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!  

M is for Marx Space - Silver Astronauts

Also in my box, and definitely from the Moonbase and other 'Luna-themed' sets, was a near complete set of the Silver Astronauts, larger than the other sets we've looked at recently, they are closer to 54mm/1:32nd scale, but were often issued with the 45mm green Moon Men., and to be fair, are 'small' for 54mm, especially the two guys wearing dustbins, who are closer to 50mm figures.

 

Year-book photo', the upright poses are the ones which were used for both the 25mm Miniature Masterpiece window-box sets' figures, and some of the 30mm human poses in the Mystery Spaceship centrifugal wind-up UFO set, the seated figure is the same one as the chap riding the Mercury capsule, while we will look at the two 'bin men' in a few minutes.

 

Close-ups of the simple figures, I'm missing the pointing guy, found in other sets, and a couple of duplicates for the full 'mould shot', not that I worry so much about things like that, I just want one of each, before I die! The four sculpts to the right were in the Mystery Spaceship, all of them appear in the window-boxes, painted or unpainted, in polystyrene or polyethylene.

 

 

 

Speaking of not seeking duplicates (unnecessarily), I've gone from none to three, I think, on the Mercury capsules, in less than three years! With the one we looked at separately (with the part-work Ad's), then another came in with the Cape Kennedy set, only for a third, in the same leery-orange to accompany this silver chap!

 

The 'bin men' are actually both wearing suits which were serious propositions back in the 1960's, with a NASA procurement competition being sent out and two designs taken seriously enough for many trials, new versions, press-junkets leading to colour-supplement articles, public exhibitions/displays, and the like, leaving a fair bit of info., on the Internet.

 

This was the Grumman-developed rigid or semi-rigid prototype S-100 Space 'Moon Suit', tested in 1965, plenty of reading on-line, so I won't bore you with the minute, but suffice to say I think of the two suits you find pictures of, the Marx model is slightly closer to the number 8-suit, than the number-3, with the more rounded skirt? Matt Mason's was better!

 

But they got the more acute angle of both suit-body versions wrong, as with the [reversed] helmet window angle, so the plastic figure is only an approximation. Also, while constantly presented as a Grumman product, it was almost exclusively the work of an Allyn B. Hazard of Space General Corporation.

 

Marx did much better with this, the 1961, Republic Aviation prototype Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) Suit. Apart from not fully-modelling the fold out rest-break tripod arms, it's a pretty faithful reproduction. And in both you can see where the Kaled Survival Suits (Daleks) came from!

 

I had this figure, sans suit, for years, as his 50mm made him part of the small-scale collection, where I thought he was a Frankenstein's Monster sculpt - basic overalls, beseeching arms, starey face!

 

Scale is a moot point here, with both the Rex Mars and astronaut figures being of similar size, Marx liked their 'floating' astronauts/spacemen, and there is a third sculpting out there, in the '60mm' set, although when I posted them here, I thought they were closer to 54mm, so I'll have to check them!

 

The only accessories with this photoshoot, the errant legs of an MPC space station!

T is for Tobar Army!

I think we saw these years ago, in the now gone Debenham's graphics as a Christmas generic, but here they are in Tobar branding, and I think they are also, or have also been seen in House of Marbles packaging?

 

Matchbox WWII American Infantry clones, and err . . . that's it!

R is for Rack Toy'ish

Not really a rack Toy, as they are on the shelf, and £8.00, but sort of 'rack toy fare' if you know what I mean, which you will by the end of the post, hopefully, if you're paying attention, which nobody says you have to, you're all free agents!

 

Back at the beginning of May, Peter Evans, roving reporter of Plastic Warrior Magazine, asked me to look out for this set, which he'd seen being advertised by B&M, the modern replacement for the now defunct Woolworths, Wilkinsons and Debenhams (sans clothes!), which I said I'd do the next day as I was heading over to B&M, looking for something else - a set of art markers!

 

Well, in the end I had to go to three stores to get the art markers; Basingrad, Borden and Reading, but none of them had the reported Helicopter set! In the meantime, Peter had found images to keep me keen, however, after a couple more visits, and more info' from Peter it wasn't until well unto July, that I finally got them, not in Borden (the smaller store) but in the B-stoke biggie! Just in time for the summer holidays!

 

Eight different figure poses, which look familiar, but I can't remember where/when or if we've seen these exact sculpts, or just something similar? And they come in green and brown, which kept washing-out under the flash!

 

 

Slightly skinny US-equiped types, the brown here is truer to the eye, than the other shots in this post, or at least I think it is, you, or I, may be hopelessly colour-blind, in a way not yet recognised by science, without knowing it, and have a completely different view of the world, compared to everyone else?!

 

A small 'readymade' tank, more 'space' than generic anything, is the best of the three smaller vehicles included, although it resembles some drawing-board stuff!

 

Accessories are pretty run-of-the-mill.

 

Scaler, it's basically rack toy junk, in a big Helicopter-shaped carry-case!

 

Only the one flag, a subdued-colour USAF, but several holes for it about the place!

 

The figures, while conforming to the advertised count, and a 50/50 (welp, 40/40!) split, seem to be otherwise, completely random in the assortment, with only one brown 'ready', but seven 'commander' sculpts!

 

It's fun, and it's nice that some people are still putting new stuff out there, and thanks to Peter for the heads-up, we buy this shit so you don't have to, but out there now, B&M, if you fancy a punt!