A is for Ancient, African & Agricultural Animals

I know, but I started with the alliterative titles, and I'm determined to get to the end of the plunder-posts with the same trope, so some are going to be a bit weak! Also, I've been a bit blearh, for the fortnight since the show, the heat, work, and a persistent cold, have left me a bit deflated, but I've sort of kept posting . . . if not regularly, becasue I'm rather just going through the motions! Anyway, I've shot the animals, the bits & bobs, and the civilian stuff, so they will be next, with ancient, medieval and 'combat' (the 'proper' toy soldiers!) still to face the camera!

 

Because I included several things from the Friday or Sunday afternoon in the total plunder-pile of 'PW Weekend', the fact that I managed to get to the Car Boot Sale at Bordon, on the Sunday morning, seemed to be a good reason to include my only purchase - I rejected some Corgi military on one stall, and similar Dinky's on another.

 

Somewhere in storage is the old childhood family set, also Merit, but in an older, litho or screen-printed box, and I bought this intending to replace a few missing and broken pieces, in that much-loved and over-played set, only to find it's got an orange beetle, instead of a red one, so I may still need a third, but could end up with enough good parts for five players!

 

Not that you have to build them all one colour, half the fun was making a multicoloured one! Called Scarabee in France, Escarabajo (scarabs!) in Spain, and Cootie in the US (WWI troops slang for body-lice! And which were love-bites over here, when I was a kid?), I'd be quite surprised if a UK collector didn't know they were called Beetle Game, indeed, one might think he was just a dealer all along, not really paying attention!

 

I got this from MM-Smith, who didn't have any new figures in his own range this year, due to the kind of personal shit, we're all suffering, however he did stall-out, and had these, they're quite modern, but he said he remembered having the exact same animals as a kid, which is both believable and likely.

 

Sometimes a maker can be left with a ton of stuff from a cancelled contract, or just a stack of stillages in a warehouse somewhere, filled with over-production, and where it can hang around for years, before another buyer, or selling/marketing opportunity arises, or someone remembers it's ". . . at the back there somewhere", and digs them out, so it's entirely possible, this is old stock in a new CE-rated card.

 

And I've had both the uncommon Hippo sculpt, and the turned-head 'Black Panther' for years, they're having come in with vintage lots, so it's nice to find they go together, and what goes with them!

 

Similar, but much older fayre from Jecsan, as their unpainted/pocket-money JC line, a mix of caveman-like native warriors, and wild animals, a bit of a packaging box-ticker, but equally I don't have any of them in the stash, or I didn't, before the show! Both bags contain two animals, three figures and a cactus!

 

This is the CollectA Quetzalcoatlus, a huge flying dinosaur, which was the idea behind the movie Q: The Winged Serpent, albeit, an inaccurate representation of an Aztec mythological creature! I'm not a great fan of horror movies, but a giant pterosaur picking bikini-babes of the roofs of New York was quite amusing!

 

Beautifully made and decorated, matching the best Schleich or Papo can offer, they tend to be a lot cheaper, but you have to find them online as brick & mortar retail stockists seem thin on the ground. The baby-sauropod snack, in scale, is slightly larger than a human! While the beak is slightly more curved than some reconstructions?

 

Mixed, mostly smaller ones, including a vinyl turkey, Matchbox horse and pearlescent cracker elephant, but that semi-flat red plastic moulding, back left . . . 

 

. . . defies description! It appears to be a lion, eating either a monkey or a human? It's quite damaged, with the legs/lower torso of the 'meal' missing, along with the Lion's other leg, and the tip of its tail, with the result that we don't even know if it had a base, or was a baseless 'charm' of some kind.

 

Does it get any more esoteric? What else was in the set? How bloodthirsty was the rest of the set? Cracker or gumball? Literally, the most interesting thing to come out of the show this year!

 

A couple of funnies, on the right, an Airfix ancient horse bing made to look like an unpainted whitemetal casting, for WTF? reasons! On the left a Merit dog, Hong Kong copy of Merit pony and a piece of Timpo hedge are brought together to make a rustic vignette.

 

In the past I would have stripped these down, but now, I'll probably hang on to them for a while, indecised (is that a word? Undecided-) as to what to do with them, then pass them on to the next generation of collectors in a mixed lot, similar to those they came in!

 

Sold to me as Starlux (!), the Corgi circus elephant, from the Jean Richard 'Pinder' playset (Gift Set No. 48). I think it's been repainted by someone, and is a hollow polystyrene moulding, glued together from about four or five parts.

 

A couple of Erzgebirge, the cow being pretty bog-standard, but the horse slightly above average, with the extra shaping of the legs. Along with a full-on piece of ivory, a tusk, probably from bookends, or similar decorative pieces. Also, two legs; one plastic, one metal; which don't appear to belong to any of the other animals in the plunder pile, so will be heading to a spares tub!

 

Three metal figures, even a plastics show will turn-up the odd piece of metal!, the goat might be a game piece? The mini-dino' is interesting, and a thing a weird shop in Wantage, where I got a wizard years ago, might have had too (in which case I may have one already?), but the Irish Wolfhound may be a jackpot find?

 

It's die-cast aluminium, as a flat. And we've seen such things before here at Small Scale World, but before I place the link, this casting (metal IS cast) has Wolfshond (with an 'o') on the base, now, it's not clear, but I think the Germans would say Wolfshund (with a 'u'). So, if this producer of aluminium flats is actually Dutch, that would help make perfect sense of this outstanding question mark;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/09/r-is-for-return-to-nazi-flats.html

 

The Dutch got a bloody hard time from the Nazi's, and it would make perfect sense for them to produce a satirical, caricature set, soon after the end of the war, and with sources of aluminium like crashed allied and destroyed German aircraft, pontoons, landing craft and similar, all over the place, aluminium might have been a good choice to try starting up a novelty/toy company?

 

And while the base on the dog, is slightly different, and has the title mark missing from the smaller farm and wild animals sets, and the figures, the parallels outnumber the differences? Does any Dutch collector/historian know anything about a flat/semi-flat manufacturer in aluminium? It could equally be Luxembourgish, and they got a hard-time too?

 

And, in fact, all three pieces are die-cast, with the T-Rex and goat both being in some Mazak/Zamac alloy, which is why I suspect a board-game playing piece for the goat?

 

Domestics, the interesting ones here being the unmarked, non-spiggoted version of the Blue Box Japanese officer's horse, here possibly from one of the Red Box factories, or one of the Singapore factories, but could be a knock-off by a rival.

 

The other interesting item is the semi-flat horse, in the style of those Mokarex/Figurines Hostoriques we saw again the other day, marked "CAROLINGIEN" on the facing side above, and "760" on the other side, I'm guessing a French premium, possibly missing a rider in the style of the Kilty/Bonnie Built (et al) US officer, but an ancient Carolingian?

 

Modern vinyls! Schleich Baby Girrafe.

 

Britains polar bear in need of a clean, and a crocodile Adrian gave me, as the show was packing up, looks Hong Kong, but is unmarked and could be an Argentine copy of something Spanish, they had some lovely animated wildlife!?

 

Another Airfix beagle/foxhound, and a rat from one of the Games Workshop/MB Games crossover board games of the 1980's? Probably Hero Quest?

 

Finishing with a Kinder dragon or dragon baby, and four dinosaurs without marks or with generic marks which will need to be sorted into the vast pile of such stuff, against more definitive posts another day, the carnivore is reasonably realistic, and the rather pale sauropod might get matched to his set, by those distinctive eyes!
 

So, that was the animals, thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again.

B is for Bearskins, Busbies and Bright, Shiny Helmets!

It's the ceremonials! And the emphasis being very much on the British Guards, but there are others, and among them a couple of really interesting figures, and one diminutive chap who is jostling for best of show!

 

Marx recycling-fodder, better than cannon-fodder, they may still become something useful! But shown for completeness, I used to just show the highlights of donations or show plunder, but these days I've got into the habit of shooting everything, warts an' all! Two Household cavalry, one Mexican and a West Point Cadet, I think, but they've all been in the wars!

 

Likewise, these are all a bit tatty, but I thought the Christmas cracker guard would make a useful officer (absent from the set which is otherwise all musicians), with the simple addition of a pin-sword, after I remove the remains of his colour-pole. The resin home-production attempt (Eyes Right musician?) is an 'only sample', so stays, but who thought gloss-white was a good undercoat?

 

However, front, middle is . . . . 

 

. . . . bloody brilliant! He's obviously a charm-bracelet charm, and 'gold chrome' on base-metal, so a budget piece from Ratner's, F Hinds or H Samuel, but still? He's not the smallest figure in the collection, that record is still held by some of the spacey figures in that little tub from Brian Berke a couple of years ago, but he's the smallest guardsman at about 8mm, or is the one in the Britains' B smaller? Future post, we'll have to check, with our own eyes!

 

And I know I'm writing this with the Polish Hussars and submarine set already blogged, and the Rocco and other treats still to come, but arguably best from show, just because he’s so easy to miss, or to lose, if you have found him, or to forget if you've put him to one side! And he was in the big-bag of HK small-scale stuff from Trevor R.

 

More of the cake-decoration jobbies, I've got so many now, I'm going to have to do something with them, and it may involve making some other instruments from brass-wire, and placing them on a foam-board parade-ground, perhaps with a few road-markings across one corner, if you can picture that!

 

Wot! Metal? At a plastics convention - how very dare they???? I don't know if there's a word for these, other than penny-toys, which several probably were? They are too thick to be semi-flat (or demi-ronde), yet not so fully-round as to not have some sort of flatness, in the title stakes? Possibly Crescent on the far right, otherwise unknown? And they are all solids, possibly some of them are actually a die-cast alloy too?

 

I have a feeling I got one or two of these a couple of PW shows ago, but someone beat me to the majority of the poses, so nice to pick-up a few more. Obviously Hong Kong production, and probably after the Charbens set (actually, they're the Crescent/Kellogg's poses, aren't they, just with angled bases like the Charbens! Have we had this conversation before?), but size-reduced, to a 45/50mm.

 

Germany's finest . . . probably, certainly in the style of other Erzgebirge, but with those trousers, aimed at the Danish tourist market rather than ours? Also, could be a [part] set of mini-skittles, although more likely to be playability makeweights, with a smaller wooden fort?

 

More metal! Jonh Hill & Co's coronation figures, they keep coming in, often with a few Skybirds. And I'll eventually have enough for the whole parade, without having to shell out a small fortune for a boxed set at Wallis & Wallis, or somewhere similar!

 

Four Johnny-foreigners and a Brit' bloke! Starlux marine/sailor is grist to the mill, I have a decent sample of the 25mm's, and a few of these 54mm's, so it's box-ticking the sample, if you know what I mean?

 

The Guardsman, is, I believe, one of the still unknown question-marks in British figure collecting, and while I have one or two, this is the first one with grey bearskin and trousers? Only a thought, but could they be Rocco? They turn-up as rarely as the Karki Infantry, or little mounted figures, are the same size as the combat chaps, and are often as brittle, as most other Rocco?

 

The next figure (centre) is probably Polish, depicting a Russian? But he's about four times lighter than he should be, at that size, if moulded from Nylon-66, the preferred material of choice in that part of the former Soviet Bloc?

 

I think he's not the first I've found, the other is something completely different, (medieval or Wild West), so it would seem at least one of the Polish makers found a way to foam their plastic into something lightweight, yet solid . . . he weighs like he's Papier Mâché.

 

Two French Colonial types to finish, I could spend an hour or two looking them up, but there's a lot of this stuff, building-up, so I'll do proper posts another day! Thanks again to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin.

A is for A Few Follow-ups!

A few things raised by stuff we've looked at recently, and despite a slower than usual posting rate so far this year, we've covered quite a bit one way or another, and here are a few bits and pieces related to some of the odds & sods, seen here in the last couple of months, or so!

 

This was an internet sales shot I downloaded a few years ago, I download a lot of stuff which illustrates stuff I don't have, but which it's not worth bidding on, or because I'm not - at the time - bidding, and this is one such. I downloaded it for the little blue Bisque pilot (whom I didn't know was bisque then, I assumed composition!), and, of which I've since picked-up a sample, seen in this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/06/bmss-is-for-more-plunder.html

 

The other stuff above is mostly common lead, some of which I've obtained in the last few years from Adrian's rummage trays, but it seems I'm still looking for the sub-scale chap. top, far-right, or is he the Crescent pilot (which I do have)? And the guy next to the blue pilot, also slightly smaller than the 54mm's. I think the sailor/lifeboat man, two along is a modern production, whitemetal solid?

 

While this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/05/d-is-for-donations-peter-animals.html

 

Reminded me I'd downloaded these wooden flats, when I saw them on sale, again, not the common poultry girl and chickens, but in the same vein, and like the farmer in Peter's donation, slightly better decorated. I've never seen the Wild West figures before, but will look out for them.

 

On the subject of the mazes we looked at, on the London Underground, it struck me, back in April, that the tiled panels at Warren Street (geddit? Warren = labyrinth, maze), should get an honourable mention! I think there's a deliberate mistake in this, but need to check it with the other panels, and there are several per platform and four platforms to check.

 

But if you look at the 7th tile along from the left in the second row from the top, it's not right? Breaking at least two rules - two red lines adjacent, and a shadow-wall falling away at the wrong angle?

 

The various Hulk's we've seen since Christmas! I think the oldest is the pencil top, and there are others to look at one day, so we'll return to Hulks at some point if I'm granted the time, by the powers that be, but the weather this week has suggested we might, none of us, have the time left, we've been hoping for or counting on!

 

I've got the blues! I thought there were six shades here, but actually there are seven, so the early works on Kellogg's jig-toys were pretty generalised in their colour lists, and clearly there were many runs of the tools, and cereal premiums was only one of several issues, for these polyethylene jig-toys.

 

These got left off one of the Peter Evans' donations, and are mostly Hong Kong small scale with a few kit-figures and other bits (central bag), but all grist to the mill! When I'm better organised, these will all go on the But Is It Giant? blog (no, none of them are!), and with both my own quite large collection of carded, bagged and blister sets, and the many I've also downloaded from the Internet over the years, we will make sense of them all, and annotate most of them!

 

Further to the recent purchase from Isaac's friend at Sandown Park;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/06/t-is-for-two-diver-sets.html

 

I took this image from evilBay back in 2021, and you can see the same soft 'polythene' ships (sans the hard 'styrene submarine), with one version of the sailors, taken from Britains hollow-cast US Marines, but what it would seem to suggest is that there's an ABC-CMV-HK link to some or all of these sets, more work needed, or a couple of confirmatory finds!

 

Sticking with vessels, these are a purchase a while ago, of the Quaker cereal premiums, we added five the other day, courtesy of Chris Smith, including a new colour (white), and while I haven't managed to shoot them all together, one day we'll unite them all and cover all the colours and all the vessels (ten?), however, I suspect, from the breadth of the colour range, these, like the Gladiators, found their way into Tom Smith crackers at some point?

 

I should have credited the seller at the time, name long-lost, and they probably don't even know of the Blog, let alone follow it, but this was a cheap BIN I got back in February '23, and this is how they arrived in an otherwise standard envelope, and I thought they were beautifully packed to ensure they arrived as they were seen in the auction shots.

 

The cereal premium submarine has all four periscopes/air-tubes/exhausts up, which was the real reason for bidding, the Quaker and Manurba vessles (middle pair) were grist to the mill, and the yacht might be from a board-game, but the keel suggests not? Maybe the water-bowl equivalent of Blow Football?!

 

And mentioned in passing in another plunder-post recently - the Tallon (UK) packaging of the Manurba vessels, I have quite a few Tallon packs now, but this one has eluded me so far, it'll come; nothing made after 1950 is 'really' rare!

 

There are two common hulls (flatter stern and pointed at both ends), to which two or three superstructure types are added, to each hull. We've also seen similar ships from Sanella, who had the one hull, and several suprestructures.

L is for Loose Lots from Last Local Show!

41 years ago, I did Street Lining for the President of Mexico, one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences which mould who you are, or who you become. The weather during the practices for the hideously complicated (until you've learnt it, then it becomes a piece of piss, I could probably still do today!) Half-Guard drills was average to cool, quite breezy some days (hard to hear the commands), while the actual day was overcast, drizzly, and foggy. Foggy in June, people . . . 41 years ago it was cold and foggy, in London, in 'Flaming' June.

 

Nobody said extinction would be painless or stress-free, and those people rushing out to buy fans, order air-conditioning, or book a visit from a pool-designer, are only adding to the problem, and making the end sooner, and more painful. Nothing like plugging some more shit in, or taking more water out of the cycle (and treating it with endless chemicals) to help end climate change, not!

 

There endeth today's lesson, but I'm getting mighty sick of the pink-monkeys and their idiocy. At least some of us have toy soldier collections, to take our minds off the gathering storm, and it's current, record-breaking, sticky evidence, and it's the tail-end of the latest Sandown Park plunder tonight/this morning, that might take our minds off the oppressive humidity - it's not the heat that kills babies, or elderly parents!

 

I couldn't resist this, it's a bit battered and hard to date, and I probably paid too much for it, but it has some age, and while you can get stuff like this today, I saw a new one on evilBay the other day, you can't fake the patina of age easily, modern ones have the lattice made from machine cut timbers, while this lattice is hand-cut from hand-peeled veneers, or carefully hand-split pine or box-wood. Upper image is the colour-true one.

 

Toyway-Timpo reissues, box-ticking exercise, box ticked!

 

I need a few reins, but they are the sort of thing I might pick up, in a little bag of ten or so, from the Plastic Warrior show, now only a week away! There was a lot of this stuff kicking around a few years ago, and spares are not hard to find.

 

More antique wood, almost certainly German, and again, some age to these, and a lovely example of something contemporaneous with the transition from horse to horse-power!

 

I know, we've pretty-much done them to death now, "How could you possibly need more, Hugh?", well, they were cheap, they were a largish sample, and there are new 'things', new colours, new combinations, and one day we'll return to them for one more long post, looking at each listed element (from the back of the box), and try to work out what other combinations/elements there were (in Woolworth's pick trays?), as well as trying to give a timeline to the variations between figures, balls, polymer material &etc.

 

I knew this soft-plastic version existed, as I had the broken off horse (still looking for a  red one!), when we looked at them a few years ago now;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/03/c-is-for-cake-coaches-cat-carnage.html

 

And there's something very satisfying about adding another item to a side-bar 'cameo', which has continued to grow over forty-odd years, with barely a duplicate - the mould-tool was hammered at some point, more than half a lifetime ago!

 

These came from more than one seller I think, certainly the dogs were from the 'terrace scrum' before the show, and everything in the shot is bisque, although the stork (heron?) has a more traditional porcelain glaze. The dogs are exquisite, and I assume German, who else did stuff that fine? I thought they were carved-bone or ivory, until they rattled in my hand! A few legs are missing, but very much a case of 'a sample is better than no sample' and the sheepdog is complete!

 

Adrian had less frontage than usual, so there wasn't much in the way of lead-rummage, and while I waited until the end so 'proper' customers got the best choice (well, nearly, P arrived just as they were about to go out to the car!), I still managed to pick out a few interesting figures to add to a growing, but barely sorted collection of such stuff.

 

The charging Britains piracy will be AHI or Minikins from Japan, the pair are like-Timpo on the left, throwing grenade, but CharbensI think? Copying the Timpo Brit', as a Yank! And Crescent (?) on the right, kneeling, radioing, the rest should be British, if not Britains!

 

Brabo idiot parachute toy. With help from Chris Smith there are a few of these now, and with help from feebleBay, their section on the parachute page is probably doable, it's more a question of me getting down to it! Known as Parafools, this is the 'Hippy', and I think they pre-dated the Imperial Poopatroopers!

 

I . . . just . . . can't say "No", there are so many variations, I seem to just grab them all, against a final shot of all of them! Lone Star, not Richard Coeur de'Lion, but rather, king of somewhere Welsh (that's a dragon!)! In blue, with sword, another example, for another 'cameo' grouping!

 

Likewise, this is something I might have already, but it was quite clean, and cheap, so as the die-cast replacement for the composition Zang version, there's quite a comparative sample of these mini-scaled P38 Lightnings (the first use of . . . are we up to four now, or three Lightnings?), as indeed, there is a similar sample of De Havilland Mosquitos!

 

More gash-lead, the cactus is possibly White Tower, or someone similar, I'll have to ask Matt? The Indian infantryman of the WWI'ish era is probably a modern kit, unmarked and has apparently been given a cap-gun carved from a broom-handle!

 

I don't know if the flag belongs to the Guards standard-barer, but it looks OK, although the red ensign should be in the possession of a merchant sailor . . . so I DO know, they don't belong together, doh! Possibly a foreign made flag, with or without the figure, Japan again? That diagonal cross is atrocious!

 

A wooden naval-gun which has lost it's wheels, but it's turned brass and could fire a black-powder (or Swan Vesta!) charge, with ball-bearing, and the motorcycle from the Merit magnetic board-game Remote Control Driving Test.

 

The show's mistake purchase! I thought "Oh, he's got his tyre, I don't think I've got one with the tyre?", but of course, he doesn't have a tyre, he's operating the storm-drain 'Hoover' tube, for the late Dinky Toy road sweeper, and in that capacity I already have him! Hay-ho - by our errors, shall we be known!