A is for Araber aus Deutschland

These used to be simple; "Manurba" would say the German collectors, then they became Dom-Manurba (or Manurba-Dom), now you usually find them listed as Dom-Manurba-Heinerle! I'm not even going to try to pin that down, but suffice to say they are slightly sub-scale at around 50mm and rather charming!

My sample, bringing something nice from the East, to the West! Carpets? Spice? The heads of their vanquished enemies? they are all unarmed so can be used with Nativity scenes as background population, and it's a small sample.

The full set includes mounted figures (some of whom are armed), horses, several different loads for the camels and other colours, and while usually from a brown/fawn/cream/white palette, I have seen them in red, orange and yellow I think.

That's it, that's them; my little handful of Manfred Urban . . . or Domplast . . . or Heinerle Wundertüten Arabs!

P is for Palm-flat Palm Flats

Another one which missed tree week, although the planting in the UK (it was 'our' tree week I think?) of palm trees outside of the South Cost, Scilly- or Channel Islands can be a bit of a fool's errand, but as the climate inexorably changes I dare say the line of success is moving firmly northwards!

On the left is Britains set of coconut palms which was based on their old Hollow-cast palms, if not actually from the same mold-tool? Much copied in Hong Kong we have two better ones from Blue Box (For Cheyenne among other sets!) and a more recent generic both of which designs have bracing across the trunks, probably to try and prevent warping upon removal from the mould?

The three together; you can see how much smaller both the copies are and the loss of detailed etching on the 2nd generation copy, which is also manufactured in an insipid, wishy-washy polymer which would benefit from a paint-job.

Charbens cheeky chimp climbing for coconuts! Actually he's easy to remove resulting in a far more useful tree in any scale which - going on the size of the monkey - is otherwise, a very small tree in quite a large scale!

Above; we have variations in the bases of the Charbens trees which 'had some work' at some point, I'd like to think one was from a hollow-cast mold or something, but the hollow-cast tree was quite different and had no stupid monkey!

Below; are two designs from that Manurba (Manfred Urban) / Heinerle süßwaren Wundertüten (confectionery surprise bags) / Dom (Domplast-Domplastik) group. They did produce a larger double coconut palm and a banana palm, but I either don't have them or have put them in the Manurba box, which is still buried in the garage! A rather nice tree-fern (Australasia) and a fruitless 'generic' palm.

I think this is Starlux, but the mark (in a little recessed cartouche) was obliterated by glue or early-removable from the tool, so it could be Befoid or Clairet? Any way it's supposed to be a coconut palm, by the look of it?

A Modern hollow-backed pair of bass-relief coconuts from some 'armyman' set; it may be a make-weight in some pocket-money rack-toy thing, but it adds to the collection of palm-flat flat palms!

C is for Carded Collection of Canned Cavalry

Slowly adding to the PRB ouvre, this being the third visit to them since the swivel-head contribution from John Roquas and the follow-up courtesy of Theo van der Weerden's memories; tying the combat infantry figures into bubble-gum.

We now have a clear logo - a sort of antenna-sporting alien with his (or her) own electron halo and a checkered-banner or pennant on what appears to be a lance?! The figures - on identical cards - being approximately 50/54 and 35/40mm (the riders are slightly bent and hard to measure with certainty), the horse being a single sculpt, the lot taken from German Manurba sculpts.

Quick note here; One Erwin Sell; he who makes it up as he goes along, has stated they are licensed from Manurba, where he got this nugget of corporate information from is anyone's guess, but as he makes it up as he goes along . . . the Manurba set are better, but heavier sculpts and the horses (four poses) have bases.

Licensed production - if new tools are generated - usually follows the design parameters of the licensor's product (Tim Mee for instance), and indeed - as far as toys go - usually only extend to re-branding of supplied or like-for-like product (all those Answer Robot/Magician games). These are quite different - still I look forward to his publishing the copies of the licence he must have to make such pronouncements - as fact.

Indeed, I would say the overall state of these is 'poorer', something you couldn't say of the swivel-heads seen here at SSW in 2017, against the blobbier, single piece Heinerle versions. It would appear that both the Italians and the Germans are the copyists here; PRB of the Manurba knights, Heinerle of the PRB swivel-heads?

Andreas Dittmann in his guide to Manurba published by Plastic Warrior magazine states that one of the companies which received Manurba product to sell-on was PRB, but these - in today's post - are not Manurba product!

The cards are the same size, but the artwork is miss-registered in the case of the 35mm set, or the guillotine-operator had his settings wrong!

As well as only using the one (base-less) horse pose in both scales, they seem to have only adopted three or four human poses and I've only seen three in 50mm and three in 35mm, the 50-mil's getting a copy of the jousting/lancing knight with separate lance not apparently re-produced in the 35mm line.

We did see these before on SSW, ten years ago (turns out I'd shown the little pirates before, so ITLAPD was their second showing on the Internet!) in an 'unknown' post, it's nice to be able to go back and add some pink-text ID'ing them, and even nicer if no one else has ID'd them in the meantime as I get to keep the credit and Breizhtt gets to call me an egotist; win-win for everyone!

The loose ones have more colours as far as horses go, and I must thank Adrian Little of Mercator Trading for finding me the carded set, between them they - both samples - are only offering the one horse pose and the three mounted-poses.

All of mine together -  I was trying to show the horse colours, but flash/reflection and a yellowish light-effect means I'm not happy with the shot and there's a couple more below. Suffice to say it's nice to have a name to put to the three old ones at long last!

This is a better illustration of the dark-chocolate brown against the black and three clearly different shades of white, being - from the left; very light-grey, cream and snow!

This chap has been languishing in Picasa since a photo-shoot I did of all the - then - extant medieval's in larger scales, around 2012 and if I don't show him now I may never! The horse is Hong Kong and only there because he fits it! Indeed - you can just see the HK-mark down it's inside front-leg.

But the figure is not so clear; he's midway between the two sets above, and was once a darker bronze-colour (I suspect), but an additive colourant seems to have leached-out, leaving him 'antiqued' with a pinkish, powdery bloom, yet slightly translucent at his thinner points.

He's much-of-a-muchness as far as rack-toy/bazaar/pocket-money shite is concerned, and not obviously one of the Manurba sculpts (although he could be a 'cut-&-shut'?), I suspect he is Hong Kong, but he could be late'ish production French, Spanish or Italian . . . anyone recognise him?

 

The rider is probably Rumanian, see comments (thanks Gabriel), I have since seen harder-plastic, painted PZG versions from Poland too.

B is for Bits & Bobs

A bitty Post, but it all needs to be got out of Picasa, and as I try to always take photographs as I go, against those occasions when I'm "Damn, no camera" or worse "Damn, forgot to use the camera!" and in the hope that more I rememebr to get it out the less I'll forget if you know what I mean!

The upper shot shows the 'storage lot' of Spot-On polyethylene 1:43rd scale figures we looked at years ago, with the recent acquisitions on the left in bags, the lower shot shows them all sorted together with the colours in a larger tub and all the whites in the old tub. When I get round to it we'll have a better look reflecting the information published elsewhere since they were posted here.

Couple of tubs I shot while sorting last Wednesday, armoured cars and German Wild West/ACW polyethylene, they are already re-buried in the garage, but I will dig out the tin-plate A/C and get it in before the weather gets too bad, the garage is dry and airy (now!) but tin-plate will tend to get surface-rust in damp, foggy or misty conditions. Label on the figures is a bit out, there's Manurba and/or Heinerle in there as well!

Found the box I was looking for! It's contents are the larger inset, with the stuff we've covered in the last couple of years to be seen down the bottom right. Interestingly; I have a set of Sainsbury's party favours from 2010/11 which I think are the same as the Amscan Para-animals Brian sent shelfies of, about a year ago.

The stuff building-up here was not well annotated as I didn't know what would be duplicate, or already have a bag, in the end there were only about six empty bags by the time I'd finished, however I need to go through all my old posts and/or the dongles to get everything labelled-up properly!

I think what I'll do with the parachute toys is start a page like the Khaki Infantry one and they can all go there in their 'family' groups, with the odds, novelty and space ones separated.

This tub (a 35-litre Really Useful Box) is a complete mystery, some of it is the sorted small scale from the 2011 show, as seen here (2nd, 3rd and 4th images) but some of it is totally un-memorable and not remembered, and when I got to the bottom of the tub I found five OO-gauge passenger coaches and a diesel locomotive I have absolutely no recollection of?

There's a wind-up mouse, Snoopy in a wind-up dog-house, a tub of street-furniture, another of broken Timpo horses, the remains of the runner from a set of Cherilea 50mm re-issues, two bags of HK/Blue-Box type farm, a small bag of Britain's Saracen sabres (and a lead torch?), a whole mass of stuff - well; 30-odd liters of it!

It must have been the detritus of a junk lot at SAS in October/Novemeber '11 and the unsorted from Birmingham at the same time the both added to the broken bits from the 'Big Purchase' the year earlier?

I will have fun 'processing' it over Christmas, and getting a spare 35lt tub out of the exercise!

Even as I'm sorting/re-acquainting, I'm also buying the odd bit, four mixed figures on Monday of this week (snow-boarding Polar-bears! Board game?) and this nice card model of a windmill on Tuesday - both purchases from Charity shops.

Credited to a local firm, down the road in Hurst, near Reading; English Village Designs, and looking to be about HO-OO compatible - confirmed as they have an active website here;

www.englishvillagedesigns.co.uk

With the above model made-up, on the landing page! Very much in the home-spun style of Fiddler's Green and with [these] two sheets for .50p; looking to make a nice model, you can't complain!

O is for Odds and Sods

There are always a few things in the queue, which aren't really in the queue as they can only be used singly or wait forever for something to help them contribute to a larger post; these are two of they - as it is said in Bristol!

We start with a Gnome from Peter Evans, who - some of you may know - has just put his out to summer pasture; he kindly sent a duplicate my way!

Branded to Tobar so probably also a Hawkins Bazaar item at some point, he's a reasonable 54mm and manufactured from a dense polymer which could be anything, but probably isn't polystyrene.

Posed with a 60mm coloured polyethylene Manurba for Heinerle 'Wundertüten' (Studio Heinerle Spiel- und Süßwaren GmbH!) copy of the originally white PVC Fontanini dwarf, a common, blow-moulded Hong Kong garden ornament/cake decoration and the two recently acquired Irish factory Wade Leprechauns to give you a sense of his size - he's definitely eaten all the pies!

Now, terrible to report, but Peter needs to keep a close eye on his Gnome Ghomes as there is such a very, actual, not-so-jolly 'thing' as gnome rustling, and it doesn't involve a bloke with leaves on his head, but rather; leaving gnomes!

The Daily Torygraph reported on the 8th May that a lady in Angus had had all her gnomes removed over several days between the 23rd and 30th April - batch-snatching!

In total 37 gnomes have gone walkabout, described by Police Scotland's Arbroath office as "small" and the "usual garden type", the elderly lady had collected them over 30 years and is genuinely bereft, the theft - believed to be a prank - is being treated as a 'not funny crime'.

Meanwhile these were sitting in Picasa waiting in vain for something similar to make a 'T is for...' post . . . although they could have been tacked-on to yesterday's Taffy post? Doh!

Sent in by Gog/Juan Angel, he's hoping someone can give him a brand name, brand-mark or set title, they presumably came with an toy ambulance or emergency-set of some kind and are quite modern, but rather nice sculpts, and it's always nicer when the two bearers are posed separately, rather than a duplicate pair.

S is for Sterwinwatch - Sir Talkedaboutalot

A brief one, it's getting boring now, at least fish in a barrel move a bit!

TJF said he felt others were wrong! Well, Jabber; I feel I know you're wrong!

Erwin thought it was Ivanhoe! Indeed - translating his usual strangled English he seem to be suggesting it was 'always sold' as Ivanhoe?

It actually depicts the actor and thespian; William Russel, playing . . . you've guessed it - Sir Lancelot, in err . . . the 1950's TV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot! Complete with the collar, gloves and a coat of arms that veered from the norm accepted of Lancelot, being of argent, three bendlets gules (three diagonal stripes of red on a silver [white] field), but which is reproduced quite clearly on the figure! What a couple of jokers, they really are too funny.

Incidentally one of the first British TV series filmed on colour stock even though we still didn't have colour TV - that's a [not very] rare fact, by the way!

Meanwhile the idiot monkey waxed ill-lyrical on Afrika Korps only for the artist to explain it was a hand-made one-off, which - it then transpired - had appeared on TJF's Stuff once before - it is painfully like watching Cheech and Chong trying to write War and Peace! And the bits I've greyed-out are amusing . . . 'That's a rare fact I got from someone-else's book, by the way' he's funnier that a clown in a suit of custard!

I'm pretty sure Hasbro's Indiana Jones Titantium Series are micro-machines to boot, he has to have an answer, he has to pontificate for several paragraphs, he need 'data' because he doesn't know anything, so he Googles, gets it wrong and publishes as fact, making it up as he goes along- again!

And a footballer! Fancy-that, you don't see many examples of footballers on Toy Soldier Blogs these days . . . oh! Doh! Hahahaha! Sat in my dust by the side of the road; the pair of them, should I just send them a list of my forthcoming posts - give'em a head-start!

I guess I'm setting their agenda whether I like it or not . . . it is too funny! And please discount the aluminium mould stuff, that was more bullshit than you can squeeze into a cider-press - although the other members of the PSTSM were supping heartily at the run-off!

T is for Ten Tin-clad Toy Troops

A pyramid of medieval mayhem!

 

And an exercise in clearing stuff from Picasa!

S is for Spacemen...German Gift Giveaways

I'm not sure a name has ever been attributed to these as maker, but Manurba would always be in the frame for this sort of stuff, so I'll put it in the tag-list. They were give-aways with the German equivalent of lucky-bags I believe (and other things?) and the metallic greeny-steel one (top right) may have been a paratrooper. He's also a copy, with helmet clips which have helped him keep his helmet on; Major Tom!

29th October 2018 - Much better explanation here