E is for Eye Candy - WWI Cavalry

I shot these at the BMSS (British Model Soldier Society)'s show in Reading, two years ago, on Mercator Trading's stall (thanks Adrian), and they are pretty special; Holgar Eriksson's finest, WWI British Cavalry in the charge. Probably from Comet-Authenticast's set British Cavalry, Field Uniform, 1914, which was unnumbered.

The brown one may be Chinese or something, Eriksson's lists included dozens and dozens of nations, and often it was just a paint-job to create another catalogue listing, but only Boxer Rebellion types are listed to my knowledge, although #56 was an 'unused' number in the later sets. The same - painting to order - was true of the first Malleable Mouldings lists. Or, it could be one of his own figures, from Sweden?

C is for Comet: Comet-Authenticast and Comet-Gaeltacht

A play in two acts, opening in New York and closing in Eire! That's Eire with a 'F'!! I won't bore you with the history today, that's one for the A-Z entry one day, but there is a book which deals well with most of it, and we're really box-ticking here, although with a lovely set from Jon Attwood to start us off!

Their HO scale figure set, as produced and carded in the Republic of Ireland, there are a few lifts from other makers not least Hornby's pre-war sets, while some others have the unmistakeable signature of Holgar Eriksson's sculpting style about them, one wonders though, if he had been happy to know (if he knew) or would have been happy to know they were side-by-side with piracies?

 

A gatefold flyer, with the O-gauge on the front, a mix of both scales in the middle, and a plug for the Authenticast soldiers and sports sets on the back. Jon's set can be seen middle-right on the opened centre pages.

 

Reminds me I have some of the shrubs, and they work for either size, at about 2cm high, they are actually very crude and look like home-painted Skytrex! For all the hype about centrifugal casting, the 'authenticast' process, the railway stuff was mostly pretty basic in the paint finish?

The box Jon's card came in, it's the standard artwork for the time fitted to a smaller, squarer area, to the more normal long-thin toy soldier boxes, but a lot of the railway range had similar dimensions, as one can see in the flyer above.

 

The obvious lifts include two figures from Hornby, flanking a Horton-Trix-Britains Lilliput passenger in the middle, and, given the era and subject-matter, it was more likely laziness than any idea of fakery, which led to these three?

Copies of copies of old Xerox or 'Electrofax' sheets, from the James Chase collection, again the O-gauge leading with HO on the second page, now with vehicles, but all really aimed at the parent company's US market.

 

Probably Eriksson's, but could be the work of Frank Rogers, who was clearly influenced by the master. Those O-gauge which are Eriksson's are often marked HE, as the male in the recent show-plunder post was, but in the HO, it's not so clear, and we have the piracies to contend with, which I don't think he would have countenanced?

 

I have posted some before, both O and HO I think, but under which Tag I can't remember, it was quite early in the blog's history I think? Many thanks to Jon, again, for the rare card and box. We are slowly coming to the end of these, but there's still a few to come!

W is for Who Made Who!

Bit of a surprise when these turned-up, as they looked familiar, but, err . . . better! Obviously I knew of Minikins, they are in Garratt, where he both spelt them wrong, and was pretty disparaging! O'Brian gives them quite a write-up, but mentions he's omitted the HO set (singular), so these should be new to most and new to the Internet, but I think we did look at them briefly in a show report, so they're not new to Blog!

 

Minikin or Minikins as they are sometimes dubbed, also, really nice presentation boxes for a make better known for dowdy or 'transport' packaging, but they may have been given this packaging at their destination, International Models Inc., of New York?

 

As Minikins were known for copies and derivatives, these would appear to be piracies of BJ Ward's Wardie Mastermodels? Except, as we shall see, they are better, so a new question mark present's itself? One set of station-staff and line workers, the other of passengers, they are reasonably painted, but just far-cleaner castings than Mastermodels.

 

The thing is, I never knew of them, so I've never looked that closely at my Wardie's, and with quality, scale and base-style (among other details) differing across the Mastermodels output, I may well have a few Minikins in there already, but these are probably the only two sets, so we may have them all on view here?

Now, they are not all Mastermodels sculpts the three railway employees for instance, and the central pair on the bottom row are questionable, Wardie did a version of the lady, but she's not quite the same. However, neither are they Comet-Authenticast sculpts, which would be the obvious direction to go in if these were repackaged AHI (see below). They are closer to the Hornby Dublo actually, aren't they?

 

A couple of seated figures, are they Mastermodels sculpts, or cleaned up Comet? They don't seem to be either, which points to original sculpts, and if two are, the rest could be, especially with the question-mark over the station staff?

Obviously the tied-in ones are the Minikins and the three loose ones are Kemlows' finest, except that next to the Japanese production, they aren't that fine at all, are they?  Rougher finished, with huge release-pin marks, heavier tool-handles and a marginally greater 'woodeness'? It's as if the Ward stuff are the copies?

In the Brooke's book 'The Illustrated Kemlows Story' these marks are credited to AHI (note above), but I suspect that was because he was familiar with AHI imports, of which these bear a remarkable resemblance - to wit; being the same!

 

But AHI (Azrak-Hamway International) were a US jobber (importer), Minikin was a Japanese brand, and (through work on the Khaki Infantry, not my non-existent knowledge of most 'BMSS' subject-matter!) I've always thought the better AHI stuff may have been or had a cross-over with Minikins, so the first thing to suggest, is that AHI's imported 'HO' railway figures, were Minikins product. And it would make the correcting of me on the ACW stuff more problematic for the corrector, as AHI had to be getting them from somewhere!

While dates give us the next clue, and with Minikins operating in the late 1940's and Kemlow's helping Ward with Mastermodels after 1951, it has to be suggested that Wardie are the copier here?

 

Also, because we will be looking at other arms of this tree in the next few days, it would mean that those copies of the Merit driving-game figures (themselves copied from Wardie) which come out of Hong Kong with a petrol-pump (a'la Blue Box) may have come straight from these?

Anyway, it's all only thoughts on new evidence, and if anyone would like to throw their tuppence-worth into the mix they're welcome! I'm just asking who made who? And I'm not looking to denegrate Garratt, O'Brian or the Brook's, they are the sources I turn-to for the earlier work on the puzzle, before adding my own tuppence-worth!

M is for Military Mystery Men

I really, really, REALLY thought I'd posted these, in fact I thought I'd posted them more than once, but I can't find them anywhere on the blog (except a relatively recent distance shot, in a 'Forthcoming' post) under the correct tags (Comet, Eriksson, Spencer Smith and/or Timpo, nor 'Motorcycles'!), so without further ado; let's get'em up'ere!

I think I must have thought about posting them once or twice and written the blurb-bits in my head, leaving me with a false memory (or false memories!) of having posted them, when I hadn't?

Anyway, here they are and they are brittle, polystyrene 'kit' plastic, in a much darker colour than the flash has rendered them here! Most of the other images are truer to the eye, but not the last one (bottom) which was taken in the same circumstances as this one.

They are relatively unusual and an odd mix as we have a semi-flat running G.I., a fully-round kneeling firing Tommy Atkins and a very generic motorcyclist who's more civilian racing scrambler!

The sources are therefore as eclectic as the finished group and we'll go from the left in the previous image, which means the kneeling firer here first; he's taken from Timpo's WWII figure, and may well have been taken from the original hollow-cast rather than either of the later plastic issues we looked at here, they having copied they own hollow-cast moulding!

The running chap is taken from a common (and much used) pose/sculpt (or should that be sculpt-pose?) from the famous figure-sculptor Holgar Eriksson. Seen here compared with the diminutive Spencer Smith's, but also used by Comet-Authenticast, Comet-Gaeltec, SAE, Tradition and probably others, it can be - and is - many nations with head/webbing swaps, or the addition of a frock-coat and bi-corn hat, and the match illustrated isn't completely identical.

The third member of the 'set' which I had remembered as four (they've been in storage for a while) and may be more, it this motorcycle, again it seems to have been a common design back in the 1950's (or even late 1940's), predominantly for board-game pieces? Luckily I have found all three 'junk' lead and unknown Hollow-cast boxes in the garage!

You'll see the best match for the front-forks among the smaller trio, is the green one, but the head of the pink one is closer - they are very play-worn, very soft lead. A lack of fettling has led the larger red one to look like one of those Bisque imp-devils for cake-decorating, but closer study reveals several similar key-signatures . . . actually closer study suggests he is meant to be an Imp? Pointy ears?

Further I have a note to the effect that the trio are 'similar; to an Agasee home-casting mould (166? I've already put it away!), which is important for the rest of the narrative, and as I haven't found the Agasee catalogue yet and the red one has come in since, we may find it (Imp), or the plastic one, are actually closer to - or from - the Agasee mould?

Now known to be from Glevum Games 'Dirt Track Racing' game.

These were sent to the Blog by Chris Smith the other day (prompting the fruitless search for the originals on the Blog!), I think they are all polyethylene and we find, as the fall-out from the BR Moulds revelations in Plastic Warrior magazine gathers momentum, that there are lots of these figures out there, who have come, not only from that set of moulds, but from other, poured-metal or hollow-casting (?) sources.

Off the top of my head we have here an ex-Agasee bren-gunner based on the Hill/Johilco pose (inset - from Joplin's 'Big Book of Hollow Cast') of the same hollow-cast pose; another of the Eriksson runners, but this one with an apparently different base; landscaped and wearing the Authenticast 'ears' and a sling - but mine may be a short-shot version of the same tool, I don't think so though; more likely Chris's was the donor for my simplified cop-of-a-copy? While the MG gunner is ex-Britains too, I think, with that ammo-box sticking-out the side?

The point being made here is that a lot of the figures previously credited by some in the Old Guard to Hilco, Charbens or 'Early Cherilea' . . . err . . . aren't! They are in fact taken from either the newly discovered BR moulds, or home-casting moulds, or pirated from Hollow-cast figures/production, either by smaller commercial outfits, or industrious individuals/hobbyists.

The three (prone MG, rifleman and Kneeling GI) I put on the Khaki Infantry page (and sent to PW (issue 156) are now looking more likely to be Trojan than when I first suggested it, while the ex-Airfix para' almost certainly is, as Trojan probably helped themselves to a set of BR's moulds! To them it would have been investing petty-cash to write-off against tax . . . ?

The mould for Chris's Bren-gunner, it's a home-casting mold, but if jigged to fit a single-shot hand injection-moulder (as still used by Peter Cole at Replicants) it could produce a number of figures without distorting as the pressures built-up by such an appliance are no greater than the weight of a body on a bottle-jack, the trick is probably more to keep heaving until the extremities have formed, to prevent short-shot 'blob-ends', than to be releasing the pressure early to prevent damage to a solid-metal mould!

I believe some of these moulds were Zamak/Mazac alloy, so pretty tough, and while a modern six-second-cycle, fully automated injection-moulding machine would probably blow-them apart in less than a minute; that's not how they were done back in the day. Some however were softer whitemetal, and wouldn't last long before deformation? So, yes, it's in the Hill catalogue, but that doesn't make it Johillco.

I don't know if it's specifically an Agasee mould, and seem to remember being corrected last time I mentioned them as they were mostly importing someone else's moulds, but there were other mould-makers supplying home hobbyists (Gilbert and Schwarz spring to mind), often with variations of the same sculpts - the modern home-casters use the output to melt-down for new lead and few of them are in Joplin's big book - the 'BMSS & OTS guys' just don't rate them.

The bases of mine, there are no marks on mine, nor on Chris's, nor the commoner prone/kneeling figures, nor the guards and highlanders now attributed to BR, nor my funny little Highlander or that larger prone highlander and lifeguard we looked at a couple of years ago, nor the 'Trojan' paratrooper.

And don't think I'm attacking the Old Guard, they've always used the caveats of 'believed', 'thought', 'might' or 'could' be . . . assumed, presumed or 'seem to be', so arses were always covered, but it's clear there was much shenanigans going-on back in the 1950's-early '60's to produce all these more esoteric toy soldiers!

Thanks to Chris again for his images and for the second time this month - the more we know, the more we know we need to find out! That's five or six figures - new to the blog, new to the Internet (except evilBay!) and new (ish) to the hobby . . . oh, and thanks to John Begg and Steve Vickers for my three, which came to me from a fruit-box on a tailgate in a car-park back in 2009, some of my first large-scale purchases!

M is for Malleable Mouldings 54mm Marching Marines

Title says it all, which leave me with a problem vis-à-vis blurb!

You were going to get Phidal Peter Rabbit in this slot, he'll appear this afternoon if things go according to a non-existent plan known as the 'see-what-happens' schedule!

I shot these on Adrian's stand back in September and they're actually cropped-out of larger images of a zoo I hope to Blog over Christmas, so I'm pleased they are as decent, image-wise, as they are!

I don't know if these are Eriksson's-hand; ex-Comet/Authenticast (Gaeltacht Industries), or latter production, if anything they are superior sculpts, while he's rated, he is formulaic; these have a more realistic countenance, I feel? Although the join-line is quite 'hollow-cast' or poured-metal in execution so I'm really just generating blurb!!

They appear to be in four parts; hat, two arms and body with a additional base that Malleable Mouldings seem to have cut from sheet material, pretty rough sheet material at that; puddled or rolled-out cellulose-acetate!

W is for War-gaming on the Waves

A couple of comments on older vessel posts the other day reminded me I had these in Brian B (Terranova)'s folder (there's lot of good stuff in there, I will try to post more of it), and as we don't have much war gaming stuff on here; it's time to look at this interesting exhibition, which he ran into on a visit to the Grolier Society, where a member had this little display; I will be pulling the biographical details from the wall-cards Brian also kindly photographed.

I know this is the 'Holy Grail' if you happen to be a fan of naval war gaming; Fletcher Pratt's original 1940 wire-bound, manuscript-publishing of the - by then - well play-tested rule set. Illustrated by his wife Inga Pratt throughout, this copy actually carries the bookplate of his close friend John D. Clark.

As well as military and Naval history, Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was also one of the early 'pulp' science-fiction writers and Dean of non-fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont (not as odd as it sounds). The Pratt's organised naval war gaming began in 1926, the games being played in their apartment in New York.

The 10th of October issue of Life Magazine in 1938 carried an article "Life Plays the War Game" on the Pratt's and the popularity of the gaming which - as can be seen - had spread to the military - which had bigger floors! The same issue carried an article on the Munich Conference entitled "Hitler listens to Reason", so it wasn't just Chamberlin!

The really interesting thing here, apart from getting across the grandeur of the old Naval Reviews, is; no flat-tops? I think there are 184 vessels, or part-vessels in the shot but nothing which looks like an aircraft carrier? The two long, dark ones toward the back may be, but they look like capital ships/battleships to me?

I love that there's a huge 'NORTH' posted on the mezzanine walkway to remind everyone - at a glance - where they are, and where they are supposed to be sailing/shooting! Note also - civilians roll in the dust; senior naval officer's squat - stiffly!

I have no idea . . . well 'some' idea as to who made the model ships, in that it's probably safe to assume they are Comet? Although the exhibition seems to suggest some were home-made by the Pratt's - highly likely as they 'invented' the genre!

But there were other quantity, lead/whitemetal, model-ship makers; Wiking in Germany have a reasonable list and a Trafalgar in Britain; although I'm not sure if Wiking were that early and my early-photocopy/roneo'd catalogues (possibly from the 1950's) for both all three companies are in storage (they will all end-up on the A-Z pages). Also the Trafalgar lists may be imported Comet or Wiking?

I do know that Comet and Comet-Authenticast produced Naval Vessels in 1:1200th (280+ models representing many more actual vessels - within 'classes'), 1:500th (25-odd US military vessels), and desk-top/promotional models from 1:100th scale to 50-feet long (by commission), so I would imagine that the former (1:1200th)'s what we're looking at in these shots. Indeed - Comet originally supplied models to the US military to use as recognition aids, so the naval ones will almost certainly be Comet.

However, there are always smaller makers and home-casting to consider! Thanks - as always - Terranova, another treat to post.

T is for Two - Irish Figures . . . From Ireland

It's funny, you should be looking at something else here today; but I put it on the back burner after faffing-around for three hours, writing two-and-a-half lines, renumbering the images twice and adding a screen-cap . . . it needs more work! Likewise some lovely Swoppets were sent to the blog this week, but I'll sort them over the weekend, they would have been rushed if I'd posted them tomorrow (Friday); so I grabbed these two from Picasa.

Except that it's three but we'll look at the one first! Hailing from Comet/Authenticast's subsidiary Gaeltacht Industries' works in the Republic of Eire, and frankly not up to the quality one would expect from Holgar Eriksson, so possibly one of the other sculptors?

It's also funny that last weekend I shot tons of stuff at Sandown Park, yet still haven't blogged most of the stuff I shot at Sandown three months ago! This was one of them (from three months ago), nice ECW musketeer, spoilt by the daft firing-arm with its elbow pointing at the ceiling . . . or sky!

These came from a charity shop (British Heart Foundation - I think?) about a week ago, clearly the gods (or 'your' god, if you've only got the one!) wanted a T for Two Irish! When I first saw them I though "Ooh, Wade", picked up the unmarked one first and thought "No?", and then found the mark on the other. I think they are related, the blue glaze is the same, but for 'T is for Two' purposes, the one on the right counts.

They are similar to Wade's figurines (Seagoe Ceramics?) but they don't have the lines on the bases. Equally they are similar to the bisque cake decorations of yesteryear, but gloss-fired enamel, where the cake toppers used to get a matt-paint over the fired clay. They also show signs of having been glued to something with brown/animal glue; so maybe touristy something's?

Anyone got any ideas? I mean - clearly they are Leprechauns and I have to be very polite to them, but - any other ideas?!! The one on the left (Pádraig) seems to be carving a crib (Christmassy) while the one on the right (Pádraic) seems to be panning for gold to put in a pot at the end of a rainbow . . . of course!

M is for "♫ Motor'bikin'! ♫ . . ♫ . . ♫ Motor'bikin'!! ♫ . . .

. . . ♫ Moving on the Queens High'way; Lookin' Like'a Streak-a'Lightning ♫"

It is a mystery to me how this stuff comes in, it only seems a few weeks since I did a round-up of motorcycles thinking "That's it for a while", and damn-me if I haven't got a whole lot more to share with you! And to show it isn't really a mystery, but rather synergy; these all piled-up in the last couple of weeks!

This was first, an email from Brian Berke with a few 'shelfies' and a note to the effect he knew I liked motorbikes on the Blog and thought this was worthy of my attention. It is! And it's also the 'other' FunTastic, so I'll have to be careful with the tags!

It says 'three styles' and what looks to be an identical one is seen below, with a different colour-way, whether that's it, or whether there are different models and colour-ways leading to the necessity to collect a whole fleet is something the Atlantic will prevent me investing in a search of the definitive answer to - no bad thing - but thanks for the shot Brian!

At the other end of the spectrum in every sense is this Holgar Eriksson designed generic 'combat troops' machine in 30mm lead. . . weird for having an obvious sticky-out, kick-stand (both sides) but no sticky-out handle-bars? Unmarked by dint of its design, I'm assuming Comet/Authenticast, but it is just a likely to be SAE?

We've seen the silver chap (recently I fear?) but the gold one with blue wheels turned-up at Sandown the other day, so a fleet of these seems to be in my future . . . oh lordy!

While below them two more [purported to be] Airfix bikes to add to the - currently in storage - bag, sans riders (but that made them cheap!), they normally have a chap in a sort of field-cap/service hat, but there may be other riders.

Because by Monday just-gone, I could see a bike post building; when I saw these I nearly bought them on the spot . . . but went back and got them first-thing Tuesday! From a larger set of Iwaco-type erasers (a pound for 6) we will look at separately; they're too cool for driving-school!

The gods of space-saving: Crammy and Pylitup, decided I couldn't add these to the stack, so I photographed them on Adrian's Mercator Trading stall at Sandown Park - French, look like Cofalux (?), it's very similar to the damaged black one we saw here a while ago (separate handlebars are even closer) and the pointy-hands of the riders suggest I have a spare military rider somewhere!

And as the Belgians were stalled-out behind us - with some nice modernist melamine shelving - I took the opportunity to shoot them on a contemporaneous, '50's-feeling, patterned-background! But I forgot the jiggit on the camera-lens, Doh!

The interest element here is that you have polystyrene bikes, polyethylene handlebars and vinyl-rubber figures! The comedy element here is that they are motorcycles? Presumably the ladder folds into the side-car and the hoses are micro-bore, everyone's using micro-bore now!

It was the best way of getting more desirable toy subjects (police, fire and even ambulances) into a budget for every pocket, like all those family-saloons and estate-cars/shooting-brakes sold as Fire Chief's. I think we had more fire chiefs in our toy box than all other fire vehicles put together . . .

"Hey Chief!"

"Hey yer'self Chief! Oh, look here's the Chief coming..."

"You Chiefs over there, can you grab the County Fire Chief when he gets here; and go and blow on that fire, see if you can put it out?"

"Who made you Chief?"

"Who made you Chief?"

"Who made you Chief?"

"Who made you Chief?"