A is for Arboraceous Articles of Actual Aboriginal American Art

Mostly seen elsewhere a while ago, it's about time for a regular'ish re-visit to Totem Poles, with some recent incomers which may or may not have been seen here too in contribution or show-report posts? And I notice we've slid over the 377 'next' target, so it's officially the fourth-best year for posts here, but I won't reach 468 in a month, so that's as good as it gets this year!

Bullyland

A quite rigid PVC-replacement polymer, with slightly cartoony wings.

 

Elastolin

Composition, but really quite well made/finished, so I suspect a late production model, perhaps even manufactured after the plastic figures started coming in?

Landi - Chromoplasto

A quite bendy rubber, possibly silicon or a mastic?

Unknown

And I'm guessing from the remains of paper and glue on the underside of the base that it's probably French and from a boxed set/window-box type thing, but it's only a hunch, and it could be a tourist thing or Hong Kong? It's a rather nice one, quite realistic?

 

Stackable shot glasses!

Found on the wibbly-wobbly-way! 

Clear or coloured glass and aping the old cereal premiums!

Speedwell

I used to think this was Cherilea, don't know why, and then nearly wrote 'belived to be' Speedwell, but there's a really nice boxed one in Plastic Warrior's special publication 'The Book of Speedwell', so that's that cleared-up then! Ask about a copy;

 

Here: http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/ (Blogger)

 

Or here: https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior (Faceplant)

Canadian tourist piece, I shot this through the window of a camper-van in Fleet's Church Road car park, only for a slightly irate man (with several kid's in tow) to accost me as I headed for Sainsbury's; "Problem?" he demanded, "Oh, is that your van?" I said, "Yes!" say he, "I was just photographing the totem-pole", says I, showing him the close-in shot still visible in the viewscreen, "Oh, OK . . ." he said, almost in disappointment, and walked off without a care as to why, obviously the mere act of photographing a totem pole in public made me one of the good guys! It looks to be a fibre-reinforced nylon or 'styrene?

 

A line-up of stuff we have mostly, previously seen here in show-reports, contribution posts and/or charity-bag plunder coverage, and from the left;

• Marx Miniature Masterpiece
• Starlux - small size
• x2 Argentine copies of Atlantic (new to Blog?)
  
• Wend-Al (cast aluminium)
• Cherilea
• The Speedwell from above
• A stumpy resin/'polystone' tourist lump
• Hong Kong Britains Herald copy

This is the third of these 'I-know-but-I-don't-know's this year, and we did manage to remember one in the end, but I can't remember which one or why, and will probably forget it again next time!

 

I definitely know what these are (toob/tub set inclusion / sobre / cereal premium?) and who they're by, but can I remember? It's on the dongles somewhere, they were ID'd on the Internet years ago, possibly on a blog which may have disappeared?

I believe there are four different runners, each issued separately as a whatever, brackets above, and in various colours, of which these are the commoner. The green one seems more common than the others; I have seen/handled several over the years, but I have three totems loose somewhere, one possibly in blue or a darker brown? They might have been on the blog? Equally unknown/unremembered if they were!

I have a feeling they could be Spanish, but I might be making that up, and French bazaar would fit the bill, but I'm pretty sure they aren't Montaplex . . . so if anyone can remind us, it would be a weight off my mind!

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 -

Welp, it seems to be Rack Toy Month already! But I've the Sandown sequence to finish first, just a few composition figures I picked up as samples or to compare with those in my existing collection.

 

Three - in khaki - marked NB for Nazaire Beeusaert, the Belgian composition maker and a fourth - sailor - who may be from the same maker, but is unmarked and a little smaller, so he may be another Belgian maker, they had several manufacturers who shared a certain style?

A Zang to check against the existing sample behind, and in front two which I was told were TAG, and may have shown here as TAG? Except I don't think they are, any more, TAG's seem to be larger, better detailed models, so these two are probably one of the other early British composition makers?

An unknown prisoner (who probably doesn't go with the Mountie, but 'goes' with him quite well here!), with his hands tied behind his back (possibly Italian?), and, errr, a Mountie! The Mountie is Durolin, from Germany, and I'd happily accept any help with ID on the seated Westerner?

He's quite rough and looks cheap, his paint a water-soluble thing, which has soaked and spread into it's not very dense composition, which almost has the feel of old egg-boxes, but isn't papier-mâché as far as I can tell?

 

And a few close-ups of the RCMP figure and his base mark, in the best traditions of learning something new every day, or whenever you can (life-long learning!), I was today-years-old when I learnt that in French they are the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada or G.R.C., which may be the 'R' on the left side of the saddle-cloth, with MP on the other side for Mounted Police, but a quick google-search only confused, with various saddle-cloth marks including a badge, but MP on both sides seeming commonest?

C is for Canoes - 19 - Dorset Models RCMP

Brian had a hankering for a Royal Canadian Mounted Police canoe, and when he couldn't find a decent premade one, he bought a casting or two and painted-up his own! Inspired by the books, comics and annuals of his childhood . . .

"When I was a lad watching TV in the 50's & 60's there was a rule that only movies of a certain vintage could be shown on TV, nothing recent if there was any chance of renting them out to the Cinemas that ran old films, the Rerun Houses.

What was shown were old 30's films with the RCMP bringing law and order plus songs to the frontier. As a result of that imagery, also covers of pulp magazines and some old schoolboy adventure books of my Dad's I developed a romantic view of early American explorers using birch bark canoes."

 

 

He chose the ex-Dorset Models casting, now part of Imperial Miniatures, to which order he added an RCMP and Native paddlers. I can't add much, so enjoy the images!

 

Many thanks again to Brian for all his Canoe stuff, there are a few more posts in the queue, but I've pulled one or two and need to have a rethink, but still more to come . . . !

U is for Uniform Info!

The title of a favorite page in the old Military Modelling magazine (which I believe has recently announced it's demise?), but absolutely fitting to this post.

I have found among my mothers possessions all sorts of things she never mentioned, one of which was this, which I initially assumed was Great Aunt Nina's (my mother's GA, I'm not sure what her relation to me is, great aunt once removed, great-great aunt?), better known as Helena Hall, an artist/designer who worked with Eric and Gordon Gill and others of that late Arts & Craft/ early Modernist movement in Sussex, but it's not really her style (I have a lot of her work from my Mother's late cousin Betty (of odd jobs in occupied Vietnam!)), so I suspect it's actually the work of John Henry Sheren Hall, one of my Grandfather's brothers.

He was a known naive artist (also of Suffolk) but these are quite different from his pastels and watercolours, so, because I'm not sure, and know nothing else about it, I'm just putting them up here for the figure modellers and painters, as they are clearly studies from the 1900-30's (some clues suggest pre-WWI and no later that 1922 - the amalgamation of the two Life Guard's regiments?) of uniforms, mostly colonial-ceremonial, but one or two fit WWI era regular barrack/parade-dress.

There are other things in the sketch book, none signed, which we will look at another day, and the book itself is tiny, an imperial size closest to modern A6 or A7 (or 'policeman's notebook') which made it easy to crop them all at the A4 setting, and is a 36 leaf George Rowney 'Cartridge Ring Bound' (No.7268) undated, but it might help date them.

The sketches are all pen & ink with some having added colour, probably watercolour, or thinned gouache? I hope you enjoy; I think they are rather lovely.

12th Lancers

7th Dragoon Guards (left), 60th (Royal American) Regiment of Foot (right)?

60th was AKA the Kings Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC)

Generic Line Infantry officer

Gordon Highlanders (left), 17th lancers (right)

8th Hussars (left), Gordon Highlanders (right)

Generic Infantry of the line private (left) - a popular pose at the time?

42nd Highlanders 'The Black Watch' (right)

 

I would say these two are better sketches - anatomically - than the rest and may be taken from statues, cigarette cards or something similar?

2nd Life Guards (left) - stable dress? 13th Hussars (right)

The 13th amalgamated with the 18th 'Royal' Hussars after WWI

Field Artillery (left), unknown Guardsman and mascot (right)

The artilleryman's uniform suggests either pre-WWI or Mesopotamian campaign?

 

Again these are superior draftsmanship and may be static studies against the from-life sketches of the majority, his legs and shoulders are distinctive in the majority of the drawings, here they look more 'professional'?

Horse Guards (left), 1st life Guards (right)

16th Lancers

2nd Life Guards

Unknown . . . infantry mess-dress?

Ditto

17th Lancers (left), Royal Canadian Dragoons (right)

Typical - most interesting sketch . . . no notes!

Got to be ANZAC?

Or Southern African units/native 'horse'/militias?

Coldstream Guards (left), RHA (right)

These two are still with us pretty-much unchanged.

C is for Christmas Exhibition - 1 of 5 - Construction Blocks

The Fleet & Crookham Local History Group had got their Christmas exhibition up and running the next time I visited after mentioning it the other day week, and I duly shot it for posterity and our annual visit, which starts here!

This year they had a themed display on each shelf, concentrating on construction toys, ancient and modern and I will be looking at each shelf on a separate post to limit the images to manageable 'lumps'

It's not just Lego that copied (stole, pirated . . . ) the Hestair Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks of Hilary Page, many other clones have come and gone, some compatible some [deliberately?] not, while the search for an alternate system also goes-on, K'nex having come closest so far.

The top shelf of this seasons display contains various other makes, and here we see (from the left) a Minibrixs signal box for O-guage model railway layouts (11), a farm loader (or 'tele-porter') from Click Brick (6) and a Kreo 'Transformer' (1) and one imagines there was no more care paid to a Transformers license as there was to a Lego (or Kiddicraft) license!

Sta-Lox soft-plastic polyethylene bricks come from the former colonies (Canada) and we all seem to have had a few kicking-about in the toy zone when we were kids, although I suspect a fair few of them were actually Hong Kong sub-copies, or locally produced under license by Merit or Peter Pan or someone like that? They were meant to represent real house-bricks, they made better stone forts (as here) and were quite useful, if you wanted something simple, in red, as that was the extent of their invention!

Ignore the blue thing, that's Lego on the shelf below (next post) and starting with the tractor (2); we have products from an unknown contract manufacturer for My Toys/Kandy Toys, an importer seen here at Small Scale World a few times now, a mini-jeep/ATV and gun, also from Click Brick (3), with modern architecture (well, when I say 'modern', I mean a mid-century/post-war, Bauhaus/post-modern Walter Gropius style of modern!) in the centre, from Bell (8), Merit (J&L Randall) would inherit the moulds, and there are both Spanish and Italian copies or licensed-versions of this simple polyethylene, stacking, infant toy.

Behind it is an Ice Castle from Mega Blocks (also Canadian - 13), with a pirate ship from K'nex with the new(-'ish) blocks bringing it closer to Lego (12) off to the left, Click Brick's tele-porter in front. While going right we have a Block Tech (Poundland, The Works etc...) Rock Drill (4) with a Wilco (also Block Tech - as contractor) dinosaur in the background, there's another, baby one on the corner.

We finish with Airfix's Eurofighter Typhoon (9) and Character Options Challenger Tank (14) with two from Nano Blocks - Big Ben and Tower Bridge, a sort of half-scale or miniaturised Kiddicraft/Lego block system from Japan (5).

A look back down the shelf for a better angle on one or two of them, the gun and dinosaur are probably better in this shot.

Still on display in Fleet library.

M is for Mail Away - Kellogg's Jungle Safari

Another one with a bit of a story behind it, I first became aware of this as a mail-away credited to Canadian Kellogg's, I think - from the images I downloaded at the time - it was an evilBay lot, from the time when the images had long tedious numbers, I knew it was from 1964 and that it looked a bit cool, but probably relatively unattainable!

Then in a mixed lot a while ago I got a paler yellow tiger with a long split down the side and no mechanism, but it gave me hope that it must have been issued here too?

And at Sandown the other day, I picked this up! It's been totally de-labeled so no clues in what I believe is otherwise the original mailing carton, it's missing three 'bullets' and their accompanying section of runner but is otherwise complete.

You get an alligator/crocodile (they don't explain the difference and indeed, conflate the two on the instruction sheet) and hippopotamus rhinoceros - well . . .  it looks more like a hippo'! Alongside which are the three 'big' cats; lion, tiger and leopard.

The hunter (can you imagine what the Daily Wail would have to say if this turned-up in a cereal pack today!) has a standard press-in, click-lock, spring-loaded firing mechanism and I suspect was the only piece pre-assembled upon delivery by the Postie?

Each animal (if you hadn't already worked it out, but the blurb has to come from somewhere!) has a rubber-band powered 'mouse-trap' trigger which when hit by a bullet throws the unfortunate 'trophy' up in the air!

Interestingly, it looks as if the crocogator-allidile was considered for posing facing the other way, with a vestigial trigger-hole on the other side of its face?

And the Canadian set I saw back in 2013 had a different colour-set, but not opposite to mine, so they must have been on one tool, run in both colours, taken off the runners and paired-up before despatch, however, whatever the mix, each animal seems meant to have the opposite colour trigger.

The set comes with instructions that double as a play-mat and are half the size of a duvet cover (dimmer members of the PSTSM should be advised that's an attempt at humour, not an accurate description), which having been folded to the size of a mint-in-pack paper serviette; has instructions to the end-user suggesting they iron it out flat again!

I don't know which cereal brand Kellogg's attached this to, but good-old Cornflakes are the obvious first base? And the Canadian set had a more substantial mailing-box of double-skinned, corrugated-card; rather than the heavy manila of mine. Also it (the Canadian one) seems to have been mailed from/by a Rattle O.K. (or D.K.?) on behalf of Kellogg's Premiums, London, Ontario (now closed).

Scoring is as random as the Lone Star shooting-set we've seen recently!

News, Views Etc . . . Not Really Resting!

I've added some listings and company details to the Selcol-Selmer page and edited it a bit . . . and yesterday found this useful stash of stuff on downloadable/savable .pdf files;

Canadian Museum of History - toy catalogues.

Now I'm off to enjoy the last of today's sun in the garden . . . Ray! Gardening . . . not-so-ray! Well, I love gardening, but it's bramble-pulling this 'arvo! And nettles!

M is for Massive Mounties

This post includes a few shots from ebay, for research purposes, cropped and manipulated, in order to show the full range of these figures, along with some Adrian at Macator Trading let me photograph and my own damaged sample...

Reliable of Canada; 'Mounties'! Obviously their Tourist draw like our Guards, and therefore plenty of keepsakes available including the Britains figures (and others) repackaged. This is about as big as they get (although I'm sure larger statuettes have been produced at some point by someone?).

I suspect the gold lanyards are the earlier versions and note that one is site-specific to Fort Erie...again I imagine there are others out there?

Close-ups of the various base treatments, the yellow RCMP being glued on. The gold lanyard versions are also the ones with the cursive logo while the [later?] other ones have an engineers stamped marking.

Just remember - before investing - other 6" figures are available! Don't know who is responsible for the left-hand figure...is it a HK (or other) piracy of the Airfix kit? That lance looks familiar, as do the glued-on gloves, but he's clearly in pink (sun-faded red) polystyrene under the paint.

The Alymer premium/counter-top advertising/display model has the best face and seems to be drawing his 'piece' (do Canadians say that?) to exersie restraint on a ne'er-do-well! And while he has a 'brand', I suspect someone else made him and I don't know who either.

I should add that Reliable did a nice Indian alongside the Mountie, who is as common and comes in as many varieties...we'll look at him another time maybe...when I've bought a couple! I should also add these are all factory-painted hard styrene hollow 'kit' mouldings.

C is for Canucks

No time for pictures tonight and continuing with the theme of the last post, here are two remembrance day related posts (a day late!), both from Canada, a large number of who's soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice carrying out their feint, probing raid, reconnaissance in strength - call it what you will - at Dieppe in the Second World War, to help buy our freedoms - may the gods grant restfulness to their souls.

Paper

wraps

Stone