L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Vehicles

Before I can get on to the very late Plastic Warrior show reports, I need to get the previous, and even later, Sandown Park's loot out of the way, which was purloined a few weeks before the PW show, so let's get them out of the way sharpish! Although I don't think you can say sharpish, when the posts are three months overdue!

 

A small Gescha/Gama style tin-plate tank, bearing more resemblance to some early post-war APC's, with a small turret, and high superstructure. I can't remember if it had branding, or if someone gave me a brand? Space Tank!

 

Two mystery (when I saw them) die-cast military vehicles. a nice inter-war armoured car, actually Charbens, it is die-cast alloy, but has lead wheels, and a British tanker-truck, which was marked Britain or England I think, the trouble with doing these posts so long after the event, is you forget stuff! But while in the style of Dinky, it's not, and is probably a re-painted Benbros Esso tanker - note the red on the paint-chips! Interestingly, a re-issue of an old Timpo mould.

 

Vintage Tootsie-Toys AFV's, one marked the other anonymous (can't remember which was/is which), I think the lorry may be pre-war (1930's), while the Armoured-car might be just post-war? But that's going on the wheels/tyres (or 'tires', they're American after all!), which could, just as easily, be replacements? You won't believe the trouble I had, getting the two MG's to look right, they are suspended, free-floating or hanging, between small bumps in the moulding, and loose with age, and were a bugger to get right!

 

Another Charbens, this all die-cast, wheels and body, and darker green than some I've seen, and while not the most accurate version of Humber out there, it's a darn-sight better than the plastic one they did later!

 

Two more French 'readymades', one each Noreda (front, Jeep-like) and Injectaplastic (behind, DKW with Jeep trailer), we've seen them both before, but they were clean, and cheap, so I took them home with me!

Banner 'row-crop' tractor in military green, possibly depicting an Oliver tractor (US Readers?), and two copies, the copies are slightly smaller all-round, and have a few detail differences, unmarked, I hope they are in Bill Hanlon's book!

 

Again, newish to me, similar to some Archer space cars from the 'States, I was told these were actually British so Kleeware or Tudor Rose, but the larger one is a Marx future car, the smaller however is a Pyro/Kleeware moulding, so could the Marx also be a mould-swap with Kleeware?

 

Two teeny-tiny battleships, probably from a late-Edwardian board game, and a larger lead yacht, which could also be a board-game piece, or a smaller component of something more decorative? It's covered in what appears to be black paint, but which could just be severe oxidation?

 

Because they came with a T4, these two reprobates have got themselves into the vehicle post! In the style of MUSCLE or Kinnukiman, these two Thunderbirds Keshi are new to the collection, along with the little Thunderbird Four.

 

A damaged Manurba coach and spare helmet crest for a Lone Star knight are snuck in at the end, just to get them off the laptop!

L is for Lambert . . . or Their Toys!

I shot this on Mercator Trading's table at Sandown Park last November as a new to hobby name, so it should be newish to Internet and is certainly new to Blog! Lambert Brothers of Acton, North London, nothing else known!

The farmer appears to be a poorer copy of the Fylde one (Joplin, pp127), the fencing a sub-copy of Britains, while the chickens seem pretty unique, but the larger animals look like Benbros (Joplin, pp23) who also do the farmer, so a better clue there, as to where Lambert's may have got their (Christmas?) stock. Thanks to Adrian for letting me shoot these.

T is for Transports of Delight

I know I'm supposed to claim to be a toy soldier and/or model figure collector, but vehicles have always had a place, not least because of the Airfix 'readymades' when I was a small-scale collector, but just as scenics and then spaceships started to feature, alongside Dinosaurs (quite recent) and erasers or cracker/gum-ball novelties, so mini and micro-vehicles have taken a growing corner of the stash for their own.

 

The fact that collected brands like Manurba, Pyro/Kleeware or MPC gave-up micro-AFV's, or the little trio of gun/armoured car/carrier thing, which came with so many rack-toys, was the start, but once you're into novelties, vehicles feature quite often, and these have all been added to the pile this year!

Actually, the exception which proves the rule - this came in some time ago, if the bedspread is anything to go by, it's been in storage for well over a year now, I think! A soft polyethylene copy of the Matchbox Greyhound coach, possibly from an earlier 'styrene Blue Box one, but starting to get a bit truncated, almost a 'deform', and smaller than the original. This may have been a put-aside from Gareth Morgan or Chris Smith.

 

A die-cast Benbros Qualitoy Gypsy wagon, these were the sort of wagon the itinerant knife-sharpeners, tin-smiths and other crafters would take village to village, all gone now, but there were still one or two on the road when I was a kid. Now rich 'celebrities' have fake ones placed in their gardens! This also shows other ways vehicles sneak into the collection, firstly my side-interest in wagons, and secondly; small-scale horses!

 

Two pieces of slush-cast lead, probably British, and a die-cast fire-engine, probably American? These were saved for me/donated to the Blog by Adrian Little, a while ago I seem to recall, and help with ID'ing them would be gratefully received! They may all, also, be board-game playing pieces?

 

Picked up in the September Sandown Park show, we have four from one series and a racing-car from another, all polystyrene, and all Hong Kong product. We looked at all my 'moulded-on wheels' micro-stuff a year or so ago, but there's also tons of this working wheels stuff, a lot of it marked W Germany, but plenty of British and HK lots, so these will join their samples against a proper look at them all one day.

 

Two of them are marked Made In Hong Kong, while the other two have an additional stock or tool number, but wheels/axles tie them to each-other.

 

I'm loving this, I'm pretty sure I already have one, possibly in the same red, which may have been on the Blog already (another Chris Smith jobbie?), but I seem to remember it having damaged engine-nacelles, while on this new example they are all present and correct. I suspect this might be a slightly upmarket (but still budget-end) Christmas cracker inclusion?

 

 It's also a spinning-top, which looks as if it should also whistle or howl, through those slats in the bodywork, but I can't get a note out of it! Of interest is the three nipplettes arranged around the spin-nipple (all my own nomenclature!), which help to prevent it from tipping too soon, or wobbling, so, help keep it spinning!

 

The flying saucer (here seen after cleaning!) came with these and the items in the next image, all around the same size, but obviously from different sources, the plane here being a bubble-gum capsule, a small piece of generic pink gum, similar to that which came with the little tanks, being stuffed in the nose and wedged against the tapered body as the two were closed together.

The yacht could be another cracker prize, or a basic/budget bath toy, or even supplied with a piece of bubble-gum 'cargo'? It was a much produced/copied novelty from both W Germany and Hong Kong, back in the day, but this seems to be the best quality one (with realistic, relief-sculpted, racing markings on the marbled sails) in a growing sample of them (we've seen a few over the years, not least a whole card of Rado/Ri Toys ones!), and while unmarked, may be British?

The wheeled passenger-boat is all soft plastic, and probably the most modern thing in the post, maybe as late as the 1990's or 2000's, and could be cracker, gum-ball or rack-toy, while the HK copy of a Manurba mini-sub is one of several generations of piracy, previously seen on the blog as rack toys.

 

Once they've all joined their like-for-likes, we'll return to them here, hopefully with details to add, or just 'bigger-pictures' as far as numbers in sets, or polymer/paint colours go! I was going to add some Internet images to this post, but there's so many of them, they can be another - 'lazy' - post, another day! And thanks to all who save this stuff for me, in addition to those named above.

K is for Khaki Infantry Page - Update

I've added some well overdue updates to the Khaki Infantry Page; a complete set of Benbros in near factory-fresh condition, another complete run of poses to the CMV section (courtesy of Brian Berke) and a new entry - ABC - courtesy of Chris Smith.

 

But as you can see from the screen-cap, there's plenty more to come, with new sections in the works for Kamley/KS et al., and  Dorset/Marlborugh/Weston. You can also see Airfix page updates gathering in the background and a mini-season on Lik Be-Holly-Jaru in the pipeline!

C is for Coronations . . . Don'cha Just Lov'em!

We're about to have another one you know! Hopefully the last, and yes, I know I did a couple of Royalist posts ten or twelve years ago, but I know now, what I didn't know then, or didn't fully understand!

Found in the garage yesterday and taken straight to storage, but I fired off a quick shot. Somehow I doubt there will be the same plethora of die-casts issued this time, and most of the issuers (some of whom reused tools from previous coronations - we had four or five (going on the stamp-faces) in less than fifty years!) have long gone, along with their tool-banks.

I think there are elements of Hill, Benbros, Britains and Lesney here? I'm tagging them all anyway! It's a whole box of metal, from the small-scale only collector-days!

K is for Ker'neeling Firing

Mentioning the piracy which was rife in the early toy industry yesterday, I thought it would be timely to have a look at what the Brits were up to, and mostly they were up to taking the piss out of Britians!

So, this is the chap we're looking at today, the Britains 'Herald' kneeling firing cowboy figure. Here are six, at the top the Multi-colour originals in brown, chalky ethylene plastic, the yellow-shirted chap having six paint-colours, the red shirted chap seven.

Below them is a pair of the later 'simplified' paint scheme figures, with four colours each on a more stable grey plastic and at the bottom a final pair of Hong Kong manufactured rigid PVC vinyl cowboys.

They too are four-colour, but changing the colour of the plastic makes them 'go further', while re-sculpting or a new tool has led to them shooting upwards more markedly, not quite the skywards of Airfix's paratrooper, but at the sneaky guy who was always in the upper-floor of the saloon!

UNA actually improved the figure slightly with a decent foresight on the rifle, they are also easy to spot with their television-screen shaped depression in the base underside of a three part mould. Speedwell are marked round the edge of a two part mould with the split-line running straight across the base. They are also slightly smaller figures.

The last figure in this line-up is unmarked and unattributed, but the suspicion is that he's a Hong Kong copy, both from the glossy paint and the glossy plastic. He has also had his head tilted over slightly and along with a general loss of detail over the previous figures is slightly thinner, a pointer to pantographing.

On the left is a definite HK version, courtesy of Darius who sent him from Italy, he is joined by another two Speedwell figures. The grey one looks different but only because some vandal has clipped his rifle tip, only for his pistol grip to be lost later to brittleness!

Markings on the HK copy include a very feint HONGKONG on one side of the base and either 03001 or 100ED on the other - I favour the former but it's not clear.

Benbros made some effort to pretend they hadn't bought a handful of Britains Herald originals before starting their own set, and Trojan - seeing an opportunity for 'originality' (bloody-hell Hugh - you've used single-quotes correctly!) among pirates - stole the Benbros cut-n-shut rather than the Britains rifleman!

For which you have to admire their chutzpah and logic; you can't be sued for pirating a pirate (by the pirate) nor are you as likely to be sued by the originator for a while, who will be after the first pirate, first - if at all?

Lone Star (above) also spotted the guy in the saloon bedroom, but clearly with help from Britains, although I think a previous owner may have spotted the shirts? While the chap from Cherilea (lower four) is a new moulding, only similar by dint of doing the same thing; not because he's a copy.

Helping the different look; he's wearing gloves and his holster is further round, and we see three base versions here with the small oblong depression in the base underside to the left, two with the shallow penny-depression and one (darker plastic) smooth.

For completion I include - here - the two kneeling figure poses from Hilco, these are pirated from earlier French hard plastic (or even metal?) figures and can't be mistaken for anything else with their wide-brimmed sombreros and dinky-little, chorus-line, cowgirl-booties!

The ultimate ignominy; Britains Hong Kong contractor is allowed to retire the kneeling guy and replace him with this piece of bent-rifled shite, a squatting, one-shot-and-he's-on-his-arse pose, apparently painted by trolls with broken-fingers! Four colours, separate base.

But it's not the end of our journey; as the cut-n-shut merchant at Benbros was so pleased with his six-gun conversion of the cowboy, he decided to use the cast-off to create an Indian kneeling rifleman; taking the head and legs of Britains archer to marry to the rifleman's torso.

Really - it's probably the topless torso from the standing Indian firing pose, but it's a nice idea! Trojan copied this pose from Benbros too, but I don't have one to show you, sorry!

Which gives us an excuse to visit these again (we've looked at them before here), just for the comparison. Two six-colour early figures to the left (the first is damaged, or maybe it's the the rare firing-last-arrow variant!), two four-colour intermediate, simplified-production in the middle, then from Hong Kong - a PVC integral based figure (five colour) and a late separate base on the far-right; four-colour paint-job.

T is for Terrific Trio

A quick look at three vaguely HO-gauge compatible die-cast AFV's today, each from a different company and none of them actually that close to HO...but all useful none-the-less, especially for old-school war gaming where the counters are everything and the need for historical accuracy is minimal!

I'm thinking Kenya, Suez or that 'Heart of Darkness'; the Belgian Congo...

Britains Lilliput Austin Champ utility vehicle with Blue Box German for size, closer to 25mm than HO's nominal 18mm, but still sitting pretty against/with the other two vehicles in this post.

I think I've mentioned before that my mother worked on these when she was in the FANY, they were a bugger to work on apparently; with sealed Rolls Royce units - the theory was fine - taken from tanks - lift out the expired engine and drop a new one in, but it was a lot of faffing about for such a small vehicle, designed to be employed in large numbers, so the concept was flawed and - along with the unit cost - led to its rapid replacement by the lightweight, cheaper and easier to maintain Land Rover, after that vehicle was trialed against the Champ and Austin Gypsy (a Land Rover in looks, but ferrous-metal and prone to rust).

Because they were still bloody good vehicles they were mothballed (for possible use in WW III), in stacked crates at the huge Donnington RAOC depot, where they were mostly destroyed in the big fire back in the mid-1980's, around the time I was in depot training or shortly after I joined battalion I think, so '84/'85? There are one or two in private hands and they are impressive at shows...being closer to a Dodge 'Beep' in classification, than a Jeep or Lannie.

The Benbros Daimler 'Dingo' inaccurately called a Ferret on Planet Diecast, this was the standard lightly armoured Scout-car and recce-vehicle for most of the Second World War and continued in service long after it, particularly in Armoured/RTC formations, where it was replaced by Ferrets over time. I think it was also the favoured steed of Forward Observers and A-echelon (immediately behind the lines) signals guys?

The vehicle is actually slightly larger than HO (although closer to one of the US HO's which can be 1:64th), yet smaller scaled than other Benbros vehicles, but the little blob of a crew figure is barely even HO!

Finally from Kemlows comes this Saracen APC from their 'Sentry Box' range, almost identical to the Lesney/Matchbox one (so smaller than HO), this differs in having a less frangible MG in the turret, and a different construction when viewed from the underside.

Commonly green with a silver-painted convoy-hatch and radiator grill not highlighted on the M'box one, it was also issued all green, and while this one has a blue/yellow formation sign (service corps?), others have a blue/red (artillery) one, and indeed - some were issued with an anachronistic gun and limber...more here: Robert Newson's Sentry Box.

News, Views Etc...Khaki Infantry Update and some show thing...

I've added some images kindly supplied by Barney Brown and David Scrivener to the Khaki Infantry page, specifically Benbros and Kentoy, with a caveat on the hollow-cast mould prone pose which I will get too soon hopefully; real life tends to get in the way of Blogging plans!

Thanks to both of them for the contibutions, they do add to the fuller picture.

UK Khaki Infantry

In other news...there's some show or something, somewhere tomorrow!

Details, details, details...still.

I will get some more Blogging done here on the homepage soon as well, hopefully!

News, Views, etc...Khaki Infantry Page, Benbros and Britains

I've added Benbros to the new page; UK Khaki Infantry, Britains will be next. Eventually it will have entries for Charbens, Cherilea, FG Taylor, Hilco, Kentoy, Reisler, Speedwell, Trojan, VP, various 'unknowns' and piracies from Brazil, Hong Kong and Poland.

While the Britains Swoppets have gone in on the homepage, below this entry.

B is for Buried, Better, Burger King, BMC, Brent, Bandai and Benbros

As this is the season for getting as many things on your plate as possible (without letting the gravy flow over the edge!) I thought it was the ideal moment to cover a few minor makes or smaller samples from my collection, so here are some minor 'B's'.

On the left (and marked "MADE IN ENGLAND") is a pawn from the Buried Treasure ice cream (?) chess set. These were also sold in the states both as Buried Treasure (?) and Sherbet Surprise. The question marks are down to my not knowing if Buried Treasure was ice cream or some other edible product, and not knowing if they were available in the states as BT or just Sherbet watsit!

On the right and dateing from 1949 is a joke/stag-novelty of a naked woman from Better Novelties Inc. of the US of A, who will only stay in her bath for the person who knows the secret - a sliding magnet. I have similar toys of naked women in [on] a bed and the kissing dolls I think I've covered somewhere in the 450 posts now gone below?

This is apparently a very early Burger King toy from the 1950's or 1960's and consists of the King (himself!!? Who knew or remembered he originally existed?) riding an air-powered go-cart/cartie. Coming as a kit of 4 parts in a nylonish plastic, maybe a polypropylene? His only mark is the R in a circle so favored of Giant - this must have been an American thing, we had the Copyright 'C' and the Patent 'Pat.' but the Registered sign was never of legal worth in Europe and didn't appear on our products.

Above are two bits of hollow-cast I've ended-up with; a Benbros calf and a 30mm BMC penny-toy of a mounted Life Guard, with below; the only other 'volume' producer of composition figures in Britain (we looked at Zang the other day) was a company called Brent, who produced these generic WWII British types with picture-frame nails as weapon barrels/muzzles.

There were about 3 sets of small scale Pokemon, these are by Bandai, I think I've also got smaller unmarked ones and same sized ones by Tomy probably from their gumball machines.

As these are yesterdays 'fad' now, and space needs to be made for Ben10 stuff, there might be good pickings for this sort of stuff at car-boot sales this year.

W is for more Wagons

Following on from the W&T post, and the realisation they copied the Britains Lilliput horse (itself a scale down of a hollow-cast 54mm horse, latter produced in plastic!), I thought it was time for some more wagons.

Here the Britains Lilliput are the green hay (Tumbrel) cart and blue dairy cart/milk float in the centre, the two - also metal - copies are probably someone like Morestone or Budgie, while the log-wagon is - I think - Benbros. The chariot is probably the French penny-toy make of 'SR' and the little Handsome-Cab at the front was probably from an early Christmas cracker.

The larger of these coronation coaches is by Hill / Johillco, the broken thread was originally threaded through the rings in the horses flanks as a rein arrangement. The whole thing is sort of 28/31mm or around the 1:48/1:56 mark. The smaller coach is totally unmarked and could be by any one of several dozen companies, as this coach has been mass produced in various scale/sizes for three coronations and a trillion tourists, not to mention one cancelled coronation, all in the period when lead/die-casting was the predominant technology! A lot of that production actually taking place in Hong Kong or Japan.

What can I add? Coach, check; Hong Kong, check; No. 505 in a probable range of one!...er that's it!

Ultra modern production, head for the pinky/mauve area of your local toy shop or Toys'r'us and you will find dozens of these fairy tale, Cinderella, pumpkin type things, trouble is they're always attached to a massive grate pile of heliotrope castle with blue towers! Still they turn up at car-boot sales a few years later, very cheap!