F is for Follow-up . . . and Update, and Image Dump, and A-Z Page Update and Contribution and Apology! Highlander Miniatures!

Jason, who I think might be Jason Pontiac (?), sent the Blog a shed-load of Highlander Miniatures stuff, which has been languishing in Picasa since 2020. Now, with Covid-19 that year, then a Mother, Friends and two beloved Cat's, dying about the place, over the next three years, while I fought HMRC, HMCTS, local authorities here and in the Channel Islands, a lazy, belligerent Brother and an . . . uncommunicative Step Mother, not to mention venal auctioneers, grasping antiques dealers, and dishonourable Estate Agents, I hope Jason will forgive me for taking so long to sort this out, especially given that I have churned out some 2000+ posts in that time, but it needed time, it needed a clear head . . . and there's more!

Armour

M60 A1's, A2 'Starship's, M107 and M110 SPG's

 

All the work on this ephemeral firm has been done here at Small Scale World over the last 11-years, with help from several people. And as part of my own research, back at the start (2014) I found, when Google was still useful, a catalogue, listed in a University's research and reference library, back in the US.

I wrote to them asking if it would be possible to have a copy, for wider dissemination (on the Blog), expecting a small fee for a couple of stock images, only to be told it would be in excess of $25 dollars, which makes one wonder how people can afford serious research, the answer is increasingly, they go to European or other countries' places of learning!

Anyway, I didn't proceed at that time, knowing that if it existed it would turn-up, and in 2023, with the images from Jason still sitting here, I found one on eBay, which with postage was less than the American Uni' wanted, so now I have the whole thing, to share with everyone, for free, and which is on the A-Z entry, or it will be in the next few hours (by the time I publish this), covers, below;

Front

 

Back

 

It came with a 1977 dated price list, but there's an extra set, listed in the catalogue, and descriptions differ between the two, and with the cards we've already seen, so it's a hard one to annotate, and I've been re-writing the listing for an hour or two already, and thought I'd get this started to help sort out my thoughts, and the images, some of which will go over there!

Jason's main aim was showing us the longer-barrelled SPG, and the standard M60 A1, but he also has a lot of infantry , guns and other stuff, which he remembers going to a ". . . toy store 'warehouse' in Brooklyn in the mid 80's" with his father, and purchasing them, presumably as clearance?

Image dump - finally!

 

Another small development, was the purchase a couple of years ago of an A3 scanner, allowing for the scanning of larger documents, and so I scanned the old broadsheet-cutting as one piece, and because the catalogue is split here, and whole on the A-Z entry, while the split cutting has been on the A-Z page for a number of years, I thought it could go here, whole, for balance!

So, many apologies to Jason for the time it's taken to get his images up here, and many thanks for his sharing them with the rest of us. His subsequent purchases of carded sets, and some AFV close-up's, have gone on the A-Z entry, along with full-scans of the gate-fold catalogue, the price-list, a fully updated product listing and some card scans.

And to anyone else who's sent stuff, I haven't got round to yet, it will all get put-up here eventually!

 

It needed a quiet Christmas morning . . . and half the afternoon!

 

https://smallscaleworld-g-h-i.blogspot.com/2016/02/highlander-toy-and-miniature-military.html 

 

The full entry is still not 100% complete, and certainly not definitive, but it's the best info' on the Web, and seems to sum up the company's history and product list, to a satisfactory level.

J is for Johnnie Walker

The iconic 'Striding Man' logographic has been used to market the 200-year-old whisky brand since 1908, now owned by drinks giant Diageo, the walker was commissioned by another; Sir Alexander Walker, the grandson of the eponymous Johnnie Walker and is counted as one of the earliest corporate marketing mascot/symbols.

 

Marx produced several of these figural mascots, as 'toy' figures, in different scales, presumably as presentation pieces, or some kind of promotional freebie? We've seen the Dewar Highlander from White Lable whisky, as a small scale one (30mm) here I think, back at the start of the Blog, while the 60mm one needs his ceremonial mace fixed before he appears here, but this is the Johnnie Walker, in the same style and probably from the same Hong Kong factory as the Warriors of the World, hard polystyrene, factory-painted figures, and there is a 30mm scaked-down version too.

The latest version has been plagiarised by the Right-wing misogynist 'Proud Boys', Trump's storm troopers, although the brewer is threatening to take them to court. I also have a lead semi-flat (from Britains - I think) somewhere, so one day I'll try to do them all in one post!

16th - Brain Berke has sent his, so he can go here, I've cropped him out of a larger image which has left him a bit pixelated, but you get the idea, and he's reputed to be supplied by Britains, as a 35mm, solid lead/tin, semi-flat.

D is for Dragonology!

We had Pirateology back on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, last September, and heaven forfend that I now influence people who used to influence me, but I've put another 'ology on the back-burner and pulled this out of the queue sharpish!

Dragonology, like the preveous Piratology, a pretty-standard board-game under the trope of the dragon theme - gotta' have a hook to hang it on! Nice graphics, although I forgot to shoot the board, but there are two views of it in the post and you can see it's a journey-round the board doing/collecting stuff, with card forfeits/jeopardies.

 

Still carried here by Paul Lamond for Sababa, but also crediting Templar Publishing who hold the 'ology series, there are other games, based on other titles in the book series, with two for Wizardology (heehee!), but not yet an Egyptology one, which is the one I'm waiting/hoping for, although if they do make one, it may not have figures! While the newer books haven't had the momentum yet, to generate the desire/need for games?

 

Obviously the figures are the all-important bit, and this set actually carries more than the Pirate set, with six figures, rather than five, several of whom bear more than a passing resemblance to the characters from Cludo!

 

 

They all have names, as do the dragons (have identities), but I was a little disappointed to see, or not see . . . a Welsh one, but I think Switzerland is doing the heavy-lifting for both Cymru and the Vikings! The right-hand human images seem to be taken from much-larger, highly detailed master-sculpts, rather than than the eventual 35/40mm'ish production figures, which have lost a lot of that detail.

 

You can see how Beatrice Cook could double for Miss Peacock, Dragon Man Dan for Colonel Mustard, Phineas Feek for Professor Plum, one of the others could be repainted for Mr. Green, and while one of the missing women could be covered by the Oriental girl, Miss Ta, either Emery or Drake (best for Mr. Green) would have to re-identify, which would excite the Trumpy Broflakes, wouldn't it!

The nine dragons are all equally well-done, and as per the B&W sheet, display some of the different physiognomies or traits of various dragons from myths and legends around the world, although scale is a little-off, I feel, the Chinese dragon should be one of the bigger ones

The other/another angle for eight of them, not much I can add, they'd go better up against 1:76/72 figures, than anything larger, perhaps with all the fantasy stuff coming from Caesar and Dark Alliance - EY, I'm thinking of you - and you can pick them up for cheapness on feeBay!

 

While the little Knucker (closest to a Viking Wyrm, or the great Earth Worm), has a nice metallic belly which is totally lost when it's on the board!

E is for Essem!

I knew I knew! It's Essem, by Morestone! That coach which had the little plastic cowboys we keep seeing here, with the 'I know but I don't know' caveats, anyway, I had a folder with this in, and I've found a link to tell you everything else, as I don't have the stagecoach yet!

 

Gets them in the bloody Tag-list at last! That link - Nicholas Martin Diecast;

https://www.diecastvintagetoys.co.uk/essem-stage-coach

 

And while the brown plastic would appear to be rarer (the link poster has a darker brown one), the red-plastic one would appear to be even less common? They are a type of phenolic or early styrene, a dense and heavy plastic.

A is for Again! Art Plastics

Now, Brian has sent me a load of Nativity stuff from the Big Apple, which I told him I would shove down in the Christmas 2024 folder, because, as you can see (it's the bloody 20th already!) I am running out of time, and still have some cake-dec' images I might get up here, however, as we looked at Art Plastics several times a year ago, and as Adrian gave me this as an early, unwrapped Christmas present last Friday, here's a nativity scene!

These are, as mentioned, the Art Plastics again, and as mentioned last year, very prolific with various sizes and finishes of this set, with alternate poses, hard and soft-edges versions, yada-yada . . . Here painted and glued into a little stable set-up, the lambs asking why there's a baby in their food tray?

 

Sphagnum moss, boy, they liked glueing sphagnum moss into their nativity-set roofs back in the day! It is the same set as the boxed one we looked at a couple of years ago, but I never took that one out and shot it separately, while with this one the box is a bit meah! Around 35 (Joseph)/40mm (Wise Man) and polystyrene, except for the sphagnum moss (I hope Brit's are saying that to themselves in Lenny Henry's David Bellamy voice!).

 

Mark on the base underside of the stable.

B is for Bright Red Bonus!

Getting into the Christmassy spirit with this little charmer, I think this in the third or fourth piece of horse-drawn, washing-power premium we've had here on Small Scale World now, courtesy of Bonux in France, and there's not much to add to what will be on the tag, via the previous posts, so enjoy . . .

 

The horse is a variation of the old Britains Hollow-cast horse which gave us all the Bergan-Airfix-Riesler-Reamsa-F&G horses, but in a less active pose, and the red is almost orange, so I guess 'scarlet' is the term!

Grabbed this from an evilBay auction back in May '21, you can see Bonux issued all sorts of pocket-money stuff, you'd also expect to find on carded rack-toy sets, individually in Christmas cracker, or lucky-bags, or even larger capsules in 'gum-ball' machines. We looked at some of the 'planes way back at the beginning of the Blog, and I keep meaning to track down a couple of the trains to compare with Kinder and Hong Kong's efforts!

M is for Mundi Toys . . . Dunkin, Montaplex et al!

A proper return to one of my favourite sets of small scale, technically intermediate scale at 30-35mm, toy soldiers, the 'Dunkin' bubble-gum premiums, and while I will show you all of them, I think I may still have to find one?

We looked at my then, small collection, near the beginning of the Blog, 2010, and at the time it was popularly considered that Dunkin were the primary source, with the other sources being secondary.

 

But I now suspect that Mundi Toys might have been the first/major user, with the various gum-manufacturers dipping-in, in turn, among which we know Mundi were themselves one, Dunkin was another, Americana probably had a pop (although I have yet to find an envelope for them), GC (General de Cofiteria S.A.) 'Boomer' and Wikö among others, as and when there was available production-time from the supplier (who may or may not have been Mundi or Dunkin), or a gap in their own promotions schedules.

Above, we see the Mundi bubblegum 'Sobre' on the right (Soldados en Accion - 'Soldiers in Action'), containing one piece of Tyler's chicle and one figure. On the left is a blister-set with a pair of vehicles and the Dunkin pack (Hazañas y Combates - lit: "Feats and Combats") in the middle. The Mundi are different colours, my - mint - envelopes contained yellow Americans, while you can see the blister has a number of metallic-blue ones, the figures we are looking at below are probably all Dunkin.

I actually had some trouble, shooting these, so we have two sets of photographs for both the Americans and the Russians! Here they all are on the carpet, which they rather shrank into, and I had to play with the light and contrast to render them viewable! 20 poses/sculpts, common to all three nations, for a total of 60 unique figurines.

 

Above are the grunts, I thought I'd sorted them into riflemen and tommy-gunners, but I notice there's a tommy-gunner hiding in the top row, so it's four and eight, not five and seven! Below them is an obvious officer, the command/support trio and some heavy weapons with the third grenade thrower.

 

I've seen these - rather ridiculously - credited to Airfix as the influencer! However I think the author was just looking for an excuse to get them in his tome! In point of fact they are mostly after MPC (54mm and 60mm) and the Marx 54mm, if you need a second source, but it's MPC poses and 'after MPC' in the main. The grenade thrower without weapon, though, is ALL Britains, as is the being-shot character! It's true, the kneeling radio operator looks vaguely like the Airfix HO/OO paratrooper one, but he also looks like a reverse sculpt of an early (1950's) kit figure!

 

The Russians, there's only 19 of the 20 present here, with the sentry and guard dog absent, we've seen him before, in green, and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of red-ones in the storage sample, now. Last time I divided them into summer (tunics and helmets) and winter (greatcoats and fur-hats) uniforms, this time I grouped them thematically as the US troops.

 

With five standing about, five fighting for their lives, five moving-up/advancing, and five miscellaneous! Being red plastic, they were the worst to photograph, and I ended-up in the bathroom, shooting them against the mirror, where - of course - the point of focus shifted to 'imaginary space'!

 

Now, I've said before, when I first encountered these, it was with a couple of the diggers, and I thought they might be Afrika Korps, but I notice Dunkin have them as Chinese, with the Mundi sobre envelope showing a sketch which is more British-Commonwealth? I guess this lot are your flexible friend! I tend to think of them as Japanese, especially now I have the swordsmen - top row, 2 & 5.

 

Although without 20 Germans, and in an odd scale/size, this set has always been a bit problematical, and it's their charm rather than their usefulness which has me staying loyal to them. If they are Chinese, then we could assume we are looking at the three main powers in the Cold War, which makes more sense?

The rest of the 'stuff', clockwise from the top left. The missing Jap'/Chinese pose is a prone shooter, he looks familiar-enough for me to think I may have one somewhere, but, equally, he may be the still-elusive 60th pose for my samples?

 

Colour variations on the Russians in red, when we looked at them last time, there were a bunch of green ones which may well have been Mundi issues, or Montaplex, who did all these, in various colours, some quite whacky, but whether from the original tools or as lower-grade copies I don't know yet.

 

Then the missing guard-dog from the above line-ups, and another colour-variation shot. Below them are the typical base marks which may or may not be mould-release pin-marks, and are something in common with lots of the output of Olà (ice cream premiums), Raja and others (in addition to those already named above), some of which output is believed to have come from the Heimo works; I don't know why?

 

Bottom right has the recipient of some wargamers snack sticker, rather than a national army identity I suspect, but whether it was a clementine, mandarin, satsuma or tangerine is currently unknown; intensive research, however, remains ongoing! Finally, slight colour variants of the US Machine-gunner.

 

There is still a Mundi Toys (they exhibited at the New York toy fair in September), but they are SRL, not SA, and are somewhere in Bolivia nor do they seem to carry this kind of stuff.

 

And this is one of those posts where everyone has given me a few figures over the years in addition to my own finds, so thanks, alphabetically to; Graham Apperley, John Begg, Andreas Dittmann, Peter Evans, Tony Harrington, Mike Harding, Adrian Little, Gareth Morgan, Trevor Rudkin and Chris Smith.

P is for Pirateology!

Having mentioned the possibility that the two smaller figures in the round-up might be from a board-game, I can tell you only that it isn't Pirateology, because that's here, right now, and it has different figures!

I thought we'd had the Dragonology set, posted up here, but looking for it just now, quickly realised it's still in the long-queue! Nevertheless, this is a sister game, Pirateology (presumably 'the study and understanding of pirates and piratey things!), from Sababa Toys (via Esdevium Games (Paul Lamond)), and it's a game . . . with pirates!

 

Based on a series of books by Dugald Steer and Nghiem Ta, it followed the Dragonology, Egyptology and Wizardology books, and has since been joined by Oceanology and Monstrology! I'm not going to pretend to know anything about them beyond the fact that clearly a franchise has been born!

 

Skull dice and coins which have gone in the spares pile for future . . . God knows what? But the little PVC-effect micro-pirate ships are rather lovely and will join the Galoob vessels in the relevant drawer of the little cabinet, we looked at a while ago.

 

The rest then went to recycling, I just haven't got the space, and would likely never have played the game, the capitalist, consumption-driven system produces mountains of this stuff, and I just waited for one going cheap (£5.99'ish), to get the figures.

 

And this is they; the meat & four veg'! About 35/40mm, quite well painted and a couple of obvious specifics; a China Sea pirate and a Berber/Barbary/Ottoman Corsair, they are really nice for board-game figures, but you'd have to be careful, as it's all in the base-colour as to who's 'marker' is who's! They seem to tie-in to the coloured banners and flags/pennants on the ships.

O is for Olympics!

So, one of my earlier purchases did a get shot before I sent the box up the road, and it raises a point I didn't mention in my 'lots' of 'wrong' history the other day, but it was pretty obvious if you studied the photographs.

It is that with some of the figure sets, the contents are, to say the least, assorted, with duplicates, often the same pose/colour - pointing to a lack of mixing before packing, or an incomplete pose-count.

Note that this set has a set number/order code, most do, but some are on the fronts and some are on the backs, and the reason I listed them alphabetically is that I couldn't find enough images of both sides of the cards to build a decent list, I will, when I get my seven/eight out again, probbaly find them all. If you read anywhere "the card has a stock number which many of the other cards do not have", be sure - you are reading bullshit.

The seven poses I've ended-up with, as stated last time these are the 'Euro' poses, not those issued by Marx, and not those issued in UK Cereal, neither of which have a torch-bearer, so are all just 'athletes' against this set's Olympic figures! I suspect there should be eight?

That's a question mark because I don't know for certain, it could be ten or more, I'm not sure, you see, Kent, Paul, Stadinger, Fuckwits Anonymous . . . if I wrote there were eight [as a fact], and they supplied them to Choco-tag-nuts in brown (because Choco-tag-nuts had them in brown), I'd be making things up as I go along, and I try not to do that kind of shit here!

 

These were offered by DS Plastic in Holland / the Netherlands, and are probably 35/40mm flats/semi-flats, possibly soft polyethylene, and which may well have appeared in De Gruyter lucky/gift/surprise envelopes, and I wonder if anyone has actual examples they could send to the blog . . . or send it to a leading magazine - Plastic Warrior has recently covered all the other athletes?

 

I had a go anyway;

• 1008 - Action Athletes
• 3006 - Antique Cars
  
• 3002 - Comic Animals
• 1001 - Comic Moon Figures
• 1007 - Comic Pirates
• ???? - Dogs - Mexico
• 1003 - Dolls of the World
• 3004 - Dune Buggys [sic]
  
• 3009 - Historical Transportation
• 3003 - Horse-Drawn Coaches
• 1011 - Robin Hood Figures
• 1022 - Soldiers of World War II
  
• 3001 - Super Motorcycles

Put in numerical order;

• 1001 - Comic Moon Figures
• 1003 - Dolls of the World
  
• 1007 - Comic Pirates
• 1008 - Action Athletes
• 1011 - Robin Hood Figures
• 1022 - Soldiers of World War II
• 3001 - Super Motorcycles
• 3002 - Comic Animals
• 3003 - Horse-Drawn Coaches
• 3004 - Dune Buggys [sic]
• 3006 - Antique Cars
• 3009 - Historical Transportation
• ???? - Dogs - Mexico

So, it's not 'many don't', it's all do! Stadinger was making it up as he went along . . . again! Hahahahaha, fuckin' unbelievable, isn't it? It's fuckin' unbelievable! But they keep doing it, in the desperate hope they may, one day, really catch me out!

The 1xxx's are probably numbered-in with other toys/novelties/playthings, the 3xxx's suggest other Italian/R&L type clip-together kits/funnies may still be to find?

B is for Battle Dressed Combat Soldiers!

When this post was in the queue for Rack Toy Month last year, it consisted of about 20 appallingly bad shots of the contents of the bag, with tons of reflection, in which I was trying to shoot at least one good shot of each pose, for collaging into groups, but I ran-out of time to crop and edit them.

There weren't all the poses in the bag which was another spoiler of the project and then, when getting toward the end of the garage emptying, I found their box, and managed a whole new shoot with loose figures and a few silver 'plated' ones!

The oddity with this set (and the reason I had them stored separately in two 'zones'), is that the ANZAC clones are, generally, a tad bigger than the 8th Army clones (both from the Airfix 1:32nd/54mm figures), so, for years, I thought I was seeking two sources! I still am of course, but now it's to find the chromium-guys set, rather than two nationalities of set!

 

How many officers? You can see here that the ANZAC Officer with pistol (converted from the Airfix Commando) is heading for 45mm, the other ANZAC's being around 40mm, with some of the 8th Army no more than 35-mil! And they go very well with the Rado Industries/Ri-Toys, definitely not Blue Box ANZAC's! Which means they could be used with the actual Blue Box too!

The mark shows up better on the metallic-sprayed set, and err, that's it for now, currently an unknown originator's 'generics', I'll return to them when more comes to light! I aught to add that I think the two chromium ones here were from Chris or Peter, as the officer wasn't in the storage lot and these images were from the old folder, so thanks - as always - to both.

I is for Indomitable Gauls . . . Still Holding-out!

A funny one this, I have the better known pastel-shade ones from Ola, Americana et al, which were issued on a one-random premium per product item basis over here, but we are actually going to look at the slightly larger knock-off clones seen elsewhere, because that's how the cookie crumbled!

Bi-lingual packaging for export, and they do turn up here, I've now known two dealers have a quantity of these, each time the same contents in every bag of a stock-carton, but different contends in the two lots.

This was the first lot, and I shot them ages ago meaning to do something with the smaller ones when they turned-up, but forgetting to do so when I did quickly sort some of the premiums last summer ('21). Note the header-card states '10' characters, but you get twelve items, however, one of them is a stone!

Close-ups, there are two Asterix models, one standing (bottom left) and one charging into action (top, 2nd from right), the premiums blogs only showed the former when they were covering the sets ten or twelve years ago, but I'm pretty sure I have them both in the smaller colours, and it seems there were various issues of different line-ups. This is all Gauls or Romans with one Egyptian (top right) I think?

The other dealers sets (I again bought 2) are part new, part duplicates, and again the count is twelve, not ten, with a duplicate menhir stone but no Obelix to carry it! We also get the chiefs shield, but only one bearer, and the missing bearer isn't in the others set I've found so-far, so there must be at least a third and fourth packing for the full 36?

I had a few of the older ones here from a Sandown purchase which may have been in the previous 'H is for . . . ' on the subject, if not it's still in the queue! You can see the older set are slightly smaller, but the clones are good, with most of the fine detail carried-over, although the menhir (Fascinating read) is a completely new sculpt with a flat bottom so it can stand in monolithic majesty after delivery!

The size difference hasn't affected the shield-carriers much and a non-matching pair (Euro-premium on the right) seem to hold it level, for the smaller Dogmatix to occupy the chief's position!

Getafix (by far the best of the anglicised names, and better than the original Panoramix in my opinion!) gets a little collar, set into the caldron bubbles, to hold his stirrer, which seems a little excessive to me! These seem to be the same figures also issued in Peru, whether the tool stopped on the way to Taiwan, or is slowly working it's way back here I don’t know!

Funny; I have a shed load of these loose, all the same blue, all the same 17 sculpts, and offered a load to a chap who was making/painting an army of them on Facebook, free, gratis, nothing asked in return, his choice and I would have swallowed the postage but he managed to turn them down with a brusqueness verging on downright rudeness! Obviously he'd taken sides in other matters, and managed not to be insultingly rude (we've ever met and I've never harmed him), while managing to be rude enough! His loss!