F is for Follow-up - Marx Space

As a follow-up to last Spring and Autumn's posts on the rather mixed contents of my two Marx playset boxes, and associated stuff, here are a few scans with a bit more info'. Not much, but it'll get Burbank attached to the Marx Space tag, and may have clues as to one of the size variants of space-base accessories?

 

So, Burbank Toys of Wellingborough, were the Marx sales 'arm' of Dunby-Combex-Marx, although I think they also carried some Mattel items, and they issued at least one glossy catalogue (in 1979), which has three space-related playsets.

 

This is the Martian Landing Playset, and you can see that the 'Aliens' group (presumably all Martians in this case!) is the same six figures which keep turning up in apple-green, not the seven claimed elsewhere? But that could be a British thing, either a Swansea leftover or a Burbank-specific detail, however it might explain why I have picked up a few of them, now?

 

The Air Command set is, like the Kennedy sets seen here last February, more realistic, and has the trucks and ground crew of those sets, with four delta fighters, while Star Station 7 has the NASA'nauts with a full set of vehicles and most of the accessories. Note also: the Balloon-tyre mould tool seems to have gone missing, or stayed in the 'States!

 

It struck me that the colour of the accessories in both sets here, matches the smallest version we looked at in September, so it may be that they too, are Burbank-specific, which would make sense, as these sets were literally among the last iterations of Marx, and as part of the 'far-flung' UK arm, might well have got a third, or copy set of tools?

 

Schmidt in Germany produced a board game, Weltraumfahrt 'Space Travel' (On Board Game Geek), with four glow-in-the dark astronauts, and you can see the artwork draws (heheh!) heavily from the Marx tower accessory, for the ship which takes our intrepid Weltraumfaher to their destination.

 

I'm not sure if I've got the figures/contents, or if the box came with something else in it, or even empty from a friend, but I scanned it, during a scanning-session, before it went to storage, I was buying a lot of space-stuff at the time, and most of it went to storage unshot, you may remember the shot of the car, all packed up with space. sci-fi and fantasy, when we looked at the pocket sets a few years ago.

 

This is from a Marx branded fold-up flyer which probably came from a toy, you know the kind of thing, Spears and Waddington's were always including a leaflet in their board games, it also included the wheeled skier set (which might help date it?). Not dated, but pre-1971, from the pricing, which equates to about £2.40p.

 

I have a vague memory of a friend having this, and it being quite heavy, I mean to the point where, as an eight-/ten-year-old, you were happy to surrender it when it was somebody else's turn, as your wrist was getting achy! There's a small, pre-digital, record-player and speaker in there, long before true miniaturisation! U2 Batteries became SP2 and are now known as D-cells.

F is for Follow-up - Fantastic Flying Fancies!

So, as promised, I fired-off the recently found (and seen here) Tom Smith novelty artifact, the 'Surprise Space Rocket' at our Christmas Breakfast (more of a brunch) meet, and we can now look at the contents and finish studying this delightful example of how Austerity Britain cheered itself up in the 1950's! Actually, probably the 1960's!

 

This has a video of the launch in the middle, but also has all the images from both posts as an accompanying slide show, and I didn't know whether to put it at the start or the end, but the whole point of the thing (post and event) is to see what happens, so it should go first!

 

So, the contents were a bit disappointing, in that I had hoped they might be space-related, astronauts, spacemen, little UFO's or something, but actually they were pretty standard budget-end novelties, classics in fact, with two whistles, one a novelty face, a 'magic' fortune-telling fish, plastic 'tangram' puzzle and small red balloon. In fact, it's all a bit red!

 

Not a game - see video - there was also a very simple card rocket kit to cut out, and glue, the only real nod to the theme of the container, I will scan and print it, laminate it to some stiff card, and make up the duplicate, as a future follow-up, to this follow-up!

 

The six pieces are one-sided (colour/print-wise) as I may be able to build it on a card tube or wooden dowel of the correct diameter, and reinforce the landing legs with tooth-picks or coffee stirrers?

 

The party hats were the bulk of the 'shot', being the sort you see in old TV sitcoms, soaps or drama's from the 1960's or early 1970's, so it may not be the 1950's item I thought it might be?

 

Much taller than modern Christmas Cracker hats, and manufactured in crepe-paper, they have tissue frills around their tops in the same pinky-orange paper as their restricting-for-packing, paper 'vest' wraps, and one is decorated.

 

The decoration is more Easter-themed, with rabbits, bears and little flowery things (it looks like), than Christmassy, but of the same mawkishly sentimental style as wrapping papers of the era, I can still, well remember. So these 'poppers' were clearly aimed at the birthday and other celebratory market, to take up some of the slack of the quiet period between Christmas cracker seasons!

 

Construction was a loosely overlapped card tube, held together with the decorated rocket paper, with chip-board discs sandwiching the spring, and lighter fibreboard or hardboard discs holding the toys in another sandwich above the hats. A gap of about 10-mil, helps the spring generate acceleration, before the contents meet the lid.

 

Turns out the top just slides out, and I'm hoping to carefully feed this back behind the outer wrapper, eventually. For now, I've folded it down to preserve the folds and prevent the loss of the hardboard piece!

 

You will notice from the video, the toys go one way and the hats another, one suspects that if the quite substantial, bed-spring type wire-helix, hadn't been in compression for 50 or 60-years, everything would have flown further! There was no pyrotechnics though, I thought there may be a snap, as with crackers, but nothing of the sort!

F is for Follow-ups - Recent Bits

When Chris Smith sent his parcel a couple of months ago, I told him I'd seen another of those finger monsters, a day or so before, and then spent ages looking for it, real rabbit hole stuff, in the end I went through most of the near-thousand folders in Picasa, thinking I must have moved it by mistake (sometimes you pick something up, absentmindedly, on the cursor and dump it elsewhere, without even realising it, on the way to somewhere else!), only to find it the other day, in the short or 'this year' queue, in a possible post on an exhibition!

 

Definitely a forth sculpt/pose, and if the paint-chips are anything to go by (almost certainly home-painted), this one is yellow plastic, which reinforces my - still possibly false - memory of a brown one? And obviously some kind of Kaiju from the Godzilla or Ultraman franchises.

 

From two different show reports, the Reliable figures and probably Reliable side-by-side, the standing shooters look different, because the foot-plug on the older version is not fully pushed-home, but I lined them up, and they are almost identical, even down to the long, adjustable iron-sight, over the breach, so clearly they just added integral bases changing the tool from a two-part to a three-part mould.

 

And thanks to Anonymous for highlighting the link, in comments, I was using the Way Back Machine version of the now defunct Ponylope as a guide!

 

Also from recent posts; show reports and donations, we've seen three of these recently in two posts, the others earlier in the year, brought together, you can see the two sizes (bigger pair on the right), to which can be added the several base marks, which I previously highlighted.

 

When combined with the couple of dozen which have come in over the last three-or-so years (get-at'able in storage), it will give an even better picture. While the master collection, buried in the container, which also includes the big ones, when all the new ones are added to them, will be the basis of a much better overview, one day.

 

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In this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/02/t-is-for-two-roarsome-rack-toys.html

 

We saw a metallic dino'bird/pterosaur kind of thing, which bore little resemblance to the other four on the card-back, but separately, and also from BJ Toys, I've been picking these up at petrol stations, namely the Esso outlet at Tongham/Hog's Back, and Bordon's BP station!

 

Plant spider!

 

Reverse colours.

 

Balrog's horns on this one!

 

The trouble is, they seem to appear one or two at a time, in a large counter display carton on the bottom shelf of a dedicated/custom BJ Toys sales display unit, mixed-in with an assortiment of other novelties, so I don't know how may there are, or whether they all have reversed colour versions.

 

And if you think this link is tenuous, for a follow-up - I thought I'd already posted one! But they were in two folders, with the other not photographed, so I was happy to find the Dino-phoenix, looking for the non-posted dragon! The point being, I think they are from the same source, not BJ; in China?

 

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On the subject of ducks,

 

The two vintage British plastic foul, one from Peter and one from Chris (pretty sure I have another in pink, or a maroonish-purple somewhere), brought together with the TK Maxx crayon ducks and a generic CHINA-marked goose from a rack-toy bag/toob/tub, for scale.

 

Similar, but simplified toys from Sonsco of Hong Kong, again I have several of these in various colours, including a fluorescent pink one which is just as leery as the green one in this set!

 

And on GI's,

 

This set of re-issue ex-Marx figures, being a mix of different sets, has the chap, both Chris and me thought "looked like Marx?", middle-top, and, sure enough, he was a Marx sculpt!

 

But I'd totally forgotten that Chris sent me this shot ages (six years) ago, when discussing something else, probably wanting it to feature in a Question Time, so, to repeat the earlier question, we know the re-loader is a Marx pose, now, but can anyone give a maker/brand to this marbled maroon-brown chap, and B) does anyone know anything about the figure on the left?

F is for Follow-up - Earlier Today!

Not often we get a follow-up this fast which wasn't planned, but I've just found these in my in-box, courtesy of Brian B! I'm happy to admit I don't really follow metal, civil vehicles closely, although there are tons on the dongles, it was all downloaded from the internet back in the twenty-tens, or scanned in batches, and is really just sitting there waiting for me to sort out the A-Z pages!

 

So when I mentioned earlier that Autocraft were new to me, I meant I'd never seen or heard of them, but it turns out at least one Loyal Reader knows all about them, and has populated his layout with a few;

 

Open Tourer

 

Soft-top.

 

The red motorcycle is a Wizard Models from Australia by a British Expat, while the other two are both Autocraft kits, I love the Noddy-coloured one, which Brian reports is an Austin 7 - the Colleges at Mattingly, had an Austin 7 (hard top) and an Austin 10, both of which I remember being built from the shiny-black painted frames, up! Brian also pointed out "The nice thing about the models is where appropriate people were included wearing correct era clothing".

The pick-up in grey here is another Autocraft and, while I thought I recognised the Charbens Old Crocks, Bran had to point out to me, that the green one with red wheels, is a similar but Japanese-made model.

 

Other stuff in this shot is best left to Brian (my italics);

 

"The black car is a Triumph Mayflower by Oxford Models

On the right, the truck with a red barrel is a Keil Kraft kit.

To the far right is a black diecast Model T van by Lion?

The blue car in front of the Mayflower is a plastic Harburns kit of a Vauxall Taxi built by me. Also issued for Jet Petrol. [which we looked at here - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/03/f-is-for-follow-up-kit-cars.html - number 7]

The blue vintage car front right was a US metal HO kit of, I think, a Buick, built by me."

 

So it was only the other green one, which was Charbens! But nice how they all look together.

 

While the big vehicle is a Tower Model plastic kit of a Blackpool Coronation Tram converted to a travelling/mobile library trailer, with what looks like a Cooper Craft (or another Keil Craft) cab-unit? And more Old Crocks in a jam round the corner!

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This should have, and nearly did, publish several hours ago, but I had to go for a quick drive, then got into an eMail conversation, and then lost an hour watching A Grand Night In, the Story of Aardman, which is free on YouTube!

 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMexOinKhQ)

 

So what was aiming for a ten-post day will remain an eight-post day, as my eyes are going funny! But I'm cracking-on this month, and there's still a lot of seasonal stuff to clear, so more to come!

F is for Festive Finger Friends!

Getting very close to the sharpest point of what's acceptable on the blog, or within the collection, but, it IS Christmas, they ARE Figural, and it's a bit of fun in a darkening world!

 

I picked up a load of stuff from Peter Evans the other day, but it was owed quite a bit on the shekels-front, so it'll mostly be filtered away into the archive/collection, against future use as 'my stuff', rather than being labelled as contribution, however, there were several items which Peter had obviously grabbed or saved for me, so he'll get credit for them, and this is another of them!

 

Festive Finger Puppets!

(Gem Imports, Barnsley) 

 

Certainly a figural sub-genre or category, and not the first time we've found room for finger-puppets here, they are - again - ideal Christmas stocking-fillers for younger kids, and it's a non-electronic form of imagination stretching, to make up and act out stories in a theatrical fashion. And, it's the second time Peter has found a Gem Imports thing, so many thanks to him, for finding this!

F is for Feelin' Feline!

An obvious title, I'm surprised I haven't used before now! We actually had a roundup of cat stuff not that long ago, and while half the stuff in this post is recent, some of it was found elsewhere in the unused archive!

A largish resin lump I picked-up at a charity shop back in '22, made by Sheratt & Simpson, I guess it's from one of those overpriced series of such stuff in jeweller's windows? But it's a reasonable sculpt, and when £20-something becomes 50p or similar, I ponce . . . like a cat!

Boysy-boy eyeing it with a modicum of suspicion! I still miss him every day, his weight on the end of the bed, his little complaints when he thought he ought to have a treat! But I miss both his Mum's too, and that's the burden of getting to this age, dealing with more and more death, in one's life.

Large Japanese blow-mould, marked on the other side with a three-leaved clover mark, and Japan in ink, and moulded on the body.

This is a modern set from Shing Hing, the people who brought a four-nation 'army man' tub to Smyths a few years ago. There's a lack of imagination in the decoration, but otherwise they are reasonable sculpts for a rack-toy type thing.

Three from Schliech, we looked at five back in October and I think two are duplicates, but the Egyptian-looking one is a definite paint variant, and the long-haired Persian is a new addition.

They are no better as cat's, than they were as dog's, who buys this shit?

Shelfied in Home Bargains.

Oh . . . I do! I actually grabbed these at Waterloo yesterday, a series of mini-adventures I could have done without - Travellers closing Charing Cross, football hooligans, and cancelled trains - led to my browsing the 'boutiques' on the new mezzanine, and I thought these were particularly stupid! The cord already hangs over the side of the vessel, how is a cat's tail going to make any difference, or improve things, one iota?

I found they preferred to sniff the fumes of sloe gin!

What? It's Christmas! 

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!

F is for Follow-up - Marx Romans

As a follow-up to this original post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/g-is-for-glory-of-rome.html

 

Reader Patrick Connolly from Canada, got in touch, first to reminisce, then with pictures! And among them is the one still missing from my sample, they are a bit bashed, but they have survived two owners and the best part of nearly seventy years, and it's the personal connection which makes all the difference! So let's have a look . . . 

"Here are pictures of Romans and Vikings. I think there were also Civil War figures. I remember the red shield and plumed guy was called Tiberius - maybe not the emperor."

 

"I remembered the guy with the leather arm and gold and red shield - one that you do not have pictured [on the right in each image, a gladiator?] - but he was not there - so on my last day in Edmonton I looked on the floor behind the shelf and there he was! - so these really were mine at one time."

 

We looked at the Vikings too, here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/v-is-for-vikings-vandals-varangians.html

 

And many thanks to Patrick for this trip down memory lane! Patrick has a web presence, check it out;

 

http://www.youtube.com/TrickTO

http://soundcloud.com/tricktol

F is for First Flying Saucer

Except, they're not saucers are they, they're domed, and it's not my first, as I have the wonderfully lethal Marx Mystery Spaceship, and its half-controllable, 20-kiloton, kinetic-engine, with air-raid siren wind-up! But, this is my first 'full size' Hong Kong, placky-tacky, big-box toy, and I think it's one of the more common designs, not least than because PMS reissued it without stickers, a few years ago, also branded to a 'JS' (?), and claimed for China on a rack-card.

 

This is the older version, with NASA stickers, and while it was a bit grubby, which may have contributed to a cheap price, it cleaned-up near new, abart from playware to the gummed-paper flag.

 

What was known as a 'bump-and-go' toy, an eccentric steering, at the front, allowed it to escape obstacles by changing direction every few seconds, like a robot vacuum-cleaner, but it doesn't collect dust, or cats tails!

 

I don't know if the PMS issue had the original markings, or a new China-related message, but as far as I know the original was an unbranded generic?

 

One vinyl, one paper. Another Sanddown Park purchase, it ticks a box!