H is for Hairy Horrors!

When I was a kid, Trolls were a simple thing to get your head round, they were slightly larger, toad-skinned goblins who lived under bridges and ate slow, or dim witted goats.

 

Then Tolkien arrived in teenage'hood, with trolls the size of land-tanks who breathed fire, while the Nottingham Mafia and Garry Gygax's D&D monster handbooks, along with dozens of whitemetal manufacturers split Trolls twenty ways, and suddenly they could be large, small, relatively harmless, existentially dangerous to the planet, green, brown, orange or yellow, or anything between!

 

These trolls, the 'Scandi trolls', fill the slightly larger, relatively harmless, goblin niche, I think, but clearly this lot are strangers to the barber's chair!

 

The final tranche of Brian Berke's Icelandic shelfies and he thought the chap with the shield reminded him of Eccles from The Telegoons, while I thought those (red background) reminded me of Michel Bentine's Potty Time, characters which was a sort of second spin-off from The Goons!

 

Many thanks to Brian for all these, they've been a lot of fun!

T is for Tröll sem eru í Treyjasum!

Apologies to any Icelandic Loyal Readers who may have just chocked on their elevenses, for my miserable attempt at a line of Icelandic grammar, and even I know (now) Treyja are really cardigans not jumpers, but sometimes my desire to be a clever-dick outweighs any need to be more sensible!

 

More Trolls from Brian's visit to Iceland, and these are your every-day, regular tröll, not seasonal guys, and it seems even the locals need jumpers to meet the weather in those northern climes! The jumpers themselves are part of the resin moulding, but I think the little woolly hats are actually real, knitted apparel, while, obviously, hatless tröll have too much hair for hats! More on the hair in the final part of Islensku tröll.

Y is for Yule Lads!

It's always fun finding out how other people do Christmas, because it's not all the modern iconography of Albert, Prince-consort, The Saxe-Coburg-Windsors or Coke Cola, endured by the English-speaking world, with or without crackers! And I well remember nearly having a fight with Krampus and his 'pals' in an Austrian pension one cold night in December!

 

In Iceland, they have the Yule Lads, a bunch of Icelandic Troll types (more to come on them), who fool about at this time of year, each having a day between the 12th and the 24th, in the lead-up to the big day, almost an half-advent of annoyance! Brian Berke, roving reporter, sent some shots he took in Iceland, and off down the rabbit-hole I went!

 

They actually leave little gifts in children's shoes, the equivalent of our stockings, but lesser, yet daily! However, if you've been bad, you might get a rotten potato, or a sour-onion!

 

This is Pottaskefill (Pot-Scraper, December 16th), he scrapes the food remains from the pots and pans!

 

While Skyrgámur (Skyr-Gobbler, December 19th) loves skyr (Icelandic traditional yogurt-type dairy-produce), and if you don't leave some out for him, he'll just steal it!

 

Ketkrókur (Meat-Hook, December 23th), he steals meat, gripping it with a hook! Another steals sausages!

 

Þvörusleikir (Spoon-Licker, December 15th), he steals spoons to lick them clean, but there isn’t much food left on spoons, so he is supposed to be scrawny, this one looks well-accommodated with bounteous spoons! Presumably, the spoons quietly reappear in the drawers when little people have forgotten them?

 

You'll have to Google the rest yourselves! And there are a couple of equally (supposedly) execrable parents and a dodgy cat! Many thanks to Brian for the introduction, to something completely different!

I is for Image Dump, L is for Longacres

I shot these in the Longacres Garden Centre up at Bagshot on the A30, back in 2023, and they sort of got half-forgotten, half unused, but it's intended to clear the bauble stuff this year, and as these aren't something I'm particularly interested in for the tree (modern poured resin), but yet, are interesting as possible conversions to stand-alone figures, here they are.

 

The entire display was Gisela Graham product, and another thing I liked about them was that while most of them are characters/stories covered by Disney over the years, they are not the recognisably Disney imagery, but rather independent/more traditional renditions.

 

I think they had the same display last year, but don't remember seeing them when I popped-up there the other day. Asda Supermarkets have a similar selection of resin solids, but they ARE Disney/Marvel/DC properties.

P is for Perfect Polymer Propine - Everything Else!

So to the rest of Theo's donation to the Blog, and it's quite an eclectic mix of civilian subjects, vehicular stuff, and bits & bobs, including several rarities and some quirkier things, alongside items which will definitely contribute to future posts.

 

Hong Kong copies of the old Triang Minic naval models, most useful, as these are often found in a pretty play-worn condition, so having things like masts included increases the chances of completing models from the tub of examples one day! Although I have lots of the relatively indestructible tug-boats, they keep turning-up with paint variations, or as 2nd generation copies in different plastic colours or with different funnel arrangements, so it's a sample which continues to grow and evolve!

 

This was a lovely surprise, these are TV Tinykins from Marx, of the Yabba-Dabba Flintstones! And, I think I'm right in saying, among the harder to find Tinykins, also used as Miniature Masterpiece set pieces?

 

Now, I'm sure this is Thomas, and a baby . . . Obviously! But, is it one of the more generic rubber babies, they issued with various pieces of playground equipment, dolls stuff, prams, and other novelties, with a randomly tied terry-towel nappy, or is it a certain Super Baby, namely Kal-El, from the planet Krypton? There seems to be something formal, or designed about that scallop at the front of his nappy (diaper)? Does anyone know?

 

This chap would appear to be an advertising premium for Alia (?), possibly a beer (or Bier!), and maybe Dutch or Belgian? But I couldn't find anything on Google, and while it looks like they had a keyring screw & eye'd through the hat, even that isn't clear, so any help with this chap?

 

Do you remember the Spanish Guisval motorcycle rider we saw, with the help of Chris Smith a few years ago? Well here's two more Guisval die-cast accessory figures, both probably missing tools for their ring-hands, and probably motor mechanics (right, is he hitting an alternator with a hammer?!) or Farmers (left?), but very nice finds, and lovely gifts from Theo. Both have basic 'swoppet' tropes, with swivel waist and neck and separate hair, but the legs/bases of both are metal die-castings

 

As they become increasingly brittle, due to age, you can never have too many 'Eye's Right' bits from Britains, so these will go in the parts tub, while the headless Weeble lookie-likey is a much earlier, probably 1950's, novelty.

 

Bits of a Goldilocks set, similar to that Emenee-Transogram-generic set, but not the same sculpts, with Goldilocks possibly being from a different set. Indeed, all the components may be from three or four sources, but they go together well!

 

The 'modern' polystyrene girl, possibly polypropylene bears, unstable phenolic table & chair and early brittle 'styrene bowl, will however, furnish useful imagery, with other stuff already in the Odds & Sods zones, in a future post, as these are part of a much larger narrative.

 

The chair with heart-shaped cut-out in the back, was in the Emenee et el., sets, it's also found in Marx Miniature Masterpiece sets, Hong Kong sets of Goldilocks and other sources of miniature Fairy Tail or dolls accessories/novelties, and I have been collecting imagery for years on them, and samples (we've seen several versions of the chair here, over the years), so a future post is a certainty!

 

Having already mentioned Marx twice - these were an amazing thing to find in a donation, the Rolykins of Batman and Robin 'The Boy Wonder', small steel ball-bearings underneath cause them to fly around on flat surfaces with the appearance of frictionless motion! We have also seen World Cup Willie and Daleks from the same line.

 

Blue Box et al., mini-farm pieces.

 

Odds! A near complete piece of corner flower-bed, from Hong Kong after Britains, a nice (European make?) pig to be ID'd, a Hong Kong Highlander and hollow-horsed, small-scale Wild West.

 

What looks like a pair of 'walker' ducks feet, a rubber-band launched glider, parts for a cap-bomb or two (or is the blue nose a babies bottle top?), a Manurba (or Bonux) Sherman Tank barrel, parts of a Jig Toy ocean liner (but it would have been a more generic novelty in Europe, maybe De Gryter?), a mini pipe, and other novelties which will all be sorted into the correct places, for building wholes from parts!

 

The Chinese tangram puzzle pieces will join a load more from Christmas crackers &etc, but is here branded to Vitella (powdered puddings?), as - presumably - a premium/free-gift. The four discs may be from some sort of firing toy, UFO launcher or 'ray-gun' (anyone recognise them?), while the composite seems to be the winding mechanism of a small kite?

 

Many, many thanks to Mr Van de Weerden for everything he sent to the Blog, I am incredibly grateful for his generosity, he was going through the mill himself, and that he thought of me and put all this to one side, was an act of some selflessness . . . Thank you, very much, Theo!

L is for Lots of London Loot - Eight is for Late

December's London Toy Soldier Show, was a quiet one for me, not much purchased, and of that, we've seen one or two bits already in other posts, and one of the larger sets has gone to the archive, because I'm not Blogging them at the moment, but here are a few things which may interest some loyal readers!

 

A couple more of the Charlie Chalk figurines/pencil-tops, of which we saw one a while ago. Then, I hadn't heard of the show, now I've genned-up on it, but still haven't seen it, and it doesn't seem to be as iconic as some of his (Ivor Wood's) other stuff.

 

The Trader Joe seems to have had his hat crushed by the factory machinery, which, to me, makes it more interesting, the figures (I think there are seven) are always the same colour, so finding a normal one is inevitable, but a factory-damaged one is a different take on the subject.

 

Paul from the South Coast had a basket of these, and I saw them at the start of the show, and said "Oh, I'll have a few of them mate", forgot all about them as the show got busy and by the time I found them at the end of the day, only one Officer was left and colleagues on the Friends of PW site have posted better samples!

 

I have a few others, including Reamsa originals of these, which are probably Gormasa/Soldis reissues, and it's one of those corners of the collection which is building slowly but surely, as a decent sample of post-war Spanish troops.

 

Board game pieces, not sure which game, but I think the answer is in the archive, so they'll end-up on the correct A-Z page one day!

 

Two Phidal Buzz from Toy Story figures, a third would come in Peter's January lot (which we've just seen here), but Peter may have brought a bag to the show, that's one of the reasons why all these posts are getting the same title, they all got a bit mixed-up over the winter!

 

The other reason I forgot about the Reamsa reissues, was I bought these Eyes Right figures, from Britains, off Paul, at the same time, they're hideously brittle, but absolutely mint, they were worth the gamble to get the shots before they become micro-polymer dust, forever! The Band Major didn't survive the lift home!

 

The Royal Marines standing band, they don't seem to be as brittle as the red ones, but it's not like I'm going to test that theory, with any robust stress experiments! The Eye's Right (and some of the Swoppets) really are the high-point of toy soldier production, the finer detail leaving both hollow-cast and composition figures, in their dust, but soon-enough replaced with lower quality shite out of Hong Kong, after losing out to Timpo's, cheaper, technicolour 'sweeties'!

 

A couple of the 'Middlesex' regiment, the sword failed and will need a gentle glue-spot to get the better shot. This was the standard band's uniform of 'County' line regiments, like my own Glosters, now mostly light-infantry (the horror, the horror! Some awful grey and black arrangement with busbies, now!), but a paint-conversion will be easy!

 

We've seen these before, and it's not like I 'need' them, but as I have them unassembled in Almark packaging, and assembled (and factory painted) as Minimodels, it makes sense to have the other iteration, for the ultimate comparison/look at them all one day!

Bit of fun! About . . . 2007 (?) these started appearing all over the place (Marx websites and evilBay); novelty skiers, both civil like, this and Disney types, of interest in that they are manufactured in the same dense, flesh-coloured, stable PVC as the Injectaplastic-JSP-Culpitt-AHM stuff, AND some late Corgi die-cast vehicle accessory figures. The hint [from me!] being that they all come from the same factory, possibly Tai Sang's Blue Box Vinyl Manufactory in Macau?

 

A hollow-cast boot, for very small peep's to live in! I had a chat with James Opie about this purchase, he has one, and Joplin put one in one of his books, but as yet, there's no known maker for it, there is another, which is known (Segal), an upside down one, in red leather, but this - possibly a cake decoration, or miniature 'Japanese' garden ornament  - remains elusive.

 

Rounding off with a PZG or similar polish Napoleonic type, there must be a handful of hollow-cast missing from these show-purchases (I've got in the habit of always raiding Adrian's 50p/£1 trays at the end of a show), and some space-stuff, I think, but it did all get a bit muddled-up, and the point of these mixed posts is eye candy and the odd question-mark rather than an accurate diary of how it all comes in!