T is for The Last of the Balls!

For now! Somewhere I have a tub of conventional Bouncy-, Super-, rubber-, Jet-balls, which include a marked Wham-O original, so they will need a box tick, one day, but for now, as a prop to the solid inclusion-balls, here are a few other novelty balls out there now, or recently.

There is a useful thread on the STS animal-collectors forum, which adds a distinctly European flavour to the stuff posted here in the last few days, and both more brands, and a couple of originators, vis-à-vis sculpts, or even product-mouldings;

 

https://sts-forum.forumieren.de/t25502-does-anyone-collect-animal-bouncy-balls?highlight=balls

 

You will probably need to sign-up, but it's well worth it. As an addendum to what's been said/shown there, the above, from a recent Bullyland catalogue shows, not only a range of teeny-tiny animals, but some of them in key-ring balls! I suspect the balls might be liquid filled, with the vignette free-floating?

 

As these babes are! Bought in the small-chain Bargain Buys, a few years ago now (2021), and they are more squishy than bouncy, filled with an inert liquid filling (probably a mix of glycerine, water and a small amount of bleach - to prevent mould/fogging), along with the figure and a pinch of glitter.

 

Something in it, has, nevertheless, reacted with one of the two purple misses, to cover her in a calcium-like deposit? Note also, the arse-injected ball-bearings, utilised to keep their heads up, in a liquid of similar density/specific gravity!

 

I'm not sure if these are liquid-filled, or solids, and the shading on the two at the back (green and orange) would suggest the latter, but I have a feeling that might be part of a bicoloured case, with free-floating contents? Find Hope are probably an Ali Baba or Amazon type phantom brand (image downloaded/obtained in 2005); there's nothing else on the Internet about them!

 

Back to Ravensden for an quick overview of the other stuff out there, and we've seen similar stuff in Show Reports from Deluxebase, Funrise, HGL, House of Marbles, HTI, Huggables, Kandytoys, Keycraft, Kidzone, Playwrite, PMS, Tobar and similar, and if we haven't, it's because they are still in the queue!

 

Ooshies, cushies, squishies, squeezies, executive stress-relief balls, the solid inclusion balls we've been looking at here, recently, funny face balls, odd-bouncing egg-balls, liquid-filled (the eyes are particularly disturbing!) and 'tactile' balls are all out there, I don't collect them, it's the inclusion-balls which brought the subject of novelty balls to the blog!

 

Which brings us to the end of this box-ticking exercise, but I think it's going to lead into another mini-season of Capsule Toys, as it's a few years since we did an overview of the non-Kinder stuff, with help from Brian B, and there's a load more in the queue now, including more images from New York.

 

And, yes, I know, I should be finishing the HO railway figure overview, from two years (three Christmases) ago, and which also has stuff from Brian, Jon Attwood and Chris in it, about ten folders, sat there waiting, and which should make about 12-posts, and an intro-page, and I know I should be doing, getting, finishing, finding . . . the reason you don't get endless eBay scrapings here, like you do at Bushy's, is because when I say there's a thousand posts in the queue, there's a thousand posts in the queue, or, at least, a thousand folders!

 

Take that image above, for instance, downloaded in 2005? I didn't have a computer in 2005! But I did have a dongle (524MB's!), I downloaded stuff to, on/from other peoples computers, so I may have found that image, browsing the coin-operated Internet terminals at Heathrow or Gatwick (one pound for five-minutes if I recall correctly?), while waiting for a client's delayed flight, or someone like John Begg or Paul Morehead might have found it, and emailed it to me, because I was known for the small-scale stuff?

 

We'll get there in the end! Afterbirth eggs next! No, seriously! But, machine-gun follow-up, first!

FMC is for Water Buffalo!

A lot of the purchases at Sandown Park, earlier this month, were suited to stand-alone posts, and this is a classic - in World War II, while we, in the UK, were melting down railings to make bombs, and German housewives were being told not to whine about a lack of bananas, the Americans could afford to make corporate desk-toy freebies, in bronze!

 

I'm not 100% sure which model this is actually representing, but I think it's the 'Amtank' (LVT (A)-1) (37mm main gun), or something similar like the LVT(A)-4 (75mm main gun), both built on LVT-2 chassis (there were lots of marks and body-types!), also known variously as an Amtrac, Buffalo or Water Buffalo, and this model appears to be a braised bronze model, of the desk-ornament/advertising variety, with a fixed turret.

 

And while the origins date back to 1935 and the civilian design 'Alligator', this is definitely a wartime, USMC procurement-driven version, so such a model is as conspicuous a sign of wealth/consumption, as you're likely to find! And, from the heft, a very useful paperweight!

 

The barrel of the gun is a steel rod, embedded in the mantlet and blacked-down to match the patina of the vehicle/model, which may have had a chemical dip, to get this antiqued look?

 

FMC is really for Food Machinery Corporation! A 'toolmaker' in common parlance, you can see the welts of the braising where the maker's plate has been added last. It could be welded steel, but it's too heavy, equally, it's not soft-enough to be a base-metal, so bronze is the obvious material, although it appears to have been slush-cast (bronze is more commonly sand-cast?), and then tidied-up with both the baseplate, and possibly an oval plate on the rear face of the hull? From the polishing on the left side, a copper-rich bronze!

 

 After a clean!

 

An oddity, a probable rarity, and over 80-years old, it's possibly not far off the same size as the Airfix Buffalo II, an open-topped troop-delivery vehicle, for which this is the fire-support variant, usually found on either wing/end of the landing line, to suppress enemy fire and engage bunkers. But it might be a bit bigger, people who know me, know how bad my 'scale eye' is, it might be closer to 1:48th or a round 1:50th?

 

If anyone with better maths than me would like to try working it out, the tape measure says it's 125mm long, 50mm wide and approximately 65mm high?

T is for The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

It's also for trees, terrible timekeeping and troublesome assistant!

This was supposed to be, or to be specifically accurate; was originally intended to be - the third post on the golf day we had a week or two ago, but, I thought, it would be better used for National Tree Week, once I had become aware of NTW, given it's about the trees with this particular set.

Obviously, plans went awry last week and I never got all the tree stuff out, so it might as well have been used on Good Walk Spoiled Day instead, but, hey-ho, there are no rules to this Blogging malarkey, unless you're my critics in which case apparently there's a whole bunch of rule books but nobody's got round to sending me copies! Anywhoos - here's Carpet Golf from Turner Research, late!

Did I say troublesome assistant? Straight into the packaging like a rat up a drainpipe!

Box was shite, but I didn't get it for the box (which was in the kindling bucket for fire starting minutes after this shot) and a poor box means a cheaper deal! We'll get on the the trees and figures in a minute, but I also kept the two bunkers and the water feature; they may come in useful at some point in the future?

I did measure the figures, but I've forgotten what it was and put them away! I think it was about 110mm - judging from the fingers below! The figures have a lever action which enables them to putt, chip or whack large expanded-polystyrene balls about the place with gay abandon!

I've also kept the green-flag (which is red!) and it will join a plethora of other, larger, wood, metal and plastic flags & standards in a tub somewhere.

Working the leaver to show how simple it is - both the golfer and the mechanism . . . tada! They are manufactured from a very dense PVC which I came to wishI hadn't separated for the 'how' shot when trying to get them to go back together again; but they went in the end with a bit of brute force!

There were only two clubs in the box, there should be six, but - again- I wasn't buying it for the golf!

I was buying it for the bloody trees weren’t I!

Over a decade ago, when I worked for JB, we had a couple of these come through the stock, and since then I'd had it on the 'long list', and from time to time would check it on evilBay; in the end I got one. It's not rare and if you're careful you can pick one up for reasonable money, not for the 'pre-executive toy' executive-toy elements, but for the trees!

Britains style trees, (marked Japan interestingly), but in autumnal colours, which, when placed with a couple of Britains copper-beeches, can make a believable autumn scene, clearly Japanese acers; they can be your very-own Westonbirt! The bases are Britains as far as it goes, but the tree trunks are more original.

As it happens; I think I'm missing an orange sprig, the box suggests using both colours for each tree, and going by the obvious studs (anyone who's made-up these types of tree will know extra fronds can be placed on twigs/branches not directly intended for them!) the two trees are supposed to take eight and six sprigs respectively, which could be 7 & 7 colour wise? But I'll be looking out for a yellow one!

This also comes in the set, also 'Japan', it seems to be complete but could have used a couple-more spreads of greenery? Also clearly channeling Britains, not only in the base-shape, but in the fact that the side branches both follow the Britains 'system' and seem to be copied from the Britains Cedar, despite the main trunk being more original?

However, the similarities are explained . . .

. . . by the fact that an original Britains Cedar was available to someone at Turner during the design phase! I dare say they had more than one Britains tree to so peruse?

E is for Executive Mini Racetrack

Another board-game and the sort of over-priced shite you find in mail-order catalogues or airport departure 'mall' boutique type shops, yet - being all wood and metal - the direction all toys should try to go in!

Lacking the finesse of an old Victorian or Edwardian game of the same ilk, it's probably laser-cut and machine-manufactured, it was next-to-nothing in a charity shop a while ago, but it missed the adding of such purchases to a Friday date-post and rather got stuck in the limbo of Picasa's queue!

I've kept the six race horses and riders, the three obstacles, the two dice and the pannel-pin with ball-finial, and I managed to prise the central 'hedge' off, so may use it for photographing HO-OO stuff one day, but the rest of the board and the box helped start a fire back in March I think!

One of the figures was still in a little bag, whether this means they were all individually wrapped, or if it was a spare, I don't know, but you will have seen in the previous image, there's only room for four to sensibly start a race at the same time?

Number stickers were factory applied and all six horses are a slightly different colour, I don't know how likely that is to be 'meant' or how much is due to batch decoration, but suspect there should be three silver/gunmetal and three antiqued/gold-finish?