B is for Bunk House

I mentioned in the first part of the Wild West plunder from last month's Plastic Warrior show plunder posts, that I'd got a post in Picasa's 'long queue' on the subject of the orange log-cabins. In fact, it was down in 1971 with the rest of the RTM stuff, and as a fortuitous post elsewhere has just covered them in passing, we might as well have them now - it's nice when a plan comes together!

 

 

Three of the boxes I found in the garage, when I was sorting everything back in 2021-'23, and combining (or part combining!) garage and attic with bedroom stuff, and the large number of purchases I was making at the time (a story for another day).

 

With the heavy box being all the Skybirds and similar, while the middle one is just loose Greeks in sets and part sets, conforming to known runner ('sprue') layouts, but the other one is the 'small scale' log-cabin, in orange polyethylene, with about 12 complete and a dozen or so spares to which, two ends are obviously about to be added, in the above image!

 

I've used small-scale in inverted commas as it's only turned-up in sets with larger figures, but is ideal as a bunk house for 20-25mm US cavalry or ACW scenarios, although it can equally be used for a gold-rush trading post, or mine accommodation, even a Midwest, claim-stake shack. Josey Wales, turf roof, porch made out of barrels?

 

And it comes in various shades of orange, from a quite dark mandarin or Chinese Orange (my favourite shade of Windsor & Newton gouache!), through to a bright, almost international 'emergency' orange, with wishy-washy versions.

 

Now, Ed just added a set to his collection with one of the log cabins in it, ascribed to a Basic Line;

 

https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2026/08/basic-line-corp-f002-cowboys-and.html

 

While we saw a similar set contents from Pikit here;

 

https://smallscaleworld-n-o-p.blogspot.com/2023/08/moneyitem-limited-pikit-toys-limited-pt.html

 

Both with the very-poor 'final generation' of the Jean copy figures, also associated with Hong Kong Toy Exporters . . . 

 

1986 catalogue image courtesy of Bill B.

 

. . . where the contents are pretty-much the same; however, accessories differ between them slightly, so each jobber, whole-seller or importer had their own ideas about what constituted a 'Cowboy & Indian' set, or value for money - while remaining profitable, or just having sufficient playability?

 

 

These have been harvested from feebleBay over the years (both in 2021 as it happens!), and now we have the windmill (post on that, in this Blog's future!), and one of the Blue Box water-well clones, along with a copy of the Britains Hong Kong trapper canoe, in the upper set, which is otherwise a generic, there's an unreadable importers sticker (top right) and what appears to be an obliterated branding, from the original (?) artwork - top left.

 

But a fundamental difference is the figures which look to be second-generation Airfix 54mm copies? The first generation tend to the same cream/white as the Airfix origianals and can confuse newbies. And another set, has a common-enough wagon, also found in other sets of the era, the 1980's

 

You can also see (as I didn't expand on the photoshoot of the boxes, with anything as sensible as all the pieces, or an assembly!), that it has six parts, a rear, with two firing slots, a front with two windows and a door, two identical gable-ended short sides, also with two windows, and two identical roof pieces.

 

The four sides interlock, leaving the ragged corner of a log-cabin, while the roof sits on four blobby studs, which can rip off on more played-with examples. There are also similarities with a Wing Wah set we saw a while back, but hatchets have been buried there, so I won't link back, and no log-cabin, anyhoos.

 

 

The smaller, soft plastic version, seems to be based on the 1970's Star Toys 'blockhouse', which forms the corner of the hard polystyrene fort, with two deer-skulls over the gate, itself a copy of an earlier European fort, with four corner towers, possibly also sourced in HK, but I'm not going there, we're doing log cabins today, not forts, or windmills!

 

This, of course explains the firing loopholes in the rear wall, it's the outside of the fort's corner; however, it also highlights a flaw in the Star Toys fort - the Indians can force the two windows on the outer end! It also has a chimney, not reproduced in the smaller clone.

 

There is a third version, which, size wise, is between the Star and the generic, and while is otherwise the same as the smaller one (orange 'ethylene, four stud roof, no slots, interlocking corners), has painted highlights, the windows and door frame being painted blue, or red, I can't remember, but I do have a couple, so we can look them when we have a better look at the components, next time!

 

And returning to my boxful above, I tend to colour-match them, as I make up complete examples, but I've seen them with different shades together, so clearly there was a huge stock of them, possibly with one of the smaller family concerns in the Kowloon slums, with their single tool and a hand-pressed injector, and they were supplied to the end-users, bulk, in mixed shades? 

H is for Hasbro's Air Raiders

We saw one of these back at the beginning of the Blog, but sometime in 2021 I picked up another one, the trouble is, it's the same one, I still need to find the purple 'enemy' or other side, although we've seen some loose! But we can have a quick box-tick of this card, as it's been sitting in Picasa for five years waiting!

 

And, of course, with reference to an exchange of comments the other day, another example of some sub-scale (50mm/2-inch) action figures I seem to be collecting, despite not collecting action figures . . . Doh! Issued in 1987, they are nearly 40-years old!

RTM is for Red Deer's Toy Merchandise!

Bit of eye candy for the lovers of low-brow, low shelf kaka from the former colonies of the Far East, and these are out there now, with Peter Evans having provided some, while I found the others locally. We've seen Red Deer before, but these are further branded, or ascribed to an OTL of Leeds . . . and Poland?!

 

Hing Fat Japanese Infantry clones (and that's funny in itself!), in pink, with a basic, mostly plastic pull-back-and-go aeroplane in another scale, along with the de rigueur flag & stand, it's a real throwback to the rack-toys of yesteryear!

 

Spellcheck says "Using many exclamation marks might seem excessive (in this case: 3 exclamation marks for a text that’s 577 characters long)" . . . Have they not seen my Blog before?!!!! It's august, it's Rack Toy Month, lighten-up, you robotic retard!

 

Nth-generation copies of Matchbox's venerable (1975?) 8th Army sculpts, in bright blue plastic with a yellow fighter!

 

Vaguely German, that's RTM off to a good start! With exclamation marks!

 

"Using many exclamation marks might seem excessive (in this case: 11 exclamation marks for a text that’s 1030 characters long)"

W is for Wild West Warriors - 2 of 2

I shot these first, of the two post's worth, but they ended-up as the second post for reasons I've already forgotten, half the bagged/carded stuff, and a bit of detritus at the end, but all good stuff!

 

Sorpresa . . . Italian for Sobre, Spanish for surprise! And Natale Luigi (NL) is a new one for the Tag list. I remember ten lira being about half-a-p in 1977, so it's not going to break the bank, not even the piggy-bank, pocket-money being the target of very small 'lucky bags'!

 

Apologies to Peter Burgner, I was chatting to him about this find, which he'd observed at a distance, and I said they were the same figures as the Lucky Clover sets, but they're not. The foot figures are larger, while the mounted are the standard 'Giant' size.

 

Still a useful find. I suspect two sets of mounted are missing from the top of the card, and while you could do without the shop-keepers stickers, they do at least date the thing to the mid/late-1970's, the sort of thing which was sixpence in d-money, and became 5-new-p, briefly, before the oil crisis 'invented' modern inflation! Who remembers when 1st class post was 3p!

 

While we had the Sorpresa/Sobre equivalent in Lucky Bags, at the larger end, here in the UK, these were the equivalent of the smaller ones, cheap polymer stuff, sourced in Hong Kong, or occasionally, especially with tin-plate, Japan.

 

A painted figure, marked Hong Kong, of the same size, against the unmarked bases of the figures in the bags, which came-in the same day. All Britains copies, and these 35mm's were cracker fodder, too.

 

Alkastep; a scruffy card, and a ripped bag, but a sample is better than no sample, and it means we can look at the figures. All marked 'France', on the rear-edge of the deep bases, these are to be found as other premiums I think, or were supplied as such to third parties, without rebranding?

 

Post-Giant wagons, the buggy was branded National and others, the small gun-team a cracker prize, while the larger gun and limber combo' was issued with unmarked copies of Giant's ACW and Napoleonics. The other three are more generic.

 

The Poplar-Quaker Foods-Tudor Rose wild west set, really just looking for colour variations or gap-filers now, they aren't rare, and most mixed lots/donations, or show plunder has a few! They could mostly use a god clean, common with these, that obviously got a lot of play back in the day.

 

Likewise, the Crescent hollow-cast and Bergan/Beton copies, these are two Airfix late type (back right, the Indian has been given black, fabric-tape chaps!), and the rest hard styrenes which may also be Tudor Rose, in the case of the mounted certainly, the foot figures seem to have been carried issued by several unknowns, at some point.

C is for Cap Bombs and Chessmen!

Two themes presented themselves as last weekend developed. In previous years it's been Merit, Blue Box, or Sports Figures, one year in was Gem-Culpitt/Cake Decorations, all of which had quite small, or no representation this year, but as I pointed out in a comment the other day; you don't pick them, the themes choose themselves! And this year, I had three lots of chess-pieces come in, and a handful of cap, and other bombs, so that's where we're at, in this post!

 

 

I got this set of Crescent's chessmen from Colin Penn, and they are rather nice, with all bar the Castle being fully figural, and with a sort of late-Norman / early-Plantagenet feel to them, or their costume. Maybe a bit more Wars of the Roses to the Knight and Pawn?

 

Also interesting, and often the way when you discover stuff outside a company's normal (or known to you) oeuvre, the material is not the normal Crescent 'Airfix' figure polyethylene plastic, but a denser, slightly soft polymer, it could be a PVC, but I suspect not, we exported the filth, pollution and health-hazards of vinyl-production quite early! But certainly a hard-wearing, and slightly spongy plastic which might still be a PE?

 

Colin then gave me these! They are from a contemporary company, Professor Puzzle, but differ slightly from the set currently on their website. Wooden, both sides are incomplete, but there are the 12 you need for two of these line-ups, which is the proper way to display them for sale, and that's not me lecturing you, I had to research chess twenty years ago, and that was one of the factoids I unearthed! King to the left, down to pawn, although I've placed the Queen first, Doh!

 

While these are the Mokarex coffee-premium chess set, and, possibly not by coincidence, all from the 'white' set. We saw them here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/p-is-for-perfectly-planned-paint.html

 

You'll notice the two outer mouldings in the five-shot, are a darker plastic, suggesting that the tool was run for some time, and that they're probably not rare, like cereal premiums, there would have been millions, as there were millions of coffee jars during the promotion. But I've still got more than half to find!

 

In the order in which I bought them, I think, four cap-bombs, at a toy-soldier show? Shocking! I removed them from the room, as a matter of common courtesy! I took the plunger from the damaged silver one, when I realised it fitted the blue/yellow one, which has the anvil/striking-plate, but another plunger, striker and two springs are required to get them both up to scratch - there is a tub of these, with various bits, so one way or another something will be completed!

 

Sizer!

 

These two had been in the odds-drawer stuff the night before the show, so presaged the theme, obviously the one on the left is a sucker-bomb, or dart from an infants shooting/target game, while the metal one has some similarities with the bomb on the Dinky Toys model of a Junkers 87 Stuka, so I'm guessing a similar toy, but no moving parts, so no cap-firing capacity - anyone recognise it?

 

Thanking, for help, support or 'stuff' at this year's show; Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin. 

J is for June's Jubbly Jackpot!

So, to the stuff on the day, as the saying goes, and because we'll be looking at everything again in future posts, we can keep the blurb light, just a few lines to keep the bots happy and give them something to trawl!

 

Contributions/donations/freebies to/for the Blog include a box from Peter Evans (top left), a bag and two tubs from Trevor Rudkin (top centre), various bit from Adrian in the two trays (top right), a bag from Brian Carrick (bottom left), with a free bag of chess pieces from Colin Penn, an armoured car and some crusaders - also free - from Isaac, pirates and Space from Martin Fahie, and Paul helped me find all the Deetail mounted (bottom centre) after I'd commented on my failed search for some!

 

Initial sort of Trevor's bag, lots of Giant or Giant-like stuff, which is literally grist to the mill, but useful grist, given the colours and variants available, across the oeuvre, with tubs of wagons (and a Lucky Clover chariot), and a less common 'navy' coloured Hong Kong truck.

 

After further sorting.

 

One of my first purchases in the hall was a bag similar to that from Trevor, and again, initial sorting produces similar stuff . . .

 

. . . with three new-to-collection aircraft, and an Airfix dog, along with the non-Giant Vikings and a cracker-toy gun-team.

 

Breakdown of Brian C's bag, and the two Realtoy/Dacron figures (top right) were a nice surprise, as they are both poses I was missing, and it's funny, 'cos Brian always hands his bag to me with a "It's just a load of junk", and there's always interesting stuff in there!

 

Adrain stuff! The space bag joins one from the box in the previous post, along with enough loose figures to make a separate post in the sequence. Top left is a large bag of smaller kit-figures I'll still be sorting/ID'ing in a decade!

 

I paid full whack for these, but they were kept for me, so credit will be in the breakdown posts, as part of the final paragraph credit list, but aren't they beautiful? Polish winged hussar and standard-bearer.

 

Peter's bag, given its first sort, lousy picture (I'm just not getting my head around this new camera properly), but . . .

 

. . . after a further sort by subject-matter, highlights include two Airfix motorcycle riders (which I need; bikes outnumber riders about two-to-one!), and several of the Soma Sci-fi figures/Pilots, but in the large size.

 

Boxed, bagged, and blister-carded purchaes from the room, highlights have to be the shop-dispenser card of pocket-money Wild West mini-packets, the Thomas submarine and the plain-box, middle right, it is a shop-stock of Rocco (Royce) combat figures, which Brian left me have, so cheap, I made him take more, but he still might as well've thrown them at me! It's an interesting example of how things are worth different amounts to different people, and we'll have a proper look at the contents in a subsequent post.

 

A new name in Sobres (except it's an Italian 'Sopresa'!) and the boxed Tresco diver also stand out, and the rocket contributes to one of the themes this year. While there was six sets from Replicants to obtain at this show.

 

Loose room purchases, a stand-out is probably the bag of loose (47!) Mokarex/Historiques demi-roundes, we've seen my various bagged ones and those painted by George Hanger, but this lot will help complete the loose, unpainted sample.

 

Starting to sort by theme, for the in-depth posts, and you can see Wild West on the left, Ancient/Medieval to the right-hand side, sci-fi and TV?movie stuff next to Vehicles at the rear and various bags (civilian, historical/ceremonial, animals, bits/accessories and combat), so maybe ten plunder-posts proper, to come? With a few bits still to sort in the foreground.

 

As I said in the previous post, I haven't started shooting the contents of these bags yet, but the thematic post is 'in the bag', haha! And there's a quick post on the obtained ephemera which will both come next.