A is for Ancient, African & Agricultural Animals

I know, but I started with the alliterative titles, and I'm determined to get to the end of the plunder-posts with the same trope, so some are going to be a bit weak! Also, I've been a bit blearh, for the fortnight since the show, the heat, work, and a persistent cold, have left me a bit deflated, but I've sort of kept posting . . . if not regularly, becasue I'm rather just going through the motions! Anyway, I've shot the animals, the bits & bobs, and the civilian stuff, so they will be next, with ancient, medieval and 'combat' (the 'proper' toy soldiers!) still to face the camera!

 

Because I included several things from the Friday or Sunday afternoon in the total plunder-pile of 'PW Weekend', the fact that I managed to get to the Car Boot Sale at Bordon, on the Sunday morning, seemed to be a good reason to include my only purchase - I rejected some Corgi military on one stall, and similar Dinky's on another.

 

Somewhere in storage is the old childhood family set, also Merit, but in an older, litho or screen-printed box, and I bought this intending to replace a few missing and broken pieces, in that much-loved and over-played set, only to find it's got an orange beetle, instead of a red one, so I may still need a third, but could end up with enough good parts for five players!

 

Not that you have to build them all one colour, half the fun was making a multicoloured one! Called Scarabee in France, Escarabajo (scarabs!) in Spain, and Cootie in the US (WWI troops slang for body-lice! And which were love-bites over here, when I was a kid?), I'd be quite surprised if a UK collector didn't know they were called Beetle Game, indeed, one might think he was just a dealer all along, not really paying attention!

 

I got this from MM-Smith, who didn't have any new figures in his own range this year, due to the kind of personal shit, we're all suffering, however he did stall-out, and had these, they're quite modern, but he said he remembered having the exact same animals as a kid, which is both believable and likely.

 

Sometimes a maker can be left with a ton of stuff from a cancelled contract, or just a stack of stillages in a warehouse somewhere, filled with over-production, and where it can hang around for years, before another buyer, or selling/marketing opportunity arises, or someone remembers it's ". . . at the back there somewhere", and digs them out, so it's entirely possible, this is old stock in a new CE-rated card.

 

And I've had both the uncommon Hippo sculpt, and the turned-head 'Black Panther' for years, they're having come in with vintage lots, so it's nice to find they go together, and what goes with them!

 

Similar, but much older fayre from Jecsan, as their unpainted/pocket-money JC line, a mix of caveman-like native warriors, and wild animals, a bit of a packaging box-ticker, but equally I don't have any of them in the stash, or I didn't, before the show! Both bags contain two animals, three figures and a cactus!

 

This is the CollectA Quetzalcoatlus, a huge flying dinosaur, which was the idea behind the movie Q: The Winged Serpent, albeit, an inaccurate representation of an Aztec mythological creature! I'm not a great fan of horror movies, but a giant pterosaur picking bikini-babes of the roofs of New York was quite amusing!

 

Beautifully made and decorated, matching the best Schleich or Papo can offer, they tend to be a lot cheaper, but you have to find them online as brick & mortar retail stockists seem thin on the ground. The baby-sauropod snack, in scale, is slightly larger than a human! While the beak is slightly more curved than some reconstructions?

 

Mixed, mostly smaller ones, including a vinyl turkey, Matchbox horse and pearlescent cracker elephant, but that semi-flat red plastic moulding, back left . . . 

 

. . . defies description! It appears to be a lion, eating either a monkey or a human? It's quite damaged, with the legs/lower torso of the 'meal' missing, along with the Lion's other leg, and the tip of its tail, with the result that we don't even know if it had a base, or was a baseless 'charm' of some kind.

 

Does it get any more esoteric? What else was in the set? How bloodthirsty was the rest of the set? Cracker or gumball? Literally, the most interesting thing to come out of the show this year!

 

A couple of funnies, on the right, an Airfix ancient horse bing made to look like an unpainted whitemetal casting, for WTF? reasons! On the left a Merit dog, Hong Kong copy of Merit pony and a piece of Timpo hedge are brought together to make a rustic vignette.

 

In the past I would have stripped these down, but now, I'll probably hang on to them for a while, indecised (is that a word? Undecided-) as to what to do with them, then pass them on to the next generation of collectors in a mixed lot, similar to those they came in!

 

Sold to me as Starlux (!), the Corgi circus elephant, from the Jean Richard 'Pinder' playset (Gift Set No. 48). I think it's been repainted by someone, and is a hollow polystyrene moulding, glued together from about four or five parts.

 

A couple of Erzgebirge, the cow being pretty bog-standard, but the horse slightly above average, with the extra shaping of the legs. Along with a full-on piece of ivory, a tusk, probably from bookends, or similar decorative pieces. Also, two legs; one plastic, one metal; which don't appear to belong to any of the other animals in the plunder pile, so will be heading to a spares tub!

 

Three metal figures, even a plastics show will turn-up the odd piece of metal!, the goat might be a game piece? The mini-dino' is interesting, and a thing a weird shop in Wantage, where I got a wizard years ago, might have had too (in which case I may have one already?), but the Irish Wolfhound may be a jackpot find?

 

It's die-cast aluminium, as a flat. And we've seen such things before here at Small Scale World, but before I place the link, this casting (metal IS cast) has Wolfshond (with an 'o') on the base, now, it's not clear, but I think the Germans would say Wolfshund (with a 'u'). So, if this producer of aluminium flats is actually Dutch, that would help make perfect sense of this outstanding question mark;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/09/r-is-for-return-to-nazi-flats.html

 

The Dutch got a bloody hard time from the Nazi's, and it would make perfect sense for them to produce a satirical, caricature set, soon after the end of the war, and with sources of aluminium like crashed allied and destroyed German aircraft, pontoons, landing craft and similar, all over the place, aluminium might have been a good choice to try starting up a novelty/toy company?

 

And while the base on the dog, is slightly different, and has the title mark missing from the smaller farm and wild animals sets, and the figures, the parallels outnumber the differences? Does any Dutch collector/historian know anything about a flat/semi-flat manufacturer in aluminium? It could equally be Luxembourgish, and they got a hard-time too?

 

And, in fact, all three pieces are die-cast, with the T-Rex and goat both being in some Mazak/Zamac alloy, which is why I suspect a board-game playing piece for the goat?

 

Domestics, the interesting ones here being the unmarked, non-spiggoted version of the Blue Box Japanese officer's horse, here possibly from one of the Red Box factories, or one of the Singapore factories, but could be a knock-off by a rival.

 

The other interesting item is the semi-flat horse, in the style of those Mokarex/Figurines Hostoriques we saw again the other day, marked "CAROLINGIEN" on the facing side above, and "760" on the other side, I'm guessing a French premium, possibly missing a rider in the style of the Kilty/Bonnie Built (et al) US officer, but an ancient Carolingian?

 

Modern vinyls! Schleich Baby Girrafe.

 

Britains polar bear in need of a clean, and a crocodile Adrian gave me, as the show was packing up, looks Hong Kong, but is unmarked and could be an Argentine copy of something Spanish, they had some lovely animated wildlife!?

 

Another Airfix beagle/foxhound, and a rat from one of the Games Workshop/MB Games crossover board games of the 1980's? Probably Hero Quest?

 

Finishing with a Kinder dragon or dragon baby, and four dinosaurs without marks or with generic marks which will need to be sorted into the vast pile of such stuff, against more definitive posts another day, the carnivore is reasonably realistic, and the rather pale sauropod might get matched to his set, by those distinctive eyes!
 

So, that was the animals, thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again.

D is for Donation - Chris - Wild West

Part two of the recent Wild West donations, this lot courtesy of Chris Smith, and we've a few interesting things to look at, starting with a real find, especially so when you consider how much help Chris has already given on the subject of pencil-sharpeners, both of the Hong Kong based KT, and related West German examples.

 

Aren't they fascinating? Almost mint plastic, but a lot of damage, reflecting their age (probably 1960's, or even 1950's) and material, which is a frangible polystyrene. But we have enough (lower right shot), to get a good idea of them including both arms, which were originally glued on.

 

The cowboys bodies had a weight attached to the end of the unfortunately positioned rod, which kept them attached to the horse (lower left shot, excuse the dirty nail), but swinging back and forth, as they mossied over the range!

 

Two colours of horse, up to six colours of rider parts and/or sharpeners, with grey-green mounting brackets and pink heads, this is an incredible find, a lovely gift and possibly best in parcel. I was so busy sorting and bagging everything I didn't really give thought to 'best in parcel', so there may be more, we're only a third of the way through these posts!

 

Another sample of the figures Brain ID'd as being from 1950/60's Lucky Bags, and amazingly, given how many I have now, there are new colours and poses in this lot, and a complete version of a figure we've previously only seen damaged, so a sample which continues to grow, but shows no signs of being the definitive one yet - I think we're over 30 poses, so far!

 

I was only waxing lyrical about the Texas Indian in silver the other day, and a yellow one turns up! I'm beginning to suspect there was only one each on the mounted, and I may have a cowboy somewhere, in red?

 

The green semi-flat Indian is quite a surprise, I've had loads of these come in over the years, they've been blogged here, and I sort of assume they were a replacement for the brittle ones above in Lucky Bags, but every one I've encountered, has been red, we may even have looked at different shades of red, now green one turns up? Raising the possibility of other colours . . . yellow, blue? Lovely find Chris! [Later - I did have a single yellow one! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/10/u-is-for-unknown-wild-west-flats-3.html]

 

Another Culpitt late type, a damaged Minimodels, those rifle tips are often missing, but the cowboys survive better than the Indians, who are almost always weaponless! The dark green chap is another of the 40mm backwoodsmen who turn-up, out of Hong Kong, and the larger lady is a rather nice, undamaged piece of poured resin, from the tourist trade, I suspect.

 

Atlantic canoe from the Davy Crockett set, I have very little Atlantic in the large scale, as I had it all in the small scale, before the Blog extended the remit of the collection! The other is probably a sports boat from a roof rack or infant-toy play set, marked 1979 Buddy L Corp.

 

Coach and wagon oddments, include three of the teeny ones from mini tree-crackers, a larger 'W.Germany' one missing its horse (orange) and the horse from another (pastel blue), missing its coach, which might be German or from Hong Kong!

 

In the middle is one of those Japanese novelties in Celluloid, missing it's wheels, but all these things have their own place, and bits or parts make wholes, while multiples make better samples, even if they're incomplete!

 

Two 1st version Cherilea 54mm swoppets will make useful spares too, and the red torso may be another, or he may be a Kinder/Italian type, novelty figure part?

 

Being a consummate collector in his own right, and having sent dozens of these parcels to the Blog now, Chris knows to keep the cleaner samples of these many, many, Giant knock-offs separate, so the bag has what looks like a mix of two semi-identified (by me) types, so all I'll have to do is swap a few riders back onto the correct 'other' horse.

 

While the loose stuff is the ones-and-twos, which come in with every mixed lot, and will require more effort/diligence in sorting, but you can see the cracker types in both sizes (mini and 'Lone Star' pirates), a Blue Box wagon horse and other treats.

 

Similar material here, with a possible post-Giant gun team in the four, but it could equally be a wagon (probably the red/green ones) team, while the pair of 'Large Standing' are from the Cracker and other Giant gun copies (sans limbers, the gun is pulled direct!), and the two farm carts were also Cracker prizes I think, I have yet to find them on cards?

 

Finishing this section with a huge tee-pee, I suspect it's from 3- or 4-inch action figures, but it's not much larger than the Britains one, and has some similarities in construction, assuming some poles are missing? But what's particularly interesting is the material, which is a sort of compressed version of the faux-chamois leather, used to dry-off cars when valeting them! But retaining a softness, those 'leathers' don't, but they are soft when you first buy them, and it's the constant wetting and drying which renders them so stiff I think. A very unusual thing, and many thanks again to Chris for all of this.

J is for Jährliche Osterhasenparade

Did you anticipate this post? I'd totally forgotten . . . again! But Brian Berke has done one of his regular photo-essays for us, by heading down to Scully & Scully, at 54 Park Avenue, an address, to Americophiles, as prestigious or exciting, as something on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées would be to a Francophile, or Park Lane to an Anglophile! And why has it taken me nearly a decade to look that up?

 

Brian had real problems with reflection this time, hence two visits were called for, and he even tried different cameras, and while I've done what I can with cropping and contrast, you can see a camera in three or four of them, and I cropped the mice out of a larger image, so that one is a bit fuzzy, because they were background!

 

As always, the sculpts, and their painting are exquisite, and while we've seen some of them before, it's all new painting, and/or some new vignettes, along with new trees, I think. I didn't reject any of the images, so there's a bit of duplication.

 

Nothing else to add, as they are a perennial here, now, so please enjoy a bit of Easter magic from the Big Apple.

 

Many thanks to Brian for these, they are a real treat!