I is for Irreverence!

Time for another collection of Internet memes I've sidled away for such a rainy day, and it was a very rainy day today! I nearly published than last night, but gave up and went and did something else, somewhere else (photographed toys), however I found the last one, just now on Faceplant, and it spurred me to action!

 

Can't shoot, won't shoot!

 

The revenge of Tim Mee was brutal!

 

There are several R2D2 one's like this kicking about, but Bungle is priceless!

 

Noooooooooo!

 

I love his grin!

 

One of my oldest friends is taking parcel after parcel of HO-OO stuff in, for his brother, so the brother's wife (no names, no pack-drill!) doesn't cotton-on to how bad it's got, they are both in their 60's, so it's no great crime, but I immediately thought of them when I saw this!

 

Ooops!

 

Hot off today's internet, I thought the following comment, from a Gary Karst deserved to be wider-shared;

 

"It's commemorating the courageous efforts of the U.S. Army Corp of Landscapers in this underwhelming battle. Semper Ficus."

D is for Dublo

Which was a play on Double-O, itself confusing as it's actually half-O, and that's O and OO, not 0 or 00, strictly being the gauge between the rails on the modelled track. And a title we may have had before?!

Very-much box-ticking Jon's samples of the Hornby lead figures, and they are lead, quite heavy and quite soft, we've seen them before here, and there are comparison shots from Jon coming in the final round-up.

 

These are the pre-war versions, if I recall correctly, available from only 1939, being lost to wartime privations, but as some of the only figures commercially available (Hamblings had carried some), and small enough to be produced in some numbers before rationing came-in, they were bought in quantity, and have survived in sufficient numbers to be findable.

 

The post-war figures were simplified both in paint style and moulding, with the points-guy/shunter getting an integrally-moulded pole, instead of the pre-war wire one, and all painting was simplified. The Locomotive driver became an 'engineer' in bluer overalls, compared to his pre-war navy suit, and their buttons all disappeared!

 

Older above and newer below, the post-war ladies were definitely more colourful, but somebody needs to have a word with Bertie Worcester on his sartorial choices in golfing attire, the Luftwaffe would have spotted that orange jump-suit from 10,000 feet!

 

Many thanks again to Jon, for sending these, I can't remember what I posted, way back when, but I know my pre-war sample is almost non-existent, although it has been added to, I think I have the grey lady with her red-fur (velvet?) trim, and the shunter now, with a loose wire!

News, Views Etc . . . Toy Memes

A few toy or collecting memes or toy-related cartoons, which have crossed my path recently, one way or another;

Preiser conversions?

Recent!

Spoiler - they're not, there's several hundred-million years between oil being laid-down and the first dinosaurs! If oil was laid-down as the theory dictates, and it's only a theory!

 

Love this one!

H is for How They Come In - London, March, Everything Else

A bit of a mixed bag to finish off, and we'll see which order they load themselves in! I'm not imagining it am I? Computing is getting harder not easier, it might be easy for 'smart phone' owners, but for people who actually work on/with PC's or laptops it's becoming increasingly glitchy and fragmented, the Internet is becoming less a tool for the advancement of civilisation, and rather an entertainment vessel for people glued to their idiot-phones!

Well, we're back to the yesterday system and they loaded in the order they should have, bargain! I know I did need a Vitacup reindeer with both antlers intact, and can't remember if I've already rectified the omission, so I may have two or three now, but this was going cheap.

 

Three little rack-toy old-fashioned cars, I think they may be crude copies of the Charben's 'Old Crocks', but I have to check, the orange one is the same moulding as the blue one, but seen from the rear.

 

Already joined by the two Chris Smith sent, this is a different-coloured plastic and mane/tail paint, so both lots only increasing the whole sample. Exin Castillos 40mm medieval figure; Prince on horse.

 

Premium flat dinosea-saurs! I mended the broken Plesiosaur I picked up a while ago, now I have an undamaged one - often the way! While the Ichthyosaur looks suitably mean and vicious!

Bog-standard rack-toy accessory, but seems to have factory paint, so I thoght I'd hang on to it and see if I can find it's set over time, Hing Fat had a copy, fantasy set, at one point, with a  'Halloween' tree that had a splash of paint, so it did happen occasionally!

 

We looked at these Lone Star African clones with a lot of help from Chris a while back, but worth getting more when you see them cheap, as there may be something new in them/their marks (I don't think so), and because one day you may have a plan to paint some up!

 

Lido or copy on the left, probably Tudor Rose on the right, nothing exciting, and we've looked at both under their tags in the past, including various copies of the Lido and a Tudor Rose bagged set. I've mentioned before that the Lido are among my favourites.

 

Hornby and Mastermodels, the Hornby five showing signs of lead-rot (a sandy whiteness to the exposed surfaces), while the Wardie stuff is safer, being die-cast alloy, but they can crack-up too, with their own 'disease'! A dip-wash with white vinegar and a new gloss paint-job, all over, might save the lead?

 

Cereal Premium!

Someone gave me these, I think, and I didn't look to check the base mark to see if they were Archie McFee/Accoutremants or BuM Slot? But the re-issues of the old Giant Mongols, which give us hope the spaceship, space tank and Viking longship mould-tool's are still out there somewhere?

H is for How They Come In - London Show December 2022 - Mercator Trading

I try to always credit people where they've helped the Blog, given me stuff, or let me have stuff for peanuts, but equally, if I pay for something it's mine to do what I want with, without crediting anyone, well, it would be ridiculous to try and credit everyone you've ever bought from, even if you wanted to!

Equally, once the stuff has been broken down and sorted into the collection it gets harder to re-credit, you can't keep track of everything . . . you'll understand if I say I give a lot of thought to the subject, I wouldn't say I lose sleep over it, but I do always want to do the right thing! One wants to credit fairly, not leave anyone out, but not be over-patronising . . . it's a hard balance sometimes!

Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, often lets me have little bits and/or saves me a tub of the same, equally he lets me have things well-under their market value, but I will also pay full-whack for bits or ask him to get something for me, the last London show involved all kinds, but I did seem to come away from the show with a lot of stuff from the one table/seller/mate, so here's a post on all of it!

I actually ordered this in advance of the show, having watched it not-sell to several interested buyers at a previous show, and I wouldn't dream of telling you what I paid for it, but it was considerably less than the market rate, due to the damage to the collar and shoulder, but it's my first 'Porcelain Head' composition figure (and probably my last!), and if you're going to tick that box, you might as well tick it with an example of the head-honcho!

As you can see, he also has a moving arm, but it's giving the full, straight-armed Sieg Heil, not his commoner, strangely bent-wrist, flicky version which always looked like he couldn't really be arsed! And the podium came home with me too!

A interesting trio here, on the left a French Napoleonic figure which might be CL (Charles Lannoy), RF (Rene Fisher) or JSF? All the dongles (and the external hard drive I put them on so they'd all be in one place) with that info' are at the flat, and I'm not!

In the middle is my first Arjoplast from Belgium, the [ceremonial?] uniform escapes me (and my pitiful attempts on Google) but might be some administrator's uniform from the Belgian Congo/colonial era?

While the chap on the right is also a bit of a mystery; I'm pretty sure I've seen (may even have -  I've rather neglected the nappies here at Small Scale World!) a couple of Napoleonic French Grenadiers with the same base, but this chap seems to be another Belgian, except Google says paler-blue top and darker trousers, while I can't find the braid at all? The bearskin however is quite a likeness with the white drop/plume and star-plate, although some of the guards on Google have a side plume in red.

The rifle is toy-like and a separate piece glued into the arm.

While these might be new to hobby, are definitely new to Blog and could be New to Internet! Consequently I can't give you much of any use, but there's plenty to say! Not least that while two of them have damaged rifles, it is of no matter; when dealing with such unusual figures better to have a broken one than none at all!

The first one seems to be a copy of an old Elastolin or Lineol figure, and in that material could be mistaken for a poured resin or even 3D print, but I suspect a test shot, due to the remains of a runner's gate-mark, and a slightly resinous hard-plastic which is sort of semi-opaque. Could it also be Argentine? They did copy some composition in plastic.

The second feels like Portuguese to me, semi-flat or demi-rond, and silver styrene are both traits of their production as seen with Plástico Osul, and the Portuguese used the British MkI/II-'Brodie' helmet for the duration of WWII (and beyond I believe), so that's the clues for this one?

While the third has a different base to the silver one and a more rounded countenance, but may be from the same source, depicting a  neighbouring Spanish soldier of the same or similar 1930-60's era, but could be something else entirely, another South American maker, they liked their 'Jerry helmets' over there!

I think this might be the Apollo moon lander from the Hing Fat sets, we've looked at some previously here, but my sample has the rover and other stuff. Quite well done as it happens with a sticker detailing the stay-behind section's flat top and various plug-in retro'/maneuver jets and radar dishes.

While this . . . is not on Alphadrome as far as I can find, no one on Friends of Plastic Warrior could help, no one on Brian Heiler's facebook group knew anything, so again, possibly new to hobby, Blog and Internet!

Isn't it lovely! The arms move, but the legs are factory-glued, as two separate, pose-specific, left/right pieces, with angled feet to keep it standing up. The head is also glued and the paint seems to be original.

The closest I could get was the 'Dime Store' maker, the Ball Manufacturing Co. who had similar products (Captain Radar) - or the French Rex, who's spacemen could be considered close (they are also quite close to the British Christmas cracker prize spacemen), but both are pure conjecture.

I also tried - and failed - to nail it to a pulp-movie robot, but that's not to say my search was that exhaustive, and there were one or two similar beasts, so it may be based on a half-forgotten B-movie one?

Not new to hobby, not new to Internet! Boo! Looks like it's a Portuguese copy of a Spanish robot by Sel-Mac, but that would tie it in with my suspicions of Portugal for a couple of the other figures in that lot?

https://www.geocities.ws/robot_ole/selmac.html

and it WAS on Alphadrome, just not in the Robot section!

http://alphadrome.net/forums/topic/15347-sel-mac-robot-from-barcelona/

and

http://alphadrome.net/forums/topic/21254-vigia-del-espacio-robot-sel-mac-spain/

Still, it's all fun! And I may have the pistol, but I may be getting confused with either the MPC one (boxier, soft polyethylene) or the US gum-ball one - altogether cruder? Both of which I do have somewhere!

Some nice pieces here as well! Polish large scale and 54mm Napoleonics, the way things are going on the Polish blogs, and among the contributors to the FoPW Faceplant group, I'm hesitant to say PZG for either of these!

The base on the right-had figure seems not quite right for PZG, while I think someone gave a alternate maker's name for a different pair of the left-hand one the other day (but I can't find the post now, trouble with Faceplant is that stuff soon drops off the page with no tags!), although PZG did have a larger sized Napoleonic line, theirs had slightly larger bases?

The new-to-collection 'Toy Town' sentry box is all-wood and rather charming, the chick is composition or chalkwear while the stool is one of the most copied pieces out there; reappearing in all sorts of guises, from Marx 'Kins' window boxes, through those fairy-tail sets, gum-ball capsules, dolls house rack toys and charms, a Hong Kong- made bear's picnic, all sorts; this seems an early phenolic or 'heavy' styrene one - if you know what I mean!

The chap with the tyre is another Cararra slot-racing set figure, my fourth in a few months, after having none for years!

Two more of the Royal Armoury (Real Armería de Madrid) models from Spain, I love these, I don't know how many were issued, and I guess they sold well (as tourist souvenirs) as you often see them, but getting them in good condition is the tricky part - these both appear OK.

They seem to have changed the base/plinth design at some point, which may give completists at least two sets to find? Factory constructed plastic-kits, my guess is ten or more with three or four mounted and the rest on foot, they all seem to be from the main hall, which is the one that comes-up when you Google the Spanish Royal Armoury Museum.

Three interesting animals on the left; a flocked giraffe in reasonable condition, probably British but who did a giraffe with integrated base? The Western horse is heavy rubber, while the cart-horse has such good paint it might be repainted, but more info sought on all of them?

To the right, a couple of Reisler's; a sailor and an African soldier, and yes that's factory paint, I think they were around the time of all the Congolese trouble (??? It's still going-on, 70-years later!) and represent UN Peacekeepers from somewhere? A Betterware cowboy flat, MPC ring-hand cowboy with accessories and a lady wagon-rider from . . . Starlux? Reisler? . . . Polystyrene anyway!

This is a really nice crossover set from the all composition set we've seen here before with Mosquito fighters (now P-38 Lightings) and the later all lead sets with a smaller metal pilot, so very pleased to add it to the pile. Timpo planes and Zang for Timpo 20mm pilots, with the box missing but the card intact.

A handful of Hornby/Dinky Dublo figures (left-hand five) and Wardie/Mastermodels workmen (right-hand trio), with a driver from early Matchbox or Moko-Lesney? Lead for the Hornby's; die-cast alloy for the other four.

A Kellogg's 'Jig-Toy' flat-bed truck and Quaker cereal-premium racing-car join a lead motorcycle in the motor-pool, and - as is becoming a habit - I raided Adrian's cheapie-trays at the end of the show, the most interesting of which is probably the one at the front, who is a die-cast Mazac/Zamak alloy, he's semi-flat and around 28mm.

There's some good stuff above, and Adrian saved/gave some of it to me, and let me have some cheap, so many thanks to him, Mercator Trading always have top-end stuff, either on their website or on evilBay, and . . . guess what - the Plastic Warrior show is only four months away now!

F is for Follow-up - Khaki Runnings!

I managed to grab the Battle Space, at the weekend after all, so managed a quick shoot of the closest Model Power  'twins' and took one of the military locomotive pool while I was at it!

Mobile missiles; both utilising their maker's flat-car, both spring-loaded and both having the large elevation tap-wheels, but otherwise quite different, the Model Power is err . . . underpowered, but as it's a polystyrene model, it would break quickly under the power of the Tri-Ang launcher which packs a serious, pre-H&S punch!

To which end, the Triang-Hornby missile is a rubber-tipped affair in softer polyethylene to take the strain, it also looks more like a Tallboy or Grand Slam (aerial bombs) than the Model Power's Honest John lines. "It'll 'av someone's eye out"!

Tank transporters; the earlier British one being a bogie well-wagon (that is a lower cargo 'well' between the raised twin-bogie (truck)-mountings) which reduces the height of the center of gravity, while Model Power utilise a clip-on set of chocks with a standard flat-car.

In fact, in the West, tanks are chained down with between four and eight chains which are screw-tightened, you only have to watch a few 'funny' tank-fail videos to understand the current Russian failings in Ukraine; while we winch-on and tie down, they rev-up and mount like dogs on heat and drive off, losing the thing at the next roundabout if it didn't fall-off on loading, or crush its own lorry!

Exploding cars; mechanisms were actually quite different (I didn't have time or space for more detailed shots this time, and while both have the look of North American 'reefer' wagons, Model Power go with a 50ft one, we Brits matched our road wagon limit with a  40-footer! Rememeber also HO is also scaled smaller (1:86/90) than OO (1:76/72), so the British model looks a bit 'chunkier'!

I have an old 1970's Walther's or two, and among the pages and pages of transfers for home-builders, mostly for reefers or passenger stock, are quite a few military ones, so you could with the two Q-Cars, this pair and a few kits, build a long, but visually rather boring (if more realistic) logistics train, but you'd need to glue these two shut first!

The loco's; we've seen the two main brands before, but of interest is the one down the front left, which is a clockwork 'cheapie' from Playcraft via Jouef of France. not specifically military, it happens to be the right colour, and adds variety to my fleet!

We loved our 'starter set' clockwork's when we were kids, and used to run them on a figure-eight inside our electrified double-oval, if we were quick we could get four trains moving at once without a crash . . . we weren't always lucky - figure-8's have a crossroad!

It's one of those quirks of toy history that at one point you had OO-guage train sets/lines from/branded-to Tri-Ang, Rovex and Mettoy Playcraft . . . all ultimately Lines Brothers! I should also mention the track, which happens to still be around despite having long lost its usefulness.

It's a sort of resinated or 'Bakelite' treated card (like the ties in old plugs which hold the cable tight), obviously for power-insulation, with the shiny (non-ferrous) rail fasteners (chairs or tie-plates) riveted through the card every forth sleeper (tie), I did have a brand name for it, well . . . it's somewhere in the archive, Hammant & Morgan maybe (our transformer was theirs), Hamblings, or early Hannants? One of the mail-order catalogues in the archive has/lists something which fits the description anyway!

It was the home-fitted rail on our train-set which was bought 2nd hand by Mum at Persons Auctions here in Fleet (long-gone, along with County Tractors and First Inertia), and somehow she managed to hide it (about 6ft x 8ft) from us until Christmas morning, I'm hoping, when I lift the boards in the loft, in the next few weeks, that I may find it's still there with its household gloss 'landscaping', but it may have gone years ago? It was old, crumbly, early (1960's) chipboard.

TM is for Tactical Missile, Technical Manual, Threat Manager, Trade Mark, Trench Mortar . . .

. . . or Toy Major! In this case it's also for Ackerman, Hornby Hobbies and Dollar Tree, among others, I'm sure!

Bit of a toe-treading on this one, as EY posted these the other day (Mini Carry Case Playsets), but in my defence I had already photographed the six (or five-and-a-half; one's been opened) sealed sets as I sorted them out to storage, but was waiting for the lose stuff to turn-up and a couple of Hornby AFV's I knew I had in the TBS pile to tell the whole story.

Agency on these was the aforementioned Toy Major, with further branding to end user Ackerman here in the UK, in the US the packaging remained generic but the sets were an exclusively Dollar Tree thing? Modern combat, medieval-fantasy and a prehistoric mash-up - Homo's and Dino's together - were the three choices.

The US sets also have limited quantities per case in a little bag, the UK sets (retailing at two-quid in the late-nineties/early-noughties) got a larger sample in separate blister with more play value, which still fit easily-enough in the case; the crinkly-bag was the logistical constraint with the US issues!

Artwork is shared, but photoshopped about a bit to fit the different packaging options, so it was all a question of which format you ordered back in Hong Kong from the TM agents!

Some of the lose stuff, they don't seem too uncommon here, with the odd few in several of the donations from Chris, Peter and Trevor over the years, while I suspect the palm-trees (included in every set) also got a cake-decorating/crafting issue, possibly still extant on Alibaba or something similar, in bulk?

They are quite small, but fill out a war game's scenic jungle well enough and can make good thick secondary jungle in the larger scales. I donn't know why I wrote Toy Masters on the tree-tub, they are a retail toy-chain here in the UK, so I might have bought some of them there?

You can see the constraint placed on content-count by the little bag very well here, with only six monsters ('Dragons') and six figures, each split equally between two colours, you aren't going to get everything in a set, with the British issue that is less of a lottery, although you may still drop one or two poses in one or the other colour-way?

The 'cave men' are copies of late Tim Mee/Processed Plastic's larger figures, although the stone-axe man has been converted to a dagger-man!, the prehistoric hominids are also the exception proving the rule of the others in having only one colour iteration.

The knights are copied from the Supreme 2nd (of three) types, as seen here at Small Scale World before, from several brands and in several sizes, and - this time - you get six poses in silver or black. They fight each other and/or a bunch of whacky creatures which are barely dragons, and not that monstrous, indeed; the unicorn is more of a unicornet and a bit of a sweetie!

Dinosaurs have a five count; relatively crude Dimetrodon, Diplodocus, Stegasaurus, T-Rex'y meat-eater and Triceratops, although its bi-cera's are so small it almost qualifies as a proto-cera'! You can see that despite a tub-full, I've yet to get a loose 'Dipy' in yellow, so all set-contents are clearly random.

As you may have noticed the animals come in/as two paired colourways - green-yellow (which appears commoner) and a mauve'ish purple-orange combo'.

Less than an hour later - there is a fourth caveman pose with club, I thought he was an artwork/pre-publicity thing, but there is one in my sealed set, you can just make out his back! So EY's right and I just don't have  a lose one.

The combat infantry are rather nice, six poses in tan or olive-drab fatigues, reminiscent of similar figures from Revell, Silvercorn/LP or Galoob's 'Micro machines', and original sculpts of some quality. Also reminiscent of Tim Mee/PP's GI's in colour offering, but unsurprising as they - Toy Major - are responsible for a set of Tim Mee knock-offs in the 54mm range.

They are clearly in that time period between the current era and the back-end of the Cold War (sort of 1971-91'ish), vague 'fritz' helmets on a couple can be painted-out, so they will still go well in a Vietnam setting.

None of the sets are currently listed on Toy Major's site, but they are still carrying the larger GI's and one of the many 50mm iterations of Supreme's knights.

The combat figures were also issued in a theHornby train set 'Battle Zone' back in the noughties, and while I thought the cave-men might have been in its sister set; the Jurrassic Park knock-off 'Dino Safari', they weren't . . . the set got a handful of PVC Chinasaurs, but is linked through the AFV's.

Probably a Hornby Hobbies thing, rather than Toy Major, so a tenuous link, but it ties all the loose-ends together, we have seen them before here I think, more than once, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometime.

An M1 Abrams tank lookie-likey with running-gear and hull shape closer to the variable geometry of the predeceased MBT70 program's prototypes (they could drop their noses to enhance the 'hull-down' low-profile aspect) and a rather nice Hummer, which can be found in both sand and drab to match the troops. The Hummer has a removable tilt with very delicate locating-studs which tend to be found snapped-off.

And that heading . . . it also means or has meant in the past - Tape Mark, Target Material, Tasking Memorandum, Task Memory, TeaM (as Tm. or tm), Team Materials, Team Member, Technical Maintenance, Technical Management, TeleMetering, TeleMetry, Temperature Meter, Temperature Monitor, Terrain Masking, Test Manager, "Thanks Man" (or "Mate"), Theater Missile, ['Landsat'] Thematic Mapper, Tone Modulation, [to receive] TeleMetry, TradeMark, Training Manual, Transmission Matrix, Transverse Magnetic [field], 'TROPO' Modem, Type Model, and Too Many [bloody abbreviations!].