L is for Lots of London Loot - Jan. Through Feb. 2 of 2

A continuation of the previous post, and as I tend to post these in the order I shoot them, we’re back with the leery pink background first . . .

 

A trio of the really rather exquisite Les Higgins English Civil War figures, gang-up against a Minifigs (?) Royalist! Although he's more of a fancy-pants, so may be a Swiss mercenary!

 

Matchbox US policeman and a similar firefighter from Hong Kong/China.

 

Bullyland Cacophonix.

 

Another Marx Moses (we saw a brown one the other day), a . . . Gormiti type thing? And a doctor from a set of infant or early learning toys? These actually come in two sizes, but go back-off to charity every now and again, I think we've ID'd one type here, with a Toy Fair report and the others may be 'Tikes or Mattel or someone  like that?

 

A couple of Hong King divers with the plug-in heads, we've seen small rack-toy sets of these, but it's nice to get a few loose samples for close-ups. The Dinky road menders watchman, a Huskey/Corgi policeman and a couple of other HK pieces.

 

Airfix or Airfix-related, nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!  I think he's meant to be a crusader though, and it's the daft shooting-skyward para' under all that modelling! Finally, my favourite ACW Confederate pose (never available as a Union sculpt), seen here as a home-cast copy!

 

A selection of kit figures, mostly Airfix, but the sailors may be Tamiya or another MTB/Fast Boat kit's crew, and the two air stewardesses could be another maker too?

 

In the background we have two lots of early Airfix HO-OO copies, a small bag of Roco Minitanks with stab-and-hope flesh paint and a near complete set of Matchbox commandos - missing their boat!

 

In the middle-distance is a nice sample of Britians Lilliput, which will help top-up that boxed set we saw here a while ago, and in front of them a few Lone Star 'Afrika Korps' are about to be neutralized by a larger contingent of UN paratroops from the same maker!

 

A nice trio of interesting combat types, with one of the so-called 'Bonnie Bilt' semi-flats to the left, but in the more-local soft polyethylene, a home piracy or minor-make (?) copy of Britains in the centre, and one of the probably Pioneer (for Stonegalleon or Zita?) figures, which could also be Realtoy or someone else!

 

Bits and bobs! Mostly generic fencing or model railway walling, with a Supreme Wild West sign-post (top right) and three pieces of Lik Be (LB)'s farm fencing - bottom left, along with a bag of Airfix Betta Bilda bricks.

 

Various Hong Kong trees/plants, and a fireplace from Merten.

 

 Bellona pup-tents, a Wardie/Mastermodels station bench,

 and a couple of boxes for the spares zone!

 

More spares, including the Mafia 'violin-case', from a (Monogram?) car kit, a ship's yard, solitaire piece, Action Man pistol with broken trigger, Britains musket, plastic toothpick and some runner oddments! Also, an ornate pressed-tin washer of the sort you used to get on toy holsters and gun-belts from the likes of Crescent, Lone Star or Marx.

 

I thought these were stands of some kind, but I think they are dividers for old multi-drawer component storage units, of which I have several types in actual storage, so they may prove very useful going forwards!

 

A mix of mostly pretty generic farm animals, although it's hoped some will be ascribed over time, and while the purple-patch rabbits have a loose association with Blue Box or Tai Sang, it's not concrete at the moment.

 

Likewise, poultry and game, with an errant pair of Crescent-copy lambs!

 

Slightly more substantial in the interest department are these Britains lambs and duck family, better-quality Hong Kong rabbits and a rather nice PVC hen.

 

Modern 'China' farm animals.

 

More nice cows (see previous post), the pair on the left need a bit of digging, while the one on the right has suffered horn-surgery!

 

Two Crescent farm animals, foal and donkey, with what I think is a Britains in the middle, but is it an O-gauge horse (which could even be Hornby?) or a 54mm foal?

 

As well as a large quantity of previously-mentioned pewter/whitemetal war gaming stuff, there was all this Atlantic, mostly loose, and a bunch of flattened boxes, but not a lot could be made into whole sets, and some brittleness will mean a better sort into my similar stocks before it all makes sense!

 

Thanks again to Peter Evans, and another thought for the late Mikael Hyde, the Atlanitc was his, all useful grist to the mill, or bricks in the wall!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 2. Airfix and Related

I had some luck with early Airfix at the show, and there were some related bits, so I shoved them all in one post, except the two early motorcycles which ended-up in a mixed shot in the Civilian Vehicles post!

Two of the Airfix mounted figures after Bergan/Beton, both mounted on soft polyethylene horses (with the correct bent tail and cavity mark), although being a hard polystyrene themselves. The lefthand shot is missing the hunter, who turned up later, hence the rethink on how to do the posts!

 

As a result that image also has two probable Argentine figures a ceremonial type (top right, integral moulding) and a Native American (bottom left, separate rider) along with two other 'styrene riders, one of whom seems to belong with the marked-Ajax horse, the other is from the Magnetic 'Bucking Bronco' novelty act - the third I've picked-up in a few months, typical; isn't it, like buses; you wait ages for one, then three turn-up together!

A mixed bunch of the early 'eight figure set', being, from the left; Airfix Paratrooper, possible pair of BR Moulds Japanese and three of Peter Evans' home-casts. The first having the clear mould-release pin-mark which seems to differentiate the Airfix originals, the two Jap's missing an obvious mark, hence the possibility they are BR and the trio being a sharper, rigid resin to the softer pink one we looked at last year?

 

In the last lot from Chris Smith, I held over a bunch of these from the plunder posts, and I picked up a few more the other day, so a major re-hash/addition to that page will be forthcoming, as are similar changes to the mounted 'Bergan Beton' page where an awful lot have come in recently, in addition to the two above.

This is a fun shot, or at least the upper one is, the lower one is a closer look at the five Gulliver Japanese infantry, one of which is based squarely on an Atlantic 'Sendai' sculpt (Gulliver's go-to for piracies when they weren't copying Reamsa, Comansi or Jecsan!), the other figures being four old Airfix Sculpts.

The upper shot has, in addition, two rather wreaked Airfix originals for a not-very-useful comparison (they've both had their feet mucked-about with), suffice to say the Gulliver are a little smaller, but well sculpted. And in the foreground, a gloss-painted 'Toy Soldier' style home-cast piracy in lead/whitemetal with a wire bipod.

Not Airfix but of the same era, the same rarity value as the 'eight' and the same esoteric range, are two on the left from BR Moulds, a Lifeguard which is almost certainly from the Trojan set (post coming) and an Indian who doesn't seem to conform to any of the known BR mould-tool catalogue descriptions, and has something of the Sacul guards in his plastic colour, but seems to be from hollow-cast, so got included here!

 

These were mixed in with everything else! They go in a big bag which gets sorted into the master-collection/future stock every few years! I actually found a Prussian advancing from the Waterloo sets the other day, trod into someone's lawn, so Airfix 'HO-OO' have become a standard feature of the Anthropocene geological layer, along with crisp packets, chocolate wrappers, drinks bottles & cans, cigarette filters and vehicle parts/metal or rubber fixings!

 

Thanks to all for everything last month; Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith and Peter Evans,

Thanks to all for everything last month; Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan and Micheal Mordant-Smith.

C is for Canoes - 17 - HO-OO Scaled

A rather limp chapter in this canoe 'season', as I haven't done all the Merten/Noch/Preiser ones for a start, there's at least one metal one, and there are others, but here's a few which I happened upon as I was building these article folders

Atlantic have given us a trapper canoe in the Davy Crockett set and a raft in the Kit Carson set, smaller boxings would have one of each whole runner, sometimes cut into two with a smaller piece (the four - common/duplicate - mouldings beyond the obvious gap) and a larger piece with all that set's unique pieces on. Larger sets could have up to four or six complete runners, they aren’t rare; just over-hyped!

 

Woodland Scenics give us a pair of modern touristy/back-packing boats with obviously young people on a day-out/adventure, pre-painted polystyrene in the manner of the European figures mentioned above, but not painted to the same quality as Preiser or Noch.

 

The little Marx boats from various Miniature Masterpiece sets; silver paint only adds to the decorative nature of these, which were to be parked near the camp (there were no suitable crew/paddling figures), where matching toylike teepees were to be found, some of the other Wild West accessories however were much better, and the same camp would have a really nice little drying rack for an animal skin.

 

My homemade effort, I found it again in the recent moving of stuff, but it got damp in the 2007 flood and needs to be rebuilt, or just replaced! It was an evening's exercise in paper folding or curving; a boat is a dynamic shape, and a waterline model of one has it's own complications! Either side of it are the Thomas/Poplar canoes, painted with gloss brown by someone other than me!

 

Poly Pocket from Bluebird Toys, licenced to Mattel in the 'States, provided another leisure craft for the diminutive little madame to punt about in a flooded powder compact, but hide the seats with stores and paint it up, it's got the lines of a nice Native American boat?

H is for How They Come In - London, March, Boxed & Bits

Playing catch-up again with the show reports! Back to the end of March and the London Toy Soldier show first, where I wasn't expecting to pick-up much but ended-up with some useful stuff anyway.

 

 Worth mentioning, that while there was some pessimism around the new combined (soldiers and modellers/wargamers) one day show, it seems to have gone well, and most I chatted with were pleased or pleasantly surprised; next one's only about six-weeks away now!

I don't actually know (or remember my reasoning) why most of these weren't subsequently photographed, but with the exception of the Kinder barbarian (bottom left) they haven't been? I know the EMCE (top) are featuring in a forthcoming post, but why the rest were spirited off to their TBS boxes without a photo', is now a mystery.

 

Points to note include two Fontanini Nappies, a Cane Turk, a nice bag of khaki infantry types, two UNA in sand, a small bag of post-Giant Romans, and . . . the Guardsman pen with flocked bearskin????? I took him off to shoot the rest of the Novelty ceremonials (we looked at on the 4th May), and forgot to come back and shoot the rest didn't I? That's what happened!

As soon as we arrived I asked one seller if he had anything nice, and he basically said I need to shift these, they're yours for [insert ridiculously low price here] if you'll take them, so I was off to a good start with mostly Atlantic small scale!

 

Also boxed were these two Minikins sets which will be part of a bigger post but not for some time, while the farm animals are Tamiya, and I bought them from one of the kit-dealers in the other - additional - room! Just for fun, really!

 

Other boxed items from the 'other team's' stallholders include the JB Models (now Airfix) 105's, I intend to do one in Wainwright two-tone, towed and the other firing in Falklands black & green. The ACE Models half-track 'Diana' SPG, is a nice variant, while I think I already have the space set (from Dark Dream Studio), but I'll de-runner these and make-up the assemblies.

 

I bought this from the Legendary James Opie's table, although I believe his colleague is behind them, there were several, but I thought this had potential for a lot of different figures/eras? Obviously you trim-back to the base of the fort and stand it at the back of a display shelf, there were a whole bunch of them. The fat chap in a bicorne wasn't a purchase on the day, but happened to be to hand for an example of how they look!

 

I have several of these now, they tend to come in with mixed lots and are mostly - I suspect - from cheap, rack-toy 'knock-off' action figures, god knows if I'll ever get them all ID'd, but there are sites which look at all the also-ran's, so one day . . . maybe!

 

This is fun, I saw a heated discussion out of the corner of my eye, toward the end of the show, and when it had petered-out, I wandered over and asked what was the interest, and the seller explained the buyer had wanted one building, but that as it was a complete run, he wanted to sell them all together, and for only twenty-quid, so I handed over the money before anyone else realised what was happening!

 

In the event I found two duplicates and one missing, but they seem to appear on feebleBay regularly, so I'll find the missing one soon for the complete set. In the meantime they are an interesting thing, Waddington's HO-gauge scaled building that slot together without glue and which can be collapsed and put away again when Mum needs the table back! Eight of the smaller/medium-sized ones were also issued as Weetabix premiums.

T is for Two - More Machine Gunners

I meant to have a series of these posts off the back of a bunch of fleaBay and show purchases last autumn, but circumstances since have knocked that plan on the head for now, they'll all come out of the woodwork eventually one way or another, but for now I do have this pair.

The Atlantic Russian Maxim-type MG was quite a piece of work for those raised on Airfix's little WWI and 8th Army MG's, and the large scale one is exactly the same; the one reduced from the other - the master model likely being bigger still. However, in both scales it is ridiculously over-sizes and comes-in about the same as a 1:35 6lb'r might be! It didn't matter much to a kid, but must be frustrating for wargamers wanting MG's for Atlantic-sourced units?

In the shenanigans I went through getting these lots, hinted at in the previous post, the gunner and gun ended-up in two different auctions, one of which went invisible for a while, but somehow I managed to get both pieces back together in the end!

 

The sum of its parts; it's probably the decision to go with a clip/pop-together assembly model which led to the over-enlarging of everything, certainly with the 1:72/HO version, as the hand-grip would be unfindable at a realistic scale, but that doesn't excuse the problem with the size in the 1:32nd range, beyond the fact that the operator needs to remain in scale with the rest, whilst still reaching the grip-handles?

 

 

This might be American, but is probably French in origin, and depicting a Brit' in Mk.I helmet rather than a Yank in a 'Brodie' version. And it might be chalkware or some other composition, but is I suspect Blank de Meudon, a hard plaster or chalk mixed with clay, also used for mould-making - particularly in the pre-production phases. Painting is simpler than some French chalkware though, so a basic penny-toy?

 

Also; while he might actually be a rifleman, I think he's trying to depict an Owen-gunner, so maybe a First World War figure?

E is for Eastern Promise - How They Come In

For reasons which should be obvious (but sadly don't seem to be for the uneducated), we're not looking at one eastern country's stuff at the moment, and I hope there's none here, but as part of Chris's recent donation to the Blog was a number of smaller scale or outside 'area of interest' to his own collection stuff which we are looking at in a single post here. Everything below is soft polyethylene plastic.

These are lovely! They are almost exactly the same size as the bubble-gum capsule tanks we looked at again recently, now the lot of Chris's from which these came, was a Hungarian lot and various clues suggest the bulk of it was Hungarian, so for now that's the 'call' on these!

As you can see; four parts with two little wheel/axle sets and loosely based on a late pattern T34/85, but when I say loosely I mean loosely! They look like Dalek copies of a K9 unit!

Now, Peter Evans gave me several of these, years ago with the message that they were Bulgarian, and with figures only, there was no reason to question that attribution (which would have come with the figures from the seller/hander-on), however, seeing the horses here, and knowing what Hungarian flats/semi-flats tend to look like against their neighbour's output/s, these may well be Hungarian, not just because of the origin of the lots, but those chunky eye-shaped bases.

And this is not to call anyone 'wrong', just to adjust the theory to fit the available evidence, and, indeed; I think I may have some more horses somewhere, which is useful as Chris sent a few sets of mounted legs, so when I've put them (Peter's, Chris's, spare horses) all together we'll have another look, and if it's a few years from now, we may have more empirical stuff by then - packaging maybe?

The odd's, now another reason for not accepting 'Hungary' willy-nilly as the origin for all of them are the facts that A) there was a few bits of Western stuff, including some Kinder, in the bag, and B) we've already learnt Progress had factories in Rus, and Bulgaria for certain, and I've been told, Poland and East Germany too, so some of this stuff, or the tools, were passed around the WarPact Bloc.

The three mounted figures are nice; a knight and two native American Indians, and match the ancient Romans I've been told were Hungarian, and which usually appear on Hungarian seller's feeds, note the same heavy eye-shaped bases again. While the racing [game?] figure looks eastern too.

But the white plastic French Foreign Legion figure could be either from the Soviet Bloc or French bazaar production? Likewise the yellow driver could be from anywhere, but both might well be Hungarian?

I think the large blue knigh knight may be from further to the East (Booo! Slava Ukraine!), he's a Lido copy/homage, with a touch of paint, but chunkier than the Hong Kong copies we've previously seen here at Small Scale World.

I'm pretty sure these are Hungarian, and further that we visited them briefly when we looked at the Atlantic Fort Riley/Abilene Town a while back (follow the link in that post), and have a possible/probably mark; Kassa György (house of George/George's house/firm? Or; Gregory?) courtesy of Kadmon, the commenter/contributor then.

These are copies of Atlantic's 7th cavalry from the General Custer sets, they are larger than the original 1:72nd scale set, so probably reduced from the 1:32nd scale figures, although as Kassa György copied the fort, they may have worked exclusively with the smaller range?

Note that there are two poses of horse is present; these have two distinctly different base types, with three stars on the rim of the heavier, formal cartouche sculpts, or thinner unmarked 'cloud' bases.

A nice set which probably isn't Hungarian, being the sort of output more closely associated with Poland, but I've recently learnt from Maciej Jasinski (who's writing a book on the subject) that some of the stuff credited with Poland, was actually imported from East Germany (common borders between the three), so until the book comes out, I'll just sprinkle a light dusting of question marks over these!

Obviously copies of the old Airfix Celtic war-band Ancient Britons, the archer had escaped from the pack during the sorting phase and so isn't in all the shots! The card shows ancient Greek/Trojan types and maker/brand is the Polish kiosk supplier Lew Prokofijev, the Polish spelling of Prokofiev.

So many thanks to Chris for this little lot, fills a few gaps and builds a better picture of the Hungarian end of things even if it's not all Hungarian, and thanks to Kadmon  and Maciej again for their help in the past/elsewhere.