L is for Louche Lucite Layabouts!

We seem to often arrive at Lik Be during Rack Toy Month, and while I tried to resist poking the Northern cow-pat of competitiveness this year, reader Keith Harrison mentioned he had all the missing clear-plastic 'Vitrine' LB robots, of which we saw the other three of, here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/07/lb-is-for-lik-be.html

 

And he kindly sent some fantastic images of them to the blog; 

 

Family Photo!

 

Base marking - clear as mud, as usual!

 

Wotan's favourite; 'Wotan'!

 

'Rocket Robin', with a partial 'Lobster', whose paint has mostly worn off, but I suspect these may have been decorated with spirit-based art markers, or something equally susceptible to rubbing and fading?

 

Keith also sent this and the next two images, these look like they might be from the same batch/source/origin as the 'eraser' set I got a while back now, as a trio;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/10/s-is-for-serious-score.html

 

But here as a full sextet, and with 'Traffic Cop' being in a semi-transparent dayglo green, rather confirming my suspicion back then, that they are some kind of silicon, not really an eraser rubber, but rather a smudging rubber! However, sold as Dragon Master Fantasy Figures, not erasers like my sample, by what looks to be Tiarri Management Sevices?

 

We've seen these Moon Platoon chaps before, and they were both poor shots, here we can see they are carried by Imperial Toys, (updates to those posts by the time I post this) who, although a US importer, seem to have got a lot of their stuff into the UK, but whether by design, or some back-of-the-warehouse accident I don't know, maybe a buyer's tie-in with one of our novelty importers, like WHC/Success? However, not necessarily this set, just other Imperial stuff.

 

While these are the 'Tesco Finest' version of the sucker 'bots with the - as yet - unascribed mark which may be ATS, AST. STA or SAT, but probably isn't T-anything! I've seen these before, occasionally, so they do seem to have been a 'thing' compared to the commoner ones with airgun blasted blobs of colour, so someone obviously stipulated a better level of paint on their contract? The point here being, it's rare to find them this clean and paint-complete.

 

Many thanks to Keith for all the above, and it got me deep-diving into the image banks to see what was waiting for next-time, which is this time now, or what I could add from the archive;

 

So sticking with the robots first, and this image was sent to another Blog, upon request, many years ago, and got lost in a lack of tagging, or got deleted, it doesn't matter, there's no meaningful relationship with the strange little men over there, now! I suspect the falling-out is more about Bwreakshit than Blogs!

 

We have, in the intervening years, seen all the gaps filled, and then some, but as a guide, it's a new image here at Small Scale World, and from the top shows;

• 54mm hard polystyrene, chrome-type finish
• 25mm hard polystyrene, chrome-type finish
• 54mm hard polystyrene, brushed-aluminium finish
• 25mm soft polyethylene, gunmetal plastic (as supplied to Culpitt and HG)
• 54mm sucker types (marked with a crude HONG KONG)

Here's a gum-ball capsule-machine window card, with 'Stern Gang' as what looks like a pencil top (bottom right), in the same flexible silicon as the sucker chaps. Note also, the cracker-toy motorcycle, the troll, the other robot and a bisque Wade Whimsy knock-off, among other things . . . the mini abacus!

While this looks like the 25mm, polyethylene, gunmetal plastic ones, as Spaceimens! Also supplied to Culpitt and HG Toys, so we have them as play-set accessories, cake decorations and gum-ball prizes! We only need to find them in Christmas crackers for the full "House"!

Which brings us to the Astro-Spacemen* element of that/those original donation post/s, with the same treatment, we have;

• 54mm hard polystyrene, gunmetal plastic, painted both sides
• 54mm & 25mm soft polyethylene, gunmetal plastic, painted one side
• 54mm soft polyethylene, various colours, painted both sides
• 54mm soft polyethylene, white plastic painted one side (as supplied to Clifford)

* I have mentioned on several occasions I have trouble pigeonholing these, as they are armed (spacemen), but wearing NASA kit (astronauts)!

 

• 54mm & 25mm soft polyethylene, various colours, unpainted
• 54mm Nylon or a propylene, and 25mm (as supplied to MPC, Pipin and Tri-Ang), all finished in silver or gold chrome-effects, which can be removed with a five-second dip in TFR or oven cleaner.
• 25mm hard polystyrene, painted matt-white. 

The previous two lots, all being LB (for Lik Be) production, while this last lot is mostly clones/copies/piracies, with the LB additional poses for the MPC, Pipin and Tri-Ang issues, off to the bottom left, which are taken from MPC's own figures, split between their 54mm and 70mm sculpts.

 

Also, the pair between the first two rows are the 54mm, soft polyethylene fakes, and marked Hong Kong, under domed bases, one pretending to be an LB original, even down to the paint, the white one being from the Shimmel blister-carded Flash Gordon sets. The four more obvious rows are;

• 50mm, soft polyethylene, various colours, unpainted
• 23mm, soft polyethylene, various colours, unpainted
• 50mm painted & 25mm unpainted, both polyethylene soft plastic
•  25mm hard polystyrene, brushed-aluminium finish

There's a more blobby, silver/gunmetal one below that last row, of unknown origin, and an unpainted figure above the MPC group. What sets that last row apart from the other LB output, is that they are unmarked, as are all the MPC mini-clones, but, a lot of the Tri-Ang supplied ones were marked. However, the late Nylon/'Propylene 54mm ones, still in bakers and cookshops in the 2000's, were also unmarked, so a late thing, or a Culpitt (or similar) takeover thing?

We have since (recently) added 45mm copies in at least two plastics, so both sets of previous overviews (and these originals) will need to be superseded by a new round of posts, in a year or two!

 

One of the sources of the - at least four types of - sucker figure, are to be seen on these gum-ball sample cards, from 'Liberty', and, at 25¢, not that long ago? Also of interest are hard plastic 'vitrine' animals at the tops of the cards, micro-mini dinosaurs and sports 'monsters', both probably of a PVC-alike material.

 

While the whole bunch appear to be available here, as Star Warriors, on an unbranded, generic card, I think we've seen better images of them close-up before now, but these cards carry their own nostalgia! And we have all six robots and two poses of the Astro-Spacemen.

 

And, thanks again for Keith's kicking off this deep dive! Best rack toys ever . . . in the moment!

H is for Hasbro's Air Raiders

We saw one of these back at the beginning of the Blog, but sometime in 2021 I picked up another one, the trouble is, it's the same one, I still need to find the purple 'enemy' or other side, although we've seen some loose! But we can have a quick box-tick of this card, as it's been sitting in Picasa for five years waiting!

 

And, of course, with reference to an exchange of comments the other day, another example of some sub-scale (50mm/2-inch) action figures I seem to be collecting, despite not collecting action figures . . . Doh! Issued in 1987, they are nearly 40-years old!

T is for Tyo Typical Types

Well? A sort of theme was the space-sets I managed to pick-up over the weekend, and the matching loose figures, from two genres we've covered here recently, so a quick post on them, and the bonus was getting two-more brands associated with them both.

 

Haglon taking the Lik Be clones, and Trafalgar the MPC copies, Trafalgar Toys (better known for their tie-ins with LJN, Mego and the Hong Kong subsidiary Lion Rock) would have been a rival to WHC, Grossman and the like, and, indeed, this card may be in the archive as LJN?

 

But Haglon (Hagemayer) were more of a shipping operation, as far as I understand it, like with container ships, port space and warehouses in Holland, shipping all over Europe, and apparently adding their moniker to some of the stuff they shipped-in, that would have extended far beyond toys, which were probably a minor concern among all the household and garden goods, haberdashery, pet supplies and the like? And I'm sure I've seen this card as a generic. We also saw them as Woolbro a while back;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/07/lb-is-for-lanky-bods.html 

 

As supplied by Haglon! The 50mm knock-offs of LB's finaest, apparently limited to four poses (did they pantograph one of the Clifford sets?!) are not hard to find, although it took me a while to garner a decent sample, I'm now going for one of each colour! These came from four sources over the weekend.

 

MPC originals, in two slightly different shades of red, we looked at their oeuvre here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/04/mpc-is-for-many-plastic-cosmonauts.html

 

and these are grist to the mill, but again, there comes a point when you are just looking for individual 'better' figures, or a specific pose-colour combination, and these are clean!

 

Seen in the link in an unreadable, but probably generic set (next to the Payton bag), the Trafalgar ones are the better versions, very close to the MPC, solidly formed and with thicker bases than the other three or so variants.

 

While these are the Henbrandt/Hing Fat third-generation (like Payton's, but worse) sub-piracies, and again, of limited use, but they'll all be sorted into the master collection, before any are passed on, probably to charity, but that's all a few years away, still.

 

Tim-Mee, so keen to cash-in on Star Wars (AND Battlestar Galactica, everyone forgets that was a year later), grabbed one of the MPC sculpts, with the barest of modification, and there was one in the plunder, last weekend, which was lucky for the completeness of this post!

 

Which gives us, from the left:

• Haglon-Hagemayer/Woolbro (and others?)
• Tim-Mee
• MPC
• Trafalgar Toys (et al)
• Hing Fat/Henbrandt (et al)

Making more and more sense, every time we visit them, and thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for their input on the day or over the weekend.

P is for Perfect Polymer Perambulation

So, to the Ambulance and crew, I rather took too-many shots of these over two sessions, but I've hacked through them, deleted a load, and collaged the rest, so it's boiled down to its over-shot essence! Brian Carrick caught me, at Sandown Park, while I was indisposed to go and find the items myself, and a version of the following conversation took place,

 

B - I've just seen something round the corner which I think you'd be interested in?

 

Me - Oh really, what is it?

 

B - An early-British plastic Ambulance, and stretcher team I haven't seen before, he doesn't want a lot for it?

 

Me - Could you grab it for me, and if it's nice I'll have it?

 

B - Yes, I'll pop-back now, he's only round the corner!

 

Which he kindly did! 

 

Two minutes later, he was back with what we're looking at here, and I quickly said "yes" and sorted him out with the dosh. Conversations ensued, between Brian and myself, and subsequently, with a few other people as they passed through the day, and the general consensus was that it was probably Triang-Minic or Mettoy-Playcraft, with me favouring the former (for the similarity of the wheels), but arguing equally for the latter because of both the big Hospital play set, and the Ward 10 stuff they did?

 

You can see both are covered in those orange-brown smuts you associate with smoker's homes and damp, whether tobacco, coal-fired boilers, or open-fires, and how they look like they go together! I also pointed out to Brain, that the figures were the ones "Blue Box Copied..." in small scale - as seen here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/08/e-is-for-emergency-empire-or-emson.html

 

The Ambulance, after cleaning, is a Daimler, and there were several toy versions around at the time, it seems to have been one of the commoner chassis used by Ambulance coachworks, before the invention of the long-wheelbase Ford Transit van, in my childhood!

 

There is the slight warping you get with the older Minic's, I think they must have been using a 'styrene-like polymer, which was not as stable as actual polystyrene? The contemporary model trains were polystyrene, and don't warp!

 

Clear marking of Made in England, I'm sure the 'red' crosses are from an old Airfix (or Revell?) version of the Junkers 52 'Aunty Ju', in Swiss airline markings, as used in the filum The Battle of Britain, and seen in both Swiss and German versions, parked-up at Blackbush Airfield, by yours truly, when I was a small boy! So they'll need to be removed! But the 'Ambulance' board, over the windscreen, is original.

 

The wheels were reminiscent of the Tri-Ang stuff we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/afv-is-for-among-my-favorite-vehicles.html

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/t-is-for-triang-minic-part-1-military.html

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/t-is-for-triang-minic-part-2-civilian.html

 

And it's now been confirmed to be Tri-Ang Minic, we actually looked at the Mettoy one a while back, which I'd totally forgotten, until preparing this article!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/09/t-is-for-two-toy-ambulances.html

 

Front and back shots!

 

But . . . these aren't the figures copied by Blue Box, I think they ARE Blue Box! When I got them home, and first, put my glasses on, then got out the jeweller's loupe, it became obvious, very quickly, that the stretcher is marked on the underside;

 

Made In Hong Kong, in a nice, neat, rounded, DIN typeface, as found on all sorts of Blue Box (and Redbox) animals and other toys/accessories. Albeit hard to photograph, in white plastic!

 

And, while I haven't found a Blue Box Ambulance in large-scale, yet, nor a medic set with the military figures, the fact that the small-scale versions are Blue Box, means I'd put money on these being so, too. You can see the similarities with the 50mm GI's sculpting as well!

 

And it's almost neater to discover that what we thought Brian had found wasn't quite what it seemed to be, as instead we've box-ticked a Triang niceness (I've since obtained a bag of the military trucks, in addition to those shot on Adrian's stall, or my previous few, as seen in the above links), and added a probable missing brick in the Blue Box wall!

 

All cleaned-up!

 

I managed to find the guy who'd sold it, had a chat, and bought something else from him, but I can't remember what, it might have been the animal transporter, which may get a post of its own, or it may be one of the racing-cars, which will also get a separate post, I think?

Confirmatory shot, from an old Vectis auction, of a shop-stock box of Tri-Ang ambulances, note how the red-cross fitted between the windows, not over them, and the LCC on the doors could be London County Council? Did councils run Ambulances before the NHS Ambulance Service took them over?

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Blue Box Brit's

This weather is draining, and we've taken on a bunch of new postcodes at work, so 90+ miles in a shift, and then home to a too warm/humid room, has reduced my desire to wrestle with word-smithery or image manipulation, but there are still two posts, one each, from Peter and Chris, to come, when I get round to them - it's supposed to be cooler next week!

 

It's funny, on the hottest May day ever recorded (until the next day!) I delivered to a smartish family, two polite kids, attractive couple, nice house, BMW in the drive, they had two office-type fans on stands going, and through the patio windows I could see a two bay gas-fired bar-b-que, I would imagine, they also have a patio heater, for when records aren't being broken, and aspirations to a bigger house and maybe a wee swimming pool . . . They just don't get it, we are literally at risk of going extinct within the lifetimes of people reading this, but let's get more fairy lights in December - Burn baby, burn!

 

Anyways, here's some stuff I put up on a Faceplant group I was on, a couple of years ago, or through '21-24? I can't remember now, probably one was shot and held for a while and the other two were dated 2024;

 

With help from Chris, in one of his more general donations, was a specific gift of the Blue Box mine-detector, as he knew from a previous conversation, or post, that I didn't have a good one! Thanks, Chris!

 

This is the 2021 shot, and as you can see, a distinct lack of operational mine-clearers! Also, the caption became dated when Chris sent me the following image, from his own collection . . . 

 

Which clearly shows two tranches of paint-job, with the probably later set having the brown of the weapons/webbing, replaced with the same black of the boots - to reduce unit-costs, I would imagine? And I think the last time I looked at them there was a third unpainted plastic colour, so a possible 30 to find!

N is for Not Really A Follow-up!

Notes on previous stuff seen here though, and images pulled from three folders and added to a set I got off Steve V yesterday, at the London Toy Soldier Show in Camden, and which opened-up a narrative for the other shots.

Marx's 45mm Air Force figures, with a rouge Space Patrol chap, in the same metallic blue plastic, waving his gypsy earrings about, at the back there! You get seven ground crew and four pilots, which, it being then, the 1950's, means the guy in a leather jacket is probably a milk runner from Transport Command (or whatever the USAF called it), next to him is the SR71 Blackbird or X-Plane pilot in high-altitude 'space' pressure-suit, along with two more conventional, fast-jet pilots.

 

With the exception of the sci-fi interloper who has the older flat base, these are all the later version with the raised under-rim base, and it's interesting to notice that the last pilot on the right has been sculpted to hold something? The hands are the wrong angle for a cockpit rim, and the arms are the wrong-angle for an access ladder, so I wonder if the sculptor's efforts fell on stony ground!

 

I think these are the ones sent by Brian Berke a few years ago, I thought they were gray, and I thought I'd published them, but they may be somewhere on the Blog already, without the needed Tags? Anyway, these are the recent reissues, and came in grey or this flat, sky-blue.

These are the contemporary figures from Deluxe Reading, and this image is courtesy of Chris Smith, as part of an eMail conversation we were having, following one of his donations, and the revelation that the orange ones were issued, over here, by Thomas in a header-bagged, oversized Jeep of theirs, which we saw here.

While I suspect these (MPC, Pyro or Revell?) come from a model car kit, as racetrack personnel, but they could be from a 1:48th scale aircraft kit, and go very well with the figures above, and the other set we saw in the Kennedy Space Centre a while ago, here. The paint on them will be OBE's, and there were at least two shot-runs, one in grey, one in silver, both a polystyrene 'kit' plastic.

 

So, thanks to Steve, Chris and Brian, a quick overview of USAF (and NASA) air and ground-crew, from over half a century ago! And the reason I hadn't got round to them before this, is because mine, mostly rimmed cream, chalky polyethylene (Marx Swansea?), with a few flat metallic-blues, are still in storage.

R is for Rack Toy Rascals

Not cake decorations! An excellent find at Sandown in September was this carded import by Merehall, more commonly associated with the larger, boxed plastic vehicles, from the old Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and doubly fascinating for being figures, previously known their role as Culpitts and other cake decorations, but also seen here (link below) as open-front, boxed teams.

 

"Collect your own team", it says, and with 12 figures, including the keeper on a card that’s possible, but, not all the known poses/shirt numbers are here, there's no referee, nor any other team strips?
 

So, were there other cards, with the other colours we've seen here before, were the other cards assorted to the point where all known poses could be found? And did some cards have the better team-strips of the carded sets we looked at last time - assuming each card was a singular colour-way like this one?

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/06/n-is-for-nearer-but-further-away.html

S is for Sandown Starter

The last Sandown Park toy show (7th September) was an odd one, in that most of my purchases, were bagged, boxed, or otherwise 'stand-alone' type things, rather than the usual handfuls of this and that, so I think I'm going to work through them as a series of smaller posts, with a few other bits in-between, to that end, one of the more mixed shots I ended-up with, was this one, so we'll get these novelty bits out of the way first, and I'll lump the few other odds (some military and sci-fi figures), in the last post!

 

Clearly a wild west theme here, with two Hong Kong rack toys, and the UK equivalent of a dime-store item, issued by Thomas in the 'States, and in a roundabout way, also a rack-toy equivalent! The interest here being that the trio of canoeists and their vessels, are hard, glassy polystyrene, like the Indian family, as issued in the US, rather than the soft polyethylene associated with UK production - thankfully with all oars and feather intact, but on a Poplar Plastics card.

 

This destroys the last remaining 'rule' in my head about this set, that the hard plastic was US and the soft was UK, and with the Thomas-Pp-T*R rules looking increasingly shaky, it's anyone's guess who manufactured/issued/carried what, when, where and why!

 

And, you can see where the Giant 'Canoe Race' set came from, a direct lift of this set, but with an extra canoe, and probably a much reduced (as much as 50% less?) retail price-point, the frugal would have taken the other home!

 

We've seen both the horse and the rider/s in the past in mixed lots, donations or charity-shop plunder, we may even have seen them together, but the beauty (loose use of the word beauty!) of a small, sixpenny, or half-shilling generic like this, is the confirmation it brings, of what [rider figure] goes with what [horse type]! Note the flash on the rider's left arm!

While the jig-puzzle toy came as part of a novelty lot, with three other jig-toys and a Merit . . . no, I keep making that mistake . . . a Kleeware locomotive whistle, possibly a mould swap with someone like, or copy of - Lido, Pyro or similar, as it's a US type locomotive, albeit with simplistic wheels! The bowling-pin is new to the collection and the fire engine is a new colour-way.

A is for At Bloody Last!

In all meanings of the word, because I've only got an hour to post this, I'm knackered, and may well hit 'publish' sometime before midnight, with half the text missing! Because this is the post which has been held over for at least the last two years, and because this is it for ITLAPD 2025!

 

And, before we start, many thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Berke, John Begg and Paul Stads for help, contributions or stuff for this year's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

 

So, I got me the Tim Mee Pirate Fortress! More of a Wild West frontier/cavalry stockade fort, but as a bolt-hole in Hispaniola, up some coastal creek, sheltered from the open sea, both weather-wise and line-of-sight wise, it'll do, and timber's easier to replace as the jungle damp rots things!

 

Big Bags!

 

Lots of 'stuff'! 

 

Assembly - shades of Marx's earlier sets are hard to ignore!

 

Believe it or not, the Tee-Pee 'sticks' are actually supposed to be a stack of muskets! And the moulding on the water-pump leaves nowhere for the water to flow up the stand!

 

The pile of logs, and the well, have more Marx DNA than Tim-Mee's!

Dark-brown accessory pack has a secret island, treasure chest and little jolly boat!

 

 

 The secret island stash!

 

Once it's all been 'de-sprued' (removed from the runners) it fits into half the box!
 

In the full figure count, I seemed lucky to get the yellow captain, or maybe you only get one per set, which would mean either a lot of captains going back as re-grind, or a much higher captain-count in the figure bags?

 

Only seven poses?

Yeah? I took 'em, . . . but I can't remember what point I was trying to illustrate? Maybe that you can fit a figure on the lid of the island! And I don't know why I collaged two shots of the same figure's back?

 

 Playing with the other accessories!

Rack-toy figure bags were available without accessories.

 

My original shot, posted elsewhere as a "Who are these?", Paul Stads put me right, although I had them on downloads of Sprecher's site, but I had been looking in the wrong place, namely Shaun's Fantasy Toy Soldier Blog, hoping they were there, as they look very Toy Major/Hing Fat/Red Box!

 

In fact, that's the earlier Hing Fat, there, to the right in green, and the Tim Mee's are more compatible with the later smaller set of limited pose numbers, so around 50mm, but I'll Tag 54mm too!

 

Sticker sheet

 

Instruction sheet

 

Well me'arties! That be it furr anotherr year! Oi managed ter get the lot out on time, but nut'un in the booty-bag furr next toim - avaarrst me blue blistering barnicles, oi'm away to hunt for morr Poirate Plunder!