M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 5 - Civilians

On to the civilians from Chris Smith's donantion today, always a few surprises here, although some of the more interesting ones, those who are nationally/ethnically-dressed, have been sent to the Ancient/Medieval post to pad that out!

And what a way to start, you know we like divers here at Small Scale World - sticking out of everything else when I opened the box, this, admittedly large, lump of polystyrene is a candidate for best in box! Obviously a fish-tank ornamental aerator, it has a pipe connection at the back of the helmet and a finely pierced ceramic plug in the top, to generate the fine lines of oxygenating bubbles. But it's just so unusual, and a rare survivor from - probably - the 1950?

 

Sports was mostly footballers, with Waddington's Table Soccer figures to the left, and what I think are Ariel's Soccerboss figures, de-pegged to the right, the tennis-player pencil sharpener is a real treat, while the incomplete kicking player could be Parker, Palitoy, even Subbuteo, there are lots, and one day I'll sort them all out. Two athletes and a broken Subbuteo make up the shot.

This is fun, and following-on from the footballers in the previous shot, he's an Airfix footballer under his new skin of Mariachi guitar player! The instrument is from an enamelled metal pin-badge, which I distinctly remember having as a kid/teenager, which has been thickened with a balsa-wood off-cut, totally homemade conversion . . . Wild West or a 1-guage restaurant/dining-car? We'll never know!

 

Odds and sods, what can you spot? The drunk is a magnetic novelty who needs his lamppost to work fully, the green chap next to him is from that Wookie/King Kong game we've seen here in passing before, there are some railway bits, cake decorations and die-cast accessory figures.

 

Police; one marked Funrise (dark blue) and in a soft PVC substitute, the two to the left unmarked in a very soft silicon and 'maybe' Pioneer, the other a common'ish, current ethylene rack toy we may have seen before here?

 

Firefighters; Three from 'big-box' vehicle toys, the third from the left being a really nice composition figure, presumably from the basket of a tin-plate ladder-truck by someone like Tipp & Co., Karl Bub or similar, as is the white chap from a plastic garden-toy

The smaller figure keeps turning-up, and is hard to place, but someone did a Berlin firefighting vessel (River Harvel) kit (Revell?) and he may be from that, or something like that? In the past I've suggested a fisherman or sailor from one of several Tug or Trawler models, but each time he turns up he's in blue or painted blue, so I think firefighter from somewhere/something?

The guy on the left is interesting for being an apparent copy of the Corgi 'cherry-picker' platform truck (forward-control Jeep), which was copied by one of the Hong Kong pirates (TAT/Telsalda?) in a large-scale plastic as a Dinky/Ford hybrid, I think, so he'll probably be from that!

 

The racing car driver is obviously from a racing car, but is looking early-British, plastic-wise, and from quite a big model (1:20/1:24?), he's both new to me and pretty stunning, he must have George Musgrave, George Eric, Stadden or Nibblet behind him? Someone like that, a bit of a 'Find', I think, and another contender for best in box - Chris, thank you!

Shopping lady could be Plasty or Kinder, I think she's the former, but I'm not 100%, and is she West West or some civilian 'doll' village thing? While the policeman is a new'ish die-cast accessory.

 

Seated figures tend to close the civilian page, as paratroopers open the posts! We may have seen some of these before, but with colour variations, there'll be many more to come, and there are shed-loads in storage to sort out and ascribe one day! Highlights here include a beach-buggy driver from a plastic kit, the pull-and-go racing motorcycle and sidecar crew and a Mattel CUTIE seated in pink!

O is for Odd & Ends

Well, we've had a T is for . . .  already today! When I said we wouldn't look at Hing Fat in the last post, I sort of lied as we're looking at them right now, but these were latecomers to the queue, and just happened to fit as I'd used the figures to scale the Pen Plax fish-tank ornament earlier in the year!

So the Pen Plax fish tank ornament; just a bit of fun and it's supposed to be derelict, but with both wheels intact all you actually need to do is rebuild the chip in the barrel with some two-part epoxy-putty (or similar modelling compound) and give it a better paint, it could be used to defend the coconut grove on X-marks-the-spot Island!

Which leaves the Hing Fat; actually Billy V for Imex, and when I said the 'recently defunct' the other day I used a question mark to cover my arse as I wasn't sure they actually have gone broke, I'd just been told they had.

I think they are still going, but they seem to be running out of steam, the weekly deal is 'not found', they have lovely pictures of the Bismarck where there should be a Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, the Faceplant page was last added to in July and the website has no news, nor any Covid-19 info., so there's a air of tiredness to it all?

However, there's still stock of Billy-V's repacked Hing Fat to be found in Hobby Stores and Brain Berke added this to his stash the other day and sent a couple of images by way of a follow-up - cheers Brain!

R is for Regular Round-Up - Divers Etc...

Time of one of the irregular 'regulars', namely; a quick look at the various novelty diver/bath toys which have come the way of the Blog since we last looked at such things.

Did I mention this the other day? It may have been in an eMail to someone, anyway this came back from September's Sandown Park toy fair with me, I think Adrian had put it to one-side for me, and it's a little charmer!

Around 25mm-compatible (allowing for an air-filled rubber suit), and blow-moulded celluloid or cellulose acetate (so probably Japanese), he is weighted in his feet and was probably one of the up-and-down with a cork's pressure type of bottle-novelties?

Not long after the little-one joined the  . . . skool? I think 'a skool of divers'! Brian B sent the shot on the left, his latest find in the cannon of air-hose, bath-toy, divers, here compared to the old packaging (on the right, also sent by Mr. Berke; a year or two ago) from the same Tobar stable.

Brian has also sent this in Support of the ITLAPD Captain Pugwash shot you may remember; he has shelf-captaincy of a right old motley crew of victorian sailors and deep-sea fish-tank ornaments!

Looking for something else I found this chap in with all the naval, marine and assault-boat stuff, when the divers have their own box, which we have pretty-much mined for it's goodies, over the years, so I thought I'd better shoot him now while he was here as it were!

'E has a long hole up 'is jacksey Pa! It's too thin for a pencil, so I suspect either a stick to anchor him into the aggregate at the bottom of a fish tank, or an aeration-hose for the same end-destination, as he is not dusty; those pale marks in the folds and crevices are limescale which didn't come-off with a cursory wash.

Finally; and because they have gone together in the past; and because I knew I'd find a use for that race-game central divider, I give you the gate-guardians at the Magical Museum of Multicoloured Miniature Mersibles, Sub.

One from Chris with all-four of its sticky-out bits intact, one from a job-lot, 'streamlined' for err . . . silent-running! And both - new colours!

Cheers A, B and C!

T is for Treasure Trunks

Booty Boxes, Coin Chests, Plunder Packs, Pillage Pelisse's, Horde Handlers, Stash Stores, [ill-gotten] Gain Gatherers . . . OK, I'm just being silly now, but when you've spent two days writing-up 12 posts on the one subject you get a bit punch-drunk, and I know it's just this post and a single-photo' finale to go now!

Grabbed these two in a charity shop back in January, there was a bunch of them, new-old stock probably donated by Official Receivers somewhere as being too small or invaluable a sample as to be worth the expence of sending to a clearance auction?

Real tourist-trap tat; poured-resin in glittery silver and copper-bronze, but when they are a few pence each and there's ITLAPD to think about . . . well; bargain!

I think Peter Evans told me who made these figures, the other day, while we were looking at his, but if he did - I've forgotten who it was!

Chris Smith sent them in one of his donations earlier in the year and I believe there is another pirate to find and that they may go with a build-your-own plaster fort similar to the 4M Industrial one we looked at ages ago, but which had different figures?

The two guards would make useful additions to an Alamo setting, even if they seem to have ray-guns! While the lower shot is a comparison with the fish-tank ornament we looked at this time last year.

The K&M set's trunk, which I chucked in here to keep the PVC meme flowing on that post and because it's roughly the same size as the other two types here. I was going to dig the rest out and do a bigger post on treasure chests but there's always next year, and no with guarantees of keeping-up the output of the last few years ITLAPD's, it maybe we'll see them all in 12-months!

But several have been seen, the drunken pirate Brian B sent a couple of years ago was defending a nice chest (along with his booze stash!), the Safari set had a nice one with a skeleton draped over it, and there are others . . . small boats, cannons, palm trees and a plunder trunk are the de rigueur accessories of a pirate crew!

P is for Plant'tastic Plastic

Another carded blister of rack toy tat from those mighty toy suppliers; Kingstar International, and another from Peter Evans, this being donated back in the spring. RTM comes to a close and I feel I haven't done it justice, but actually with over 70-posts in August at the time of writing, I think it just went so smoothly it only seems like I didn't do much!

However there are so many in the queue we will still have the odd one though the year - as always!

This is interesting not for the toy animals, which are a typical set of mini, soft PVC-alike rack toy generics, but for the false-plant/fish-tank accessories thrown-in as make-weights/volume-fillers, but we'll have a quick look at the livestock first . . .

. . . all eight of them! Ignoring the facts that they are not in scale and that the kangaroo has sloth lichen in his fur (the elephant's aluminium, and the lion gold so why not!), they can be seen as reasonable for what they are, the llama type is unusual and both the bear and the lion are also nice sculpts.

I have - still in Picasa from last year - a folder called 'RTM- Henbandt et al' which deals with about ten or eleven of these sets, it's now penciled-in for next August, but I may try and get it done in the next few weeks so's to compare with this lot, who ended up getting their own post, due to the plants.

The 'plants' are three plug-in sections of larger synthetic plants/artificial flowers, although - from the leery colours - I suspect fish-tanks as an end destination for the bulk of the production, however a few ended up in these blisters, and while on one level fruitless fillers with no means of being stood-up as 'trees' they are very interesting from a technical point of view.

The easier to understand are these, where it would appear a twin-nozzle injector-head is used to fire a shot of yellow (or light green) polyethylene, followed (instantly?) by a shot of red (or dark green), the second shot pushing the first up the cavity as it mixes with it for yellow-orange-red or gradated green effects.

This however, presents one with more of a headache, as it appears that the (and this is all guesswork on both types) green is shot to almost full-cavity, then a jacket of red is shot over it, but it's not over-moulding as the green survives at the tips of the leaves and is visible under the red at the branch-joints and end-plug/loop.

I can only guess that the green goes in at under-[optimum]-pressure, then the red is immediately shot at a higher over-or-optimum-pressure, slipping over the top or 'surface' of the green, but also pushing the green into the tips?

It may be that a red polymer-stain/colorant is injected into the mould before the green has fully-cooled, but it's not clear, and both aught to lead to more/redder leaves nearer the gate at the end-plug/loop?

Either way it's very clever and I'd be interested to know more, however the way other posts here looking at technical aspects have resulted in further work appearing elsewhere, I'm sure someone will go and find out and wax-knowledgeable, in the near future?

I haven't got the time; next week we are World War II box-ticking and while I have the images, I haven't done the blurbs yet! Some clues here . . . 

https://www.plasticmetal.it/en/multi-injection-molding-machine/

. . . suggest it's a form of 'bi-injection'?

M is for Mixed Menagerie of Mermaids

The title covers it, a few mixed mermaids - representing all the main toy-use polymer groups!

At the back right is the Resin one we saw a while ago, still available from The Works, leaning against her is a small gum-ball/capsule machine charm in a hard, undecorated styrene.

To their right (the viewers left) is another resin lump, a recent purchase from Penn Plax and one of a set of Disney stuff for fish tanks, note how much better finished it is than their treasure chest, or Easter Island statues.

In front of that lump is a little polypropylene 'Polly Pocket' type thing of the same Disney Ariel/Little Mermaid figurine, probably Bluebird/Kenner for Disney Stores? The tatty-paint pair between the two Ariel's are polyethylene Hong Kong lumps from the 1970's, I suspect they belong with a group of rather eclectic sculpts which include a turtle with gwee-tar and a W-shaped sea-serpent?

At the front is a clear-blue, polystyrene, cocktail-glass decoration I rescued from a party in Berlin in the 1980's (and one of the oldest-sitting non-25mm figures in my collection), unmarked but likely a Hong Kong generic, although the Germans had lots of plastic novelty makers a few years earlier, so it could be domestic production?

The other bright-blue tailed-girl is an unmarked - probably 'China' - mermaid, similar to but not Soma (who's mermaids' are better sculpts), she's probably from a generic 'Toob', rack-toy or possibly via cake-decorating? She's a modern substitute PVC-like rubber/elastomer.

You can judge the scales from the approximately 28mm Polly Pocket alike.

That's a mixed menagerie of mermaids!

S is for Soma's Silly Sailors

Although the first set-post today, they were the last lot to fully come-in, with four out of storage a month ago the rest purchased couple of weeks ago, and a missing one (seven) arriving the other day!

In the 1980's Soma who had been contract-manufacturing for some time before that, began issuing their own branded lines, and by the late 1990's several of these slightly childlike figure sets had been issued, the pirates arrived in 1991 and unlike other sets where you find two colourways (Robin Hood for instance), they only got the one scheme, Issued in three blister-sets of four, two sets of six or a window box with all twelve.

Number 10 (each figure is numbered on the underside of one foot) looks like the love-child of MacDonald's 'Hamburgler' and the popster; Boy George, while I think you could use the facial expressions to make the 7-darves out of some of them, well, seven of them! Number 12, with the all important swag-bag, seems to have been equipped with a fully-automatic Walther or Berretta?

He also looks mighty pleased with himself, possibly because he has possesion of the loot!

I bought these two Penn-Plax fish-tank ornaments a while ago and they seemed ideal for these chaps to discover! I don't know if Pirates ever put-in at Easter Island, but it seems like a nice place to hole-up, chill-out, get drunk, sing bawdy songs, bury some loot and draw a map with a big X on it!

B is for Best Buy - Big Block of Badly Behaved Bear

I picked this up in a Charity shop a few weeks ago, I grabbed it because I thought it looked quite 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea 'ish, and the lady behind the counter commented that sometimes she wondered if something so quirky was going to sell immediately (It hadn't been there the day before) or sit on the shelf for an age, I didn't think it was that quirky, and assuming a fish-tank ornament went on my way, with my bargain wrapped in tissue-paper, well pleased!

But when I got home and un-wrapped it it became obvious that some of the helmet 'detailing' I hadn't given any attention to was, in actual fact - the riveted-on 'helmet-spaces' for a pair of ears . . . WTF?! Luckily; not squeaky-voiced mouse sized . . . phew!

Some close-ups showing the markings (a bear logo - with his tongue out?), the classic or standard three-finger 'cartoon' hand, odd belt-equipment and vicious, double-barbed, curved under-blade harpoon!

Does anyone know anything about a deep-sea diving bear, armed and liable to stick his tongue out? Best find since the Toy Soldier show in May!

Terranova sent a shot of three more; real synergy as he didn't know I had the bearskin-diver (heh-heh!), which is above. The large one looks to be a fish-tank ornament, but looking at the PVC  pipe, possibly a filter or aerator disguised by the diver 'shell'? It also looks to be about the size of my bear, but in polystyrene, and seems to be several parts (the rocks and coral being undecorated, flecked mouldings?) with a clip-on helmet and over-belt & braces.

Brian is actually after the ID of the middle figure which is a metal casting around 54mm, can anyone help him with a name? It looks a bit too flat-painted for someone like King & Country and I'm not sure what he's holding but it looks like maybe a deck-gun or something?

The small one is another 25/25mm war-games/role-playing figure (see yesterdays post on Space Invaders!) and I'd be interested in an ID.

Return to bear-man-diver-bloke-teddy! I think he's prizing-open a rusted door or forcing the lid off a treasure chest rather than attacking someone, but you never know! Perhaps he's preparing to repel Captain Nemo's men, as he clearly isn't one of them; he's got half-moon ears!