N is for November's Sandown Park - Wild West, Animals and Odds

Winding-up the Sandown purchases from a month ago now, and it's mostly animals, and the Wild West, with a few odds & sods, cartoon, TV-Movie stuff and the like, to look at this time.

 

I have two beliefs about this set (which was a gift from John Begg, I think), one is that it's from the same series as the #445 Mobile Task Force, and Space Explorer sets issued by Gordy, Woolbro and others, this being one 'sock' instead of two, and a generic issue with no branding-overprint. The other is that we were bought a set each from Webb's the Newsagent, in Hartley Wintney, by Mum, one wet weekend, in the holidays!

 

There was a two-sock Fort Cheyenne under the 445-code, but that had a version of the fort, and different figures/horses, so this may be a lookie-likey , and leaves the first belief questionable for now, the second belief is 100%, I well-remember the colour samples, and trying to wiggle the horses hooves into the carpet fibres to keep them standing up!

 

I bought a second pirate set from the same chap as last time, and it's already been opened and shot for International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so a couple of months after the last one, and there are already two folders ready for next year!

 

A  mix of HK smallies, including several sub-piracies of the 2nd version knights, in red, I'd had a few yellow ones but I think these are new, usually you find both the Giant originals and the copies in silver or black. They probably belong on the horses to the right, but this is how they came!

 

Someone tried to 'mend' a broken tail, by rolling a scrap of faux-suede up, very tight, setting it alight, and stuffing it up the horse's jacksie! Given how common these are, and how many would come in even a small 6d set, that was a hell of an effort! Probably a 'favourite' horse? Kids are a bit like that, you can have fifteen white horses in the bag, but if one's slightly grey and becomes your favourite, you'll move Heaven & Earth to keep in going!

A rather tatty 2nd generation copy of one of the Hong Kong dogs we looked at in a couple of round-up posts a year or two ago, and the smallest King Kong in the world! Certainly the smallest I've seen, who wasn't moulded into a resin Empire State Building keepsake!

 

Probably a 1d-1¢, gum-ball capsule prize or Christmas cracker novelty, it really is tiny, less than 20mm! In all other respects it's the same as all other HK gorillas; soft polyethylene, with a basic MADE IN HONG KONG mark.

 

A sample of broken Cherilea dinosaurs, which Adrian gave me from his bits box. Useful nevertheless, against colour variations, or even to combine with others into dodgy Dr. Moreau subjects at a later date? I mean they are so rare these days, due entirely to their brittleness, that some are better than none, and they will be added to a bigger sample with some better ones we have seen here, previously, at Small Scale World.

 

Two Britains copies, a rather nice Hong Kong Herakd clone, from Hong Kong! And a damaged sub-scale rendition of the war-dancing Swoppet, also from the colony of intellectual property crime!

 

Kinder, all 1980's, I think. If you were to 'age' Kinder like comic-fans age their stuff, these would be 'silver age'! The head and hat, is from a slightly different set to the complete figure, I think, while the fire-appliance with two mini plug-in firefighters was late 80's, and I actually kept a few of the tractors at the time, so there's a tub of these to add-to, or cannibalise from, to make whole examples.

 

Damaged guard from Cherilea's executioner set, another Invicta dinosaur, a couple of Esci Americans and a partial pig, in the style of the Xandria key-rings, but all 'ethylene, and probably from another source?

 

Four 'funnimals', and all probbaly Holly rather than Lik Be, certainly the llama-like and squirel-thing come in a set with the known Holly guitar-turtle, while the cow was issued by Mail-Order outfit Colonial Studios, with a set of otherwise realistic (Briatins copies) farm animals.

 

This is just marked Hong Kong, but is not a bad rendition of Disney's Pluto, and holds-up against the Marx, Heimo, and early-Schleich stuff of the 1970's, a lump of stable-PVC, I guess the ring is the remnants of a key-chain?

 

More of the cartoon mini-animals often credited to Kinder, but which predate Kinder by a decade or two, and were issued as carded 'families', as gum-ball machine prizes and through other such novelty avenues. Kinder would issue similar 'hard plastics' in the 1980's, but usually larger models.

 

UK Cereal premiums, haveing other outlets elsewhere, here they were all cereal, with two jig-toys, three of the Aristocat figures and a Brian the Snail from the Magic Roundabout, and while we now know Brian could have been a Wavyline promotional, I think in this shade of blue, he might be a European ice-cream premium.

 

I think we might have the Little Baby Jesus (or Moses?) in red here, a rather tatty Marx Snow White (from Swansea?) and a lovely survivor of Japanese blow-moulded lightness, in the probable 'styrene copy of an earlier celluloid Santa Claus.

CGB is for Cool Glassware Buddy!

Another box-ticker from the Gift Fair at the NEC, and we're looking at glass animals from CGB Giftware, who are clearly some kind of marketing outfit for a cooperative of smaller, artisan makers, with at least two brands visible, Jasmine and Fox Fern.

 

Some of these are so clever, you have to work very fast, with molten glass, to get the techniques to work, and while there's an element of once you've designed one, you can reproduce it quicker and quicker, the nature of artists is that they will constantly have new ideas, so they are always trying new things, I love the giraffe with the bent neck, these two kerthunkersaurs, and, the ducks must be incredibly hard to get 'right'?

F is for Follow-up - B&M Stores

 As a follow-up to this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/12/s-is-for-shelfies-b-stores.html

 

I did go back and get a set of the mini-animals;

 

12 Dogs.

 

12 farm animals, including another dog!

 

12 wild / zoo animals.

 

12 Dinosaurs.

They work out at less than 10p each! The dinosaurs are much-of-a-muchness, I've got worse, the wild animals are more hit-and-miss, while the farm animals have their scale all over the place, but are mostly reasonable sculpts, the dogs are probably the poorest of the four sets.

 

Two of the poultry were designated to carry the consumer information for the whole set, while a comparison between the farm's collie-dog and the dog's Alsatian, reveals the different levels of expertise in two sculptors!

P is for Philanthropic Polymer Pile

I haven't been as quick or often through the Charity Shops, this last eighteen months or so, work commitments, eBay bottom-feeders and a couple of store closures making it a less lucrative quest these days, but I did manage two quick tours of Farnham and Fleet's charity shops last week, while I had some time off, and I found these.

 

This was a quick round-up in Fleet

 

Box tickers for the tubs of generic play-set accessories, but also a new figure, funny how, despite forty-odd serious years of this, there's still new figures, in every bunch of plunder, every donantion, even a random bag of charity stuff! Jame's Opie always asks - primarily of lead hollow-casts and solids - how many figures (actual pose mouldings/sculpting) have there been, and the answer, from where I'm sitting, is millions - one is including copies and colour or paint variations.

 

A couple of slip-cast kittens, with slightly 'Disney' or 'doe eyes', but a rather interesting glaze technique, I thought? And mostly because they are often in mixed lots of cats, or pets, I now have quite a side-collection of china, bisque or chalkware cats. These are priced 3/6 each (three shillings and sixpence, 42 old pence, about 16p in new money, at the time?).

 

A pair of Toy Major Dino's.

 

A right old mix here, with the Ray marked Smartstudy and Viacom 2021, I assume not a Finding Nemo thing, but some other franchise, maybe Baby Shark?

 

And then, the next day - to Farnham!

 

Given the cost of these new, or 2nd-hand with box, I'm guessing a tenner for the three, while a swallow, was also the best I was going to get for what, to me, are box-tickers, to compare with plastics in the future? Not 'Britians' but W'britian from the US.

 

Simply marked 'China' and probably from some toob, or tub type thing, but a nice sample of ocean or shore-dwelling mammals, from the left; a Sea-lion, Mantee, Seal and Walrus.

 

It's Christmas! A nicely executed bit of poured-resin, possibly from Italy, but I don't know, as they are unmarked where visible, and have green-baize discs on their undersides, hiding any clues which might be there?

F is for Follow-up to Plunder Posts - Animals (Prehistoric)

Confirmation of the 30mm rubber cavemen being issued by Harett-Gilmar (HG Toys), and some of the rather fat dinosaurs they lived alongside, in the well-known prehistoric continent of Gondneverwhen!

 

Sometimes it's those mid-era (of one's life) toys which pass one by, those issued while you're busy doing other things, but which have disappeared from the retail market by the time you return to collecting, full-time, and I only discovered these, looking for something else, in 2023!

 

The dinosaurs are fat, I mean there's something wrong with their metabolism, which may be a clue as to their demise, if the meteor theory proves false . . . they ate themselves extinct by getting too fat to mate, or move! The shrub, being like everything else, a softish PVC, could easily be mistaken for a Bata accessory, with its semi-flatness?

At least four poses, although I've also seen the guy with stripey loin-cloth ascribed to another toy line (Mighty Max, I think?), but that was almost certainly a false identification, and I'm guessing the string on the bow is a home addition (in fact I think the whole bow is a replacement), and the club is missing from stripey-pants, but you get the idea!

B is for Big Box of Bounty - Animals

The penultimate post of plastic plunder from Chris, and it's the animals, the least documented of the collection, simply because there are thousands upon thousands of them, and they've just never been a priority, and as the pile of unknowns grows, it gets, like any dark secret, too big to face!

 

But one day soon I hope to tackle it (there's realistic-sculpt Lik Be hidden in there, among other things), and when I do, it will fall into place, or at least some of it will!

 

A Dino-skeleton, a modern phenomenon which is contributing to that pile, although we have ID'd a few over the years, but they keep coming, and this one, one of those 'berry-heads' (Pachycephalosaurus) by the look of it, is larger than most and new to me, it's creeping-up on two arguing cave-men, who are now known (by me, other people knew all along!) to be HG Toys.

 

Small PVC jobbies, and a big job too, with many ID'd and many still to be, here I think we have examples of two modern/current'ish sets, a good [detail] and a not so good set, and one of more vintage, the green one with a splash of pink paint?

 

Not Dinosaurs in my Pocket (Matchbox and cereal premiums), but 'Dino Brites' by Happyness Express of New York (1991), originally Panosh, there's plenty on the Internet about them, this is a good précis on the subject;

 

https://www.littleweirdos.net/2012/02/dino-mites-dino-brites.html

 

 

Larger chaps, with an erasersaur, and one from my favourite rubber set, front right, in a bit of a state, but that state is interesting - it looks upon first glance to be a string, tied by a young owner, which has cut into the foot, but actually, upon trying to remove it, it became clear it was actually an inclusion, running through the leg, and exiting at two points, a piece of cleaning cloth, or hessian sack used to transfer batches of product around the factory floor, which got flicked into the tool? Amazing how it's survived!

 

Two recognisable Holly's (now we've had half a look at them here, as part of the Gygax posts), and the silver one is a nice, but unknown, moulding? Which leaves a softer, more 'Chinasaur' Stegosaurus, who may belong with the Protoceratops and red chap in the second image above?

 

I've seen this chap in mixed lots on evilBay and wondered if it was a copy of one of the Wild West charging/fighting bears, but I think it's a copy of an Elastolin (or Lineol?) composition model, perhaps for Roggatz's ZZ-brand, although not with those green eyes . . . a copy of a copy? Still a nice sculpt, though!

 

Two Airfix piracies, getting a good sample of these now, with and without painted eyes, two larger Hong Kong/China pieces, being a mouse/rat and copy of the Corgi farm dog, a Matchbox boxer-dog from the pick-up truck, and a Berlin-marked bear, with MAMPE, on the other side, a logo-premium for the 'Berlin Mule' kicker-spirit!?

 

A flocked kangaroo, believed to be a Hong Kong-supplied tourist keepsake, three Safari animals, another weakness in the collection, as I've concentrated on the figural sets, and a collectable-series monkey from Topps, who need a better post, along with those Yowies, still in the long queue!

 

Tupperware zebra on the left, chalkware lion from the Naturecraft Christmas crackers in the middle, and one of the two, or four, I'm still looking for! And another bath-toy swan (there was a blue one in the last lot from Peter Evans, and I think I have a pinkish-red one?), which is almost certainly an early post-war novelty, brightening the Christmases, and bath-time's, of the nation's baby-boom.

 

Farm stuff, the composition cow looks particularly interesting (Brent?), while piggy-wiggies and eeeps will need their own ID pages eventually, as there are many of them, and so many copies of known sculpts, it's a collection field in itself . . . Indeed I know a cow collector, who comes round the shows, and from just what I've seen him buy, his collection must be amazing.

 

Two modern horses, and a rather knackered, but still interesting (a sample is always better than no sample) wagon or cart horse, in a solid plastic, which may be Bakelite, or a similar phenol-formaldehyde resin / thermo-set?

 

A bit of fun on the left (but it's a sample!), probably from a modern kid's magazine freebies, and a more conventional beetle on the right, I have half an idea, one day, if I get the time, to mount them all in thematic, glass-fronted, deep frames, as if they are real entomologists exhibits, and ladybirds will be first, as I have a dozen, or more, already!

 

 

Vitacup premiums, mostly damaged, but 'styrene, so usefully glueable, and kept apart, against a future mending session! The baby elephant is more robust, and has survived intact.

 

Lego (?) fish, a Hammerhead, who is damaged, he's missing his lower 'gape mouth' jaw, but it actually, ironically, takes him from the realm of rubber-juggler, to something more realistic looking! A Safari White Shark, and a more generic . . . Mako? Marked China and 'Shark'!

 

Two stretchy 'rubber-jiggler' lizards, probably from two sources, the one unmarked, and flattish with fine sculpting detail, the other fully-round, with fuzzier surface detail (marked China), despite both being metallics, common on these stretchy toys.

 

The turtle is amusing, to me, as I have a blue one which I think is a childhood survivor, despite my not remembering the set, or occasion of its acquisition, it seems to have been in the toy drawer for forever, and nice to find his mate, in another fantastic parcel from Chris Smith.