T is "To Boldly Go . . . "

. . . forth! 2022? It too will pass!

Did I say we'd be looking at something from Kazakhstan in the future? Well, it's a year in the future now, so by Jove; let's look at it! First though, do you remember when I got a little excited about a Merit infant-toy stackable fort/palace thing?

Well, this is even better, and, looking at the images in that old post, I recon the parts will be interchangeable, if I ever get the urge to fire masonry towers or tiled-turrets into deep space!

Jovians queue-up to board their space rocket courtesy of a brand I don't recognise, but it looks like ЈПЕ as a pyramid/in a triangle, indeed it's might be ЗЦГ with the point of the triangle at the bottom? I should have photographed it but . . . red plastic, winter light, flash!

The colours of the rocket, or at least; the red and turquoise could be seen as the colours of the flag of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, so while the factory may have been considered 'Soviet Russian', I suspect it was local to the now independent Kazakhstan?

The component parts, a mid-density (soft) polyethylene plastic with the wooden 'wand'! The base-plate (bottom right, red) and the top cap/cone (white, top left) are slightly tighter fits than the other parts, so that once you have finished building it, it all stays together so it can be flown about by hand!

While the Merit castle had fixed spigots top and bottom of hollow tubes, this rocket has a central core of a wooden rod or dowel - I don't know how long a dowel has to be to become a rod!

I done did a little .gif

A quick point - in hours, this was less than six days, Kazakhstan to UK . . . over Christmas! I have to wait at least two weeks to get something from New York, New Jersey or New Hampshire, at the best of times and they are direct to Heathrow, several times a day, while it's up to three weeks from Italy or Greece? Mexico? Over two months! Heathrow-sorting to Fleet sorting . . . 40-minute van-drive, Fleet sorting to my door, 3/4-minute walk. yet this, from a  late-night purchase to a 9am delivery was a few hours over the five days? I think the words we're looking for are 'quality service', from the Kazak postal services! Something ours - in the West - have lost, abandoned.

Kazakhstan is building closer economic ties with the EU (without showing a similar interest in Joining NATO) and will be watching the Ukrainian border with some alarm, Russia has no right to enslave all these neighbours, just because she had once done so, and I hope common-sense prevails . . . or Putin meets a sticky-end.

While it clearly has an order of construction (left) to make a pretty standard space rocket of the pulp book-cover variety, the components can - of course - be assembled in numerous ways, which may or may not look good, fashionable or just plain silly!

New 'best toy ever'? 

B is for Best Toy Ever? Working Machinegun

It's time for another Best Toy Ever post, and like the last one, thanks are due to Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) who took this along to a show where I was able to get a few shots off. Not 100% sure to the maker, but some of the ammunition resupplies are marked Märklin which is probably a good clue to the original maker too.

The contents were less than pristine having obviously been played with, well; you'd want to play with a best toy ever wouldn't you! Basically, it's a firing machine-gun, and I don't mean it makes a noise like a machinegun, I mean you feed it a belt of pre-loaded ammunition and it bangs . . .  as it fires rubber-bullets; it's too damn cool for the SF-Cadre!

A scaled-down feed mechanism and cap-firing hammer are operated by the turning of the handle, which is not far removed from the handle found on a Gatling Gun. Painting is similar to pre- or inter-war toys, but the two instruction sheets are cruder than you might expect from a 1930's toy, also at least one (the pink sheet above) seems to be that purpleish thing which I think we used to call  a 'roneo' (spell?) copy.

So I suspect it is just post-war? But using a pre-war tool, and painting style, just to get a product up and running in a blasted economy, and apart for the unconvincing clues to a post war sale, there's nothing in it.

This was the best bit! An exquisite chain of small brass turnings each of which can take a cap-gun charge at one end (top), and a rubber bullet at the other end (bottom), all tied together in a series of sort-of Morbius-loops or - more accurately - figure-of-eights, which allow for flexibility and a 'belt' feel, but which arrangement keeps the strings tight to the 'rounds' so they don't foul the mechanism, it's very clever!

The original bullets were small vulcanised rubber (tyre rubber) shells, but seem to have been replaced - due to loss - with small wooden splints which could be jammed in the blast hole between the cap-charge and the barrel, which must have worked because there were enough for the whole belt (with signs of jamming-in) which you wouldn't bother with if it all didn't work.

I couldn't try it as we had no caps on site, and you wouldn't want to break something like this if you hadn't paid for it, not to mention the cotton 'belt' arrangement looked like it might need replacing with some newer threads! But I can imagine what it must have been like spurting rubber death at ranks of composition or hollow-cast toy soldiers - best toy ever . . .

. . . 'till next time!

B is for Best Toy Ever . . . Again!

Some best-toys win on features or playability (the Tri-Ang Battle Game), others win on sheer quality (The Britains Land Rover), but when I awarded the Britains Land Rover BTE status, I hadn't seen today's entrant, which trumps the Land Rover by a country-mile, making it look all a bit cheap and placky!

It's the gonad-challenged leader of the 4,000-odd-day Reich; Herr Adolf Hitler, in his Mercedes tourer, with straight-backed driver at the controls. Shot two years ago at the then September Sandown Park show, this has been sat in Picasa ever since, but two years is about par for the stuff in the queue! Adrian Little of Mercator (link) is to thank for allowing me to photograph it.

I can't remember if Adrian said if it was Elastolin or Lineol, but it has a porcelain-head Hitler so it could be Elastolin, although other people bought-in the figures for their vehicles; Arnold, Bing and Karl Bub, for instance, so I stand to be corrected.

The detail of the model is on a par with modern, similarly scaled (and unnecessarily expensive) 'executive desk toy' type limited edition things, and compared with my Land Rover, is in a different league.

The main construction is tin-plate, but much use is made of die-cast and white-metal parts, down to the little door-handles! The wheels are almost scale replicas with rubber tyres, steel rims and cast hubs on rod-axles.

If one thing lets it down it's the steering-wheel which is a simple tin-stamping which doesn't look right next to all the other, finer detailing? The Fuhrer also has a moveable arm so he can do his flicky-little Nazi salute, or madly wave at his granny!

I can't remember where this came from; it's cropped out of a larger (but un-watermarked) image, from somewhere - auction catalogue on feeBay? Anyway, you can see the cheaper, rival Märklin model has all-tin wheels/tyres and simpler figures, albeit three of them, probably small O-Gauge/40mm to boot? Whether the main-subject above is also a 1936 model Mercedes or not I don't know, there are differences between the mud-guards of the two vehicles?

A worthy - if temporary - winner of 'Best Toy Ever' I hope you'll agree; despite it's background politics, it's a beautiful thing and many thanks to Adrian for the chance to photograph it.

B is for Best Toy Ever? . . . Again!

This should be the fourth or fifth time I've appended the 'Best Toy Ever' tag to a post here, and hopefully loyal readers have remembered that after the 2nd or 3rd time, I just decided it was something that couldn't be attributed to any single toy, but which could be used from time to time on stand-out items of particular production-worth or great play-value; here's another one!

Speaking of Adrian Little (as I was at the end of the last post), this was shot on his stall at Sandown Park's toy fair, back in September. The contents are somewhat mixed, incomplete or added-to, but the overall 'thing' is a beautiful plaything, that should have brought joy to an owner back in the day.

I say 'should' as someone obviously looked after this to the point where not much play can have occurred, but the items are too clean to have been on display either, which is a little sad - that such a lovely toy was probably not played with?

The packaging has an undeniable circus theme on the top flap/cover, but the rest of it is more farm or countryside themed, artwork wise, and obviously was a standard, dual-purpose factory box, with set specific inserts.

Likewise the internal sheet of press-out scenic accessories are more rural in nature, but a back-drop, box liner, is - again - undeniably circus in subject matter. Clearly a bit of a curate's egg, cobbled together from what was in the factory or with the printer's, enhanced to tie-it in with the contents.

The cages are manufactured from soft wire rod, they will have been set out on a wooden jig and spot-soldered by hand before painting, and there were more than I photographed, allowing for a decent animal 'holding area' to be constructed for the circus.

The safety-tunnel into the ring is likewise produced, probably being trimmed and bent to shape after the soldering and before the gates were slipped into place. We had a go at something similar at Uni' years ago, while being shown the workshop facilities. I made a shelter/gantry for a bus-stop!

A rather fine elephant, I don't know if it's a baby from the 70mm range, a scaled down adult from the same range, or a 40mm line-specific sculpt?

And you thought a 'Bear Dance' was something Native Americans did!

This must be one of the last things manufactured by Hausser under the Elastolin moniker, using composition animals, especially in this smaller 40mm scale, and with both wood and metal accessories?

A whole pride of Lions to train, there were no tubs for them to stand on, or hoops to jump through, leading one to suspect there was more to collect in the wider range, or that a larger collection had already been broken-up prior to Adrian obtaining his sample?

This mysterious aspect of the 'set' is mirrored in the two figures which are of different scales and styles and the only two present, a keeper and a clown? No ringmaster, no animal trainers? No other performers?

I'm not sure if the clown is sharing his moment in the lime-light with a monkey or a mountain-lion/cougar . . . or even a hyena!

A pair of tigers, a zebra and a camel, all things you might find at an old school circus, but in the case of the later two, more likely to be in the day-time 'zoo' than in the night-time performances, and all things you'd equally expect in a proper zoo. The circus ring is the only plastic component, being a trimmed vac-form, with a drop-in 'gate' section, also vac-formed.

The lack of a tent or marquee is another pointer to this being a part-set, and one wonders if the box (part farm-linked) was actually included in a larger set, for which the other liner has gone AWOL, the contents of the sample can fit in the box but only by ignoring the slots and packing everything loose. I suspect there was once much-more to the whole set, yet it is still a really lovely thing - Best Toy Ever ['till the next one] - Cheers Adrian!

B is for Best Non-Boardgames Game . . . With Pigs - Ever!

I can't remember when I first Played Pass the Pigs but it was a long time ago, and while I have the old wood-alike, mahogany-brown, parallel-sided, plastic-case in storage with a full set of all two porkers, I couldn't resist grabbing this for a couple of quid in a charity shop the other day. In fact - I think there is a little bag of them in storage with slightly different colours of plastic, or nose/trotter paint.

If you've never played Pass the Pigs, can I suggest you do. It may not deserve the 'Best Toy Ever?' tag, but I'm giving it anyway - as it's a while since we had one here - but it's definitely the most fun you can have with two pigs in a family setting without getting yourself arrested and carted off! As this weekend is all about visiting families and stuff, now is the time to rush out and find a set.

The case has been given a make-over, using design styling from 1990's remote-controls and the 2000's Nokia mobiles; it now looks like something Captain Kirk might ask 'Bones' for . . .

"Pass me the porker-patcher . . . I've . . . got . . . to . . . to  . . . learn . . . to . . . communicate . . . with them"

"Jim; you're not well, you need to rest now"

^^ Captain; your insistent belief that these small, naked, pink creatures hold the secret to life, the universe and everything is illogical, besides; I happen to know it's 42 ^^

Basically it's a dice game with pigs! Two of them, cleverly designed to fall several ways, some more commonly than others, leading to variable point scoring, with a race to 100 for as many people as you happen to have in the room and at a loose-end.

Pigs landing on either side are a 'Pig Out' and you lose all your points that move. All other likely landing positions are scored as follows, with single scores applied as part of a 'Mixed Combo', or some harder to attain poses earning quadruple points for doubles.

Moves are as long as you want them to be, you can score once and Pass the Pigs, or be a 'Pig-head' and throw again, you can keep doing so until you get a 'Pig Out' or something worse!

Pigs leaning the same side (either a marked or un-marked side-pair) is the commonest result and earns you a measly 1-point, it's called a 'Sider' and there's no 2-for-a-double!

The 'Double-Razorback' gets you 20 points, or 5 as part of a 'Mixed Combo', the similar but not-illustrated standing 'Trotter' is also 5-or-20.

A 'Leaning Jowler' (on the left in both shots, the pig is arse-up and resting on its nose and an ear) brings in a right royal 15-points, with the extremely unlikely double scoring a 60. On the right is a plain 'Snouter' with the pig resting on its nose only, for a 10-shot, the double; 40 points.

If the dice pigs end-up touching (and remember they don't roll straight, they're pigs!), that is the ultimate crime, known as 'Makin' Bacon' (the "...something worse." and you lose all the points you've accrued in the game so far - boo-hoo, it's like the Snakes and Ladders serpent at 98 which takes you back to 4!

Recognised as a theoretical result, but considered impossible, this is the 'Piggy Back' and would A) require some fancy dice pig-flicking, B) be a pointless thing to practice throwing, as it gets you a swift exit from the game for failing to wrangle you pigs in an appropriate fashion.

A throw resulting in a combination of two different point-scoring landing positions is called a 'Mixed Combo' and scores at the lower (non-double) scoring of the poses.

A quick shot scale-sizing them with various farm figures from Britain, France and Hong Kong, with a larger Chinese figure in the centre, these two little chaps often turn-up loose in mixed lots or 'bundles' of farm or farm & zoo animals on feebleBay having escaped Pass the Pigs.

The point counter (and umpire) is known as the swineherd and there is a gambling variation. This (illustrated) version is issued by Winning Moves, although  others have carried it in the past; originally David Moffat, commonly; MB Games (my storage edition).

Boardgamegeek Passing the Pigs

One of the pigs is called Hugh . . . Hugh Pigfellow . . . Soooowwweeeee!

B is for Best Toy Ever - Again

We have had several 'Best Toys' now (I think this is the forth) and I'm pretty sure I've tagged that, if not I will when I post this so you can compare and decide if you agree with any of them!

'Mechanical Machine Gunner' . . . I'd suggest the box is very early Airfix'y, but one of the PSTSM might burst a blood-vessel and "...other brands were available". This is the Best Toy Ever since the last Best Toy Ever, which wasn't here on Small Scale World, and wasn't that long ago - a parachuting, fully-armed, sentient simian - how cool is that?!

Cooler, and probably more intelligent than the PSTSM, that's how cool. Funny how they all ended-up talking English with a slightly American accent - the armed-simians that is; I can't speak for the PSTSM, they probably just grunt at one another.

360° free-fire zone! Legs splayed, back padded with the large pack and rest'able against the sandbag wall - give him enough ammunition and old Ma' Atkins little boy will give the enemy hell 'till it freezes over!

He winds himself-up (back to the PSTSM!) with ease and key-less'ly, although his past exertions have split the bottom of the toy which is current BEST TOY EVER!

N is for No Mystery!

The Marx Mystery Space Ship was so well illustrated on the box it was no mystery at all really! But...best toy ever!

Now, this will be the third time I've announced 'Best Toy Ever' on this blog, but if one casts one's mind back to childhood; that's par for the course...the best toy was always the one you were playing with, and I had to play with this yesterday, to get the photo's of it in 'full flight'!

I am actually missing the curved cradle that should go on top of the pink shaft, but these ships are not rare, there are several on FeeBay at the moment, and there are most weeks, when a damaged or box-less one turns up for a reasonable amount I'll grab it, but it's not a priority. I would point out that some of the buy-it-now's on these are ridiculous.

However, missing piece aside, this is a fantastic toy, and once you get it fired-up you have a package of contained kinetic energy that - if you lose control of it - can do a lot of damage to furniture, china ornaments, gerbil cages and anything else of a frangible nature you might find in a 1950's/1960's living-room or bedroom, or anywhere else for that matter!

Along with the main ship you got two spring-loaded rockets and two strange semi-flats that seem to have been included just to 'square-off' the the mould-tool or 'fill the sprue'? The pilots had a plug in their bums and they need it, as once the thing's fired-up they would rattle-about without a decent anchorage!

There are three boxing, the early one with 'groovy' '50's graphics and US and UK versions of the illustrated and more common later type.

When you Google-search them you will read all sorts of nonsense about them (most of which could have been sorted with a quick 'Google'!), one of which is that the US ones where one colour set, the UK ones; another colour set - the inference being that never the twain would meet. In point of fact there are several colours of ship (yellow, primrose and 'aqua') and all the accessories come in three colours which can be interchangeable.

This is due to the fact that the ships came from a third party (Sperry Gyroscope Company of Brentford, Middlesex; the UK branch of, and probably supplied by; Sperry Rand,  Great Neck, New York; a subsidiary of the Rand Corp. in the US) and weren't Marx products at all.

The figure and accessory 'sprues' were Marx, and again you see these being sold as "...'mint' with seven moon-men and two seated astronauts" or (as one 'definitive list' puts it) "9 unique aliens" and 9 astronauts. Other listings will try to fob you off with one colour only, others give one colour of aliens and the other colour of spacemen...

The fact is you get two un-seperated sprues (correctly; runners), one of each colour, they have 6 different aliens and 6 standing astronauts. There are also 2 seated astronauts in each colour, giving four all together, 6 'unique' aliens (12 in total) and 7 unique astronauts (16 in total).

The only rarity with this set is a small run of oxide-red figures which seem to have been sold usually partnered with the orange set.

The aliens are all different [species], with the last one apparently being related to Frankenstein! The figures are scaled down from other Marx figures from the various space-based play-sets and none of the astronauts are armed - only one alien has a hand-gun.

As to best toy ever...once you've got the hang of the winding, and can crank it up to full speed, you can with little practice or effort get the machine to carry-out all sorts of tricks, it will dance on a sixpence, defy gravity, whirl up and down a piece of string and can do "up to 50 tricks", and...despite the potential for damage, is so robust, there are lots of survivors, and you really should try to track one done, especially if you have young kids...they'll love it!

P is for Probably...the Best Toy in the World, Ever

[To be voiced by Orson Wells's gravelly tones!]. Or; Probably the Worst Lager in the World! ((c) 1989 Hugh Walter - I hope to sell it to an advertising agency one day and make my fortune!).
This has been on my brother's shelf for a few years, and was a sort of late Christmas present to me, although I've said I'll clean it and put it with the Detail stuff we looked at a while ago. Made by Britains, it predates the Detail range and the figures aren't compatible, neither did they go that well with the Herald figures, but are - at least - made of the same dark olive vinyl.

I genuinely think this has to be up there with the other contenders of best toy ever, if such an award could ever ignore the broad sweep of something like 'Lego' or 'kits' and look at each toy issued on it's merits.

It was a tad dusty when it arrived two days after Christmas, and needed to be stripped down and cleaned. Due to all the stickers that come with it and the fact that it seemed to be surface dust only, it was better to do a dry clean with a paint brush. Illustrated - bottom right - are three brushes typical of the type I'd use for a job like this, from the left; a chef's pastry brush (soft bristles that can get up a nice lather if 'wet cleaning'), a 1/2 inch decorators brush which is a bit stiffer and was the one used this time, and a stiff craft brush of the type kids in playgroup/kindergarten use for poster paint and glue, which is the best for getting years of grime out of detailed mouldings with doing the damage something like a nail brush or scrubbing brush can do.

The model carries a UK civilian license plate, with the 'F-Reg' dating it to an issue date (in the real world) between 1 August 1967 and 31 July 1968, and (without being an expert on Lanny's) seems to represent a late Series II/IIA?

So why is it the best toy ever - in my humble opinion!?...Independent suspension on all four wheels, front wheels steer from the spare, turning the steering wheel at the same time, two fully articulated crew-figures (with separate helmets), two-position co-driver/sentry's machine-gun, opening doors, opening bonnet (with a good stab at a Solihul engine-block), dash sticker and cab-details, pivoting twin pom-pom type weapon with removable, revolving mounting, locking towing-hook cover, radio set...

There are downsides; it's British Racing Green, not the army green of the wagons I knew (although Her Madge' always used to get a Review-vehicle in this colour when inspecting large units or parades), the main armament is totally fictitious and the bonnet tools tended to be broken by people thinking they should be removable (because everything else was!), but it was a toy, and as a toy it had shed-loads of play-value and preempted the modern irregulars 'Technicals' by a decade or two..Rock-on!

All cleaned-up and put back together, I gave the crew slightly more jaunty angles to their helmets at the same time! They're singing "There Was a Gloster Soldier" as they swing wildly between termite-hills and wart-hog holes looking for Mau-mau!!

Various aspects of this moulding (or the wheels!) produced a quite wide range of long and short-wheelbase farm and military versions right up to the early 2000's, with and without soft or hard-tops, drivers, crew or loads.

Go-on then...tell me what's better than this? Must be a single set or box not a generic like 'Action Man', what's your all-time best toy - not favourite; 'best', all-round and viewed with judge-like neutrality!

1970's catalogue illustration.

A is for "A New Battle Game"

Somewhere toward the back (page 127) of his little 'Introduction to Battle Gaming' Terry Wise had a very small picture of a 'board game' which would turn out to be very large! With the caption "A new Battle Game introduced by Tri-ang", it had me captivated, and oh how I wanted one, well, one day I got one, had to wait until I was in my mid-thirties mind! This is it...

It's VERY, very big, about two foot by two foot by a foot - 8 cubic feet of my universe taken up with plastic and card crap, but my - what quality crap!! Check out that 60's artwork, the guy bottom right is my all time favorite...."Maaahhh Maaaaaaaaaa'haammiieeee!!!". I think he's being shot in the back, a lesson for anyone thinking of running away; Real men die with frontal perforations!!

In fact, it's so big, this one's been given it's own Pickford's label at some point!

Bottom center, with the lid off, there's a shed-load of stuff. This game? Play-set? Interactive tour-de-force, had so much going on, the mines (bottom left), barbed wire and trees, machine-guns, all sorts!

It actually looks far more complicated than it really is, and once you've got it all set up it's just a turn-for-turn game with lots of counters, and all the 'chance' cards replaced with 'action' pieces.

The figures have 'value', which is displayed by pose (they are the Almark figures with long spigots on the base, probably manufactured in the Minimodels plant in Havent, Portsmouth for Tri-ang) and the helmet colour; White is the Officer, with 2 brown Sappers, 3 red NCO's and the Grunts have green helmets.

One player set up, the machine gun turns using a football rattle type mechanism to make a shooting sound and the long tongues of the trees limit traverse. The two trenches above ground have mini-mines. With printed-card, styrene, ethylene, rubber, metal and paint, this is really the high point of domestic toy production in that immediate post-war era.

Unless you're some professional, returning to childhood with a bank full of money - in which case some bloke on eBay has got one you can have for 85 quid-something, my advice is don't pay a fortune for one, they can go for as little as £12, and I've never paid more than £25, so much is subject to loss or damage, you'll need to get a couple - at least - to make one decent one, and they DO take up a lot of space.

Tatty ones are always on eBay, there's usually one under a table at the Plastic Warrior or Birmingham shows and your local car-boot sale will chuck-up one or two a year, if you get there early.

Best play-set/game/toy ever and more nostalgia curtsy of Mr. Wise who's sadly not here, thanks again Terry...I GOT ONE!