O is for Oh, Go On Then . . . Have Some Merry Festive Disney!

A few Disney bits which aren't going to make stand-alone posts, or which have escaped previous posts or might have been seen already!

 

From the cannibalised show report from November 2021, I picked this little lot up for a tenner at the last Sandown Park show of that year, which, at less than 75p each, is a bargain, but intrinsically no more than such little pieces of plastic should ever be? Marx Disneykins, most from the general set, but a couple from the 101 Dalmatians set.

 

I shot this on a dealer's stall ages ago, he has a man who 'does' for him, mending lead, antimony or whitemetal parts and breakages, and occasionally he plays with the stuff in the bits bin, and this was the result of one such play!

 

Minutes after I took the shot someone jogged the table and the figure fell, with the head coming-off, so it's now with me, awaiting the magic of superglue, because mending lead is a skilled operation I wouldn't even attempt, slightly too much heat applied to the original piece, and it turns to liquid! Micky says;

"Be nice to the poor in 2024, or I'll re-slot yer' arse wi'me arrows, init!"

Somehow this escaped several posts and follow-ups on the Marx/Wilton cake decorations and similar 'toy town' figures, these are the two sizes of the Babes in Toyland guards, and are both by Marx.

And did we settle this a while ago? This is the commercial version of the pre-production stuff which turned-up in the Dave Pomeroy archive, as depicted on the Minimodels shop-stock boxes. Being Shere Khan from the Jungle Book.

F is for Follow-up - Babes in Toy Soldier Land!

A quick follow-up to this post on the Wilton copies of Marx's Disney figures, I found the two Marx I have!

Private's Chivalrous or Courageous were the names for the two - identical - drummers, with no packaging I'll call him Fred! You can see (left of each shot) he's a tad bigger and slightly better detailed; in both etching and painting, while the Wilton drummer has a fat head!

Marx did a forth pose which wasn't pirated by Wilton, to my knowledge; dubbed Valiant or Hooligan! I'll call him Bob! They - the Marx originals were sold individually in sentry-box shaped cartons with their names, or in various window-box combinations of three figures, nameless.

Marx also reduced them for their 'Disneykin' range of Miniature Masterpieces, where the four got a window box, I don't know if they ever got the separate, single-figure Disneykin boxes, I suspect not. The forth sentry pose, here damaged in a feeBay screen-shot, seems to have been re-designed for the small scale iteration.

B is for Babes . . . in Toyland!

The folder these were in is a new one which was going to sit in the long queue until I could get the Marx originals out for full comparisons, not that I have many, a couple of damaged 60mm's I think and some of the HO Miniature Masterpiece/Disneykin ones (actually around 1:64th - if cartoon characters can have a scale?), but having bumped myself into yesterday's post these might as well go here for now, and we'll have a better look at all the cake-dec' soldiers in a year or two.

A complete set as sold by Wilton, they are - as mentioned yesterday - copies of the Marx set, Marx actually had a fourth pose, standing to attention (Private's Valiant and Hooligan!), but Wilton only copied the marching figures, who, using the Marx names are, from the top-left to bottom-right; Privates Chivalrous & Courageous (drummers), Trustworthy & Archibald (riflemen) and Gallant & Fearless - trumpeters.

The only real difference is in quality, the Marx are better finished and painted, while the Wilton's are probably a tad smaller, I haven't checked. It also looks like the bases are bigger, to anchor them firmly in the icing!

The set was in Wilton's catalogues for over twenty (maybe over thirty-) years, so the figures aren't even slightly rare, and there are always several mint sets on evilbay, but a lot of sellers try to price scalp as if they are Marx, so try not to pay over the odds, I bought a tatty-carded set to keep the cost down!

Compared with the slightly comical, but not so cartoonish guard from George Musgrave's Gemodels on the left, on the right and from the 1966 catalogue, another set of cake decoration soldiers from Wilton, these being made of real cloth and - I think (?) - pipe-cleaners and likely to be rarer, but won't find a home in my collection, they're just a bit too 'off-the-wall'!

 That scruffy card!

 

And I've added a shot to yesterdays post.

C is for Cartoon Card Craft

Two years ago I found this rather neat download, I think I flagged it up at the time in a 'News, Views...', anyway I had a stab at it, took some photographs and it's been languishing in Picasa ever since! Watching Ed Berg re-design his fire house reminded me this was sitting there...

I think it was three sheets of cut-outs, with lots of white between the pieces - for littler fingers? Or for those impossibly blunt, plastic-handled 'craft' scissors they always issue in primary/junior school!

Disney's Babes in Toyland marching toy soldier, about 6-inches high! How cool is that? here...make your own. Quite a festive thing too and I'm no fan of Disney, but it's out there, it's a Toy Soldier and the kids love this stuff at Christmas!

If I were to have another stab at it, I'd print it off and sit it on a radiator, or in the sun and give it five to ten thin coats of hairspray first; I found that the bits which required the most work (arms and legs which needed rolling round a pencil) started to wear-off, I think because I used the studio printer which was a big machine using powder cartridges or something?

Another download here (Century 21 JR21) brought to my attention by the boys at Moonbase proved less successful however...

...the TV21 Snow Train: Started OK, but I glued the back on the cab thinking I was being clever and getting the shape to hold while I wrestled with the windscreen, but of course I needed to flatten the tabs down with tweezers or a long sticky thing (like...a stick?) from the end I'd just sealed-up...Doh!

All the remaining cut-out bits and the cab are now in a Douwe Egbert's coffee jar waiting for a new plan...it'll be a long wait - I fear. There was a really nice one on Moonbase, made properly by someone proper, but I can't find it, can anyone from there give us a link?