G is for Gardiner, Alison Gardiner

Another one shot in passing, back in February, at the NEC gift fair in Birmingham, these were both on the Alison Gardiner (who specialises in advent calenders) stand, but may both be imported from Coppenrath, (since 1768!) in Germany?

 

Nutcracker soldier tree-hangers.

 

Victoriana'esque nativity scene.

B is for Blow Job!

No! You can't even begin to pretend, you don't think it wasn't going to happen one day, because you know it was, Blow Job has been inevitable, from the founding of the blog! I found this rather interesting item at Sandown Park a month ago, and here it is for Loyal Readers to enjoy!

 

House Martin's eponymous blow-football game, 'Blow Football', our draughs set was by House Martin, when we were kids, and I seem to recall them providing games for newsagents or corner-shops, more than the dedicated toys shops or department stores (who's toy departments were always small, outside the 4th quarter), but that might be a personal memory/conclusion, rather than the truth of the situation.

 

 

The interest being these two, not only are they better-quality sculpts of the commonly Hong Kong sports set, with the 'five-ring' circus logo of the Olympic movement, but the better quality suggests a better quality set of all of them, somewhere, were they premiums at one point, before Hong Kong got their hands on them?

 

There's a tube missing if each player is to have one, and it won't be easy to replace, exactly, without a second set of the same game, but you never know, and maybe it's already in the loose odd's Blow Football section, of the stash?

 

The obvious difference between this set and others with figures (not all Blow Football games have figures), is that there is no handle or means /instructions for affixing them to such, so either you hold and move 'the goalkeepers' with the other hand, or just place them in from of the goal, and hope they stop some shots? 

My memories are that after a while, saliva tended to come out of the end of the tubes, and I'd imagine Blow Football has become a bit persona non grata, in these post-covid times? I should add, that I thought I'd posted more of these, back in the early days of the Blog, I certainly have several, so we will have to have a better look another day, as I can't find them on the blog now? There should be a couple of Merit versions, a Gibson and/or Spears, and a couple of more modern/generic ones?

L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Dr. Barnado's Collecting House

One of the odder things to have happened at a show, where coincidence often occurs, or things you are only half looking for, happen to turn up was, my purchase of this little piece of social history, manufactured in papier-mâché, it's actually survived remarkably well. Scaled to a vague 25/30mm and sitting well'ish with Airfix'x old Lineside houses - the Dr. Barnardo's collection-box!

Sadly a victim of the development (under Thatcher and the post-thatcher years) of a propensity to steal these, or similar collection vessels from counter tops, by swiping. You won't find any survivors still in use now, but when I was a kid, these were pretty ubiquitous, often sharing shelf or counter space with the collection 'jars' of several other charity causes. The few survivors tend to be substantial plastic, chained to the counter or a nearby wall, and usually a lone/chosen cause per-premises!

I wanted one because of the cross-over with the Britains Lilliput and other scenic accessories, by W. Horton (or Hugar?) and had just been discussing with Adrian, Christian and Gareth, the fact that I had been looking for one, without luck, for years, and that I'd never found one on evilBay, when I saw this (literally, seconds later) near-perfect one on Ann Evan's table for a reasonable sum, and immediately grabbed it, expecting the gods to tap me on the shoulder and demand their pound of flesh!

S is for Shot at the Show

As I prepare for today's toy fair at Sandown Park, one of those dozen-odd dates which help the collecting year click over, here's a nice game I shot at last May's show, Spear's Games 'Targets in Space', a clockwork automated shooting game, which is almost a miniaturised fairground sideshow booth!

 

It's all about the artwork with these old things, isn't it?!

 

Reproduced on the inside with the far-distant sky, cut out for the target-wheel.

 

A large clock mainspring, behind the metal plate, is wound via the butterfly-nut.

 

 

Eight targets with variable scoring, not exactly random as you would learn the sequence!

But you could change the cards around occasionally.

 

Not the best image, but an old auction shot shows the rather futuristic, and robust sidearm, with pretty lethal-looking metal-shafted darts, used to achieve the task of blowing alien critter transports off the ring, or at least, folding them behind it, on their spring-clips! 

 

I love the spaceman, he's that classic Ajax/Archer type with the rubber ducting for stretchy knees and elbows! Cheers to Adrian Little for letting me shoot the other shots.

W is for Welgar

Also in the Nabisco section of the folders (see previous post) was this from the 1950's, credited to Welgar, the original branding of the Shredded Wheat factory, Shredded Wheat being a US licensed product, which Nabisco bought, Shredded Wheat is now part of the Kraft group, while Nabisco is owned by Mondelēz. Welgar is a portmanteau word for Welwyn Garden [City], where the factory was established.

Part of a set, the rest can be seen here, but sadly only as thumbnails. I might cut these out one day and stand them up with a few Britains Polar Bears or something! Not really to scale, the two figures are around 60/70mm?

P is for Popup Games

Another new name encountered at the Toy Fair in Kensington back in January was Popup Games, a clever use of paper folding to produce games which can be taken with the players, mid-action, and carried on with at the other end [of the journey] by the simple expedient of opening the game up again, and finding the previous state of play popping-up, as it was left!

 

Ludus latrunculorum, latrunculi, or simply latrones ("the game of brigands", or "the game of soldiers" from latrunculus, diminutive of latro, mercenary or highwayman) was a two-player strategy board game played throughout the Roman Empire. It is said to resemble chess or draughts, as it is generally accepted to be a game of military tactics. Because of the scarcity of sources, reconstruction of the game's rules and basic structure is difficult, and therefore there are multiple interpretations of the available evidence.

 

- Wikipedia

Five Lines (Greek: πέντε γραμμαί, Romanized: pente grammai) is the modern name of an ancient Greek tables game. Two players each move five counters on a board with five lines, with moves likely determined by the roll of a die. The winner may have been the first one to place their pieces on the central "sacred line". No complete description of the game exists, but there have been several scholarly reconstructions, including Schädler's and Kidd's.

 

- Wikipedia

 

Tafl games, also known as Hnefatafl games, are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a chequered or latticed game board with two armies of uneven numbers.

 

- Wikipedia

As you can see from the Wiki' quotes, there is a pattern here, as well as being fold-away games, they are specialising in games which, while maybe not familiar to the man in the street, have been known to mankind for centuries, or millennia! I didn't see the Game of Ur, but it may only be a matter of time?

 

A more traditional game, instead of the playing pieces (which you will note were all figural), slotting down into a box-like structure, with the chess set, players get pieces with three-dimensional box-bases, where, provided one player keeps the boxes toward him and the other away, all will fold neatly, and tightly into the playing surface, at any point the game needs pausing.

 

Quite apart from the idea of folding games, and the plethora of ancient games re-imagined, there is also the ecological aspect of a 100% paper/card product, so I hope Popup Games do very well, and a couple of them rather reminded me of all those inter-war/post-war games like Tri-Tacktics and Dover Patrol.

 

Some pop-up retailers took the Popup URL a year earlier, so they can be found under the owners name, here;

https://www.hawcockbooks.co.uk/pop-up-games

Fer is for Philmar Phort!

I've almost (temporarily) lost my mojo, there's still too much happening IRL (as they say on anti-social media), which means there's a ton of stuff been piling-up over the course of the year, and it's mostly going to come out piecemeal rather than as show reports or donation posts, and this is a good example, I think it was in the first/earlier Sandown park stuff back in the late summer, a purchase from Mercator, I think.

 

The Philmar 'Toyland' Fort, a simple-enough, and quite sturdy cardboard fort in a game/puzzle type box which also provides a plinth-base for the pieces to be seated in. Colourfully printed in a definite toy-town style, it would look good with some of the stylised Wend-Al or Britains toy-town figures or (because of weight), probably better, with the Marx/Wilton 'Babes in Toyland' soldiers?

The base, turned-up . . . side-down (upturned!), and the components. Only twelve pieces, but there are still some fiddly moments in the construction, which could lead to unwanted folds, creases or dog-ears, if one isn't careful, so hopefully Mum or Dad would lend a helping hand!

Completed; the luckiest aspect is that the flag hasn't been bent or torn, often with these card toys, it's the flags which go first. Plenty of flat-topped surfaces for displaying figures, and once it's together, quite robust.

Paper sheet is a single sheet, folded in half, with a rather over-enhanced 'finished item' picture on the fourth side! I - typically - didn't follow the instructions, and had to undo a large portion to get the corner-tower to sit properly!

 

A quick sizer with 60mm (Pal/Athena), 45mm (Kleeware/Tudor Rose?) and 35mm (Kinder) bits I had to hand at the time of the photo-shoot! I think 30-35mm would be the best size for actual play, German flats for instance; its walls are really too high for the Airfix guards.

E is for Ephemera - Plastic Warrior Show 2024

I really shouldn't be blogging right now, far too much going on in real life, of far more importances, or worry! And I will apologise to Jon Attwood now for putting the remaining railway figure posts on hold, when we were quite near the end, equally I've got to put Peter and Chris's donation-plunder posts on hold too (although I have taken the images, they aren't sorted/cropped/collaged yet), and the show reports might be a month or two away right now (I haven't even started shooting the thematic stuff), but I will pick at low hanging-fruit when I get the chance/time, and this is a few bits from the show, which have been shot, of a more ephemeral nature!

 

I picked-up a few pieces of ephemera at the show, in the 'paper' rather than 'semi-lost' meaning of the word! With three new 'special publications' from the show's organisers, Plastic Warrior, a useful guide to Leyla farm models, covering both the hard and soft plastic, painted and unpainted with packaging and other bits, and another set of the card figures, I know I've posted - but can't now find - before.

 

The important detail of the last one being, that on the previous occasion, I think I showed them without a maker, as they had already gone-off to storage, this time I can tell you they are by, and called - Kardsmen by Mackenzie, that is John Mackenzie Models Ltd., of London, and dated to 1979.

Now, last time it was two ceremonial sets, if memory serves, and in storage from a fair-while ago, I think I may have two or three more sets which came from the second-hand booksellers' in Wantage, which were also ceremonial subjects (and may, or may not be/include duplicates of those seen here last time?), but these are clearly more belligerent in depiction, being the battle of Culloden, and on the reverse of the card is a hint at a more esoteric output;

• Nelson & Trafalgar
• The Royal Family
• Willian Shaspeear
• Black Watch Pipe Band (seen here?)
• King Henry VIII
• Queen's Guards (see here?)
• Royal Marine Band (possibly in storage?)
• Guards Band (seen here?)
• Yeoman Warders (possibly in storage?)

Which is quite a touristy/museum gift-shop type listing, I think you'll agree? As I say, I can't find the previous mention, which I think was a show report, possibly Sandown, or the London show, but when I find them, probably while looking for something else, I'll tag them to join these. The plastic bases always seem to be the same bright mid-green.

So, to the three specials, they are quite different from each other, being a technical treatise on the vagaries of engraving moulds and cutting detail into the tool halves and such-like (specifically, working 'in reverse' on the tools, not the masters), a more conversational piece on the early figurative Herald artwork and artists, both slim volumes, and a more substantial run through the Britains catalogues from 1965 to 1971, with reminisces of the author's thoughts at the time, and opinions now!

 

All penned by Peter Cole, with Chris Hawkins co-authoring the work on engraving, and both Barney Brown and John Rafferty helping with the artwork volume. While two are Britains specific, the third, technical work, is a wider look at how certain things might have been done to various early British-made figures.

They are available separately or as a package from Plastic Warrior (details below), and all proceeds will go to putting-on the next show (as I am reliably informed "I suppose we'll have to do another next year" due to the success of this year's!), because, let's face it, the subscription to the quarterly mag' is pretty-much 'at cost' given the prices of printing and post these days, so dig-deep, to support the hobby.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts 

Blog. - http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/ 

eMail - pw.editor3@gmail.com (pw.editor@ntlworld.com) 

Tel. - 01483 830 743

Finally less ephemeral, yet more so, and possibly needing a new entry/folder in whatever information storage and retrieval system you possess, if you haven't already done so from the back pages of Philip Dean's book on Wend-Al, is this, from when they wound-up the aluminium production and took to flocking in a big way, a Timpo ape with ball (as supplied by Prindus (Prison Industries) ?), beautifully flocked by a flocking flocker (well, you can't resist the opportunity when it arises!) and in Wendan packaging - presumably; Wend Animals as opposed to Wend Aluminium?

A is for Alphagraphics, Brumtrams, Howard Scenics, MA Arts, Nimbus, S&D, Streetscape and others, and errr . . . Follow-up!

We had a couple of items from this stable (MA Arts) in one of the card bus posts over the Christmas season, and another (Nimbus) in Brian Berke's follow-up submission, then I found I'd missed the Alphagraphics folder, only to notice that the multi-brand 'thing' I had pointed-out in the blurb, went further, and it seems Aphagraphics were the print-arm, and sort of central HQ for a whole-bunch of after-market and 'garage' producers through the 1980/90's.

 

I really can't be arsed to go back and add what would be both complicated and duplicate notes to those two posts, so I'll just add all the brands to this post as Tags, add Alphagraphics to the existing Nimbus post and then both the other posts will appear with these in future searches, as relevant!

1:43rd scale (Märklin's standard O-Gauge is 1:43.5) stuff, as well as HO-OO, resin and whitemetal products, as well as card/paper, it's your one-stop shop for scene-enhancing, limited production or esoteric subject-matter, civilian/model railway stuff!

 

Omen . . . geddit? O-gauge men! And the second time that particular play on words has been used in the hobby I think, or am I confusing it with Keymen?

 

Alternate packaging, remember we've already seen the larger sheets and the post-cards, decent model railway shops used to have this stuff hung, stacked or stuffed into every corner of the shop, and we'll never be able to list them all, as some were produced by the guy down the lane, who only came in with new stock a couple of times, before he "...sort of disappeared from the hobby"!

 

Another catalogue.

Single-deckers and smaller minibuses.

Modern double-deckers

More historical models or liveries.

It's very hard for me to produce much blurb on things I know so little about, beyond getting it up here so it's not lost to the Internet generation, but if anyone does know more, perhaps they can enlighten the rest of us in the comments, not because I'm begging for comments, that's other-people's shtick, but because if it isn't passed-on, it's lost.

T is for Two - Marx Fort Bits

A couple of bits I scanned last night while looking for other things, and while I could have sworn we'd seen this first one here already, I can't find it under the 'Marx', 'Forts', 'Paper' or 'Cardboard' Tags, so I must have posted it on Faceplant and then lost it somewhere?

No matter, fresh scan, these actually look a bit flimsy against the card building kits Britains was doing around the same time, but that may have something to do with scale, they are a bit larger, and are probably unique to Marx Swansea and the UK? A fort and Hospital, scaled for the Playpeople (Playmobil under licence), and it's interesting that in the blurb they are called 'Little People' which was actually a Fisher Price thing.

 

For years, I'd never encountered these or their remnants in the wild, so, wondered if they were they ever issued, this is from the 1978 catalogue, and '76-80 (the same years the Playpeople were available) is what you might call the interregnum, no; 'drawn-out death', with Dunby-Combex at the helm, and while some stuff did get out, it was all a bit hit-and-miss? However, I have now/since seen them on evilBay, so they did happen!

 

At a figure-height of 7.5cm things made for Playmobil could/can be used with larger toy soldiers and model figures.

Just the scan of the instructions for the Miniature Masterpiece forts, which we looked at here. It's a bit tatty, but might be useful to print out, if you're selling one without an instruction sheet?

15th - I did find it and it is now Tagged-up the same as this one, so it's now on the Blog twice, but that's just how it rolls sometimes!

F is for Forts

A couple of 'seen elsewhere's and a more recent scan from . . . probably Military Modelling, I can't remember! Forts and things, mostly wooden, all scanned from the archive.

Some confusion over this one, I thought it had come from the James Chase collection and been supplied to Plastic Warrior at the same time I got mine, but in fact it was an A. Hood of Cumbria, who sent it to PW (issue 62, 1997!), my cutting (with surrounding articles) came into my possession around 2005/6? I thought it was probably die-cut, printed, pressed hardboard, but Mr. Carrick reports that they are individual slats tacked into place, probably box-wood or a similar knotless-softwood?

 

This was in the James Chase ephemera, and I think it's a FAO Schwarz catalogue, but I can't swear to it, as there was a fair bit of SS Kresege stuff as well. And we have the Crescent Hollow-cast, Tudor Rose (?), Lido et al., here as T Cohn, wild west figures, with those comedic pot-bellied cannons which can fire both matchsticks and BB pellets! The fort and rock emplacements are tin-plate.

 

While this is card, and designed for displays/shelf backgrounds, with a shallow countenance and two shelf-battlements, I don't know what happened to CTA, but they advertised for a while in the modelling press, around the turn of the 1980's?

 

And as a bonus, to bring a bit of colour to a grey post, here's an old Hamley's catalogue page from 1972, with a mix of commercial (Britains [riding school], Exin [fairy-tale castle] and Blue Box [garage, I think, or Fisher Price?]) and more locally sourced/craft stuff in wood, ply I suspect, certainly for the slot-together Western fort, not so sure about the medieval castle, while the farmyard is probably that pressed hardboard.

A is for obviously, how could it possibly be anything else but, of course - "Avon Calling!"

I've scanned these 1:1, but have no idea how they will show on your system, and being press-out, it's not that clear where you will be required to cut, should you chose to try and make one, but I've darkened the instruction side to try and make it a little clearer, and the things to get 'really' right are the four slots in the engine tubes.

It's naff, it's very simple, and it was sold as a Christmas 'mobile', still, it probably made someone very happy way back when (1980), and was apparently supplied by Ccai Como, which sounds Italian? And it's a robot, so no scale, it can be a mile long or a nano! Avon calling, but not the 2nd Captain of the Liberator, although the walls are just as cardboard!

And - speaking of the BBC, for it was they - apparently as part of their maths programme; they made 4 (or 14?) 'Print & Do' Starships? Anybody know anything about that?

R is for Return - or Not? Palitoy-Parker Horse of the Year Game, Anyway!

Something weird seems to be going on, with me and/or my blog, I'm absolutely sure we've actually looked at these twice now, horses and riders only, once briefly as a foursome, once in more depth with variations, which should all be on the Palitoy and/or Parker Tags, but coming a few days after I couldn't find the Jungle flat set I was equally sure I had posted, I now can't find hide nor hair, of raiders or beasts, anywhere on the blog?

 

It doesn't matter as we are about to look at them anyway, but I would have shot more images of the riders, if I knew I wasn't going to find the posts I thought were here, and while I can understand accidentally not tagging one post (which may have happened with the jungle set?), nor noticing it isn't tagged as it makes its way down the front page over days or weeks, I can't believe I would do it three times, twice with the same set?

 

First, let's hear it for the anonymous sender (it was 2021, and I've lost any record of it) who packed this to defeat the best efforts of Parcel Farce and Royal Fail to totally destroy it, but it's the large things with a full wrap of bubble which do tend to survive against the tendency of smaller things to get massacred!

 

Issued under both Parker and Palitoy branding (in that order - I think?), it was the BBC coverage of The Horse of the Year Show back in the 1970's to which I was referring last time, and this set clearly sold well as there's never a shortage of them going cheapish on feebleBay, and well worth the purchase if you also have/collect the Britains gymkhana/show jumping stuff. Although the playing-board is more cross-country/three-day-eventing than a London arena!

 

The fences which look closest to Britains, giving a real variety with full interchangeability between the two end-types, flat and angled, and the various ways you can arrange the boards or poles, along with a gate. Makes you think what you could do with Britains white gate and the wall sections it clips into.

I arranged these as a triple, but they can go anywhere on the board, the little one could also be used for the Britains kids on the Shetland Ponies, in a proper gymkhana! Or, you could put it just in front of the taller lattice-ends one to make a longer-reach jump? Officially, jumps have type-names, and I'm probably inventing stuff which wouldn't be allowed!

The wall and the water, there is one permanent water jump printed on the board, but you can place another one, somewhere else. I haven't played the game, but it seems to be a simple progression through 'jeopardy' cards and dice. I just wish I'd shot the riders better, it is a figure Blog! Still, an excuse to return to them another day, unless the missing posts 'turn up'?!!

 

Riders are a dense/stiff PVC, with one-each of another military (Britains post the other day), police, hunter's pink and female types, while the jumps are all polystyrene and the water-jump is card.