U is for Up the Smoke!

Except it's been smokeless for most of my life, people under 40 have no idea what fog was like once, I remember going to pick our pet rabbit up, from the pet-rabbit people in Rotherwick, a journey which would normally have taken maybe 20-minutes, round trip, but which took over an hour, because Mum had to drive at ten miles an hour, in the hope that if she caught-up with someone going 9-mph, she wouldn't hit them! Fog-lights became visible at about 20-yards!

 

Anyway, I was up to London the other day, and as is customary, had a look, first with PW's roving reporter; Peter Evans, then, on my own, while returning to Waterloo, for items of use! And these were the things which came back to Ash Road Towers, or not!

 

This was the 'or not', £7.99 is too much for such a piece of rack toy shite, so it stayed on the peg (keeping it warm!), hopefully one of the Bocheng Jin tanks will turn-up in a mixed lot in a few years, and I can see if the red flash-eliminator is easily removable? Daft soldier may also reappear at some point!

 

Timeless pocket-money, rubber-jiggler, 'finger fright' shite! A set of six from House of Marbles, I think we've seen theirs before, but these seem to be new and better colours than those seen previously (Waterstones?), I particularly liked the metallic gold one!

 

Imported by Thomas Benacci, I thought these 40mm figures would prove to be poured PE-resin, but they are, in fact, PVC, so well within the scope of the core project! And I think we've seen the policeman already in a mixed lot or show report, so they don't take long to filter down!

 

And I'd bought these earlier than the others, but they got shot last, so yah-boo-sucks to them! Four quid's more like it, and I thought the painting of a couple (Spinosaur and Sauropod) were better than the common offering. Unbranded, but it's a rack toy!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - House of Marbles

Taking up some of the slack from the demise of Ackerman, House of Marbles had a few nice things on display this year, we've seen the eraser-troops already, but here's the rest of the stuff I though all or some of you might be very or vaguely interested in!

They seen to be carrying two colours of this chap whom we've previously seen carded under the Tobar tag in green, I took more shots and he/they'll soon be on the new parachutists page, so this will do for now, I like the tag line; Shoot up, chute down!

This is lovely (I mean it's the poorest grade of ex-HK shite you can find, but its 'throwback/retro' existence is lovely to someone like me!), I know I have these with various HK-era marks, and you may remember about seven or eight years ago I bought the Farm version in a department store (Debenhams in Newbury?) at Christmas, also in HoM branding - so it should be on the 'tag'.

The best thing is the Black Panther; the rest are pretty standard old, much sub-pirated sculpts, half Britains Herald (Tiger, baby Giraffe, Pelican etc.), some Timpo (Llama) some more generic with an old cake-decoration pine-tree and some zoo fencing which probably owe more to Blue Box than the Britains originals!

But - despite the age of the sculpts/tools - it's hours of fun for a youngster, and they've packed a lot into a tiny box.

These are a bit 'deform', but could pass for fat little baby-saurs! Key-ring novelty dinosaurs; there sem to be four sculpts, a stegosuarus, a carnivor/'Rex type a Proto- or Tri- ceratopsian and a dimetrodon who looks like a cross between a Spinosaur and a  Baryonyx!

Finally, I couldn't pass this by without snapping a picture; we loved this as kids and managed to play it for years without breaking any of the pieces. These retro games are being carried by various brands and both sides of the pond, so you may find them in different graphics?

They are weird animals; the tongue of a butterfly, the antenna of a slug, the head of an ant, the body of Thunderbirds 'Mole' and legs removed from a trio of can-can dancers while their eyes seem to have been removed from the back of a washing-machine! Timeless toys!

The rule in our house was . . . you can build multicoloured ones but the legs, eyes and antenna must match the same components' colour!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - House of Marbles - 'Eraserheads'

While there were a few parachute toy figures dotted around the Toy fair, all of which have already gone in the folders for that page, the only traditional-looking green 'army men' figures were these, and they were hardly a pack of realistic 'toy soldiers'!

I think both Peter and myself spotted these at the same time, well-trained eyes! But they weren't the toys soldiers they looked liked from ten feet away, not that it mattered much, as you can't balk at a box of patrolling polymer pencil erasers.

Three of the poses are the oft-copied Airfix paratroops (although a Matchbox kneeling firing pose is advertised on the box-art), but the fourth is more original and all four are best described as 'boxy' in the sculpting. Plastic is that soft, crumbly modern material, which has given the three upright figures a weakness at the ankles and play-wear will make short work of the kneeling firer's rifle tip, in the hands of youngsters, I fear?

The 'new' pose has a reasonable rendition of a 'bullpup' designed automatic weapon, but not specifically an SA80, nor any other known make! He's also retained the WWII cross-straps of the Airfix figures, the impression being that once the sculptor had re-done three of the old Airfix poses he felt confident enough (with a few more modern photographs as reference) to have a stab at a piece of his own work?

Nothing in this post couldn't have waited 'till March, May or Mo'vember! And some of the forthcoming posts will wait!

News, Views Etc . . . Paratrooper Page

The third part has been held-over as I ended-up with a load of stuff to add to the second part, which was uploaded the other day, so I've just added to that as an early update.

Kicked-off by some images from Brian, I added a few screen-caps of current offers and shots from the recent Toy Fair 2020 in London.

News, Views Etc . . . Crimbo Roundup

Not the usual format today, there's only one date I know of this weekend;

Sunday 22nd December 2019

Orpington - SRP Toyfairs

Crofton Halls, Orpington, Kent, BR6 8PR

Web. - www.srptoyfairs1.co.uk

eMail: srptoys1@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 07739 998 012 (Paula or Gerry)

10:00 - 14:00hrs

Admission charge unknown

Gerry's shows are always well run and I think I'm right in thinking Orpington is one of the bigger venues in his itinerary, so if you've any spare cash after investing in a stash of mince-pies it might be worth a mosey-on-down, and traffic should have eased a bit by Sunday?

Then there's a bunch of shows after Christmas, which I may post earlier in the week if I get my finger pulled-out over this weekend?

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Firefighters

One of the more obvious developments this year on the Blog has been much more feedback to some articles, which is lovely, but it presents a quandary or two, due to the 'felt need' to get contributions up as quickly as possible, both by way of thanks and to encourage the individuals sending the items, images or other information.

Follow-up's to the follow-up!
(thanks to Brain, Chris and Theo for the above) 

Case in point was the resent series of Hong Kong company ID posts and the latter Firefighter posts, which due to a number of firefighters in the former have sort of morphed into a twin-fork of fire stuff and road worker stuff! Further enhanced by the two fire-engine posts the other day.

Firefighting contents of the miscellaneous emergency-personnel box

So I got-out a follow-up out to the first set of articles, but more stuff came in, which I put to one side and then added to after the second - fire engine - posts, and I think I'm beginning to understand why the editor of a certain magazine I know, has articles of mine going back years . . . I think it's called editorial control! If you keep doing follow-up's to follow-up's, there'd be no end to it, so at a certain point you must/have-to drop that subject and move on.

Mixed with firefighters

But, this is not to say you can't return to it as a new subject, months or years later, so don't think I'm not, or won't still be grateful for anything or everything sent, I am and I will be!

And to that end, with 460 folders in Picasa (one of which; Latest Toy Shots has 766 images in it today) and another 20-odd on the desk top (including Follow-Ups and Scans - 170+ images), I am now creating thematic folders which can be repositories of similar stuff, for future posts, both on specific themes and more general stuff. It's not an exact science, does Tarzan go as Tarzan, or with zoo for instance, but something workable is formulating.

The Firefighters, for instance will get a page, I haven't however decided whether to put it here with the other 'pages' at the top of the page, or give it an entry on the A-Z's under 'F'?

And to add to the stuff in the above images will be the stuff we've seen before (Corgi, Dinky & Matchbox, the Blue Box/Lucky stuff plus a few other bits which have been posted!) and the contents of a couple of tubs of larger-scale/recent additions.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Toys in the Media

Sort of Duplo/Playmobile clones helping advertise an Apple i-Phone10 contract, the 'i' stands for idiot, now they (the owners of idiot-phones) have taken my favourite 'dumb-phone' moniker to refer to other mobiles, I will bow to common-usage and change to idiot!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

This Week I Are Be Mostly Sorting . . .

More deer!

But it's taken so long, it'll be next Christmas that benefits!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Edible Advent Calendar Update

Good week for figurals compared to last week, with an angel, gingerbread man, penguin, and Santa sleigh, alongside a stag's head and something which might be a Blue Meanie, might be a vital part of a tower-crane, might be an alien lander, might be an Egyptian cat-god with a comedy-moustache . . . but which we decided was probably John Lennon doing a Biblical Wise-man impersonation?

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

H is for How They Come In

Slow start this week but a few bits have been acquired for pocket-money, or less, although it was all money in my pocket, which might be the decider as far as the 'pocket money' designation goes, rather than the/a specific amount!

A couple of stand-alones; being a smallish ceramic Santa Clause 'fairing' type ornamental figurine and a Triple-A rabbit. The rabbit is actually much larger (1:6th?) than the Santa', but they collaged to the same height! He's a modern, softish PVC-substitute.

A House of Marbles retro' board-game brought-in four more micro racing-cars! Also credited to 4moreideas, I thought the board itself was lazy-design; racetracks don't cross each-other like snakes & ladders!

A bag of Ja-Ru 'Army Men' as imported by the - now extinct - Toysaurus in 2006, so predating the various sets shelfied and/or donated to the blog by Brian Berke in the last three or four years, and adding to that maker's known-output here. Unlike the current Ja-Ru 'fritz-helmet' set which are soft and marked on the base, these are polyethylene and unmarked. They reprise the old Tim Mee copies; a bag of classic Army Men for Christmas? What's not to like!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

 

Wot? No Bears!

This year's additions; 54 items

but I found room on the tree for all of them!

I'm winding-down for Christmas now, and while I'm working on all sorts of stuff, I don't know what I'll post or when over the next week or two, so here's wishing all loyal readers a Happy Christmas, and thanking everyone who's helped and contributed this last twelve months. Even with a near-three month hiatus while Dad passed-away, I managed the second best posting rate/year ever, here's to an even better 2020 - the Blog's 11th year . . . and second decade!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

A is for Answer Robot

There was a game, very popular in the past, more of a 'parlour game' than a board game, but it was sold as or in-with the board-games, and would end-up in the family board-game cupboard.

There were many versions from the 1950's or earlier, through to the 1970's if not '80's, it appears on all the auction sites in a dozen languages and can come with a magician/mage/mystic, or a monkey/ape, but the best is The Answer Robot!

On Boardgamegeek

Mentioned a few years ago here in passing (possibly in a 'News, Views...'?); it was re-issued the other year as The Magical Amazing Robot, I didn't at the time of mention have the publisher - it's House of Marbles.

Spoiler alert - for the young at heart, please miss-out this and the next paragraph!

The mechanism is simple slight-of-physics in that you set the robot (or magician/monkey) correctly and then turn him to a question "Any question, pick a question sir, I'll wager the robot gets it right", he having been rotated has become off-line with his hidden magnet.

You then move the answerer to the mirror-pond in the centre of the answers and by placing him randomly opposite a wrong answer, he will revolve until his hidden magnet lines-up with another hidden magnet set at another angle, under the pond; both being polarised bars which can only line up one way, leaving the answerer pointing to the corresponding correct answer!

Here he is, the subject of today's biography! He oozes that 1950's throwback kitsch to the Sci-fi of the Edwardian era, of Wells and Verne, looking more like a kid's comic idea of a robot schoolteacher, still a popular trope when I was young, and you will recognise him as being . . .

. . . a reduced-size copy of the old Archer robot, a copy/re-issue of which by Glencoe is seen on the left, with an original (sans 'answer stick') sandwiched between, His pointer arm has been re-set to allow for the dramatic sweep of the denouement and his feet absorbed into the large base, but otherwise there's not much in it.

The new one is lacking in the finer surface detail (as if the other two have much to write home about!) and would seem to be a copy, but a good one, there's no reduction in size; or from a very old and tired mould.

It's not the first time the Archer has been served 'homage', as both Johillco and Cherilea issued copies of him first in hollow-cast lead and then in plastic (as seen here) possibly under the later Hilco branding, all examples are around the 50mm mark, and very brittle these days in the plastic form.

With the gubbins of the secret base removed he looks like a robot mine-detector, or a Vogon intergalactic space-highway surveyor!

Another difference between the older version and this latest incarnation, it that the old one was formed round the pointer (which would have been set in a jig in the tool before each shot), while the new one has the [heated] wire inserted into the hand after the figure has been manufactured, leading to minor melting/loss of detail to the fingers of the hand.

The dismantling of the set for onward transit to the recycling-bin raised an interesting query which will appear as a separate Question Time in an hour.

And many thanks go to Adrian Little for letting me photograph mine next to his pair.

L is for Little Livestock

Sorting the stock . . . mooooo!

Yet another of my pet projects is making sense (trying to make sense) of the dozens and dozens of copies - of mostly ex-Merit and Britains - farm animals in - or even consciously aimed-at - HO/OO model railway scales. As pet projects go, it's not going so well and yet, it's not going so badly. But, they are commonly found as rack toys and this is Rack Toy Month!

These are almost certainly Blue Box, a conclusion drawn by the fact that Marx carried them in their 'Majestic Series' which matched their 'Sunshine Series' which was Blue Box Wild West small scale - rebadged! Also the plastic colours match other larger animals and figures from Blue Box, however, without the smoking gun of a Blue Box logo'd set, they stay apart from the main collection, especially if they are overprinted with a WH Cornelius' logo!

The main sculpts of the range, in storage I have a few seated/prone calves and foals (and possibly another item of poultry - single goose or turkey?), but they seem uncommon and must have only been supplied in larger sets.

Likewise the unpainted sets - which have the cows in 'horse' plastic, and the additional ex-Britains lambs and the sheep -  would seem to have been from a later tranche.

The sample here is about a third of the size of the sample in storage; for years various friends like Trevor Rudkin, Gareth Morgan, John Begg and others have saved this stuff for me, from long before anybody knew anything about any of it, or if it had any value (it still doesn't really!), yet without that collective effort, drawing any conclusions would be almost impossible.

Below are two question mark samples, one (on the left) being almost certainly just copies of the Blue Box, but with a newer mould-stamp, that just happens to look like the Blue Box one. On the right though are better painted figures, but with a poorer stamp, again the same design. Until they turn-up in an unsealed rack-toy or boxed 'Home Farm' type set, any conclusion is pure guesswork.

The next most numerous type of these is similar; same ex-Britains figures, same ex-Merit cattle and horse poses, but new pig and [larger] sheep designs and different markings. So far there is no clue as to maker, and both sets are unmarked generics with graphics that might be later 1970's?

You can see the animals are cruder sculpts, but plastic colours are richer, yet chalkier. I'm not going to get too bogged down in markings today, although we will look briefly at all of them in a minute. It will take an in-depth page to do them all justice when I get the rest out of storage.

So with only the above two (the commonest two) ID'd, and then only to small packagings, you can see why I say the project is going not so well, but then this bag turned-up a while ago (Trevor or Gareth!), and helped to ID (as far as you can) one of the minor samples, which means it's going not so badly!

Almost certainly a Christmas cracker insert, it may also have seen service in a larger capsule or a crane-machine, but seems to have been designed to roll-up and stuff in a cracker. These are late, monochromatic versions in a dowdy range of colours, brightened by the orange and yellow of the bagged set.

While we won't look at large scale sets today, this mid-size set might as well shine for probably its only outing on the Blog. Pikit Toys of Birmingham anyone? Thought not! [Apparently - two years in the late 1980's!] It's also trying to look like it's by both Imperial and S for Star (visual shelf-recognition!); when really it's a generic with a local importer's name on it.

Again the numbers in storage tend to be larger, but not always, and I have some single-item samples in storage as I have here (capsule toys and such-like undoubtedly), also I have some samples here I hadn't yet encountered, and more examples in storage than are here overall.

While my handwriting was the reason everyone thought I was dyslexic for 35-odd years, (when in fact I was an Aspergic retard/genius!), all the typo's, reverses and inversions here are deliberate.
There are two types of engineer's stamp; those for stamping ownership or data on the outside of a machine, which, like typewriter-keys; leave an impression which is readable in the normal way. Then there are mirror-reversed stamps for marking the mould-cavity, so that the reverse impression will be readable on the moulding. Then: there are menkind, and menkind, like Brexit voters; can be stupid.

They use the wrong stamps on the wrong thing and it all comes out a bit wonky, like the current affairs of the UK! Sometimes they mix the two sets of stamps, so some letters are inverted, some read normally, or trying too hard, with too few brain-cells (Brexit again) they try to mentally reverse the word when they don't need to and you get 'Kong Hong' or Honk Gong!

These can be clues, tying some of these animals to, say, some of the combat figures, or rubber aliens or whatever, but really they are a starting place for sorting the myriad copies, and copies of copies that turn-up.

The HK and H[dot]K here are joined by H[dot]K[dot] and reversed examples in the storage samples for instance. And while I have a bag with about 7 of the charm-loop tailed cows in storage, I hadn't clocked that that was what they were, these came in with all the other charms, from the December 2015 posts, but escaped the camera then!

The other thing about all these marks is that from time to time, like when you find a carded or bagged example, you often find that a couple of sub-marks actually go together, so you can combine a couple of bags. More of that kind of work will be on the New HK Blog. As we look at sorting all the many non-Giant small scale figures.

The real problem lot - some of these will turn-out to belong to other marked samples, where someone forgot to stamp one cavity in a multiple-cavity mould, all have to be sorted very carefully, using little signature marks.

The green girl with bucket for instance, had a release-pin ridge under her base and I know I have a bunch in storage, so she doesn't belong to the bag with the white farmer, who has a smoother, thinner base and may be the same as the Plasty ones we looked at in 1" Warrior magazine, I won't know until I find another Plasty set, or get mine out of storage! Painting - as in the spray-painted ones - can also be a signifier.

The lower three are Airfix copies and they have been looked at, not here; but on the three relevant entries on the Airfix Blog, with the storage samples (and bagged farm versions) included, these are what's turned-up in the last four years . . .where has it gone; four years!

Nearly ten years ago I was active on HäT Industry's forum for a while, and one of the guys there (known only as 'B') was asking about ancient cattle for a little project of his, I said these might be useful, as their poor sculpting meant they could be from any-old era, sent him a few and about a month later he sent me these images, showing what a bit of paint and some consummate scratch-building can do . . . good; aren’t they? Not mine - Brecht's!

Then China got involved and it all stops being fun! Crap copies-of-copies . . .of copies, several or no 'China' marks, mixed scales, a poor quality copy of the Britains Hen House, a moulding which started life as a lead casting I think; 70, 80-years ago?

Horrid, careless, loveless, flash-ridden, sink-hole ridden, miss-moulded crap, imported by House of Marbles and sold through a local department store in a market town about four Christmases' ago. Nasty.

Three figures for the collection-total though . . . got to look on the bright side!