A is for Autumn Assortment - Gift Fair

Peter Evans, roving reporter in London, roved to Birmingham for the Autumn Gift fair, which I had hoped to attend, but Space, Time and Nathaniel waits for no man, and it wasn't going to happen, still, we do have these from Peter;

 

Possibly a bit big for war gaming, but in the garden the rules can change, they're only counters, when all's said and done! No figures though!

Variation on a theme, I don't think we've seen the packaging before, but we have seen the figures now, the ones with 'vignette' bases.

 

Kawong is a new name, so a new Tag! The stuff looks similar to the New Ray stuff (next shot), so fans of modern farm equipemnt can have a field day . . . field? Geddit? I'll get me coat . . . 

 

Just mentioned.

 

Dinosaurs, it seems you get a window-visible realistic dinosaur, and a dig-for-it skeleton, to match whichever Dino' is in the specific bag?

 

I think we've seen these before, but you can't have too many images of things!

All the above look to be from Padgett Brothers (A-to-Z) 

 

Definitely seen these before, I think several times, Tobar, House of Marbles and others, but we like a bit of paratrooper action here at Small Scale World!

 

Gotta get me one of these, preferably a Hugh? You don't always find a Hugh in these pre-personalised sets, but any company which does Anna and Annabelle, Ben and Benjamin, must surely do a Hugh? Also, note one of each colour are supplied with a blank lable (top of display), so you can write what you like - "Kiss my shiny metal arse"!

 

A Japanese merchandise store had a full range of Gashapon, including those which can be presented as Christmas baubles for placing on a tree (lower shot), although Peter noted "unfortunately, no Samurai". And many thanks to Peter for sending these over to the Blog.

A is for Autumn Assortment - Local

A few shelfies which were meant for Rack Toy Month, but missed it, as I had other stuff to post and ran out of month! And it's off to B&M for the first two, shot in June and July respectively, so availability may be dodgy now, they have quite a quick turnover on some stuff.

 

Somewhere between 25 and 54mm compatible, but I thought they’d be of interest to some, maybe for garden war-gaming, or as 'Market Garden' OP's! Shot at the end of June, this year.

 

A month later and I left these on the shelves, they were twelve-quid plus, for not a lot, and most of it slime or plaster? The skeletons will appear in mixed lots over time, and if they were in the 'dig' eggs, what was in the slime . . . four instantly rejectable novelty lumps of something?

 

These next four were shot the other week, in two garden centres and all should still be out there? These look like they come from the same factory as those glasslike resin Kodama we saw a few years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/l-is-for-lets-ave-some-more.html

 

And, while 'mere' mini rubber ducks, a definite sub-branch of collecting!

 

In the same garden centre I saw these figural lip-balm tops, sadly the shot didn't take, but I failed to realise at the time! Again, not something I'm going to fill my pockets with, but nevertheless, they may well turn-up in mixed lots of figures in the years to come?

 

Legami are becoming  a regular here, and these seem to me to be a complete waste of human endeavour and resource. They 'protect' a couple of centimetres of a much longer cable, so protect nothing, and if fitted as shown, will only pull on the connection between USB and device?

 

Also Legami, and while I think we've seen several Sloths or Pandas as shelfies or actual collection entrants, I don't know if Koalas have featured yet? Both the last two were shot in Haskins near Alice Holt, not sure about the other two . . . possibly a Squires garden centre?

 

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PS - My reading list hasn't updated for at least 72-hours, and my link-list on the visible Blog, hasn't updated for over 24-hours, so you may have posted really interesting stuff, but I haven't a clue, something which has been getting worse for a few weeks now?! And with problems uploading images, recognised on the forums (reduce the size of the edit window, and drag-&-drop), it's clear Google is tinkering in the background, not in a nice way, and telling us fuck-all about it!

A is for Again, I'm Afraid!

We've seen these dinosaur pencil tops from Depesche already, but not together, so here they are again, and it should be a last time for them, as they're not deserving of one post, let alone the three or four outings they've had, but that's how the cookie's crumbled on this one!

 

Thinking I still needed one, and that this was it, I grabbed this pencil top a while ago now, and took the shots, only to realise while looking for something else, that I already had it! Not then being able to remember which one I did need, I bought the other two earlier this year.

 

Velociraptor

 

Triceratops

 

Carnosaur of some kind, assume T-Rex!

 

Because it turned out I had actually got all three, and we've already seen them here, I broke the glue seal on these to shoot them as stand-alone figures, although two of them are only standing-up due to careful angling of laptop and camera! So best left on the ends of their pencils! 

 

Family group; They are good sculpts for what they are - quite small, and ephemeral novelties, and I've been getting mine from an independent garden centre and farmers market, but I dare say they are available elsewhere, including zoo or museum gift shops?

A is for Ancient Archaic Antagonists of Antiquity!

Into the final furlong as far as the 2026 Plastic Warrior Toy Soldier Show plunder and loot is concerned, and I've split this lot into ancient and medieval posts, with the older soldiers first!

 

So, we'll go back 3000-odd years, to the siege of Troy, a probably real event, heavily fictionalised, the facts lost to national and region mythology, and the demented whitterings of priests, or bards, or priest's bards, no doubt, and thanks to Matt at Hobby Bunker, who brought these over.

 

I'd actually bought three other sets from him, either at last years show, or at the London Show in December (?), either way, I forgot to shoot them, and knowing these two were still to be found, never got around to it, but in all there are five sets of 'Troy' era figures, these two, and the sets:

• LOD 015 - The Amazons
• Figure Set #1 - The War at Troy - Commemorative Set, Ten Years of LOD
• Figure Set #19 - Amazons, Aeneas and Ajax

And the aim now is to open them all, and have a decent photo-shoot of all the pre-classical Greek sets from LOD, my first by them, and probably my last, just because I'm not doing the post 1990 stuff in the larger scales, there is tons of it, other people are collecting it, other sources are annotating it, and I haven't got the room, or budget for it, with so much vintage still to be found, but I do like ancient Greeks!

 

Similar point of discussion with these Supreme sets, I buy them as box-tickers when I see them cheap, we've done the Knights - of all types - to death, here at Small Scale World, and looked at the Romans, Crusaders, and was it the Vikings? I think we've seen three of these now, and while I haven't tracked down the Arabs/Saracens, one of their camels is in the Egyptian set above, and these both have one each of the two common horse poses.

 

Interestingly, the Greek looking commander figure and archer sculpts, usually smaller, from some of the medieval sets, aren't actually included in the pose-count for the Alexander set! But with their segmented-armour, knee-pads they'd look a bit silly, or even sillier than normal!

 

Unknown, probably still on Amazon if I look hard enough, and marked 'CHINA', I'm not sure if they are supposed to be cavemen, predating Troy by about 500,000-years (give or take a few 100,000), or 19th-20th century Zulu warriors, but they are fun, and were in one of the donations I think, so basically free, to share with you and tick the box! AND . . . they're not that bad, as sculpts, but the axe is a bit OTT, and the lady isn't going to be doing much damage with that hand-trident!

 

Two lovely sculpts, both purchases, the Athena is probably not that rare, being a tourist souvenir, but he joins a foot one we saw years ago, while the Nardi is quite a bit less common, and you can tell I really like them - multiple shots; gotta' do them justice!

 

Despite being late to the larger scales, as far as collecting goes, there aren't many massive holes or gaps in the UK collection, but this is one, and while I have the Cleopatra somewhere I think, on her chaise-longue/daybed thing, and, you may remember, I picked-up the Sphinx a year or so ago, I don't have many of this double set, half tan-plastic Egyptians, half brown Nubian slaves/captives.

 

And, yes, I know the Nubians were in charge under the Kushite kings, but Cherilea decided to sculpt them in chains, holding fans or cowering! Also, I've really got to get the cheetah and handler. But in the meantime these are a useful addition to a couple of play-worns, and maybe some reissues? I'd forgotten how colourful the series is, too!

 

Roman Gladiators as issued by Quaker Sugar Puffs and Tom Smith Christmas crackers.

 

Lucky Clover and other non-Giant Romano-Greek stuff.

 

Non-Giant Vikings.

 

The small scale stuff, as sorted mostly from Trevor's bag, and the similar early-purchase bag of hollow Hong Kong horse stuff, The Quaker have been done here, the Vikings, gold 'Trojans' and black forts have been covered on the But is it Giant Blog, the rest are pending, but some are covered on the HK Romans page above.!

 

Thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again, there's a fair bit of their stuff above. 

A is for Ancient, African & Agricultural Animals

I know, but I started with the alliterative titles, and I'm determined to get to the end of the plunder-posts with the same trope, so some are going to be a bit weak! Also, I've been a bit blearh, for the fortnight since the show, the heat, work, and a persistent cold, have left me a bit deflated, but I've sort of kept posting . . . if not regularly, becasue I'm rather just going through the motions! Anyway, I've shot the animals, the bits & bobs, and the civilian stuff, so they will be next, with ancient, medieval and 'combat' (the 'proper' toy soldiers!) still to face the camera!

 

Because I included several things from the Friday or Sunday afternoon in the total plunder-pile of 'PW Weekend', the fact that I managed to get to the Car Boot Sale at Bordon, on the Sunday morning, seemed to be a good reason to include my only purchase - I rejected some Corgi military on one stall, and similar Dinky's on another.

 

Somewhere in storage is the old childhood family set, also Merit, but in an older, litho or screen-printed box, and I bought this intending to replace a few missing and broken pieces, in that much-loved and over-played set, only to find it's got an orange beetle, instead of a red one, so I may still need a third, but could end up with enough good parts for five players!

 

Not that you have to build them all one colour, half the fun was making a multicoloured one! Called Scarabee in France, Escarabajo (scarabs!) in Spain, and Cootie in the US (WWI troops slang for body-lice! And which were love-bites over here, when I was a kid?), I'd be quite surprised if a UK collector didn't know they were called Beetle Game, indeed, one might think he was just a dealer all along, not really paying attention!

 

I got this from MM-Smith, who didn't have any new figures in his own range this year, due to the kind of personal shit, we're all suffering, however he did stall-out, and had these, they're quite modern, but he said he remembered having the exact same animals as a kid, which is both believable and likely.

 

Sometimes a maker can be left with a ton of stuff from a cancelled contract, or just a stack of stillages in a warehouse somewhere, filled with over-production, and where it can hang around for years, before another buyer, or selling/marketing opportunity arises, or someone remembers it's ". . . at the back there somewhere", and digs them out, so it's entirely possible, this is old stock in a new CE-rated card.

 

And I've had both the uncommon Hippo sculpt, and the turned-head 'Black Panther' for years, they're having come in with vintage lots, so it's nice to find they go together, and what goes with them!

 

Similar, but much older fayre from Jecsan, as their unpainted/pocket-money JC line, a mix of caveman-like native warriors, and wild animals, a bit of a packaging box-ticker, but equally I don't have any of them in the stash, or I didn't, before the show! Both bags contain two animals, three figures and a cactus!

 

This is the CollectA Quetzalcoatlus, a huge flying dinosaur, which was the idea behind the movie Q: The Winged Serpent, albeit, an inaccurate representation of an Aztec mythological creature! I'm not a great fan of horror movies, but a giant pterosaur picking bikini-babes of the roofs of New York was quite amusing!

 

Beautifully made and decorated, matching the best Schleich or Papo can offer, they tend to be a lot cheaper, but you have to find them online as brick & mortar retail stockists seem thin on the ground. The baby-sauropod snack, in scale, is slightly larger than a human! While the beak is slightly more curved than some reconstructions?

 

Mixed, mostly smaller ones, including a vinyl turkey, Matchbox horse and pearlescent cracker elephant, but that semi-flat red plastic moulding, back left . . . 

 

. . . defies description! It appears to be a lion, eating either a monkey or a human? It's quite damaged, with the legs/lower torso of the 'meal' missing, along with the Lion's other leg, and the tip of its tail, with the result that we don't even know if it had a base, or was a baseless 'charm' of some kind.

 

Does it get any more esoteric? What else was in the set? How bloodthirsty was the rest of the set? Cracker or gumball? Literally, the most interesting thing to come out of the show this year!

 

A couple of funnies, on the right, an Airfix ancient horse bing made to look like an unpainted whitemetal casting, for WTF? reasons! On the left a Merit dog, Hong Kong copy of Merit pony and a piece of Timpo hedge are brought together to make a rustic vignette.

 

In the past I would have stripped these down, but now, I'll probably hang on to them for a while, indecised (is that a word? Undecided-) as to what to do with them, then pass them on to the next generation of collectors in a mixed lot, similar to those they came in!

 

Sold to me as Starlux (!), the Corgi circus elephant, from the Jean Richard 'Pinder' playset (Gift Set No. 48). I think it's been repainted by someone, and is a hollow polystyrene moulding, glued together from about four or five parts.

 

A couple of Erzgebirge, the cow being pretty bog-standard, but the horse slightly above average, with the extra shaping of the legs. Along with a full-on piece of ivory, a tusk, probably from bookends, or similar decorative pieces. Also, two legs; one plastic, one metal; which don't appear to belong to any of the other animals in the plunder pile, so will be heading to a spares tub!

 

Three metal figures, even a plastics show will turn-up the odd piece of metal!, the goat might be a game piece? The mini-dino' is interesting, and a thing a weird shop in Wantage, where I got a wizard years ago, might have had too (in which case I may have one already?), but the Irish Wolfhound may be a jackpot find?

 

It's die-cast aluminium, as a flat. And we've seen such things before here at Small Scale World, but before I place the link, this casting (metal IS cast) has Wolfshond (with an 'o') on the base, now, it's not clear, but I think the Germans would say Wolfshund (with a 'u'). So, if this producer of aluminium flats is actually Dutch, that would help make perfect sense of this outstanding question mark;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/09/r-is-for-return-to-nazi-flats.html

 

The Dutch got a bloody hard time from the Nazi's, and it would make perfect sense for them to produce a satirical, caricature set, soon after the end of the war, and with sources of aluminium like crashed allied and destroyed German aircraft, pontoons, landing craft and similar, all over the place, aluminium might have been a good choice to try starting up a novelty/toy company?

 

And while the base on the dog, is slightly different, and has the title mark missing from the smaller farm and wild animals sets, and the figures, the parallels outnumber the differences? Does any Dutch collector/historian know anything about a flat/semi-flat manufacturer in aluminium? It could equally be Luxembourgish, and they got a hard-time too?

 

And, in fact, all three pieces are die-cast, with the T-Rex and goat both being in some Mazak/Zamac alloy, which is why I suspect a board-game playing piece for the goat?

 

Domestics, the interesting ones here being the unmarked, non-spiggoted version of the Blue Box Japanese officer's horse, here possibly from one of the Red Box factories, or one of the Singapore factories, but could be a knock-off by a rival.

 

The other interesting item is the semi-flat horse, in the style of those Mokarex/Figurines Hostoriques we saw again the other day, marked "CAROLINGIEN" on the facing side above, and "760" on the other side, I'm guessing a French premium, possibly missing a rider in the style of the Kilty/Bonnie Built (et al) US officer, but an ancient Carolingian?

 

Modern vinyls! Schleich Baby Girrafe.

 

Britains polar bear in need of a clean, and a crocodile Adrian gave me, as the show was packing up, looks Hong Kong, but is unmarked and could be an Argentine copy of something Spanish, they had some lovely animated wildlife!?

 

Another Airfix beagle/foxhound, and a rat from one of the Games Workshop/MB Games crossover board games of the 1980's? Probably Hero Quest?

 

Finishing with a Kinder dragon or dragon baby, and four dinosaurs without marks or with generic marks which will need to be sorted into the vast pile of such stuff, against more definitive posts another day, the carnivore is reasonably realistic, and the rather pale sauropod might get matched to his set, by those distinctive eyes!
 

So, that was the animals, thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again.

A is for Available in Any Colour, as Long as it's Fast!

I seemed to do quite well in the racing-car department, at Sandown, I rarely go to Sandown with anything like a shopping list, it's a question of what's there (and cheap) on the day! And, a month or so ago, it was racing cars, apparently?

Rather highfalutin instructions, and blurb, bigging-up a basic mechanism in this Maserati, which had been known to aficionados of balsa flying machines for several decades before this was issued? And the addition of a crown and bevel makes the 'starting handle' a harder wind than the propeller usually employed for the winding of rubber-band models!

 

To be honest, and given the quality of some more obvious 'facsimile' boxes I've seen recently, I have my doubts over the authenticity of this box, it's just too good, too clean? But the jeweller's loupe seems to suggest it's litho- or screen-printed onto an absorbent card, and shop stock stuff does turn-up, from time to time, but I'm not confident, either way?

 

This is my second FROG (Flies Right Off [the] Ground) Penguin (flightless bird), but is very different, the previously-found jeep being a heavy, vulcanised rubber, almost composition in consistency and weight, while this is a lightweight, plastic (early 'styrene?) and tin, novelty.

 

A future post (currently in storage) will be two of these helmets, one of which, in silver, is identical to the one depicted on this driver figure (the reason vehicles started to gain traction in the collection), with the set-forward or stand-off, drop-down perspex sheet, mounted around the front of a rigid visor.

 

They both came from 'Old Mr. Bening' (might be Benny or Benning), who was a silversmith, in a little shop/workshop, I think at the T-junction of the B3004 (Forge Road) and A325, just shy of Bordon, Hampshire, although the premises seem to have gone in a junction remodelling over the 50-odd years since he died, and we last visited him.

 

It may have been somewhere else, nearby, the memories are weak, and Google is no help with everyday, local historical stuff, there might as well have been no world prior to 1997! But he had been a racer in his younger days, and gave us a couple of his old helmets.

 

Ingap large scale Porsche F1, my first larger Ingap, and another in that classic fifties or sixties metallic blue plastic! I don't know if the box is original (packing from a larger carton?), or fashioned by a previous owner, but it fits well, and keeps the car protected, so I'll hang on to it! Both the above are about 1:43rd/48th scale.

 

Not a racing car, and closer to 1:35th/32nd, but just for fun, it was one of the items missing from my flood-damaged set, which we looked at prior to my discarding the packaging as beyond saveable a few years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/ab-is-for-vidalis-brothers-joy-toy.html

 

And given the price Greek sellers on evilBay want, for everything, it was a bargain! I guess it's trying to be a VW Carmen Ghia, or early Porsche Carrera? Bonnet's not right for either! Equally, the Greek Hellas sports-car, might fit (after a quick Google!), but whatever it wants to be, it's still, a nice find.