I is for If I Have To!

Not really in the mood, so expect an intermittent service in January! In case anyone else hasn't noticed, the World's going to hell in a hand-cart, and there's no sword-based baby to save us. And who had Putler turning out to be the mere Mussolini to Trump's Hitler, on the card for 2026?

 

Happy New Year!

I know from my job, this was generally, a crap Christmas, the most telling sign of which, was that all the fairy-light shit and illuminated/inflated, technicolour bollocks in peoples front gardens (hey, you can do it tastefully, or you can do it as half-arsed shit, or OTT classless excess, most chose one of the latter two options!) had gone by the 5th. Last year many were up through the second week of Jan', and we weren't swamped, at work, like last year.

 

Anyway, plenty more to say, and I'll keep saying it; those who pretend it's not happening deserve everything that's coming, for never getting involved! Getting back into the saddle with a simple box-ticker, this is from the UPC scans folder, and follows-up, or follows-on from the previous posts on the subject - Monograms many copyists.

 

I was promised a load of stuff on the subject back when we looked at them on one of the other occasions, but I've heard nothing more, and suspect Covid may have changed those plans? We looked at them, in no particular order, here:

 

Revell/Roco-Minitanks - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/07/m-is-for-monograms-many-mates.html

 

UPC (1st post!) - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/u-is-for-universal-powermaster.html

 

Fujimi - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/07/us-army-is-for-more-clones.html 

 

Model Power - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/08/r-is-for-roco-as-rack-toys.html

 

Hong Kong's finest! Still needs a lot of work, but this was a reasonable primer! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

You'll also find Past the Post and ABC, and others, on the Monogram Tag, but this is the UPC supporting stuff:

 

Box art from the HO set (3034), copied from Roco.

 

Rather dodgy early photocopy of the instruction sheet from the James Chase collection. 

Catalogue image, 1968/9.

From the same catalogue, the image (and box art?) for the "1:40"th set (5149), actually the same vaguely 1:35th of all the other versions which aren't reduced to HO/OO.

An instruction sheet I happen to have, and which may sort the question over some of my polystyrene samples, which seems to hint at an alternate box-art, closer to the Revell 'convoy ambush' artwork, of one of the larger sets. In fact, that's a clue as to Roco's being copies of Revell, as the Patton Figure was only in that large 4-kit set, he being the Sherman tank commander?!

 

That's it, just a box ticker!

I is for I read Comics!

I know, but we're all allowed a guilty pleasure! I mentioned the other day, I visited Forbidden Planet on my last visit to London, and while it always depresses me (I remember when it was 90% second-hand comics out of corrugated-card cartons, off bare floorboards round the corner, now, it's all shiny Kidult crap! But I managed to find three tomes this time - the last few visits I've left empty-handed!

 

I love these, I got the first volume of Legends of the Guard, as a Library sell-off a few years ago, so I was very pleased to find the second, on a yellow ticket (all three of these were in the 'bargain bin' shelves). To describe this is not easy, but if you imagine an illustrated Silmarillion, but written by mice, about an ancient mouse civilisation, you'd get the picture . . . s!

 

The original/core series (set as if in the present day of the mice) are written by David Petersen, but the various stories in Legends, are from the past of the mouse lands, and are told as tall-tales 'down the pub', with different artists invited to draw, 'ink' and/or letter the stories, which are just absolutely charming, and unlike a lot of my graphic-novel library, are as suitable for kid's as they are appealing to adult readers. If you haven't discovered the Mouse Guard yet, I recommend you do so!

 

This was a bit of fun, as it's a modern 'treatment' of the old movie, using all-new artwork based on the film, rather than the original cells or screen-shots, it was dirt cheap and took about 20 minutes to read from end to end, but the whole point of this kind of thing is the visuals, and they are sumptuous in this, capturing the original, perfectly. "Blue Meanies, Blue Meanies!"

 

I don't know if you are familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation, but this has a close connection to the previous, in that the Den segment of the 1981 Canadian animated movie Heavy Metal, was directed by a Yellow Submarine veteran, Jack Stokes!

 

I first encountered Den in Heavy Metal, the magazine, not the movie, and it's best to say the visuals beat a very confusing series of story arcs, and it helps if you read each story as a stand alone with some similarities to that which has come before, Den being the late Corben's 'Star Wars', going back to his early years, but with less control on timelines or character development!

 

This is the third in a series of [relatively] new collections of all the Den'i'verse, and I'm now looking for the others!

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!