1 is for 1st Rack Toy of the New Year!

Just a quickie, picked this up on my rounds the other day, it's BJ Toys again, and a new one on me, sadly the four main figures are a disappointment, but I have been noticing more and more Paint Your Own sets, a trend spotted here a few years ago, with the cheapo'sets in The Works one Christmas, and which have since featured several times a year!

 

And, of course, the real interest here is not the handful of 45mm Matchbox GI copies, but the four 90mm Chinese Army figures, original sculpts, although, sadly hollowed-out behind, so after painting - for display only!

 

But they are dressed as they would have been through the war with Japan (second Sino-Japanese War) and the Civil Wars, in total from 1927-49, and which ultimately brought the Communists to power. A bit different, and hopefully, a sign of interesting things to come, from the Toymen of the Far East?

M is for Mundi Toys . . . Dunkin, Montaplex et al!

A proper return to one of my favourite sets of small scale, technically intermediate scale at 30-35mm, toy soldiers, the 'Dunkin' bubble-gum premiums, and while I will show you all of them, I think I may still have to find one?

We looked at my then, small collection, near the beginning of the Blog, 2010, and at the time it was popularly considered that Dunkin were the primary source, with the other sources being secondary.

 

But I now suspect that Mundi Toys might have been the first/major user, with the various gum-manufacturers dipping-in, in turn, among which we know Mundi were themselves one, Dunkin was another, Americana probably had a pop (although I have yet to find an envelope for them), GC (General de Cofiteria S.A.) 'Boomer' and Wikö among others, as and when there was available production-time from the supplier (who may or may not have been Mundi or Dunkin), or a gap in their own promotions schedules.

Above, we see the Mundi bubblegum 'Sobre' on the right (Soldados en Accion - 'Soldiers in Action'), containing one piece of Tyler's chicle and one figure. On the left is a blister-set with a pair of vehicles and the Dunkin pack (Hazañas y Combates - lit: "Feats and Combats") in the middle. The Mundi are different colours, my - mint - envelopes contained yellow Americans, while you can see the blister has a number of metallic-blue ones, the figures we are looking at below are probably all Dunkin.

I actually had some trouble, shooting these, so we have two sets of photographs for both the Americans and the Russians! Here they all are on the carpet, which they rather shrank into, and I had to play with the light and contrast to render them viewable! 20 poses/sculpts, common to all three nations, for a total of 60 unique figurines.

 

Above are the grunts, I thought I'd sorted them into riflemen and tommy-gunners, but I notice there's a tommy-gunner hiding in the top row, so it's four and eight, not five and seven! Below them is an obvious officer, the command/support trio and some heavy weapons with the third grenade thrower.

 

I've seen these - rather ridiculously - credited to Airfix as the influencer! However I think the author was just looking for an excuse to get them in his tome! In point of fact they are mostly after MPC (54mm and 60mm) and the Marx 54mm, if you need a second source, but it's MPC poses and 'after MPC' in the main. The grenade thrower without weapon, though, is ALL Britains, as is the being-shot character! It's true, the kneeling radio operator looks vaguely like the Airfix HO/OO paratrooper one, but he also looks like a reverse sculpt of an early (1950's) kit figure!

 

The Russians, there's only 19 of the 20 present here, with the sentry and guard dog absent, we've seen him before, in green, and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of red-ones in the storage sample, now. Last time I divided them into summer (tunics and helmets) and winter (greatcoats and fur-hats) uniforms, this time I grouped them thematically as the US troops.

 

With five standing about, five fighting for their lives, five moving-up/advancing, and five miscellaneous! Being red plastic, they were the worst to photograph, and I ended-up in the bathroom, shooting them against the mirror, where - of course - the point of focus shifted to 'imaginary space'!

 

Now, I've said before, when I first encountered these, it was with a couple of the diggers, and I thought they might be Afrika Korps, but I notice Dunkin have them as Chinese, with the Mundi sobre envelope showing a sketch which is more British-Commonwealth? I guess this lot are your flexible friend! I tend to think of them as Japanese, especially now I have the swordsmen - top row, 2 & 5.

 

Although without 20 Germans, and in an odd scale/size, this set has always been a bit problematical, and it's their charm rather than their usefulness which has me staying loyal to them. If they are Chinese, then we could assume we are looking at the three main powers in the Cold War, which makes more sense?

The rest of the 'stuff', clockwise from the top left. The missing Jap'/Chinese pose is a prone shooter, he looks familiar-enough for me to think I may have one somewhere, but, equally, he may be the still-elusive 60th pose for my samples?

 

Colour variations on the Russians in red, when we looked at them last time, there were a bunch of green ones which may well have been Mundi issues, or Montaplex, who did all these, in various colours, some quite whacky, but whether from the original tools or as lower-grade copies I don't know yet.

 

Then the missing guard-dog from the above line-ups, and another colour-variation shot. Below them are the typical base marks which may or may not be mould-release pin-marks, and are something in common with lots of the output of Olà (ice cream premiums), Raja and others (in addition to those already named above), some of which output is believed to have come from the Heimo works; I don't know why?

 

Bottom right has the recipient of some wargamers snack sticker, rather than a national army identity I suspect, but whether it was a clementine, mandarin, satsuma or tangerine is currently unknown; intensive research, however, remains ongoing! Finally, slight colour variants of the US Machine-gunner.

 

There is still a Mundi Toys (they exhibited at the New York toy fair in September), but they are SRL, not SA, and are somewhere in Bolivia nor do they seem to carry this kind of stuff.

 

And this is one of those posts where everyone has given me a few figures over the years in addition to my own finds, so thanks, alphabetically to; Graham Apperley, John Begg, Andreas Dittmann, Peter Evans, Tony Harrington, Mike Harding, Adrian Little, Gareth Morgan, Trevor Rudkin and Chris Smith.

A is for ARMY Men; the People's Liberation ARMY Men!

This lot present the same moral quandary as some of that overpriced stuff coming out of a co-operative 'somewhere' in the Ukraine (several 'interviews' now, several brands; no location?), but as I didn't pay for them I'll desperately try to pretend there's no hypocritical conflict of interest here and/or a public service element to the posting!

Sent to the Blog by Peter Evan's - roving reporter for Plastic Warrior magazine and moderator of the Friends of PW Faceplant group - They are variously branded to Jeu, Jeunow and Vi!Kondo, these are clearly and best described (there's no clues on the packaging or online - it may be hidden in the Chinese characters) as Middle Eastern irregulars, but have the look more of 1970's PLO/PFLP, 1980's Lebanese combatants, Hezbollah or similar Levantine fores, rather than the looser-garbed modern terrorists of Al Qaeda, IS or the legitimate power of the [never listed as 'Terrorists' so OK for The Donald to do a deal with them-] Taliban!

These are the 'army-builder' poses, the bare-headed pair can be used anywhere that's had problems in the last 40/50 years from Ireland and Central America to Namibia or Burma! Their clothing is more Viet Cong, revealing their Chinese-centric sculpting. Top left has a Turban which could place him with Maoist Nepalese, or in the contested Indian-administered Kashmir? The others have cloth balaclavas of the Keffiyeh / Shemagh / Hatta type made iconic by generations of Palestinian fighters.

Slightly dodgy sculpting on the Molotov Cocktail here, but what a useful pose, cut-away the gun and we could be in Paris '69 now! The bases are separate and both plastics are quite hard polyethylene or 'propylene types and a single lug on the base locates in a hole on the figures, leaving some a bit off-center.

25-10-21 - For more on the poses see Craig's comments - below 

These two particularly; are both stuffed-up one-end of their bases by the parameters of the fixing system! The 2"/51mm generic infantry or foot-mortar is more of a VC thing than for modern insurgents, but some may have IRA style home-made mortars, however the limitations of the AN/FO explosive they tend to use makes them larger on the whole! Note Accessories.

Googling them to find-out more, I discovered my sample was missing a tenth pose, and he looks quite Mujahidin/Talib-like! The machine-gun's an oddity - looking a lot like the brand-new RPL-20, I suspect it's modeled on a Chinese copy of the old RP-46 LMG, or an FN Minimi LSW which is becoming quite ubiquitous now?

All-together a really useful set for irregular force-building.

On-line, they are Jeunow, and here are seen with 'Fritz'-helmeted opponents and various other items from the same source. Of interest is the variation of stock-quality, from the excellent (and probably HO-compatible) Opel Blitz, to various lumps of anonymous imagi-AFV, some of which are copies of copies, or have been copied, as I think we've already seen some in other sets!

Chinese WWII-era figures and Japanese invaders also exist, and integrally-based variants of both are seen on the right here. I was unable to find built-in base versions of the insurgents and US-helmeted troops, but imagine they all-four come in both types?

The Japanese have been given an accurate flag, the Chinese have been given one which can't be mistaken for any of the flags (CSR, Maoist, Nationalist or Imperial) they fought/resisted under! Quite deliberate I'm sure; Xi Jinping's regime is trying to re-write the history of the period to include the better details of Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang party, in part to weaken Taiwan's claims to that history/legacy!

A few hours later - never try being clever when you're tired! Both forces on the right have perfectly good flags, it's the Japanese on the left who have a generic printer's registration-mark! But the Wikipedia page (link below) is still an interesting read!

The paper header was a home-printed affair, although a subsequent one was in a glossy-magazine style, professionally printed on card-stock, so it may be someone ran-out on a Friday afternoon and printed a few copies off in the warehouse, to finish an order?

But this is where it all goes a bit sour, morally . . . that third logotype, is CCTV7, that is China Central Television [channel] Seven . . . the channel exclusively for the use of (and probably funded by or for-) The People's Liberation Army.

What I'm suggesting is that by purchasing these, you may well be financially supporting the army of the Enemy! Because, and make no mistake about it; A) That's how these things work in China (as they did in Soviet Russia), and B) despite the rapprochement of Nixon (another lying, narcissistic Republican with the gift of the gab, more interested in power at any cost, and profit over the best interests of most of the people most of the time), China were always the 'other enemy' and are flexing like never before . . . indeed through these toys! What do you think the wars in Korea, Vietnam and Malaya were all about?

Now, OK, if you're a simple-thinking, garden-gaming, kidult, you're not going to give such things a second thought as you squat in the yard going "piow-piow", but I served, and I served for a reason, with a sense of purpose, and I find it all a bit disturbing . . . this watching the American far-right getting into bed with Eastern-European disrupters and mercenary gangs in Donbass or Libya, on the Dark Web, watching Trump selling-out the Middle-East to Russian influence, hanging the Afghans out to dry next to the Kurds, watching Biden going along with it all while Boris kills 200,000 of us while banging-on about Vegemite!

We're fucking rudderless in the West right now, the only rock among all the self-serving wankers, populist liars and religious-Right nutters was Merkel and she's now just keeping the chairs warm for a few more weeks, in a caretaker capacity, while they sort out a new coalition.

Deep breath . . . these came (also from Peter) with the glossy card, and can be seen in the previous shot, I saw them on-line in other, wackier, colours - pink, purple etc . . . probably down to any end-user/customer's requirements.

As sculpts, these (or some of them, the two kneeling poses may be new) have been around for a while now (Ja-Ru, Soma?), and these might be 2nd or 3rd generation, but cut/re-cut to a good standard, and basic modern American troop types, usable for m-any forces who use Western/NATO equipment.

Many thanks to Peter for sending them, and I'm not meaning to be ungrateful or cast aspersions, but now I've uncovered the somewhat sinister link, please think twice before buying them. One man's freedom fighter, is another man's terrorist, another man's resistance fighter, another man's revolutionary, but one's enemy, is one's enemy, is one's enemy, and we forget that at our peril.

Here's a lovely 'Rabbit Hole' - go; lose an hour of you life!

H is for Happy New Year . . . You Rats!

Courtesy of the free sample I received from Jonathon's, the designers/importers of Mojo animals into the UK (and Europe?) from China . . .

. . . here's wishing all the Blog's Chinese (do we have any?), Asian or Cinophile readers a Happy New Year of the Rat!

It's their standard rat - normally in white (lab-rat!), but now painted gold for the New Year and given a key-chain, so you can carry your 'luck' with you all year!

F is for From the Sublime to the Ridiculous!

Just a quickie in case I don't get anything else up in time for Monday!

The figure in the center is that crappy China-via-Russia-to-Germany thing I bought at Plastic Warrior's show back in May (hey, I'm nothing if not an esoteric completist!), either side of him is a probably Japanese-made (from one of those scallop-shell, mini-diorama, touristy things) South Asian warrior of the contemporaneous era (depicted), but ten times nicer!

He's also interesting in being a solid, rather than the usual hollow vac-form or blow-mould, despite being the same celluloid or cellulose acetate.

As to the red one; when I said back in June/July "We won't see them again here very soon or very often!" I clearly lied! Issued/packed by Smart Toys Creative of Yiwu, China, imported into Russia by Trading House Mirika.

That's it, something for Monday morning!

C is for Chinese Combat Chaps

Another box-ticker really, but nice to get this one out of the way, as I've had the bottom shot in Picasa for about six-and-a-half years waiting to find the rest (out in the market place), only to find them, near-mint, in the Cherilea box, putting something away the other day (mixed, might-be-Hill Wild West!), which was nice! It also means the missing Sikhs may turn up as I was sure I had them but can't find them anywhere?

Six poses, are they Chinese, North Korean or UN? In those bloody awful winters, everyone ended up wearing 'Deputy-dog' hats and there are two Bren-like weapons in evidence! But the officer sets the tone - and he's an indoctrinated, enthusiastically-invading, 'commie' rat-fink . . . if ever I saw one!

From the other side (or another aspect), points to note I suppose are the different colours of base plastic, the Japanese style puttees, the US bazooka and British 'life-belt' flamethrower? And that's it really, it's why I call them box-tickers; you all know them . . . other people have covered them . . . these are mine . . . now in the tag-list!

I have spares! Here compared to the Sino-Japanese flamethrower from Charbens (make a useful Rumanian on the Russian Front - summer of '43), ostensibly; the Cherilea are supposed to be 60mm and the Charbens 54' but you can see there's not much in it!.

I could shoot them in a line, but that's for the A-Z Blog one day, I could do more comparisons, but the obvious one will be on the Airfix Gurkha page eventually, so that's it!

Q is for Question Time - Composition Queries

Chris sent me an interesting shot last week, and as I had a few in Picasa, I thought it might be an idea to put them out here - all new-to-Internet, if not new-to-hobby?

This was Chris's question-mark. Flanked by two known or believed to be Zang or Zang for Timpo (Timpolin) figures - a pilot on the left and Tommy Atkins on the right - is an unknown guardsman in a similar material and style, but with a strange stalactite of flash running down his front, which Chris reports (it's not clear in the image) is painted a different colour. I wondered if that might indicate the removal of a drum or standard, but neither would match the arm/hand positioning?

I also think he may have been re-painted as he looks very clean and the flesh is pale for Zang? Now I know some Zang ceremonial guards have recently turned up but I was lead to believe they were matched to the 30/35mm highlander, not this 50/54mm size, so a big question mark here?

If not Zang, a name-in-the-frame could be Plastoline (Msrs. D. Brown and M. Leech) of whose 'output' or 'production' I know of the first three items (more on the 'known' another day).

They worked in Plasticine, hardened with what the old school (old-old-old-school) euphemistically referred to as 'banana oil' in old figure-modelling tomes, which could be any one of several things; cellulose 'dope' (flying-aeroplane modelling), cellulose lacquer or nitro-toluene thinners (automotive trade) or acetone (nail-varnish remover), or even wood-hardener - destroyer of good brushes?

These four figures, however, are unknown but in the style of Plastoline's known figures (anatomy wasn't their strong point) and anything anyone knows about them would be very helpful.

I suspect the first three are Chang-Kai-Chek's Imperial Chinese forces from the 2nd World War (70-years ago today - there's always method in SSW's madness . . . well, nearly always!); an officer (marked 10) and two soldiers (one marked 14) while the last figure is probably an early (WWI'ish) NBC-warfare (ABC/CBN) operative (marked 4), spraying gas by hand, whilst dressed in protective equipment, but which nation, or is it Sci-Fi, or an early Air Force firefighter, or a DDT fumigator?

He appears to have two tanks on his back, presumably; one to breath, one to spray shit with . . . stopping other people breathing forever?

It's very unlikely to get much odder, more unusual, or any rarer, on Small Scale World than these chaps, so if anyone can add anything; it'll be appreciated by the other 800-odd daily visitors.

Many thanks to Adrian Little and Chris Smith for the images.

PW5 is for Best of Show - Warrior Types

As well as the themes which develop as the show progresses and the plunder grows in several bags, there are the stand-alone pieces which won't otherwise be Blogged for years, or which may already have been blogged in a lesser form, and which therefore can go here!

Although we'll start with something which was anything but 'best' of show, they are intriguing, unusual, but - and let's be honest here - f**king hideous! Clearly aimed at little kids (not that most of what we collect wasn't; in its original retail form) and/or Terracotta Army tourists, these are actually in Russian packaging and being imported by one of the German dealers . . . but . . . Oh Boy! Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Vases . . . semi-flat, tinny, chalky-plastic, leery colours, stab-and-hope paint job, one figure per pack, childlike poses, poor anatomy, faces that look like a horse just mounted them (in the Biblical sense) . . . they have NO redeeming features beyond depicting a previously un-covered era.

Smart Toys Creative of Yiwu, China, carried in Russia by Trading House Mirika, they're not nice and that's a box ticked - we won't see them again here very soon or very often!

Hee-hee . . it's funny how something keeps growing; forth (?) appearance since Christmas on the Blog, and there's more to come - Chris Smith also found the hunter, at around the same time - despite missing the show!

So we have a new native pose (now have to find his load) and the hunter; a clever take on the much-pirated Britains farmer with shotgun, and this one is smaller than most so probably a copy of an old Blue Box or Holly copy-farmer rather than a Britains original?

Already seen today, but this was one of the highlights for me, most Polish production is quite large, starting at 54/60mm and going in steps (like Fontanini) up to five-inch stauettes, so this 45/50mm semi-flat in the margarine premium style was a lovely find, and paint looks original, yet near-mint, but it may not be that old, a lot of the Polish stuff was still in production in the 1970-80's?

Similar in several respects to the previous figure, this has to be French? But it's a weird dence yet soft plastic; polyethylene, nylon, polypropylene . . . even a PVC? Seems to be factory painted, seems to be relatively modern. French Foreign Legion, unusual, plastic version of an old lead figure?

I keep finding them! Another Drevopodnik, and not one I was looking for; I know I'm looking for a carded set of Napoleonic/ceremonial dressed figures and staff officers as I've seen one, but this guy is A) new to me and B) clearly sold individually as a tourist trinket - from the little label? Bulling boots, probably not a great seller, and he's a sly-looking fella'!

F is for Follow Up - Chinese Nationalist Egg!

I know it's not Easter anymore (!) but I'd feel a bit of a fraud getting two years worth of posts out of one set (even though there are Christmas and ITLAPD perennials, but hypocrisy is humanities middle name!) so I'll get this out of the way now!

We looked at the figure a while back and I arbitrarily decided the figure was more Chinese than Japanese and more nationalist than Maoist, but I hadn't got the whole thing - now I have! Note that the silhouetted-figures in the artwork are Airfix Commados, Para's, German and Russian Infantry.

It was a 'design' piece by a Reiko Kaneko back in 2008 when it retailed for a tenner! The original publicity blurb going like this;

"Egg Soldier Eggcup

Battle On The Breakfast Table

It's early in the morning..... Having been for a dip, the EGG quietly prepares for another day. Suddenly, from the end of the table, an army of BREAD SOLDIERS starts to approach. The MODEL SOLDIERS, fearing for the safety of their EGG, close in. They work hard to protect the EGG but one after another, the BREAD SOLDIERS just keep coming....

How will it end?"

Yeah! I didn't have an egg to hand!

Now, if you want to buy real 'designer' stuff, say Fendi handbags or pool-side chairs by Renzo Piano you need to be awarding yourself Philip Green sized amounts of folding trouser-stuffing, so I guess a designer-thing for ten-quid is not to be sniffed at, but . . . it's a bit naff!

The plastic mirror base is very naff, the figures flexibility is naff-enough to annoy, as they don't hold the egg up properly, the lack of a definite nationality for the soldiers is naff to the sort of people who might be considered its main customers - war-gamers, modellers, toy soldier collectors, historians and the denizens of similar assorted geek-categories! While the construction - as a whole - is cheap, placky-tacky and err . . . a bit naff.

Then I got an egg-full of dinosaurs;

it was a bit small!

Which is not to castigate it completely; it's a fun thing, but I think less of the 'designer' in the original hype (several 'influencer' sites seem to have picked it up at the time) would have been a bit more honest, and a £6.99-point would have been fairer for what you got.

Was someone to do something similar again, maybe three or four figures a'la the Iwo Jima 'flag-raising' would be a better execution of the idea? You know - make it about the egg, not the toast soldiers, which they aren't really engaging with their swords anyway. Make it three or four US Marines struggling to hold the egg up and I recon you'd sell tens-of-thousands of units in the USA alone! Construction workers could work too, or firefighters; holding a ring to hold the egg?

Original publicity shots

We had close-ups of the figure last time, but at least the original shots have the right sort of egg to hand! I think some of that yolk has been photo-shopped? If my egg looks like that in the middle I've learnt to get it to the compost-bin before I find the dark feathery bit in the centre; proper 'free range'!

T is for Two - Catering Novelties

A couple of oddities from the collection now, both from what is strictly called crockery! One from years ago and the 'small-scale-only' collection-days, the other a pretty perfect 54mm and given to me by Peter Evans - the other day.

This came from a Euromark picnic set carried by Tesco supermarkets about 18-years ago (item dated 2001) and was rescued by me when it started leaking! Let me explain; they were double-skin plastic mug/cups with a twin-liquid filling and these roughly 20mm-compatible Simpsons characters in the liquid which sort of bobbed about at the boundary between the two liquids - one blue (heavy spirit?) below and one clear (water or light oil?) above, they are weighted with steel bearings to keep them the right way up.

Anyway, one of them started leaking on the shelf and I (night-shift!) offered to take it out to the skips after it was written-off, and left it to drain under my car in the staff car-park for later retrieval and recycling into the collection! I haven't the faintest idea what the three-eyed sharks are all about, but assume a specific episode of the TV cartoon?

There were other figure designs and other items of crockery involved; bottles, flasks &etc.

Previously seen - complete - in Plastic Warrior magazine, this Reiko Kaneko-designed chap seems to have been clearly based-on the old Britains Deetail Japanese office, but that's probably more of a co-incidence than an actual relationship.

He started life as one of a matching trio, all arranged in a ring facing inward as an egg-cup! The egg rests on the three fists and is held in place by the heads/swords. It should still be findable on the Internet, I'll try and find it and post a link. [Seems to be off the market, but this is it]

On the matter of the soldier's uniform; he's sort-of half WWII Japanese-looking (Katanga sword) and half Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces (belt-yolk and helmet), so it's a wonder he got past the checkers (he was designed in Japan, made in China), as he's more Nationalist than either revolutionary Mao'ist forces or Japanese invaders - just the sword . . . and water-bottle?