N is for "Nart a'Nurtherrr Whone?!"

As if this set hadn't given us more than most already, another Wilton set has turned-up, only this one has just five figures (the austerity set!), for a two-a-side game with referee, giving us new all-red and all-white strips into the bargain!

 

 

Still sealed, in a charity shop a few weeks ago, I don't know if it's an import, or if someone bought it in the 'States and brought it over here/back here? We have after all looked at it a half-dozen times now, with variations on each issue, what more could be added to the story?

 

From the number of sets we've seen here now, we can begin to conclude the pale green bases, equate to Referees with whistle, so must be the earlier production run/s, while dark green bases should be later sets, with the Ref' turned into another player for single teams of seven.

 

The guy on the ground, and the Number 2 shirt are the ones dropped from this fixture!

 

If you want to see the others - roughly in the order in which they appeared, i.e., the reverse of how they're found if you follow the tags;

 

Wilton - three-a-side 

Anniversary House seven-a-side - red shirts

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/01/f-is-for-football-2-w-is-for-wilton-and.html 

 

JPW seven-a-side - two teams

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/f-is-for-football.html

(courtesy of Brian Berke, and I only realised, just now, scrolling through all the football posts, they are the same sculpts! Don't know if they are the larger ones or the smaller ones)

 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - all white faces

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/t-is-for-they-keep-coming.html

 

Anniversary House seven-a-side - blue shirts + comparison shot (mixed post)

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/02/f-is-for-follow-ups-various-recent-posts.html 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - Four white, three black players

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/k-is-for-kicking-and-screaming.html 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - Four black, three white players + comparison with the small ones

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/f-is-for-follow-up-footballer-cake.html 

 

Wilton two-a-side

This post! 

 

 

Kaskey Kids - Similar poses, but not the same

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/02/f-is-for-follow-up-kaskey-kids-soccer.html 

 

So the Anniversary House sets are the dark-green based later issues, still in retail outlets, although the PME and Wilton can also be found, while the JPW were probably a one- or two-season rack-toy presentation. What next? We still need a full set and branding for the smaller figures, clearly from the same source, as they are the same colours/materials.

 

Fourteen teams, nine examples, seven posts, four brands, three team configurations, two versions of the referee sculpt, all one set! 

K is for Kicking and Screaming . . .

Hard to believe that a modern set of such poor overall (paint and fine detail) quality could feature on the Blog for a forth or fifth time, but that is what is happening here and a follow-up to various follow-up's, found in The Range, Aldershot (looking for hose connectors - always check the toy section!) and branded to the previously seen PME, but with a new header-card, it's those footballers' again!

Although, if you're a racist, this isn't a set for you, oh, no-no-no, you go and sit in your so wrong, white-right zone and leave the rest of us to enjoy the fact that a set that's been around for over a decade now has finally decided to represent what's happening on the pitch!

Sticking with one of the previously seen colour schemes, shirt wise, we now have 50% of the players showing obvious ethnicity and the knowledge that the Ref' might be a gay Scotsman, or even that one of the players might be gay, means inclusivity finally comes to the hallowed turf -  provided it's icing - as it has in real life! And it's Pride month - go Justin; you've got the ball ('Forest strip!), score goals on a green cake!

P is for Profuse Plastics from Pandora's Box!

Crimbo' 2021 hasn't had much of a festive feel here, but the effort has been made, and perusals undertaken, and this is what I purloined on a recce' to Pandora's Box in Basingrad the other day.

And shout-out to them as they had the only face-masks in three towns on the 13th March 2020, when we went into lock-down (understanding the science and following the story since 24/25th Dec. 2019; two things our useless cock of a clown Prime Minister seemed blissfully unaware-of at the time), and I managed to grab enough to last until they became more readily available here (in Sainsbury's) a couple of weeks later.

Two resin unicorns (as 'last year' now, as flamingoes are 'last decade'! Although cacti seem to be on the rise?), but from a tag already on the Blog; Puckator, who did the pirates, so I thought I'd better grab them and chuck them up here to fill-out that tag! And they are a nice 28/30mm compatible, so role-play gamers could keep an eye out for them? But then it's cheaper to add the tip of a toothpick to any suitable horse!

The strange 'yoga' Santa's; we may have seen these before, with or without packaging and/or spikes, or even me removing the spikes, but it might have been another set, as there are two or three of these smallest size? Anyway, with packaging and spikes - Anniversary House!

The similar figure next to them was in a display-box at the counter when I went to pay for everything else, branded to Doric (who have also been here at Small Scale World before now), they were mostly very pricey, but one compartment/section in the middle of the tray was cheaper so I bought one of each in that price bracket, he was one.

In fact we dealt with them at length in 2019

The other item was another of the old winter cottage designs we saw here, and which I suspect is a cleaner and better painted version of the third (newest type) in that Post, but it might be a re-cut fourth type, I won't know until they are all got together in a year or so.

In the meantime I had found the bisque original, suggesting that Gem/Festival added the shrubs to the opposite corner to try and hide a bit of plagiarism (although Musgrave was probably around to have provided the master for this one too?), which would mean that the HK copies are in two yolks of a ven-diagram; from-Gem (with shrubbery), from-bisque (without) and it would be nice to find a chalkwear one (if it was done in plaster), for the 'whole' set!

How quick did they get these in the shops?!! the craze is weeks rather than months old (well, about four months, in August of this year none of us had ever heard of it, now no-one hasn't!), and there was a whole box of reasonable sculpts, over-moulded in three colours of substitute-PVC and fitted with a key-chain loop - Squid Game guard, no brand. the big-head renders them 'deforms' or semi-deforms!

I listened to a fatuous piece on Radio4 (which is a shadow of the station I've listened-to all my life) when the craze first became noticeable about how it is a variation of Tag, or the British Bulldogs game, when in fact it's a parable about totalitarianism, closer to hunger-games and taking a deliberate side-swipe at the capitalism which has trashed the planet and is now creating whole swathes of young adults in the UK and America, who can't feed themselves on their wages, or ever get a car or a foot on the housing ladder. While the Korean kid's original is a more complicated struggle between two teams.

Squid Game

Squid (game)

I think I may have bought these before and bloged them (the tags are in Picasa's tag-archive!), but here they are again! Imported by BCG Ltd., and with no other obvious brand, and poor copies of Matchbox 8th Army and DAK. If I have bought another set, I'll open one when I find the other and we'll add them to a Rack Toy Month.

Pandora's Box is the only retail outlet round here with a turnover of traditional rack-toys and novelties, and they don't turn-over that quickly, but it was a fruitful visit this last time.

We have a couple here in Fleet; Izzy's who use Tobar and another which seems to be semi-permanently closed these days and stocks Red Deer, but not all the stuff from them that Peter Evans manages to find, so "keep looking around" is still a must!

C is for Creative Converting

Of Clintonville, Wisconsin and Bournemouth, Dorset! No Unicorns here, but if you didn't fancy this morning's offering of eight garishly coloured Unicorns, here eight garishly coloured horsey-pony types!

Of the four Clintonville's listed in Wikiwattsit, this is the second biggest, but at a 4,000+ population somewhat behind Bornemouth in the development stakes! Part of the Hoffmaster Group, they are currently offering 11 catalogues which are mostly party table-ware, so these were probably bought in from China, for a single season, or left to the Bournemouth arm (Creative Party (also UK arm of Anniversary House)) to organise independently - there's nothing like this on their Amazon account either?

Well, without the header-card I only would have had one picture, which still gets the box ticked, but would have been a bit meah! I could have done a T is for Two... with the Unicorns but then I would have been looking for a 'Horsey-Likey' title, despite some of them being actual horses . . . so, having over-thought it to the N^th degree, it had to be two posts!

Courtesy of Peter Evans who picked these up in the Smoke somewhere I think, these are a realistic alternative to fantasy foals, and are of similar size, as with a lot of model animals the scale comparability depends on the age you want to depict, 25mm adults or 50-mil juveniles!

That's them, Creative Converting (et al), available now, out there somewhere and probably also to be found in other packaging - they are similar to stuff by both Henbrandt and D&D I think? Cheers Peter!

F is for Follow-ups - Various Recent Posts

A few bits and bobs pertaining to previous posts; we'll start with the recently seen African native set ID'd by Peter Evans the other week;

Chris Smith had one with three colours, the shorts and red-clay'ed hair of my better sample but with the addition of silver for the spear tip, studying mine under the looking-glass I can find no hint of silver and I think it really is an example of how the paint was slowly reduced to cut costs, perhaps dating the set to the midst of the oil crisis?

Chris also has this lovely marbled rhinoceros which came in the same lot/sample, whether they go together or not is still a question-mark, but it's a fine beast! It is also however a bit Asian-looking, rather than an African black or white?

Which leads me on to the wheeled crocodile, I don't know why I didn’t spot it at the time, but there are little spigots on its tail and little dimples on the roof of its mouth and on its tongue . . . it's only from a crocodile 'train', or crocodile 'crocodile'! How cool is that? Too cool for first class!

I dropped into the party shop at Clapham Junction when I was up in The Smoke for the Toy Fair at the end of last month and they did have some blue teams left, the shop-assistant had to go in the basement for them, but I stole-away with one . . . after passing over the requisite shekels!

Giving me six team strips from three brandings, and enough figures for an interesting five-a-side competition. There must be some war-gaming style rule-sets you could use for such a venture, maybe some of the board-games with footballer figures could supply ideas for a skeleton rule-set without a board? Playable on a Subbuto pitch maybe!

Chris also sent in the autumn parcel a soviet-bloc, flat figure for which I already had a clone (seen before), but mine is a poorer quality copy; something which sometimes happened 'behind the curtain' as we saw with all the versions of Progress cavalry, and as it did here in the West.

The new one has been mended with a combination of an Evostick-like snot and some fag-lighter, heat-melting, so cowardice has decided me against trying to clean it up for fear of doing more damage! It’s a new colour anyway, and as I say - a better sculpt - Thanks Chris!

As a follow-up to an older post, I recently got another bunch of Merten copy Victorians/Edwardian (Wilhelmian?) civilian cake decorations (from Peter Evans I think? Cheers Peter!), with a colour variation of the pink lady we looked at before.

T is for They Keep Coming!

I picked these up the other day!

Having said I'd go back for the dark-blue team when we last looked at them, I didn't and they've probably all gone by now, that was back in January, but now a third 'player' has bought into the league - Knightsbridge PME Ltd.?

Totally new colours, even the referee has white turn-downs on his socks for a slightly different look to the originally-found Wilton's ref '. The set is following the Wilton's pattern with 3-a-side and two goalies but is the most colourful to date.

Numbering has gone a bit awry, with the true number-one miss-registered and the number-three over-stenciled with a 1, despite 3 being marked on the base-underside and - as a raised moulding - on the shirt!

The card, albeit in black & white, seems to suggest other colourways, so I suspect we'll be returning to them, whether I track-down the blue set or not. And 50p each with two 'free' goals - bargain! Have you found these, what colours have you seen/got, or . . . what brand were they sold under? 'Cos that's three now; I'm gonna' need a bigger tub!

F is for Football - 2 - W is for Wilton and not Wilton!

When I was editing this post I was sure I had posted the Wilton set, however I couldn't find any photographs in the Wilton folder, so I guess I never got round to it, and as they sat there in the collection I just convinced myself I had? If they are on the Blog there will be a link here now! [No - I didn't]

But that meant I would need to post the Wilton's here to compare with the Anniversary House version - which the post was always about . . . anyway; it gave us a slightly weird title and here are both sets, with the - probably latter - Anniversary House to the fore and a quick comparison with the Wilton set at the end!

This is the set currently findable in the UK from Anniversary House, you get one team in red or blue (I didn't get a blue set, but will go back for one now I know they are the same as the Wilton's - side collection!) and a goalie who can be with or against the other six?

Close-ups, the first thing one notices is that one of the players is wearing goal keeper's gloves and appears to be preparing to hand the ball . . . fowl! It was at this point I started to think "Are these the same poses as those Wilton's in the attic, I got a while back?"

The other players, and again, the standing player looked both a tad odd and a tad familiar, so it was off to the attic, wasn't it!

Sure enough they are the same! These are Wilton's figures, and we can see they are configured for three-a-side with two goalies in reverse-coloured strip and a referee!

The main differences are the bright green bases, the slightly more elaborate painting and the fact that the Anniversary House 10-shirt, is not only painted as a referee with Wilton, but has an obvious whistle.

Blue's goalie is calling for a fowl, as one of the reds has brought-down a blue in the box, the ref's just blown for a free-kick and the red goal-keeper knows it!

At 70mm-odd they are on the big side (Airfix referee for comparison), and you can see how the whistle has been blanked-off to create the 'new' player, otherwise there is no real difference between them and flesh/face-painting is the same on both sets.

I bought the Wilton lot in the same craft superstore in Basingrad where I photographed the 4M pirate fort set, back at Christmas 2011? So the Wilton may still be available, although a craft superstore has recently opened in Farnborough, and; upon inspection in the cake decoration department - no banana!

I'm hoping I can track down a Wilton one with the players opposite-painted so I can have four teams of six-a-side, with two ref's, once I've grabbed a dark blue Anniversary House set - which we will look at [briefly] another day before I put them in the attic!

C is for Cristmas, Crimbo and CAKE!

A bit of a thematic - indeed - 'Seasonal' post tonight. We have looked at this sort of stuff before and will again, tonight's have all come into the collection in the last 15 or so months.

This is a surprisingly sophisticated design from Festival, a UK company, and I suspect a late production attempt to fight back against the onslaught of cheap imports from Hong Kong, who were simply copying their older polyethylene cake decorations in polystyrene.

Made from a polypropylene type material, it's in two parts which slot together, the white trim and red cloak reducing the need for the quantities of paint they had used in the 1950's and '60's. Supplied to Culpitts in the UK (as most of their output seems to have been), we see also a late Culpitts packaging.

Another carded set; this company (Anniversary House) are still extant and based in Bournemouth, although this item seems to be a discontinued - probably 1980's - piece, it has a spike or spigot to punch through the icing on a Christmas cake.

Nothing to do with cake this one, except that I have a whole set of cake decorations somewhere with this trombonist, so he's a case of cross-marketing, being supplied to cake decoration wholesalers and glued into snow-domes/snow-shakers.

Some older or more traditional ones - to me that is...or people of a certain age! Tradition with regard to Christmas is a very movable feast! But these are the sort of thing I remember from my childhood. The top picture's items are all by Festival, with the deer, the motto and the cupid all being copied in Hong Kong in polystyrene at one time or another, these are all originals with the registered trade numbers and/or Festival logo showing. The clown is only in the picture because they were all in the same bag, he's more of a Birthday cake decoration!

Bottom left are my favourite type of Christmas cake decorations; the plaster-of-Paris ones, going back to the turn of the century they ran alongside the bisque ones for years as the poorer brother, but have slowly lost out to plastics in the last 40 years, although they are still around and two of the above were bought new from a bakery in Newbury a year ago.

The final shot are 1970's style Hong Kong imports of a tree with and without a metallic finish and a little church, with another Festival item - the other tree - to the right.

Mostly more modern types although the large picture of the Santa' with a spigot looks to be early British (1950's) and could be Festival or Gem (who I think are connected anyway). Top left are poured resin (or 'Poly-stone'!!), the chap next to them seems to be made out of that oven-cure modelling compound, used by kids for craft stuff, but here used commercially.

A mixed bag which starts with a pair of earrings, these were imported by several companies a few years ago. and somewhere I have a bunch of them with the hangers removed and various treatments, both hand-painted and sprayed, in various schemes.

Next is a 'Mr. Man' pencil top who looks like a snowman and - you'll be unsurprised to hear - is called Mr. Snow! The very small one skating is interesting as he appears to be a polystyrene HK effort, but is quite finely designed and may be a copy of an earlier European moulding, but I've never found a soft plastic or marked version?

The chap on a card-plinth is the only Christmas themed cake decoration I could find in Britain's main supermarkets in the last month, and I tried Tesco (Andover and Aldershot), Walmart-call-me-Asda (Farnborough), Waitrose (Fleet) and Sainsbury's (Fleet and Farnborough). Not one of them thought to stock Christmas dec's, despite all having large displays of 'year-round' and birthday decorations? Oh...and he's made out of Royal Icing and is good for eating or removing teeth!

The lower image shows a china/ceramic 'fairing' type candle-holder of indeterminate years and origin...possibly made in Japan post war for the German market? And a hideous glitter covered, pipe-cleaner 'enhanced' Santa' who came with a commercial cake years ago, but was being sold with 5 other coloured fellows as tree decorations in Tesco this December, so the mould - unfortunately - survives somewhere in Hong Kong/China...

Going back to earrings for a moment; the main shot here shows three ex-earrings, which are just the right size for filling in at the top of the tree where you want little baubles and other hangings, and both the stripped bauble and the Christmas pudding were so converted a few years ago, while the little bell was courtesy of Tesco's about a week ago!

Below them is last years Christmas cake, with a poured resin and Santa Claus and his tree, which lost out at audition to a more traditional brush-type with plaster snow...and this years Yule Log with a squirrel bought from the local toy shop.

At the risk of repeating myself - wherever you are and whoever you're with; have a lovely Christmas, and get cake, eat cake, only...save the decorations!