I is for It's That Horse Again!

The best thing in the recent pick-up from Peter Evans is this Hong Kong Roman chariot, it's the third iteration, I think, on the Thomas/Poplar theme, but it has very different horses!

 

And they are puke-green! Arranged in the Western Wagon configuration, the figure is the only real connection with the others, seen here previously, although the other HK copy uses the same horses, but the artwork and shape of this chariot is very different.

 

Is it based on one of the earlier lead ones, both the British and the French have some nice slush-cast chariots in the archive? One of the draw-bar connectors is broken, but I think I may have a set of these horses in the unknown horses tub!
 

I is for Image Dump - Gift Fair 2023 - Christmas Baubles

Taken nearly three years ago, more for my own interest, so the products of several stalls/stands, none of which I recorded the names of, so just more bauble eye-candy as we creep closer to the big day, less than four weeks now!

 

TKMaxx have had these dogs, or something remarkably similar, this year.

 

Resin

 

Pumpkin coach!

 

Bees and bee-keeping related, my late mother would have loved these!

 

Fruits, a bear and a soldier (wantone!), the now defunct Paperchase used to carry the more kitsch stuff like these fruits, but theirs were often very big.

 

Glass drops, give extra structure to the tree, and prevent layering.

And, for those who were asking, I delivered a card several days ago, because I may not see the recipients again before Christmas, and I wouldn't trust the privatised Royal Fail to deliver a turd from their own arse. 

 

The first Christmas sections appeared in stores in mid-August, and while that's ridiculously early, that's capitalism, which is also responsible for the depressing daily-news which Christmas helps us hide from for a while, especially after the quite sudden onset of Autumn this year, nothing wrong with a bit of whimsy, fantasy or tradition in one's life.

I is for Image Dump, L is for Longacres

I shot these in the Longacres Garden Centre up at Bagshot on the A30, back in 2023, and they sort of got half-forgotten, half unused, but it's intended to clear the bauble stuff this year, and as these aren't something I'm particularly interested in for the tree (modern poured resin), but yet, are interesting as possible conversions to stand-alone figures, here they are.

 

The entire display was Gisela Graham product, and another thing I liked about them was that while most of them are characters/stories covered by Disney over the years, they are not the recognisably Disney imagery, but rather independent/more traditional renditions.

 

I think they had the same display last year, but don't remember seeing them when I popped-up there the other day. Asda Supermarkets have a similar selection of resin solids, but they ARE Disney/Marvel/DC properties.

I is for Is This an AI Blog?

Three posts in 2020, and not one of them makes more than a gnat's crochet of sense?

https://jeffreyantiquetoys.wordpress.com/ 

AI has improved exponentially since 2020, but I don't know what was going on there, one wonders if it's auto-translating from another language, but the subjects - of the three posts - are all based in and around London.

And then . . . you go here:

https://jeffreytoysnews.mystrikingly.com/#_blog

And find the same strangled English, this time with four posts? Did the 'Bot responsible;e succumb to Covid a few weeks later? Does anyone know the history behind all this?

There's a rumour that the owner of Mint & Boxed was convicted of fraud and sent to gaol, but I have no firm knowledge of such happenings, and it looks like it was before these two sites (how many were there?) were churning out their pidgin rubbish! The Internet is groaning under the weight of this garbage.

I was actually searching because I picked this up the other day, thinking it was a book in the Shire Album or Self Publishing oeuvres, but in fact it's a sort of glorified catalogue, of really rather pricey stuff, and I wanted to find out more about the shop/auction house, only to find the above-linked weirdness!

It appears to be the only edition ever issued, with several on sale around the Internet, but all Issue 1 Winter 1990/1991, so a short-lived enterprise, whatever happened to the owner! Although I have also found a Summer 1989 copy, in a different format, which is unnumbered? And there are two versions of this, one (2nd printing?) cuts the logo's of Wells and Brimtoy off the bottom of the artwork.

One hobby site says, "Possible [sic] the largest vintage toy shop that ever was. Now closed." , but they like their hyperbole over there, and this mint Dinky-Corgi-Matchbox stuff goes through Vectis by the lorry load, umpteen times a year! Whilst Modeller's Loft had a pretty big store or two?

The internecine goings-on at the top of the hobby, where a few people think there's a fortune to be made from old toys? A couple of auction houses do OK, a few top evilBayers do OK, many bottom-feeders keep from starving, and the odd gentleman-amateur throws money at a loss-making enterprise, because he enjoys doing it, and can afford to.

But when a millionaire pays £250k for a tin-plate liner, or locomotive, or over a million-quid for a plastic Boba Fett, that's not our hobby, that's the Art World, the world of investment, and that's a very different thing.

And damn-me if another one hasn't appeared as I write this!

https://levytoysboxes.tumblr.com/ 

I is for Ideal Jolly Boat

I've also picked-up this, the Ideal Pirate Ship, recently, a bit sun-faded, but otherwise complete, as far as I know, but I didn't have time to shoot it with figures, so a bit of a box-tick, gets it up here! Hard plastic, probably a polystyrene or polypropylene hybrid of some kind, it has soft polyethylene ratlines and rolled sails.

 

Beached!

 

Fold-out gang-plank!

 

 

Firing cannon.

 

 

It also has a ship's boat, which is similar to the other makers', so there was definitely some homage-copying going on, but who was first?

 

As per the last couple of years, time is of the essence now, I have two more posts to do, but I have to go to work, so whether I get them out before midnight is anyone's guess!

I is for Invicta

We've seen one or two here, as they came in from Charity Shops, and there may be one or two more in storage, but I happened to be up early one Sunday back in July, and went to the big car-boot over at Borden, off the A325 Farnham Road, where I found a chap selling a shit-ton (an official measurement somewhat larger than a shitload!) of the Invicta (for The British Natural History Museum) dinosaur models, and I sort of bought one-each of most of them!

 

I then went and got an egg & bacon bap and a coffee, the real reason for going to a car-boot sale, in my opinion, went back to the car to eat said burger, and sort the plunder, and decided I might as well go back and get the others, which proved problematical, as everyone was starting to pack-up and leave, and I couldn't find the stall for a while, then nearly tripped over it, and this, below, is the result!

 

All the big boys together, I think I have one in storage, but couldn't remember which one! That's a three-foot table, so 'Dippy' is nearly two-and-a-half feet! Despite having looked these up in the past, I either failed to learn or didn't notice anything about the painted version in a softer PVC, so they came as a surprise to me, and means that despite this haul, I am no nearer to even half of the possible versions (there are a couple of complete colour variants among the old PE ones too), but I do now have more than half the sculpts, at least once. Technically, there's a modern Blue Whale to find too!

 

Cetiosaurus

(painted PVC)

 

Diplodocus

 

Mammenchisaurus

 

Apatosaurus

 

Brachiosaurus

 

Stegosaurus

(PE on the left, painted PVC on the right)

 

Ichthyosaurus

(surface-coated polymer)

 

Plesiosaurus

(surface-coated polymer)

 

Woolly Mammoth

(PE on the left, painted PVC on the right)

 

Left: Glyptodon

Right: Baryonyx

 

 

Left: Iguanodon

Right: Tyrannosaurus (Rex)

 

All undecorated polyethylene unless otherwise stated, the two later additions, both marine subjects, have a shiny coated-surface, almost like resin or fibreglass, with fine age cracks revealing a softer substrate as the bulk of the model, which is probably some form of polyethylene or polypropylene? Also, the tusks of the two version of the Mammoth are quite different, and were clearly redesigned between issues.

 

What was daft was that, despite two visits to the guy's table, I didn't take a Triceratops, even though he had several, as I thought I'd got one, but I'm pretty sure now I haven't, I had the Scelidosaurus which we saw here a while back, along with a couple of Megalosaurs over the years. And, or course, the one I most want, the Dimetrodon, remains elusive!

 

You can find pictures of all of them here:

http://www.dinosaurcollectorsitea.com/invicta.html

 

And details of all variations here:

https://dinotoyforum.proboards.com/thread/4110 

 

Less than a month later, and we have plagiarist eBay scrapings from you know who! His insecurity must be eating him up, and the commenters are only encouraging him!