B is for Bunk House

I mentioned in the first part of the Wild West plunder from last month's Plastic Warrior show plunder posts, that I'd got a post in Picasa's 'long queue' on the subject of the orange log-cabins. In fact, it was down in 1971 with the rest of the RTM stuff, and as a fortuitous post elsewhere has just covered them in passing, we might as well have them now - it's nice when a plan comes together!

 

 

Three of the boxes I found in the garage, when I was sorting everything back in 2021-'23, and combining (or part combining!) garage and attic with bedroom stuff, and the large number of purchases I was making at the time (a story for another day).

 

With the heavy box being all the Skybirds and similar, while the middle one is just loose Greeks in sets and part sets, conforming to known runner ('sprue') layouts, but the other one is the 'small scale' log-cabin, in orange polyethylene, with about 12 complete and a dozen or so spares to which, two ends are obviously about to be added, in the above image!

 

I've used small-scale in inverted commas as it's only turned-up in sets with larger figures, but is ideal as a bunk house for 20-25mm US cavalry or ACW scenarios, although it can equally be used for a gold-rush trading post, or mine accommodation, even a Midwest, claim-stake shack. Josey Wales, turf roof, porch made out of barrels?

 

And it comes in various shades of orange, from a quite dark mandarin or Chinese Orange (my favourite shade of Windsor & Newton gouache!), through to a bright, almost international 'emergency' orange, with wishy-washy versions.

 

Now, Ed just added a set to his collection with one of the log cabins in it, ascribed to a Basic Line;

 

https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2026/08/basic-line-corp-f002-cowboys-and.html

 

While we saw a similar set contents from Pikit here;

 

https://smallscaleworld-n-o-p.blogspot.com/2023/08/moneyitem-limited-pikit-toys-limited-pt.html

 

Both with the very-poor 'final generation' of the Jean copy figures, also associated with Hong Kong Toy Exporters . . . 

 

1986 catalogue image courtesy of Bill B.

 

. . . where the contents are pretty-much the same; however, accessories differ between them slightly, so each jobber, whole-seller or importer had their own ideas about what constituted a 'Cowboy & Indian' set, or value for money - while remaining profitable, or just having sufficient playability?

 

 

These have been harvested from feebleBay over the years (both in 2021 as it happens!), and now we have the windmill (post on that, in this Blog's future!), and one of the Blue Box water-well clones, along with a copy of the Britains Hong Kong trapper canoe, in the upper set, which is otherwise a generic, there's an unreadable importers sticker (top right) and what appears to be an obliterated branding, from the original (?) artwork - top left.

 

But a fundamental difference is the figures which look to be second-generation Airfix 54mm copies? The first generation tend to the same cream/white as the Airfix origianals and can confuse newbies. And another set, has a common-enough wagon, also found in other sets of the era, the 1980's

 

You can also see (as I didn't expand on the photoshoot of the boxes, with anything as sensible as all the pieces, or an assembly!), that it has six parts, a rear, with two firing slots, a front with two windows and a door, two identical gable-ended short sides, also with two windows, and two identical roof pieces.

 

The four sides interlock, leaving the ragged corner of a log-cabin, while the roof sits on four blobby studs, which can rip off on more played-with examples. There are also similarities with a Wing Wah set we saw a while back, but hatchets have been buried there, so I won't link back, and no log-cabin, anyhoos.

 

 

The smaller, soft plastic version, seems to be based on the 1970's Star Toys 'blockhouse', which forms the corner of the hard polystyrene fort, with two deer-skulls over the gate, itself a copy of an earlier European fort, with four corner towers, possibly also sourced in HK, but I'm not going there, we're doing log cabins today, not forts, or windmills!

 

This, of course explains the firing loopholes in the rear wall, it's the outside of the fort's corner; however, it also highlights a flaw in the Star Toys fort - the Indians can force the two windows on the outer end! It also has a chimney, not reproduced in the smaller clone.

 

There is a third version, which, size wise, is between the Star and the generic, and while is otherwise the same as the smaller one (orange 'ethylene, four stud roof, no slots, interlocking corners), has painted highlights, the windows and door frame being painted blue, or red, I can't remember, but I do have a couple, so we can look them when we have a better look at the components, next time!

 

And returning to my boxful above, I tend to colour-match them, as I make up complete examples, but I've seen them with different shades together, so clearly there was a huge stock of them, possibly with one of the smaller family concerns in the Kowloon slums, with their single tool and a hand-pressed injector, and they were supplied to the end-users, bulk, in mixed shades? 

W is for Wild West Warriors - 2 of 2

I shot these first, of the two post's worth, but they ended-up as the second post for reasons I've already forgotten, half the bagged/carded stuff, and a bit of detritus at the end, but all good stuff!

 

Sorpresa . . . Italian for Sobre, Spanish for surprise! And Natale Luigi (NL) is a new one for the Tag list. I remember ten lira being about half-a-p in 1977, so it's not going to break the bank, not even the piggy-bank, pocket-money being the target of very small 'lucky bags'!

 

Apologies to Peter Burgner, I was chatting to him about this find, which he'd observed at a distance, and I said they were the same figures as the Lucky Clover sets, but they're not. The foot figures are larger, while the mounted are the standard 'Giant' size.

 

Still a useful find. I suspect two sets of mounted are missing from the top of the card, and while you could do without the shop-keepers stickers, they do at least date the thing to the mid/late-1970's, the sort of thing which was sixpence in d-money, and became 5-new-p, briefly, before the oil crisis 'invented' modern inflation! Who remembers when 1st class post was 3p!

 

While we had the Sorpresa/Sobre equivalent in Lucky Bags, at the larger end, here in the UK, these were the equivalent of the smaller ones, cheap polymer stuff, sourced in Hong Kong, or occasionally, especially with tin-plate, Japan.

 

A painted figure, marked Hong Kong, of the same size, against the unmarked bases of the figures in the bags, which came-in the same day. All Britains copies, and these 35mm's were cracker fodder, too.

 

Alkastep; a scruffy card, and a ripped bag, but a sample is better than no sample, and it means we can look at the figures. All marked 'France', on the rear-edge of the deep bases, these are to be found as other premiums I think, or were supplied as such to third parties, without rebranding?

 

Post-Giant wagons, the buggy was branded National and others, the small gun-team a cracker prize, while the larger gun and limber combo' was issued with unmarked copies of Giant's ACW and Napoleonics. The other three are more generic.

 

The Poplar-Quaker Foods-Tudor Rose wild west set, really just looking for colour variations or gap-filers now, they aren't rare, and most mixed lots/donations, or show plunder has a few! They could mostly use a god clean, common with these, that obviously got a lot of play back in the day.

 

Likewise, the Crescent hollow-cast and Bergan/Beton copies, these are two Airfix late type (back right, the Indian has been given black, fabric-tape chaps!), and the rest hard styrenes which may also be Tudor Rose, in the case of the mounted certainly, the foot figures seem to have been carried issued by several unknowns, at some point.

B is for Bearskins, Busbies and Bright, Shiny Helmets!

It's the ceremonials! And the emphasis being very much on the British Guards, but there are others, and among them a couple of really interesting figures, and one diminutive chap who is jostling for best of show!

 

Marx recycling-fodder, better than cannon-fodder, they may still become something useful! But shown for completeness, I used to just show the highlights of donations or show plunder, but these days I've got into the habit of shooting everything, warts an' all! Two Household cavalry, one Mexican and a West Point Cadet, I think, but they've all been in the wars!

 

Likewise, these are all a bit tatty, but I thought the Christmas cracker guard would make a useful officer (absent from the set which is otherwise all musicians), with the simple addition of a pin-sword, after I remove the remains of his colour-pole. The resin home-production attempt (Eyes Right musician?) is an 'only sample', so stays, but who thought gloss-white was a good undercoat?

 

However, front, middle is . . . . 

 

. . . . bloody brilliant! He's obviously a charm-bracelet charm, and 'gold chrome' on base-metal, so a budget piece from Ratner's, F Hinds or H Samuel, but still? He's not the smallest figure in the collection, that record is still held by some of the spacey figures in that little tub from Brian Berke a couple of years ago, but he's the smallest guardsman at about 8mm, or is the one in the Britains' B smaller? Future post, we'll have to check, with our own eyes!

 

And I know I'm writing this with the Polish Hussars and submarine set already blogged, and the Rocco and other treats still to come, but arguably best from show, just because he’s so easy to miss, or to lose, if you have found him, or to forget if you've put him to one side! And he was in the big-bag of HK small-scale stuff from Trevor R.

 

More of the cake-decoration jobbies, I've got so many now, I'm going to have to do something with them, and it may involve making some other instruments from brass-wire, and placing them on a foam-board parade-ground, perhaps with a few road-markings across one corner, if you can picture that!

 

Wot! Metal? At a plastics convention - how very dare they???? I don't know if there's a word for these, other than penny-toys, which several probably were? They are too thick to be semi-flat (or demi-ronde), yet not so fully-round as to not have some sort of flatness, in the title stakes? Possibly Crescent on the far right, otherwise unknown? And they are all solids, possibly some of them are actually a die-cast alloy too?

 

I have a feeling I got one or two of these a couple of PW shows ago, but someone beat me to the majority of the poses, so nice to pick-up a few more. Obviously Hong Kong production, and probably after the Charbens set (actually, they're the Crescent/Kellogg's poses, aren't they, just with angled bases like the Charbens! Have we had this conversation before?), but size-reduced, to a 45/50mm.

 

Germany's finest . . . probably, certainly in the style of other Erzgebirge, but with those trousers, aimed at the Danish tourist market rather than ours? Also, could be a [part] set of mini-skittles, although more likely to be playability makeweights, with a smaller wooden fort?

 

More metal! Jonh Hill & Co's coronation figures, they keep coming in, often with a few Skybirds. And I'll eventually have enough for the whole parade, without having to shell out a small fortune for a boxed set at Wallis & Wallis, or somewhere similar!

 

Four Johnny-foreigners and a Brit' bloke! Starlux marine/sailor is grist to the mill, I have a decent sample of the 25mm's, and a few of these 54mm's, so it's box-ticking the sample, if you know what I mean?

 

The Guardsman, is, I believe, one of the still unknown question-marks in British figure collecting, and while I have one or two, this is the first one with grey bearskin and trousers? Only a thought, but could they be Rocco? They turn-up as rarely as the Karki Infantry, or little mounted figures, are the same size as the combat chaps, and are often as brittle, as most other Rocco?

 

The next figure (centre) is probably Polish, depicting a Russian? But he's about four times lighter than he should be, at that size, if moulded from Nylon-66, the preferred material of choice in that part of the former Soviet Bloc?

 

I think he's not the first I've found, the other is something completely different, (medieval or Wild West), so it would seem at least one of the Polish makers found a way to foam their plastic into something lightweight, yet solid . . . he weighs like he's Papier Mâché.

 

Two French Colonial types to finish, I could spend an hour or two looking them up, but there's a lot of this stuff, building-up, so I'll do proper posts another day! Thanks again to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin.

S is for Ships at Sea, and Sky Surfers

The other half of the vehicular element of this year's Plastic Warrior plunder; only a few, it is - after all - a figure show, but I took loads of photographs of one of them, because it was such a cool find!

 

 

 

 

TN Thomas Toys boxed jem: Submarine Base with Rocket Battery! I was very pleased to find this, I think it was my first purchase of the day, along with the smaller bag of Hong Kong smallies, and while I soon worked out it's missing a launcher, a missile and all the torpedoes, they are things which I will be able to replace, possibly from 'the pile'?

 

I've found examples online, and I think I recognise the torpedoes from the ammo-stash, of interest is that the launchers and rockets are of finer, and sharper finish, than all the others we've looked at, notably here

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/05/s-is-for-spring-powered.html 

 

But we have looked at one or two others which came in, and I think one might be from this set, or just from Thomas? But it would suggest that the Thomas one is the granddaddy of all those from Jean, Kellogg's, Unimel and - obviously - the Hong Kong ones.

 

The missile will be the hardest thing to source, because it looks like they were paired white, charcoal and mid-grey (all marbled), so I'll not be happy if I don't find a dark one, but the tool ran, so they must be out there somewhere!

 

This came in one of the mixed bags, and I thought it might be from one of the Hong Kong bath-toy sets, but I suspect it's just a badly painted model-kit, possibly from one of the early Japanese makers, someone did two destroyers in a box around 1:1200 if I recall a corner of the hobby I didn't pay much attention to!

 

These are interesting, a lot of kit-figures came in at the show, for the 'combat' post, and they were mostly sub-scale, but none seem to match with these plastic-colour wise, so they remain a mystery, although they could be from a river-craft kit? If anyone can ID them, than would be cool, they are around 1:48th.

 

A few small-to-micro 'planes, the little metal one keeps turning up, and is probably a cracker prize, but might have been from a board-game, but possibly one with multiple aircraft? I think the small red one is from one of those aircraft-carrier toys with a flick-catapult, I think?

 

The transparent, but damaged plane is early, probably taken from those Lido/Pyro sets, but even it this state, is a 'place holder', while the delta-type (Dart II?), is the earlier, better version of one you can still find occasionally, I think I got one in that short-lived cake-decoration store in Fleet about ten years ago, and they are in the cheaper crackers, which are slowly disappearing now.

 

Which leaves the red, spacey lump, which is totally unknown to me, and bares no clues as to its origin, accessory from a larger play-set? Blind-bag thing? I haven't a clue! But there's plenty of that kind of thing in the collection!

 

Finally, we have two Hong Kong copies, a Gloster Javlin and Sea Vixen I think, and I suspect they were taken from early British plastic toys (the ones in the red, white and blue boxes, were they Mettoy?), a slight dink on the Javlin's tail-plane will be mendable with that two-part epoxy 'metal' you can get from Halfords (auto-parts place for our foreign readers), or even a scrap from the spares box, plenty of wing, tail and fin parts in there!

 

thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans or Trevor Rudkin, for everything here, except the Thomas set! 

T is for Tyo Typical Types

Well? A sort of theme was the space-sets I managed to pick-up over the weekend, and the matching loose figures, from two genres we've covered here recently, so a quick post on them, and the bonus was getting two-more brands associated with them both.

 

Haglon taking the Lik Be clones, and Trafalgar the MPC copies, Trafalgar Toys (better known for their tie-ins with LJN, Mego and the Hong Kong subsidiary Lion Rock) would have been a rival to WHC, Grossman and the like, and, indeed, this card may be in the archive as LJN?

 

But Haglon (Hagemayer) were more of a shipping operation, as far as I understand it, like with container ships, port space and warehouses in Holland, shipping all over Europe, and apparently adding their moniker to some of the stuff they shipped-in, that would have extended far beyond toys, which were probably a minor concern among all the household and garden goods, haberdashery, pet supplies and the like? And I'm sure I've seen this card as a generic. We also saw them as Woolbro a while back;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/07/lb-is-for-lanky-bods.html 

 

As supplied by Haglon! The 50mm knock-offs of LB's finaest, apparently limited to four poses (did they pantograph one of the Clifford sets?!) are not hard to find, although it took me a while to garner a decent sample, I'm now going for one of each colour! These came from four sources over the weekend.

 

MPC originals, in two slightly different shades of red, we looked at their oeuvre here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/04/mpc-is-for-many-plastic-cosmonauts.html

 

and these are grist to the mill, but again, there comes a point when you are just looking for individual 'better' figures, or a specific pose-colour combination, and these are clean!

 

Seen in the link in an unreadable, but probably generic set (next to the Payton bag), the Trafalgar ones are the better versions, very close to the MPC, solidly formed and with thicker bases than the other three or so variants.

 

While these are the Henbrandt/Hing Fat third-generation (like Payton's, but worse) sub-piracies, and again, of limited use, but they'll all be sorted into the master collection, before any are passed on, probably to charity, but that's all a few years away, still.

 

Tim-Mee, so keen to cash-in on Star Wars (AND Battlestar Galactica, everyone forgets that was a year later), grabbed one of the MPC sculpts, with the barest of modification, and there was one in the plunder, last weekend, which was lucky for the completeness of this post!

 

Which gives us, from the left:

• Haglon-Hagemayer/Woolbro (and others?)
• Tim-Mee
• MPC
• Trafalgar Toys (et al)
• Hing Fat/Henbrandt (et al)

Making more and more sense, every time we visit them, and thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for their input on the day or over the weekend.

F is for Further Follow-up - Micro Vessels

I'd forgotten I'd picked the bits up from the storage unit, to do a comparison, so here's a bit more on the small or 'micro' vessels we looked at a couple of days ago, and some more bits from the Internet downloads folder on naval stuff.

 

Both this and the previous should be viewed in the context of the original post on the very small vessels, which was part of a series of seven articles;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/s-is-for-ships-and-other-vessels-part-7.html

 

There were also some comparisons in the MPC series a few years later; 

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2015/05/mpc-is-for-mini-ships-part-two.html

 

Which was a two-parter, both series have become dated by the scope of the collection now, and one day I intend to re-do all seven of the first lot, in the same order, but as longer, fuller articles, in the meantime a few more points arising . . .

 

. . . including a colour fan of the Quaker samples which are here at the moment, I know the original sample with all ten mouldings, and other accrued duplicates is elsewhere, so a better version of this shot is in the Blog's future, and looking at these, I think there's some merit to my hypothesis re. Tom Smith?

 

Furthermore, I'd suggest that whoever made these ships, made the Gladiators, both are relatively common in small quantities (down to single samples in mixed 'junk' lots), more common than other cereal premiums, and while there are none here, the metallic green in the original post, is matched perfectly in the Gladiators, originally, also Quaker.

 

Nine of ten, by size, with a hole for the missing one!

 

The two Sanella superstructures I have here, there are at least three, and they have a common hull, sometimes found loose, sometimes found glued together, like that water-film novelty I got from Steve Vickers recently. However, I'd forgotten . . .

 

. . . the larger., better finished liner, also marked Sanella, which is almost certainly a later model? The Manurba seem to have three hull types, not the two mentioned the other day - my bad! Pointed, rounded and flat sterns, and maybe only three matching superstructures? Although, like the Sanella - lots of colours, albeit brighter/primary, as opposed to Sanella's more muted or pastel hues.

 

Recently, with the help of Chris Smith (pink, middle), and - I think - another purchase (red, front), I've picked-up three vessels with WWI/turn-of-the-19th-Century forward sloping prows (there was a silver warship, from Adrian Little, still in a separate bag!), and it turned-out I'd found them online some time ago (2020);

 

Apparently sold in waxed-paper bags of twelve vessels, there are possibly only four sculpts/mouldings; twin-barrelled warship, single-barrelled warship, merchantman/tanker and liner? But with three marking variations (prow - my red one, stern - this set, and none - silver warship), there really aught to be more in the collection than there are?

 

The fate of all this Hong Kong bottom-end/pocket-money stuff is that it was always unappreciated and mostly went to landfill decades ago. So, if you have any going spare, bring them to the Plastic Warrior show, this Saturday, and I'll give you real Earth money for them!!

 

Finally, found in 2021, and as an addendum to that part-7 link above, another game which contains a micro-navy, to add to the games in that post, is the Ariel Games one, Manoeuvre, also sold as Strategy, from 1973;

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8905/strategy-the-navy-game-for-all-the-family

 

Which is quite bloodthirsty, if you contemplate the number of troops you can have on a troopship! I'm sure there are more games with these micro vessels, and - of course - we've ID'd the slightly larger Silvercorn stuff, since those early posts.