T is for That Tudor Tug Tractor

Or is it a tractor tug? Except I never said it was a tractor, or a tug, but it is! As mentioned earlier (a couple of hours ago to you, last night to me!), I saved this Tudor Rose toy from the long-queue, where it looked like it was headed, a day or so ago, actually shot back in May, at Sandown Park, and we can look at it now.

 

The sort of larger, diesel tractor with an electrostatic gearbox you might have found in a bigger warehouse, yard or working Terminus platforms next to the smaller electric trolleys, and while probably a quaint toy to our eye, the 1950/60's were a different time, and things like this were new and exciting. And it's a big, tangible toy you can really get your hands round, manufactured in a selection of bright colours.

 

The churn cargo, they are a bit too big, even for the large sized figure, as we saw in the previous post. I well remember my Mother explaining 'milk trains' to me, and seeing the churns on their little platforms as we flew North from Kings Cross!

 

A full set of Tudor Rose marks, and I can't work out if the trailer started it's design-life, destined to be a rail car, or if that's supposed to be some kind of suspension Maybe we're supposed to think it can go on the rails like a hand-cart?

 

Close-up of the driver, which I took for future ID'ing, little knowing Peter would donate one to the Blog five months later! From the fact he is in Wild West waggoner cream plastic, rather than any of the Tug's colours suggests he may have been from a tool with some of the other larger figures, maybe the two biggies from the large-scale stagecoach?

 

It's all soft polyethylene,, and the figure will be about 1:16/1/20th, somewhere between three and four inches. And thanks due to Adrian Little who let me shoot this on his table, at the show.

M is for Menagerie Mini Sets

Currently in B&M Stores, the domestic and wild animals have been around for a while now, the Dinosaur egg is a little newer. It's a bit of a box-ticker, but let's have a look at them!

 

I may have shelfied these a while back, but there was only one wild animal one, and as there were two farm sets, I had a good idea there must be two safari ones, too, and sure enough a few months later the other set appeared, so I grabbed all four while they were there.

 

The cow's gonna' be careful around that turkey! Obviously scale is all over the place, with the poultry dwarfing everything else on both cards, scale wise!

 

Lamb's a bit on the overgrown side too!

 

Same problem with the wild animals, and you often get it with these 'mini' animal sets, the models are basically 'unit size', like box size, but really a financial unit size! And at a quid a card, allowing for card, printing, blister and the sorting/packing (heat) process, each painted animal can be no more than about 14/15p?

 

This is also in B&M at the moment, and at £2.50 is well worth a punt, as there are so many of these very small dinosaurs out there needing ID'ing, I hope to do a whole page of them one day, so other people can ID them too. And at 22 items, these are barely 10p each!

S is for Sandown Park - Animals

There's a lot of lose stuff to clear, from the last Sandown, from Peter Evans and from Adrian, and with the next Sandown Park show only three weeks away, I guess, I need to clear the last lot, sharpish! Here's the animal element of the last show's plunder!

 

A miniature set from Rado Industries, with both the Ri Toys tree-logo and a Laurie Toy moniker, having previously seen a Lucky Toy in Laurie graphics one might be tempted to think there's a connection between Lucky and Rado, but really it's just that Laurie were an importer/jobber, putting their name to various other peoples stuff, whether known or unknown. The beauty of these little sets (we've seen a long thin one before (in Linda graphics?), is that they help separate the Blue Box/Marx (Sunshine Series) stuff from the Ri Toys copies!

 

This was an excellent find, as it's only a year or two since I discovered this knock-off Muffin the Mule from Gantoy, courtesy of one of Chris Smith's donations to the blog. I now know there are other colours too, and the one from Chris didn't have the integral base of this one, nor signs of it's removal, so there's  two versions, but for now, box ticked!

 

The accompanying plants in the first image are from the Corgi Magic Roundabout playset.

 

Odds and sods to be sorted!

 

Dinosaur flats, with three British cereal premiums (left, Nabisco), and two Warner marked, German versions on the right. I believe there are French variants too, and with soft polyethylene re-hashes (seen here passim), some from the antipodes, quite a sub-section now!

 

More flats, with the white ones probably all from Europe, the Elephant (missing a gun or circus wagon?) marked Munsterland, the cat 'Carstanjen' and the puppy something unreadable, while the other two, coloured ones, are more capsule toy or cracker prize type fare.

 

These are from a board game, not unreasonably called the Donkey and the Carrot! From Spears Games, there's a red one missing from the line-up, and these are interesting as they may connect with the sheep we saw in the Shepard and his Dog game. There may also be a connection with all the Prior/AHM/Cullpit stuff (they are vinyl), and Arco (some Rae marked polyethylene animals seem to be the same as the Arco Noah's Ark stuff), so another useful find, toward future, more definitive posts.

A is for Autumn Assortment - Gift Fair

Peter Evans, roving reporter in London, roved to Birmingham for the Autumn Gift fair, which I had hoped to attend, but Space, Time and Nathaniel waits for no man, and it wasn't going to happen, still, we do have these from Peter;

 

Possibly a bit big for war gaming, but in the garden the rules can change, they're only counters, when all's said and done! No figures though!

Variation on a theme, I don't think we've seen the packaging before, but we have seen the figures now, the ones with 'vignette' bases.

 

Kawong is a new name, so a new Tag! The stuff looks similar to the New Ray stuff (next shot), so fans of modern farm equipemnt can have a field day . . . field? Geddit? I'll get me coat . . . 

 

Just mentioned.

 

Dinosaurs, it seems you get a window-visible realistic dinosaur, and a dig-for-it skeleton, to match whichever Dino' is in the specific bag?

 

I think we've seen these before, but you can't have too many images of things!

All the above look to be from Padgett Brothers (A-to-Z) 

 

Definitely seen these before, I think several times, Tobar, House of Marbles and others, but we like a bit of paratrooper action here at Small Scale World!

 

Gotta get me one of these, preferably a Hugh? You don't always find a Hugh in these pre-personalised sets, but any company which does Anna and Annabelle, Ben and Benjamin, must surely do a Hugh? Also, note one of each colour are supplied with a blank lable (top of display), so you can write what you like - "Kiss my shiny metal arse"!

 

A Japanese merchandise store had a full range of Gashapon, including those which can be presented as Christmas baubles for placing on a tree (lower shot), although Peter noted "unfortunately, no Samurai". And many thanks to Peter for sending these over to the Blog.

H is for Huggables!

A new name on the import/jobber horizon, but Huggables' website claims they've 30-years experience, so they must have been around under another name, or just been passing generics through to end users, anonymously, and like A-to-Z(Padgett Brothers), and others, are still, also carrying some stock in the original branding. These were shot at the Gift Fair last year, at Birmingham's NEC, and it's mostly run-of-the-mill stuff.

 

The first two shots show models similar to the set of six which have made so many appearances here over the years,under at least six brand-marks and seven or eight packagings, while the third shot seems to show another iteration of that set of six poses! All credited to Chinese brand Jinfenglong (JFL).

 

These are bi-branded Huggables on a sticker and Weinida on the card-art, with that artwork suggesting wild animals, and sea life as well as these dinosaurs being available, somewhere!

 

Some from the previous shots, with a larger set of single animals (right, close ups below), hugeormous insects and reptiles, and smaller dinosaurs in blisters and carded bottle-bags.

 

Those larger models, Lexiang Toys (LX), these are well beyond the pocket-money bracket, think dentist visit treats, distractions for Rover 'going to live on the farm' or half-term shut'em ups!

 

'Zhongjeming'

 

Fantasy dragons and mythological/heraldic beasts in several sizes, and, in the case of the last set, two packing variants, the small blisters, and the last lot having a non-Huggables brand, but it seems to have been obliterated at the printing stage?

 

Many companies are carrying these, which probably come from a central source, and you can find them in petrol stations and corner shops the length and breadth of the land! 3D-printed from a colour-change, metallic polymer, any problem is likely to prove to be the polymer - so far, most 3D printing polymers I've encountered seem to be frangible (and probably short lived) plastics?

 

Novelty animals.

 

Again, the hint of a dinosaur line/bag.

 

Poor shot, sorry, brand-mark might be IPC or IPL?

 

These last four (Jisam Toys - who's going to tell them!?) are either the same as, or aping sets which are detailed in the long queue, but I'll try to get them upgraded and posted before the end of the month. All the above seven shots, are showing more traditional farm and zoo stuff, and in various configurations/sizes.

 

These shiny, semi-metallic, printed on the crinkly plastic 'header card' bags, are common, in various scales, and we’ve seen toy soldiers in them, novelty parachute toys, and etcetera, but never with a firm brand, so they may be a collective/co-op, of smaller Chinese producers, and are usually carrying stuff at the cheaper end of production, material and/or price points.

 

Likewise (cheapness), these carry-case sets, which were hard to photograph, as far as contents are concerned, but were monochromatic, polyethylene types, or one-colour-spray over PVC, with the usual accessories of farm fence sections, and generic plants/shrubs.

 

Novelty key-rings.

 

 

Novelty squishies are a more modern thing, a fine soft, memory foam, possibly a tech' coming across from the bedding sector, and here we have astronauts and a bunch of those dunny-bunny-bear things, with their whacky artwork.

 

A complete irony really, that 'art toys', which were a big thing back in the 2010's when this Blog started, and which could be 50-100+ of your currency units ($-£-Euro), and which would often, quickly resell on evilBay or at auction for many times that, are now being churned out by novelty manufacturers for 50p or a pound!

 

More of the generics in their shiny not-card cards! A half decent T54/55, if you need a Cold War unit in a hurry and have a can of matt-green, sand or brown aerosol to-hand! And a rather dodgy thing, which is a Panzer IV turret, on the same Soviet chassis!

 

Way outside the remit of the Blog (Yile Toys), but figural, so I shot it!

I can't now remember if these were resin, or more of that lightweight 3D-printer stuff (PLA or PETG), but they are big, ornamental and the sort of thing someone like TKMaxx might get in, not as 'clearance', but as shelf-filler, at Christmas! And, look . . . we seem to have the source of our diminutive, enthusiastically signalling NASA'stronaut, as seen a few posts ago, in two smaller iterations!

 

Also, by accident, as I wasn’t trying to shoot them, the equally shiny and metallic, flying foil to the tanks, both would seem to be pull-back-and-go novelty carpet toys. So that's an overview of Huggables, nothing urgent or exciting, and the sticky, stretchy window-walkers (previous post) weren't in the line-up, 18-months ago, so seem to have hit the market since.