E is for East of India

Another non-toy company whose products had a bit of a Christmassy vibe, also shot at the Birmingham gift fair, but crafty fun, and no polymer in sight, bar a few rabbit-sized, dungaree-buttons!

 

There's something of the primative votive about these.

 

Cake decorations?

 

Felt tree-hangers.

 

There were several displays of 'The Boos'

 

Nativity figures, so generic, you can't tell which is Mary or Joseph?

 

Boos . . .

 

Animals . . .

 

. . . and more Boos!

T is for Two - Cake Guards!

Actually by the end of the post we'll have seen five lots from at least three sources, but we're concentrating on two recent additions to the pile, both from the 'plastic smalls' end of the spectrum, so we'll just give the PTSM a few moments to grind their chairs and leave the room . . . Hairband! Your satchel . . . Sell - I saw that . . . Stadinger - I heard that! Right, that's better; fancy not rating plastic smalls, they lose-out on so much!

These are quite early I think (like inter-war period maybe, or just after the 2nd? 3rd on the horizon; thanks Putin, if anyone could trump both 2020 AND 2021!), and are either a phenolic resin or an early unstable polystyrene, both losing colour and starting to faintly blister on the flat areas, but, still - how cool!

Sort of French Wellingtonian line-infantry - with the buttons up the seam of the trousers - and fitted for novelty/party candles to be placed in their hats.

Lemon Madeira cake I think? It was a while ago!

The other set are a tad smaller, and while I thought they might be copies of Airfix when I first saw them, and Britains Eyes-Right after they arrived, I actually think they are channeling the later, taller Charbens bandsmen, which should mean there's a trumpeter out there still to find, for a set-count of six?

Painted as a US marching band (they came from America) with white trousers, there may be a darker painted version for the UK market or Denmark (do the Danish have cake decorations - a very under-covered subject; cake decorations?), and I think they may be after, or the donors for, the bright-coloured set we looked at here, which would mean I'm looking for (or might be looking for) a standard bearer, rather than the extra brass instrumentalist?

Quite short spikes (or 'picks') on the earlier set and only the one design as far as I know . . . I only have the four? While it took me an hour or two to realise the pick for the second set (hard polystyrene) could be removed from the soft polyethylene figures.

Unfortunately the Frenchies went to storage before the other set were found, so they are missing from these comparisons, but you can judge them from the cork in the previous shot.

Here on the left we have various cake decoration ceremonials, from Gemodels, Wilton in the 'States (copies of Marx's sculpts from the Disney production Babes in Toyland) and the recent addition, which might also be Wilton, but could be someone else - Carousel, Grandmother Stovers, SSCO &/or-etc.

On the right the newer one compared with one of the standing cake Guards we saw here, the one in the shot arriving yesterday in a nice lot from Peter Evans, and triggering my getting this out of the long-queue and dusting it off for publishing!

It's a scone (rhymes with song) not a scone (rhyming with stone).

And don't forget the wooden set!

And the funnies!

The next day - I found another image while preparing today's post! I think it might be the seller's original shot, it's better than the others anyway! You can see the beginnings of the same distortions/decay some of those F&G clowns suffer from, which might even be a clue as to the origin?

C is for Cake Candle Carriages

This has been sat in Picasa since we last looked at mini-trains (about a year ago?), Brian sent me the last image (below) as a follow-up, and I nearly ran it a few days later but wasn't happy with the Festival photo's, so dug the 'here' lot out and combined them with the storage lot, and then sort of lost interest . . . as you do sometimes? Anyway, mojo back now and time for this lot to leave the laptop and go and live on the archive-dongles, via the Blog!

Ancient and modern; the newer one behind and an older 1970's one in front, probably from the same source although I've got evilBay images of several different packaging/brands . . . and yes; the pale-orange wagon in the middle should be pink - a perfect example of the opposite-origin to a 'smoke free house'!!

The older one is manufactured from polystyrene with nylon or polypropylene wheels, and you can see the engine has undergone some discoloration as well, but the others seem to have fared better. The coupling is a hook-under-slot design.

Close-up with a pretty bog-standard 'Made in Hong Kong' mark.

The newer train (still available if you search-about I think?) is all polypropylene and the roof sections can be lifted-off the four circus-wagon coaches, not a practical solution to anything cake or birthday-related, but a method of allowing for two colours and a fancier design!

Each roof is attached to a pair of circus animals which, from the left are; tiger, lion, polar bear and blob!

The blob started life (in my head) as a bearded-lady, or - after further study - a mermaid, but is in fact, I suspect, meant to be a monkey?

The locomotives with their cow-catchers already put the trains firmly over the pond as far as operation goes, but in addition the clerestory-papoose wagons bringing-up the rear are also very North-American, and follow the role of our 'guards/brake' wagon. Indeed the external steps down to low platforms are an American design feature too.

You can see how the wheels follow the earlier design but are not identical and the coupling as changed to a hook an eye, but I still think they are from the same source as they follow both number of items and colour of items rules.

Moving away from the larger train brings us to the old George Musgrave design, also a candle carrier, but a much smaller scale; paint it khaki and you could use it as a troop train with micro-armour . . . at a touch!

We have looked at this one before, but more (Hong Kong copies) have come in so a quick recap. The Festival packaging in the background and an extended train in the middle-ground - mostly from my brother and my childhood's cakes! The cellophane bag has a Hong Kong piracy as is the little pink tank-loco to the front-centre.

A point to note here is that the Festival train will only take the very thin 'austerity' candles of post-war Britain while the HK trains take the current 'fat-boys'! The two trains making-up the bulk of the post - however - take both sizes and the larger Christmas candles for those heat-powered mobile tinkley-brass things (look again at the papoose wagons).

The passenger wagons from the colony are a tad smaller (and more colourful) but otherwise the same, pointing to some pantography, but the 'Wild West' locomotive is a re-design with a slimmer but taller chimney-stack and forward-set lantern, the whole being elongated slightly with larger gaps between the wheels.

I don't know if the tank-engine is a copy of a Festival model or something more original thought-up by the chaps in Hong Kong (it could be a scale-down of the Lone Star Tripple-O train tank-loco?), but I don't remember - as a kid - seeing anything other than the large 'Wild West' one, of which we also had a blue one which has long-gone to the great turntable in the sky!

In a different league altogether, and carrying no candles! From the shininess of the tracks I assume a modern casting, but probably from old Nuremberg-flat moulds, and I'm not sure if it's 'Der Adler' (the Eagle - Germany's 'Rocket') or just a generic early dampflok (one of those brilliant German words like krankenhause or krankenwagen which tells you exactly what it means!), and sent to the Blog by Mr. Berke as a follow-up to the previous micro-train post.

It's just charming! Although I'm not sure I'd want the job of human bridge-gauge!

T is for Two - Novelty Sets

Sometimes stuff comes in which is worth more than a glance in a 'show report' but which won't make a decent 'headline' post, for which the 'T is for . . . ' trope sort of happened, one day. These two definitely fall into the category of novelty shite, but in a way which guarantees that some of you would give them house-room . . . as I have!

Anyone who collects large scale space is going to say yes to robots and aliens, even if they have large holes in their heads! Copywrite to Wilton in Illinois, but happy also to claim Hong Kong for their origin, they are novelty cake candle-holders.

These will be contract manufactured in the colony for the American firm, what is now known as 'OEM' (original equipment manufacturing) contracting, back then it would have been 'exclusive' of some kind; commissioner exclusive, exclusive contract, something like that, it just means the contracting company is not allowing a generic run of 'their' product; not 'made by' Wilton, but made for Wilton - and nobody else.

Mr Men pencil tops, along with the candle-holders these were a find at May's Sandown Park toy fair, where I was supposed to be having a quite time after PW, a fortnight earlier, but still managed to find 17 rack toys, these two lots and a handful or other stuff!

I recognise Mr Tickle and Mr Bump and suppose the yellow one to be Mr Happy, but I haven't a clue as to the green one - Mr silly hat? Oh! Is he Mr Silly, there was one, wasn't there?

I have to confess they sort of passed me by as a kid; we had Beatrix Potter to learn to read (new one; once you could read the last one through, out loud), then it was on to Victor and Valiant comics with their cruiser-tanks and Messerschmitt fighters, or Look & Learn , Tell Me Why, and World of Wonder!

What I really like about these is the stands, why don't you always get stands with a set of pencil tops?  I wondered if maybe they were damaged spring-jumpers, but there's no sign-of or place for either a spring or a sucker.

T is for Two . . . actually six!