L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Dr. Barnado's Collecting House

One of the odder things to have happened at a show, where coincidence often occurs, or things you are only half looking for, happen to turn up was, my purchase of this little piece of social history, manufactured in papier-mâché, it's actually survived remarkably well. Scaled to a vague 25/30mm and sitting well'ish with Airfix'x old Lineside houses - the Dr. Barnardo's collection-box!

Sadly a victim of the development (under Thatcher and the post-thatcher years) of a propensity to steal these, or similar collection vessels from counter tops, by swiping. You won't find any survivors still in use now, but when I was a kid, these were pretty ubiquitous, often sharing shelf or counter space with the collection 'jars' of several other charity causes. The few survivors tend to be substantial plastic, chained to the counter or a nearby wall, and usually a lone/chosen cause per-premises!

I wanted one because of the cross-over with the Britains Lilliput and other scenic accessories, by W. Horton (or Hugar?) and had just been discussing with Adrian, Christian and Gareth, the fact that I had been looking for one, without luck, for years, and that I'd never found one on evilBay, when I saw this (literally, seconds later) near-perfect one on Ann Evan's table for a reasonable sum, and immediately grabbed it, expecting the gods to tap me on the shoulder and demand their pound of flesh!

B is for Box of Britains Babies!

We looked at the Britains Lilliput 'Tr'oo'scale' figures, reductions of the larger Khaki Infantry, way back at the start of the blog, and today we're looking at the one form of packaging not seen then, the shop stock, pocket money dispenser tray.

The box is near-mint, with a couple of dinks and a small pin-hole on the underside, and you can see that it's quite small, smaller than a paperback, for instance, and one supposes it was kept very close to the shop's till/cash register or certainly within reach of the shop-staff/proprietor! Most toy shops I remember, of the period, had at least one glass cabinet near the till, and it would have been displayed in there.

 

I suspect the paper insert is a reprint, but a quite good one, with the Lilliput range on the reverse (you can just see the prices missing from the third column), and a full colour promotional image on the obverse, while the clear dust-cover sheet, with thumb cut-out, is almost certainly an original.

 

There are eight little compartments to display one-each of the eight figure sculpts, with larger compartments for the stock, which I think it's believed should contain nine figures (for a total of 80), but I've seen people suggest eight (for 72 figures) or ten per compartment (88). I don't think it's known for sure, but with things in those days often sold wholesale in dozens or grosses, it may be that each larger compartment should have 11 figures - a 96 count? There's certainly room for them.

 

We've seen them before, but it's always worth a second look as they are lovely little figures of the crossover from WWII to Cold War era, standard infantry, most in Fighting Order, but two in full Movement Order webbing, and with the Enfield EM2 semi-automatic assault-rifle, much discussed elsewhere, and 58-pattern webbing, and are probably based on the Warminster garrison demonstration battalion's troops.

 

This set came from Belgium, where the collector had two (I know!), and it's obvious he or the previous owner/s have built-up the contents of the tray, from occasionally encountered loose figures, completely separately from me/my sample, and from different sources, at different times, yet the sample has ended up with all the variants I've previously highlighted, gaining suggestions from some, that many of mine are home-painted.

But the gloss-green webbing batch would appear to 'be a thing', as would the very pale flesh batches, while others have the very reddish-pink flesh of the 'lozenge' (or Toblerone!) window-carton issue. Of particular interest here (given most examples have a version of the mid-green) is the kneeling firer on the left, who is the first I've seen with the same (correct for late WWII/early post-war) charcoal grey as seen on a few of the full-sized 54mm issues.

There's no obvious reason for the variations in painting, beyond home-painting of the unpainted 'envelope' set, but when you look at variation in the larger figures, which is not so marked, but is there, even to semi-gloss greens on some, I suspect something like the following;

It may be that Britains decided to give these diminutive figures to only a few of their better out-painters, one of whom was bad at stirring their green! While they were all trusted to mix their own flesh from red and white, with or without a touch of yellow? If the range was not terribly successful (it didn't last long), there would have been small batches with periods of inactivity between them, leading to an even grater range of paint-variants than the 54mm set? It's all pure conjecture though!

 

Final thought: someone at the show where I bought this immediately asked "Who would buy the 'being shot' figures?", and it's a fair point, but collectors, even one figure a week with their sixpence collectors', whould want one of each, wouldn't they?!

Three days later - Courtesy of Paul Morehead, editor of Plastic Warrior magazine, we see the Britains catalogue states only six of each figure, so five per large compartment plus the eight display samples, for a total contents count of only 48! Many thanks to Paul for this nugget.

W is for William Britains & W. Horton

Who may well be another William, but could also be something else entirely, Wally, or Walt, Warren or Wesley . . . yeah, it's probably William! Confusing, because there's nothing in Garratt, while Grace's has two, the novelty maker (probably our man!) in Middlesex (W.) and the gunsmiths in Birmingham, who ARE William and are still going, while another William played Cricket for Middlesex, around the same time as the toy producer set-up, but while the toy maker moved to Middlesborough, he died in Sussex?

 

Anywhoos, a quick box-ticker as we close-up on the railway figure posts, and with more comparison images to come in the round-up, and some other stuff in the past, linked-to in the Tags, this is a couple of images from Jon Attwood (many thanks again) and three from me, one of which we've seen before, just to get them all up here.

Various packagings for both the Britains Lilliput and Trix TTR (Trix Twin Railway) ranges, both of which used the same figures, although the Lilliput range was enhanced with vehicles in a larger HO-gauge (Half-O-gauge) compatible size, which couldn't be passed-off so easily as TT-gauge (Table Top/1:120), while little people are just little people!

 

I slipped this in to a post years ago with a casual note, and didn't admit to my sin, but as I get older, I seem more amenable to expunging my guilty secrets in public, if only to spread the guilt around and lighten the load on my own conscience, as we've all done similar things.

 

Before I do, just a note that the figures were attached to the platform by being drilled between the feet or elsewhere on the base and held in place with brass cabinet-makers screws of the smallest size.

 

The truth is, I no longer have it, although I did save the figures, but, because I thought it was homemade - it was a car-boot purchase by a third party given to me, because of my then specialization in small scale, although 'specialization' itself is a bit cheeky, given I didn't know what this was, but model railways were very-much a side shoot then, anyway - it got burnt! There, I said it, I used it to light a fire, many years ago, well, it wouldn't fit in any of my storage containers, and looked a bit naff!

 

I now realise it's classic Horton, and classic Art Deco, in the style of Woking station, which I've always liked, despite the tons of haphazardly-added modern shite hiding the true nature of the original, but the - seemingly unused these days - signal-box between the two sets of up and down lines is still relatively untouched.

 

Although Woking's signal-box is bare brick for the most part, but it has the rounded corners and the flat roof, I have the Hornby station in aluminium, and it's the same style, and 'rendered' in cream/orange/green if memory serves, so this was probably depicting one of many, or a generic London suburban halt, from the inter-war building boom?

None of Salisbury's stations look anything like this, being all Victorian multicoloured brick wonders, but I dare say you got a sheet of station names and the posters? One of the reasons it looked home-made was the poor application of the paper elements!

I know, but I'm afraid to try straitening him! The difference between the Hotel Porter on the left and the railway station-staff Porter on the right, a similar trick was played with another figure, while a third railwayman got a cream jacket to become an ice-cream seller, rather than a platform refreshment vendor!

I is for Initial Introduction

Below these three shots - If I get them all loaded today; are 7 other articles, which this picture will help with, as far as identifying the various figures goes and judging the sizes against each other.

Soldiers, pilots and civilians/rail passengers, the relevant rail staff are dealt with in a couple of the posts below somewhere and the entire range of Hornby Dublo/Hornby/Hornby-Triang and Hornby Railways sets and issues will be covered in another post another time, as will a more in-depth look at the relationships - as I understand them - in the Modelmaster/Merit/Wills/
Slater’s/Peco/Guagemaster family of semi-flats from old die-cast moulds.

For some reason this is not enlarging when you click on it, probably too much coding on the image, I'll re-load all three seperately in a day or two, sorry for that, it's the one image in all 8 posts you want to open - peer hard!!!...Done!

Three years later (05th April 2014)...we'll try this;

That seems to have done the trick...click on it to enlarge them all to tha same relative size!

T is for Tiny...Tiny Trojan's

The reason I ended up with 7 articles was that I wanted to cover the ‘Tiny Trojan’ figures, but to do that I needed to compare them to their Crescent originals, which lent toward further comparisons with Skybirds and Dinky and so on…
The Trojans are bigger than both Airfix and Britains ‘Trooscale’ who were aiming at a market which was quite dominated by the smaller European HO railway equipment, and the associated buildings, trees and so on that the war gaming fraternity were interested in campaigning their Airfix figures through!

They are however the same size as the small ranges of pre- and post-war figures by Skybirds, Crescent (1:72) and Dinky (nominally; 1:60), and it’s this early inability of the toy industry to standardize a size or range of sizes that leaves us collecting figures that climb in quarter-millimeter increments from less than 15mm to 70mm+

As can be seen in the picture at the bottom right, there were two distinct issues of these figures (Khaki below and a greyish brown – the more common – above), with further ‘collectable’ variants as well, such as the black or unpainted helmets of the former issue.

The Crescent figure with an asterisk seems not to have been issued by Trojan in plastic. The lack of a discernable size difference between the Crescent originals and the Tiny Trojans would suggest that Trojan inherited the moulds for the Crescent range, why they dropped one pose and created 3 new ones may never been known, a guess would be the level of damage to the moulds when Trojan got hold of them and/or a desire to fill gaps in the ‘Infantry section’ with an anti-tank weapon and a machine gun.

All the Trojans in this collage are from the set known to the hobby as set ‘B’ or set ‘2’ or ‘The second set’, as neither set is identified anywhere other than the catalogue list, there is no guarantee that this is the correct way round, apart for the fact that these poses seem currently less common than the other 4 poses and it seems reasonable to assume they were in production for a shorter time.

The additional poses (over the Crescent range) in this set are the Bazooka-man; here seemingly based on a pose common to a lot of Eriksson’s kneeling figures (posted the other day in an ACW article), which by the late 1950’s were everywhere in all sizes; and the flailing around/stabbing pose which was common to a lot of larger scale figure sets of the time such as Marx, MPC and so on, indeed it bears a striking resemblance to the stabbing 8th Army pose from Charbens.
Set 1/A/The first set; The extra pose here is the prone machine-gunner, clearly sculpted by an amateur, probably from someone else’s casualty (?), and I’ve shot three together to show that he is meant to look like that! His weapon seems to have been sculpted from the weapon on the deck of a common pocket-money/bath toy MTB of the time from Hong Kong, and is a scaled-down twin-Oerlikon (with shield) from the front deck of the said boat.

The other three poses are from the previous metal Crescent range. The fact that the gloss paint on the browner/khaki figures probably pre-dates the matt colours of the other batch, and the fact that the other 4 poses appear in both styles, would point to neither being more or less common that the other, and that larger numbers of ‘Set B’ are just ‘still to be found’; three shop-stock boxes of ‘Set A’ having turned up in the last 12 years - on both sides of the ‘Pond’.
Added 29/02/12 I've been waiting a while for this, now it's here - the 'shop stock' box; this is the second one to turn up in the States, and like the previous one contained only the four 'set A' poses, originally about 36 sets of them.

Purely by a process of elimination (which is by no means accurate), I have tentatively identified these (‘T?’) as being from the other two sets in the Trojan Catalogue; Passengers and Rail Staff. Both are taken from the Britains/W.Horton/Trix (‘B’) range of ‘Trooscale’/Lilliput figures.

Again, evidence - lack of size difference - points to Trojan (if it is them) getting hold of the moulds originally used for the metal ranges. The better detail on the plastic figures can be explained by the use of a different material in the mould, while the head/hat differences of the mother and daughter (Britains; No.LB/517 Nurse and Child) is easily explained as being due to flash rather than remoulding.

R is for Railway figures

Returning to the Trojan article that launched this group of 8 posts, we find that the figures I believe to be the civilians from the Trojan Catalogue that’s been doing the rounds for a while now, are based on the Britains Lilliput series, itself probably produced/certainly marketed by W.Horton and also supplied to Trix, who drilled the bases and fixed them to their wooden station accessories (probably also - actually - made by W.Horton).

Top Left shows the same picture already seen in the Trojan Article, to the right is a ticket-issuer or platform vendor (?), the chap on the right has clearly been painted as a vendor of something rather than a member of Railway Staff.

Below them is the full range as I know it, the man at the back right is showing the hole used to fix him to a Trix platform. I’m not 100% sure about all the cargo, most is Britains/Horton/Trix, but some of the barrels may well be Wardie/Mastermodels, as might the small box on top of the two bigger ones? The trolleys; both powered and trailing, are marked ‘Trix’ and may well have been exclusive to them, although the powered trolley is listed in the Lilliput range (LB/549). Of interest is that Airfix (most pirated of companies after Britains), did themselves pirate the large box (Britains; No.LB/546 Large Packing Case) for their HO/OO strongpoint/outpost Playset type kits!

The last image is possibly the most interesting; as it shows the figures I used to think were the Trojan ones, even though they were hard styrene plastic, until I found an early Merit box with the same mouldings, it then transpired that they were ex-Wardie ‘Mastermodels’ moulds, which we now know emigrated to Merit upon the demise of the former. However by the time that had all come to light, the soft-plastic one had turned up and he took the mantle of ‘possibly Tiny Trojan’!

Mastermodels by Wardie have also been looked at in this series of articles and should be the next but one down the page, although - like the Hornby family (see note in the ‘Initial Article’ 3 posts above) - there is a lot more to the Wardie/Mastermodels, Merit/Model Scene, Peco/Guagemaster, Slater’s/Wills story than I’m ready [can be arsed] to cover here.

The Britains/Horton/Trix passengers/civilians with colour variations, again the Trojan photograph is re-produced bottom left. Bottom right shows another Trix mounting hole, and it’s interesting to note that some out-workers painted the woman with handbag as sometimes looking to the side, sometimes; looking forwards. The Golfer however has a pigs snout and can only be painted looking sideways, this WAS the era of ‘Animal Farm’!

To prove the necessity of my stressing that the identification of the Trojan civilians is still very tentative or conjectural, here are some other figures that contend for the title. Top left are some soft plastic/polyethylene figures based upon, but not the same as; the Wardie/Mastermodels set of stevedores (57), while to the right is a hard styrene better quality copy of one of the plank-carriers from the same set. Hammond states that there was plastic production at some point from B.J.Ward/Wardie, but the Brookes (who have done most of the work on the subject) don’t mention it, so it could be that the figure on the right is a late Mastermodels issue, and the figures on the left are just piracies? But…either could be the true Trojan figure/s?

Below them are the early Merit figures again, now; usually the Merit figures from Wardie are taken from the same moulds (the Merit ‘Remote Control Driving Test’ game playing pieces for instance), but these are clearly more of a piracy thing, the cut of the waistcoat of the porter carrying luggage makes a good comparison. Merit did copy a lot, so it may be that these were copied before the ex-Wardie people carried the moulds over to Merit as they went bust, which is one version of the tale…

Bottom is the replacement Merit set with both Merit and the current/late (?) Model Scene packaging, note; Model Scene issue/issued theirs without bases.

The Salisbury Station unit from Trix, probably made by W.Horton who also supplied 54mm scenics to Britains who made the Lilliput range of OO gauge figures that Trix used on their TT gauge Railway sets…clear?!

L is for Lilliput

Having now cleared those companies linked to the original Trojan post, we might as well clear-up the other loose-ends that have been raised one way or the other. As the Britains/Horton 'Lilliput' range were touched upon, let’s do them first…

Loose figures and other items from the farm range, all badged to W. Horton. The tractor has been looked at before here, and these animals are - for the most part - a bit tatty, but that’s life on the farm for you! Since taking these pictures I have removed the larger pig from the Britains box, there’s no evidence for him being there and I don’t know why he was…probably a piglet from a 54mm range? These are - basically - scaled down from the 54mm range, with the exception of the tractor-driver.

There is no cataloguing differential for black or brown splotched cattle, nor for the pink or black finish on the pigs.

Also Britains Lilliput (originally) are the hunt scene, and in metal; very rare, due to their thin legs and small parts (fox and dogs), as a result I only have one and he’s a very headless rider!

The mystery is where the (really quite common) plastic mouldings come from, they could be unlisted (in the only catalogue found) Trojan figures, for the mould-destination reasons brought-up in the above posts, but for the same or similar reasons they could be Trix, an independent Horton thing, a late Britains thing to accompany the plastic Herald downscales (but why has no packaging turned-up?), or even someone not yet mentioned…Culpitts (for cake decorations), Hilco or Cherilea (who both liked other peoples moulds/sculpts…Hell - the saddles are all Skybirds (and Crescent) khaki infantry colours! Meanwhile the horses in the upper image (earlier set?) are manufactured in colours common to both Britains/Herald AND Timpo plastic?

What we do know is that they come in two distinct issues, the earlier, better mouldings in flat realistic-coloured plastic and the later sets with a more glossy, translucent (is that the right word?) plastic in brighter colours. Sitting here pouring over an enlarged image of both sets together, my vote veers toward Culpitts. Mercator Trading had lots of these at the PW show last month, in little bags, and Culpitts used to use un-carded little bags in the big stand-alone revolving 6-foot and counter top 2-foot Perspex display units they used to use, it would also explain the difference between the first issue (made for Culpitts by Britains/Horton…or Gem?) and the later ones which look like the later HK produced versions of other Culpitts/Gemodels stuff?

The other thing we know is that no one has ever seen the fox in this range, but there was a metal one? Well - you wouldn’t want a fox about to die on a cake, but a little might want to celebrate horses or horse-riding on her birthday or Mum might make a cake to celebrate the beginning or the end of the hunt season? This set is different from the 54mm Hollow-cast range, where most of the horses are standing, and there are three dog poses, not the single one found in this set (there are only 2 poses in the Lilliput metal set), while only three of the four (Lilliput metal) rider poses are reproduced in the plastic sets. Finally note how the woman rider (all black) is side-saddle.

The two box sizes the Farm came in, Horton also produced a lot of the Papier-mâché buildings and scenics that Britains used with this and the larger-scale ranges, a job which had previously been undertaken by Hugar. Also a look at some larger-scale farm from Taylor and/or Barratt versus small scale Lilliput figures from Britains/Horton.

As we also looked at the Crescent military figures above, here is their small scale farm, larger than Britains offering they are quite crudely painted and were probably sold on small cards as penny (or from the likely dates thre’penny or sixpence!) toys. As with the military figures; there are crude home casts/piracies around - not shown here.

B is for Britains Trooscale Lilliput (Truescale)

Well, as it's Christmas I thought I'd cover an oldie but a goodie! Issued in 1958, these were supposed to be the first of a range of plastic figures to be added to the metal range of Trooscale 'Lilliput' model railway figures by William Horton (for William Britains).

They were first issued in this slightly 'Toblerone' shaped triangular prism packaging, and a counter pack of 48 figures (6x8 poses), fully painted in the same scheme as their 54mm brethren (upon which they were based, if not just pantographed down from!).

They were also sold as an unpainted set in this small 'envelope' sized pack with eight separate windows, the range/series/set (?) was pretty much dead at birth as Airfix had already started producing 40/50 figures/items per set for about the same money as these!

The eight poses. As can be seen they are not only the same size as their larger donors, but bare a remarkable resemblance to the Airfix Combat Group issued a few years later. They are - like most 1950's toy 'khaki' infantry - modelled on the School of Infantry 'Demonstration Battalion' down at Warminster, being equipped with the experimental/trials EM 2 Bullpup design Assault Rifle, the - then - brand new '58 pattern webbing with large pack, 'bum-roll' & kidney pouches and the late WWII helmet, which would soldier-on (excuse the pun!) until at least 1987 (when I surrendered mine for the itchy-piss-pot that was/is the Kevlar replacement!).

Rear view of three different colour treatments, some collectors think the gloss ones were not issued by Britains as the 54mm never got such a painting, but as they keep turning up in different shades - as above - I think they did, probably toward the end of their period of availability, to try to make them stand out on the shop rack and sell?