T is for ♫♪♪ "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines . . . " ♪♫♫

An odd one here, as reader Brian Berke sent me some images in relation to a post, a while ago, and I can't find the post, or whether I posted one of the images, since when I grabbed a few from Adrian's rummage tray, and as a result a post with 50/50 Brain's and my images!

 

Brian's group, with what I hope is a Sopwith Camel, if not it's probably a Spad? Brain was wondering if they were Johillco (John Hill & Co.), which they were, or are! And we have a pilot in leather overcoat, a rigger (in blue greatcoat) and a mechanic with a spanner, a rather large spanner, more suited to the bolts on a sub-soiling plough - I was going to say, sarcastically (having worked the bleeder, with two extension poles!), before realising that propellers and the drive-shaft behind them would probably have huge nuts - fnaar-fnaar!

Brian's above mine below, all marked COPYR for copyright, across the shoulders. The base colour is a known variant, and Joplin doesn't state it, but I suspect the green bases are earlier, the uniform-matching colour later, as a cost measure? And if you think my mechanic is looking thinner than Brian's . . . 

. . . it's because he is! If I'm right about the bases, then we can further deduce/assume, there was a re-jig/re-sculpt of the mechanic toward the end of the run? He could be a copy, of course? Those hollow-cast chaps did a lot of plagiarism! As well as a thinner head, he's looking forwards while the [earlier?] figure is looking up and to the left - toward 'his' pilot?

 

Many thanks to Brian for kicking this one off!

Z is for Zip O'Daly!

Apart from further appearances by Swift Morgan, who gets two outings, The New Spaceways Comic Annual also introduces another character, Zip O'Daly, which I suspect is meant to rhyme with O'Maly rather than Daily? And do you get it . . . Zip, Swift? Not sure about Dick Hardy though (first of this sequence of posts), that is more than accidental, I fear!

There's not much of interest in the strip beyond the Johillco/Cherilea ship again, looking more off-pat, then the one with the added wings the other day, while the 'prison ship' looks like two of Marx's clamshells glued together and placed on end!

X-300 is for Space Cruiser

The sister publication for Ed's Adventure Annual, was The New Spaceways Comic Annual Number 1, a slightly pretentious title as I don't believe there was ever a 'number two'! And, it too pulled heavily from existing toys for it's artwork, mostly hollow-cast, but the Pyro et al Spaceships were also referenced. I believe they were published the same year, 1954, but while The Adventure Annual seems to have run for some time (with title tweaks - Okay, for Boys, the Boys & Girls, &etc.), there was only the one 'Spaceways.

This is the cover of the annual, with the big beast it's lifting-from to the right; The X-300 Space Cruiser and probably my favourite of all the ships in the extended family of 'Dime-Store' sculpts.

 

You can see that the cover art has taken a wing and turned it into a powered tail, Tristar-like, while pulling the tail down to make two wings! The nose has also been sharpened and shortened, I wonder if they used the Combex sharpener!

Mine is missing its wheels, and while they do turn-up on evilBay occasionally, even ragged ones with no nose can cost a pretty penny, so for now I ignore the absence, it still sits 'right' on a flat surface! You can just see the Kleeware mark on this one, on the underside of the left wing - on the right here.

 

My tail-fin is also slightly truncated, the tip was lost long before it was mine, and I just cleaned-it up with a file to match the lower one, but I notice it's cut-short in some of the artwork below, so it must have been a common break/fault, present on the artist's bench-model too!

The Covers of The Adventure Annual use the same ship, but with no real changes, grounded on the left with a bunch of distinctly Johillco/Cherilea figures, and flying in formation with an X-100 Space Scout through some bloody dangerous manoeuvres courtesy of an X-200 Space Ranger!. Artist seems to be Denis McLouchlin

 

I should add that all these connections were first made in Plastic Warrior magazine a decade or two ago, and these [above] crops can be seen in context, via Moonbase Central here, thanks to Ed Berg's scans of the 'Swift Morgan' strip.

An older shot of mine, the line between the portholes isn't a crack, but rather the boundary line between two regions of the resin, flowing into the mould from different directions, and meeting, just as they begin to cool-off, producing a kiss rather than fully-melting into each other, the mark is called a weld-line or a knit-line, and it is commonest, or more-commonly found with metallic materials, due to the inclusions in the polymer making moulding harder to get just right.

Couple of hours later - I forgot the image inside the cover! Complete with another Johillco/Cherilea figure and the hollow-cast 'vending machine' robot!

Later Still - In the 1950's, future spaceships were going to be very easy to control!

In the early hours - Brian Berke sent his scan of the bookplate from 'Spaceways, which I had failed to scan (because it had been filled-in I think), which was daft as I could have used it to illustrate a point on the bookplate posts, at Easter - Doh! But there's the converted Cruiser again!

A is for Adventure Story for Boys

Actually, it should be 'L is for Lazy Post'! With Ed sending his scan's to Moonbase I need to clear some of my scans, before they post them and I end-up waiting a few years until the coast is clear, if you know what I mean!

 

So this is a story from Adventure Stories for Boys, nineteen fifty-something. I think it was the one with a helicopter on the cover, but it was in such a state that after I'd scanned the space stuff a year or so ago, it went in the recycling pile.

 

Notable for the use of a rocket which looks like the Hilco/Cherilea cast-lead one, and a ring/wheel space-station from central casting!

Annual's fly-leaf.

I think the artist might be Tony Bradman?

The metal model courtesy of the late Martin Hills, the book illustrator has added four fins and called it a 'Thunderbird', years before anyone had heard of Gerry Anderson; there's nothing new under the sun!

C is for Coronations . . . Don'cha Just Lov'em!

We're about to have another one you know! Hopefully the last, and yes, I know I did a couple of Royalist posts ten or twelve years ago, but I know now, what I didn't know then, or didn't fully understand!

Found in the garage yesterday and taken straight to storage, but I fired off a quick shot. Somehow I doubt there will be the same plethora of die-casts issued this time, and most of the issuers (some of whom reused tools from previous coronations - we had four or five (going on the stamp-faces) in less than fifty years!) have long gone, along with their tool-banks.

I think there are elements of Hill, Benbros, Britains and Lesney here? I'm tagging them all anyway! It's a whole box of metal, from the small-scale only collector-days!

H is for How They Come In - Medieval Knight Types

I've been buying more off of that evilBay during lockdown, and grabbed a mixed lot of medievals the other day, going spare, for one particular figure, but there were other items of interest in it and as they are a theme, we might as well have them as a post!

Cherilea 60mm, swoppets and solids, nothing terribly exciting, but the black-wash over bronze polymer swoppets were new to me and will be retained, while the yellow plug-ins will help with complete figure building - I have a bag (they're too big for tubs) of finished ones and a bag of detritus! Among the solids I think I like the pinky-maroon re-issue the most, he looks like he's been cast in 'boiled sweet'!

The other usable figures, it was the yellow 40mm from Cherilea I was after (previously seen here), but I have a base for the brown Kinder somewhere, who may turn-out to be a different colour to the one I've got?

The headless 1st version Cherilea will go in their spares tub and the Charbens (top left) is a hard plastic one, they used to be a bit of a mystery to me, they did, now (post PW's 'special' publication on the subject) I assume Prison Industries - Prindus?

Nothing else leaps-out, but they are all complete, which is more than can be said for the third 'third' . . .

. . . who have already gone to 'Recyce' for onward conversion to Solent P! This stuff isn't rare, so there's just no point keeping it in this state, unless you happen to be a converter who wants to work with such an awkward material - and that's not a dig, I have much admiration for those who produce workable figures from polyethylene!

M is for Military Mystery Men

I really, really, REALLY thought I'd posted these, in fact I thought I'd posted them more than once, but I can't find them anywhere on the blog (except a relatively recent distance shot, in a 'Forthcoming' post) under the correct tags (Comet, Eriksson, Spencer Smith and/or Timpo, nor 'Motorcycles'!), so without further ado; let's get'em up'ere!

I think I must have thought about posting them once or twice and written the blurb-bits in my head, leaving me with a false memory (or false memories!) of having posted them, when I hadn't?

Anyway, here they are and they are brittle, polystyrene 'kit' plastic, in a much darker colour than the flash has rendered them here! Most of the other images are truer to the eye, but not the last one (bottom) which was taken in the same circumstances as this one.

They are relatively unusual and an odd mix as we have a semi-flat running G.I., a fully-round kneeling firing Tommy Atkins and a very generic motorcyclist who's more civilian racing scrambler!

The sources are therefore as eclectic as the finished group and we'll go from the left in the previous image, which means the kneeling firer here first; he's taken from Timpo's WWII figure, and may well have been taken from the original hollow-cast rather than either of the later plastic issues we looked at here, they having copied they own hollow-cast moulding!

The running chap is taken from a common (and much used) pose/sculpt (or should that be sculpt-pose?) from the famous figure-sculptor Holgar Eriksson. Seen here compared with the diminutive Spencer Smith's, but also used by Comet-Authenticast, Comet-Gaeltec, SAE, Tradition and probably others, it can be - and is - many nations with head/webbing swaps, or the addition of a frock-coat and bi-corn hat, and the match illustrated isn't completely identical.

The third member of the 'set' which I had remembered as four (they've been in storage for a while) and may be more, it this motorcycle, again it seems to have been a common design back in the 1950's (or even late 1940's), predominantly for board-game pieces? Luckily I have found all three 'junk' lead and unknown Hollow-cast boxes in the garage!

You'll see the best match for the front-forks among the smaller trio, is the green one, but the head of the pink one is closer - they are very play-worn, very soft lead. A lack of fettling has led the larger red one to look like one of those Bisque imp-devils for cake-decorating, but closer study reveals several similar key-signatures . . . actually closer study suggests he is meant to be an Imp? Pointy ears?

Further I have a note to the effect that the trio are 'similar; to an Agasee home-casting mould (166? I've already put it away!), which is important for the rest of the narrative, and as I haven't found the Agasee catalogue yet and the red one has come in since, we may find it (Imp), or the plastic one, are actually closer to - or from - the Agasee mould?

Now known to be from Glevum Games 'Dirt Track Racing' game.

These were sent to the Blog by Chris Smith the other day (prompting the fruitless search for the originals on the Blog!), I think they are all polyethylene and we find, as the fall-out from the BR Moulds revelations in Plastic Warrior magazine gathers momentum, that there are lots of these figures out there, who have come, not only from that set of moulds, but from other, poured-metal or hollow-casting (?) sources.

Off the top of my head we have here an ex-Agasee bren-gunner based on the Hill/Johilco pose (inset - from Joplin's 'Big Book of Hollow Cast') of the same hollow-cast pose; another of the Eriksson runners, but this one with an apparently different base; landscaped and wearing the Authenticast 'ears' and a sling - but mine may be a short-shot version of the same tool, I don't think so though; more likely Chris's was the donor for my simplified cop-of-a-copy? While the MG gunner is ex-Britains too, I think, with that ammo-box sticking-out the side?

The point being made here is that a lot of the figures previously credited by some in the Old Guard to Hilco, Charbens or 'Early Cherilea' . . . err . . . aren't! They are in fact taken from either the newly discovered BR moulds, or home-casting moulds, or pirated from Hollow-cast figures/production, either by smaller commercial outfits, or industrious individuals/hobbyists.

The three (prone MG, rifleman and Kneeling GI) I put on the Khaki Infantry page (and sent to PW (issue 156) are now looking more likely to be Trojan than when I first suggested it, while the ex-Airfix para' almost certainly is, as Trojan probably helped themselves to a set of BR's moulds! To them it would have been investing petty-cash to write-off against tax . . . ?

The mould for Chris's Bren-gunner, it's a home-casting mold, but if jigged to fit a single-shot hand injection-moulder (as still used by Peter Cole at Replicants) it could produce a number of figures without distorting as the pressures built-up by such an appliance are no greater than the weight of a body on a bottle-jack, the trick is probably more to keep heaving until the extremities have formed, to prevent short-shot 'blob-ends', than to be releasing the pressure early to prevent damage to a solid-metal mould!

I believe some of these moulds were Zamak/Mazac alloy, so pretty tough, and while a modern six-second-cycle, fully automated injection-moulding machine would probably blow-them apart in less than a minute; that's not how they were done back in the day. Some however were softer whitemetal, and wouldn't last long before deformation? So, yes, it's in the Hill catalogue, but that doesn't make it Johillco.

I don't know if it's specifically an Agasee mould, and seem to remember being corrected last time I mentioned them as they were mostly importing someone else's moulds, but there were other mould-makers supplying home hobbyists (Gilbert and Schwarz spring to mind), often with variations of the same sculpts - the modern home-casters use the output to melt-down for new lead and few of them are in Joplin's big book - the 'BMSS & OTS guys' just don't rate them.

The bases of mine, there are no marks on mine, nor on Chris's, nor the commoner prone/kneeling figures, nor the guards and highlanders now attributed to BR, nor my funny little Highlander or that larger prone highlander and lifeguard we looked at a couple of years ago, nor the 'Trojan' paratrooper.

And don't think I'm attacking the Old Guard, they've always used the caveats of 'believed', 'thought', 'might' or 'could' be . . . assumed, presumed or 'seem to be', so arses were always covered, but it's clear there was much shenanigans going-on back in the 1950's-early '60's to produce all these more esoteric toy soldiers!

Thanks to Chris again for his images and for the second time this month - the more we know, the more we know we need to find out! That's five or six figures - new to the blog, new to the Internet (except evilBay!) and new (ish) to the hobby . . . oh, and thanks to John Begg and Steve Vickers for my three, which came to me from a fruit-box on a tailgate in a car-park back in 2009, some of my first large-scale purchases!

G is for Going . . . Going . . .!

A cheap segue to look at the Hilco space figures, but there you are; I'm clearly a manipulative bastard! No, I thought there were similarities between my broken unknown spaceman and the Hilco figures (although I think 'technically' these were/are the full "Johillco"?), not least that he's in the same state as most of them, who are getting increasingly brittle!

He is similar to one of the [Jo]Hilco figures, but probably only because both are channeling the100-odd-mm  Archer 'space' grenade-thrower (looks like a foam or Velcro lawn-dart!) pose. The picture on the right is from a series I took in 2012 and destined for a future post, the guy on the left has (at time of shooting) just had his weapon's tip glued back on . . . ohhh! Misses!

Because this is how I found them - for the second time in recent years! The kneeling guy was OK and the shooter just needed a little work on his . . . err . . . tool! But panic-central guy was in a hell of a state! The two yellow arrows show previous mends, and getting the left hand guy back together was exactly like working with chalk.

How they look now (March 30th), and they won't move until I've bought a box of cotton-wool, at which point the bubble-wrap will be replaced with a bed of the stuff, and a second layer will be placed over them, thick enough to hold them firm when the lid pushes it down, but not so wadded it breaks them again!

I shot these on Adrian's table at Sandown Park's toy fair (back in 2012), you can see the kneeling guys tend to survive (with care) and fifty-years from now he'll be the only pose in collectors' collections! But the waist of the robot is a definite weak-point.

I thought I had a robot, as I remembered gluing one (at the waist), but I think I must have mended some of JB's years ago. In the meantime I shot this guy when I posted all the robots a while ago, and as well as the comparison/group shots, I posed him separately (as I must have subconsciously known I didn't have him?), so we have four poses and a broken duplicate in the whole image.

I don't know how many there are altogether; the early PW guidebook (B&W editions) have a similar figure with a base which they think isn't from the set, while the full-colour edition has a very nice pre-production test-shot never released (which looks to be in a non-chalky, therefore, lasting polymer), along with a walking figure which takes the set-count to five?

Also, despite the Hilco/Johillco comments at the start I wonder if they were only ever Cherilea? Firstly; Cherilea are known for their early, chalky, explosively-brittle shite and secondly while these are from Johillco hollow-cast moulds, later, Cherilea also issued them in hollow-cast . . . looked at here, where a sixth pose is the crawling figure.

There are also two (Cherilea-only) monsters (a cata-slug and a running gecko-dragon thing) neither of which have I ever seen in plastic? However, I think I have seen the rocket and separate launch-ramp in plastic? Joplin adds a Buck Rogers Treen-type and a vending-bot, along with a seventh 'human' (the plastics are always painted as green 'Martians') spaceman holding a dumbbell aloft! Joplin believes the boxy-bot and 7th humanoid never went to Cherilea.

But it's not clear when the mould went to Cherilea, and what packaging any Hill plastics might have appeared in, but for Cherilea to issue them in late space boxes already printed for the hollow-cast figures seems sensible?

Wilfred Cherrington is credited with designing these, and it may be that - with or without permission (?) - he took the mould as part of his severance from Hill, which would make the plastic figures a Cherilea thing.

Summing up of the preceding text!

F is for Follow-up - Speedwell & Co - Walls, Sandbags and Rocks

I said the other day that I'd misplaced both the Speedwell 'master' tub and the spares bag . . .

. . . well, the spares bag is in the foreground here, the master-tub is to the right, the stuff we looked at the other day is mostly in the rear centre tub with the little walls in their own carded bag. Another bag of bits is to the left and the box - the missing bits all turned-up in - had a few other bits for this or the next Post, so the follow-up has come more rapidly than I imagined it would the other day!

The 'Speedwell' master-tubs contents, unlike other Speedwell scenics these are all unmarked, and further, in the catalogue used by Plastic Warrior magazine they are separately listed under farm and military groupings, but these all came together as - presumably - ex-shop stock with the ones in the spares bag, in two shades of red, but the same three mouldings in the darker maroon-red (were the three on the same tool?), the rest in a flat red.

The one bottom-centre, seems to be a doorway blocked with a hay-bale and along with the lapped-fence (middle-right) is unlisted, but as you can see; are both painted in the same pale-green and came in the same large, 'mint' batch.

Note - the church-door, broken gate/corner and hay-pile weren't in the [sizable] sample, so could they also be on a single mould-tool, not used the day my 'order' was made-up and shipped-out?

[And if anyone has swaps of those three, I have most of the others, mint to near mint in the bag of spares, happy to do a one-for-one swap - eMail me]

Contemporary offering from Timpo Toys, a two-part, plug-together, corner piece, which; judging from the number of small holes in it provides little or no protection for troops or sheltering civilians - cinder-blocks!

These are modern I think - a sort of stiff-but-bendy PVC type material, possibly 21st Century or Unimax? The two larger pieces are identical, they can be braced in either of two positions, either side (dotted lines) to make a verity of ruins or a single piece, the sandbag emplacements are the same - slightly-bendy - stuff.

We looked at two of these the other week, and I said they couldn't be Speedwell because of the loopholes, well, the Speedwell is on the right (upper image), and a copy has turned up, I've pencilled Trojan in as it's too glossy for the chalky production of Kentoy or UNA/VP, but could be any of them or someone else?

Along with the Charbens (really a dry-stone wall, but with loop-holes) another two smooth-backed copies have also turned-up, both with a gloss-green grass highlight in paint. And; to be honest, they both look like they were made yesterday in China! I'm not sugegsting they were, the other one (top centre) looks 'Early British' production - but they are very clean, and presumably also ex-shop stock, or very un-played-with?

Hillco shell-crater on the left, unknown pile of rocks on the right, might be Gemodels, but not known to be, and the sort of thing all sort of people would throw in a window-boxed set for visual effect?

Likewise this; the clue here, such as it is, is the little ears either side of the main product moulding, which would have either located in slots in the card base of a boxed-set, or have been used to tie-down, with thread or elastic. Some Charbens pieces have similar 'ears' but they are less obvious or geometrical?