P is for Polotoys

Another set of old 28/30mm role-play gaming-figure, or similar knock-off's, you can see how they would have gone well together as a pair mid-posting on the 31st of last month, but, there you go, I totally lost sight of them in the bottom centre of my desktop, where I'd left them to remind me they were there - hey-ho!

Polotoys seem to have been incorporated in 1985, and share the Blue Box building in Hong Kong, so may well be another branding of Tai Sang, but they haven't got enough of a presence online to dig that deep, more of a straight marketing 'brand mark', than one with board-members and press-releases etc., . . . one supposes?

 

Similar to some Games Workshop stuff, and you may recognise the MB Games poses from Heroquest (also GW in a roundabout way, Citadel?) but again I think there will be other names in the frame as the victims of the plagiarism!

As per the Blue Box Japanese yesterday, I seem to have had two photo-shoots! The pink dragon is a bee-eye-tee-cee-haitch to photograph, and I know I have one or two more somewhere, as I shot a different one (unknown at the time) in a comparison shot a few years ago.

 

The horses, possibly based on the old Nottingham Mafia poses, but so simplified as to be new sculpts! And with no rider in the Polotoys set, I tried the Toy Major one, and he does a fine job of filling in, a tad too big for the mount maybe, but . . . it's fantasy, and it's probably a Steppes pony!

While this comparison with some DFC (Dimensions For Children) daemons, gives a good idea of the size which is heading toward 54mm. As always Shaun has all of it here, with packagings, the Schilling set is very interesting as the 'H' branded Deetail clones have been linked to Kwong Wah in the last few weeks (subscribe to Plastic Warrior magazine), which would mean the contents have been bought-in from more than one source.

M is for Matters Arising

A few things which got a closer shot or a comparison of one sort or another as this year's show plunder was being put away . . .

A quickie comparison between the unknown cloaked fantasy figure on the left and a Dimensions for Children (DFC) cloak wearer on the right. The unknown one is more sci-fi than swords & sorcery though and I wonder if it might be from the large Toyco set which contains the solid copies of the Colourform space alien figures?

The pilots in close-up, the larger one is a patch above Zang to be honest, and like the better versions of the standing infantryman, has a much neater base, so I think definitely another maker, or a later second version?

Cleaned-up the Airfix bikes; but they're shot to bits! I needed two riders and I didn't have the cap-wearer, so they are useful, and two pairs of blue wheels will prove equally useful at some point in the future I'm sure. I suspect the 'cutter' was trying to make them look more like scramblers, and I may clean them-up by removing the stunted remains of the mud-guards and guard supports

Because they were both to hand as I was putting-away; comparison between the Cavendish (etc.) on the left, and the KT/Shackman et al, novelty plinth/pencil sharpener figure on the right. Cavendish is a stiff 'At Ease', the other is 'easy'!

I thought he'd gone up here already, but I got the left-hand figure a while ago, the one on the right - last Saturday (Sandown tomorrow!), they are the fourth Airfix non-beagle dog, so I now have all four which will go on the Airfix Blog's Bergan/Beton page shortly! I think it's meant to be a Springer Spaniel, which means they are all working/hunting dogs - Setter/Lurcher-Greyhound /Alsatian . . . or; farm dogs.

Three of these are from forthcoming posts on the latest donation from Chris Smith, one was here and five came-in on Saturday. Colour, shade, base marks, copies - the more we find, the more we discover we still had to find! Mostly ABC (or their tool) but there are others!

Two of the figures from PW's show needed the old hot water treatment to get them standing up, one also wasn't shot clearly the other day so I've re shot him here, I suspect another Argentinian figure (silver paint) but more original in the sculpt than the other five which were added to the pile last weekend.

The Jecsan circus (clairvoyant/soothsayer?) figure didn't really respond to the hot water, despite two pouring, straight from the kettle! She stands better, but not flat, the infantry man did much better but needed a jiggit pared-off first.

Well, the blue one didn't clean-up as well as I'd hoped, the black marks seem to be some kind of bituminous splashes which have stained the substrate, so I'm stuck with the 'new' faint ones but he is an improvement on a week-ago!

While the silver one did need a clean, it was only the flash than made him look cleaner, the two other colour ones however have cleaned-up to the point where the flash has rather washed them out! On the left a 5th which was hanging out in the 'TBS Space' tray, from Chris as well I think.

Not quite as nice as the other one, and more Romanesque than Greek (I've seen them online as 'guerrier Grec/Romain', so it's an acknowledged factor of the set), but still a lovely figure, this one has had his replacement weapon blobbed to his hand with glue, at the 'other end' I will drill the hand out as with the previous find.

F is for Follow-ups - Combat Soldiers

Technically I'm a 'toy soldier collector', but it's a long time since the collection was more than 50% military, if it ever was, and even if you include all the cowboys & Indians, armed spacemen, the sailors and airmen, it probably won't get far over the halfway point! But I try to deliver a decent number of green 'army men' here, and these are follow-ups to they!

I've known for some time that my Taffy Toys stretcher has damaged carrying-handles, so I was very pleased to pick this up at Sandown the other day. We've seen them before more than once and with Brian Carrick's also on the Khaki Infantry page, they've had a lot of column inches here for 8 or so poses of odd-scale, odd era figures, with non-service weapons!

Also of interest with the new acquisition - he has clear signs of paint? The fleck of green on the pillow came off the base of one of the Timpo Brit's he was bagged with for a few days - I suspect, but the flesh seems to be all his, what's left of it! Given the number of other companies [possibly] in the frame with Taffy, could one of them have had a painted issue? For instance those TN Thomas space figures have a painted PVC version; alongside unpainted PVC and polyethylene issues and it's not 'firm' that they all came from Thomas?

We've seen the Chap Mai Land-Rover quite recently, with the figure frame Blogger a while ago, but I picked-up a few spare figures so shot them with the 'rover, and then looking for something else found this . . .

  . . . which is the whole set, beautifully shown-off in a box-opening type video, but she can't resist playing with them, para-drop AFV's! And THAT's obviously what the funny thing under the Lanny is - that fouls the carpet - it's for attaching the para-drop frame and parachute! I've got to find the whole set haven't I? . . . God knows where I'll stash a two-foot-by-three-foot polypropylene Hercules!

I believe it was sold here as an unbranded generic through both Argos and Index (before the latter folded), but may have been branded to either of the stores or Chap Mai (but not in the catalogues) and will have had different packaging and/or branding in different markets.

Argo are now selling the Chinook version under their Chad Valley branding.

I had one of those anonymous eMails from an anonymous fuckwit with the misfortune to be born fuckwitted who suggested I had used the same few figures to pretend I had all three sets of the DFC-MTC  Mini Military Playpack's I posted on the Hong Kong small scale, Giant or Not Blog back in Rack Toy Month, he said "I guess you think your [sic] clever and you tricked folks", so - fuckwitted one - actually I think I'm clever 'cos I can guess which 'folksy' side of the pond you reside! 

Dude - if I've got all three boxes and all three playmats, I don't think it actually matters how many of the figures I might have in your addled brainbox. Wotafuckwit.

To add weight to his conspiracy theorising; there may well be a difference in the figure count of one set (or two sets) compared to the three published posts as I found a crawling figure on the floor a few weeks later and added it to the Battle for Berlin set, as A) it only had one prone figure, B) it only has one vehicle and might have an extra figure and C) I didn't want to upset the count of the other two, when B has some validity!

And I can't be arsed to check my own posts to further 'trick' folks! Sometimes you do have to wonder why you bother . . .

 . . . anyway; while I was at it - I did a better colour comparison!

Also now on the Gaint... Blog, but shown here in last year's RTM was the Wing Lung post , and here's the missing larger scale base mark, it's not quite as neat as my 'from memory' graphics, but it's not too far removed!

News, Views Etc . . . News and Views!

I don't know what happened to September, I was sure we still had a week to go, by which I mean on Friday the 29th I was thinking it was about the 22nd or 23rd; someone stole a week from my life . . . bastard!

Also; on Friday last, we had pretty-much 'had' the conkers, and a few sweet chestnuts were starting to fall on the way into town, but it was still basically late-summer, today - 72 hours later - there's leaves everywhere and it's nearly Christmas! It would appear that at midnight on Saturday all the leaves remembered they hadn't paid rent for October and just took-off!

But is it Giant?

Nothing much toy-related here today, but there are new posts over on the small scale Hong Kong piracy Blog, each looking at one of the three little boxed sets from DFC/MTC which were issued back in the 1980's.

Barbie

Also a bit of news for those whose interest in toys extends to something broader than 50-60 millimetre soldiers; Channel4 here in the UK are showing Barbie: The Most Famous Doll in the World tomorrow night (Tuesday 3rd) at 9.15, it's staring Mary I-can't-save-the-high-street-after-all Portas, so it may well turn-out to be all of a Mattel-edited 'fluff and nonsense' screen-filler -  with little on Bild Lilly and nothing on Marx or the Lam/Seltzer Gina doll - but it promises to visit the Mattel factory, follow the design process, attend a Barbie convention and look at social issues here in the UK so should have something of interest, and it's nice to see toys on the telly for once!

3rd Best Month Ever

Because I lost a week somewhere (bastard!) the 'first/second week of October' thing was way out, and the Blog actually tipped the two-million hits sometime on the afternoon of the thirtieth! I was in the Library at about 3pm and it had 198-hits to go, so around 4 o'clock/teatime I reckon, if that was you (singular) thanks! While if you (plural) keep coming, I'll keep posting!

The funny thing is, it took nearly eight years to get the first million up, and just over a year to get the second but I think it will be less than 12-months to the third, from June's million-point to mid-December last year the total had only risen about 250,000, so the Blog's seen around 750,000-hits in 9 months! However as I know a similar Blog got their three-million up ages ago, I'm not getting ideas above my station!

I'd like to thank my family, because even though they're not involved, you always start by thanking them, I'd like to thank Miss Nash, Mrs Uprichard, Mrs Polity and Mike Richardson (my art teachers at various schools!) for letting me muck-about and 'express myself', I'd like to thank you, the viewing public for voting with your left-clicks - Ooops, I'm welling-up here, what would Gwyneth do now? - I'd like to thank everyone I've ever slept with, because when you see the futility of most human existence it's only the hope or possibility of more sex at some point in the future which keeps you going.

I'd like to thank Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior for encouraging me out of private, lone-collecting (the natural state of most collectors) into more public participation, PTS, Plastic Warrior, Paul McKenna, Andy Harfield and Peter Bergner for the shows (in the order I first attended!), John Begg and Adrian Little for support, encouragement and opportunity, Trevor Rudkin for a ton of stuff over the years and everyone who's ever been named as a contributor to the Blog.

I'd like to thank Pope John Paul II [not], President the Dead Kennedy's, King Crimson, the Beatles and the Stones, the Monkeys (who were Monkees and arguably better than the Beatles), Francis Ford Coppola, Harry Harrison and The Stainless Steel Rat, Susan George, AC/DC and Deep Purple (in fact; all the colours - Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd &etc), Dan Dare (the Eagle one), Judge Dredd (the 70's one), Flash Gordon (the silly one with Brian Blessed), the kid whose brother gave me all his Airfix blue ACW artillery in 1960-something, Donald Lehmkule, Brian Woodruffe, Tangerine Dream, Peardrax (in fact; all the fruit...yeah, even Bananarama), Mariella Frostrup, Punch, Private Eye, The Blues Brothers, Berlin, the smaller Channel Islands, Kenya, Enio Morriconi, the American Civil War, Asimov, Clarke, Huxley, the various Priests (authors; not effing clerics), The Hairdresser's Husband, Philip Glass, Vitalic - Poison Lips (Captain Flash Remix), Arms and Armour Press, Bellona, Almark, Ian Allen and MAP, Ramses II, Akhenaton, Brazil, Bowie (before he became a knob), Charlton Hesston (before he became a git), barrels (wooden), elephants, Autumn, gull's eggs, a galaxy long ago and far away, and another where no man had boldly gone to split-infinitives, Tribbles, Dimetrodon, Mohammad Ali, Janis Joplin, 1970's French Porn comedies, rock-pools, Clint Eastwood, Charlotte Rampling, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jenny Agutter, Celtic knot-work, fossils, most trees (not spiky, bastard-bush ones in Africa, they probably stole my last bit of September too; the bastards), The Man with Two Brains, De Sade, Kafka, Orwell, Vonnegut (all the depressives - they tell it like it was, is and always bloody will be), Mouse, Kelley and psychedelia, the Beach Boys, Susan Sarandon, The Simpsons, rhubarb crumble, Futurama, apple crumble South Park, plum crumble, the Hooters - All You Zombies, and Donald & Keifer Sutherland. I'd like to thank Rutger Hauer in Heaven & Hell, pancakes with sugar & lemon, crepes with hot chocolate-sauce, Catch-22 (book or film), Christmas-tree baubles, Rommel, Michael Caine, Art Nouveau and the Arts & Craft movement, anyone called Napoleon but not called Bonaparte (there's a Solo one), Prisoner, Z-cars, The Goodies, The Year of Living Dangerously, Bernard Fall, Daleks, Lego (but only before about 1997), Forbidden Planet (the animated movie), Forbidden Planet (the shop, but only before about 1997), Jerry-cans, Rubber Jigglers, Ray Bradbury, Abseiling, the ceremonial uniforms of South American Dictatorships, Raglan Castle, Schlöss Neuschwanstein, jam doughnuts, Santiago Calatrava, Rodney Matthews, gooseberry-fool, JRR Hobbit-man, ration-pack Mars Bars (not high-street ones), Lord of War and Nick Cage, oatmeal blocks with greengage jam from a tube, the SR71 Blackbird, chocolate trifle, Stuttgart, Munich, Baden Württemberg, the Black Forest, the Bodensee, Weingarten, Steibis and the Donautal (basically; everything German, south of Kassel), Bob Marley, insects (except camel-spiders), daffodils, peanut-butter, The Wire (telly not cold-war), Silent Running, old 1950's Volvo's, Dad's Army, Hadrian's Wall, old 1970's Volvo's, skinny-dipping, cacti, (not at the same time), old 1960's...yeah - just 'Volvo's'. I'd like to thank the British for 1000 years of annoying the French, mapping pens, Burger King's cinnamon-apple slice (discontinued in '92; bastards), Trading Places, Action Man (not GI Joe), Hurricanes, Vulcan V-Bombers, Britten-Norman Trilanders (yellow ones), Tom & Jerry, aircraft carriers, MTB's, fog-horns, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, snow, snowmen, skiing, Massey Furguson, The Primrose Café at Eastleigh, M4 Heston Services Northbound, armoured cars, the South Downs Way, Led Zepplin, Pepperami, English canals, Welsh streams, stepping-stones, Irish coffee and Highland toffee. I'd like to thank Ford Transit vans, American military 6x6 trucks, shortbread, a Harley Davidson Sturgis in midnight-pumpkin, raspberry Ruffles, Lucky Bags, Tootie-Fruities (like Skittles but BETTER), chemistry-sets and microscopes, black socks with coloured toes, Neil Young, Land-Rovers, Austin Gypsies, Chelsea Bridge, plain-chocolate Bounties, the Bayeux Tapestry, big cats, little cats, kittens , cheetahs, aliens that look like kittens but eat your soul in your sleep, Kew Gardens, sloe gin, Advocatt, Advocart, Addvocat egg-nog, Guinness, Sauterne, canoeing, Manu Chao & Noir Desir  - Le Vent Nous Portera, Roger Dean,  special-fried rice, variegated-holly hedges, the GPMG and Chinooks (not at the same time), Mon Cherie in Charlottenberg, Leonard Cohan and the other one with the gravelly voice (Judas!), Azaleas, Eli Wallach, Sigourney Weaver, the Great Pyramids at Giza, Blade Runner, Big-O, Heavy Metal magazine, Asterix and Tintin, toadstools, Peter Rabbit, glow-in the dark stars on the ceiling, hedgehogs, roast lamb with all the trimmings, Nazareth - Morning Dew, the Morris Minor estate, Aphrodite's Child, Pooh-sticks, dandelions, Stonehenge, Tusker's larger, Phauenbrau, Easyrider T-shirts, Nutella, Marmite, Twister ice-lollies . . .

Best Month Ever - from the 17th!

 . . . but most of all - I'd like to thank the kind folks of the Penn State Toy Soldier Mafia, and in particular the jabbering-fuck; Paul Stadinger and his cock-wackin' monkey-lizard; Erwin Sell, because without their intervention last December and their various entertaining, misguided, lunatic intermissions since, the blog would only be sitting on around 1,450,000-hits today, so - thanks y'awll!

D is for Dragon, on St George's Day

Or, it would have been St George's Day if Picasa hadn't mucked me about until after midnight!