E is for Eye Candy - Naval & Marines

This was shot back in November 2020, so five years ago, give or take the odd day and a leap-year! There's about the same again to be added to this, in the still being sorted pile, at the lip of the storage container, and we've added a couple of rack-toy assault-craft over that time, all seen here in various posts, I think, try 'Vessels' or 'Naval - Marines' in the tag list. But what can you spot?

 

Top left is all the larger 60mm'ish stuff from Marx, MPC, Auburn (polymer, not rubber) or Ideal (?) and so on, originals and re-issues, to their right is the Lone Star sample, with some PVC, Timpo-branded, Toyway reissues, while the more historically-uniformed Charbens are in the little bag.

 

In the box, top right, are the more modern (WWI/II'ish) Charbens with four of the ever more brittle Lone Star marines - fighting in No.1 Dress uniforms! I have added one or two I think, but they may be duplicates. Below them is a mixed tub of the smaller Marx and a few others; Reisler, hollow-cast &etc, which we saw in an early post on the subject. There's been a few hollow-cast additions too.

 

Sandwiched between those two tubs is a wooden, hand-carved, tourist chap, who we also saw here over a decade a go, but there are four, similar, and very interesting plastic versions about to hit the blog! To the left of the mixed tub is a newer one, since enlarged, but still not ready for the definitive post, with the Britains Naval gun, now 'guns', but not all versions yet, although we did have a look at them, in part, a while ago.

 

In the corner are the three Greek assault-boats, copied from Britains, which got a post, and then in the top-left quarter of the box, all the iconic novelty floating toys from Britains and Timpo. You can see the Greek crewmen under the US Assault craft . . . I've actually done an 'Assault River-Crossing', in a remarkably similar boat, but ours didn't have engines, so we had to fucking paddle, in the rain!

 

The final tub, outside the box, has all the European types, obvious are Cofalu/Cofalux swivel-heads and the Coma assault marines, but there's some other stuff, a couple of Atlantic, a Hong Kong or two, and, strangely, mu original Frog trio, who are RAF rocket-troops! They've since been moved, as the sample is up to about ten now!

 

You can add a largish sample of the Gem cadets, those Argentine rubber ones which came in a while ago, and more Atlantic, Lone Star and Reisler, along with some Starlux (not sure where they are?), but, there's actually quite a few to sort into this tub at some point, and more take-away tubs will be needed! Then there's all the ABC and other Hong Kong copies, from hollow-cast, taken from Britains, which we have looked at here, on more than one occasion, now.

M is for Military Marvels from 'Merika!

So, around the same time as the show the other week, I got a lovely parcel from the other side of the pond, and having covered the show a couple of weeks ago, and Peter's stuff from it, last week, it's time to show gratitude to Brian Berke, by sharing his plunder with the rest of the loyal readers, and we're starting with the military, in what was a vehicle-heavy donation.

This should be a Renwal readymade, very much in the same vein and size as the similar Airfix Attack Force, or stuff we've seen here from Injectaplastic, Jean Hoefler, Manurba or Norada, but this one isn't fully-marked, and has already led to a follow-up! It's quite 'space-tank'y isn't it?!!

 

Gilmark's Sherman behind and a lovely, early, polystyrene, US-made Lido jeep, trailer and gun in front. Following the pattern of the 25lbr and quads, I suspect some artistic licence from the 1950's dime-store supplier, with the very British limber added to a jeep, and a gun closer to the early war 37mm, which, although quickly rendered ineffective by advances in German armour, remained far from obsolete, retained as a very useful infantry support weapon, and which WAS towed by jeeps, among other tractor-vehicles.

 

It is a sad inevitability, that Royal Fail have to take their boatman's coin from pretty-much every parcel from Brian, Chris or Peter, and on this occasion it was the Auburn jeep which paid the price. No matter, I will glue it, and before the cyanoacrylate dries whitish, shoot it with the Airfix jeep for that post, on the Airifx blog.

 

Annoying though, as I'm pretty sure I have the original Auburn Rubber 'rubber' one somewhere (chunk of PVC), and having the polyethylene replacement turn-up is a fine showing of the other side of that coin!

Also the Auburn one I think, or 'based on', although we have seen various versions here over the years, not least the Banner, Bell, Lido and Merit ones, but unmarked and a clean mould-shot, so probably one of the US 'army man' issuers rather than Hong Kong's finest?

 

These on the other hand, are Hong Kong, but rather uncommon 'German' blue plastic, probably from Ri-Toys (Rado Industries), and one of their bagged or carded rack-toys of the 1970/80's, but equally possibly a sub-pirate, the tank being a cruder copy of the Blue Box one, than I remember Rado being responsible for!

 

Brian kindly put these to one-side when I mentioned them a while ago, and it's the Faun 6x6, NATO-era, 10-ton Bundeswehr truck from Roco Minitanks, with a load of assault boats and the larger rubber-boat.

 

Interestingly, I think that grey wheel, is the early sign of 'styrene-rot, and it's only the second time I've seen it, but on the other occasion it was A) also Roco product, and B) also from the 'States, probably AHM over-stamped stuff from the late 1960's? On that previous occasion, I rather blamed the climate in Florida - well, Americans themselves, seem to blame Florida for most things!

 

It's not like the brittleness of dying polyethylene, but more like the Mazak-rot you get in early die-casts, the grey bloom eventually getting fine cracks in it before crumbling, more like biscuit. As with other plastic diseases, I'm sure it's a batch thing, but whether it's down to too-high or low injection temperatures, incorrect operating-pressures or corrupting additives/inclusions . . . as yet, as far as I know, that work hasn't been done.

Many thanks to Brian for all these, and there will be more on the Renwall tank next!

B is for Before & After - Cleaning!

Quick one from the photo-archive, the Auburn Rubber half-track, before and after cleaning, the lighting also changed slightly, but I think the job still shows itself to have been a good-un!

Not terribly realistic/true-to-life, but better than Marx's efforts, and around 1:48th scale? Manufactured from a synthetic PVC-rubber, rather than the earlier vulcanised tapped-rubber, of which Auburn had done a few military vehicles, but not a half-track, I think Sun Rubber did a very crude vulcanised half-track?

 

I put a little touch of WD40 on the axles too (hidden carpet-wheels behind the track-units), just to stop them getting any worse, after I'd given them a wet-polish with a bit of wire-wool, while it was in the sink for its once-in-a-blue-moon valet!

R is for Ragged Rubber Redskin's

Ragged because they'd adopted the same furry-black over-coats as one of my Thomas PVC Romans, Rubber because they are manufactured with Auburn Rubber's synthetic, PVC-rubber compound and Redskin's for alliterative purposes only; they are - of course - First Nation Native Americans!

I cleaned them! They are actually very red! That’s it; Auburn's 70mm Indians, box ticked, tags attributed and I'm already on to the next thing!

T isfurr'Towe! Said Old McDonald!

 With impeccable (and almost psychic) timing, Mr. B sent these from the Big Apple the other day, but I only got around to them on Wednesday (by the time you read this I should have caught-up with everything, replied to everyone's eMails and be firing on all cylinders!); follow-up's to recent posts, I was saving them for the next time we looked at poultry, when I realised I only had two posts for Sunday and one of them was animal shelfies, so it all sort of slotted into place!

Hunson/JPW are shipping these as I write, or they did a while ago, either-way they are still findable on the other side of the pond and cover the four main [poultry] food groups; Chicken, Duck, Goose and Turkey,! Sort of like, ooh, I dunno' . . .  Papo/Schleich size . . . but cheaper!

Brian also sent his Auburn Rubber 'smaller animals' as a follow-up or addendum to the post on such things here just before Christmas and a direct comparison with the Ohio Arts figures we saw on that occasion or; better still 'cos I like a challenge . . .

. . . Ohio art are the left of each pair (obviously; I knew that!), and the Auburn are undeniably the better sculpts! Not my best touching-up of images but it was rushed!

T is for Two - Antique Armoured Cars

Well, they're both older than me and I've been feeling like a bit of an antique myself, after a couple of weeks in the garden! These couldn't be further apart, one a clockwork tin-plate toy from Germany, the other a lump of vulcanised-rubber (now stone-like), probably from the US, yet they are also remarkably similar, in both being a yellow-olive, and representing inter-war period, small-run armoured cars, but of generic lines, and both probably actually manufactured in the 1950's.

Marklin, Bing, Karl Bub? Your guess is as good as mine (unless you know for certain!), compatible with the smaller 40mm composition that both Elastolin and Lineol made a few of, it still works, but the key is long gone, although the Mecanno keys fit I think? And while it needs a new flint, it looks like a Zippo flint will fit, so maybe one day I'll do a video of it rushing-about; spitting flame!

It manages to look quite American in its lines, presumably as they would have been the bigger customer; I imagine it escorting gold to Fort Knox for Wells Fargo! I'm guessing it's from the 1950's but may be from inter-war period tooling?

This has more the look of a locally-produced 'revolutionaries' vehicle, of which the 1920's and 1930's were littered, world-wide. Take a prestige car (with a big engine = heavy chassis), or commercial truck and cover it with steel plates down the local blacksmith's or bus depot's workshops; every town and most villages had one or the other - if not both!

I don't think it's Sun Rubber or Auburn? My book on them is hidden at the moment, not in the attic or the garage, but a couple of feet away . . . behind more books, a pile of Sammelerkatalog and a teetering heap of crazy-clowns who didn't combine as neatly as I had hoped they would and are now waiting a new, larger container! I'll tag it to both but try to remember to come back and correct it if I ever find out.

Markings on the tin-plate car consist of the DRGM registration mark and a 'Foreign' mark (which appears to have been sniped through the 'o'!). DRGM stands for Deutsches Reich Gebrauchs Muster and indicates that a unique feature has been registered with the relevant authority. It has no connection to the Nazi era (beyond overlapping) as Reich is an older term for State. The Foreign was an indicator of an import - I think to BOTH - the US or UK.

Side by side they make quite a team! I think the German tin one is a bit too tatty for serious tin-plate collectors, who like their stuff rust-free, mine's seen quite a bit of action in a damp climate . . . Indochina? The counties which . . . err . . . aren't in Ulster any more (lucky them!)?

Likewise, the rubber one is a bit dry and cracked and the tyres look flat at certain angles, but it's just that they are a bit small, and slightly perished, which has led to the shrinkage and radial cracks.

T is for Two - PVC Jeeps

Looking briefly at two vinyl-rubber jeeps, I photographed quite a bit over the weekend but also went down with a head-cold, nothing debilitating, but it left me a bit 'whatever' when it came to any serious editing, so I pottered about and shot some stuff!

It's odd, but PVC doesn't like long-term storage, these weren't 'mint' when they went in, but they didn't look like this - left hand shot! One has a black mould, the other a sandy deposit (remember the fury, grey Roman). Clearly as well as phthalates and free-radicals, PVC's exude something nutritious to various micro-fungi?

In the backgrownd is a Tomte Laerdal Toys model No. 2, the Willy's Jeep, with an Auburn Rubber 1950's Jeep M38A1 in front, but the later 'PVC vinyl-rubber' (synthetic rubber) not the earlier vulcanised rubber (real rubber) before and after a quick scrub-up!

The fact that it's the PVC means it's still quite supple, the old Vulcanised toys are hardening now and breaking-up, but they were different toys and I don't think there was a Jeep, one of the makers (Sun Rubber?) did a lovely half-track! Tomte also experimented with hard rubber to begin with before settling on PVC.

Both crewed with rear-area troops wearing side-caps who can be put in any army with a bit of paint! The Tomte look a bit air-force to me? Auburn's looks like an off-duty Marine (yaay!) or MP . . . boo!

The Auburn appears in the same slight shade-variations of green as the figures, but the Tomte comes in various bright colours of which this blue is possibly the best . . . if you run with the air-force line! Yellow, orange, scarlet, neon-green and [occasionally] white are also found

The M51 is around 1:35th scale, while the Tomte Laerdal Jeep is closer to 1:48/50th scale and the two share pretty similar design parameters, the Auburn losing on the position/moulding of the undercut (or lack of it!) for the steering-wheel, the Willy's having a silly windscreen.

Tomte means gnome in Norwegian, and Tomte Laerdal therefore translates as 'little Laerdal', the larger parent being big in pharmaceutical accessories of all kings, probably best know over here for  Resusci-Annie, the mouthwash kisser!

While there is (or was; I suspect it's died-down a bit, like Kinder prize prices!) a bit of a 'thing' about Tomte in wider collecting circles, there are in fact two or three other issuers of similar ranges of the smaller PVC vehicles in both Scandinavia and Germany ('West' at the time), and while I don't know of another Jeep, I think I have tracked-down 3 of four Land Rover's which we will look at here one day!

Also - as you can see - they survive a lot of punishment and aren't seen as being as rare as they may have been thought to have been when the 'thing' was at its height a decade or so ago. The one big problem with Tomte and the other brands are the clear vinyl windscreens which can harden and break-off with age/handling, got ripped-off - when still soft - by little-hands, or are to be found chewed!

I almost forgot these; they can go here! Brian Berke sent them to the blog some time last year - everything sent by anyone will get used in the end. They are both Tomte; No's 15 - Truck (which I've seen described as a Dodge or Commer?) and 16 - the Ford Thunderbird convertible - hey? Only the best for the streets of New York!

Co-indecently the truck is the best other Tomte Laerdal vehicle for military-use alongside the Jeep while the T-Bird is another with figures and a windscreen, between all the ranges there are quite a few 'soft-tops' and Brian's right-hand shot reveals another aspect of Tomte, the finish is poorer than some of the 'Germany/W. Germany' models.

Cheers Brian - T is for Two + Two!

F is for Follow-up to Flexible Foreign Farm Folk

Following the recent bucket'ess post Brian Berke kindly sent me the off-shoots of his Auburn Rubber 'Dan Dare' hunt, to compare the - believed - Ohio Arts figure with an Auburn original, this is they!

Not only was the Ohio Arts girl carrying a basket of bread, but the original is carrying a basket of eggs; with one of the Britains' girls carrying a bowl of 'cereal' we have a whole, healthy, farm breakfast . . . in polymer! Sausages coming on the 31st . . . !

Here she is with her husband, except that that is an illiberal, patriarchal, old school assumption, worthy only of a reactionary, parochial right-winger! He may be her son, her brother, one of the farm hands or a neighbour; come-over to give a hand at egg-carrying time!

Cheers Brian, another box ticked!

D is for Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future . . . Past!

As you may have clocked by now, we are having a Space day and a Follow-up day and a Brian day, because they are all follow-ups to previous related posts of shots Brian had sent. This post is looking at some more of Brian's collection of Dan Dare stuff, and in his own words . . .

"These figures are mostly Unicorn metal, factory painted.

The second and third on row-3 are Phants painted by me and are unlicensed UK made metal figures.

Row four - the four figures on the right are Treens; as per the Phants

Row five is a Crescent Dan Dare/RAF figure, then 3 as per above Phants and Treens. Then a plastic Spacefleet Commando by Eaglewall. Then two larger Auburn Rubber policemen this time the whistle blower is Dan smoking a pipe, followed by two Unicorns and a Comet metal Mekon."

=====================

A lovely display of a favourite from childhood, and - at the risk of being accused of name-dropping;

When we used to fly to Alderney (Britten-Norman Trislander - like a small Lancaster but noisier!), we would sometimes be unable to land (due to fog) and would be re-directed to Guernsey for an unscheduled overnight stay. We used a little B&B, but it often meant supper with General Sir John 'Arnhem' Hackett and his wife.

Now, after supper he and Dad would talk 'shop' (jumping out of perfectly-serviceable aircraft mostly!), while my Brother and I would sit at the top of the stairs going through a whole shelf of Lion, Tiger and Eagle annuals! Indeed we had to be dragged FROM the top of the stairs FOR supper, and were only returning to our 'roost'! Consequently; I knew well, things I should have been too-young to remember, like Harris Tweed, Waldorf & Cecil, PC49, Luck of the Legion and - of course - Dan Dare! "Pilot of the Future" . . . then!

=====================

Although the best thing there is hiding on the bottom row - where the hell do you go to find a figurine of Desperate Dan? "Cow-pie, with horns!"

Brian also sent a close-up of his Auburn Rubber paint-conversions - Cheers Mr B - some real treats!

F is for French Figures II - Soft Polyethylene Plastics

Strangely - as a plastics collector - I seem to know less about most of these than the most of the figures in the other three posts! But they (the moulds) seem to have had several owners, mostly in that period when 'army men' were falling out of favour, cleared as rack-toys in pocket-money price brackets.

Mostly derivative of; or copies of; or soft-plastic, unpainted mouldings of; other, better known makes, or metal originals, or previously better decorated hard-plastic figures, they rather defy ID'ing from across La Manche!

This was also the post Blogger lost - adding a year to it's edit-shelf life!

 

Some of these are straight lifts from Starlux, others seem 'based on', and while they have the feel of Cofalux, I don't think they are. As we saw with the medieval figures, this late '60's-1970's French rack-toy ethylene production has both the moulds and the mouldings being handled by several companies/brands - whoever actually held them. I'm told that the sailors are Hugonnet (?), the marching poses being much copied by Hong Kong in the '70's.

Bottom right shot shows the differences between the 'same' pose from the two sets, based on a Starlux French Foreign Legionary, the one to the left is the closer copy, the one on the right has had a head-turn.

Again...Hugonnet have been put in the frame for some of these (top left - but the bases are large enough to point at Aludo?), others are similar to Cofalux, but not so well finished (two main lots) while the little group to the top-right are so poor they could be Hong Kong apart from markings and the fact that again...they are the same poses that keep cropping-up in this late mono-colour production and again...mostly Starlux poses, or Starlux-like, including the pose which gets itself into the Timpo GI's and through them to half-a-dozen minor (and not so minor; Hilco) 'khaki Infantry' makers!

Speaking of Timpo - in all the time this lot have been in Picasa and 'Edit' Sam sent me a bunch which included more of the small lot above and there are several Timpo 1st version 'WWII' poses included with the Aludo-looking pose on the top row. The same shot has an odd figure (top right) from the Hugonnet (?) set below, while the third row are from another origin and includes a scale-down of one of the US Auburn Rubber (Double Fabric Tire Corp.) company's figures - the white one, with a couple of Cofalux copies and a Starlux-a-like. Indeed I think they are additions to the same 'set' as the middle group in the previous collage.

The multicoloured row in the image below that has the same pose but larger along with several others from the Auburn 70mm's (but here around 60mm) in polyethylene, also very poor quality, no better than the worse of Hong Kong's efforts.

The upper shot here are now known (by me) to be Vilco issues of older figures by other people (in this case Cofalu aluminium figures I believe?), these being home-painted, the originals were issued on the runner in header-carded bags and as well as then olive green issues; also came in a variety of metallic colours including silver, gold, blue, mauve, pink &etc.

 

Below them are five modern production WWI troops by Armies in Plastic (AIP) really nice animated sculpts, I think the blue came first and the dung-brown after, but they ended-up side-by-side in the shop's stock so it's a mute point.

 

The recent (2009) re-issues of the Mokarex coffee-premium figures by Effigies, are in quite a dense un-glueable ethylene, but useful when you consider the frangibility of the originals and the fact that the packs are often missing, they can always be heat-welded on - of course.

 

Top left is the odds and ends, a couple of painted ethylene, which seem relatively uncommon and again I don't know who made them but the same names as the medievals are in the frame, just from the base paint! Then the little Airfix copy scaled-up to 45mm from Ri-Toys (Rado) which was also looked at here and a slightly rubbery 50mm from the Spanish Teixido?

 

The next two shots are of figures I've been told are Hugonnet (?), very much in the dress of the Indochinese or North African campaign's and like many of these figures seeming to reference Starlux sculpts, either because they were all deliberately pirating each other (like the Brits were at the same time with their 'Khaki Infantry' types), or because they were all using the same sculptor?

 

The final shot is all Marx, from the States, with the marching figure in brown a 1990's re-issue (carried in the Uk by Marksmen) from the 'Soldiers of the World' with the set of 6 WWII figures from the 54mm range, two in the original powder-blue, with re-issues in light and dark grey and a deep bottle-green.

Additions that have come in over the three years or so since I started these posts! Some more Vilco copies of other people's good moulds at the top, a late Cofalux flamethrower operator who looks so thin and weedy he may be a copy by someone else (?) and a later rack toy in electric-apple-puke-neon-dayglo green...Hugonnet again?

While I've been cogitating on these posts for so long, I've got round to stripping the Nazi paint off the supposedly Hugonnet figures, so a later additional picture. I don't know what's happening with the smaller bloke saluting...different make? Deliberate down-scale to make-up cavity numbers in the mould tool? And I'm assuming the glossier colours came after the matt'er olive and olive-drab issues?