KUM is for Rotor Ship!

Very much a follow-up to this old post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-article-has-been-long-time-in.html

. . . and it's been ready to go for a while, but I hadn't got round to it, until I mentioned it in the previous post and thought, "Yep, nice bit of Dime Store tat for Christmas!".

So first-up are the two from storage, which I managed to dig out of the Garage and shoot in the autumn before all the heartache with Katie-cat and Mum, after which I sort of lost interest for a bit, the military one has lost two blades, but still looks the part and has the RAF roundel/National marking missing from my other khaki example. While the blue/white combo' is the one in Fairylite marked packaging.

 

All four 'on the tarmac', except it's now-five-and-a-half, as we shall see in a minute, no, it might be six-and-a-half, because I think I ended-up with the ACME one, but it went straight to storage.

 

I re-shot the Injection Moulders' (IM) Rota Ship's box again, it had a good outing last time, but what the hell! I love how the end folds down into a launching garage, which has all the graphics of a 1950's amusement at Coney Island!

 

And this is the rather tatty Fairylite box

 

But this is new, joining the fleet in February '21, according to the photo's! This is the Cheerio (UK) packaging of the same machine (all marked - REGD DES Nº  844987) from Thomas/ACME, and it goes one better than Injection Moulder's box-end, the whole box (less the bottom panel!) is an aircraft hangar!

 

It's more simply marked ACME HELICOPTER, suggesting it came via the Canadian parent of Cheerio, via Thomas/ACME themselves. The other two shots are from the Intermaweb-thingy, and show a really nice colour combination in grey/red and a lovely marbled-heliotrope one, rather ruined by the extremities, in a red which is from a different part of the colour-wheel and clashes!

 

Quick one, it can't have escaped your notice that after 15-years of rubbing along happily, someone has decided to competitive-blog against me? I haven't the faintest idea why, but he's been doing it for over a year, and he did stop responding to eMails a few years ago, his mucker didn't, but he did, and now his mucker seems to have joined-in anyway?

 

Anyway, I like to Blog my collection, and increasingly I have the archive to hand, or, at least about 14 meters of it (A4), there's a similar amount in the storage unit, and if I wholesale scanned that, the tag-list would take half-an-hour to scroll at full speed!

Now, in blogging, my collection or archive, along with submissions, I will use the occasional eBay or other image, to enhance a post, like this one, 90+% mine, but if I started using the stuff I've kept off the Internet, wholesale, as they do, we'd be here 'till 2525! And, apart from submissions, that's all they've got? eBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates and Google?

 

If they really think that it's a good idea, to start a war, now? I'm up for it, I'll start digging out all the stuff I tend to leave to them, or in the past have sent to them? Think about it. What is it about Christmas that brings out the worst in some people?

While this, this is the KUM! And it's the dog's bollocks! It's a W. Germany knock-off, of the Thomas/ACME gear-ratcheted helicopter with a truncated tail, and enlarged crew-compartment for the fitting of a pencil-sharpener! How cool is that? Too cool for cyclical flight-training school, that's how!

 

They might be planeings, but they're not helicopterings, are they! The shaving-compartment, which was missing off the one we saw earlier today, although that had the pencil-feed from the back. KUM have produced a wide range of novelty pencil-sharpeners, and could be worth a side-collection on their own. And this collage was made in April 2022, coincidence happens!

 

I loved it so much I shot it thrice! This is the 'half' referred-to above! Here posed with a combination of Atlantic Italian Air Force and Preiser Luftwaffe accessories! So there you go, yet more on the Thomas-ACME-IM-Fairylite-Cheerio-KUM et al (don't forget the French and Scandinavian versions!) helicopter!

B is for Bobbing Bunny!

We've seen bobbing tanks here several times in two designs, but this came-in with a mixed lot of mostly British/Canadian 'dime-store' type plastics, and I'd forgotten all about it until someone came round the other day and we were going through them, indeed, if it hadn't been for that visit and Brian's kindness a few days ago there would have been no seasonal stuff here today at all!

In fact I got two mixed-lots recently, this is both lots together, some (from Mercator Trading) have been seen here in the past, others haven't, and a similar-sized lot came from a charity-lot on feebleBay, among which was the target of this post.

I know I've spelt probably incorrectly - Doh! And the wreaker-truck turned-out to have faint PP's on the wheel-hubs so is another Poplar, but the motorcycle-rider is PVC so probably a Thomas left-over. while the Cheerio's are half-and half 'Canada' (yellow wheels) and 'England' (black/white wheels).

It's a Bobbing Bunny! He appears to be driving the bastard-child of a White's scout-car and an Indian Pattern Chevrolet as supplied to the Long Range Dessert Group (LRDG)! And that's all I can say about it really, it is what it is, and you can see that for yourselves!

I'm not saying my diet's that healthy at the moment but I made the little bugger work for his sugar-coated,Mr Cadbury's Parrot, chocolate mini-eggs! Up and down the carpet, up and down the bedspread, up and down the table, up-and-down the mantelpiece, he's quite versatile and delivers all sorts of treats!

Only marking is a Made in England and tool/cavity mark '2' and he probably came with either Jelly-Tots (or similar?) or a great, big, tooth-loosening gobstopper?

C is for Cheerio Cars from Canada

This is definitely a minor make, here, back in Canada, back in the day,  I believe it was another workaday 'dime-store' maker, but these are from the UK arm, and we didn't have the same market, we had much more Hong Kong rack-toy tat, much earlier, sitting alongside hundreds of home-grown brands, but they do turn-up and were probably - at some point - readily available; if not actually common.

I think we've seen both these shots (or other images from the same photo-sessions) before so let's get them out of the way, the upper image is my sample of Cheerio, with a comparison shot below, on a couple of similar vehicles from other contemporary companies. (yes Wanna..., not wana...)

Quality suggests that the parent; Cheerio (Canada), was sending the moulds over for a run in the UK plant, and also that those moulds were being borrowed from the US owners, rather than there being any kind of illicit copying/piracy going on.

Years ago we had a discussion about this on one of the Forums (when I was on forums!); the mould-sharing that went on, which has led to the problems of ID'ing a lot of these, was down to good old protectionism, taxes (lifted by President Johnson, I seem to recall, maybe Nixon?) on imports and exports led to moulds being flown about the planet (or trucked to Canada!), as you could run the mould in the customer country for three days and produce all the stock you'd need for the next few years!

Not sure if the chain is original, but no reason why it wouldn't be, although it is missing a hook of some kind. Equally I don't know the origin of the moulding, but I think Pyro is a definite source for Cheerio product.

The little jeep in the first shot (which we have looked at here, before - more than once) was definitely a Pyro moulding.

This is definitely an ex-Pyro moulding; you can see the remains of one of those funny semi-flat, yellowish-tan figures that both Pyro and Kleeware used with their vehicles (except when they were red - fire brigade - vehicles; then they got blue figures glued in.

One wonders how Cheerio (UK) and Kleeware resolved the fact that they were both importing similar moulds for the same companies in the US (or Canada!). The mark is not clear, but you can see how its basically the same as the Kleeware, Pyro and Tudor Rose marks with 'Made In England in a circle and Cheerio across the middle.

The reason for the similar marks and all those blank circles, or simple, unbranded, 'Made-in-England's' on the spaceships will be down to the fact that the mark was on a large rod (like a release-pin, but bigger) running through the mould-block as a separate element, which could be replaced with different rods with different faces, sometimes it was easier/expedient to just put a blank-faced rod in the tool.

This is totally unknown to me, and is a call for help, Brian Berke who's sent lots of stuff to the Blog and for the Blog in the last few months, would love to find one, as this - pictured - is his old childhood bath toy, and he'd like to find one in better shape!

Made by Remark who I've no information on, it's not in Garratt, it's not in White, and it's not in FIM! If you happen to have this boat or a serviceable component (I suspect a deck and mast/sail/s) please get in touch and I'll pass you on the Brian.

If you're wondering what the black thing behind the boat is, it's the mounting-plate for the single pom-pom gun on the back of some Tri-Ang Minic plastic trucks!