A is for Apropos The Previous Post

Just a couple of quickies; 

 

First, don't forget it's the Autumn Sandown Park Toy Fair tomorrow, it's going to be a lovely day for it, and while the air-con' might struggle to keep the place fully cool once it's full of exhaling, warm bodies, it's never too hot, although it will give the all-day attendees a dry throat! Anyway, get on over and fill your boots with old kid's playthings!

Secondly, I found a few more of Claire's Creations images from this Spring (couldn't find the Lifeguard?), so here they are if you're thinking of dropping her a line with an idea for a figure.

The Guardsman

The king

An old-school Gypsy wagon

A canoe! With a mouse!

This was the online image from which Claire modelled the Horse guard she made for me. I might have a go at sewing-in the red cord which runs round the centre of the cartridge-belt?

F is for a Bit Floofy!

Well, soft anyways! Some of you may have noticed that some event for non-self-determinist fan-boys occurred up in Laarden Tarn' earlier this year, in celebration of which an old friend of mine, Claire, produced some hand-knitted (or crotch-et-ted) members of the Royal Family,  Life Guards and Royal Guards, to which, when I saw them on Faceplant, I added my usual pithy call for Horse Guards, and damn-me if she didn't make me my very own Horse Guard

 

We had similar soft-toy animals when we were kids, my brother had 'Bill' the guardsman, who ended-up with some of Grandad Hall's miniatures, a sam-brown from a fancy pet collar and a paper-knife sword - he should appear on the Blog one day, he's somewhere in all the stuff I've been moving around.

While there was also a blue and white lamb and a Santa Claus, I think they all came from patterns you could buy in newsagents, or that came with housekeeping type magazines . . . there always seemed to be a table of them at church fêtes!

Beautifully made, he's about eight inches in his boots and the metallic wool is very clever. I'm sure Claire's Creations would accept commissions if you have a good reference for her to work from, and you can contact her on the above details.

 

Guarding one end of the bookcase!

Azco is for . . . well; Your Guess is as Good as Mine!

I'm guessing - from the address (Pawtucket, Rhode Island) that - Azco Products Corporation are now part of (and may always have been - phantom brand?) part of Hasbro Inc.? But this may have been issued by the US arm of a Canadian (Montreal) company, which may or may not now be part of Hasbro?

There are still several Azco's around but they all seem to be in engineering; cutting/packing machine-tools (New Jersey, since 1983), water treatment (Langley, British Columbia, since 1975), industrial construction (Appleton, Wisconsin, since 1949) . . . and etcetera! The trouble here is that the name is - of course - an obvious diminution of 'A-to-Z Company'

Anyhoos, getting here just in time for not going in the Christmas 2022 folder, which already has unused nativity stuff from last year (and 2019's leftovers) in it, is this rather charming blow-moulded set and; another shooting-game, which although a generic infant toy, has a certain seasonal vibe to it, at least to me? Babe's in the Wood, lawn-inflatable's, Crimbo nutcrackers . . . Hans Anderson's The Steadfast Tin Soldier (or The Little Soldier), you get the vibe too, don't you?

From the styling of the card I'd say sometime between 1950 and 1962/4 (Hassenfeld opened a Canadian subsidiary in '63 I believe)? And the sort of thing you'd expect to see at a seaside gift-shop over here, or hung near the tills in a dime-store over there? I've found a larger, lawn (or beach!) checkers (draughts) game by Azco too, which sort of confirms their target market/manufacturing bent, if not their history! He's 8-inches from top of Shako to base-underside, so a 7" figure for boot-to-eyeline measuring-Nazis!

Given its age, and the dearth of other stuff available on-line, physically, or as text, I thought it better to not open it, so after cleaning the bag, which you could barely see through yesterday morning, tried to get good shots of the crude blow-moulded cannon and equally basic 'cork' - another polyethylene blow-moulded piece!

Possibly the best shot - you stuff the cork in the end of the barrel and hit the pad on the end of the trail, it claims to fire the cork 20-feet, but my memories of such toys coupled with a test-squeeze through the outer-bag, suggest you'd be lucky to get two feet out of it, or have it last longer than a few hours before one of the edges/seams goes futt!

But that would get you through an afternoon on the beach, or a Christmas morning which would be job-done as it's very-much a one-trick pony. However; the figure is definitely a Toy Soldier, without a shadow of a doubt, and blow-moulded Toy Soldiers are a perennial favourite here at Small Scale World!

B is for Bat Toys - Argentina Part I

Back to Argentina (or 'believed to be' Argentina), back to blow-moulds, back to dolls, back to Bat Toys! Listed under the unknown moniker, they are indeed blow-moulded Bat-dolls, probably from Argentina!

The man-bat himself with a cape made from [soon to be illegal; they already are in Kenya] shopping-bag polyethylene! We've seen a similar Tarzan here and given the size, they really are dolls, they even have the same plug-in arms as the cheap rip-offs of Action Man/GI Joe. This one's about ten-inches with only his arms moving.

The Boy Wonder (who appears to be Joe 90 moonlighting out of season-three) has five points of articulation in pink ethylene attached to a red torso, his cape is either a replacement or made with slightly less love than Batman's, same shopping-bag supplier though! [The next day . . . see comments - might be Mexican?]

We've also seen the Batman parachute toy before but I had a spare image kicking-about in Picasa, he was around eight-inches I think, while Robin is twelve-inches+. Thanks to Adrian at Mercator for all these.

R is for Round-up - Bendy Toys

The reason I finished-off on both of the last two days with bendys is because we're already into a short 'season' of bendy toy posts - intermingled with the Halloween thing - of which this is the third of four!

Here's a thing, about 18 months ago I posted some plant-ties and pointed out that they were in every aspect the same as the old bendy-toys of my youth, a few weeks (months?) later I posted some oldies, some of which had come-in, some of which I had upstairs; then Brian Berke sent us some shelfies, then I spotted some, then some more, suddenly Bendy Toys are hot again.

In point of fact - bendy toys are all over the place! This is a quick run-through a bunch of shelfies taken by both me and Brain B over the last 12 months or so, showing bendy toys from at least 3 companies, possibly 4?

I shot this about two  months ago, TK Maxx end-of-summer clearance from NJCroce, I actually went back for it but it had gone, careful reading of the shelfied packaging reveals the wheels may not be carpet-running, so I'm not so disappointed to have missed it, but . . . the original-shape car, in huge-scale, with bendy crew . . . does it get much better . . . these days?

"Battling brake-peddles Batman! Go easy with the lead-foot; why don't you!"

Another from NJCroce, a small key-ring man bat (yes - I know there was an actual Manbat at some point, if you read every American comic ever written there have been everything-men and most-things women over the years . . . and decades!) and another of the larger figures; I suspect the same company but it's not clear.

I then went back to TK Maxx on the trail of Halloween stuff and they'd got more of the NJCroce five-figure sets both Brian and I shelfied around this time last year, this set of cartoon characters, which I don't like at all really and . . .

. . . a set which I struggled to shoot without creating a toy-landslide (TK Maxx's toy area always looks as if Barbarians have just been through it, on the way back from the pub!), so only the heads - to give you a heads-up! Design-wise they look to be the original 1950/60's types which I prefer - in fact; as I write I wonder if it isn't one of the sets we saw a year ago?.

They (TK Maxx) haven't got the single-figures in yet, but I suspect they will in time for Christmas.

Then I found monkeys in Tiger, most tiger's call that 'breakfast'! These monkeys have been skandie'fied to abecat! Grey and brown with separately heat-welded, wired-tails, they are two-quid a'piece, and going on Tiger's usual stock-runs, they should be available for the next 6-18 months.

And then I found this sitting in Brain's folder (it's still very full!), where I fear it's been languishing long enough to have missed a couple of bendy-posts; my bad.

Although; obviously he's been accidently miss-named (he's Wally in the UK!), and at $5 dollars he's very-much at the top of the price range for these as single figures, you can get 5 plant-ties for £4 at the other end of the scale . . . contents and construction; by weight, the PVC and wire being exactly the same, so must be - the unit cost, so should be - the unit price!

T is for Two - Loose Ends

Just a quick one today, bit of a lazy post, still working on that A-Z entry (keep my shadow's on tenterhooks!), so throwing a couple of 'odds & sods' at you . . .

  . . . following on from a post and comment about six weeks ago, they were from a part work, I picked this one up at the Plastic Warrior show in May, handled by Bisset elsewhere in the world and Hachette Publishing here in the UK, title varies and the run went to over 70 issues, but not all were these figural statuettes, there were other things Ankhs and the like!

Shot on Adrien's Stand at the resent Sandown Park show, probably Forest Toys and about 8/9-inches high, carved from wood, it's hard to be certain and although I've posted Forest before I think; it doesn't seem to be in the tag-list so it may be that I was posting [animals] on another platform, last time. Grenadier!

He has a little house, it's like a little box, it hasn't got a kitchen, but there's room for drying socks!

B is is for Big Buggers

Yes, you are right; we a in a phase of lazy-posts! This is due to technical issues with Hotmail-call-me-Outlook which is currently being addressed by Gmail! In the meantime I'm just throwing stuff up here in the hope it sticks!

A random sample of larger or 'over-scale' figures in a variety of formats and from various sources; left (4-inches) to right (8-inches):

• Poured-resin Egyptian god, from a charity shop, I bought six about twelve years ago and then found dozens of other sculpts on evilBay - possibly a part-work thing? But equally likely to be just tourist tat.
• Large Fireman, he looks vaguely French or German, but the helmet is wrong for both (given the era he was likely made in) so I suspect a Japanese tin-plate or Hong Kong plastic toy with their take on a British fireman?
• The HK blow-moulded GI we looked at last year.
• Russian blow-mould (actually I think 'rotational moulding' he's far more substantial) also been seen here recently, he's the larger of the sizes they issued these in.
• Hong Kong polystyrene statuette of a larger Greco-Roman marble original, mirroring and possibly a direct copy of Fontanini
• Carrara-marble sample with the aforementioned Fontanini's 'Rocco' or Regency lady atop it, polyethylene with colour-washes.
• Branded to Noki (www.nokiware.com) and imported by Paladone (www.paladone.com), this guardsman washing-up sponge is - lets face it - in design parameters; no more than a Roman arse-wipe! Like the fireman he's two halves of polystyrene moulding heat-welded together. Both the website Addresses seem to have been amalgamated. and there's disco-divas and a lovely egg-set with guardsman toast-cutter still on their books.

T is for Two - Batman Paratroopers . . . Batroopers? Batachutists? Batatroopers!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No . . . it really IS Batman this time! More from DC, and one f my favorite side-collections; Parachute Toys!

The first one is pretty standard, late 1970's, polyethylene blow-moulding, seems to have obtained a license, although not a likeness - he looks like Momma from 'Throw Momma From a Train'. Also, he seems to be wearing a nappy, probably a good idea as his fellow blow-moulding . . .

. . . seems to be err . . . packing a bit of a lunch-box, if you know what I mean! How did that get through trading-standards? Believed to be an Argentinean or Mexican in origin, it's a more recent toy, with a much thicker walled moulding, waxed-nylon or rayon (?) fishing-line like strings (pined through his shoulders - ouch!) and a thick polythene parachute.

F is for Fould or Foulds Figurines

I am around, just been indulging in real-life (how selfish!) and this week I've been busy over on the Airfix blog, adding stuff!

This is all I know about these figurines;

Edgar Rice Boroughs E'zine...scroll down about half-way.

But...I'm not even sure that's right, I mean; clearly the figurines go with/are for the toy theatre, but I can find nothing else about 'Fould' without an 's' and the order-form in the link isn't enlargeable to check spelling. As I have squirrelled away all sorts of stuff over the years I know that a company called Foulds & Freure (with an 's') were importers of Japanese and European toys (to America) between the wars, I suspect these (the link's subjects) are them? There's nothing on either name in Garratt.

The figures illustrated above, will be originals. probably from Germany (?), and are about 8 inches high, hollow, slip-cast bisque (or;Parian Porcelain) mouldings in the style of Fairings, which they may well have been issued as over here...there..Europe. Doh!

29th Jan 2015 - Paul 'Stads' Stadinger has sent a link with further information....

Hakes Dot Com

Thanks for that Paul (both Pauls!)., and it's a different Foulds altogether, in fact it's Gem Clay...when it's not Heinz!

"In 1932 the Gem Clay Forming Co. produced a series of Tarzan plaster statues which were offered by various sponsors ........ The insert sheets/sets varied for the different sponsors. One side features images of the 10 numbered statues along w/color chart and offer blank. Opposite side advertises Foulds/Heinz products. The main difference is the statues offered. Most are same from set to set, with a few exceptions. Foulds offers "Three Monkeys" and "Witch Doctor" statues while Heinz offers "Kerchak The Ape" and "French Sailor" statues and sheets have different layouts".