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.

F is for Follow-up - Antique Antipodean Aircraft

So, Ozi sent these a few days after the previous post involving his images, and it's more, rare to the point of unheard-of outside Australia, model aeroplane news, so I'll let him tell it in his own words, but first the images;

 

 

 

 

"About twenty years ago I ran into this diecast model of the Boeing B29A – or, seeing as it features RAF roundels on the wings – an RAF Washington B1. Made by Pope, Australia (local manufacturers of household appliances including washing machines) it survived in not-too-bad 'play worn' condition. Wingspan is nine inches. 

 

The hollow undersurface of the fuselage has the legend “Made in Australia A Pope Product” and the undersurface of the wings is “Supa-fort”. Close examination of the nose of the model shows that some attempt at shading was made to give the appearance of windows.  

 

The Washington B1 was in RAF use between c1950 to 1954 (as an interim waiting the arrival of the V-Bombers) was reportedly a better performer in all respects than the Avro Lincoln. That is despite what “Aircraft of the Fighting Powers” says!

On the internet is shown a similar Pope product with USAF markings and legend on the fuselage.  The markings on that item look to me like transfers."

 

Many thanks to Ozi for this rarity. 

A is for Airforce One . . . Hundred and Eighty!

I know, I know, but if you think about it, there is some sense in that, a method in the madness!

 

I like to think that over the years a lot of the important ID work on both Zang (composition) and Palitoy (early plastic) aircraft has been done here, slowly, as I've found them, not knowing Mig Bonnefoy already knew more about the Zang than me, but wasn't publishing online!

 

In recent months I've had a couple of good chats with Mig, on the subject, and shared two of these Zang revelations with him, but in the meantime a loyal reader 'Down Under', sent more revelations on Palitoy and some Antipodean angles on 'dine store' plastics, therefore this post is full of interesting stuff, new to Blog, Internet and some further corners of the Hobby!

 

So, in the order in which they were revealed to me, let's get stuck in!

 

We've seen the Boeing B17 in both silver and camouflage, and both British and USAAF markings (indeed, the examples on that occasion, came from Mig!), but for years, people have always been careful to say things like 'believed to be', 'said to be' and such like, when discussing the 'Zang for Timpo', I know I have, and the confusion, aided by Joplin's big yellow book, was always best left as Zang if loose, Timpo if Timpo-carded!

 

But here we have, on opposite tail planes, both a Timpo mark and the Zang mark, as a nice underlining confirmation of the relationship, and the first time I've seen it. And many thanks to John Begg for saving this one for me.

 

Then, a couple of weeks later, I found this at Sandown Park, and I've pulled it from those plunder-posts, to get it all together here. I was able to show it to Mig, literally minutes later, and an eMail exchange then ensured to decide whether it was a Yakovlev Yak-3 or an Ilyushin Il-2 (Flying Tank), and the Yak was settled upon! But nobody knew these were out there.

 

No Timpo blue-triangle label, although there may have been one where the paper blemish lies under the nose of the righthand Yak, but the box is quite fancy, and reminiscent of the JE Beale's department-store one, which reminds us they are still all Zang first, and only Timpo if so packaged . . . or, now, sometimes, marked!

 

Mig also gave me an updated list of the Zang/Timpo 'planes;

• Airspeed Horsa (Glider) 
• Boeing B17 Fortress
• Boeing B29 Super Fortress
• Bristol Blenheim 
• De Havilland Mosquito
• Gloster E28/39 (Jet)
• Hawker Typhoon 
• Lockheed P-38 Lightning
• North American P-51 Mustang
• Supermarine Spitfire
• Yakovlev Yak-3
•  
• Fairy Battle (mentioned in an Article by Sue Richardson )?
• 
  
• While we both think there should be a Hawker Hurricane!

So I still have at least, four to shoot, five to find, as the Horsa we saw here wasn't mine! 

 

In the meantime, a loyal reader who doesn't want naming, but is happy to go by the moniker 'Ozi', sent me this, from Australia, and it's clearly a metal copy of the later/better Palitoy spitfire moulding, under the name of Merry Toys, missing its landing gear and propeller, but, there's no missing those lines, as we've seen them here, on the Blog, most recently this January, just gone. 

 

Ozi said: "I will attach a few pics of the “Merry Toys” metal cast item; which I think owes a great deal in parentage to the Palitoy “Spitfire or whatever it is”.  The wingspan of the Merry Toy is spot on four inches.  I don’t have a Palitoy Spitfire” to go alongside it.  The casting of the Merry Toy is pretty crude anyway.  Would you please let me have your thoughts on the possible parentage of this item?  I found it in a model shop about twenty years ago" .

 

Well . . . my thoughts are, who copied who? There is clearly a relationship, but the Aussie one is both lacking the strange indented line down the fuselage (of the Palitoy one), and has a better cockpit. So I am minded to think, given how poor Palitoy's version-one Spitfire was, that they are also responsible for the first iteration of this beast, and Merry then improved upon it?

 

Also, haveing placed the Palitoys firmly in the 1940's, there is something of the 1950's tinplate about this Merry antipodean one, albeit, it's actually a die-cast alloy model?

Ozi also sent a very clean Mossie . . . from Aussie . . . sometimes I should just be jailed! Ozi found it on Gumtree, down under, so some made their way down there. I think I read, there is both a real Mosquito and a Lancaster being rebuilt in that part of the world?

 

It's not the only Mossie being rebuilt I believe, and likewise I think an American (or second Canadian?) Lancaster is under rebuild. Having seen the then, only two, flying Lank's together, at Farnborough, a fair few years ago, now, imagine what four would look/sound like, and likewise, three Mosquitos! 

 

In a follow-up eMail Ozi sent these four pictures (above and below) of smaller 'novelty' 'plane models, and I'll post his musing on childhood fandom and memories of toy aircraft at the bottom. Here a rather nice Vampire, in marbled pinkish-maroons.

 

 

 North American P-51 Mustang and De Havilland DH.106 Comet

 

Grumman F9F Panther

"In my school days, growing up in a smallish country town in OZ and later in a City, with only my imagination for company, it was natural to have a liking for toy aircraft.  It was a bit after WW2 and no one wanted reminders of it – but I was curious about the aircraft.  Over several years, I saw the Dinkies, the Timpo “Bomber Station” set (with what I later recognized as Lightnings!), a small scale plastic set of apparently locally produced items and – best of them all – the plastic Palitoys.  Particularly the Wellington with its transparent gun turrets with guns!

 

They were all out of my reach and I just had to drool. The Defiant and the Wellington were moulded in a sort-of camouflage pattern [the distinctive marbling of early Palitoy's. Ed.]; which made them very distinctive. 

 

And then there was a series of plastic toys contemporary with the Korean War; Panther, MIG 15, Shooting Star a nice Sabre with RAAF markings and they had wheeled undercarriages. In various colours; blue, yellow, red.  I managed to somehow get a couple of them.  There might have others in that series. I am pretty sure they were local knock-offs of the US Empire brand – or they might have been licensed copies.  I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody knows now.

There was another series out about the same time – no undercarriages on this lot ; a Hawker Hunter (Only saw red ones), a Canberra and a DC3.  And a bit later were the giveaways with packets of “Aeroplane Jellies”.  I have illustrated the only one of those I have ever seen.  A Vampire, not very well moulded in a dark purple colour. Similarly, I somehow managed to swap for or find examples.

 
The first pics are of the “Aeroplane Jellies” Vampire.  Wingspan about 2.5”. Next are a couple of examples of the small scale locals – a Mustang and a Comet in silver.  Wingspan about 2.5”.  Only ever saw these in silver, and I am pretty sure there was a Canberra in that series and also a Lincoln.  Next is a pic of an American Empire Grumman Panther.  Wingspan about 4.5”.  Despite looking for years for examples of the OZ made Panthers, MIG15’s etc, I have never seen a single one.

In more recent times I have obtained locally a very distorted Palitoy Defiant, a couple of Lockheed bombers; plus eBay examples of the post-war Wellington and Sunderland.  The occasional Timpo Lightning crops up here, and also their B17.  Usually very play worn.

 

A couple of ZANG Mossies were a welcome find a few years ago.  A local site had a listing some time ago of a collection of small plastic toys; FD2, Lightning and others and I put in a bid, but it was not good enough.  Apparently they were local KELLOGG'S giveaways and dated rather after my school days. . . . 

. . . I should mention seeing the toys section of one of the new supermarkets (COLES) having Palitoy “Spit-whatevers” and Vampires and possibly other types finished in what appeared to be chrome plating."

The 'small scale locals' would seem to be yet another iteration of the MPC 'Minis', also done in hard plastic by Blue Box, but possibly only one or two? And many thanks to John, Mig and 'Ozi' for helping bring this lot together!

K is for Kennedy Space Centre - Figures

I shot them twice! Again, I had up to four of most poses, with a few pairs and some threes, so the figures of two sets had been left in the tin, I think you should have two of each, but some of the sets on sale seem to have one of each, so I'm not sure, and maybe the numbers were reduced for budgetary reasons as the 1960's gave way to the 1970's?

 

Fuellers or firefighters?

 

Ground-crew and mechanics.

 

The people who get paid the proper money!

 

Stupidly, I failed to do the comparison shot with the other Marx 50mm space and the Deluxe Reading chaps, despite buying a handful of the former, in metallic blue, and one of the latter, specifically to do so! They are all in storage now, with this set. In the meantime I thought "Oh, Brian sent us some?", but I can't find them in the folders, so I think they did get blogged? It means we'll have a good comparison post another day, as there are lots to compare, what with the re-issues, Thomas orange ones and two base-types for the Marx!

 

The pointing astronaut is also made in 54mm, and with the Mystery Space Ship in 35mm

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2014/04/n-is-for-no-mystery.html

M is for More - Palitoy and Renwal's Plastic 'Planes

Not really a follow-up as it's been a while now since we last mentioned the Palitoy 'planes, and the Renwal are new to the blog, but I picked these up in one of the autumn shows, and there are a few things to unpack, so a T is for Two . . . maybe!

I actually picked up a bagful of the Palitoy aircraft for next to nothing, which was nice, these bargains happen from time to time, and we all have them occasionally, so not an obvious or deliberate brag, but I didn't know what I'd really got until I'd got them back to Adrian's table, and looked at them properly.

We have looked at the Spitfire[s] before here, and the musing on that occasion, are upset by this pair where the supposed earlier, inaccurate one is here found in the supposed later, stable polystyrene, while the opposite is true of the other moulding, with an early marbled/flecked example of the better quality model, which logic dictates must have come later.

So some new points or musings from yours truly, first, in conversation with several other collectors at the show, we mused that (given the inaccuracy and pre-war nature of several of the other aircraft in the range) there could be the lines of a French Dewoitine D.520, albeit without the long sharks-nose of the original, and someone has started to add French roundels to this one in paint.

Now I'm not saying it ever was a Dewoitine, but I have learned that among the specific war work of Palitoy's Coalville works was Spitfire landing gear, and perspex components for the aeroplane industry, and there remains the possibility that it might have been renamed at the last minute, due to perceived failure by the French in 1940, or just the need for a Spitfire.

But the fact that the two now seem to have run alongside each-other, and the inaccuracies to both against real Spitfires, which they (Palitoy) would have been very familiar with, might suggest they were originally two different planes - maybe one was meant to be a Hurricane and got the wrong marking-stamps, first - and that my previous assertions of the age of these being definitely wartime and with possibly some pre-war production, seems more solid now.

The Wellington; the early ones might be manufactured from what Palitoy (then British Cascelloid, or even Pallet Toys as they may still have been known) called cascelloid, which was a rather flammable celluloid polymer, but that tended to be processed into product as/from a sheet material.

 

In 1931 they were purchased by British Xylonite (another branded celluloid), and in 1939, merged into Bakelite Xylonite Ltd. (BXL), who's Union Carbide partner in the 'States may have something to do with the earlier unstable plastic these aircraft are found in, some kind of Bakelite by-product?

 

My own feeling is that they are an early, unstable form of polystyrene, looking to copy the product being made by IG Farben in Germany from - also - 1931, which had been worked on, fitfully, since the 1870's.

 

Lockheed 'Hudson' bomber-reconnaissance aircraft and air-taxi; While the 'early' models tend to have the red/pink wheels and propellers, and the late (obviously polystyrene) ones black accessories, the fact is I now have all four combinations in the collection with the later Spitfire first seen here in a stable blue, having the red attachments.

 

This actually only reinforces my thoughts on wartime production, as while some will tell you there was no toy production in the war, that's not strictly the case, as with the tariffs we're all currently being threatened with by that lieing, criminal, orange loon, exceptions can always be sought in these matters, with exemption licences being issued on a case by case basis.

 

As a company engaged in 'war work' and a group experimenting with plastics on both sides of the pond, the idea that those experiments could be undertaken in small runs of cheap playthings makes perfect sense, and once they started playing with perspex components for real aircraft and gas-masks/respirators, the small transparencies on the Wellingtons also makes sense, and also ties them to wartime production. The toys helping boost morale while promoting popular aeroplane types, of the time.

I think these Renwal were either the same seller, or the same bag, I can't remember now, but new to me and ready for action as 'Dimestore' style ready-made's, one (wing-tip tanks) marked Navy Plane, the other Army Plane, I guess there's a third out there somewhere - 'Air Force Plane'?

 

The army 'plane is a generic design, although there are recognisable elements of Sabre, but not that pointed nose! The other is a better rendition of US Navy Grumman F9F Panther, capturing the rear-wing line quite well.

 

A comparison shot, between the two lines, scale per se doesn't come into it, but they're both the same size, which, with their simple construction, would put them in the same pocket-money category!

T is for Two . . . err . . . Four, Engines!

I picked up a couple of rather interesting aircraft models a week ago last Saturday, neither of which seem to be elsewhere on the Internet, so we'll look at them both and thoughts are welcome on these two mysteries, the first is a kicker for Brit's . . . 

. . . as I suspected first that Victory Toys were likely a US firm, before finding it (as an aluminium Jeep manufacturer) in the archive as being a Dutch/Netherlands maker, but the point is, it's inescapable that this composition B17 Flying Fortress is a world away from the lumpen models we've seen here previously from Zang for Timpo. I don't know if the dodgy-looking characters (possibly a dog, a human and a duck) have any significance, or are a further clue to anything?

 

I wondered if at first it was aluminium, Victory seem to have made figures in the same material, as well as the Jeeps (all around 60mm), but it's definitely a composition; you can see where light rust on the prop-shafts is just starting to split the cases on the port-engines. Also, the varnish, where it hasn't worn off, is starting to bubble, like the unit/nationality shield transfers on a WWII  German helmet I used to own - clearly reacting with the paint underneath.

 

Only, it's a very finely finished model, as you can tell from this comparison of another recent airborne discovery here at Small Scale World, the Zang B29 Superfortress, you can see it's a much cruder beast altogether, and you wonder if, at that level of finess, we don't still have composition toys, but that's forgetting the frangibility of the material, and the fact that it's only survived because the box has soldiered-on, getting a bit battered, defending the contents!

 

Typically, the B17's from Zang which we also only recently looked at, are in storage, but that will give us an excuse to return to the whole Air Wing one day, as there are some lead ones too, and a wax one!  Going by the scale on the wing of the next, below, these are about 1:300th scale?

 

The other 'plane I found that day was this cast-aluminium MR2/Mk.2 Shackleton, long range maritime-patrol/reconnaissance aircraft. The official recognition model was a 1:72 scale celluloid/phenolic model, made by Cruver, and most of the desk-models I could find are far more detailed/larger, so I was minded to suspect an apprentice piece, however, the 52/986 looks like a stock-code, so it may still be a recognition model, or perhaps a targeting-aid, but I'm not sure that I'd be very happy if our gunners were practising on models of our own aircraft?

 

Now, 52 could be the year, and 986 is close to codes used by Avro for both the Shackleton (696/716) and Lincoln Bomber (694/695), so this could be an Avro factory/design office model? I can see there's still more to learn about this!

 

The small recess shows no sign of glue or fixings, so seems to be designed to fit easily on a stand of some kind, and be removed again, while the yellow-brown paint is crudely done, compared to the all-over green, but seems to be original?

 

And here's another thought, the Shackleton has direct descendancy from the Lancaster, via the Lincoln, and I wonder if the fact that around the world, three Lancaster's have now (I believe) been rendered airworthy, is down to the number of Shackleton parts still kicking around here or in South Africa?

L is for Late Show Report - Vehicular Elements!

Onwards and upwards and we get to transports of delight! One way or another, I came back from Whitton with a lot of the smaller novelty stuff, in part thanks to the donations from Trevor, Peter and Brian C, whose bags all had a few, so let me stop waffling and we'll have a look . . . 

These are lovely, well, I mean you can see with your own eyes, they are shite, but, they are new to me, new to the collection and new to the oeuvre of mini/micro-mini rack-toy shite! They were in Trevor's bag, and are so clean they might be quite recent, but could equally be old stock, looked-after? Quite wacky and two have a sort of 1970's US muscle-car lines to them, with the type on the right looking like some semi-demented cartoon armoured car, I know nothing else, but love 'em!

 

I think I had one of these scout cars from Barney a few years ago as an 'I've never seen it before' type thing, since when, several have turned-up and with these two I have a troop now, with some spare parts! What I love about them and the similar jeeps is that the little drivers are in scale with Airfix, even if the AFV's aren't, so they could be used in 'old school' wargaming! The Jeep is a modern rack-toy thing!

 

You've seen this stuff coming in, time and time again, if you've followed the Blog for any length of time, and, in ones and twos like this, the master samples continue to grow to workable sizes. We've looked at the semi-flats (front pair) before, both as French premiums with a variety of marks, and as these Hong Kong staples of Christmas crackers, but the Chinese only copied one of the original sculpts.

 

I think the pop-together green car (top right) is an early Kinder (there were similar military vehicles), the silver one may be new (cereal premium?), while the other green one goes with a growing handful of 'chunky' ones, we saw a while back in a mini-season of integral-moulded-wheels 'minis'. The red car in the centre is from the early-learning collection we've seen before, and the solid blue sports-car is another one joining mates in the stash!

The other two sports cars, with pierced bodywork are again somewhere in the pile as a larger sample with more colours, and have something (poor quality) in common with the first image above, while the one with separate wheels is a HK copy of an old Jean/Maurba/Siku type thing from the 1950's/early 1960's, and belongs to the genre we haven't looked at here, yet, but will - those with running wheels. There's many more of them, and several of the samples have outgrown their bags and moved up to takeaway tubs!

 

Again, we have looked at these in an overview, but there's plenty more to tell and plenty more have come-in since. Today we have a banana-plane (bottom right), two which are supposed to be SE5's I think (Biggles was still very big when I was a kid, I read them all in the school library, old hardbacks with glorious, bright, coloured lithographed covers and thick pages which were almost card!), and a small pale blue . . . Albatross? Some iterations of these have the supposed make on the underside, but I didn't think to look with these four, too much else going on!

 

A mix here of rack-toy tat and cracker/gum-ball tat, but again, all grist to the mill, all adding to existing samples, with a possible game-playing piece bottom right, and a possible new sculpt in the little primrose-yellow cracker-toy?

 

Two generations of cracker motorcyclist in the red pair, the third mine-wagon to come it, it must be from a railway scenery kit? One is complete with a cross-bar/brace, the other two like this missing the delicate piece, but when three come-in over 40-odd years, they must be from something relatively common?

 

The large motorcycle is another early Airfix one, and has lost it's handlebar tips, but the other marbled-yellowish one I found was the one we looked at with a crumbly area in the centre of the engine, so they must have had a duff batch with that colour?

 

The final piece looks familiar, but I can't place it, I think it may be the nose wheel from a possibly die-cast mini-plane, but that's pure guesswork, and it will join the spare wheel stock in the hope of being reunited with something, one day!

 

Gisby kindly ID'd the free sample of a Warlord Games 'Cruel Seas' British MTB from the fuzzy image in the Intro-post the other day, which he thinks was given away with Wargames Illustrated magazine, and to go with it are various other vessels.

 

The four silver ones are common, and we've looked at them before, the left-hand submarine is very useful, as it's the last one I needed lose, from the carded set of 1960's hard 'styrene naval vessels we have seen here. The other sub' is a 'Made In England' beach or bath toy which I think is new to me/the collection. 

 

The little white one is from the set of mini 'tree' crackers we have seen before, while the deck at the front is a useful spare from the various sets of Hong Kong copies of such Western makes as INGAP, and I may already have a bereft hull for it, somewhere.

Finally, a novelty white-button railway set, we've looked at a few in one or two posts already, and there is a bunch in the medium-to-long queue! I think the B&TAR is a madeupname railway company! I also think it's quite recent, if not still out there somewhere, it's the kind of thing you see in Poundland?

 

Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile.

A is for Another One

Coming so soon after the recent expanding of the envelope with a B17 Flying Fortress (erroneously described as a B29 at the time), in part in answer to Collectors Gazette's apparent attempt to précis this Blog's work on the range over the years, comes an actual B29 Super Fortress!

Not exactly a rack-toy (yes, this August has been a bit of a wash-out on the RTM front), but I bet it was cheaper than a bag of chips back in the day! Another believed to be Zang for Timpo/Model Toys composition (Timpolin) aircraft model to add to the previous post's listing;

• Boeing B17 Flying Fortress
• Boeing B29 Super Fortress
  
• De Havilland Mosquito
• Gloster Whittle
  
• Hawker Hurricane (or Supermarine Spitfire?)
• Horsa Glider 
• Lockheed P-38 Lightning
  

Alphabetical this time, and new to blog, Internet and hobby, I think, what will turn-up next?

M is for More Lead!

Twice in two days! Just a box-ticker, I found these shots of one of the Panits Lazlo sets from Hungary, which I think we looked at, not that long ago, so just to add them to the archive as it were, here they are!

 

As last time, they are a mix of factory painted piracies of Airfix and Esci sculpts, probably from home-cast rubber-moulds, and presented in a small carded blister, I think the text on the card-front literally translates as 'metal figures carton', so a kind of pocket-money kiosk cheapie, like the Polish plastics we've also seen here.

P is for Panits Laszlo, or is it Laszlo Panits?

There are four things I can say about these, and with little else to say, I might as well get stuck in without a long opener!

 

The first thing is that I could have sworn we had these on the Blog about 15-years ago, but I'm damned if I can find them now, they are not in the Tag List, yet the above image was taken before I ever had a Blog, and had gone to the dongles as 'done', so they must have been posted somewhere, maybe they were on my long-defunct Imageshack account, which I had for about 18-months, about 16-years ago! In which case they may have been posted to a long-gone HäT Forum article or something?
 

I think the upper ones are copies of Preiser, the lower set a mix of Esci-Ertl and Airfix sculpts.

 

The second thing is that I genuinely don't know if the firm/shop/chap is called Panits Laszlo, or Laszlo Panits? In trying to research the company (Google has got shit in the last ten years), I discovered quite a few of both, but without the comma we'd use in English - Hugh Walter or Walter, Hugh - it's imposible to work out which is commonly the surname or the forename, how they are typically presented, or if, indeed, in Hungarian, there's no difference, but the fact that there are quite a few, suggests it's the equivalent of a John Smith, or Andy Brown.

 

And neither point is meant to upset any Hungarians reading, I'd love input from them, to explain the points? But it's Panits Laszlo on the back of the card, so that's what we are going with.

The third point is the obvious stuff, they are factory-painted, HO/OO sized (1:76th scale), whitemetal piracies of Airfix, mostly RAF Personnel, or Esci NATO Ground Crew, here, I suspect, painted up as Warsaw Pact Hungarians, with the other sets painted-up as WWII USAAF-USAF, and with at least one figure taken from Airfix's set of that American title.

 

Set contents also vary from card to card, so you could - presumably - choose a card that would most closely allow you to set up your diorama, with whichever kit you were making? And I think the message stamped on the front just says "Model Figure Card" (blister/pack).

 

And I've forgotten what the fourth point was going to be, but it's worth mentioning that Panits Laszlo were probably responsible for the other Esci copies seen here in the past - which I also can't find, Doh!!

 

So, we'll have it 'again'? Also copies of Esci, also factory painted whitemetal, not seen on these cards, and here not divisible by six, there may be some damaged ones in the bag taking the sample to 24? But they otherwise seem to be the same idea/concept as the air force figures above?

And that's it, that's them, box ticked, I don't know a lot, I suspect it/he (Panits Laszlo) was also a model shop in Budapest, and if anyone can add anything, their input will be welcome.

C is for Composition Crates

As well as regular dips into (and revelations on) the model aircraft range of early Palitoy over the years, here at Small Scale World, we have also had numerous dips into the output of Zang and Zang for Timpo, using their Timpolin pumic-based composition, including several looks at the aircraft, showing the Horsa Glider for the first time, and the Navy which has since appeared everywhere!

Today we're looking predominantly at the B17 Flying Fortress, of which these came in, via a rather convoluted deal, a year or two ago, I spotted them late at night on feebleBay, eMailed a friend who I knew would A) be interested and B) most likely to be a rival bidder, he knew the seller, and wasn't that interested, so messaged him and bought them, the seller then posted them direct to me, and I settled-up later with the payer!

I know they came from one of the few decent toy museums still going, and may have been spares or just surplus to requirements and sacrificed to raise funds for more 'grail' or exhibitable items, but it was the first time I'd seen them. Note how the British one has 'our' camouflage scheme, the two US ones 'theirs', while a late-war (8th Air Force?) machine is finished in silver, and clearly caught flak!

 

I'm not sure if the rust-brown colouration in this damage/crack is the linseed-oil often used as the main mixing-liquid in compositions, particularly European ones, or signs of a metal armature being deemed necessary, on these larger models? There's no hint of them on the other aircraft, nor the figures, so I suspect not.

Having seen the Gloster Whittle before as an archive item, I now have my own, which Adrian Little of Mercator Trading kindly put to one side for me a while back. So I now have personally;

• Lockheed P-38 Lightnings (and the later Timpo diecast version)
  
• Boeing B17 Flying Fortresses
• De Havilland Mosquitos (two brandings)
  
• Hawker Hurricane/s (or Supermarine Spitfire/s, I can't remember!)
• Gloster Whittle

and we've seen here before, the;

• Horsa Glider

What will we see/uncover next? Or maybe Collectors Gazette would like to have a punt? What? All publicity's good publicity, isnt it? Heh-heh-heh!