FMC is for Water Buffalo!

A lot of the purchases at Sandown Park, earlier this month, were suited to stand-alone posts, and this is a classic - in World War II, while we, in the UK, were melting down railings to make bombs, and German housewives were being told not to whine about a lack of bananas, the Americans could afford to make corporate desk-toy freebies, in bronze!

 

I'm not 100% sure which model this is actually representing, but I think it's the 'Amtank' (LVT (A)-1) (37mm main gun), or something similar like the LVT(A)-4 (75mm main gun), both built on LVT-2 chassis (there were lots of marks and body-types!), also known variously as an Amtrac, Buffalo or Water Buffalo, and this model appears to be a braised bronze model, of the desk-ornament/advertising variety, with a fixed turret.

 

And while the origins date back to 1935 and the civilian design 'Alligator', this is definitely a wartime, USMC procurement-driven version, so such a model is as conspicuous a sign of wealth/consumption, as you're likely to find! And, from the heft, a very useful paperweight!

 

The barrel of the gun is a steel rod, embedded in the mantlet and blacked-down to match the patina of the vehicle/model, which may have had a chemical dip, to get this antiqued look?

 

FMC is really for Food Machinery Corporation! A 'toolmaker' in common parlance, you can see the welts of the braising where the maker's plate has been added last. It could be welded steel, but it's too heavy, equally, it's not soft-enough to be a base-metal, so bronze is the obvious material, although it appears to have been slush-cast (bronze is more commonly sand-cast?), and then tidied-up with both the baseplate, and possibly an oval plate on the rear face of the hull? From the polishing on the left side, a copper-rich bronze!

 

 After a clean!

 

An oddity, a probable rarity, and over 80-years old, it's possibly not far off the same size as the Airfix Buffalo II, an open-topped troop-delivery vehicle, for which this is the fire-support variant, usually found on either wing/end of the landing line, to suppress enemy fire and engage bunkers. But it might be a bit bigger, people who know me, know how bad my 'scale eye' is, it might be closer to 1:48th or a round 1:50th?

 

If anyone with better maths than me would like to try working it out, the tape measure says it's 125mm long, 50mm wide and approximately 65mm high?

T is for Two - Rocketry

 I seem to have a whole bunch of images from two Sandown's which have - in the case of the earlier show - already been dipped into, and with several donation posts still in the queue, I'm just going to use piecemeal, as part of the oddments-folder plundering, or like this as a quick box-ticker!

Although box ticking is a bit rich for these two, both picked-up at the show two weeks ago, as they are more gap-filling detritus than box-tickers, yet. still, some boxes will be ticked, if you know what I mean!

On the left is an almost certainly incomplete pen-case or holder, while on the right is one of the rockets from the Mettoy 'Tank Battle Game', more on which below. Both cheap as chips, I think total outlay was £5.50p?

 

The pen-case is definitely missing a few pens, and seems to be missing some kind of central pole or mechanism, but it's not clear what, and Google has only found similar things, but not the same thing!

 

The three part tail includes a grey disc of plastic which is somehow connected to the free-spinning fin section, through the cup, but free spins itself, too, and I can't separate them without apparently doing damage, and you wonder at the smaller cup at the nose end of the rocket and what it might do, in relationship to the tail assembly, or not?

I'm pretty sure the pens are the commonly seen (back in the 1970's) generics from geometry sets, knock-off spirograph's and the like, so I may have some in the pen-zone (oh, yeah! Things we haven't even contemplated here yet!), so I might be able to replace the missing colours - a red and some blues?

[image removed!]

Courtesy of Vectis Auctions (their Christmas Toy Soldier auction is pending, but I didn't notice anything exciting, unless you're looking for boxed Timpo buildings and/or farm sets), this inage is the set the smaller red rocket belongs to, the mechanism is the same as the Tri-Ang Battle Space rocket-launcher, so it may well be fireable from the rail-car. But despite being the same company, they designed a new one for another toy, rather than reusing stock!

 

Right, that was all bullshit! Racing to publish before I went to work - in biblical weather! Actually the two Lines Group rockets were the same fat-nosed one (Mettoy game and Triang train-set), so they did reuse, and the person who told me they were 'from that game' must have been mistaken or thinking of something else, which leaves my second guess as it's being a Solido or similar 'unknown rocket'? Suffice to say, this post is now two unknown rockets!

F is for Follow-up - Q is for Question Time - Sheep Joins Pig!

I'm sure the pig was a question time, but it might have been in a show report or contribution post and I forgot to Tag it unknown, however, I can't find it on the Blog now? I have shot it again below, but. sure of its existence on the Blog, I've concentrated on the addition, a sheep!

So this is the beast, it's very similar to the pig, in the crudity of it's sculpting and moulding, but still very naturalistic lines, 'Sculptural' is I think the term? A three part tool, with a large belly-block beneath two body halves the over the top split-line having been heavily fettled, the belly line less so, and the colouring the same yellowish-gray and charcoal/black, applied on the same neutral plastic.
 

The two together with a BMC figure for scale (they announced three new colourway pirate sets for later in the month, earlier today!), you can see scale in on the bigger side, and I wonder if they went with a tin-plate farm-truck or trailer, maybe even a railway wagon, but that's unlikely? Whatever, answers on a postcard if you have one . . . answer or postcard!

An hour or so later - I hadn't published it! This came from Adrian a couple of months ago, and I shot it, with Britains sizer, but never got round to the planned Question Time post, so, anyway, here it is, in better detail than the above, still looking for info on both though!

P is for Promotional

You don't see real premiums these days, most people now buy own-brand products which owe some of their cheapness to a lack of promotional gimmicks, and while I know people like Topps do the odd set of animals, or Smarties occasionally add figurals to their tube tops, it's not something which is common or everyday, and while I guess Blind Bags, have filled that niche (at a cost), it was interesting to find these . . . 

 

. . . in an Italian flyer type thing. My Italian being poor it seemed they are plain figures (rather than stampers or something), and you have to visit the store on or after the given dates to get the specific figure, and from the way the flyer was laid-out, I suspect the Italian equivalent of Aldi or Lidl? Anyway it appeared to be called Eurospin, and now we're all on the Internet, it didn't take long to find a set of six, with a previous or future set of another six?

https://www.eurospin.it/kung-fu-panda/

And at €3.99, hardly a 'premium', rather a promotional! Thanks to Jan & Istfan for fetching the flyer back from Italy! And . . . Kung Fu Panda 4? I seem to have missed King Fu Panda 3 all together!

Q is for Question Time - Space Play Mat

You'll either know this 'cos you've got it, or you won't have a clue, the only clue I had was that it might have been from one of the larger Hing Fat sets, but a bit of googling/EvilBay serching revealed that the only plastic mat they seem to have had, in one of the NASA sets, was a sort of sandy/desert scene?

Hard to photograph without reflections, when it's been scrunched-up and your landlord's put 18 downlighter spots in your ceiling, but i soaked it in hot water and then used kitchen roll to streatch it flat against the wood-floor. The only actual clue is a small PART NO .0031, located in the large crater against the long side, in black print? Anyone recognise it?

Haha! See comments; Marx/Mego - 4206 Galaxy Command, 1979, or the previous year's Star Station Seven, two of the very last play sets;

https://2warpstoneptune.com/2013/01/25/marx-toys-galaxy-command-play-set/

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 2 - Animals

So, we're into the thematic posts, I hid most of the Pirate shots, this morning, in the ITLAPD zone for next year, so we're down a post, but there's a 'what can you see' shot, now attached to another post! In the meantime - Aminalls! As I called them when I was very small!

Polar Bears! The one on the left is lovely, a bit dirty which gives it a worn apperance, but actually bery few actual bald-patches, a flocked bear, Charbens I think? But done by Wend-Al for zoo gift-shops after they stopped the aluminium production.

 

I never know with the little one, if it's a Taylor &/or Barratt cub, or from a Corgi Chipperfield's Circus wagon, one day I'll sit down and sort them all out! The other is a PVC chap marked - quite neatly - MADE IN HONG KONG, and could be from one of Tai Sang's brands, for someone else?

Elephants . . . half a Corgi, from the elephant truck, unusual to see it painted as the 'styrene kit, but they do turn-up. The little 'ivorene' one is a charmer, and probably a Christmas cracker charm type thing, but with no charm loop? Top left is a Cadbury's UK Yowie (No.85) elephant (something else in the long-queue, four posts!), while the wooden flats are always reminiscent of childhood, and simpler toys for simpler times!

 

Cats & Dogs; the two biggies are HK copies as is the little green one (Crescent gun-dog), while the two black-cats (lucky for some) are cracker-novelties and the red one looks like a Euro-premium which has been glued to something? White is the Matchbox gun-dog.

 

Always nice to get a bit of poultry, especially when you don't recognise most f it, nor the parrot (Playmobil?), while the little hen is a less-common Hong Kong copy of the earlier Britains one from the hollow-cast original!

 

A couple of PVC-alike smallimals!

 

Aquatics, the crab is an old rubber 'jiggler', he's lost his two rear claw-things, but as they were his eleventh and twelfth limbs . . . possibly a good thing! I jest, always accept a first sample of anything with gratitude, and the whole point of rubber jigglers was that they should be as 'horrific' as possible, so limb-counts being way-off is par for the course!

 

The large horse on the left is marked 'Singapore', and will be a Blue Box or Redbox animal, from which the Japanese Officer's horse seems to have been taken? Small horse is Renold's composition in very good nick, while I'm pretty sure the large, hollow, two-part, polystyrene pig is from a Tri-Ang tin-plate pick-up/farm truck?

And so soon after Stephen Hawley had a horses-head in his bed . . . I get one too! Obviously a plug-in, but for what? Anyone got a clue? Soft PVC, or the 'paint-your-own set variety?

The two damaged ones are from R&L type premiums, the monkey is standard weight-filler/box-filler in those generic Noah's Ark playsets, and the lion will probably be another cracker-toy, the mini-jiggler crocodile/alligator will be a similar capsule toy?

I is for Inflation!

For those Brwreakshiteers who wanted to take us back to the heady days of the 1970's, here is a lesson on the sunlit-uplands of post oil crisis inflation!

Basset-Lowke 'The Waterloo Cannons'

Daily Telegraph Magazine (Sunday Supplement)

No.469 October 26th 1973

Basset-Lowke 'The Waterloo Cannons'

Sunday Times Magazine (Sunday Supplement)

November 17th 1974

 

In less than fourteen months, they went up nearly 25%! That's how it was when we were begging to join the EEC, which De Gualle had tried to keep us out of (The UK's applications to join in 1963 and 1967 were vetoed by the President of France).

 

Basset-Lowke, an old railway modelling name often used by its various owners for oddities which don't belong in the standard lines! Lovely looking guns and just the sort of thing to turn-up in a charity shop, or auction job-lot. Possibly a bit big at around 60 or 70mm compatible? Anyone know them?

W is for a Wicked Witch of the Woods and her Whacky Wonky Waffle-hovel!

But she got hers!

I try not to ask for stuff for the Blog, I get plenty sent voluntarily and this year of all years haven't had the time to keep up with anything, but I did drop a line to Brian Berke in New York the other day just to see if Scully & Scully were going to 'deliver the goods' this year, and he kindly popped down the next day to check - and has been back subsequently.

Sadly all they had was this quite large-scale table centre-piece, and Brian wondered if maybe they had been caught-up in the global logistics foul-up and failed to get a new stock from Germany, which is likely, but anyway, no blurb needed as we're familiar with them now . . . Hansel and Gretel;

And many thanks to Brain for going the extra-mile; cheers Brian!

O is for Old School!

This is a fun piece, Theo van de Weerden sent me this shot with some items he was hoping I could ID (some, but not all!), and while it didn't need ID'ing itself, it's clearly marked . . .

. . . Dulcop of Italy; I couldn't work out from the photograph if it was complete, incomplete or smashed-up! Nor was it clear how it was supposed to work, so I asked Theo if he could explain further!

He then kindly re-shot it and found a link to one on evilBay with the bullets. The second set of shots are odd-coloured due to the remnants of what seems to have been a uniform coat of silver paint (mostly now worn off) reflecting back at us - which had gone some way toward confusing with the upper image too. Once you've seen these shots, the first one become equally clear!

What we actually have here is a nice, probably early production, Dulcop novelty piece which fires two large shells (which clip onto the two strange cut-outs in the shield) using a sort of 'pop-gun' action and may not have been connected to their later toy soldier line at all, but rather sold purely as an interactive, if slightly violent plaything.

It would though, make a lovely howitzer or mountain-gun for old school set-them-up-and-knock-them-down carpet wars. Thanks to Theo for sharing it with the rest of us.

P is for Prototypes?

If TJF and his chattering, ventriloquist's glove, monkey-puppet (see earlier post today) had done a bit of searching instead of picking the low-hanging fruit . . . so low they ended up with their faces in the dirt - they might have found these on a British patent application site;

Registered by Hing Fat in October 1995, and given the design number GB2051216 (now expired), this and the following three figures seem to have been the start of a planned sci-fi range of space warriors and robot/android figures, probably of a 3-to-4½-inch action figure type, but with no obvious points of articulation, they may well have been intended as smaller solids?

From the left; GB2051213, GB2051214 and GB2051215 (I think?), there's an obvious provision for separate weapons, and the possibility of a removable helmet on '15, I would imagine if they were going to be 54/60mm solids that the planned material would have been a PVC-type soft polymer? Has anyone ever seen these are a retail item/commercial prospect?

Both images are false-coloured by me from B&W originals.

I tried to find the original page (to give you the link) and couldn't! Google is really shit now, it's so commercially-oriented, it's almost impossible to find useful stuff, even if you know it was there years ago! But I did fond this page . . . with another figure from this 'set', but registered in 1994! I think the page is actually dead, as it takes ages to load?

Five minutes later and I found a few more, but I'll let you find them from the link! It looks like a set of Power Ranger knock-off's (added to the tag list!) registered in 1994, renewed in 1999 and struck out in 2007, and the set of space figures I'd already found from the following-year? The pages get faster once you've opened a few too!

Note the definite ring hands on what I now suspect were going to be 65/70mm vinyls?

SCUBA is for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

I think . . . I didn't check it! And invented or developed from nascent military experiments to commercial/civilian-use by Jacques Cousteau and his team of early eco-filmographers.

There really only appears to be one set of note out there which is the Lone Star set of eight, upon which most others have then be derived, there are stand-alone figures from smaller toys - the two Britains Minisets for instance, Ideal - and Jecsan did some nice ones with sea creatures, but Lone Star seem to have carried the day over four or five decades with this subject.

They were issued in three schemes, these are the 'James Bond' set, referencing the movie Thunderball (I think?) and were the last version so the easiest to find, as (like the Afghans) there was a number of ex-shop stock boxes, of near-mint examples, kicking around after the hobby got organised in the mid-1980's.

They went alongside bare-skin versions (as enemy), pink plastic with coloured swimming-trunks, while the first versions were in the same heavy-rubber suited (military?) black of the mini-sub' crew we saw in the previous post.

There are eight poses altogether, but I've not found the chap carrying a wrench yet. Two of the figures (top left) are designed to stand up (not very successfully!), one shining a light, while the other chisels something off a rock-face or sunken hull . . . or sets charges on a bridge!

Much copied, the little 'lamp' being replaced by a more substantial arc-light type thing, they can be found in various sizes - at least four. Most of these are later types, with the additional swimming pose (middle-left) and have all had their tanks enlarged. Some of these may still be out there if you're lucky, but are common-enough in mixed lots on feebleBay.

The two larger (yellow and white) ones, with both arms forward, are from another source and were just in the tub with the multi-coloureds!

Most of the previous shot originate with these reprobates; Hing Fat, although they will have copied them from the slightly earlier (slightly bigger) ones! This is the 'two-kids' logo packaging; from a 2006 magazine ad.

These are also based-upon the Lone Star sculpts, although there are changes, and my 'young' collection is mostly Hong Kong-marked (usually on the flipper) copies, although I think these are mostly earlier than the previous multicoloured ones (some of which are 'China' marked), with a possible original (Spanish?) top left, but he's so tatty it's hard to tell - however he's larger and unmarked. The three main sizes are all painted with the same scheme of yellow helmet/hood and red straps.

Likewise the pair at the bottom may be LS originals, but are so play worn as to be un-callable. The major change with these is that they have a rudimantry chest-pack breathing apparatus, rather than tanks on the back, a situation reversed by the four newer HK/China figures who have had tanks added (middle row), and a possible new pose with dart-gun, but he may be in the earlier sets, I've only found a few of each?

The chap middle-right is from, or belongs to, the previous 'hing fat' line-up where he's the smallest size, as a guide to all of them.

The conversions; from Lone Star on the left, and back to air-tanks on the right, the left is marked 'Hong Kong' on a flipper, the right is unmarked but has all the hallmarks of a 1980/90's rack-toy/carded-bag type figure and I may have seen them in a set with a rubber boat, but I can't find the referance.

L is for Lucky Lorry

I shot this at Sandown Park on Adrian Little tables, but little did I know at the time how apposite it might prove to be only a few weeks later, as the measures to control Corvid-19 bring the haulage industry to its knees and their own 'professional body'; the Road Haulage Association, mutters darkly about  a possible need for nationalisation.

Because - if I'm remembering it correctly - BRS (as they were called when I was little) were the national, tax-payer owned transport organisation? I think they were being privatised while I was still little, as I don't remember any great 'sell-off' under Thatcher, so it was probably sold piecemeal to regional independents and gradually scaled-down to nothing?

Presumably some leftover from WWII, I think their wagons were blue but a little (a lot?) darker than the shade chosen by The Lucky Toys for this model, although I equally remember tarp's of exactly this colour among all the greasy, charcoal, navy and turd-brown ones!

Under the corona virus pandemic we have seen how both private railways and bus operators cannot survive, giving full-light to the lies of 41 years of outsourced, downsized, privatisation and sell-off. Lies which were identified as such at the time, but sadly, the Tories have had the newspaper editors on their side!

Quite apart from the selling-off of all our war-store depots and all our laboratories and the obvious failure of rail and bus networks, all the other obvious failings of our nation in this crisis can be laid at the feet of the Tories, and while 'New Blair' is hardly an innocent party, it is the people in charge - right now - who are responsible for that fact that while we (a developed, '1st World' country) have no face-masks to speak of, Turkey (regarded as a 2nd World developing nation) has a compulsory face-mask policy and enough face-marks to adhere to such a dictate?

A national haulier or the mechanism to create one at short notice is something we should have had, or had ready. That we had no such organisation, no national lab's, no face-masks, is all you need to know about the Thatcherite-Reganomic desire to protect the citizens they want to vote for them and their Trumpundbrwreakshit.

We were offered a part in a pan-European respirator procurement program last  the other week, and turned down the opportunity, now we're taking 200 off the Yanks . . . who need them just as badly? Capitalism has been failing us since before the crash of 2008, now democracy itself is failing.

Enough politics for now, although there will be more . . . it's my Blog!

Look! The treasure-chest from the Dinky Spectrum Maximum Security Car, cleverly copied to make a lorry load! And many thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Th above obviously written while I was off line, it's all here;

https://www.brs.co.uk/page/103/history

And I wouldn't recognize one of it went past the window as I type! They were ours and if they'd been retained, we'd have had them when we need them! Sweden (who own BRS!) haven't gone into lockdown, because they are a high-tax/high-welfare society with spare capacity in their health services, New Zealand have a low death rate because they moved sharpish and hard (instead of watching and waiting like Boris!), we aren't 'great' anymore, we're just breaking Britain, struggling with the dichotomy between true democracy and big business' interests.