M is for More . . . Giant WWII

I've posted some more Giant World War 2 stuff over on the Giant . . . or What? Blog;

Just scans of several old cards and a couple of archive shots.

B is for "But is it Giant?" . . . Yes!

The long neglected 'Giant or what? page has got some copy, and it's the first piece which does actually look at some Giant output, and not something I'd got around to in the One Inch Warrior magazine series (a few back orders may still be available from Paul at PW?), so if you want to see the AFV's from the WWII range . . . 

. . . head over there; http://butisitgiant.blogspot.com/2021/06/giant-landing-craft-crew-and-wwii-afvs.html

T is for They Were Verh'verh'ry Drunk!

This one took me a while to locate and pin down, but I am now satisfied enough to share it with you, despite the fact that I may be wrong, but given how little we seem to know about some Western manufactures, researching the Eastern ones is no easier!

The following was - I now believe - manufactured by The People's Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia's Medical & Labor Dispensary №.1 Tambov Region, Zelenyi Settlement but I stand to be corrected . . . and may have extended the title somewhat, for comedic effect!

First, however, a rant; a small rant! We have all been lied to, and are continually lied to by those in power, and those who control the media or have other 'vested interests'. There is no difference between 'them' and 'us', which is not to say there aren't differences in funding, or finance, in political will or behavior, in economic model or philosophy, but ultimately the Russians ("the 'Commie' Sov's") and us were far more similar than you might think from what we were told.

Today's toy (below) was basically manufactured by recovering alcoholics, they could just as easily have been disabled people, or ex-servicemen, but that 'meaningful, gainful employment' by way of therapy or as a means to aid convalescence - in the Soviet Union - is (was!) no different to the work being done by the blind at PZG in Poland, by ex-servicemen at Enham Alamein or Linburn (both latterly: Remploy) or (because a lot of the drunks were at Tambov custodially) Prindus (Prison Industries).

Now, there are two points to take away from this, the first is that the Soviets had a rehabilitation system for habitual drunks . . . they didn't send them to Siberia, they didn't 'disappear' them out of helicopters (a trick of US backed/funded/trained regimes in Central and South America), no, like any normal, day-to-day society, they had a rehabilitation program for troubled (or troublesom) citizens; just like ours.

The second point is that the facilities at Tambov (which is how I'll refer to it for the rest of the article, as otherwise their title - any other way you cut-it - is a mouthful!) are now derelict, as PZG seems to have ceased producing toys, as Linburn disappeared, as Enham was swallowed by civilian (state funded) 'charity' bureaucracy and has now lost it's Remploy unit. So the parallels of good programs under social responsibility are mirrored in the later neglect of today's Thatcherite-Raganomic 'free-market' Capitalists . . . everywhere!

All simplistic (and a bit muddle-headed), I'll grant you, but you know what I'm trying to get across and to do the above properly would require a wordy tome on nuanced-parallels of socio-economic conditions in differing political systems, which only academics would read! But, if Tambov, PZG, Linburn and Prindus were still making toys; what a nicer world it would be!

And if Remploy (all units, Britain-wide, closed without warming by the Cameron-Glegg administration) were still going last December, they could have scaled-up and been producing the PPE we needed, before we needed it, negating the need for Boris to give £122m for PPE to a company with no assets formed seven or eight weeks ago . . . by someone he gave a peerage to!

You see, as well as there being no difference between us all at the bottom, there's no real difference between them all at the top!

This is the item in question, a towed field-gun with caterpillar-tractor, all as a one-moulding 'readymade'. Similar to the solid ones we looked at a while ago from Chris (both rockets and large howitzers being towed on that occasion), but hollowed-out to lessen material costs, and the heat shrinkage.

It was in a mixed lot with some other stuff, among which was this chap, who being the same semi-transparent polymer which - after recent conversations with Polish collectors - is probably nylon66 (what in the past I have called a nylon/rayon type or Polypropylene!) and a similar scale, is I suspect part of the same set? They go well together anyway!

Foreshortening from the camera-angle has made him look a lot smaller than the Airfix figure, he's not, but he is only HO-compatible to the Airfix 1:76th scale.

This was the logo, and it wasn't in the list of 160-odd I use as a first point of reference for these things (many thanks to Nazar Marchenko for that heads-up), so I had some days looking, but in the end I think I've called it right . . .

. . . for the Tambov 'clinic' (on the left here), while other contenders were both too circular and the toy-vehicle's mark lacks anything which might be the tree's trunk (Roshal Chemical Plant 'A.A. Kosyakov')* or the lettering of the Mercedes/Pizza Hut-hat (Moscow Factory 'Spetsstanok'), so I think the rather crude mark on the toy (carved with an engineer's chisel straight into the tool?) is the one we're after? But . . . I stand to be corrected!

* Also now derelict (I like the construction guide-board for a noddy-suit respirator, all laid-out like an O-Level lab-rat!) and like Tambov; known for colourful sets of blow-moulded figures; manufactured on an armaments site!

B is for Britains Mini Sets - 1 - № 1074 German Gun

Three quickie box-tickers today, starting with what is possibly the worst example of a PAK-38, 50mm anti-tank gun ever to hit the toy shelves and stay remotely fashionable, or, collectable!

The box fold's out to make a Tunisian scene with a herd of Shermans threatening to flatten some innocent village. Unlike the earlier series, this later issue had no box-square base, but rather a little 'baselette' which plugs-in to the underside of the gun and is further attached to the gunner's base.

The wheels and shield are actually pretty good, but the box-scale gun is let down by a huge cannon-barrel (with Dinky-style 'safety' muzzle) and short, stumpy trail-legs. I nicked the barbed-wire scenery from the ACW set as it came with the same colour bases!

The 40mm figure; remember - as the only other WWII set to be made - he has to attack (or defend himself from) six US G.I.'s, a mortar and a medium machine-gun, on his own! Using - as ammunition - something which looks like a lighter-fluid can's spout-attachment! And they gave him a comedy German uniform which wouldn't look out of place at Gay Pride . . . or in the Blue Oyster Club!

Zulu Hour!

C is for Contribution Fortnight - XII - Airfix Ready-made AFV display from Glenn

Glenn sent this from the other side of the world, literally, not figuratively as he lives in the land of the lazy parrots and a walking fruit with a long bill! Not, as I'd previously said; the land of the "...laast of the vee-ehyt inter'cepters" and where the mice can be 7-foot tall and box each other before breakfast - that's a land of a very different hue, many leagues hence from New Zealand - where Glenn lives!

It is quite the most perfect picture of a display of the 2nd version Airfix 'ready-mades' I've ever seen, with the modern over the WWII, the green over the grey, the biggies to the left, gun and tractors on top, it all fits, it all works, perfect!

Thanks Glenn!

A is for Artillery...Big Guns, Cannons, Howitzers...

Not all of them by any means, but a sample of mostly small scale artillery from two photo-shoots I've done over the last 20-odd years. the bulk are scanned photographs from 20 years ago, the rest are rescued from my Imageshack account with a loss of resolution, and were taken about 10 years ago - the first time the collection was in storage!

At the top is the diminutive take on a British 5.5inch gun by EKO, which they did themselves as far as I can tell, there was no Rocco/Roskopf in the mix! Below it is the common Hong Kong take on another British stalwart, the 25lbr. Shield-less, this is a common enough HK piece turning up in various sets through the 1960's and early '70's.

Here we see the HK one again - this time with red wheels, and sharing the frame is a grey version of the Airfix first version gun. In this colour it's probably the latter Brumberger/T Cohn version and I cut the ears off thinking they were flash/blemishes, long before I knew what it was, so no 6x6 truck will pull it now; the designed way, so I've drilled a hitching-hole!

Below are the two later Airfix offerings, the 25lbr again and a German PaK 36 type? I painted the one on the left a lifetime ago, I'm not owning up to the gloss mud-puddle on the right!

At he back of the superscript shot is the matchstick-firing beast from Manurba, with it's eponymous little brother to the far right, and again badly painted behind on the subscript shot (missing it's firing 'pin'), in front of that is the Tudor Rose madeupname Mk.1, while the large pale-green one may be Hong Kong, but I favour South America or Spain from the styling and lack of HK mark.

Montaplex/BuM top and Atlantic bottom. We'll come back to the Atlantic again as they are among the more problematical sets in the 'Export' series, being designed for two different boxes, the staff in the packaging department (and/or subsequent dealers) not being able to tell them apart, they tend to end up in both boxes, but the contents lists are different but constant depending on which set they are...on the sprue/runner

Lump of very soft, home-cast, lead from roofing, shot-gun or Air-rifle pellets or fishing weights probably - at the top. Dinky 25lbr below, father of many copies! And the nearest the observer is interesting, it has all the hallmarks of a penny toy from between the wars, but has ethylene plastic wheels, these may have been stuffed-on to replace something older (people used to make and mend, not upgrade to landfill every 12 months!), or it may date it as a sixpenny-toy from the late 1950's?

Equally it could be entirely home-made, as the barrel is again a crude lump of lead, the wheels taken from another toy and the carriage cut from thin sheet tin.

Blue Box provide the polystyrene copy of a Crescent WWI Horse Artillery gun and the very simplistic die-cast is a late Matchbox effort.

The hard styrene gun below is from the Italian maker INGAP, and seems to have shades of 25lbr about it.

Three from Hong Kong, the on eon the left turns-up from time to time, but I've yet to tie-it down to a set or group of sets. The brown one on the other hand is or was common in the late 1970's and into the 1980's in cheap rack-toys. The Dinky copy was a bit earlier, but again - quite common in it's heyday.

We'll be looking at these more closely when (if) I ever finish the series on small scale copies of Britains and Crescent I started well over a year ago. I may well cut and paste the ones I've published into a new page and carry-on below them? There is a third design with a four-legged cruciform mount. All three carriages can be found with both guns.

Top are Marx and NFIC, while the bottom one I should know, well I do but I can't remember, one of the lesser US makes I think? Dom or Dom-for-Heinerle. We looked at the smaller Marx one the other day with it's barrel (a black-painted recoilless rifle looking thing), back when I took these I thought it must be some sort of towing bogie!

The one on the left is the remains of the - I think - Corgi die-cast with Tom the Cat, a poor TV/Cartoon tie-in [Tom & Jerry], but it may prove useful one day...maybe on the wall at the Alamo?

The two top right have previously been ascribed to Kinder in early German 'Eier Sammlerkatalog' (egg collector's check-lists), but I never went with that as they are too big for a standard Kinder capsule, and I don't think they are still in them (the checklists), worse though is that I'm sure I have their real origin somewhere, but can't find it, I seem to recall there is a third design though? Technolog boxed toy soldier sets! And there were several other designs and other siege equipment!

The little HK piece still in it's blister is probably the commonest design out there, originating at the tail-end of the 1940's with one of the early US plastics guys (Pyro, Thomas, Lido?) it was copied by most of the other pioneers, they then shared their moulds with various UK makers, Merit had a stab and Hong Kong producers spent 20 or 30 years copying all of them! It comes in every size from huge to this one and in hard, soft and various rubberised polymers and Merit gave some of theirs wooden wheels!

Saving the best to last (well they were the best when I was a dedicated small-scale collector!), these are mostly Hong Kong. We've looked at the multicoloured one - back-right - before (Lucky Clover), in front of it are three post-Giant copies of the old Marx ACW piece, each showing difference in wheels, barrel length, or detail and all probably from Christmas crackers.

The blue one is Eagle Games (I think? It's also on the Airfix blog's ACW Artillery post - I think), the black one is anybodies guess? Pirate-ship toy of some kind is the obvious best bet, but it could be a game playing piece? The other three are also Hong Kong.

T is for Twenty-five...Pounder

For anyone contemplating the Tamiya kit or it's scaled-down Esci counterpart; I think this is the old gate guardian from the Airborne Forces museum at Browning Barracks in Aldershot. When that museum was broken-up and the bulk moved to the IWM at Duxford, I imagine they found they already had various versions of 25lbr, so the good Burgers of Rushmoor got to stick it on a traffic island next to the stations and forget about it!

The business-end, for early WWII, you need to drop the flash eliminator, like the simpler Airfix kit.

 Shield and axle with inner wheel-hubs.

 Traversing plate and connecting rods.

 Hitch and spade.

 More undercarriage 'stuff'.

Mounting and elevation mechanism.

 The maths...range calculator and inner shield.

Walk round, rear and starboard!

Walk round, port and front view.

M is for McMystery Figures

Back in 2009 a member of the Treefrog toy soldier forum asked the assembled experts if they could identify his Mystery Figures, sadly, the experts were all off for the day (I'm joking!)...and it's taken me a while to track down the images I took in 2007 of an eBay lot I'd just bought.

If someone on that forum could direct the chap to this post, his query can be answered...to an extent!

They are made by a company called Highlander, not - as one might expect - from Scotland, but Boca Raton, Florida! How a swamp came to be associated with the crags of Caledonia is anyone's guess....I know, I know...I've got Google...it's the beach!

I'm guessing this was a short-lived venture, probably launched off the back of the 1968 movie 'The Green Berets', short-lived because A) they don't appear often on feeBay and B) the popularism of the Vietnam war would soon become the silence of the war that dare not speak its name, and selling any war toys, let alone specifically Vietnam War related became an uphill task! Probably issued in 1972 as US troop numbers in-theatre were already being reduced, the pull-out being completed in '73, these would have been a heavy-sell.

A 3-page commercial catalogue (Build Profits While Your Customers 'Build Battlefields' with Highlander) was published in 1978, and later sets were issued unpainted, unassembled and - judging by one recent feeBay listing - missing the MG! they do appear on feeBay regularly, usually with ridiculous BIN's. Look out for the A/T gun released without figures as code; HT-105 and the 2-man MG team as HT-106 (painted or unpainted).

I'm not sure how many Pak. 40 75mm Anti-Tank guns the US special forces employed in Vietnam, but my guess is none! However, toys is toys, and this is not a bad little model of one. Of far more interest are the approximately 40mm figures, some painted as African-Americans and all wearing the green beret.

I don't know how many poses there were in total, or whether there were ever any North Vietnamese 'enemy'? The cards apparently cost 25C back in the day and both the vehicles and figures are in a hard styrene plastic - another reason for their rarity?

I had an SPG as well, also carded but it had no figures included and I gave it to Paul for PW, but he seems to have misplaced it - one of the reasons I've held-off on blogging them was the hope of a photograph of it! It was - if I recall correctly - one of that 1950's family of M53, 54, 55 vehicles, but I can't remember which one and didn't think to photograph it at the time; I'd only had a digital camera for a few weeks (these start at photo number 148, from zero). Another reason for the delay, as I'd yet to suss-out the 'tulip = macro' rule and was hoping to get them out of storage and re-shoot them better...one day I might!

There is very little about these on the 'net', and a bit of research from someone in Florida might reap a list of products, or a better company history? There is a Highland Toys in Scotland....they make stuffed animals!

C is for Colecion not Comet

In the past I've thought these were Comet-Authenticast but I've now got enough Comet originals to know that A) they are multi-colour painted, and B) have separate figure sculpts for the Russians and Germans. These plain-painted US G.I.'s would however - seem to be from the original moulds as the Comet-Authenticast US Infantry and one has to assume that Birmania got the moulds as so many South American countries have ended-up with American toy soldier and European food premium moulds.

There is another of these kicking about the Internet, which has I think also appeared in a book somewhere, it shows a pink card with a red/yellow/orange rainbow boarder, but the contents are the same, and as contents go, very realistic.

A unit in combat will mostly be on their bellies (or kneeling behind something) not wandering and standing about the place as most war-game and toy soldier companies would have you believe from the contents of their boxes or catalogues! This set has a third of their number advancing under covering fire from the other two thirds - proper!

A close-up of the set, waiting at San Carlos for a good drubbing! It is unfortunate that so many of the prone figures are the same pose, but they are soft white-metal and could easily be adjusted at foot/ankle or knee/thigh to give a better representation of a group of guys behind low-cover.

The little gun is a bit fictional, I think Comet-Authenticast/Holgar Eriksson were/was aiming at a representation of the 37mm AT gun.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that Industria Argentina (listed in several books as a separate make) is in fact just the Spanio-Portuguese/South American for 'Made In Argentina', and not an entity in its own right at all? Given I've had over 150 hits from Argentina in the last 24 hours, it's a pity no one has thought to add that fact in the comments section of one of the Argentine posts for the benefit of all collectors who follow the blog...hay-ho - some people don't want to share!