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!

P is for Playplax Plastic Play Pieces by Patrick Rylands

This is one of those nostalgia hits for people of a certain age, as if you didn't have them yourselves, you knew someone who did! In our case we never had these, but various other friends did, and they tended to be kicking around, but didn't get that much play, as we were older, as friends, and these were leftovers from earlier childhood.

I can't remember the exact date of this Sunday-supplement cutting, or the title, but they were a batch from mostly 1969-74'ish. The toy had won it's designer a Duke of Edinburgh's Prize for Elegant Design in 1970, among a tranche of other toys he, the Patrick Rylands of the post's title, had designed for Trendon Toys. He would go on to work with Ambi Toys in Denmark, not in the Tags yet, but I think there is something in the files for the A-Z entries!

 

He was - and I believe remains - the youngest ever recipient of the award for which the citation, as published in the June edition of the Design Journal that year, reads;

 

"The Duke of Edinburgh's Prize for Elegant Design 1970 has been awarded to Patrick Rylands for a range of toys designed for Trendon Ltd. The judges were impressed by Mr Rylands's creative approach to the design of toys and by his sustained contribution to toy design in the development of this range. They particularly commended the abstract qualities of the toys, which encourage children to use their imagination and introduce them to ideas of structure, form, colour and balance.

The best known of Patrick Rylands's toys is Playplax and this illustrates all the features which the selection panel praised. Playplax consists of simple tubes and flat squares of transparent polystyrene slotted so that they can be constructed in a multitude of ways. Red, yellow, blue, green ond clear pieces are included in each set so that children learn about colour combinations while exploring the wide variety of constructions which can be achieved."

 

He had originally designed them in ceramics, which he read at University (Hull and the Royal Collage of Arts), before creating these for Trendon in ABS/Acrylic, which was quickly replaced with polystyrene. There's plenty more on the internet, under Patrick Rylands or PlayPlax!

My own memories of them are mixed, I did have a few plays, the friend's samples tended to have lots of broken and cracked pieces, it was, in fact, far too easy to break them, either by forcing, or just sliding them together or apart at slight angles, and equally - they cracked easily.

 

As you can see from this shot, they were also quite wobbly constructions, that needed a flat surface, and steady hands, if one was to produce anything lasting and/or memorable! And actually, they had a pretty limited spacial-geometry, the tubes being far better for constructing substantial things, than the plates, which tended to spread quickly in space, without producing much of practical application!

Colours varied over the years, or between sets, and the one thing you can say for them is that they were colourfully eye-catching, especially when new and shiny! One US licensor (or pirate?), added triangles at some point which you see on evilBay from time to time, but what would have really given the line 'legs' would have been square or triangular tubes, like the round ones, or . . . and why did nobody ever do it, small joining clips, which would have allowed for long, flat runs, or side-by-side mounting?

 

The stuff is apparently still made, by Portabello Games, in the original colours and the original factory, still polystyrene (still brittle!) but no further innovation since the 'flower' pieces were added, or, are they knock-offs?

Instruction sheets from the first two sets, I don't know when the flowers' hit, but it must have been quite late, as you don't often see them in feeBay lots? And they may be a piracy thing, but I do seem to remember some of our mates having them in the larger samples?

Where they come into their own however, is in futuristic settings, think: Logan's Run, Babarella, or some of the early alien city's in Dr. Who or Star Trek! Not to mention half the props in Blake's Seven! Here I've managed a garage for space car number five! But it is huge, and you still have a very low ceiling!

 

Slightly more success with a rocket tower, but the inspection platforms are breaking all the rules of Playplax, being half-set at an angle and not locked in! But not too shabby for what was basically an infant's hand/eye coordination, 'early learner' toy.

 

There were the inevitable knock-offs, here made for a US 'jobber' (The Toy house), in the British Crown Colony (should we call it the long-term lease, now?) of Hong Kong. Pluses were more colours or - at least - different shades, minus were that they sometimes had different dimensions which either made them looser, or more likely to jam and split/break the not so cheap UK production ones!

I is for Instant Gratification!

Probably the only time we will ever visit these, because the company has gone, the US parent also seems to have gone, the products are still out there in number, now China imports, and they are very definitely infant-fodder, indeed, the delay in getting them into Europe was the possibility of infants using them AS fodder and choking on a circus performer . . . Well, you would, wouldn't you, especially a whole one!

Originally the US company Instant Products line, at one time called Magic Grow, these were introduced to the UK and Europe at the London Toy Fair back in 2001, which I attended as One Inch Warrior magazine's 'roving reporter' (I think there were three of us, but I was specifically tasked with keeping my eye out for the small scale stuff), by a CCL, who seem to have been a phantom-brand for Europa Consultants UK?

 

Modern generic Chinese ones

The trick with them was they came in a gelatine capsule, like those bead-drugs, which was designed to melt in water, at which point the contents burst open with a florish and revealed very, very small, novelty bath sponges, about the right size for Action man to lather himself up!

 

My original five, as used in the subsequent show report, of little use to toy-soldier or model figure collectors, but nevertheless, if someone give you a freebie you owe them the courtesy of a mention, and thanks to Darnel Penrose (whom I hope went on to better things, with a better-lasting company!) for supplying the samples all those years ago!

 

An old evilBay image, you can see robots, a monster or two, a ghost and skeleton and teddy bear, among the more usual animals, dinosaurs and sea-life. I thought the over printed ones were interesting, I have memories of full sized novelty sponges over-printed with designs or slogans which would leave you with little bits of black or white print stuck to your skin after the bath, and which - as designs - only lasted a few bath times on the sponge!

 

And while the choking was a very real concern this side of the pond, resulting in packaging which was designed to be fully immersed without being opened, they were clearly slow to take off, and have now been totally replaced with this Chinese stuff, probably from the same factory/ies supplying the originals?

T is for Two - Freebies!

Except at £4, 5, or 6.99, these modern kid's periodicals aren't exactly cheap, so whatever they Sellotape to the cover is not entirely 'free', but it brings down the unit cost, and none more so than this rather generic mag' I found back in November - Everything Jungle!

Two stories and forty-four stickers, sort of explains why we are going extinct, doesn't it? Sort of explains why we aren't rioting in the streets over the 300,000+ excess deaths of our loved-ones in the last four years, why we aren't protesting outside No.10 about the closure of 700 libraries? When you compare Look & Learn, World of Wonder or Tell Me Why to what kids get given these days, it rather explains everything.

 

But let's not worry about that boring real-life stuff, we've got free toys! I'm not sure if you'd call the upper cat a Leotah, or a Cheepard, but comparison with the other big cats will eventually clear up that attempt at a lame joke, by forcing it into one bag or the other, and for either cat it's quite well decorated for a Chinese generic.

 

As is the tiger, 90% of all tigers ever, having being pretty poor in the decoration department, over the years (and I include all generations/materials of Britains in that damming statement), obviously Schleich/Papo it 'aint, but better than most, it is. A reasonable [baby - if they are in-scale] elephant makes up the trio.

But then they gave us these as well, Iwako style/rip-off, plug-together erasers, two parrots, and - more amazingly - two designs, bargain! Kennedy Enterprises go in the Tag list and everyone is happy . . . aren't they?

L is for Lego's Dirty Little Secret

One of the drums I keep beating, one of the windmills I will continue to tilt-at, is the theft by Lego of the Hilary Page design of the Kiddycraft Mini Bricks, a scaled down version of his pre-war self-locking bricks.

So - as we shall see in a second - when I saw this German language version of one of the first sets we had as kids, the stand-alone 'pre-fab' garage, I had to get it up here.

 

One of the 'excuses' Lego have used for the similarity of their product in recent years has been that they 'improved' the product with the addition of the rods and tubes at the centre-points between the studs, to 'jam' the bricks together, and as those huge propagandist tomes from Dorling Kindersly have had to address the plagiarism, that's the line that's been taken, to explain the fact that the one is a copy of the other!

But here we have a set, admittedly early, and European, yet manufactured some time after the brand had become popular outside Denmark, and sometime before they lost the court-case brought by Kiddycraft in the UK, in which the rods between the studs are absent. These are a direct copy of the UK bricks, with the exception of the weight-balanced door, and the two specialist receiving bricks, but by then Airfix had similar bricks in their Betta Builder!

 

So, when Jørgen Vig Knudstorp said in 2009 "On January 28, 1958 the LEGO (R) Group patented the LEGO (R) brick with its now well-known tubes inside..." He was being a bit disingenuous, as the Kiddycraft design was the one which had gone International in '56! What we have here, are Hilary Page's self-locking 'Kiddybricks', stolen by Ole Kirk Christensen and exploited by his son, Godtfred.

And the thing is, the later tubes/rods were an innovation, or 'novel addition', they did not change the outward appearance, nor the function of the bricks, very important in Patent Law. The very patents Lego would use for years against all-comers including Tyco, and it was not until the courts protected Mega Bloks, after these facts started to gain wider recognition, that things changed and some began to realise Lego are just another 'evil empire'!

The early products were made from cellulose-acetate, which tends to warp over time, and while you can use hot water or a hair-dryer to restore shape, there's often associated shrinkage, so the bricks and components no longer interact with others, or the modern product. Not a problem on Kiddycraft's original urea-formaldehyde bricks, nor Airfix's polystyrene or Blue Box's polyethylene ones.

 

Other Points

Apparently 'Award-winning' journalist Erin Blakemore writes "LEGO says Kiddicraft told the company it was fine to use the design, but in 1981 they formally bought the rights to Kiddicraft bricks from their inventor’s descendants.", and while the "but" is telling, she fails to mention that they had already, by that point, lost a UK court case and been fined a large amount of money (for the day), neither a fine nor a subsequent IP purchase would have been necessary, if they had that permission.

 

And they bought from Hestair-Kiddycraft (to save their arses), not the 'decendents', his widow had, by then, sold her stake in the Kiddycraft company to Hestair.

 

On the Brick Fetish (and other) website/s, the story is told that "Although Hilary and Oreline visited Ole and Godtfred in 1949, and perhaps, even left drawings and samples, Page was never aware that Lego produced a version of his brick.", yet while it is true Hilary (who would commit suicide a few years later) never knew the depth of the deception, not even Lego have ever claimed that there was a meeting. Indeed, with their mawkishly-sentimental animated history of the product (which you can find on YouTube), they claim he found the bricks (made - in the video - to resemble the much later Tri-Ang 'Pennybricks') at a trade fair.

The idea seems to come from a Daily Wail article by Adrian Lithgow, back in 1987, and the truth is likely that the trade-fair exhibitor, from which the bricks were stolen by Ole, was probably Hilary or someone from Kiddycraft?

 

While Miniland states "Along with the new [injection moulding] machine, Ole received several sample parts showing its capabilities. Among these were samples of a toy brick made by Injection Moulders, Ltd, of London. It was Hilary Fisher Page’s Kiddicraft brick. Interlego A.G. v. Tyco Industries [1989] 1 A.C. 217. During cross-examination, Godtfred indicated that He and Ole had received Kiddicraft samples, which served as the basis of the original Automatic Binding Brick.", ie, no trade fair, let alone no meeting?

 

However it happened, it was theft, straight-up, pure & simple thievery, piracy, plagiarism. 

Without the Star Wars franchise (which can't have been cheap), Lego would have gone under in 2004, and in producing figures with lightsabres and ray guns, not to mention 'star fighters', they broke their own golden 'no war toys' rule, except . . . they had already broken it with the knights & castles, the Wild West and the pirates & Red/Blue-coat soldiers, so, even within their own mythos, Lego are a bit crap!

And the above all matters; had they paid for a licence, Hilary Page may not have felt the need to kill himself (over something else), and yet, without a licence fee payable, they remain the most expensive bricks on the market, by a country mile!