E is for Eye Candy - WWI Cavalry

I shot these at the BMSS (British Model Soldier Society)'s show in Reading, two years ago, on Mercator Trading's stall (thanks Adrian), and they are pretty special; Holgar Eriksson's finest, WWI British Cavalry in the charge. Probably from Comet-Authenticast's set British Cavalry, Field Uniform, 1914, which was unnumbered.

The brown one may be Chinese or something, Eriksson's lists included dozens and dozens of nations, and often it was just a paint-job to create another catalogue listing, but only Boxer Rebellion types are listed to my knowledge, although #56 was an 'unused' number in the later sets. The same - painting to order - was true of the first Malleable Mouldings lists. Or, it could be one of his own figures, from Sweden?

E is for Eye Candy - Sort Of!

I think we've seen this before, in passing, but I took it apart and cleaned it of a lifetime's kitchen grime, a while ago and seem to have taken far too many photographs, which need to be out of Picasa and on the Wibbly Wobbly Way!

 

 

Obviously you need a kettle with the right kind/diameter of spout, and when the water starts to boil, the inner sliding component moves and the bird starts whistling! Before modern automatic cut-offs (which work the same way - pressure, try getting one to work if you haven't closed the lid properly, it'll boil dry!), this was an ingenious solution, to a minor problem!

E is for Eye Candy - Naval & Marines

This was shot back in November 2020, so five years ago, give or take the odd day and a leap-year! There's about the same again to be added to this, in the still being sorted pile, at the lip of the storage container, and we've added a couple of rack-toy assault-craft over that time, all seen here in various posts, I think, try 'Vessels' or 'Naval - Marines' in the tag list. But what can you spot?

 

Top left is all the larger 60mm'ish stuff from Marx, MPC, Auburn (polymer, not rubber) or Ideal (?) and so on, originals and re-issues, to their right is the Lone Star sample, with some PVC, Timpo-branded, Toyway reissues, while the more historically-uniformed Charbens are in the little bag.

 

In the box, top right, are the more modern (WWI/II'ish) Charbens with four of the ever more brittle Lone Star marines - fighting in No.1 Dress uniforms! I have added one or two I think, but they may be duplicates. Below them is a mixed tub of the smaller Marx and a few others; Reisler, hollow-cast &etc, which we saw in an early post on the subject. There's been a few hollow-cast additions too.

 

Sandwiched between those two tubs is a wooden, hand-carved, tourist chap, who we also saw here over a decade a go, but there are four, similar, and very interesting plastic versions about to hit the blog! To the left of the mixed tub is a newer one, since enlarged, but still not ready for the definitive post, with the Britains Naval gun, now 'guns', but not all versions yet, although we did have a look at them, in part, a while ago.

 

In the corner are the three Greek assault-boats, copied from Britains, which got a post, and then in the top-left quarter of the box, all the iconic novelty floating toys from Britains and Timpo. You can see the Greek crewmen under the US Assault craft . . . I've actually done an 'Assault River-Crossing', in a remarkably similar boat, but ours didn't have engines, so we had to fucking paddle, in the rain!

 

The final tub, outside the box, has all the European types, obvious are Cofalu/Cofalux swivel-heads and the Coma assault marines, but there's some other stuff, a couple of Atlantic, a Hong Kong or two, and, strangely, mu original Frog trio, who are RAF rocket-troops! They've since been moved, as the sample is up to about ten now!

 

You can add a largish sample of the Gem cadets, those Argentine rubber ones which came in a while ago, and more Atlantic, Lone Star and Reisler, along with some Starlux (not sure where they are?), but, there's actually quite a few to sort into this tub at some point, and more take-away tubs will be needed! Then there's all the ABC and other Hong Kong copies, from hollow-cast, taken from Britains, which we have looked at here, on more than one occasion, now.

E is for Eye Candy - Blue Box French Resistance

As far as I know, Blue Box never gave these a title or name, so we don't know if they were resistance, revolutionaries, militia or for that matter, even French! But they are pretty unique, and having never been produced in the 50mm, a bit of a grail for some small-scale collectors, despite being a tad big at 28/30mm.

 

I'm really only using this as an excuse for a News, Views . . . as I have finally started updating the Parachute page, with shooting-sets added a few months ago, Imperial Poopa-Troopa's and similar cartoonish ones, a few weeks later, the Trojan Red Devil and others tonight, and a subsection of the Airfix clones. I've also added a lot of images throughout, and tweaked a few things, but there are still about nine-sections to do! And I think I need to spell-check it properly!

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html

E is for Eye-Candy - Gem Cadets

Adrian Little gave me these OBE's the other day, when I was passing, and I realised, looking for something else the other day, it's not a 'new feature', I started using E is for Eye Candy, a couple of years ago! Hay-ho, I'm a danger to myself sometimes!

 

Three of the Gemodels sea-cadet cake decorations, given heavy bases and painted in the 'Old Toy Solder' style of gloss paint or varnish, but without the pink cheek dots!

E is for Everything Else - Odds & Sodds!

There were a few smaller pieces and loose figures picked up at the Last Sandown Part show, which was, in some respects, one of my best yet for purchaes, but in conversation, there's a feeling that while prices are down, this stuff is coming out of the woodwork at the moment, I got a really nice, never seen before piece off of that evilBay the other day.

 

I've never really followed this stuff, nor felt the need to, poorly acted 'C' movies, for kids, in the 'over the top' style of kids programming, never grabbed me, but there is a big following for the whole Kaiju, Gojira, Ultraman, Atomic-boy stuff, and these are probably quite modern 'Ultramen', and may be from one source, but two are realistic 54mm'ish solids, well within the scope of the collection, the other two are a super-deform (right) and big-head (left), both of which, leave me pretty cold.

 

A Christmas cracker bike, and two micro-trucks from Italy, another 1-ton Humber knock-off, too close to the Dinky original to be considered the donor for all the Hong Kong copies, but could be based on the Pyro/Kleeware minis? And a post-war US 'duce-and-a-half' probably an M39 era/generation?

 

Very obviously an ex-Giant chariot, we looked at them on the Romans page (above), and eventually will look at them again on the But is it Giant sub-Blog, in greater detail, but for now, this one needs a good clean, or at least, the horses do!

 

A couple of bags of odds I picked up on a wander, the gum-ball robot will go in a bag with several others and bits, in the hope his arm turns up one day! Two lesser characters from the larger, 'styrene set of Noddy figures, a Fozzie Bear pencil top, and another of the Rupert Bear pencil-top torsos, I think I have four now, two Kinder and an LB for Culpitt spaceman!

 

Adrian found these two for me, French clowns in hard plastic of the polystyrene type, but being French could be Phenolic or a formaldehyde resin of some kind, although both are stable. Cyrnos, Clairet; someone like that?

 

A bit of fun, it links a common-enough piece of scenery to a specific animal, so not that useful, but it also links marks together.

 

Swoppet knock-offs!

 

A nice, early piece of, probbaly German composition, around 45mm, and unmarked, he's obviously a WWI-era German soldier, and I rather like him, as a possibly very old survivor . . . 1920/30's?

 

Isaac gave me these two lots, the Cherilea 60mm's are clean, but have lost 90%+ of their paint, while the karki infantry might have all been home-painted to match, or are a new-to-me paint scheme, the radio-operator is Benbros.

 

Seen in a recent book-post, useful little monograph on Selwyn Miniatures.

 

I'm guessing this is American, but it could be French, or from down the road! It's a solid lump of die-cast Mazac / Zamak or pure aluminium (not light enough?) with wooden wheels, and may once have been a penny-toy . . . a whole penny!

 

Make your own caption! How cake-decorations are born!

E is for Emergence Event

One of those many, many board-games, aimed at the adult members of sites like Boardgamegeek, I saw it going cheap, as many of these games do end-up, once the hype has settled, back in 2021, shot it, shoved the pictures in Picasa and forgot all about it!

 

I'll almost certainly never play it, and don't know anything about it, and in the grand scheme of things, it represents the straight-to-landfill waste of human endeavour, ingenuity and resources, which is one of many facets of the end of humanity event, we're currently living in! So . . . not much blurb! But it does have nice micro-spaceships, in plastic! Megacon Games - Emergence Event.

 

 Box art, half Jean Giraud (Moebius), half Frank Frazetta.

 

Half blokade-runner, far-far-away;

half Weyland-Yutani mining vessel, silently screaming.

 

Firefly 'Reaver' vessel,

or Harlock cruiser?

 

Babylon 5!

 

Romulan Warbird / Klingon Bird of Pray

 

Box full of bits!

 

By the time you've learnt the rules, you're bored with the game, and you've painted-up the playing pieces to go with your micro spacefleet stuff! Box ticked!

 

If you need more;

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/154857/emergence-event 

E is for Eye Candy - Daleks and Mechaniods

My new camera really seems to struggle to take decent pictures in strong, natural light, especially on the macro setting, which is bloody annoying, especially when you consider it's cost more than every other camera killed by the Blog, put together, its near five-hundred quid, being more than all their forty-to-sixties! And it struggles both with focusing and compensating for the light levels.

 

So I'm already more disappointed by Olympus, than I was by the two Fuji Finepix I started with, before discovering the Nikon Coolpix, with which most of the Blog, to date, has been produced. Not that they were brilliant, they all died (about four or five of them), either from inordinate fluff finding itself into the lens, or components of the battery-housing catches breaking, and two actually went dead, after lens/focus failure.

 

But, it's par for the course, not in modern Britain, but the modern World, they (capitalists) are not interested in the customer, but only in the customer's money, and the customer is no longer first, nor right. We won't get to the stars if we can't build what have become 'basic' electronics, properly, and anyone who's switched (or been forcibly switched) to Windows11 will know we are actually going backwards now.

 

But, enough whinging, I shot these when I was up at the storage unit the other day, and while they're not brilliant shots, they are fun images!

 

Cherilea Daleks and Mecanoids, a pair of each with matching midriff colours! I've since discovered another type of Mechaniod, with handrails running round the 'equator', so my three or four (I think it's three, and enough bits for two crashed ones!), are still only a start!

E is for Eye Candy - Timpo Police Tourist Trinket

Actually a 'Seen elsewhere' item, but the two recurring titles will be interchangeable!

A simple window box with a commercially available postcard as the backdrop, and a set of the Timpo 'solid' Police figures. There appears to have originally been a smooth foil round the sides of the box, to illuminate with reflected light?

E is for Egyptian Eye-candy!

Having recently taken the 6" Marx Romans to a six-count (once I mend one and 'restore' the other), I have recently done well with the equally wonderful 6" Egyptians, with these three, below, and a couple more still to come, in the PW show-reports.

Colourful versions of the unpainted soft-plastic ones we looked at on the Blog, years ago (try the Ancient Egypt Tag), they are a fine sight, and I happen to know these have been on a window-sill for decades, without noticeable fading or any apparent move to further brittleness, beyond that expected of quite robust 'styrene mouldings!

E is for Eye Candy - Lone Star King Richard

We've probably seen these one at a time, but here they all are together, they came in over the last few months, because I just can't pass one, since I found I already had more than enough! So that'll be twelve then!

The lighting was so different between the flash and no-flash shots, I've included both to give a better idea of the colours; paint and plastic. Hollow-cast original on the left, with three plastics, and I think they are all Lone Star, but the one on the right might be a home-painted premium - technicaly branded to somebody else - with that smooth base?

 

As well as being slightly shorter, the plastic versions have lost the undercut/s represented by the hole though the product, between the left elbow and body, and the sword has been shortened and tapered, probably to aid moulding/mould-release.

E is for Eye Candy - Wild Minimals!

E is for . . . will be a new trope here, a single shot of interest, or a couple of shots, with a bit of blurb, maybe maximising Tags, illustrating a particular feature or specific point, or just showing a nice image!

 

Today it's some of the many sets of 'Minimals' as I call them, the smallest size of commonly commercial plastic animals, approximately 30/40mm-figure compatible, but actually 'unit sized', so never to true scale with smaller animals in real life rendered larger, and larger animals in real life rendered smaller.

 

Two bags of loose, but clean samples (bottom left), probably complete or near-complete (all these sets tend to a content count of between 8-16 items), and then clockwise from the top left; Ackerman Group tub, 'Play Works' from The Works bag, Kandytoys blister-card, Boland BV of the Netherlands and Henbrandt (second set I think - newer card, we looked at both passim), both header-carded bottle-bags.

 

The contents of these sets are always fun, with an almost guaranteed Elephant, Giraffe and Lion, with Tiger and/or Leopard/Cheetah/Jaguar type (occasionally a black panther), then a Hippo and/or Rhino. Most sets will have some kind of Monkey or Gorilla, some have both, and a Zebra is almost as guaranteed as the three standards.

 

Then it gets a little less predictable with Camels or Kangaroo's to the fore and some kind of ruminant, either a North American / European Deer/Moose/Elk, Bison/Wisent or an African / Asian Gazelle/Antelope type or Buffalo/Wildebeest, better sets have a Bear, but it can be black, brown or 'polar', and usually only one, if present!

 

More off-the-wall items in bigger sets might include an Alligator/Crocodile type, an oversized Turtle or an equally enlarged Penguin! There have also been several insectivore/Ant-eater types over the years, and occasionally a - usually poorly sculpted - Hyena thing, or Wild Boar/Warthog! And these mini-sets are never usually more than two-fifty or three-quid - proper pocket-money toys!

E is for Elgate - Spring Gift Fair 2025

As last, another image dump, but many more figural items on display, this year. With Scotland and Wales having a bigger presence in the various lines, and Paddington putting in an appearance!

 

Poured resin

 

Those non-sharpening pencil sharpeners again!

Not for the collection, but could interest someone? Christmas trees?

 

I've seen a boxing Kangaroo in the last few days, don't know if it was Elgate (didn't look), but they are a bit naff, fun for kids though, which is the main function of novelties!

 

 

 

Nothing of the 'piper' about them, just Guardsman on decorated pens!

 

Roman big 'ed!

 

Keyrings, might be one of the new soft/foamed rubbers? Rather in the style of the old Xandria keyrings from the Netherlands, but modern and made in China.

 

Metal keyrings, if I see the guardsman, I'll grab one for that novelty stash, but the rest can stay on the peg, being more bottle-opener than figural!

 

Egg-cups!

 

The resin parade again, and more egg-cups.

 

A 'Photoclip', what the novelty industry calls a place-name holder, when everybody likely to buy place-name holders have bought a set (or two!) of place-name holders! Also, selling them singly, results in a higher profit-margin per unit . . . and more packaging for a planet which just hasn't seen enough packaging yet.

 

The resin bears!

 

All, also seen before!

 

The big-heads have been replaced with rubber Leprechaun keyrings.

 

Nessie - die-cast Mazak/Zamak

 

Scottie-dogs and a bear!

Close-ups of the snow 'eggs', I think the thinner one is manufactured from poured-resin, the chubby chap may be plastic or a synthetic rubber compound?

 

Various Welsh Dragons in die-cast alloy or resin, mostly smallish, baby 'Game of Thrones' dragons (the die-casts), the larger poured-resin examples could be useful for Role Play, or fans of the Nottingham Mafia system.

 

Paddington!

 

Mostly novelty stuff and pretty ephemeral, but, that's given Elgate a decent presence in the Tag list, and covered most of what they have, which may be of interest, currently, but they're not the only purveyors of this kind of stuff, and we'll look at another soon.