B is for Bearskins, Busbies and Bright, Shiny Helmets!

It's the ceremonials! And the emphasis being very much on the British Guards, but there are others, and among them a couple of really interesting figures, and one diminutive chap who is jostling for best of show!

 

Marx recycling-fodder, better than cannon-fodder, they may still become something useful! But shown for completeness, I used to just show the highlights of donations or show plunder, but these days I've got into the habit of shooting everything, warts an' all! Two Household cavalry, one Mexican and a West Point Cadet, I think, but they've all been in the wars!

 

Likewise, these are all a bit tatty, but I thought the Christmas cracker guard would make a useful officer (absent from the set which is otherwise all musicians), with the simple addition of a pin-sword, after I remove the remains of his colour-pole. The resin home-production attempt (Eyes Right musician?) is an 'only sample', so stays, but who thought gloss-white was a good undercoat?

 

However, front, middle is . . . . 

 

. . . . bloody brilliant! He's obviously a charm-bracelet charm, and 'gold chrome' on base-metal, so a budget piece from Ratner's, F Hinds or H Samuel, but still? He's not the smallest figure in the collection, that record is still held by some of the spacey figures in that little tub from Brian Berke a couple of years ago, but he's the smallest guardsman at about 8mm, or is the one in the Britains' B smaller? Future post, we'll have to check, with our own eyes!

 

And I know I'm writing this with the Polish Hussars and submarine set already blogged, and the Rocco and other treats still to come, but arguably best from show, just because he’s so easy to miss, or to lose, if you have found him, or to forget if you've put him to one side! And he was in the big-bag of HK small-scale stuff from Trevor R.

 

More of the cake-decoration jobbies, I've got so many now, I'm going to have to do something with them, and it may involve making some other instruments from brass-wire, and placing them on a foam-board parade-ground, perhaps with a few road-markings across one corner, if you can picture that!

 

Wot! Metal? At a plastics convention - how very dare they???? I don't know if there's a word for these, other than penny-toys, which several probably were? They are too thick to be semi-flat (or demi-ronde), yet not so fully-round as to not have some sort of flatness, in the title stakes? Possibly Crescent on the far right, otherwise unknown? And they are all solids, possibly some of them are actually a die-cast alloy too?

 

I have a feeling I got one or two of these a couple of PW shows ago, but someone beat me to the majority of the poses, so nice to pick-up a few more. Obviously Hong Kong production, and probably after the Charbens set (actually, they're the Crescent/Kellogg's poses, aren't they, just with angled bases like the Charbens! Have we had this conversation before?), but size-reduced, to a 45/50mm.

 

Germany's finest . . . probably, certainly in the style of other Erzgebirge, but with those trousers, aimed at the Danish tourist market rather than ours? Also, could be a [part] set of mini-skittles, although more likely to be playability makeweights, with a smaller wooden fort?

 

More metal! Jonh Hill & Co's coronation figures, they keep coming in, often with a few Skybirds. And I'll eventually have enough for the whole parade, without having to shell out a small fortune for a boxed set at Wallis & Wallis, or somewhere similar!

 

Four Johnny-foreigners and a Brit' bloke! Starlux marine/sailor is grist to the mill, I have a decent sample of the 25mm's, and a few of these 54mm's, so it's box-ticking the sample, if you know what I mean?

 

The Guardsman, is, I believe, one of the still unknown question-marks in British figure collecting, and while I have one or two, this is the first one with grey bearskin and trousers? Only a thought, but could they be Rocco? They turn-up as rarely as the Karki Infantry, or little mounted figures, are the same size as the combat chaps, and are often as brittle, as most other Rocco?

 

The next figure (centre) is probably Polish, depicting a Russian? But he's about four times lighter than he should be, at that size, if moulded from Nylon-66, the preferred material of choice in that part of the former Soviet Bloc?

 

I think he's not the first I've found, the other is something completely different, (medieval or Wild West), so it would seem at least one of the Polish makers found a way to foam their plastic into something lightweight, yet solid . . . he weighs like he's Papier Mâché.

 

Two French Colonial types to finish, I could spend an hour or two looking them up, but there's a lot of this stuff, building-up, so I'll do proper posts another day! Thanks again to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin.

A is for Antiques!

So, that show the other weekend, was possibly even more disappointing that I had feared, not only was it - as I suggested in my newsflash the day before - all  ". . . wooden games, barley-twist marbles, balding Teddy Bears and old dolls", there were in fact no marbles, few wooden games and really nothing beyond dolls and bears (and other soft toys), there were a few Gollies and Golly-related things, going under the evilBay police radar, but no tinplate, not even old carpet trains, not much dolls house stuff/furniture, just lots and lots of dolls and bears, which is fine if you're into that kind of thing, but a little disappointing, if you've come looking for other antique or 'properly' old toys other than those two genres?

 

However, the organiser's table (Daniel Agnew - ex-Christie's Auction House) did have a wider range, Adrian's table had everything but dolls and bears, and there were the odd tubs of interesting things, on some stalls . . . actually baskets, the antiquey-people use baskets! And I managed to find a few pieces of interest.

This was fascinating, obviously you find the same items in early Christmas crackers, but the five items are similar to those found, to this day, in Irish Halloween barmbrack cakes/puddings, which in the 'Brack are: a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin (originally a silver sixpence), a ring, and a bean, the ring in both cases signifying marriage in the forthcoming year!

 

But it's also interesting is showing how traditions can be lost in a generation as well as created, as while in my childhood, the sixpence (not even included here, but maybe you provided the sixpence and bought the other five?) survived, we didn't have the rest, and now, apart from a few families putting a pound-coin in their Crimbo-pud', most people put nothing in their puddings or cakes?

 

In a similar vein, I bought these, probably also from Christmas crackers, but possibly from an actual charm-bracelet, but of a budget or penny-/market-stall variety? Some plated on a base-metal, the other items in the group-shot are a fancy 'brier' pipe, and two pairs of opera-glasses.

 

Obviously, these were on Adrian's stall and I grabbed both, just to have something substantial to take away from the day! We've seen the Thomas/Poplar plastic jobbie before, while the die-cast piece in front is from Morestone, and although rather tatty, does seem to come with the original gift-bag, nearly always missing, or replaced with some shiny-new thing, and it ticks a box!

 

This is also silver-plated, but on brass, and maybe an apprenticed smith's exam-piece, or just a small 'objets d'art' to be put in the family curio-cabinet or something, they were simpler times!

 

'A Gentleman in Kharki' (older spelling intended), the iconic figure of a Boer war soldier, which I will wax fully on, in the near future, but for now suffice to say this was made by Britains, but was a stand-alone figure, I believe, and probably sold with charitable intent, at a rate over the ordinary unit-price.

L is for Late Show Report - Odds & Sods

Getting towards the end of the plunder posts from May's Toy Solder show in Whitton/Twicker's, and it's the bits and pieces which didn't really belong in any of the other posts, but there's a few interesting things among the detritus, dingbats and doobries!

 

Vehicle parts and hand-tools; these will all go to the spares zone until needed/matched with their owners, although of course I know the searchlight mount is Airfix and the horse furniture is Lone Star. The larger machine-gun is actually a copy of the early Airfix one from the Attack Force APC.

I think the two hands are from a Koala bear stuffed toy, they could be from a similarly described mole, but there was a range of tourist keepsake Koala's back in the 1960's, where the Koala's were stuffed rigid; more like taxidermy, rather than 'cuddly', and I suspect these hands are from one of those? We looked at a similar Kiwi from across the straits, here.

Mostly Christmas cracker charms and similar novelties, probably from the very cheapest crackers, or the mini 'tree decoration' crackers. The blue thing I don't know, the khaki piece - some kind of removable hatch from a vehicle or building, with a couple of larger novelties and an old Toy Show badge.

 

I seem to have a large tub of toy show badges, both my own 'earned attendance' examples and a bagful from Brian Carrick, once, and there's a quandry as to what to do with them as they slowly gather in an ever growing pile, they have the nostalgia of past shows, but no real use?

This was in one of the donation bags, and is interesting for being an obviously early piece of plastic, clearly a dolls house item, and it will need careful paint-stipping, there is a sprung-loaded mechanism, which allows the baby chair to switch between rocker, low chair and high-chair, for meal times and has a built-in potty! It's un-marked, and obviously I don't collect this stuff, but it clearly has some historical value, which is probably why it was given to me?

 

Large, rigid, foamed-rubber (or a similar material) scenics, I think they are modern, possibly Early Learning Centre (ELC) or a similar source, and certainly scaled for the larger figurines, they will nevertheless prove useful as future photo-props or display back-drops.

A few more scenics, there's a whole box of the orange log-cabins somewhere, and a growing post on them in the queue, as they come with or without paint, in two sizes, and from several 'names' as well as many generic sets, we saw them here previously in a Pikit Toys set, I think?

 

Lego bush/shrub, a Hong Kong poplar tree which has been home-painted, a pond in need of a railing, and a railing from something else, a vehicle, I think?

 

In Brian C's bag were these glass-tablet WHW tokens, not military, they consist of two from a set of landmark buildings, and a pair of runes, from that set. Ironic, as, being runes they are of interest to lexicographers and etymologists, but, they - the runic symbols - were, by the time of the set, being bowdlerized to provide iconography for the Nazi party and it's war-machine, with various civil and paramilitary unit formation signs, logotypes and SS divisional/unit flashes being based upon the old Nordic runes!

 

Both sets seem to come in many colours of glass, and a couple of variations of paint/layout/final decoration, so we can assume several glassworks were involved, either over time, as separate//repeat issues, or just in providing the hundred's of thousands, or millions, necessary for such a promotion.

These - from Trevor - must be from those mini tree-crackers, they are officially the smallest-scale item in the collection now, I believe, and while I have obviously, and absent-mindedly, placed Admiralty Arch upside down (I initially thought it was a crude 'White Tower' I think!), the icons of London's skyline are pretty clear, with St. Paul's Cathedral, The clock-tower for Big Ben and Tower Bridge being included in a set of otherwise unknown number.

Obverse and reverse of the Lone Star horse furniture from the articulated draft-house we saw here, with my earlier (brown plastic), damaged, collar compared to the new, complete one, and the non-seating saddle for cart/wagon/implement poles.

Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile.

L is for Late Show Report - Animals, Farm & Zoo!

You could subtitle this post 'Wot no dinosaurs?', as it's rare show these days, where there isn't at least one dino' among the plunder, but, with the exception of the double-headed monster we looked at the other day, there were no dinosaurs at all, in this year's PW plunder, four legs or two!

A few interesting pieces here, along with a broken Britains flamingo, but I may have spare legs for it? The Cherilea panda is not common, and from the hollow-cast I believe, while the croc' is Clairet? The giraffe may be Clairet as well, I can't remember, and is missing a hoof, but stands as a sample (on the back of the crocodile!), and while the gorilla on the right is a bog-standard one-of-meany, the one on the left (from Stad's) is new to Blog with the key-ring/charm-loop.

 

This was silly, I saw the painted cow, and thought "Looks like the Tudor Rose" (which I don't need!), but I couldn't read anything on the belly, and as it looked interesting, grabbed it in a rummage-tray lot, only to find it was the T*R one, heavily painted at some point, with poster paint, which soon washed-off on the Sunday as I processed through the plunder . . . hay-ho!

Looking like the Britains late, PVC version, I think this goat is actually the New Ray moulding? Two Matchbox cattle, one with horns, the other, later one (brown) without horns, from the gift sets. The rest are grist to the mill, with the marbled pig (bottom right), possibly having some value/interest beyond the HK tat of the others.

 

These monochromatics can be found in cheapo' bagged rack-toys, but are as likely from Christmas crackers, particularly the really cheap budget ones, and I seem to have photographed them in such a way as to make it look like the penguin is briefing the poultry on something!

 

"Guys, none of you are safe, voting for Christmas"

 

Three novelty dogs (I think we've had other colours in a Chris Smith donation in the past), could be cracker toys too, or may be low-price (1d or two new pence) gumbal capsule machine prizes, while the tiger who looks like a leopard/panther is a current capsule toy. There is a round-up of capsule toys (with contributions from Peter and Brian) in the 'hopefully by Christmas' queue!

 

More of the same novelty stuff; charm elephants and Scottie-dogs being standard tropes, the micro-mini red plastic take on a carved tusk being more fanciful than the common fare behind it and the donkey/zebra (?) being one of several in a set of chunky sculpts we may or may not have seen here before, I certainly have a few now?

 

And yet more novelties; most of the main tropes covered here, elephants, rockers, charms, Scottie-dogs, other dogs, monkeys, poultry, camels! That blue elephant is about 4mm x 6mm, absolutely tiny.

 

These were mostly in the bag from Trevor, as were a lot of the above novelties, and Trevor has found inordinate amounts of useful stuff for me, over the years, since Paul Morhead put us in touch back in 1995/6?

 

Butterfly hair clips from two sources, and a magnetic fly I remember having as a kid, in that little box. Flies were a standard of the joke shop/novelty section, and still are, flies in fake ice-cubes, flies for real ice-cubes, flies in sugar-lumps, magnetic flies, flies with glowing wings, jumping flies . . . and giant flies! And I've just realised I have to correct both the tags, there's no flys!

Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile.

T is for Two - Full Size Christmas Crackers

Just a quickie, it's been a funny-old day, today!

We're looking at two complete sets today, both shot a few years ago, and both obtained for pennies, or I couldn't justify the philistinism of destroying them, although both are from the tail-end of the 1970's or - more probably - the 1980's, and both are budget types, so not exactly rare or valuable.

 

This one is a total generic with no identifying features or information. the photo-art on the box makes it recent in the history of crackers, but not ultra-modern, so the 70's seems likely, and there are 12 crackers in crepe-paper with metallic 'collars' - I'm sure all these things have their own piece of specific lingo within cracker-making circles!

Clockwise from top left we have a hair-clip, micro vanity-case/doll's accessory, motorcycle, cocktail ornamental-monkey, relief-flat spider, magnifying-glass key, elephant charm, moustache, two-part ring, fake fingertip, flat car (after a French original) and a baby's/doll's rattle.

 

Contents tick most of the boxes, there's no obvious puzzles or games? The cocktail-glass monkey was originally a design credited to Nosco in the 'States, but early plastics firms over here carried similar products - this one though will be Hong Kong.

The other set, equally cheap types, but in all-stiffer paper, and very 1980's is credited to a Napier Industries, who claim to be manufacturing over here, but using part-foreign pieces, we should get them on a boat to Rwanda!

Clockwise again - ballbearing dexterity game, hair-clip and trick rubber-pencil, Ultraman pencil-top, water squirter, magic maths puzzle, novelty curling-fish, metal puzzle, moustache, motorbike, rubber-spider and elephant charm.

 

Contents again ticking most of the boxes, but with the puzzles and magic tricks, which were missing in the previous set, note also, the motorcycle is a different design, I have bags of both, as with the elephant, but like the similar cats and Scottie-dogs there are many variants of them! Also we get a bi-coloured crown, but in the same easy-rip tissue paper!

 

Some of the LRG collectors get a bit excised over the Ultraman pencil-tops, not realising there were tens of thousands of them in British/Commonwealth crackers, and that they are ephemeral cheepies really!

Both boxes have a 'cut-out-and-keep' (or 'use') feature, for enhanced value-for-money, in a number of place-mat nameplates, which could equally be used as parcel gift-tags.

T is for Two - Mini Crackers

Way back when, Crackers tended to be limited to the actual dinner, you all had one and shared the hats and prizes if one person 'won' two ends, you then read the joke and wore the hat. Extravagant families might have a second pull before the pudding course, but there was the undeniable guilt of redundant hats?

 

In order to get round the unwritten limits on cracker engagement, some wag in cracker-central came up with the mini-cracker, which lived in the tree as a 'decoration' and cried silently 'pull me, pull me' for the entirety of the tree-up period. Pester-power (spoilt whining) did the rest!

Here we see generic and Sainsbury's branded versions of the same common mini-crackers, I'm really after another (1960's) set, which comes up regularly, but always goes for silly money, so clearly other people know what they are looking for, in the meantime these later ones (1980-2000's?) which flourished under several guises, are often going for no money, and these are from a few years ago (left) and this year, a charity lot (right).

 

You can tell they are the same from the little bells and Christmas trees glued to them, which didn't change for over a decade and can be found on the larger crackers, presumably from the same source/origin, too, whatever the design of the crackers themselves, which - with these minis - is always a variation of the metallic 'Christmas colours'.

 

But it's the contents which interest me and hopefully some of you, and here, mercifully, the rings have tied them together as closely as the glued tags! Only seven left in the first - generic - box, a full complement of eight in the newer, charity set.

 

Of note; another micro-racing car for my long-term project, the diminutive copy of a Layla type railway figurine, and it solves the question of the different bases on some of the copies, I thought we'd looked at more of the Hong Kong ones than we did in the linked post, but there are some (the above . . . golfer?) with better bases, but poorer sculpting than the Hong Kong bagged sets you could get in model railways retailers back in the day. Obviously, these crackers are one of the sources of them.

While the Sainsbury's-branded set is also interesting for having four items at normal cracker size (fake finger, moustache, ring and fly), and four mini-versions of what would normally be bigger - rocking bear, whistle, charm and the relief-flat crab. favourite here is the microscopic warship, we had a bunch of these in soft, silver polyethylene when we were kids, and I've found a couple over the years along with a red one, but this bright green one is the first polystyrene one I've found.

S is for Sandown Park - May 2022 - 3 of 3

The final part of the show report; not so exciting, mostly small scale, but the stat's seem to indicate that both these show reports and the 'H is for How...' posts are popular, so I tend to photograph everything, rather than just the highlights, these days!

The chap I bought the Airfix SAM-2 Guideline from in February, had said he's bring a better one (a detail I left out of that show report!), and he had, but he'd put it out for anyone to buy which was worrying, but it's a fine line when people make such agreements - I know from past experience - that the one or other party either forgets or doesn't attend, leading to wasted time/journey or a cheated feeling in the other!

If as a seller, you say you'll bring something to the 'next show', you have to write it down and make the effort to take it, and if someone says they will do so, you, as the buyer have to turn-up and at least look at it with willingness!

Contents were minter than a minty thing which grew-up as a mint, got picked by the mint harvester and taken to the mint works to be turned-into minty-mints! So I will make-up the February one at some point in the future, and keep this as the sample.

The lid is probably slightly better that February's more common version, but the tray was a mess of tape, some of which has been extended to the skirt of the lid, so I will do the hair-dryer trick before deciding which to retain with the contents, as I know the corner-dinks on both will iron-out as well as each others? And - to be honest - I prefer the extended artwork of the latter boxing!

The Slater's box of 'Huminiatures' was a present from Adrian Little, when I first opened it and saw the chap with two cases I had a wobble on the Trojan theory, but it was just bad, or yellow lighting in that far hall! It actually contains the expected Wardie/Merit/PPP figures, but painted, they later issued them unpainted on wheel runners, alongside the Merit ones.

The others came in from various quarters and include an unpainted Mastermodels casting (right) some Merit versions (centre) an Airfix farm dog and what I suspect is an airliner civilian (left) with more Wardie Mastermodels metals' in the little bag.

The only way to tell if they are Slater's or Merit are the European-style thin, clear-plastic, sheet bases on the Slater's (some merit have none (early?), other latter ones got heavier oval bases with a chamfered edge) and the more subdued painting of the Slater's figures - the yellow lady might be a latter Merit make-up-the-numbers addition? You can't really tell the difference between Merit and Modelscene (fourth branding of the sculpts) at all!

Charming Christmas cracker charms, as I bought them; two matching 'sets' of six, missing one shoe. I suspect though, that they are home-threaded, and came one per mini 'tree' cracker, as per similar items we've seen here before. They are an early 'styrene or late, stable'ish fenolic/cellulose type polymer and the little pony is still around in the very cheap crackers.

The rabbit actually came with the FG Taylor's in the first post, but is a Hong Kong example, who usually comes on a mini runner with two other poses. I have a good white-plastic Policeman, but wasn't sure on the black one (I think I have shades of blue) so as they came together, I ended-up with a  headless horseman! Metal sheep-dog is Timpo I think and a Merten/Preiser (?) horse.

A larger version of Merit's barrel (as copied by Marx), but I think there was a larger one in one of the earlier, larger 'load' sets? While the windmill is lovely, probably a tourist item from Holland, it's early I think, and polystyrene with an aluminium rivet.

Odds and sods and out of focus, so we'll move swiftly along - cereal premium, Phidal superhero and pencil topper!

I meant to grab these at the PW show, as I knew they were getting cheap, but it wasn't until Michael M-S grabbed most of them that I remembered, so took the dregs with a three-part Plesiosaur (who'll glue OK) and a woolly Mammoth!

Another Remco firefighter closes the shoot, although I did also buy a whole train-set which will get a separate post!