J is for Jimson - 116 & 127 Tank Transporter and 128 'Bulldog' Tank

Except the numbering is not that clear! This is one of those posts, that's been in the queue for ages, but I couldn't decide what to do with all the images, or remember what I'd wanted to say about them, so I just lost interest after the first collage was done, about four years ago!

But I looked them up the other day looking for something else (which turned out to Hover-Hoover!), and I got minded to polish it off, and get it out of Picasa! And in fact it's a tale of two transporters and two tanks!

Jimson 127 Tank Transporter with Action Bulldog Tank. "Fully Metallised" refers only to the wheel-hubs with this toy, but other toys had more chrome-effect detailing, and presumably the message was just put on all boxes! I think this is the same box-art as you get with the Fairylite issues, where Fairylite is just over-printed, but I suspect the Jimson box was different for the second version, but I don't have an example?

 

As they left the box, you will recognise the tank from a previous post on it and it's similarity to the Airfix '1st version' Patton Tank, now believed to be originally a T. Cohn design, the older one is above, and a reasonable rendition of a post-war US 'big rig' truck, the later version is very 'spacey', but uses an almost identical tank.

We'll return to the tanks in a minute, but here they are stripped down, and both have an unexplained, and unexplainable hole in the main bed/plane of the trailer, if I had to guess, I'd say the hole might be to stop warping, as the hot moulding is released from the tool?

The newer version (the trailers carry the 116 and 127 numbering, the cabs are both unnumbered) has two holes for the locating pin and clip of the trailers, and I'm guessing this will be due to a slightly different stud on one of the civilian trailers, I think there were fuel-tanker, and car-transporter bodies available, and maybe a plain flatbed for loads?

How the clip locks the pin/stud into place - older version.

As well as a whacky tractor-unit, the 127 version has whacky wheels, still 'metallised', but far less realistic than those on the earlier version, in this they were mirroring moves in the die-cast market, where realism gave way to silliness, in a need to keep kids interested, or entertained!

Piggy-back! The whole-width ramp of the later model, was separate ramps on the earlier, which loosely sat in channels, using words like 'clipped' or 'locked' wouldn't do justice to the lightly sitting-there, they were actually managing! I think they are meant to be wedged under the two suds behind the cab, but are already quite a loose fit, and with nowhere safe to store them, if you can't find a boxed one, you might not get ramps!

But, while they both carry the 128 code, the tanks are very different, while looking almost the same! The mudguards have been extended on 'II', the cupola MG lost, the main-gun shortened and the flash-eliminator fattened, while the turret itself is set back a bit, and, on my example . . .

. . . there's no push and go motor on 'I', it has the mounting-holes for one, so again, guesstimation suggests the motor was fitted to single-boxed tanks, but not to the transporter ones, because the tractor-cab has its own? But in the end it was easier to have one assembly-line, so the later tanks all have a motor?

The track-guards, extended on II, still short on I, which is how we find them as Airfix, Brumberger and/or T. Cohn, in the smaller scale, in which guise we looked at this last;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/p-is-for-patton-pershing-by-airfix-and.html

 

II (left) v. I (right)

 

Image dump;

Type I at a slightly different angle!

 

Even the same-numbered baseplates are not exactly the same.

 

Recent eBay sale, which is a II with motor, it was sold with the 'space-truck' transporter. As per previous viewings, the turrets are soft polyethylene, colour-matched to the hard polystyrene bodies and baseplates, and scale is around 1:48th.

A couple of scans I took at a later date, I think the tank is the key to the odd numbering of these sets, originally awarded 128 as a stand-alone, boxed, and probably motorised version (1960's), when the tractor-unit (unnumbered, and possibly already in use with other-number carrying tanker or car trailers) was married to the flat-deck trailer and tank, the box got the 127 number, because it was spare, and/or closer to the tank's 128, than the trailer's 116?

Then, when the combination was redesigned (1970's), the new trailer was numbered to match the earlier box, because . . . well, it's only conjecture, but the truth won't be too different? Although, as the whole thing would have required new box-art, it could have all been given a new number?

116 - 1st version trailer

127 - 2nd version trailer

127 - 1st version box

128 - Bulldog Tanks, both versions

Both tractors unnumbered

T is for Two - Fairylite

By the time I was a kid, Fairylite (like Chad Valley), were as likely to be importing (rebranded Jimson, for instance) as claiming the stuff for themselves, but in the early days, they were a British producer, and recently I've come into two nice pieces of early, marked 'Made in England' output.

 

A lovely little HO/OO-compatible steam road-roller, before and after cleaning. I don't know how many toy road-rollers there were, but as they were still being used as the M4 started to snake its way through my local countryside as a kid, and the various duel-carriageway schemes on the A30 happened (I think diesels had replaced steam by the time they built the M3), they were still an everyday thing, rather than the exotic traction engines which were already appearing on mugs and tea-towels and being marketed as 'old-fashioned', so I guess most toy firms had one!

 

Then, at the same show, Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, gave me this, after no interest was shown in it by the general-public - who were never a good guide to true value!

 

It's a slightly 'stag', variation of the slide-puzzles more normally consisting of words, sums or a single picture, here you can keep going to your heart's content, making sillier combinations, once you've lined them up correctly . . . a lovely little novelty item. It's missing a set of lower legs, to allow for the movement of the other tiles, resulting in at least one child/dwarf each time you stop!

 

Proof, if proof were needed!

F is for First Show of the Year - I

And so we all trekked-off to Sandown Park for the first show of 2024, a lovely day in the end, given it seems to have rained every other day since the beginning of February! I didn't buy much, but there are some nice bits among all the make-weights!

 

How cool is this? Adrian gave me this Fairylight magnetic-novelty at the end of the show, when I asked him what he had on it? We like cats here, and there's a surprising number of mice in the stash too; rubber, cartoon, Erzgebirge/wood, I think we saw some musician mice one time, so adding one of each, in the same box - bargain!

 

These are under embargo until they appear in the ongoing Railway figure posts!

 

Two early Wiking 'planes, I think we looked at a good one a few years back, these are missing bases and the wire hanger, along with their little clear acetate 'propeller sweeps', which clip over the nose-cones and can be replaced. Both dive-bombers/ground-attack types, a German Junkers Ju 87 'Stuka' and what I suspect is a Japanese Nakajima B5N'Kate' or, because the tail's not right, a Grumman TBF 'Avenger'?

An eclectic mix here, which, from the top left includes, a Linde premium buffalo/wisent type, a Barrat & Sons flocked cow, and an interesting use of the Impro tooling; an eraser-rubber version, with the full marking of the originals, also left on the brightly-coloured Imperial reissues.

Below them are two Vitacup animal premiums, one in a darker than normal ivory shade (which may only be a smoker's house jobbie?) and two Kellogg's premiums of Sooty characters, actually sweep and whatsit-cat . . . Googles frantically . . . Kipper! Kipper the cat.

And I'm sure most of you will recognise the Charbens circus elephant, it's easy to ID from this side!

 

A couple of cheap lots of smaller (35mm) flats, actually the upper lot are technically semi-flat, being a bit fatter, German troops painted as Fins, by the simple expedient of painting the flag Finnish! I'm not sure on the lower flats, but they do have base markings under the paint, which I shall address at some latter date, there is a fair bit of material to dig into on these.

And this was also a gift, Christian Hatley had mentioned them a while ago, and not recognising me with my Spring haircut, it took him a while to realise who I was, then gifted me this Diddy Man, who, I found when I got home, is another KT novelty figure! And there are probably at least three more to find, if they are aping the Cherilea ones?

KUM is for Rotor Ship!

Very much a follow-up to this old post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-article-has-been-long-time-in.html

. . . and it's been ready to go for a while, but I hadn't got round to it, until I mentioned it in the previous post and thought, "Yep, nice bit of Dime Store tat for Christmas!".

So first-up are the two from storage, which I managed to dig out of the Garage and shoot in the autumn before all the heartache with Katie-cat and Mum, after which I sort of lost interest for a bit, the military one has lost two blades, but still looks the part and has the RAF roundel/National marking missing from my other khaki example. While the blue/white combo' is the one in Fairylite marked packaging.

 

All four 'on the tarmac', except it's now-five-and-a-half, as we shall see in a minute, no, it might be six-and-a-half, because I think I ended-up with the ACME one, but it went straight to storage.

 

I re-shot the Injection Moulders' (IM) Rota Ship's box again, it had a good outing last time, but what the hell! I love how the end folds down into a launching garage, which has all the graphics of a 1950's amusement at Coney Island!

 

And this is the rather tatty Fairylite box

 

But this is new, joining the fleet in February '21, according to the photo's! This is the Cheerio (UK) packaging of the same machine (all marked - REGD DES Nº  844987) from Thomas/ACME, and it goes one better than Injection Moulder's box-end, the whole box (less the bottom panel!) is an aircraft hangar!

 

It's more simply marked ACME HELICOPTER, suggesting it came via the Canadian parent of Cheerio, via Thomas/ACME themselves. The other two shots are from the Intermaweb-thingy, and show a really nice colour combination in grey/red and a lovely marbled-heliotrope one, rather ruined by the extremities, in a red which is from a different part of the colour-wheel and clashes!

 

Quick one, it can't have escaped your notice that after 15-years of rubbing along happily, someone has decided to competitive-blog against me? I haven't the faintest idea why, but he's been doing it for over a year, and he did stop responding to eMails a few years ago, his mucker didn't, but he did, and now his mucker seems to have joined-in anyway?

 

Anyway, I like to Blog my collection, and increasingly I have the archive to hand, or, at least about 14 meters of it (A4), there's a similar amount in the storage unit, and if I wholesale scanned that, the tag-list would take half-an-hour to scroll at full speed!

Now, in blogging, my collection or archive, along with submissions, I will use the occasional eBay or other image, to enhance a post, like this one, 90+% mine, but if I started using the stuff I've kept off the Internet, wholesale, as they do, we'd be here 'till 2525! And, apart from submissions, that's all they've got? eBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates and Google?

 

If they really think that it's a good idea, to start a war, now? I'm up for it, I'll start digging out all the stuff I tend to leave to them, or in the past have sent to them? Think about it. What is it about Christmas that brings out the worst in some people?

While this, this is the KUM! And it's the dog's bollocks! It's a W. Germany knock-off, of the Thomas/ACME gear-ratcheted helicopter with a truncated tail, and enlarged crew-compartment for the fitting of a pencil-sharpener! How cool is that? Too cool for cyclical flight-training school, that's how!

 

They might be planeings, but they're not helicopterings, are they! The shaving-compartment, which was missing off the one we saw earlier today, although that had the pencil-feed from the back. KUM have produced a wide range of novelty pencil-sharpeners, and could be worth a side-collection on their own. And this collage was made in April 2022, coincidence happens!

 

I loved it so much I shot it thrice! This is the 'half' referred-to above! Here posed with a combination of Atlantic Italian Air Force and Preiser Luftwaffe accessories! So there you go, yet more on the Thomas-ACME-IM-Fairylite-Cheerio-KUM et al (don't forget the French and Scandinavian versions!) helicopter!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 8. Civilian Vehicles

Lead here by the two non-show purchase carts this afternoon and there is more horse-drawn stuff (along with elephants; another great favourite sidebar of mine), but we've got all sorts to look at.

 

We've seen this in more than one Hong Kong iteration, here at Small Scale World, but I have a fancy this one is actually French or Italian, someone like Cle or Jouplast issued them as beach toys I think, and supplied some (of the smaller ones?) as premiums to people like Bonux, while in Italy, think I they might have been married to Texas and their plug-in based figures?

But don't quote me on either point, it's only memory! Suffice to say the finish is sharper than the Hong Kong ones (previously we've only seen stagecoaches), and the plastic is chalkier. The design of this one is a tad ridiculous, with over-sized tools stuffed through two unrealistic holes in the removable, but not working, tailgate. However, if you're moving sand on a beach, quite playable, if not terribly practical!

Tudor Rose beach- / bath-toy tugboat, small Hong Kong pleasure cruiser and A Bruder vessel make up the merchant navy in this lot. I believe the TR Tug, was reissued by Springwell in a retro header-carded net bag!

 

There is a bag of the HK ones slowly growing, and when I think I've found most of the body-type variants I'll blog them, in fact there are lots of bags of similar things all slowly growing . . . or at least some are!

 

Mixed road transport, a magnetic racing car we'll look at below, Praline and Minic (Triang-Mettoy) model railway HO/OO (respectively) compatible cars, a jig-toy truck (which will join all the others) and two classic 'dime store' or - in the UK - corner-shop/pocket money vehicles; a car marked 'Made in England' which could be Kleeware (?) and a Fairylite road roller.

The steam road roller is either a phenolic plastic or an early, unstable polystyrene, and is beginning to warp, while the racing-car, also Fairylite is quite stable.

A handful of Quaker racing car premiums to be checked against the master sample, and a comparison between the number-3 car (also used - as a sculpt - by Parker/Waddington's board-game Monopoly) and the previously seen Fairylite model.

 

Which is here for a third look! A simple magnetic novelty toy where you used negative-to-negative to push the car around with the hand-stick, a simple thing for simple times, what would they make of today's all singing-all dancing, digital Frozen dolls, or Super-deform Star Wars Angry Birds!

 

The jeep is supposed to be Tudor Rose, but smaller and less accurately portraying the real-life version as we saw the other day in military guise, and being unmarked, I'm only considering it an 'unknown' vintage beach/garden toy for now?

The tanker is usefully marked Banner Oil, so clear piece of Dime Store tat there! And the old-fashioned car is another of the better detailed Hong Kong copies of a French original I think?

The motorcycle side-collection took a real fillip in the last few weeks with another Airfix the following week, a second French Bazaar police motorcycle and then two more Airfix a week later.

 

What we have here are, from the left; that French bazaar copy/late issue of Cofalux's policeman, a Hong Kong with the base we were lacking when we sorted all that out with PW's help a few years ago, the motor-trike by Poplar Plastics / Poplar Playthings (they used both, and Poplar Plastic Products!), and the two Airfix 'dispatch riders'.

So soon after the gold one from Chris Smith, comes a full colour Gondola in the larger size, Brain Carrick remembered these being sold (or cleared?) through Woolworth's, but as this would have been the beginning of the age of mass-consumerism we're now trapped/locked-in to, there is the secondary reasoning that rather than being clearance of unsold Italian tourist trinkets, they are aping the silver neff which the rich had on their dining tables or sideboards, in a more affordable material?

 

It seems to be missing a couple of components down by the Gondoliers feet, and there appears to be two hinge-covers for a storage-compartment flap behind the customer's throne, so I will now look out for a cheap bashed one which happens to have the missing pieces.

 

 

Finally, a couple of 'box scale' wagons from Kleeware, from US tools (Pyro-Bachmann-LifeLike?), note that the buggy driver is about HO/OO compatible, while the fire-pump's driver is closer to N-gauge! Same sculpt. I have a bunch of these somewhere and will look at them all one day.

Thanks to all for everything last month; Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans and Brian Carrick.

T is for Two - Khaki Infantry Rack Toys

This wasn't even in the quese until I found the .zip file from Chris in Downloads this morning and thought I'd better pull my finger out and get them up here before the end of the month, so then I thought I might as well add the others as they follow a theme!

Fairylite (whom I regularly confuse - in my head - with the antipodean Feathalite! Not here, yet, I think?) were an early British importer/re-packer, jobbing both domestic production and Hong Kong output (there is a Fairylite version of the Jimson tank and transporter for instance) and Chris Smith sent these as part of our further discussions (off Blog) on the African 'Zulus' the other-few-weeks back.

The set bears some similarities with the blue & yellow trays which turn-up on evilBay from time to time, and of which a good example was recently in Plastic Warrior magazine. The back has a strange 'envelope-fold' closure and wire-hanger which looks easy to tare, so that this has survived intact is a minor miracle.

Those other trays however have the Britains/Timpo copies, whereas these are clearly Lone Star clones, painted-up to UN service, which could be a clue as to approximate production date, after the 1948 Middle East deployments, the next UN mission which caught the popular imagination was the war/s and insurgencies resulting from the collapse of the Belgian Congo, so early to mid-1960;s for this set? the 'Empire Made' is another clue, by the 1970's most mentions of 'empire' on prodcts from the colony had been replaced by some form of 'Hong Kong'.

This contemporary set (dated '64 by the diligent - and legendary - James Opie) has been seen here before, but back when the Blog had forty visitors a day, not the number we have now, and I know some people don't bother with the tag-list much, so we'll have another quick look!

Past the Post, who I mentioned in those Zulu posts, as being a possible source of those figures, there's so little on them they may be a phantom branding for the UK (or other) importers, and I have seen larger trays like the one in PW, or the one above, but in the same red-yellow Past the Post graphics.

Copies of Monogram's PM35/8213 US Infantry kit-figures, there are several sets of these and we have looked at them briefly here at Small Scale World in the past, only the carded rack-toy examples though, and I will get round to comparing and contrasting all of them with the lose samples - one day!

The marking is neatly stamped in two parts 'MADE IN' and 'HONG KONG', despite also having the 'Empire made' on the box. These are smaller (45mm 'ish) than the closer to 54mm of the other sets mentioned/above.