O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! AFV's

So, the other half of the 'Army Men' post (which was going to be one post, but I couldn't face all that typing in one hit!), their transport, and it's an eclectic mix with a few interesting bits in it!

 

I know, but it was a Jeep! It was a Hugonnet card! It's otherwise the same rack-toy shite churned-out by Hong Kong, but a worthy addition to the collection, and confirms loose figures I've got somewhere! Starlux piracies!

 

These were from Isaac, who's surname I've never caught, but he'd saved them for me (along with the Wild West swoppet bags and some other stuff), and they were a real revelation, as when I got them home I found they were confirming one of the possible combinations suggested by me in this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2015/09/p-is-for-pick.html

  

With the 'Long Tom' on the odd coastal-artillery type platform, as well as getting the 'Speedwell' tank, with/in the same card/bag, so a very useful addition to the collection Something I would have been even more excited about, back when I was a small-scale only collector, and new things were getting thin on the ground! Now I've seen the all-scale polymer mountain to climb, I'm a little more jaded, but these are much appreciated.

 

The CTS (now BMC) Sherman Tank, apparently a bit smaller than the rarer Airfix one, and in a hard'ish ethylene or propylene, I didn't get this from Matt, who I now know WAS Matt!, But either from Steve Weston or somebody near him? On one level it's a gap-filler/box-ticker, but on another level, also a nice model, and it looks the part, which is important with Shermans, get one major dimension, angle or curve wrong and they can instantly look very odd, or daft!

 

They need a clean, but for reasons you don't need to be bored with, cleaning's out at the moment. Also, we've seen them before, they are pretty common, but belong to a family of rack-toy stuff, including the Jeep-trailer/gun combo's we’ve also seen here,with and without plug-in crew, and with two or even three new colours, they are adding to the story, if we ever tease the full story out!

 

And the comments on Sherman's were specific, because this gets a lot wrong! Can't remember of this was a purchase or a contribution, but it's the sort of thing you see on eBay, and think "Even if I get it for 99p, it's not worth the postage!", but it was a box that needed ticking, and it has its own rack-toy charm!

 

Also, a generic, over-branded to Woolbro, and it has a telescopic barrel, to keep the box as small as possible, while the turret on the box art is even whackier than the turret in the box!
 

Thanks especially to Issack, but also Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, who I have forgotten to add.

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Army Men and Combat Infantry

The meat and two veg' of Toy Soldier collecting . . . toy soldiers! I had quite a good run at the show this year on the khaki-front, in fact, I've just split the folder into two; troops and AFV's, as it was 27 images! So, this post is that plunder, less all the vehicles! And we seem to be starting with pretty-much the last thing I bought at the show, probably because it was on top of a bag, and got shot first!

 

One of the American dealers was over for the day, was it Matt from Hobby Bunker? And he had these, in most colours, I went for the pink! BMC's GI Janes! I've not got them out of the pack, as Brian Berke sent us a nice khaki sample when they first came out, so they can wait for another day, but it was a definite box ticked!

 

Two blow-moulds which I think we've seen before, but here they are again, and they'll be back soon, as Peter Evans gave me a pair not a week ago! He remembers them being part of a shooting game with [I think he said;] four each of these two and one officer?

 

A Marx six-inch British infantryman, and Blue Box (or BB-clone) five-inch GI, complete the larger figures found in June.

 

Not my finest moment, but we all make mistakes at shows, hurrying, poor lighting, trying to hold-down two conversations, but whatever, I bought a lemon - the lewis gunner team are mucked about with, I thought they were a pair, but actually the No.2 is a conversion . . . heay-ho! Some Chinese made Matchbox clones (Shin Hing maybe?) and an earlier Rado or similar Russian.

 

French, very early Starlux (ovoid bases), or Quiralu, I think, possibly from aluminium moulds? I should know, and if I spent longer going through the folders I would know, but nice anyway!

 

Bagged small-scale and a couple of loose figures.

 

The right-hand bag had some interesting mould-purge figures in green/blue.

 

I actually went to the show with only one thing on the absolute wants-list; Hilco Anzacs, and managed to get all three with a colour variation, from one stall, and a seller on the opposite side of the aisle had the Trojan 14th Army types, so I grabbed them at the same time! The Hilco's are cut-n-shut 'conversions' (in the loosest, just-escaping-a-plagiarism-charge, meaning of the word) of the Timpo 'solid' 8th Army poses.

 

Also picked-up two of the Airfix 1st version Para's neither of which seem brittle, a problem with them now, a Thomas/Poplar 'ubiquityman' (driver, gunner and stretcher bearer), Blue Box GI in 50mm and three Lido-clones.

 

More small-scale, with Corgi 'chocolate bars' from the gift-set, Blue Box Germans in 'styrene, a similar Hornby-Triang 'Battle Space' radio-operator and a few other bits.

 

To be sorted, mostly Hong Kong, mostly Britains clones, and mostly to appear on the Khaki Infantry page at some point, I haven't done as much on there as I'd have wanted to, due to circumstance, this last few years, but I did add a few bits there, the other day, and there is more in the queue.

 

More Hong Kong, copies of Airfix 8th Army and Monogram GI's, all very much grist to the mill, but all having a place in the oeuvre, and will all need to be sorted into the correct tubs and samples, to build the bigger picture.

 

For instance the two colours of 8th Army clones, are from two sources, one marked Hong Kong the other just HK, and a difference in quality between the two. The aim being to eventually get them all tied into the correct sets/packaging, and hopefully get the odd brand-ID on them, I happen to know the HK's are probably Ri-Toys (Rado)!

 

More thanks to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, who I have forgotten to add.

A is for Army Men, From America!

Actually there's all sorts in Brian's parcel, but we're starting with two absolutely classic 'Army Men', bagged rack-toy types! After which, it's quite a space/sci-fi themed bundle this time!

So these are they, a new'ish set of Matchbox GI copies, from Japan? And the MTC set Brian had previously sent us, and becasue the figure mix in this second sample was not so hot (four running guys), I open the other for a better look below, and will keep this as the 'mint bagged' sample.

 

But first, back to the Japanese firm, it has a US arm in California, but is, I would suggest, a sign of changing habits, globally, as America (and by association - Hasbro, Mattel and Tomy-Takara - the rest of us), wean themselves (ourselves) off Chinese product? Daiso, therefore, possibly being the van of more to come?

 

Strangely, scanning the card and shooting the figures close-up, then bring the two images together without a borderline, has produced a collage which is better than the shots of the whole item, which were troubled by reflections!

Isn't it ironic?!! The one figure, missing from the bag I opened, is in the other bag four times! One of each, with most taken from the bag Brian sent last time, they are, on one level, trash, but equally, are 'proper' TOY soldiers, and kids love this stuff, big enough to take to the beach (70mm) plus, and as valid in my collection as anything else!

 

A sample of the 'Army Women' from BMC, they are every bit as fun as they looked when first announced (here actually!) back in August 2019. What I like is that most of them are aping the old Tim Mee cold-war figure poses, but as women, nothing sexualised, just soldiers who are women, and these are the best colour to have - cheers Brian!

 

Three Mexican copies/reissues of the old Mark 60mm spacemen, I have a growing sample of these now, you may recall Peter sent a pink one . . . orange? I think he was orange, a while ago, and I do have some older ones too.

This is the whole line-up, I think this is an early guide from The Toy Soldier Company, although it's called a Toy Soldier Guide, and as I said, I have various others in both a darker metallic-blue and a paler metallic blue-grey, which all seem original, along with some grey reissues I think, all helmetless, but the helmet which came with the orange one is different to that issued with the grey ones anyway!

 

Brian also sent a nice sample of the MPC astronauts (one of each pose here, there were more), in red, white and blue (very patriotic!), which I needed, as I have the LB (for Lik Be, obviously!) copies, from late MPC sets in HO, with this colour way, along with those Nasta Industries copies in the same three colours, but otherwise had only the gold-orange-yellow ones from the XL5 boxed set.

 

Here's a quick comparison with the silver one Peter Evans sent the other day, and serves as a presage to a forthcoming article with a wider look at these figures, from various sources.

These are interesting, and I'd love to know more, if only so I can label the bag! They look like Pokémon, mostly after transformation, but are unmarked, so even if they are Pokémon, will be unlicensed, but I suspect either a rival product, or a total knock-off line, possibly from capsule dispensers?

While this is awesome! We've seen them before, Peter has sent me two lots over the years and I found a bunch myself, which have been covered here on several occasions, so I've left them in the bag for now, but I am looking for a flat-topped cake at some point, for a full parade! They are cake decorations and based on Britains 'Eyes Right', but scaled down, and quite exquisite, and there's 40-odd in the bag, so a major parade is calling.

However, I grabbed this shot off of that evilBay a while ago, and it shows little boxes that allow them to be used without a cake, by receiving the cake spikes. It's the only time I've ever seen them, so don't know if they are original accessories, or something an owner has fashioned from something else (and I have shots somewhere of them in cake decoration packs without the cubes), but it's worth looking out for a few.

 

You may recall Peter mounted some of his in pairs on old Timpo bases! I will need to scratch-build at least one bass drum, which has never turned-up and doesn't seem to have been made as part of the set?

Thanks again to Brian for all these, it's the extensions, connections and 'further's, which make these donations so useful, and as I say, we'll expand on the MPC spacemen in a day or two.

M is for ♪♪♫♪ Mamma Mia, Here He Goes Again, My-My, How Can I Desist Him? ♫♫♪♪

Oh yes! TJF thought to put paws to keyboard again in the matter of what I'm doing over here!

He started with a pirate ship which first appeared on a Faceplant group (to which we are both associated) back in 2021, and which then appeared here at Small Scale World in September of the same year (I'd been holding them for ITLAPD, and never comment on that poster's stuff) and again in 2022, so he's playing 'Simon says keep-up, catch-up!' there!

 

2021 - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/b-is-for-big-boxed-buccaneers-black-boat.html

 

and:

 

2022 - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/09/itlapd-is-for-its-that-long-assorted.html

It has, in fact, been around for some years and had several issues, in several territories, under a half-dozen importers and a plethora of phantom, or in-house brands!

 

Then he managed to spell Plastoy as Plastotoys, which he was literally copying/quoting from a two-week old magazine, in his hands! His stupidity is the gift that keeps on giving, his 'arse-torn-out' is still up there, after a couple of weeks! He was referring to the set we looked at here, a few months ago:

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/09/a-is-for-additional-adventurers.html

Before showing us more new production from someone else's website, and a few figures of merit, he gets on to the nitty-gritty of the day, with the following puff-piece on my post of a few days ago, pertaining to Wing Wah and BMC:

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/bmc-is-for-wing-wah-plastic-factory.html

We'll need the coloured crayons for a bit;

Hugh Walter in one of his latest posts talked about finding the BMC Alamo Mexicans on the card with a company name of Wing Wah. Well thank you! As I hardly provided empirical evidence for them being Wing Wah, you've obviously gone off and Googled them and found what was there all along! This card was sold in Greece. Was it? I said that, I might have been lying? You make it up all the time, after all! Don't worry Loyal Readers, I wasn't! He was confused about how the figures got to Greece. Err . . . "confused"? No, I gave the four possible scenarios from the available evidence, which were:

1. BMC licensed a 'generic' Wing Wah set
2. It was issued before BMC's involvement.
3. Wing Wah were just shifting stock behind BMC's back.
4. Wing Wah didn't have an 'exclusive' with BMC for the sculpts/production.
   

To clarify the situation I have to go to the conversations Laurie and I had with Bill McMasters of BMC Toys. Conversations he had more than ten or twenty years ago? With two dead people, and no empirical evidence? Given the level of memory he's shown us, in the past? But, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt! Bill told us he had an arrangement with a Chinese (in 1994 it was still very much a Hong Kong company, based in Hong Kong) company to produce playsets and figures. He provided the sculptures (the quality of the products hardly backs-up that hyperbole, but who are we to argue with a dead man?), box art (undoubtably), and other materials (do tell!). In return, he got an exclusive to sell the product in the United States. The Chinese [Hong Kong] company which we now know as Wing Wah from Hugh had the right to sell to the rest of the world. So the set from Greece is an example of that. As I said, it was?

 

So, firstly, if a 'legend' credits you, what does that make you? And secondly, I preferred my option-two, he is confirming option-four? It doesn't matter, I wasn't "confused", I was on the right tracks and hedging my bets against the available evidence. Now he's told us, we all know! But, it is both hearsay, and hyperbole!

And he's revealed how closely he follows this Blog, his post was two days ago, and I only posted the day before! And he's probably sent some extra traffic to the post, including - one hopes - those members of the PSTSM who are so loyal to The Jabbering Fuck, they really try not to follow my blog, even though the person who told them not to, clearly does . . . he's a very stupid man.

And while TJF also uses the term 'exclusive', generally, an 'exclusive-contract' is when the stuff can't be sold elsewhere, except by, or with the permission of the contractee, or under their logographies, it is in that context I used the word, and as such, was correct.

 

He (McMasters/BMC) didn't have an exclusive, the stuff was sold elsewhere, he had an embargo on- or memorandum of understanding with- Wing Wah for not shipping their product to the States, except in so far as it was for/marked-to BMC.

Bill did several of his playsets with this company until the owner died. The owner’s heirs had a falling out with Bill forcing him to find another company for his playsets. Americana Toy Soldiers came into Wing Wah and arranged to sell the old BMC product.

 

Ah, the red-letter moment! I'll just throw Wing Wah in there, like I knew all along! If you want to know what really happened, read the link at the end, as hinted-at above, TJF's got his memories in a twist!

To situation we will now call them Wing Wah soldiers the answer is no. They have been and will stay at BMC Toys. this is what the public know as well. This sentence is illiterate?

 

We can dispense with the colours now. what he's trying to say in that garbled last line, is pertaining to my red-letter comment, but he has already failed that, in a Godwin'esque fashion, by casually using the name in the previous sentence, as I had predicted people would, although in this case, he has already credited me with the origination!

The point I was making, was that those party's listed last time, would now refer to Wing Wah, when discussing the double-W logo, not the Alamo set specifically, not BMC in general, however as we have discovered before, his comprehension skill is very poor and is matched only by his ability to come to the wrong conclusion!

 

A logo which, prior to my post, some people had written absolute garbage about, tying it - falsely - into/with various other companies, and sometimes describing it - as fact - as a single W - Wello, Welly, Wentoys, Willco, etcetera!

Also, Americana didn't 'come into' Wing Wah, like the Airborne over Grenada! They got some stock, probably through an agent! Wasn't Imex involved at one point? I'd have to go look at tedious files to answer that myself, and it really doesn't matter!

 

Elsewhere (globally: the rest of the world! He's talking about a few hundred American collectors as if the rest of us don't count!), it would have remained Wing Wah, and that may even apply to my Greek set, by dates, I don't know, and I don't really care, the point of the post was identifying Wing Wah, period. Not the intricate, yet inconsequential, vagaries of global shipping programs for bagged, carded or boxed rack-toy import/exports! And to a Greek collector they ARE Wing Wah, as issued by BMC in the 'States!

 

I suspect, eventually we will find that in the UK we got both, with toy-soldeir dealers shipping from BMC, after reading about them in the Winter 1994 edition of Plastic Warrior magazine (issue No. 46), while independent convenience stores would have been getting WW-marked or generic sets from down the Hong Kong rack-toy pipeline, possibly earlier?!

I don't know why he keeps doing this, it's only a week or two since he got - as fact - a figure completely wrong, yet here he is trying to correct me, when I was correct? It's pathetic, it's stupid, and it's destroying any 'legacy' he thought he had? This tired, sad old man, shouting nonsense into the wind!

And then, when it can't get any better on the International Idiocy Scale, the cockwacking monkey-lizard popped up and said this;

I have the pirate ship but with two different poses inside.
I found mine at a theme park few years back .
Thanks for making clarification in the BMC history .
Is always great to set the facts straights rather than assumptions or made out tales run around free .

 

Yes! Yes, it is illiterate funk! He spaffed his pocket-money on some words from a dodgy geezer in the car-lot behind the diner, and then glued them together blindfold, it's a good effort! It's like a mutual-appreciation society of fuckwits, they never land their punches, and then I rip them to shreds, again! Even their fans must be getting bored with it now?

Some imagery from Bill B's 1987 trade catalogue. Yes, I've been sitting on it for years, I keep telling you there's about 800-and-something articles in the long queue, and yes, TJF should have learnt by now that whenever I reveal/reacquaint the hobby with one of these Hong Kong producers, there is usually more than one post to come!

 

You will note there are similarities with the output of both Rado Industries (Ri-Toys, the landing craft) and Kwong Shing-KS-Kamley-Kositoys (the aircraft and Chieftain tank), but sometimes when you study them next to each other, there are subtle differences, different wheels, different release-pin marks, dimensions &etc. Equally, they bought and sold this junk to each-other, or from third-parties, to make up the sets, so while it is my hope, one day, to attribute some of it, more definitively, that's still a big "We will see?"!

 

In the meantime, bog-standard Airfix figure piracies, with various accessories, which by the mid-1980's were starting to look like the tired 1970's fare they were! And the brighter among you will have noticed the base-undersides of the Wing Wah Alamo figures, bear a resemblance to the Crescent copy ceremonials we looked at a while ago, and some of the Herald ACW copies out there, could they (factory painted) be earlier product of Wing Wah?

 

There's not enough evidence to call it, but it's food-for-thought . . . for the thoughtful, not for idiotic morons like TJF and his sidekick!

 

And I should add that all the above, and everything in the previous post pertains to the previous iteration of BMC, under the leadership of the late Mr. McMasters, and not the current iteration of BMC (VictoryBuy Inc.) with Jeff Imel at the helm, he bought the intellectual property of the older firm, and others, and probably some late stock, but the improved Alamo figures are re-sculpts (2018'ish?), with new bases, and no aspersions are intended to be cast on the new BMC by either post.

 

And Mr. Imel explains it all somewhat more clearly than Mr. Stadinger, here:

 

https://warhorseminiatures.com/2017/09/04/an-interview-with-jeff-imel-and-the-return-of-bmc-toys/

BMC is for the Wing Wah Plastic Factory!

This was - as far as I was concerned, I'm sure some of you know more than I did, certainly Ed Berg helped - a mystery, then it wasn't a mystery, then it sort of was a mystery again, maybe, now I don't think it is, but it does point to the firm who might have been supplying early or pre-BMC mouldings.

 

Firstly, let's get clear that these are not rare figures, they are in fact, all over the place, in various configurations and colours, of which this azure blue is perhaps marginally less common than the current darker blue, but the dark chocolate may be more common than the paler shades, a situation made harder by different sculpts. And then there's a paler sky-blue and a mid-brown!

This larger 'rack toy' set, badged to Wing Wah (formerly, and for some 30-odd years, of Kennedy Town, Hong Kong Island, before moving to the New Territories, where they seem to have folded in 2021, or thereabouts), who's over-imposed WW-mark is quite common in rack-toy circles.

 

And it was bought from Greece, where the air-miles of an HK import would be considerably less than from the States, especially if they were so imported, before BMC ever put their moniker to them?

A limited pose-count (which may not be original, the blister was loose), has a nice firing line of the shako'ed Mexicans and a handful of armed Texan terrorist-insurgents.

The guy on the left had escaped the packaging, but I didn't find him until after I'd taken the card-shot, I have more of these in storage, from years ago, and hope I have a couple more of the poses, but I only previously had the Texans I think, if I have the Mexicans, they will be the newer ones with rimmed bases, and the poses with the wide-brimmed 'Poblano' sombrero, rather than these shako wearers, although I think I have the CTS ones somewhere!

 

Anyway, I wasn't sure of their heritage, as the ones on the Internet seemed to have BMC on the base underside, and sometimes the extra rim, so I asked Ed, when he was Blogging his 'Frankenset' a while back, if they were BMC and said he thought so.

 

But me being a Doubting Thomas, without empirical evidence, still didn't post them for a year or two more, until I was clear they were all the same Wing Wah / early BMC stock, which I'm now convinced they are! The three to the left are BMC, rimless, but the newer colour, I bought last year, at PW's show, specially for this post, which has been in edit-hell since 2020!

I seem to be missing a pile of boxes, to which the two small ones were positioned either-side, in the blister, and I keep seeing various gun ramps, but I think they're all CTS, Marx re-issues or TSSD!

 

I'm not one to comment on the exactness of the authenticity, but they don't look that accurate to me, especially the Texans, and they are definitely not Action Figures in the normal use of the term among both collectors and the wider toy trade, but when did the Hong Kong toy-men pay more that lip-service to accuracy?

 

1965-1990-something (?) on the left, terminal logo (1998-2021?) on the right.

Wing Wah - formed in 1965 and - apparently - the original supplier/manufacturer of BMC's Alamo figures/accessories, joining the Wing's Luen, Lung and Mau in the Tag-list. There is a current Wing Wah (Wing Wah Precision Mould & Plastics), in Dongguan City, Guangdong, mainland China which probably has no connection.

 

And, of course, this is a red-letter day for your diary's, as it's the date after which Deadleaf Hairband, Master Baiter Sell and Pericles over at the HK toy soldier site, will all start using the Wing Wah attribution, like they knew all along!

Above we see an early BMC set with the same rimless figures as the Wing Wah set, with the current Amazon image of the side-rimmed versions. I have also seen the Texans in the paler blue of my Mexicans.

 

I don't know if BMC licensed the 'generic' Wing Wah set for Greece, or other territories it wasn't then interested in, or if it was before BMC's involvement, most likely, while a third option is that WW were just being naughty behind BMC's back, or didn't have an exclusive with BMC for the sculpts/production.