B is for Big Bag

Just a quickie, another 'lucky bag' type thing, in the same vein as the two cornucopias we saw a while back (Christmas?), and with very similar contents of little use to military figure minded peeps such as yourselves, but, we buy this shit so you don't have to!

 

Courtesy of Hunter Price International, under the Toymania branding, I think I got this in The Works, it was back last August, but I think I've since seen it elsewhere as well? Asda carry Toymania, as do a couple of the Sub-Poundland discount stores.

 

Contents include a quite good sample of 18 standard novelties or party gifts, including light-up cars, bouncy-balls, a shaped slinky, maracas clackers/clappers, blow-ball balancer, 'helicopter', spinning tops, a couple of stretchies, a balancing bird, a disc 'baseball' firer, and two weird bookmark things? Clearly designed to keep two smaller people happy, without fighting over who has what.

 

The stretchy unicorn has a hole in its arse and can pass through itself?

 

Two-colour stretchy smiley.

 

The weird bookmark things? They seem to utilise memory-metal, to roll up or unroll, but why? I think I'm missing something in my old age; both space-themed, they would make useful bookmarks, but I suspect they have another function?

 

It's funny, but memory-metal, is a bit like 3D printing, apart from one or two esoteric medical applications, both technologies have been used primarily to make toys, novelties and other short-life, ephemeral crap! While I don't think Nano Carbon or Buckminster Fullerine have even had a decent application yet, beyond research and being talked about as the next big things . . . it's almost like we are running out of ideas, even as we keep having them, if you know what I mean, ceasing to strive for excellence and sliding back to an anti-democratic, belligerent, less enlightened 19th century mindset! 

 

The launcher of the 'helicopter' disc, they had a period of being 'UFO's didn't they?

 

That't it, might keep younger kids happy for an hour or so!

L is for Local Loot - 2 of 2

It looks like I might be picking-up two lots of donated loot at the BMSS show this Saturday, if I can swing my carcass out of bed, early enough, something I have been struggling with recently! So at some point I'll have to get back to a more regular posting, but with over a million hits since Christmas, the Blog seems to have reached a self-supporting momentum, based around it's existing content, which is nice, but may be one of the [subconscious] factors contributing to my lack of motivation? Never thought I'd accuse myself of sitting on my laurels! Anyway, in continuing the plan of some weeks ago - there was a second successful trip to charity shops at the start of the year . . .

 

A bag of bits, a bag of animals and a couple of Stegosaurii . . . Stegosauruses?

Before and after cleaning - three Galanite infant-toy vinyls from Sweden, the poorer brother of Tomte, Both in accuracy (although the BMC 1100/Mini is quite good), and the wheels, which are no way as nice as Tomte's, or even the cheap 'W.Germany' (Stelco, Vinylline) and Hong Kong (Miniflex?) clones which were around at the same time. But collectable nevertheless, and there's a tub of them all somewhere!

 

There was also these . . . they went to 'Recyche'!

 

I'm pretty sure these are from the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus sets, and will need to be compared to the others, there's a bigfull somewhere, to get the best samples in the 'master collection', then the others can be disposed off, probably to charity! They all suffer from paint loss due to play-handling.

 

I suspect these are Corgi too, I don't remember a Zebra, but the same Hong Kong identifiers, and lack of marking, suggest they go with the giraffes? Close to the Britains sculpt, they are also very close to the various Blue Box, Redbox, Holly and New Maries zebras, which I'm one day going to have to try and sort out!

Likewise, note-wise, these two yellow tigers, the white one being marked and probably Holly? Again, someone, someday is going to have to sit down with all the boxed, carded and bagged sets, any catalogue images and all the loose examples, and try and sort them all out and get them annotated correctly by plastic colour, paint, markings etc . . .

 

Britains Llama, Corgi Rhino; a later vinyl moulding, and the bear, which again, may be Corgi, it's quite common in mixed lots, and has a lot in common with both the Rhino and the Corgi Bull from the Lamborghini, so it may be another Corgi, but I'm not sure I have it listed?

 

Modern, Chinasaurs, two makes, both unknown, but we may have seen them in show-reports, or carded acquisitions/donations, all to be sorted another day!

 

 

 

I also picked up this for next-to-nothing, a couple of the figures are damaged, but they just join a growing sub-branch of the collection . . . Box in the recycling bin, and I kept a couple of the accessories, as a sample!

 

Popular movies or other licensed productions, TV, Comics &etc, produce a plethora of crap over a shortish period (unless they really take off like Star Wars or TMNT), and while there's a lot of Minions stuff around at the moment, in 30-years, they'll be more like Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite or Richard Scarry animals are now - half-forgotten, and "What was all the hype about?"!

C is for Clone Charlies, Charly Clones, Charly's Clones?

I muttered about clearing some of the capsule toy backlog, and while not strictly capsule toys, unless the Kinder variant, these are . . . were (!) in the same section of Picasa and can go first! Dulcop's line Super Charly and his cousins.

 

These are half-and-half mine and Internet scrapings, and in the order they joined the folder, some have been seen before, I think, in a show-plunder post, but it's a better overview!

 

A lot on evilBay back in '21, which I meant to bid on, but either didn't, or failed to win, I can't remember now. Obviously from Soviet-era Eastern Europe, and bilingual, is it Polish and Russian? Hungarian/Bulgarian? Out-and-out copies.

 

Also from Eastern Europe, this was a Sandown Park jobbie, I think, last year sometime, again, a straight-up copy of Dulcop's American Indians, and which kicked-off the next few comparison shots. He's lost a feather from his headdress, and a bow.

 

I first became aware of SMĚR, just after the 'Wall' came down, when they started shipping copies of old Viking ship models into the west, here, to the UK, via Pocketbond, but these would have probably remained something more domestic, in Czechoslovakia, whether they are now Czech or Slovakian, I have no idea!

 

Mine, on the left, possibly a Hong Kong copy, I think he's supposed to be a medic, I'm not sure why he has a walkie-talkie? Dulcop original US Cavalryman from feeBay on the right. The Eastern copies, both from SMĚR and the unknown packs, have button noses, Dulcop, Kinder and Hong Kong pirates have rounded m-noses, like little piggy-wigs!

 

The lot which I think we've seen before, these are the sub-scale Kinder, probably under licence from Dulcop, or somebody with a Dulcop licence like CGGC/Grisoni? Above shot shows six complete figures, below shot, the 'bits  pieces', but with a bag of bits in the old storage lot, there should be a future coming together of parts to make more 'wholes'!

 

Two Kinder, the SMĚR and a Dulcop sized figure, which I suspect is HK.

Note the SMĚR has more ovoid feet/shoes.

 

So I felt I should add some actual Dunlop examples, and grabbed these off feebleBay not that long ago, two larger boxed sets of cowboys and Indians, and a smaller single-figure window-box of a confederate soldier, with hidden horse and cactus, and illustrations of several others, foot & mounted, on the back. Accessories are mostly from the standard 54mm figure range.

C is for Colouring In!

Mentioning - as I did earlier - circa-1975 colouring books, this is dated 2024!

 

Note the rockets! I popped into McDonald's back in the spring, and found a bunch of these left on one of the tables, presumably some kid's party had been and gone, anyway, the girl cleaning the floor said I could have one if I wanted, so I did!

 

In my dotage I may even have a crack at it, but with proper pencils rather than the supplied set of four wax-crayons, (ham-fisted, for the use of), which bear a remarkable resemblance to those seen from Henbrandt in a previous post here at Small Scale World.

L is for Late Show Report - Mr. Potato Head!

Just a quickie, pulled from another post I wasn't going to have time for tonight, and which enables me to remind everyone it's Sandown Park tomorrow, be there, or . . . err . . . miss-out! I think this was in Brian C's bag, but it might have Been Peter E's or from Adrian, and it's a ton of fun!

 

The box is actually hanging together, and will need work at some point in the future, but I propped it against itself in a way that rendered it sufficiently photogenic for the purpose! Whoever didn't have this in a 1960-80's childhood definitely missed out, unless they got to play with a friend's set! It's only Mr. Potato Head! Or, at least, a Hong Kong copy of an iconic plaything which is still with us in various forms including some big-name versions, one of which now has a pathetic plastic potato?????

It's also missing some components, but there were enough (if you can ignore the lack of hands) for a passable Great Uncle Chitty! "We were verrh-verrh-drunk!" This is one of those things which were always going to appear here one day, purely on the 'figural' rule, but which I hadn't given much thought to due to the 'infant toy' caveat, however, there are often a body-part or two, in mixed junk lots, and they have been accruing in a tub somewhere.

 

So, with this set, it behoves me to track down a few more, and get to matching up (from plastic colour, spike style and size of parts) the spares, in order to do a better overview one day, which will be fun, as you can have Mr. (or Mrs.) banana head, onion head, brinjal head, and etcetera. While eschewing the plastic body with larger fruits and veg', can produce some quite weird constructs, although none quite as weird as Republican candidate's! Actually, looking at Chitty's hair, that's debatable!

Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile.

P is for Peterkin - 3 of 4 - Shelfies

If you happen to be within comfortable driving distance of Borden in Hampshire, there is a Peterkin motherlode to be mined in the big Farm Shop there (Malthouse and Osborne Farms, Country Market, Garden Centre, Farm Shop & Shopping Village), along with a lot of Siku and Maisto farm stuff! It's only ten-minutes up the road from Bird World too, or five minutes from the Monkey thing at Alice Holt!

The farm sets take up a fair bit of the shelf space, as farm is the main theme with all the stocked toys, at a Farm Shop! I did purchase some Peterkin (next post) but the bagged farm had very different contents/sculpts from the big tub (which was only £8.99, but I was feeling tight, and don't have the room right now), so they are obviously using different sources in China, for these sets.

Wild/zoo animals and dinosaurs again.

 

Both the farm and wild animals sets in these tubs share the quirk of the dinosaur sets in having the bulky, paint-decorated animals filled-out with smaller-scale 'monobloks' in bright colours of polymer, and all the animals seem to be PVC-types, but the scenic accessories are polyethylene or polypropylene?

And the medieval set was there.

These are the sets which have managed four previous mentions in the Tag List, not something for me, I think I called them Juvenilia last time! And when they have come in, in mixed lots, they have gone back to charity soon-enough, but someone may be interested (some of our fellow collectors chase Lego or Playmobil after all?), and they are figural, if a bit daft, so I shot them, and they are here now!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Introduction

So . . . Having some idea what was coming down the tracks toward me, Chris Smith actually sent me his 'next parcel', a week or two before Plastic Warrior's show, and in the end I pretty-much shot them altogether, the week after the show, which was three months ago now, so well over-due for Blogging, as they are sent, in part, for you to enjoy too!

 

The de rigueur shot now associated with these posts here at Small Scale World, of the amassed parachute toys/paratrooper figures, and this lot didn't disappoint, with what I think is a new size (or colour) of large blow-mould, a Brabo knock-off caricature and a possible new sculpt of blow-mould in the middle!

Keenly diving into the box (which I forgot to shoot in its entirety this time), and balancing piles of interesting bits on the back of the sofa! We'll be looking at it all again in the forthcoming posts.

More goodies in the bottom of the box . . . I'd run-out of perches to balance stuff on, and resorted to putting it all back in the box, until I'd cleared the table, a week or so later for the photo-session! What can you spot?

They did go back-in semi-sorted, in self-seal bags, some individually, some thematic, so they could be further sorted (and amalgamated with the PW show stuff) more quickly as they were all put away a week or so latter.

This was actually the 'photo-booth' at the flat, so I was rather stuck for backgrounds, once I'd started putting thematic piles on it - the need to feed the addiction take all self-control away! Here are the parachute toys, racing-cars, aeroplanes and others.

Bits and pieces, the camp-fires, hay/straw-bales and treasure/pirate chests are becoming sizable side collections, and at some point we will have posts on all three, the pink ice-cream sundae will be from some modern thing, Polly-Pocket like maybe, or a Lego knock-off? Shields and weapons have their own bags, while the pink wheel will go in the spares until ID'd/needed, it looks like a central wheel from a plastic aircraft toy, so could prove very useful, maybe years from now?

This is extraordinary, because I could swear we had this as kids, I mean, I know we had them (it was part of a set), but this actual one seems to have all the same warps and marks as the one I last saw in the late 1960's/early 1970's, I don't suppose it is, but . . . it all has to come around again, if it hasn't gone to landfill/incinerator?

 

If I recall correctly they were for drawing round, and then filling in with the minor details laid out as lines, and there was a sort of pale blue star with halo maybe, like the USAAF roundel of WWI/II, and a pushchair/baby-chair possibly, in pink? But they might be false memories created by seeing this after 50-odd years! Fun thing, and a nostalgia hit, for me!

Equally interesting, Chris doesn't make a habit of sending non-figure or figure-related stuff in his donations, but this was - upon inspection - an obvious inclusion, as not only is it plastic (our core interest here - he says, the day after a lead-article!), but it's marked Dibro! The same people who made the push-and-go 'space tank'/SPG?

Clearly they had a nice niche producing high-quality plastic novelties alongside the usual suspects of Kleeman/Tudor Rose/Lipkin, before Hong Kong's lower grade rip-offs took the market away - see also Cle, Siku et al! They are still going, unlike Tatra who have vanished during the lifetime of this Blog!.

The other standard shot these days is the assorted seated figures, all divorced from their plastic, tin-plate or die-cast vehicles, planes etc . . . and here's another nice sample, with the blue lad in the middle all-new I think, a pair of the Revell/Monogram GI's to be reunited with their Jeep at some point and a Tudor Rose dumper-driver!

 

A collective of Kinder, or Kinder-like; I'm not sure on the moped? A near complete pirate and the same torso in another colour, some kind of Sport Billy (?) athlete with press-on cardboard kit, another Samurai, to be stripped and matched-up with the other bits in a bag (or two) somewhere, and a Viking!

 

This was a lovely surprise, minor damage was what probably got him into the box for us, because whole, they are not cheap, it's World Cup Willie, from Marx, as a 'Rolykin', from the pig's bladder kicking competition held in 1966, which some of my compatriots spend a little too-much time reminiscing on!

 

What was left after I'd taken all the other, forthcoming, photographs! A Hong Kong knock-off of Manurba's minisub pilot, an infant toy figure who's a bit faded in the printing department and a Weetabix Puff-Kin!

As always it's impossible to sound grateful enough for these parcels Chris (and others) send the blog, but, believe me, I am very grateful, as many missing links, missing pieces of the bigger jigsaw and other interesting items appear in them, as if by magic! So thank you, Chris.

Y is for ♫♪♪♪ "You Spin Me Right Round, Injun', Right 'Round, Like a Ranch Raid, Right 'Round, 'Round-Round!" ♫♪♫

One of the best things I got at the recent (a month and a half ago already!) Plastic Warrior show in South West London was this spinning top, which Michael Mordant-Smith had found and saved for me, some of the riders had come loose, so I had to take it all apart and renovate it with a bit of glue and a duster, phases which I either forgot to photograph, or might have actually delated the photographs from!

Fully restored and put back together, there are no marks on it, not even in the hidden areas I could look at while it was all in pieces, but Google reveals similar tops by Chad Valley, Fuchs, LBZ/KSM (very similar handles and contents; trains, circus performers &etc), Schilling and RedBox, so there are a few out there!

 

Of course, the attraction was the little Native American Indians charging round the rancher's place a'whoopin' and a'yellin' their war cries, and a'firin' their ar'ers! Years of centrifugal charging had broken two off, at the horses fetlocks, and third came away as I was taking it apart, so once I'd matched them back with the hooves - still firmly glued to the tin-plate - I also gave the fourth a collar of glue on each ankle, to hopefully reinforce them through capillary-action?

 

Only the three poses, with a duplicate of the white one on the opposite side, they look a bit Comansi-like, but the horses are different, and I guess they would have been manufactured by some small, unsung, local plastics fabricator, commissioned to knock-up a small tool with the three poses and possibly, three horse cavities?

 

The first time I put it back together, I got the smaller gear-cog in the wrong place, and it wouldn't spin properly. As I had realised by that point, that I hadn't shot the earlier strip-down, or had lost the images, I took this shot of the parts, after glueing.

 

The lower dome and the spinning plate are tin, the two washers and the twisted-shaft, steel, everything else is in a polystyrene polymer.

Close-up of one of the riders after mending, the horse's feet are glued with dobs of PVA wood-glue, by the looks of it? Anyone recognise the origins of the horse or riders.

The central shaft goes through/is partially hidden by this rancher's hovel, with the shaft exiting the chimney! The main gear-wheel is under the raised plinth of the building.

 

Many thanks to Michael for saving this for me.

An hour later - Peter Evans has identified the horse pose as Dulcop along with two of the riders, the other (archer) being originally a Marx sculpt!