M is for More to Come . . .

. . . but we've sort of sorted some of it out, for now!

This wasn't in the queue a few days ago! I bought a nice (well; tatty!) set of Shackman novelty pencil sharpeners from New York a few weeks a ago, which were going on the back burner, but Chris Smith posted some nice thematic shots on the Friend's of Plastic Warrior Facebook group earlier this week, which lead to a flurry of activity there and here at SSW Towers, leading to this post!

First a quick look at that Shackman set; it's been mucked about with - I suspect end-of-line/ex-shop stock, put back in a box and sold as a set when it's meant to be broken down in a small stores? There's an extra Beefeater and the Indian is a suspect inclusion, but a nice sculpt in a civilian role as hunter rather than war-path warrior.

Quick confirmation of the empirical evidence for the doubting Thomas's and make-it-up-as-you-go-along-brigade, Shackman were a jobber specialising in the novelty/tourist trinket end of the market (a bit like HCF here in the UK), I'm also collecting their novelty-matchbox pencil sharpeners with 'Mocherette' in them (I know, I know, I'll get round to it, but probably next year now - most of the photo's are done!), although, further back (1950's), they also imported some of the Erikson/Authenticast copy sets from Japan as more mainstream playthings.

If the boxes were sold as sets, I suspect the chap here would have been one (?) of the missing figures, the pair in the two central shots are Chris's, the sharpener on the left is mine now and the other pair on the end are an Internet couple! Tyrolean dancers who could be German or North Italian . . . Austrian or Eastern/Alpine Swiss!

Back to the set, and they all (including the Indian) have plug-feet and separate bases, which are glued to a standard pencil sharpener which I remember being included in cheap Christmas crackers, and have seen on gum-ball vending machine cards. The Indian however plugs straight into a flimsier pencil-honeing device.

Chris's however are integrally moulded with base and figure as single moulding, not two pieces. Now I already knew - and you may remember - we had seen the Beefeater before here, when by coincidence Chris and Adrian both gave me examples a few days apart, neither of them are marked, but a policeman we will look at in a minute has a small KT on his base in an oval cartouche reminiscent of the aforementioned HCF's little gold stickers?

My dancer has a fuller set of marking (as do the 'Internet pair' in the second image) and a stock/cavity number/code; 315, while Chris's lady (who's base has been home-painted/re-painted white over the original balck) is coded 673, her partner 674 and lacking her ® mark? The sharpeners, meanwhile, can be found with or without a pretty bog-standard HONG KONG.

The earlier Beefeaters, along with the stationary policeman from the boxed set have a disc-shaped blemish which people (including me) would more normally, and erroneously describe or assume (never assume huh?!!! Heeheehee!) as/to be mould-release pin-marks, but which are clearly blanking plates or pins to hide the smaller mark of the policeman.

In the conversation at FoPW, Chris had managed to find another figure on-line, which reminded me that Brain Wagstaff had sent two to this Blog ages ago, as they were clearly influenced by the Commonwealth/Van Brode/Codec 'dancing doll' sets. The 'Brain pair' having no mark on either side of the integral base, while the Internet one - also having an integral base - on a pencil sharpener; neatly tying all the above (bar the Indian?) to the same series.

Meanwhile, or actually closer to the Beefeaters and the start of this little odyssey, Chris had spotted a policeman on feebleBay ages ago, back near the start of Lockdown One, and I thanked him for the heads up and watched it half-heartedly for several months (it was really too pricey), now . . . I can't remember if the price came down or the seller listed something else to combine . . . but in the end I did get it in the autumn/recently.

Here we see pencil-sharpener and non-pencil sharpener versions of both Beefeater and policeman together, along with another Internet shot of a new sharpener colour - new to this article mind; many colours dropped out of Christmas crackers!

By this time ( a couple of days ago)n it had dawned on me that the Highlander was also rather familiar, as we saw him here at Small Scale World not that long ago - green sharpener! Now, a point of note; it would appear one is attempting Black Watch (left, 'new' one) and the other the Gordon's (right, 'old' one). It may be the out-painter was just running out of yellow on the brush, but it seems to be a deliberately different shade of green and has not been applied to the haggis-bag or the lower reaches of the pipe's webbing?

Which leaves us with the Indian from the boxed set and a conclusion to formulate!

The Indian, is lovely, I don't know if he's based on a donor, most of these seem pretty unique - only one of Brian's is a direct copy - as sculpts, and the hunting with raptor is quite a German/East German pose (if you know what I mean), however, he is plugged into a thin-walled base which has a different sharpener, glued in, and it - the sharpener - has a different blade design.

The differences outweigh the similarities; plug-in feet, gloss-paint in a stab-and-hope style, so for now he must remain a question-mark, there are other sources of figural, novelty, pencil-sharpener as we saw not that long ago here.

But I suspect he is from the same source, but the thin-walled case for the sharpener was easily damaged, and the extra glue-step of a separate sharpener was more expensive, so he's likely an earlier variant.

The conclusion is that with the possible exception of the Indian, these are all from one, evolving series, from the same source, and differing either for reasons of increasing the ease of production, over time, or to comply with caveats from different clients, such as Shackman, from contract to contract.

They can be plug-in, or moulded with a base, which may or may not subsequently end-up glued to a pencil sharpener which is also available separately elsewhere. A variety of marks or no-marking can be found on the separate bases, the integral bases and/or the sharpener-units.

There must be more 'world dancers', possibly another Indian or two, and matching quantities of cowboy, still to be found, maybe a Welsh lady and etcetera. I would also put a fiver, at least a fiver, on HCF being found to have shipped some of them into UK, and dare to say Tom Smith was in-there as well?

The only likely "KT" I can come up with is Kitoys Traders Co., who were making/marketing mini-deform, pull-back-and-go, 'hot hatch' novelty cars in the late 1980's from Connaught Road, West, Hong Kong and may have been responsible for something like these figures a decade or two earlier, if they were around then?

Despite the question-mark I will put them in the tags, as I have one of the little cars to Blog - one day! And many thanks to Chris Smith for several involvements in this 'Discovery', plus the photos, Bill B for the Kitoys reference and to Brian Wagstaff for the other images.

Small Scale World - weaving magic, with lots of help . . . and more to come!

A is for A Little Bit of Silliness

Unless you worry about rubbish, in which case Wombles are very serious things!

I picked this chap up in a mixed lot the other day, I think he may have been Uncle Bulgaria once but he was beyond tatty, and it was either save him somehow or . . . off to recycling . . . sniff!

Now; I feel I have a close association with Wombles, my Granny made my brother and I very realistic ones in her craft group when we were kids which I still have somewhere; you often see similar really good unbranded Wombles in charity shops or on feeBay and I think they were all produced with the same plans/pattern by WI-circles and the like? They sometimes have sewn-in paper or card stiffening the ears! We had Uncle B and Wellington.

Also; we were big fans of the TV series anyway, and later we rented a field from the Author (Liza Beresford) who would sometimes chat to us over the wall while we worked it, so throwing Wombles in the recycling is akin to cold-blooded murder, ergo; 'Do something Muttley!' was the only option!

The flock had to go, I tried to save the scarf but it fell apart due to age! I saved the eye (2) and the nose (3), and would have replaced the missing eye, or both with glass beads, but the remains of his looking-glasses had such a long locating-stud (1), I managed to melt a bead on the end with a cigarette lighter (at the cost of heat-tendered finger-tips) and form a new eye. The key-ring chain-loop (⊂) was the last thing to go.

The scarf was then fashioned with a section of bootlace, which is looped through itself in the modern style and was held-tight and glued at the knot over-night, before being trimmed and the ends frayed with a hat-pin!

As there is already an Alderney ['she'], I shall call him Berlin and he can join the hard plastic ones we've seen in-part, a couple of times now, but - while I want to tick that box - I'm still waiting for an elusive Madame Cholet to turn up.

I suspect both these flocked blow-moulds and the similar-sized hard-plastic ones were HCF imports, certainly there were the remains of one of those little gold stickers on the underside of his feet, but it's a guess, not yet empirical.

B is for Bonus Beefeaters!

When I did a round-up of Beefeaters the other day, well; earlier this year (I don't know where the time goes!), I meant to add the last pair of shots from this post, but in my usual disorganised fashion managed to forget them! Anyway, they would have rotted in Picacsa for another year or two (I took them in 2016!) if I hadn't spotted the first item in today's post the other day, and literally the other day, it arrived the day before the May-eleventh PW show.

How cool is this desktop pen holder? Not-very I know . . . it's a Hong Kong cheapie and the three pen-holders aren't even glued in-line and facing the same way! But the figure is nice, although a larger-scaled novelty which will only interest the more eclectic collectors, but then; I am one, and I snapped it up as soon as I saw it.

Box is a bit water-damaged, and as well as carrying the HCF mark of novelty tat (becoming a regular here at SSW), it also carries the originator's mark (AH or HA) on the end flaps, although not sadly in the catalogue Bill B recently posted online, but then it looks to be a 1970's item.

You can see from a comparison with the smaller Chris/Adrian figure - from the previous post - that he's around the 90mm mark, and he has a separate, soft polyethylene plug-in hat and a similar staff finial which is not the correct design for a Yeoman Warder's 'Partisan', yet neither is it the white tower or an obvious axe, nor does it resemble the halberds of the Gentlemen At Arms or anything from the ceremonial elements of the HAC, Artists Rifles and /or Loyal Archers (or whatever they're all called), so a bit of artistic licence there, I feel?

The left-off-the-last-post shots; a bit of vintage metal, with two hollow-cast Britains yeomen on the right and a Wendal figure in aluminium to the left. The latter having a slip-in wire partisan, the weapon's head being also cast in aluminium, with alternate base styles in the second image, while I think the sandy-coloured base is the earlier of the Britains pair.

Due to the tourism nature of their market, I don't think either are particularly rare examples of their maker's figures.

 

December 2024 - The smaller plastic figures are now known to be from a larger range by KT of Hong Kong, so it must have been copied by the other brands/brand-marks mentioned above, it's unlikely to have been copied the other way - from the larger one - as subsequent research has given the KT ones more age I feel?

HCF is for Hairy Chewbac'grilla Fella! . . . Filthy Ape!

I spent last week getting Rack Toy Month posts scheduled on the desktop 'till the 23rd, in the hope that whatever happened with the move and stuff, I'd be able to feed things into the blog irrespective . . .

. . . , a system you now know broke down two days ago! In the meantime while I have resisted the urge to start blanket-blogging everything sitting in the garage, I did spot this classic rack toy in the 'Minor Makes F-J' box this evening (Tuesday), and had to post it! And yes . . . I've cleaned my desktop since previous capcha's!

There are - among the grandees of the hobby (whose coat-tails I hope I'm increasingly treading-on!) - those who have suggested one or two companies did all the flocking, but in fact there were many flocking flockers both in the UK and elsewhere, while others bought the - relatively small - machines and did a bit of flocking themselves.

However, after the evidence of their sourcing Wombles, Paddington and the recent heavy/cart-horse, it's clear that as far as the colonies go, HCF (of Essex) were the 'go-to' for flocking-flocker's to flog flocked flockings to!

The process is actually quite simple, although there will be variations between machine-tool makers, with a glue-sloughed product (stencilled, all-over sprayed or cut-in by hand) introduced to a sealed-cabinet full of fine-fibres and given a shake, or blow, or a spin while a static charge is applied to the atmosphere in the space. War-gamers can attest to the simplicity of the tech' (if not its execution!), having affordable hand-held equipment for flocking flat areas, or even small bases?*

Too cool for film school! Excellent rendition of an M16 (which looks as if they were intending it to be threaded with a sling at one point?) and if the Planet of the Apes' movies weren't a few years earlier, you'd swear they'd used an old Chewbacca head!

Blow-moulded polyethylene with a solid plug-in head and the techniques are the same as for the cart-horse with stencilled, airbrushed highlights to jacket and boots, and paper stickers for the leather armband/gauntlet cuffs.

*Thinking out loud . . . has anyone flocked a Leopard tank kit to represent the carpeting someone in the 1980's (Belgium, Holland  . . . or Denmark maybe?) placed on them as a camouflage? You'd have to use very fine flock with a larger-scale model as the carpeting was that thin-pile, carpet-tile, type stuff, I seem to recall?

F is for Follow-up - Blow Moulded Cart Horse

Just a quick follow-up to the other day'spost; showing that while a perfect 54mm/1:32nd scale and similar to Britains 'heavy' . . .

. . . the flocked HCF draft horse isn't exactly the same as the Britains one either (we looked at the Timpo version last time), but seems to be a pose of its own (unless you know better?) with a prouder head and more-bent legs. I took the opportunity to look - properly - for signs of a tail, or signs of a an ex-tail's glue or pin hole, there isn't any; so it's fair to assume he was docked from birth!

HCF is for Heavy Cob; Flocked

51! - I picked this up in one of my regular trawls of the charity shops a week ago, it looked like it ought to have a wagon attached, but I'm not so sure now?

Made by (or claimed-by) HCF who have appeared here on Small Scale World several times, they (HCF) obviously cornered the market in novelty tat - badges, Robertson's Golliwog pencil sharpeners, Star Wars erasers, 'Battleground' rack-toys and with the lovely flocked Paddington's - flocked novelty tat . . . the flocking flockers!

It's certainly the sort of thing you find attached to kitsch, wheeled, mantle-shelf 'ornaments' or keepsakes (you know the type of thing, a wooden and plastic Spanish two-wheeled 'tumbrel' with a glass or ceramic sherry-miniature in the shape of a barrel) , and is the same kind of heavy horse, but there is no evidence of it having ever been attached to anything, no glue-remnants on the reins, no damage to the six rings at the end of the chains, no signs of side-poles or ropes.

So my suspicion is that while it may have been made for (and occasionally/originally sold with-) wagon models, this particular one was probably sold in canal-side or other waterway gift shops and visitor centres, as a stand-alone, tourist trinket of a long-boat or narrow-boat 'tug'?

It's construction is quite complicated; the base is a blow-moulded farm horse which - once it has been flocked - takes various glued or pierced additions such as faux-leather PVC (the same stuff car-seats were made of), PVC tubing, cloth scraps, steel rings, brass studs, alloy chains & mouldings (the large buckle), card scraps and some paper stickers - the only item obviously missing is a balancing gold star over the right hand side's eye-blinker.

Comparison with a rather chewed Timpo horse I happened to have kicking around (I won't tag it, it's purely for size); the real reason I grabbed it is - or was - because while most of the mantle-wagons are 1:large-scale heaps of wooden and polymer shite, this is basically a blow-moulded, tailless, piracy of a Britains cart-horse and near to 54mm . . . bargain! Indeed, the one other thing which may be missing (other than a possible whole wagon!) is a 'real' hair tail, although there's no sign of there having ever been one?

I suspect HCF are/will turn out to be also responsible for both the un-flocked and flocked Womble pencil-tops/figurines you see from time to time.

News, Views Etc...

Daily Mash
As I'm sure you've heard by now, toys will be removed from the destructive reach of pesky kids, who can all go and look for strange-looking men in ghost-costumes instead!

Adults Only

Posting
I might take a break for a week or two as I need to get a couple of real-life rants together and send them to my insurance and IT provider. Capitalism . . . it's grinding to a halt in front of our eyes!

I've put a few more posts on the Hong Kong blog, but only more easy stuff! The 1st draft for ZZ is nearly ready published for on the A-Z blogs, and I was going to update the Arco entry, but the amount of info, and the way it falls, means I need to do Arco, Sarco, Giant and the Rosenberg Toy Co.  at the same time and it looks like the companies will just get 'listing' entries, with all four cross-referenced to a 'Rosenberg's' entry for the full history.

[The above was written a month ago, and I think it's all happened/been announced!]

There are a couple of updates for the early stuff to go on the Airfix blog and I need to kick start the 54mm posts, so I may do some of that in the autumn, but I think I said that a year ago and did pretty-much bugger-all, so don't count on it - only so many hours in a lifetime!

There's also a nice set of Hong Kong Britains copies going on the Khaki Infantry page courtesy of Brian Berke, with individual close-ups of all six common poses; unusual for HK to do all six.

[Also happened; but not yet announced - I've still got to do some text on that page, just call me fuckwit!]

Paddingteddy Bears
As a follow-up to a resent post while-ago post on the subject, Brian's wife sent us a couple of images of Paddington Bears, all of which were new to me. In Brian's words:

"The red coated one is 2.5" high, flock covered, made in Hong Kong by H.C.F., purchased in UK mid 70's. Blue coated flock bear grips if you squeeze arms. Bought in US mid 70's, made in Korea for Eden Toys who held the US Paddington marketing rights. [Pair of] Plastic Pencil Sharpeners made in Hong Kong, purchased in London 1976. Marked Paddington & Co/Filmfair Ltd who made the animated Paddington TV show."

You may recall we've looked at both Robertson's 'Golly' pencil-sharpeners by HFC, and pencil-top Paddingtons here before, so the 'whole' becomes greater!

Plong Bubblegum Toys - Moon-Panorama Cards
Can anyone supply a shot (flat or straight-on) or scan of card number 6, I have managed to stitch various combo's together in Picasa over the years, then in May I was able to shoot 1-5 in a row and 7 & 8 as a pair, all I need is a six and I can show the whole panorama!

Say it Like it Sounds Department
The end of the human race right there! That's a hundred years of compulsory schooling and the 'information-age' in action . . . and fifty dollars for a tourist-trinket ash-tray; really?

Things to Come
With Rack Toy Month well and truly over, I've got about 23 things in the queue, with contributions from four or five people, but I may not post every day in September so we'll see how it goes, and only about three weeks to the next PW (by my reckoning?), so there'll be another post there if I pull my finger out!

Rack Toy Month only half-emptied Brian's folder, and Picasa is still stuffed full of odds and sods, so we'll have another 'RTM', probably next August but maybe sooner? I've got some more novelty type stuff for Christmas, and five other posts 'in the bag' so busy, busy!

Unknown Combat GI's
Can anyone help put a brand or set name to either of these; the upper trio are a dense but soapy polyethylene or -propylene and seem to be from the 1990's with the 'fritz' helmets. The lower three are a medium-density PVC-rubber in the style of Supreme, but unpainted and with an Italian 'feel' to them. Both lots are about 35mm - could be 40-mil, it's an old photograph.

"When I grow-up I wanna' be a flat-top with a nuclear engine, four steam

-catapults, some Chinooks and squadrons of Navy Raptors"

Another follow-up to recent goings-on here; we've seen them both before, the large Ja-Ru one the other day, the smaller one back in December '15, but I forgot to bring them together in the rack-toy post!

Speaking of the forthcoming PW: I took this at Plastic Warrior's show back in May, a Lever washing-powder (?) premium, with more than a nod to Crescent, but of the same size and style as the Solido figures. I think it's thanks to Adrian at Mercator, for letting me photograph this.

And Finally . . .
I wondered if I shouldn't rename News, Views . . . to something like 'Bits & Pieces, Odds, Sods, Bobs and All Other Stuff &Etc.'? Heehee, only joking - nice to know I'm so influential! But some people seem to think it's a competition, and so, not for the first time this year; It's not a competition and if you think it is; you're probably heading for a fall.

With a couple of breaks, I've been here for a while now (longer than you - oh competitive ones!), and I'm not going anywhere, I've posted the same stuff in the same fashion (the 'voice' changes a bit over time) and I intend to continue to do so, although I haven't had a rant for a while, hummm . . . maybe I should have a rant! Google's algorithms seem to like it, the visitors keep coming back - so live with it; oh competitive ones!

B is for Battle Ground...or is it?

Having now decided to have a Hong Kong small-scale Blog (which I tried back in 2008, but I thought I had to trick Blogger with a separate ID and it all got too complicated!) these will appear on that Blog at some point, both singly and as a group comparison (mirroring this post), but as I loaded this here back in January it can stay.

So; to the nature of 'Generics', a post that could almost as easily be done with 1970's bagged or carded small scale Cowboys & Indians or 1960's dime-store 'penny-whistles', but I'm using these as they were pretty much the swan-song of small-scale 'army men', also: having got out of the army and decided I was old enough to blow my money on what I wanted, I spent a few years hoovering them up as they appeared, so - hopefully - should have most of the variations!

I say rather pompously "so; to the nature of generics" as if I'm about to deliver some great treatise on a grand secret of the Hong Kong toy industry...I'm not! There is no secret, basically, all the figures in this post came from the same source, we just don't know who, and - in point of fact - it's probably not an HK source, it's probably a Chinese one! Indeed, because these appeared as the run-up to handover was looming, they carry neither HK nor China on any of the packaging; itself unusual, nor on the figures bases.

These first four are all 'branded' to Battle Ground; the clear 'generic', although several have stickers on the card or reverse with another ID entirely, while the same sets can come with different cards, and the same brands carry alternate and different-sourced products. All importers (jobbers) - to a man.

The shot shows single and double-pouch header-carded bags, and both single and four-blister bubble-packs. I'm sure that elsewhere other formats could be obtained - as Battle Ground - to order, but these were available in the UK between 1988/9 and about 1998/9 and I should also add that other products in other scales also come in packaging with both types of the Battle Ground artwork - again: as generics or with over-stickers.

As well as stipulating different formats (or accepting them 'off the shelf'), end-users/clients could have customised artwork, again to their own design using the Chinese company's designers, or off-the-shelf graphics or from their own art workers, and here we see the same four-pocket blister attached to three different cards, the French artwork seems to have been lifted or part-lifted from somewhere else, see the white areas round the hand/butt of the gun, this was before digital patches and colour-matching, and as they were budget toys: cheap-cost artwork - whoever was responsible for it - was the order of the day.

Here we see the contents of the single pouch, now with new header-cards and a squarer bags - which are softer PVC. One colour, or several, and note how with the multi-coloured set each colour has been dumped in the bag on top of the last, but the first (bottom) layer seems to be the dregs of several batches!

Mini sets were also available, each with the flag and there is no relationship between the colour of the figures and the design on the flag's sticker, with the same flag accompanying bags of different coloured figures, and different flags being put with the same coloured figures! I have to thank German collector Andreas Dittman for most of these, and they were a bit later than the above dates, he picked them up on the continent about ten years ago, and I then found a few others in one of those glass-shelf partitioned 50p pocket-money displays at/around the same time.

Some of the logos/trademarks connected to these figure's 'brands'. The LB sets are almost certainly from the Glasgow-based Levy Brother's LB Group (correctly: Levy (LB Group) Bros. Ltd.), I seem to recall that they were bought a few years ago by H Grossmann/HGL (their postcodes were a few streets apart!) who have themselves recently been sold, but I'll check that.

The figures are all copies of Matchbox German Infantry and Airfix US Infantry, to which is added a crude version of the old Monogram radio operator, although see the note on the Japanese (2nd following paragraph).

The bases - as mentioned above - are blank, which is as uncommon for Hong Kong products as it is for modern/current Chinese products, suggesting that the originator was either an HK-based company, obtaining finished product from the (then still slightly 'enemy' Communist State) mainland OR already producing on the mainland themselves, but not wanting to admit it (for the same reasons) until the handover of the colony, which actually/eventually happened as these were drying-up in UK shops.

As an exception to the rule, the smaller two-pouch bag has some ex-Airfix Japanese added; these are earlier figures, which I looked at in One Inch Warrior magazine's 7th edition. They are the same size and style (but with sharper-edged bases), and share the wacky colours so will almost certainly come from the same source (which is why they're in the bags!), but were definitely originally issued earlier, as they had been turning-up as loose figures for years(#) before these 1990's figures. Their original HONG KONG mark has been removed for this issue, although the scar is visible on the base. [# When they turned-up previously (and with the full base mark) - it was usually in small numbers, so probably from Christmas crackers, end-of-pier crane-machine bags and/or vending capsules &etc.]

The loose stuff is all in storage at the moment so we'll have to re-use these old pictures from something else to just show that: A) as loose figures they are not that rare (upper arrow - both stacks), but they are not as common as some of the 1960-80's small scale, and: B) they come in various other colours or shades, but green and blue remain the commonest (from the big bags!) also: C), there is a second issue (lower arrow) which are of poorer quality with thinner bases and lots of flash which I haven't tied into specific packaging yet, but they may just be from late versions of some of the sets listed here. These points are - of course - UK-centric; it may be a different story elsewhere.

 

Known Sets
As Battle Ground (generic)
- Single blister pack (J.A.Phillips, 1992)
- Quadruple blister pack (HCF, 1996)
A7/521 - Single pouch bag with header card (Herbert Kees, early 1990’s)
- Double pouch bag with header Card (late 1990's with older 1980's Japanese figures)
As Bestoy (generic)
BES142 - Soldier Set (quadruple blister, an earlier logo was written in baby-blocks)
As HP (Hans Postler, France and Germany)
51353 - Small header-card Bag (French language version*)
As LB Ltd. ('Super Toy Packs'**)
ST-11-2436 - Mini Army (Clown and 3-balloon graphics, blue figures, 1993)
ST-11-2436 - Mini Army (4-balloon graphics, multi-coloured figures, 1994)
ST-11-2436 - Mini Army (4-balloon graphics, blue figures, 1995)
As MGM Super Toy International (France?)
Ref. 2295 - Les Minis Armees (quadruple blister pack)
Other (generic)
- Attack Force Set (multi-blister with AFV's and scenics, late 1980's***)
- Title-less mini pack (France/Germany? Mid-2010's)

* The same packs came with the larger Airfix piracies with striated bases; each bag also has a small-scale Saladin-type armoured car.
* * The same bags were used for very poor 'last generation' Airfix piracies (Russian Infantry and Paratroops) in a pale blue crumbly kind of polyethylene, almost 'scrap plastic'.
*** The same card was previously used for Airfix piracies of an earlier 1980's type, which may make this the earliest use of the later figures - from the artwork re-use.

T is for Toys of Toy People from Toytown

I've got all the pictures in the wrong order, so this will jump back and forwards but it's a post of bits and bobs anyway, so we'll press on. I have mentioned the origins of the 'Golly' moniker before, so to recap, I'll copy the entry from the abbreviations page, which I hope sums it up succinctly without causing offence...

Golliwogg/s - Ghul/s Working on Government Service (led to; 'Wogs', a now extremely derogatory nickname for Egyptian natives employed on British government service in the 1800's, which then gained wider use as a general racist/racially-derived slur word)
Golly / Gollie - See; Golliwogg/s

However, it is the only word we have to work with, and when it comes to Robinson's (Jams and Preserves), a sort of 'pax' was called on it's use due to the fame of the brands logo use, and the fact that Robinson's never used him in a negative context...not that most of the thousands of other 'Golly' products, books and soft toys did...Enid Blighton's (sometimes bad Golly) being the exception rather than the rule!

Adrian had this on his table back in the summer and I shot it when I had the chance, it was empty, but I had an idea I'd seen the HFC label before somewhere, without even noticing the image between the jar and the orange above, but that'll have to wait 'till the end of the post...

...in the meantime, the above shot shows some of the larger Marx (UK) figures (which may or may not have been supplied to Codeg / Cowan de Groot?), the two to the right have been paint-stripped, probably by Ron Good of Good Soldiers who casts them in metal and sells them in sets, in red gift boxes, like old Britians! I'm not even sure they're not from two Marx series, as Big Ears seems a tad too large?

Below them, are some finger-puppets, possibly from Christmas Crackers? But unknown in the provenance department and could just as easily be from a pocket-money craft set. Litho-printed paper faces glued to a felt loop, which on some provides the hat or other detail.

Back to Marx (UK) the upper-shot here is of a figure also from the above set (sets?), but which was languishing in the 'Unknown, probably Blue Box' box for years due to his similarity to other Blue Box (or Blue Box-like!) figures that follow the Marx (US) Disney production. It is actually (I assume) Mr. Bear; husband to the Mrs. Bear finger puppet above.

Below him and we're back to the top...where I'd recognised the HFC from; a bit of a disappointment, but it was illustrated on the lid, and pretending to be a Golly Badge (we think the link with Robinson's - established on the box - is tenuous, if not; non-existent) when it's actually a pencil sharpener! These were sold in newsagents and corner-shops back in the early 1980's although; note no date on the (C), a sure sign of everything being not as it seems in the licensing department?

This image was in my files, I suspect evilBay, but I'm not sure, so if you're the owner of the image, recognise it and want it removed, that's not a problem, eMail me...I rarely use downloaded images, and it's presented here for research purposes.

As a footnote; in 2001 Robinson's ceased to produce Golly memorabilia and he was dropped in 2002 with this press-release;

"We are retiring Golly because we found families with kids no longer necessarily knew about him. We are not bowing to political correctness, but like with any great make we have to move with the times"

P is for Pencil Topper

Long, long ago...In a Galaxy far, far away...they had Mausers, Stirling SMG's and MG34's with extra bits stuck on...oh yeah, and they had inter-planetary and inter-system faster-than-light drives! Other than that it was all a bit Wild Wild West!!

In a galaxy a bit nearer home, like err...the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong; They had Polyvinyl-chloride, lots of it, AND they knew how to use it!

Wherever possible the one I believe to be the oldest is on the left, Darth - he got an ice-pick...in his legs, which were redesigned in later years, leaving him a bit of a mini-me-Vader!! R2D2 might be from another series of heads only?

Right, that's me running out of vague cultural references! I'm missing an orange-brown wicket, but then Pakistani bowlers have apparently been doing that for days and in my defense - I'm not trying!

Far from it, I keep finding them on FeeBay at a tenner a pop! Some of these dealers should be strung-up and run-through with a damp dish-cloth, bloody rip-off merchants, these things are 10/20p car-booty, and asking 20 quid for a set of six is marginally less criminal than paying an Ayrton Senna for a late production figure.

Apologies for the flare coming off the white/pale areas, I took the photo's twice, but the camera has started not recognizing when it's in Macro, so is giving a full blast on the flash at point-blank range. It's only three years old, nearly a hundred quid, it shouldn't be allowed, but that's about how long they last!

9th March 2021 - Now confirmed to be another HFC import, tag-list updated.