I seem to have done particularly well on the Western front, out there in West London, last June, with a lot to look at and eventually sort into the main collection, and with bits from all over the world, and at least two lines here, now, it's best to get started looking at them!
Indians.
Cowboys.
In their boxes.
A fantastic start to the day, when Adrian Little showed me these, I was sure they were
Torgano, but thought I'd check, so, this is what GoogleAI had to say on the subject . . .
"The term "Torgano Cowboys"
likely refers to Les Cowboys Fringants, a popular Québécois band, and
the phrase is a play on their name, which translates to "The Frilly
Cowboys". The band is known for their folk-rock music and socially conscious lyrics."
WTF? Obviously Google didn't add the accents to 'Québécois', and it didn't get a single detail right, either! It was simply making it up as it went along, to please it's human task-master - me! All these AI bots are filling the internet with falsehood, inaccuracies and complete bollocks! Bucket-loads of it. It could have defaulted with "Did you mean . . . ", but chose to lie through its teeth instead!
These are early (1950's?) Torgano, they did the space sets the same too, with an interim version (1960's?) in one-colour, undecorated hard plastic, and integrally moulded bases (the ones here are glued on), which may have been someone else? And finally the soft plastic, slightly rounded-out copies, of the 1970's blister-cards, in various coloured polyethylenes.
This was a nice find as well, as we've seen the Stage-coach version, or bits of it, under a couple of Hong Kong or phantom brands, on the Blog, in the past, copies of various European makes/premiums, from people like
Alkastap,
Texas/Isus or
Clé (?), but it's nice to now have a complete wagon. Elsewhere in the last year or two (possibly not on the Blog) I've found the mounted figures that clearly go with these, so when they're all brought together it'll now be a decent, semi-definitive post!
Also Hong Kong, I think, copies of
Jecsan, but they may be
Jecsan, I didn't have samples of either to judge-from, and the Spanish makers do like a bit of sandy-yellow polymer? Perfectly scaled to go with the slightly less hideously-caricatured
Lik Be/LB Westerners, and some of the larger
Lucky Luke stuff, a market the Spainsh figures were probably aiming for!
Don't know! Probably Hong Kong, or even 'China', they are very clean, and copying other figures, both Swoppets and
Jean Hoefleur solids, new to the collection though, and new to Blog!
These we have seen, under several brands now I think, and were the default rack-toy/paty favour Cowboys & Indians about 15-years ago, so keep turning up now in mixed lots, happy to receive them though, as with limited colours and poses, there’s a chance of getting a complete set of every pose in every colour without much effort!
A mix of bits here, with a lovely flourescent yellow-green copy of
Britains sitting elder, two
Supreme accessories (canoe and totem pole), which think I already have, but wether I bought them, because they were cheap, or they were in one of the donantions, they will need to be checked against the master-lode!
The little runner is the accessory 'sprue' for the Timpo chuck-wagon I think, while someone ID'd the camp fire a few years ago, I can't remember the verdict then, but it'll be labelled in the stash! And who can refuse a purple tee-pee, or Miniature Masterpiece totem-pole from Marx!
Useful odds-and-sods here, with
Thomas/Poplar/Tudor Rose foot figures, two of the Hong Kong copies of the
Britains/Paramount/
et al six-shooters, a pair of early Hong Kong copies and the brown one to the right may be another
Koho, in the smaller size, damaged, but a first sample of the pose?
I forgot to record whether this was a
Brabo or
Imperial branded chap, or just another Hong Kong generic, but still, more bendier bendy polymer for the bendies tub! And in near-mint condition.
Argentinian, and not in the best condition, but I now have five or six of these in a tub somewhere, so a growing sample of figures which tend to be hard to find this side of The Pond?
Slowly building a complete set of loose
Supreme/SP Toys stuff, with this vaguely Alamo/
Magnificent Seven chapel, being from the large sets and as background in the flatter 'window trays', I think I only need the raft, another building, and one of the wagons for completion now, the fun of collecting!
A box-ticker . . . in a box! It builds the complete story of the figures/sample.
This was gifted by Michael Mordant-Smith, and is another of the test shots from his new Toy Soldier company, which is finding, cleaning and getting back into production, a variety of moulds, and I love the purge-marbling of red/black on this figure.
Another useful Hong Kong item, is this Lido knock-off, as I have one or two in different packaging, all generics, but, again, building a bigger picture!
A mix of mostly Hong Kong, not sure about the big green guy, he has a base like
Tim Mee, especially the German ones, while the Native on the left is
Kinder, for the spare parts tub, although he only needs a correct weapon!
A mix of mostly British branded stuff, some in a bit of a state,
along with a harder to find Jean and a horse from Safari.
Broken, metal, but an only sample!
More of the Lucky Bag figures form the 1950's, and a new Indian pose I think?
Very useful against one of the longer term projects, there is a tendency for some people to lazily state these all as either
Star or
M-Toys, but in fact there are about seven or more types out there (same with the Knights and ACW etc.), and with people Like
Transogram and
Blue Box also having their own lines, there's still a lot of work to be done on a definitive ID list of Hong Kong swoppet clones, and items like this will help. Note how the people (likely women) picking, tend to grab from one batch/stillage, leading to colour bias in each bag!
To which end (previous blurb) all these go in a large tub, sorted either by base, or sometimes material, with regular sortings to match-up all the odd torsos, legs etc . . . Until the picture is complete, and the loose samples can be matched to the sets obtained, or internet images accrued!
A similar project is the Hong Kong 'hollow horses' and their associated accessories/foot figures, here a mixed lot will go in a separate bag with a note, to be sorted . . .
. . . while this clean sample of 'Wavymane' will be sorted straight into its correct zone, after checking weather they are type I, II or III (type IV is a variant!). But, they will get a separate bag, as this sample has the uncommon red horses, and again, note how the picker/packers have put green figures on all the red horses, because that’s the two heaps the line manager gave to them, to pair-up!
And again, this year thanks are due, alphabetically by surname, 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, I've
forgotten to add! Thank you all.
