B is for Bunk House

I mentioned in the first part of the Wild West plunder from last month's Plastic Warrior show plunder posts, that I'd got a post in Picasa's 'long queue' on the subject of the orange log-cabins. In fact, it was down in 1971 with the rest of the RTM stuff, and as a fortuitous post elsewhere has just covered them in passing, we might as well have them now - it's nice when a plan comes together!

 

 

Three of the boxes I found in the garage, when I was sorting everything back in 2021-'23, and combining (or part combining!) garage and attic with bedroom stuff, and the large number of purchases I was making at the time (a story for another day).

 

With the heavy box being all the Skybirds and similar, while the middle one is just loose Greeks in sets and part sets, conforming to known runner ('sprue') layouts, but the other one is the 'small scale' log-cabin, in orange polyethylene, with about 12 complete and a dozen or so spares to which, two ends are obviously about to be added, in the above image!

 

I've used small-scale in inverted commas as it's only turned-up in sets with larger figures, but is ideal as a bunk house for 20-25mm US cavalry or ACW scenarios, although it can equally be used for a gold-rush trading post, or mine accommodation, even a Midwest, claim-stake shack. Josey Wales, turf roof, porch made out of barrels?

 

And it comes in various shades of orange, from a quite dark mandarin or Chinese Orange (my favourite shade of Windsor & Newton gouache!), through to a bright, almost international 'emergency' orange, with wishy-washy versions.

 

Now, Ed just added a set to his collection with one of the log cabins in it, ascribed to a Basic Line;

 

https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2026/08/basic-line-corp-f002-cowboys-and.html

 

While we saw a similar set contents from Pikit here;

 

https://smallscaleworld-n-o-p.blogspot.com/2023/08/moneyitem-limited-pikit-toys-limited-pt.html

 

Both with the very-poor 'final generation' of the Jean copy figures, also associated with Hong Kong Toy Exporters . . . 

 

1986 catalogue image courtesy of Bill B.

 

. . . where the contents are pretty-much the same; however, accessories differ between them slightly, so each jobber, whole-seller or importer had their own ideas about what constituted a 'Cowboy & Indian' set, or value for money - while remaining profitable, or just having sufficient playability?

 

 

These have been harvested from feebleBay over the years (both in 2021 as it happens!), and now we have the windmill (post on that, in this Blog's future!), and one of the Blue Box water-well clones, along with a copy of the Britains Hong Kong trapper canoe, in the upper set, which is otherwise a generic, there's an unreadable importers sticker (top right) and what appears to be an obliterated branding, from the original (?) artwork - top left.

 

But a fundamental difference is the figures which look to be second-generation Airfix 54mm copies? The first generation tend to the same cream/white as the Airfix origianals and can confuse newbies. And another set, has a common-enough wagon, also found in other sets of the era, the 1980's

 

You can also see (as I didn't expand on the photoshoot of the boxes, with anything as sensible as all the pieces, or an assembly!), that it has six parts, a rear, with two firing slots, a front with two windows and a door, two identical gable-ended short sides, also with two windows, and two identical roof pieces.

 

The four sides interlock, leaving the ragged corner of a log-cabin, while the roof sits on four blobby studs, which can rip off on more played-with examples. There are also similarities with a Wing Wah set we saw a while back, but hatchets have been buried there, so I won't link back, and no log-cabin, anyhoos.

 

 

The smaller, soft plastic version, seems to be based on the 1970's Star Toys 'blockhouse', which forms the corner of the hard polystyrene fort, with two deer-skulls over the gate, itself a copy of an earlier European fort, with four corner towers, possibly also sourced in HK, but I'm not going there, we're doing log cabins today, not forts, or windmills!

 

This, of course explains the firing loopholes in the rear wall, it's the outside of the fort's corner; however, it also highlights a flaw in the Star Toys fort - the Indians can force the two windows on the outer end! It also has a chimney, not reproduced in the smaller clone.

 

There is a third version, which, size wise, is between the Star and the generic, and while is otherwise the same as the smaller one (orange 'ethylene, four stud roof, no slots, interlocking corners), has painted highlights, the windows and door frame being painted blue, or red, I can't remember, but I do have a couple, so we can look them when we have a better look at the components, next time!

 

And returning to my boxful above, I tend to colour-match them, as I make up complete examples, but I've seen them with different shades together, so clearly there was a huge stock of them, possibly with one of the smaller family concerns in the Kowloon slums, with their single tool and a hand-pressed injector, and they were supplied to the end-users, bulk, in mixed shades? 

T is for Two - Four-Wheeled Wonders!

Between civil, military and space, there were lots of vehicles in the last lot of Sandown show plunder, but that's not such a surprise, given as how it started life as a train/die-cast show, those tables groaning under the weight of Furby 'plushies', Bratz dolls, Lego and Transformer stuff you see these days, are far more recent additions to the halls!

 

In its day, this must have been a common-enough pocket-money toy, as it's at least the third to be added to the stash I think, and while this isn't the best one, it comes with the driver, which previous examples were lacking, but which I probably have in the loose passenger/rider zone, so will hopefully now be able to properly crew the others with! It's a pretty-standard Poplar/Thomas PVC figure, but in white rubber, rather than the usual flesh/pink/brown tones; possibly to match the wheels he was shot with?

 

While this, Jean Höfler or Manurba (?) toy is another Mercer, and it could be the Mercer all the other plastic Mercers are copied from, but I don't think so, it's not even the best moulding out of all those US, French and Hong Kong ones we saw here at Small scale World, a while ago, so I suspect it's a copy too, from whichever was the better Mercer, one of the French ones, Schuco, Matchbox 'Yesteryears'?

 

I don't recognise the boy-logo, and Jean used a drum-logo, but the text is very much in the style of either maker. I've found the rest of the set on a locked foreign-language site, associated with the name Rosenberg, and have possibly ruled-out early Siku and Bruder?

D is for Don't Forget The Best Toy Soldier Show On Earth!

It's the 39th year - ignoring the hiatus of SARS-Covid19  - of the Plastic Warrior magazine's toy soldier show tomorrow, and I know for a fact a couple of new table holders have sorted out piles of new to market stuff, and other people have sorted out equally good stuff, so there's going to be lots of stuff! If you're looking for toy soldier stuff, you'll want to be there, you need to be there!

 

The next Twicker's match is first of June, so we should be safe from rugger-bugger's and there'll be plenty of parking. Gareth reported a rail replacement bus service to Whitton -

 

Replacement rail bus, Saturday.
If travelling on the train from London there is a bus service

from Feltham to Whitton

So worth setting out a bit earlier if that was your intended mode of ingress! All other details are on Brian Carrick's page - 

https://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.com/2024/05/plastic-warrior-show-2024.html

To get us in the mood, here's a few shots I found languishing in a folder in Picasa, taken at the 2018 show.

 

Vehicles.

 

 

Timpo and early British bits.

Gun-line!

Steve Weston's tables, he'd started packing-up.

I bought the chariot . . . the next year!

Elastolin fort and their 40mm figures.

Britains Herald & Deetail

 

Jean stagecoach and two East German sets

(Georg Blechschmidt KG or Friedhold Fischer KG,

I think it's GB figures in FF boxes?)
 

Hope you make it, I'll be there, and I shouldn't be, far too much, more serious stuff happening in real life, right now, but you can't keep an addict down!

P is for Plastic Toys!

The title of Bill Hanlon's excellent book on Dimestore Dreams of the '40s & '50s, and the core of this blog, no matter how much metal, wood, glass or card sneaks in! Alongside the military vehicles, which Mr Berke sent us the other day, was a plethora of civilian transport delights, most being of the 'dime store' variety, and this post is looking at the larger examples.

Left to right we have here, a 1911 Maxwell Roadster, a 1911 Daimler and a 1911 Renault, all made in Hong Kong, and my initial thought - given the leery colours - was Wilton's cake decorations, but they are different, so these may have just been pocket-money rack toys, like the ones we saw in a bit of a mini season a while back, but lovely additions to that particular oeuvre!

Two of the vehicles had been enhanced with 'ticker-tape' type-written graphics, which had seen better days, but with weathering/discolouring looked like a comercial exercise, until you realised one was a Marx tanker, the other a Dillon-Beck 'Wannatoy' utility/tool-locker truck, so I removed the remnants, which proved easy, as the glue was some water-based animal-stuff, like the old 'Gloy' pots at school!

 

There were actually a fair few Wannatoy or DB marked examples, including the boat and three 'rigid' trucks - we saw the artic's here, years ago! Indeed i think there were five different markings between the seven items. One of the spare cab/tractor-units had a different hitching mechanism/method, and I thought I might be looking for new trailers, but the aforementioned Hanlon book put me right.

 

I had seen the unmarked yellow bit, and decided it must be part of a construction vehicle or earthmover, but it turned out it's the other half of the 'new' Wannatoys cab design, but I'm still looking for the outer-end of the arm, for now it can do service as a tow-truck!

 

A lot of red, in the parcel, it has to be said! Three lovelies here, with a Renwal delivery van, we know it's a delivery van because it has DELIVERY written across the roof for police helicopters!

 

In the middle a Thomas Toys marked sedan, or at least I think it's called a sedan, in the UK it would be a 'family saloon car'! With a soft polyethylene dream to the right! I thought it might be a T-Bird and was googling with image-results by year '51, '52, '53 etc. . . and getting nowhere, before switching to Processed Plastic soft top, and finding it was a '56 Cadillac El Dorado, which I should have recognised, but I only drove the hard-top!

 

Stop me if I've bored you with this already, oh! You can't, it's a Blog . . . Hay-ho! Many years ago, like about 25, I worked for a stretch-limo' firm for a bit, actually ran into a childhood mate, but have since lost touch with him again!

 

Anyway, they were mostly shitty-old Lincoln Towncars from the 90's, ratted, sparking mother-boards you had to hold against the shocks with your spare hand to keep the gizmo's shining for the punters, awful things which had been hammered doing the LA-San Fran-Las Vegas triangle, 100's of thousands of miles. And in various liveries of silver, graphite, grey, white (weddings!) and two-tone.

But, there was one original 1960's 'Beatles & Stones', presidential Cadillac El Dorado ('68 I seem to recall), in black, with all leather, slightly stretched with a little B&W TV, and mahogany veneer bar, it only sat about six (some of those Lincoln's could hold 12 or 14 topless tarts!) in a small broken-U, but compared to the modern shit, it was one classy lady!

 

One summer evening I parked-up in the big Sainsbury's at Hatch Warren in Basingrad, while my fare did their function, and I went in for a snack and when I came out I had a crowd! She was lovely, and this little toy, albeit an earlier model, will remind me of her! She broke down as often as the others, though!

If you need a Limo', go to a reputable firm, with new cars and a landline, stay away from the local-press guys with their old cars, a mobile number and maybe a hosted webpage, you could spend half the night by the side of the motorway, or miss your flight, and you rarely get your money back!

This was funny, I'd literally mentioned it in passing a few days before it dropped on the porch, unannounced! It's the dairy boardgame, which was from Hasbro, and four players go around delivering milk, eggs and butter (I think) which fit over the different studs on the back! There was a green one in the parcel, but Royal Fail did their worst, and I have a bag of green bits waiting for a glueing session.

 

Some more polyethylene, the two to the left are in the style of all that German or Scandinavian vinyl, but in 'ethylene, and probably some similar infant/first/early-learning type thing, 1970's maybe? The tractor is lovely, marked Hong Kong, it is a direct copy of the Jean Höfler one which I have in military and civil types, so it will be nice to compare all three sometime.

While the sports car [muscle car!] is in a similar vein to the first two, I suspect enhanced with aftermarket or old leftover kit transfers, and while I would clean them off if I was sure, I'm not, and I'm even less sure about the blue paint, not obvious in the shot, but which runs around the lower quarter, and might/might not actually be factory-finish, so I wouldn't want to lift that at the same time?

Two of the little Pyro's, an Ideal 'aerodynamic' trailer (very 1950's), which is a fair lump of stable cellulose-acetate, a Banner road-grader, I think I have the military-green one somewhere (?) and a locomotive conductor's caboose from Lido Lines!

 

While this is a mystery, there's a feint USA mark under the right corner of the bonnet/hood, but no other markings, and it clearly had some interactive properties which are now half-missing, a hole in the rear only reveals that which is no longer there, while a sliding piston thing at the front has no obvious stop, trigger or function? I don't think it's dropping low enough to fit in a road-slot?

 

I suspect either a jump toy, with the trigger in another component (ramp or launch-mechanism), or a magnetic novelty with parts/a corresponding magnetic-wand missing? So any help tying this down to a maker or a set would be happily accepted!

 

And many thanks to Brian again, for this pile of brightly-coloured treasures!

P is for Peter's Plunder - Highlights 1

As I mentioned the other day, I don't tend to post-credit when geldt has crossed palms, but first, I know who gave me the contents of the bag, and second, I know they were cheapies, so we'll look at the highlights!

 

A couple of robo-dino-bots, similar to the pair of gift shop dragons carried by several branding's a few years (couple of decades?) ago, but still around, with the same black undercoat, heavy silver over-brushing and red eyes!

There's a post on these coming soon'ish I think, touristy horses, I spent years waiting for riders to appear, but it seems there weren't any, despite the Western/American saddlery?

 

Three American natives from Jean, the prone one is one of the slightly harder to find poses, but they are as common as Airfix readymades, on the continent, so it's all a bit relative!

 

Very strange manga/anime things with slightly animalistic faces, pre-pubescent teen bodies, angels wings, and a look of mischief about them! Possibly Wild Vibes Zombaes Forever dolls (some Netflix thing), but not the 8cm articulated action figures Google reveals, rather 54/60mm PVC solids - an earlier/capsule-toy line?

 

A bit infant'y, and probably going-on to charity, but they are fun if you like all this 'deforms' stuff, and marked-up to K&M/Wild Republic, so - box ticked! And the horses are less cartoony and could prove useful for spare mounts?

 

Kinder's Disney Fairies, I tried to get them to perform for the camera, but the petals kept falling out, or the fairies fell over, so, well, you get the idea, a similar set of 'Flower Fairies' has been issued recently as well!
 

Space! The lenticular goldfish-bowl-face is a new [to the collection] colour, the orange guy is Safari, I think the green one might be Ben Ten (and was another one who didn't want to stand up!), while the silver guy is an MPC copy, and the other two are mini-action figures from Hasbro, one a Star Wars 'Clone War' figure, the other possibly a GI Joe or something?

 

Loving the quirkiness of these, semi-flat, polyethylene, 'monochromatic' dinosaurs, what's not to like? The bases have channels in them which suggest they may attach to something else, but similar channels have been seen in other figures over the years (game playing pieces, IHC firefighters), so there may be a technical reason behind it.

 

More Kinder, and another fail to get a better display shot, but they are from several Barbie series I think, and as spares/to-be-sorted are a useful addition to my smaller sample. Oddly, several of them have pink knickers! But it's probably not that odd to a child and I'm just channelling the inherited residues of Edwardian uptightedness in the matter?

 

More Kinder (or Phidal in the case of the little blonde) capsule-type stuff.

More space! Seven of the LB (for Lik Be, of course!) astronauts, in their soft polyethylene iteration, probably the best surviving of the small scale versions, and posed with the Combex pencil sharpener. I've since learned there is a carpet-wheel version of the novelty, marked only 'B - 5 2 0'.