E is for Erudite Editions and Ephemera

Let's get the boring ones out of the way first, then we can get into the proper polymer plunder! There was a new book, a new facsimile catalogue, a - now - quite old book and some other ephemera in the PW show loot, and that's what we're looking at today!

Barney Brown had these two on his stall, and I dare say you can get them from him at;

 

https://www.heraldtoysandmodels.co.uk/

 

The Timpo facsimile is a new one I think, being a scanned reprint of an old Timpo plastic solids catalogue, from the time between the hollow-cast era and the full-on Swoppets, and while it's mostly black & white, there is an opening colour page, with the cowboys, Indians, FFL and Arabs fully illustrated. It also includes a copy of a letter signed by Ally Gee, head of Model Toys.

 

I haven't managed to read the Swoppet tome yet, it's a sister publication to the one on knights, which I passed-on a while ago, I just didn't believe there was that much to say on less than two-dozen figures! But, this has four sections, covering all the other Swoppet lines (although you could argue the Eyes Right were only the parade/ceremonial Swoppet lines!), with a less fastidious, shall we say, attention to the minutiae of each range, so it will be a better general read.

 

Not than I'm knocking the first volume, if it was for you, I know how obsessive some people are on Swoppet Knights! And hell, I can get bogged down in the small, precise, or trivial details of far more esoteric stuff, than this 'mainstream' interest material, but it wasn't for me.

 

Also, I think it's a similar format to the other works on Britains plastics by Barney and Peter Cole, published in association with Plastic Warrior, so will sit well with them, at the 'landscape' end of your bookshelf!

 

This is a fun one . . . I've been waiting thirteen years to get this, I knew I would; it was just a case of waiting for somebody to die, at the right time for his copy to end up at a show I was attending, when or where that might be, and while I don't know if that's the case, in this case, but anyway, here it is.

 

And the first thing I'll say, is, it's bloody heavy! I reckon it's about the same as eight bags of sugar, 8kg's or about sixteen pounds (I haven't actually weighed it), or a large bag of potatoes, but that's where the parallels with potatoes start and finish, this is a fantastic work, and I won't hear a word against it.

 

It covers in some detail, everything the non-Spanish collector might need to know on Spanish toy soldiers and model figures, and while I think I might have a Sobre brand or two, not in here, and seem to have more Credeco elephants, than are listed, that's just the eclectic nature of my own collecting, and there's a ton here, I knew nothing about, at all, including on both Credeco and Sobres!

 

But why the thirteen-year wait Hugh? Well, therein lies a pretty tale! Which goes back further than the 2013 publishing date of the volume before you. I originally saw it advertised on one of the Spanish or Portuguese Blogs, which pre-dated mine, and were among the first Blogs I linked to in my sidebar features here at Small Scale World, but upon expressing an interest in getting what was the earlier, self-published version, was warned-off, by one of the Spanish collectors (the thread's still there), due to, shall we say irregularities in the book's arrival and/or repayments?

 

So, when a while later, someone waxed lyrical over it, in a UK magazine, I thought it was right and proper to warn others of what was being reported, by the Spaniards, as I was still, technically, at the time, a 'consultant editor' to the publication here. And that was all I did, I repeated the warning, as clearly second-hand, and, from the Spanish.

 

Mr. Hermida managed - understandably (no one likes criticism) - to take a certain chagrin to that, and rather over-personalised his response, in a subsequent addition of the magazine in question, during which he seemed to admit that there had been problems, but that they were all sorted [however I've since been approached by a major German collector, who is still owed several hundred Euro's for his copies, which never arrived], and a slightly catty repost from me ended that particular long-distance, printed conversation.

 

In the months (or years?) following that exchange, it was announced that Andrea Press, the publishing arm of the very well-know Andrea Miniatures, would be taking over the project, for the second, enlarged edition, and that there would be an English language volume, which was good news for everyone!

 

Except there then followed a long series of publishing dates, new publishing dates, rumours of plan changes, and press releases, explaining last minute updates, hiccups, and so on, to the point where some thought it would never actually happen!

 

But, in time for Christmas 2013, if memory serves, it was finally published! I believe there are 300 in English and maybe a 1000 in Spanish? I don't know, but mine is numbered 'of 300', so I assume that's the English-language 'limited edition' total?

 

Obviously, given what had happened, I wasn't contemplating sending off to the author for a copy! But this was back when I wasn't active as a consumer on that there Wibbly Wobbly Way either, so ordering a copy from Andrea wasn't likely to happen, and while I did hint to family members who were online in that fashion, that it might make the best Christmas present ever, for anyone they might know, who collected toy soldiers, the hints fell on shallow ground, and that might have been the year I got three copies of 'Tailgunner's repetitive second/third/forth (?) effort! Well, it was piled-high and sold cheap in The Works!

 

Now I hold Mr. Hermida no ill-will over the correspondence through media, all those years ago, and have only raked it all up here, to A) explain why it's taken so long to get one, and to get it on to the blog, and B) as a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of writing/producing a 'grand opus' . . . it's not easy!

 

In fact it's bloody hard, especially if you are planning a large format, or lots of data/tables of information and/or many illustrations, or any combination of them, and even more so, if your target audience is probably no more than a couple of thousand dedicated collectors nation world-wide, in a small hobby, where not everyone can throw four ponies at the wall, in short-order!

 

I know what publishing the two Farming in Miniature books involved, or have a fair idea of some of it, and it was years of dedication by three authors who had regular meetings with each-other, in pairs or threesomes, getting up to monthly or more frequent, as publishing-day loomed, meetings with the publishers, travelling all over the country, thousands of eMails, emergency updates of images, re-writes of paragraphs, whole pages or entire entries! Discussions on fonts, typefaces, pagination (how you number the pages!), layout and cover-designs, it's an endless headache, which I've avoided by just throwing it up here willy-nilly in a voice which changes with my mood!*

 

And, ignoring the problems associated with its gestation, 'Made in Spain' is a superb work, and Mr. Hermida is, along with Andrea Press, to be congratulated for getting it to those of us who have been lucky enough to get a copy. If you haven't, and you're a younger member of the hobby, I'll be dead soon enough, and you can enjoy my copy!

 

I will do a proper book-review of it, once I've read it a couple more times, I've really only leafed through it a few times, since last weekend . . . OK, I've dipped into it every day, alright! But there's so much to take in!

 

* And they still had to put the third volume online, and that, after a publisher change between the first two volumes! You can see it here;

 

https://farminginminiature.co.uk/volume3.html

  

 

I also picked-up these, I wasn't sure on the PW-20, but if it's a duplicate, it will make a useful swap for some of the earlier ones I still need (I think I'm still two or three issues short of a full run), while the PFPC has Marx Miniature Masterpiece stuff in, which I still have a soft spot for. The German (Strenger, Berlin) retail store catalogue is a box-ticker of limited use, but adds to the whole, and likewise the John Sanders/Treforest Mouldings thing, which is heavily annotated by a past owner. I think I actually have the full catalogues, by nation, from the James Chase collection?

 

Interestingly, the Strenger catalogue refers to the tanks as 'tanks' (kletter tank 'clatter' and Feuernder tank 'firing' or sparking), so panzer seems to have come later, with Nazism - there's a small sample of Elastolin SA, so the catalogue would appear to be 1933/34 maybe? 

 

While this site;

 

https://www.etymonline.com/word/panzer

 

Seems to indicate that the use of panzer was a deliberate act, sometime in 1939, what did Guderian call them in his seminal work? Could it be something the Nazi's came up with (from armour or mail), because those pesky Jew-loving Churchillian's over the Channel invented 'tank'? It's the sort of thing Trump does, with his Gulf of Fuckwit, Museum of Grifter, Peace Prize of Bum-Chums and Arse of Mouth.

 

A few other bits of ephemera which made it into this year's plunder-pile, mostly old Britains leaflets, a Timpo tick-list of medieval movie-character models, and a Skybirds packers card, by the looks of it. All grist to the mill of research!!

 

So, now we're into the plunder proper, I must thank, in alphabetical order, by Christian name this year, because I've forgotten, or not got several surnames; Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin.

R is for Recent Events

Had a mare of a day yesterday (Thursday), although it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I managed to get back to Waterloo OK, despite the impending strike by tube workers, and some bus staff! The main event being the picking-up of a lovely lot of loot from Peter Evans.

 

I had a better Saturday last, attending the BMSS show in Reading, where among other things I picked up the above ephemera, all relatively useful, especially the colour facsimile of a Lineol catalogue. I may already have some of it, particularly the Corgi checklist/customer leaflet, but if so, it'll make a useful spare to swap for something!

 

The Hausser farm and zoo flyer is an original, and there's some German language stuff which seems to be either a dealers lists, or trade orders of some kind, and which may or may not have future use. The V&A monograph is a bit of fun for the library, and a picture of a diner from Route 66 heralds a parcel from Brian, which I'll hopefully post in the next few days, while Steve Vickers gave me both his cards!

 

Two Elastolin facsimiles got left out of the other shot, and I won two items on the raffle this year, the Land Rover kit has no figures (shock horror!), so I may just make them up 'as is', and photograph them against future Land Rover posts, in their neutral . . . gray - I just (a while ago) remembered I had to go to the bank, so shot off, forgetting I'd been doing this, then thought I'd go for a walk, it's a nice day, or it was, it's dark now! And actually wrote 'neutral' about ten hours ago!

 

As well as show plunder, which needs photographing, and the box from Mr Burke, which has been shot, I also picked up a big lot from Chris, which also needs photographing, but I have sorted it, and there are some interesting bits winging their way to these pages!

 

When I was on Faceplant, I'd thank Chris when a parcel arrived, with the Collected Paratroopers image, a few days or a week or so before they got posted here, but, as I'm not on Faceplant at the moment, here it is! The red one is actually a stand-alone figure from Processed Plastics, but he made the line-up neater, and was needed in the flyboy zone!

 

And while I'd happily draw a veil over yesterday's shenanigans, as I said, I did manage to get to Peter's and pick up a collected bunch of donations and car-booty, which is also in the queue to be photographed, along with some charity shop stuff I picked-up this afternoon, next to the bank!

 

Given that I haven't cleared any of the stuff I was intending to clear, back in January, because I've had a month off, like a lazy fuck, there's no shortage of stuff to post, and I fear the capsule-toy mini-season may join the HO railway outstanding's in the never-never section of the short queue! We'll see, what will be, will be!

 

The next event will be the London Toy Soldier Show, on the 9th of May, with a Sandown the next weekend (16th of May), so it's lucky PW has moved to June really!

A is for A Friend Returns

There's nothing worse than losing something, especially when you know where it is, and losing books is particularly annoying, I am still missing two Soviet recognition manuals I lent to a friend years ago, so his wife (TA) could complete the same Soviet Studies course I had done a few years earlier, and after I ran into him about six years later, and reminded him, it's a bit galling that that conversation, where he promised to look them out, was, itself, now, 25-years ago!

 

Another book I leant to a friend, because I thought her kids would enjoy it, never to see again, was this, and, yes, it was probably silly of me to lend a book to kids, I should have either given it, or kept schtum, and they do say "Never lend a book [or money] you can't afford to lose", and while I'd written it off years ago (not so the Soviet manuals, they have emotional connections and I still hope to get them back one day!), I found another-one, in the Blue Cross charity shop yesterday!

 

Larry Gonick is well known in the 'States, for these ambitious tomes, educating through cartoons, and humour, he has done many on a variety of - mostly - scientific subjects, over the years, but this is a sweeping history of the Universe, up to the world of Alexander the Great, it's the first of several volumes, and arguably, the most fun one?

 

The style is slightly irascible, and a bit Horrible Histories, but predating that franchise by nearly two decades! Indeed, this volume, which covers the Egyptians, is dated 1990, three years prior to the first HH, coincidently (?) on the Egyptians!

 

I seem to recall getting mine in one of the remaindered bookshops which were quite common in the 1990's/early 2000's (they've all gone now, even the chains), probably on the Wandsworth Road, or up at Charring Cross, and I guess, that’s where/when this one originated, as it's not the one I lost, and I think it was only, ever, an import? But I'm enjoying re-reading it, and can recommend it to anyone who'll listen to my advice!

A is for Another Book Plate!

I'm working through a folder of over 800 scans, and came across (became reacquainted with!) this, which probably should have been in the posts on bookplates a while ago!

It's actually printed into the front flyleaf of an 1879 imprint of Goethe's Faust, translated by Anna Swanwick, the blank area being for the owner of the book to sign or print their name, as a form of pre-printed bookplate. I've worked on it in the contrast tool, to make it a little clearer, the original is quite feint.

The signature below the etching is that of the artist Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch (1779–1857), a German painter and etcher known for his outline illustrations of classic literary works, especially those by the aforementioned Goethe, and Schiller. There are another 40 etchings "engraved on steel after the works of Moritz Retzsch" in the book.

 

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Retzsch

 

As I go through the folder I'm also adding various minor-make entries to the A-Z Blogs, and there's been a couple of disambiguations added too, so I may concentrate on the A-Z's, this year?

I is for I read Comics!

I know, but we're all allowed a guilty pleasure! I mentioned the other day, I visited Forbidden Planet on my last visit to London, and while it always depresses me (I remember when it was 90% second-hand comics out of corrugated-card cartons, off bare floorboards round the corner, now, it's all shiny Kidult crap! But I managed to find three tomes this time - the last few visits I've left empty-handed!

 

I love these, I got the first volume of Legends of the Guard, as a Library sell-off a few years ago, so I was very pleased to find the second, on a yellow ticket (all three of these were in the 'bargain bin' shelves). To describe this is not easy, but if you imagine an illustrated Silmarillion, but written by mice, about an ancient mouse civilisation, you'd get the picture . . . s!

 

The original/core series (set as if in the present day of the mice) are written by David Petersen, but the various stories in Legends, are from the past of the mouse lands, and are told as tall-tales 'down the pub', with different artists invited to draw, 'ink' and/or letter the stories, which are just absolutely charming, and unlike a lot of my graphic-novel library, are as suitable for kid's as they are appealing to adult readers. If you haven't discovered the Mouse Guard yet, I recommend you do so!

 

This was a bit of fun, as it's a modern 'treatment' of the old movie, using all-new artwork based on the film, rather than the original cells or screen-shots, it was dirt cheap and took about 20 minutes to read from end to end, but the whole point of this kind of thing is the visuals, and they are sumptuous in this, capturing the original, perfectly. "Blue Meanies, Blue Meanies!"

 

I don't know if you are familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation, but this has a close connection to the previous, in that the Den segment of the 1981 Canadian animated movie Heavy Metal, was directed by a Yellow Submarine veteran, Jack Stokes!

 

I first encountered Den in Heavy Metal, the magazine, not the movie, and it's best to say the visuals beat a very confusing series of story arcs, and it helps if you read each story as a stand alone with some similarities to that which has come before, Den being the late Corben's 'Star Wars', going back to his early years, but with less control on timelines or character development!

 

This is the third in a series of [relatively] new collections of all the Den'i'verse, and I'm now looking for the others!

M is for Memories of the Old Toy Shop

If we've had Scully & Sully, we must be into the festive season, but there's another box to tick, before we can consider the season complete, if you know what I mean, and so, earlier than some years, here's the display in Fleet Library of the annual toy-related exhibition by the Fleet & Crookham Local historical Society.

 

A coincidence, I'm sure!

 

Loved Fuzzy felt when we were younger!

 

Seen on the Blog, in three colours? Rosebud - bought by/swallowed by Mattel.

Rushden has its own Local History group;

 

https://rushdenheartsandsoles.co.uk/commerce/rosebud-mattel.html 

 

They're just very expensive Gonks for a generation who never had Gonks!

 

Mon'Kay! He has a very complicated history, involving two brands!

 

I've noticed that while Johnny Vegas can mention the monkey, he has 'lost' him,

and apparently can't legally discuss anything else about him!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(character) 

 

Our gyroscope had a metal 'Eifel Tower'!

 

The tin-plate racing car looks modern?

 

New to me.

 

Nope! That Dinosaur isn't 48-months old, and never sold for shillings!

 

Stegosaurus in a generic (department store Christmas stock?) Triceratops' box?

 

Solido behind, don't recognise the one in front?

 

Not quite half-way through the month, and that's me done for the year! Sixth-best year ever for posts, despite two and a half months off, in April-May, and July, but don't worry, there's too much in the short queue to quit now, maybe I'll have a quiet January!

B is for Building a Bibliography

While we're ticking through the Tente stuff, it would seem to be a good time to look at the construction corner of the library, one of the weaker wings as it happens, and while I believe there is a good book on the Spanish Tente and Exin Castillos, both owned by Exin Lines at one point, I don't have it yet, so mine are mostly the on the Kiddycraft thief from Bilund, Denmark!

 

This was the big boxed set by Dorling Kingdersley, published about fifteen years ago, but available remaindered for a fraction of the original cost for several years after, both volumes have been updated and enlarged in the last few years, with whatever WHSmith are now calling themselves (it's like watching a Diplodocus slowly dieing) currently selling the new, expanded figure-book for a tenner, while the history was republished a few years ago.

 

More personal books, about private projects or themes, two by Warren Elsmore, who has several more titles under his belt, the other also on architectural themes, Lego are now producing kits on the subject of these urban 'town house' types, a case of life imitating art!

 

Classic Sets, rebuilt!

 

Predating the boxed set, and also a DK tome, it too glosses over the theft of the design in the first place, but reveals a tractor model, so similar to the famous Airfix 'Fergie', you wonder who was copying who (the famous Aurora Spitfire controversy, and the Bergan-Beton mounted line), but realise the big-guys were all pretty ruthless and lacking in a level of morality, or ethics, which probably sent the smaller guys to the wall.

 

Latest member of the construction toy section, this is a more interesting work on the relationship/s, actual or imagined (by the authors) between construction toys, and their place in the 20th Century, as compared to the actions of the architects themselves, and has chapters on lesser makes, such as Minibrix, Lincoln Logs,  Bayko, or Triang's Arkitex, and the wackier examples like PlayPlax.

D is for Discovering Shire Albums in the Shire Library

Continuing with the meander through my collecting library, both for the general interest and/or hell of it, and as an illustrated bibliography which may or may not be of interest to readers, new or loyal, as to suggesting titles they might want to track down.

 

Shire Publications began with UK-specific travel and local geographic guides, known as the Discovering series, which I don't think ever got a full numbering system, even as they expanded into wider hobby interests, beginning with cultural/rural/folk stuff. That led to the larger format Shire Albums, which were renamed Shire Library when Osprey bought the intellectual property a couple of decades ago, now Osprey itself has been bought by Bloomsbury, and the future is unknown. Shire Albums were numbered more formally, and there are a couple of useful lists of early volumes, here;

Discovering series -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/discovering-series-shire.html 

Shire Albums -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/shire-albums.html

The main storage collection, as it stood about five years ago, these are the smaller Discovering series, with a few similarly formatted softback/pamphlet type publications. I don't know the full argot or jargon of book sizes, and as anyone who has a library will know, they creep in either height or depth by increments of millimetres, with hardbacks complicating things by having internal pages smaller than the dimensions of the whole 'box'. But both formats from Shire Publications were 'standard' sizes used by many other publishers/printers.

 

Here we see a MAP (Model [and] Allied Publications) guide to early plastic kits, which I mentioned while looking at the Burns guides in previous posts on the far right, and on the left a Hamlyn 'All Colour' guide to war-gaming on the left.

 

The Discovering's cover war-gaming and modelling, uniforms and militaria, artillery, horse-drawn transport and horse furniture, and while they are all small, are still very useful for research, especially when you are looking for something specific, or on the tip of an increasingly forgetful tongue (old age bites!), each is like a better illustrated Wikipedia page, you only need to reach for, no Googling lots of useless crap!

 

The larger format Shire Albums include an early tome by James Opie, and are in an even commoner format (A5), so we see an Argus Publishing plans book, and several self-published efforts, including the late John Clarke's diorama's, Britains [horse-]racing colours, and both the Spot On guide and overview of a private collection of cartoon die-casts are self-published, I think.

 

The Airfix history was one of the last new titles added to the Shire stable, numbered at 598, while the W&H list should be with the catalogues, where I have several more, it was a yearly thing for some years, I believe.

 

Added the next day - I thought there were a bunch missing! The core of the toy-related volumes are in the larger format Shire Album size, and here's their shot! 

 

Cropped out of a larger image we'll see in a future post, I grabbed this in the last few years, firstly because 'once you're collecting these things . . . ', and secondly I thought it might help ID some farm/Santon type stuff, and lastly, there is a bit of a costume sub-library in any case!

 

These were all issued as 'free gifts' in Military Modelling magazine, and used to be stapled into the centre-fold, but (with the exception of the one on top, which was a different size for some reason), they were all A5.

 

Private publications, there is very little in these which is still relevant or useful now, but they remain in the library, as all books should, in part as part of the history of the library, and against the concept of 'you never know'; always worth a flick if you're looking for something specific, like a code-number. I have no idea how many titles were issued in this private, or club (?) series?

 

Covers are different, contents are the same, -Album versus -Library.

 

Another MAP, they tended to be compendiums of material previously published in their stable of hobby magazines, and interesting to see an early publication from Pat Hammond, who would go on to become better known for his work on Hornby, Tri-Ang and Binns Road.

 

The MAP is an ex-library copy, both a useful source of old titles, and a guarantee of cheap-price, as true 'collectors' (Bibliophiles) don't rate them, so neither do the second-hand book trade!

 

 Four more minor publisher/self-published types, including more trams (all useful for manufacturers data), and three peripheral tomes, but it all builds the whole, and appendices often have useful stuff in them, lists of manufactures, or after-market (now 'garage') producers.

 

 More of the same.

 

One of the first of the new Library titles, and a useful little overview. Really belongs with the Atlantic Wall/Channel Island subsection of the military library, but should be with its brother volumes, a perennial problem when a figure or book sits firmly in two camps. Does it belong in Cake Decorations, or Ceremonials? Is it Fantasy or Medieval? Bought new, a few years ago, from Waterstones in Basingrad.

 

A visit to the secondhand bookshop in Alton, 2021.

 

Three titles I inherited, as I was sorting my late Mother's estate out, over the last few years, I have a subsection, or subsections on tiles and mosaic, so a useful work, while Shire Archaeology is a third series, running - to date - to 91 titles, listed here;

 

Shire Archaeology - https://www.librarything.com/nseries/15546/Shire-Archaeology

 

Three more interesting tomes, particularly the schools one, not something I have much on, in the library as a whole, an old ex-Public Library book on school architecture in the arts section, maybe? But an interesting read.

 

I don't know if anyone caught the history of Boarding Schools by Nicky Campbell, the Radio1 DJ, on Radio4 recently, but as someone shoved through that flawed and damaging system, I found it both poignant and nostalgic in equal measure.

 

Also inherited, these share one code in the partial numbering of Discovering's

Mum's own fields included furniture, silverware, and latterly oriental art and ceramics.

 

 Another visit to Alton!

 

The most recent but one visit, and seen before, we've also seen Horse Drawn Commercial Vehicles and a second edition of Antique Maps, from a visit this year. While 487, Garden Gnomes, has so far escaped me, but it's only a matter of time! Discovering Book Collecting is a good full stop to this post!