F is for Follow-up - Deep Sea Divers

Mine wasn't Tresco, although looking through past posts on the Divers - Deep Tag, I do have one, however, by then I'd shot the ones I have here, and Brian had sent me a bunch of shots of his, so I raided the Divers & Submarines folder for a few carded sets off of that evilBay, and we have a quick post!

Two Tresco's from Brian Berke, old and new, with the Tobar one, still on the card, and which I know you could also find in Hawkin's Bazaar, as I saw it before I was collecting all scales, so at least 15-odd-years ago?

 

What seems to set them apart as two groups, whether copies or originals, Tresco versus Hong Kong, is that those from or after Tresco have a small 'pouch' like a binoculars case, on the chest, while the Hong Kong lifts have a longer, thinner case-like object you might find spare machine-gun-barrels in!

 

In the centre is what must be Tresco's last production, in bright yellow, while to either side are the ones with the tubelike piece of equipment marked-up to Imperial and Kingsway, a quick check-back to Brian's image, and you'll see all three are the same Tresco design, with the packet/parcel.

 

While all three of the ones I have here are the tube-design, which I'm calling Hong Kong, to which I added the giant 5" one we saw a while back, so you could see how giant he is! From the apparent age of the paler two, I suspect they may be earlier and the origin of the tube-design, changed from the parcel of the Tresco they were aping?

 

I should have shot that fish-tank one from Chris again too, but . . . next time! Divers are a bit of a favourite here, and we do return to them regularly! Brain also sent three individual shots, but as we've seen the subjects before, and they are in the above line-up, I put them in the folder to replace the three carded ones, against another of those re-visits!

 

There are some very interesting things in that folder, but I need to find more in context to Blog them with, and I have a feeling there's some on the old 'unknown' dongle? So we may return to divers sooner rather than later?

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 5 - Civilians

On to the civilians from Chris Smith's donantion today, always a few surprises here, although some of the more interesting ones, those who are nationally/ethnically-dressed, have been sent to the Ancient/Medieval post to pad that out!

And what a way to start, you know we like divers here at Small Scale World - sticking out of everything else when I opened the box, this, admittedly large, lump of polystyrene is a candidate for best in box! Obviously a fish-tank ornamental aerator, it has a pipe connection at the back of the helmet and a finely pierced ceramic plug in the top, to generate the fine lines of oxygenating bubbles. But it's just so unusual, and a rare survivor from - probably - the 1950?

 

Sports was mostly footballers, with Waddington's Table Soccer figures to the left, and what I think are Ariel's Soccerboss figures, de-pegged to the right, the tennis-player pencil sharpener is a real treat, while the incomplete kicking player could be Parker, Palitoy, even Subbuteo, there are lots, and one day I'll sort them all out. Two athletes and a broken Subbuteo make up the shot.

This is fun, and following-on from the footballers in the previous shot, he's an Airfix footballer under his new skin of Mariachi guitar player! The instrument is from an enamelled metal pin-badge, which I distinctly remember having as a kid/teenager, which has been thickened with a balsa-wood off-cut, totally homemade conversion . . . Wild West or a 1-guage restaurant/dining-car? We'll never know!

 

Odds and sods, what can you spot? The drunk is a magnetic novelty who needs his lamppost to work fully, the green chap next to him is from that Wookie/King Kong game we've seen here in passing before, there are some railway bits, cake decorations and die-cast accessory figures.

 

Police; one marked Funrise (dark blue) and in a soft PVC substitute, the two to the left unmarked in a very soft silicon and 'maybe' Pioneer, the other a common'ish, current ethylene rack toy we may have seen before here?

 

Firefighters; Three from 'big-box' vehicle toys, the third from the left being a really nice composition figure, presumably from the basket of a tin-plate ladder-truck by someone like Tipp & Co., Karl Bub or similar, as is the white chap from a plastic garden-toy

The smaller figure keeps turning-up, and is hard to place, but someone did a Berlin firefighting vessel (River Harvel) kit (Revell?) and he may be from that, or something like that? In the past I've suggested a fisherman or sailor from one of several Tug or Trawler models, but each time he turns up he's in blue or painted blue, so I think firefighter from somewhere/something?

The guy on the left is interesting for being an apparent copy of the Corgi 'cherry-picker' platform truck (forward-control Jeep), which was copied by one of the Hong Kong pirates (TAT/Telsalda?) in a large-scale plastic as a Dinky/Ford hybrid, I think, so he'll probably be from that!

 

The racing car driver is obviously from a racing car, but is looking early-British, plastic-wise, and from quite a big model (1:20/1:24?), he's both new to me and pretty stunning, he must have George Musgrave, George Eric, Stadden or Nibblet behind him? Someone like that, a bit of a 'Find', I think, and another contender for best in box - Chris, thank you!

Shopping lady could be Plasty or Kinder, I think she's the former, but I'm not 100%, and is she West West or some civilian 'doll' village thing? While the policeman is a new'ish die-cast accessory.

 

Seated figures tend to close the civilian page, as paratroopers open the posts! We may have seen some of these before, but with colour variations, there'll be many more to come, and there are shed-loads in storage to sort out and ascribe one day! Highlights here include a beach-buggy driver from a plastic kit, the pull-and-go racing motorcycle and sidecar crew and a Mattel CUTIE seated in pink!

N is for New Stuff, from New York!

Welp, four hours sleep, but everything that could be painted was, and everything else was washed or hoovered and the house in on the market! I'm having the afternoon off to relax, and this was next in the 'new queue', or 'ready rounds' on the desktop, so with much gratitude to Brian Berke, lets have a look at the contents of his recent parcel!

 

Marx President Hoover (of the dam, not the vacuum cleaners!) who is very useful as there's a whole bunch to collect and I only have about five! And a horse which I think is the Ajax version, again very useful as there's a major update on that Bergan/Beton horse page in the pipeline, although technically it's a Britains Hollow-cast cavalry horse which B/B copied.

 

The ubiquity of Britains in the early 20th Century, throughout the developed world, colonies and Empire (upon which the sun never set!) means everyone copied that horse in metal even, before plastic was even used for toys - you find it a lot in South America, for instance, solid or hollow, and then plastic!

 

Under them two Van Brode figures and a ger'nome . . . because!

 

Lovely O-gauge samples from Marx on the right and Bachmann Plasticville on the left I think, I have the latter in HO-gauge, and possibly some factory painted in O', but it's nice to have the raw ones for future comparison.

 

Below which are some of the comic flat mail-order 100 Dolls figures. I was hoping - as I waded through everything this last two years or so - to find the sticker-sheet for them, but it hasn't turned-up yet, although I think I know where it is, so we will look at it one day.

 

Is this another Mold-a-Rama, or a beach toy? It's sort of in the same style, heavy-walled blow-mold (or rotary mould? I don't know exactly how the machines work), but without a plinth for promotional messages? It'd be funny if I'd got two in a few weeks, after waiting forever for one! Whether it is or not, it's a cool and unusual piece, not much smaller than the elephant

 

Two Carzol Tanks, co-incidental for two reasons; Moonbase only covered the history of this Canadian firm the other day, and they are from the US Mohawk mould tools, of which I have all but the Tank, in Khaki plastic! The New York yellow-cab is unmarked (It's marked MADE IN USA, and is Marx, see comments) while the red cars were Renwal, one family saloon (No.143), one 'space car' (No. 150). Except, I think it might be based on a concept car from a 1930/40's motor-show, but it's a space car to me!

 

Brian mentioned that some of the items in his parcel were covered here, while it was in transit, and it's true we had a 'Space Car' at the time, from Thomas, but the Rewal one he sent is much spacier, when you see them side-by-side! And a decent shot of the cab's graphics.

 

How to Train Your Dragon figures from Spinmaster/Dreamworks, I think I have a few duplicates of these now (Peter too has donated some), so I will have a stab at painting a few when I'm settled in my place of decrepitude!

 

Interesting mix of figures here, the MPC African is particularly nice, as I only have the metallic gold/bronze ones, and a couple of grey reissues, the Hippo is a new sculpt to the collection, and I like the goose and the little 'plane!

 

Oh, wow! I think the large diver might have been a baking-soda toy? He's a bit damaged now, but seems to have had a large compartment (possibly with a missing slot-in powder box) with a small air/water hole, if he was, it's the biggest such toy I've encountered outside the submarines, and much heavier, being quite a chunk of polyethylene!

 

The two Hong Kong copies of the Lone Star mini-sub/two-man torpedo are lovely, and it means there must be a (more colourful?) sub' out there as well! I don't normally collect things like the mini-fig (Bonkers for the Ryan's World franchise), but given how the 'sub-collection' of divers has grown, he's a welcome addition, for completist’s sake!

 

While the creamy-white chap seems to be a hang-glider pilot (I'm old enough to remember the hype and excitement over their 'invention'!), and is probably from a quite sophisticated kite of some kind? Very useful and will make an interesting addendum to the parachutists page when I get back to that . . . I know, I know - the Airfix blurbing-up, the Khaki Infantry page, the A-Z's!!!

 

A spoon-rider! I think it might be Christopher Robin? Quite the American thing, spoon-riders, I don't think UK cereal issued many, or any at all, nor European brands, but in the 'States there's a load of them;, TV/Movie-related tie-ins, brand mascots and others, so a nice thing to get in the post - my first!

 

I've still to ID the baseball player, rubber lady and caveman, all-three around 45/50mm.

 

Finally, Brian sent us images in time for last year's Halloween, but now he's sent the packaging! Which adds the witches to the stash! He also reminded me that the content-count on the skeleton warriors has gone down to match the newer sets, which is a bit of a swizz, but, life as we know it!

Many thanks to Brian as always, this will all enhance the collection, and enhance future posts, and the thematic pages I plan for the future; Divers, paratroopers, there's a firefighter one half-ready in the queue somewhere!

Now. I'm going to have a snooze, then have an evening off decorating/cleaning/sorting to go round to the flat and photograph the stuff Jon Attwood has sent to the blog!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 9. Divers

Thinning-out a too-long civilians post, we find ourselves with some all-diver stuff!

In the centre we have the mini-sub from Hing Fat, with older bagged James Bond knock-offs (Thunderball - the original version) either side and a couple of the air-line uppy-downy bath toys behind.

 

We've seen (with much help from Brian Berke) various domestic and foreign versions of the smaller one, but the other is, as you can see, jai-huge! It has heavy-metal (lead?) feet, to which the body is melted on, presumably because the amount of plastic made the diver too buoyant even when filled with water?

 

The bags seem to contain sub-piaracies of the ones we looked at here, which had a handful of accessories missing from these bags, it may be that the moulding is the same, and price-cutting is responsible, but it's not clear without taking them out and comparing with something currently in storage, so a future post there!

 

Thanks to all for everything last month; Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith and Peter Evans.

C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Sports & Civilians

I was going to do sports and civilians as two separate posts, but realised most of them were sports (or pastimes) of one sort or another, and all the seated figures were in one shot which would have made a quick post with two Asian ladies, so they're all here!

Fussbal! There was something about pig's bladder kicking on Faceplant the other day, some Arabs were organising an end-of year kick-about or something, I believe the Argentines were playing dirty again, but still won? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

The three on the right are from board games of one type or another, but the chap on the left is one of those press-button collapse'a'toys (I've ever found a good generic term for them), where all the parts are threaded on wire, cotton button-thread (in this case) or fishing line, and held in tension by a spring in the drum base, so when you press the button, pushing the spring in, the fellow collapses like a 'red shirt' in an alien death ray! All plastic - brilliant thing!

Sorry for the upper shot, by the time I realised it was unusable they had gone to storage, so I used it! They are something we have seen before, in depth twice and in many mixed-posts like this one so you should be familiar with them, and with so many variations in size, colour and base type; something we will return to one day, these are mid-range (30-odd millimeters) and mid-quality.

Below them we have a rider (from an eraser go-cart/cartie type thing?) in eraser rubber, a wrestler in the style of Kinukiman/M.U.S.C.L.E., but not marked-up as one of them, so probably a gum-ball/capsule-machine knock-off, and, finally, an ice hockey player, similar to the pencil-top/key-ring footballers, but with no sign of a loop having been removed and no hole up his back-passage, more of a stand-alone desk-mascot.

The rear of that cart-rider, I wondered if he was a spaceman (he's quite similar to the Dinky Moon-buggy/Space Chariot crew, but he's more BMX'y with knee-pads and padded thigh-protectors, and I have half a feeling I've seen the cart somewhere, equally you might think pencil-top, but the larger hole is still a tad small, and I suspect locating-lugs on the go-cart?

The upper shot shows three skiers, all cake decorations, all Hong Kong, two polyethylene and one polystyrene (to the left) who's predictably lost his sticks, the first two are copies of the Britains Arctic Explorer, the one to the right a Gemodels skier I think?

The funny thing is I think the Britains 'Arctic' exploration set came out during the hype for an Antarctic expedition, the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE) of 1955–1958, which my late mother helped with, back here in the UK, and I've found some of the paperwork in her estate, which at some point I'll do something with, nothing exciting; kit lists, typed databases of suppliers, formats of begging-letters, that sort of thing!

Below them are three of the cuckoo-clock/barometer figures, a pair and an odd, with a lovely Bavarian/Tyrolean dancer in Lederhosen. We have looked at the clock-figures before, but we will return to them at some point because several more have come in, and hopefully some will make-up more pairs? In the meantime this is a pretty good line-up!

A couple of these - like the go-carter - were borderline space figures until I looked closer; they all seem to be divers/marine explorers of one type or another, with a deep-sea diver to the left, two undersea vehicle crew to his right and the Nabisco (?) diver, much chewed in front. The chewed one is worth keeping for the colour and the fact that I think I only have the one other - bent legs - pose!

The deep sea diver looks like a pencil top, but the hole is too small again, so I expect he's from a similar novelty to the Nabisco one, which relies on air pressure/water density affecting a air-bubble in the hole, to make him go up and down in a bottle? But what do I know? He might be a nineteen-fifties fish-tank ornament from a weighted wreak or something!

The other yellow plastic chap is from one of the several rack-toy sea 'chariot' or James Bond villain-army type toy vehicles out there, I think/assume!

The 'might be' Hilco cake decoration hunters, from Britains Lilliput above, with two Hong Kong cyclists below, one almost a cracker-toy, but we've seen the packaging here I think, the other from one generation of Britains piracy or another. I picked up another, raising his arms as if crossing the finish-line, the other day, which I'm pretty sure goes with this chap (but they are already ensconced in two different places!), so it's a question of matching them with the right cycles in the future, and blogging them together with the doors and the little articulated one we saw here a while ago!

Seated figures, like paratroopers are standard contents of mixed lots, and highlights this time are the turquoise one (top, middle) who looks to have some age, and the metallic turquoise one below him which is also new to me, I think? Below them is a grey aircraft (?) crewman, in the style of a kit-figure, but possibly factory-painted and therefore from a more commercial toy/pre-built aeroplane model?

Lastly, but anything but leastly; two more of the KT/Shackman et al., figures, we saw these two in images from Brian Wagstaff which are on the 'World Dancers' page (link at the top of the page), so it's really nice to have them here now, a separate image has already been taken and added to the 'Commonwealth additions' folder!

When Brian W sent them I hoped they might be the sign of a larger set of ex-Commonwealth or Van Brode sculpts within the tourist/novelty pencil-sharpener line we've been looking at here, but these are the fourth/fifth to turn-up now, and the feeling is that they are just the pair, as in a 'Pair of Asian Dancers'

With a pair of Americans (Cowboy & Indian), pair of Germans/Tyrolean's (May Day/Dirndl dancers), four British touristy subjects (Policeman, Beefeater, Guardsman and Highland piper), and . . . I'm hopeful a Mountie might turn-up?

Thanks again to Chris for all these, which leaves us waiting for the 'other figures' post!

F is for Follow-up - Divers

Brian also sent me some diver stuff to follow-on from the recent post on that subject and I gained a few more the other day, almost by accident!

We've seen Brian's self display before (in another diver 'follow-up' post I think!), but there are new faces in the line-up; at that time it was the three whitish ones in the back row, they have been joined by two Lik Be (LB) cake decorations (they had a carded issue or two as well!) in red, a nice figure in front (metal?) and the larger chap at the back.

Cap'n Pugwash is still keeping an eye on his increasing motley crew!

Brian has actually found two of them, and using the stuff on the feet found them to be by Bonkers for the Ryan's World franchise. Brian reports the figures are solid with no movable parts which somewhat restricts play?

I have seen the gift eggs in various supermarkets and other outlets, and had even got as far as working out there are different themes to the different trays/counter boxes (boys, Girls etc . . . ), but the graphics are too 'busy' to work out if there's anything useful to us in which tray's eggs, so I've ♫ . . . walked on down the hall ♪♪!

Clearly they are worth a shufftie, and if anyone can enlighten us further, that would be grand. The Ryan's World 'phenomena' is best explained by Wikipedia for those who haven't encountered it.

In the meantime these turned up the other day in a lot I'd bid on for something else, and to be honest I hadn't really registered them in the evilBay images beyond maybe clocking them as 'better' or earlier Hong Kong copy stuff, but actually they are quite good paint Lone Star survivors and will need comparing with my 'master' sample, which we have seen before. Although I think most of mine are the James Bond orange ones, so these may be a very useful surprise?

Q is for Quintet of Queerish Questors

Yeah, I dun'know, it sort of started with Quartet and just grew! At one point it was diving divers di . . . it got samey! Just a quicky; it's been a long day! We're looking at a group of pretty diverse divers - oh, could have run with that?!! - I picked-up in the autumn and spring.

It's the five on the left we'll inspect in a minute, but I shot them with a few commoner plastics (trio to the right) to give some idea of size/scale and bulk/sculpt. From the left we have Manoil's hollow-cast US lump, a fully painted/matt-glazed bisque from Japan, Argentinian plastic cake-decoration (seen before) and Britain's own ceramic classic from Wade, the last is a Murano style, hand-made/blown vitreous example of the glass-carftsmann's art.

So Manoil's lump, and I don't call it a lump in a derogatory fashion, just that it's a heavy chunk of post-war lead-rich solidity! For it's time, it's a surprisingly modern suit with no cage-windows; although he seems to be carrying his air-hose, so deck or dock-side?

Also carrying his hose, this chap makes a quite good alien, being unrealistically short with a huge head, and fanciful suit-design . . . pressurised rubber? Slip-cast hollow-bisque and marked 'JAPAN'.

Wade's is similarly as fine a material as bisque, but a solid cast with a full, translucent glaze which settles after firing like a heavy wash. Not a Whimsy, but a larger, stand-alone piece aimed at the tourist keepsake/seaside market I guess . . . I shouldn't have to guess, I have the Wade book somewhere, but currently in a storage unit!

The fourth of the new additions and what a peach! Probably not as difficult to produce as some of the little animals, but still, it's all very clever . . . one of my secret pleasures at the moment is watching glass-blowing and twist-marble manufacturing videos on YouTube! So I have some idea how he's been rolled out and split, the colours added as hotter blobs, the fins squished down with steel pinchers, and so on!

We did see this chap, not long ago, but he was still around, so he gets a second outing! A polyethylene cake-decoration, with icing-spikes, under his feet and simple paint; that silver again, the Argentines like their silver paint! But a unique sculpt, as far as I know?

A second group shot, the number of photographs is due to the fact that I shot 'an article' . . . twice! Only a few days apart, I totally forgot the first photo-shoot - when I uploaded the SD-Card, there they all were; a few hedgehogs apart! Doh!