P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Introduction

Well, so much has happened in the last few weeks, none of it of that much importance, except the meltdown of the United States of America, which is proving as morbidly entertaining as a crash video where real people are being vaporised by large trucks. But suffice to say, plans went south, and things got left on the shelf, and I won't be going for any posting-records this year!

 

But, there is a lot to post when I get the time, and I've had a lot of Dinosaur stuff come in recently, which I tried to clear over Christmas, but didn't really more than take the edge off, and have since added to, as have others, so I'm going to try and have a bit of a push to alternate between Chris Smith's Christmas donation of interesting, weird or quirky stuff to the blog, and dino-posts, for the next few days at least. Then a similar bunch of Peter Evans posts is in the pipeline, possibly interspersed with Toy Fair stuff?

One of the contenders for best thing in the parcel was this novelty, spring-loaded, perambulating dice-shaker, with a green-baize dice table in a UFO canopy, on jumpy feet! I mean, it's too cool for clown school! Less commonly, 'made in Taiwan'.

 

There's a rubber sucker, which may have produced a delayed action, or just be a buffer against rough use? Anyway it works with a flick of the finger, and if I have the time, in the future, I may try glueing the hairline crack in the foot, and resurfacing the sucker with cycle tyre-repair solution and see if it works as a delay/jumper toy.

 

A few wooden items were in the parcel, older and newer animals, a farmer/villager from the 'red cottage' sets and what I suspect is a figure from a  miniature tenpin bowling set, but could be from a wooden Noughts & Crosses (tic-tac-toe?) or solitaire set? A sort of guardsman, that's the storage zone he'll end-up in!

This was nice, I knew of its existence, but still don't know which/what game's it comes from, but it will be a board game, and it will be Triang, Omnia or even Waddington's, designed by Dave Pomeroy, the reason I knew it existed was because . . .

 

 . . . I'd come into possession of the original modelling-clay master, from the remnants of the Pomeroy estate. This is actually the picture sent by the seller, but I did pick it up with a bunch of other stuff a few weeks later. The figure's simplified/graphical arm bears something in common with other game playing pieces, including the godfather figures from Parker's Vendetta, and while the significance of that fact is lost on me, there must be a reason?

These were both interesting enough for Chris to recognise and save from the bin, the pirate lady is from the rack-toy sets we saw under the Webb's Supertoy label, but she's shrunk slightly after leaving the tool-cavity, too hot, and is now leaning to one side . . . after the pirates gave her a cut of Dutch courage before walking the plank, hic!

 

The other is a very rare Airfix short-shot, where the polymer hasn't reached all the extremities, the opposite problem, resin (or cavity) too cold! Given how tight the Quality Control was at Airfix, a rare bird indeed, who now looks like some stocking-headed Dr. Who villain army-man!

 

A couple of conversions which Chris passed to the parcel box, the amusing thing here was the glittery headdress on the Indian, made from a Tunnock's tea-cake wrapper!

 

The post office took their rent with these, the missing bits of the Rocco lifeguard had gone, possibly out of a very small hole in the corner of the box, the horse is most of a nice Elastolin 40mm, but may yet prove a useful donor of legs to another, so in the damaged tub he goes, while the larger Indian is from the same set as the two we saw in a PW show report (FFL and another) I think? Where the other arm is a plug-in and the leg inners transcribe a smooth curve?

 

Odds & Sods; the motorcyclist will be from a board game, and while he's missing his head, I have quite a few of these mostly in ones and twos, and he will join them in - hopefully - being a new colourway, they are usually tending to sets of four or six, like their cyclist and racing car brethren.

 

Likewise, the yacht is probably from a similar board game, but rather well-painted it could have some age, late Victorian even, certainly early Edwardian? The dolls' food, while not something I actively seek out, is all fascinating stuff, and they do have their own zones, the two to the left are hard polystyrene, and while not marked could be early Hong Kong production, while the fish-platter looks to be early British, maybe Charbens or Cherilea, or someone smaller like the Taylor's or Barratt's, or even someone like Trojan, Kentoy or maybe early Gem?

The coke bottle will be from crates in a 'big box' delivery truck I suspect, while the metal frying-pan might be older than the cold-setting, modelling-dough 'full English' now being prepared in it?

 

The metal handful included some useful bits, the three smaller painted figures in the rear row are all from small carts or wagons, and thankfully people like Robert Newson have done all the work on them, so one day I'll sit down and have a session ID'ing them all, as I have dozens somewhere! Looks like two dairymen and a generic cheapie wagoner.

The Indian is from any one of many versions of the Schneider home-casting moulds, and the large cockerel might be French, or a copy of the Cherilea one? A homemade pirate of the Matchbox (or Lledo? I can never remember which lot faces which way!) fireman, from the old die-cast, horse-drawn appliance, the two seated figures look familiar and the pair of wargames chaps seem to be sort of Sci-Fi wild-west or Special Forces types?

A broken Skybirds German and some 5mm wargaming figures leaves a broken chauffeur, but he's very interesting as he may be the Timpo lead one which replaced Zang's composition one, although Kay's did similar figures, so for now he goes in the stash as an only/first sample/example.

The regular 'assorted, seated civilians' shot! Of interest this time is the third fireman from the left on the top row, who isn't from the Airfix kit, but one of several others, mostly American brands, and I won't embarrass myself by stating which one I think it might be, I've only seen them in passing. in the catalogue pile - AMT, Monogram, Pyro, Revell, someone like that, I think even Tamiya did a fire engine in the early days!

 

The near-naked green guy is also new to me, and I think he may be a waterskier, possibly from a cheap beach-toy, copying something more substantial, or a kit? And the guys I used to think were Napoleonic wagon-drivers (bottom, yellow) are probably also firefighters from cheap polyethylene vehicles, there is a sub-scale copy too, somewhere.

 

The last shot is the 'cereal premium' shot, even though they're not all cereal giveaways! The fascinating one is the blue baking-soda diver, as he's like the Shreddies 'Freddie Frogman' or the later two Nabisco ones, but they were all masked skin-divers, this chap is in trunks, and suggests a third set/issue?

Another early-learning Mad March Hare, and behind him, some kind of sci-fi mini, possibly a Ben 10 item, I thought I'd posted the watch-figures, but I can't find them, there were small wristwatch type 'bracelets' with clips or compartments which held about six/eight small-scale (20mm'ish) figures, two different assortments, some similar to this yellow-green one, but they had different bases?

The coach bits and penny-farthing rider will go in a large tub of similar R&L type parts, and every now and again I go through it seeing if enough wheels, tyres, or axles (mostly the very tiny pin-axles!) have been found to complete another one! HK copy of Dinky road worker in an unusual butterscotch plastic, and things we’ve seen before in the top right-hand corner, but all grist to the mill, or colour variations, or whatever!

As always, many, many thanks to Chris for putting this stuff to one side all through the year, and occasionally sending me a cornucopia of stuff to share with you, as I said to him in an eMail the other day, I would eventually, probably, hopefully find all this myself, I love a mixed bag of shite, but it would need three lifetimes, but because people like Chris (and the others) save this stuff for the Blog, we may get to the finish in one lifetime . . . we hope!

H is for How They Come In - November Sandown Park - Dave Pomeroy

So, I didn't get the Dave Pomeroy stuff I'd meant to in the autumn/early-winter for a bunch of reasons, but I managed to pick it up just before Christmas, probably paid too much for it in the end, but heay! It WAS Christmas and the seller was a nice chap! But I had picked-up a few bits at the last Sandown Park show, which we are looking at now, and we'll look at some other stuff later, but probably much later?

A couple of bits of lead, obviously home-cast, the baby is taken from a set of rubber babies which came in pink or brown and were - I think - premiums of some kind, or early blind-bag stuff? It's all in the files and I can't be arsed to look it up just now! But I have a tub of them somewhere, so a future post can include a comparison with this one.

The Napoleonic head is probably taken from a Historex moulding, and may have been cast for Mr. Pomeroy's own modelling activities, although there is a fair bit of this stuff in the main purchase so he may have been working on a range for Lines (Frog?) or involved with the Airfix 54mm Connoisseur range or Multipose?

Mr. Periwinkle Pennybrix, who, not unsurprisingly was the character-mascot for Tri-Ang's Pennybrix building system, a simplified version of Hestair Kiddicraft's mini-bricks (as stolen by Billund's Lego), with sheet roofing like the contemporary Airfix Betta Builder.

Periwinkle had a couple of pals, Mortimer Mole and Freddie Fox, and above we see a Periwikle which has been part painted, and two Freddies one shot in the same colour as the bases, the other possibly a test shot? In the Pennybrix sets they were all fully painted.

A set of Spot-On's 'Tommy Spot' figures also cast in whitemetal, might be test shots, maybe for further conversion work, there are various cut and filed castings among Pomeroy's stuff, and it's hard to second-guess what was going on, while he was also a hobbyist in his own right, for the fun of it?

From the left we have Tommy's father, the burglar from a police vehicle set, Tommy himself and the Policeman drawing his truncheon and blowing his whistle, both mouldings were also used in a Sweeny* board game by Omnia.

*Cockney rhyming slang - Sweeney Todd  = [the] Flying Squad (of London's Metropolitan Police)

A selection of resin pieces Dave was working on, some we saw last time like the Budda, who might be using a hookah-pipe or a pestle & mortar? I suspect the London Taxi is from a board game, as is - probably - the buglar; was there a non-Sweeny 'Cops & Robbers' type game aimed at younger players?

The Pinocchio is polystyrene, factory-painted and seems to have been removed from a toy/vehicle and may be a rival's finished product . . . Marx Swansea? The policeman looks like those unpainted figures which I suggested were key rings and which subsequently turned-out to be so, but he may be intended to go with the burglar?

Thinking-back; the unpainted key-rings probably came from the same person who gave me the original samples from Dave Pomeroy, shortly before I met him, so that would all tie-in nicely, and suggest Tri-Ang and the Havant Minimodels plant did anonymous contract-manufacturing for third parties? Hardly a surprise - spare capacity, easy cash with no in-house marketing and tax-deductible tooling-costs!

Which leaves the bust? He/she isn't one I recognise from the various cereal-premium sets of the time, so it might be a dolls-house accessory (mantelpiece ornamentation, for the use of), or a counter from a board game - there seems to have been a lot of board-game stuff coming out of Havant?

Now these are a mystery . . . various parts of various characters from Disney's Jungle Book, each of two parts, but not enough parts to do all the characters in each available colour, and not enough parts to do one or two, completely, at all. Also; they're in the style of cereal premiums, but much bigger than you would normally find such things?

There are two Mowgli characters; standing (top left) and walking (bottom middle), with models of King Louis (centre, two colours), Shere Khan walking  (bottom left, three colours (including Bagheera black?) with a painted yellow one), Bagheera sitting (top right), Baloo (three colours, bottom right), Junior (or Hathi Jr., top centre, two colours) and some kind of grinning gopher (middle left, two colours) . . . who is probably meant to be a mongoose? I don't remember him from the movie!

I'm leaving them in the bags for now, as if they turn-out to have been a commercial thing, I'll try to get a few of the missing halves and blog them fully when the sample is better, if not they will still make an interesting post with more imagery another day.

But, on the subject of commercialism; Google just throws up loads of Bullyland/Applause type vinyl-rubber figures, with a Maccy-D's set of kids-meal premiums, as does feeBay, but over there I also tried obvious individuals like Kaa (below) without the 'vintage' to maximise the search results, with no better success, so there's a possibility these were either quite a short-lived thing, or a cancelled thing?

So to Kaa, the snake; where the link to Dave Pomeroy's input is stronger, with a pre-production example which may be handmade? The Malachite-green one is straighter, has finer-etched details and two flat-spots to help him (more recently voiced by a woman!) stand up, while the muddy-jade one seems to have been manipulated with heat; a blow torch or something, and is clearly a stage on the way to the green one.

Imagine a sort of stretched-sprue (runner!) effect, but with heat-proof gloves and a thicker rod of material which seems to have been rolled-together from various recycled polystyrene scraps, with a  thick head-end and thin 'tail', being formed with the application of heat and force! If the green one is the finished article (which it seems to be), it is a single solid molding unlike the two-part press-together 'kits' of the others above.

And, as I say; nothing on Google, nothing on feebleBay and nothing on Cereal Offers, does anyone remember these? Are they or were they common once or are they pretty unique? Were they giveaways/premiums or was there a big-box model kit with simple construction for little hands? They seem (with the exception of the pre-prototype Kaa) to be from [a] professional mould-tool [/s], and any further information would be gratefully received here.

A is for And so to Sandown Park!

The ultimate cause of the failure of ITLAPD this year was a trip to NW Surrey two days earlier where I blew most of my budget on one item, but still managed to come away with enough stuff for a post.

What the budget was blown on, and no, I'm not telling you, but it wasn't cheap, and I had to talk myself into it with the help of the seller! It was the only item of Attack Force I still needed to find on a card, since finding the Centurion last year, and here are before and after shots.

There's not much of a difference, but I cleaned, ironed and wiped the card with a silicon furniture-cloth, to get a bit of depth back in the yellow. I also washed the landing-craft, but it's mostly dirt/dust, out of shot, on the flat surfaces.

This was only a fiver, it's pretty clean, and it's another tank transporter for that particular side-collection! With the die-cast collectors, box is everything isn't it, so a loose one is often to be found cheap, trailer is the same as the Airfix/Dinky/Lipkin (et al) ones, but the cab claims to be an International, although it's pretty fictional I think, the Aussies do have an International Harvester 'SF2670' tank transporter but it postdates this model by several decades!

Adrian gave me the five Les Higgins ECW's, they are exquisitely painted for 18/20mm figures, while the figure to their left is a rubber blow-mould from France, which being a latex type, has perished to a kind of chalky material, but still - mercifully - in one piece.

Bottom right are two other purchases, three of the smaller, better-sculpted, celluloid animals from Japan and a handful of Atlantic air force chaps, while the pair of guitar-playing Tim-Mee style GI's are what I have left after giving the rest away. They are/were issued by the US Armed Forces Entertainment (AFE) unit.

I bought a job-lot a while ago, and as they didn't owe me much and various people were interested, they all got divvied-out, three to mates from a Facebook group and the other five at Sandown, with Brain C politely declining, only for Matt Their to show up and happily take the 'spare'!

Bottom left was a little handful Adrian brought to the show for me, and the stretcher is important, I can't find it now, but I know it has been [is] somewhere on the blog as a pale-blue-grey unpainted moulding, 'probably' a margarine premium, but I said at the time, I think, that I'd like it to be WHW, and I'm confident with Adrian's turning-up of this painted one, that it is from the set of police figures from the Gau of Berlin.

A set which has several versions, painted, unpainted and silver. The set being three Nazi's, four gendarme and one each fireman, traffic cop and this stretcher-team for a ten count, not of 'police' but 'public' or mixed emergency-service personnel?

I also got a nice tub of cereal premiums from Steve Vickers, among which were these Kellogg's types; almost a complete set of Sooty, and a similar Noddy 'bear', a couple of the Olà & Co., Magic Roundabout and four of the comedy pirates, along with an astronaut - because the astronauts are known to be manufactured by Crescent (along with other marked premiums - guards, cowboys, Robin Hood etc.), it's assumed all these are (not the Roundabout stuff - we know that's Tatra), but there's nothing to say so definitely.

The same lot also had a nice selection of the Asterix figures from Europe (although as I've said before, they are common enough over here to have probably had an issue in the UK, possibly with Wall's Ice Cream), the lower lot are a bit chewed-up (compare the blacksmiths), but in an interesting plastic colour.

These were interesting, but sad, as they heralded the passing of Dave Pomeroy back at the start of the year, sadly his estate has been broken-up, and I happened upon these workshop bits which consist of the blue blob (back left) which seems to be a wax moulding of a (pre-existing?) Brickwoods Brewery key-ring (variation seen on the Blog), which sort of makes sense as they were Portsmouth based?

I have no idea on the queen, but she's got a resin body with a wax-head, but carving wax, rather than the poured candle-wax of the Brickwoods chap. Next to her is a resin test-shot (?) of the lady hockey players from the Subbuteo (or Waddington's?) board game, and a grave-stone, which must be of similar history - playing piece or game accessory?

In front of them are two 'product' quality shots, both busts, both board-games I think? The round blob is a Buddha or casting of a novelty smoking-monkey, it's not clear, while the other piece has plaster still stuck in it, so would appear to be a mid-process piece from the prototyping stage? And it looks like it might also have origins as a novelty key-ring? So he obviously used existing stuff to try things out on? Or 'keep his hand-in'?

Now, I had the pleasure, or privilege of spending a very enjoyable afternoon at Mr Pomeroy's house, many years ago now, with John Begg, having afternoon tea, quizzing him on the Triang game pieces I'd inherited from him a year or so earlier, and asking about the relationship between Almark, Minimodels, Omnia et al., while being shown various swords, model soldiers and a suit of armour!

Dave was also connected to the artist Denis Knight (of the Lettraset rub-down historical picture books, also carried by Patterson Blick in the States and someone else in Europe), and the pair of them probably worked with or knew Charles C Stadden as they all seem to have been involved with the Minimodels plant at Havent at around the same time, and to have also worked with Subbuteo, Waddington's etcetera.

So, while not necessarily monetarily valuable, the above are a small slice of the hobby's historical archive, if you will, and it's very sad to learn of his passing.

At the end of the show I helped myself to a fiver's worth of hollow-cast from Adrian's 50p tray, it's all grist to the mill, and provides further samples for future thematic posts, particularly the Robin Hood pair, while the sentry with gas-mask case on his chest looks similar to the Zang composition version. There was also a clean gun from Crescent.

The Batman sticker is a genuine 1970's vintage PVC vehicle-graphic which went down well on another site, the Crescent WWI plastics are home-painted, so will need cleaning, but I knew I didn't have one and couldn't remember which one, so got all three, as I knew it was one of the 'advancing' poses - it's the one on the left! Pink frame is chuck-outs and floor sweepings!