K is for Khaki Kattle-truck!

There is a tendency, particularly among cheaper toy makers, for military versions of civilian vehicles to be produced, by the simple expedient of manufacturing the civilian toy in military-coloured plastic, this third Jimson post covers one of those! And I should point out, yesterday's Land Rover was based on the Daktari one, not a clown/circus one!

 

These came with the Land Rover and futuristic Transporter/Tank combo', and while I don't think the figures have anything to do with the vehicles, I shot them with this one, just in case! They are high-grade piracies of the Matchbox American Infantry from 1974/75'ish.

 

Compared with the transporter's tractor-unit, the body is longer, and the stake-sided superstructure is held in place with the same clip used on the transporters. It would seem these late-cab toys are harder to find, so must have been made right at the end of Jimson's reign?

 

The mounting hole equates to the other position on the tractor-cab, which is the further-back one, not found on the first version, so clearly there was an attempt to mount some other bodies on the tractor, before the newer stretched-chassis was designed, as seen on the cattle-truck? The newer chassis, like the transporter cab-units, has no mark/number.

 

Badly damaged, but I was buying the lot for the Tank Transporter and Land Rover really, and, as I say, I don't think the figures belong with the set, but they might?!

K is for SS Kresge, Kids, Kmart and Super K!

Nearly history now, but the Australian operations continue as an independent enterprise, several stores outside CONUS are still going and a limited presence on an old Floridian site is still doing business. But back in the day, they were big!

 

Claimed by a Chemtoy Corp of Circero, Illinois, the set also states the contents are made in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and to anyone who's been following this stuff, clearly contains the products of the Lik Be Plastic & Metal Factory of the territory, but not carrying the LB logo on this occasion. It's then further branded to SSK, the short form logo of the earlier iteration of Kmart, - SS Kresge.

 

I said, in a post on other things (astronaut-spacemen I think) a while ago, that I had two farm sets to post, but don't seem to have got round to doing so yet, however, as one needs much editing before it goes first, of the pair, I thought I'd shift this out of Picasa as a warm-up!

 

How it arrived from the 'States!

 

 

After I had matched up glue marks and restored a bit of order!

 

A mix of three from the anthropomorphic animal band (bases marked with the LB hugging monster, as per the divers/fishermen/astronauts) and seven of what I call the cartoon 'Funimals', we also get five sections of the distinctive LB farm fencing, in two blisters, heat-welded and dated to 1971.

 

There is no relationship between the Key 1 code here and the British supermarket chain Keymarket, which, although having a similar logo, was not related to Kresge at all. The first supermarket locally was a Keymarket,, back in the late 1960's, it's now the - totally rebuilt - Sainsbury's site in Farnham, we would go there, very occasionally, to do a 'big shop', and it was a big deal!

K is for a King Does Not a Republic Make!

I bought this in the Phillis Tuckwell charity shop in Farnham on Tuesday, I have to say the Phillis Tuckwell shop in Farnham has some very, very, very smart stock, lots of old collectables, stamps and ephemera, white elephant, ceramics, fabrics and clothing, old toys (a tray of good condition Yesteryear's), I could have spent a fortune, but this was in the window, and while not cheap, is near perfect, so I settled on this.

 

For reasons, I WILL bore you with another day, this is how you are supposed to display a chess set for sales purposes, one of each piece in one colour and a pawn from the opposing side. The set is bone, not ivory, I do have an ivory set or two, and one day we'll have a mini season on chess sets, but for now, these happen to be in front of me!

 

Exquistely hand-made threads on all the base discs, and several sections of the Kings and Queens, I don't know if these are a Napoleonic POW's work, or something more commercial, or later? I suspect something a little more modern, as the joins are all tight, unlike earlier sets, where some threads can be quite loose. Suggesting the maker had a jig, if not a modern tap & die set?

 

You can tell it's bone, at a glance, none of the warmth of ivory, nor yellowing with age/handling, and clear striations in the material, along with some rough areas like this crown underside, all easy clues to it being bone rather than ivory.

 

The greatest variation is in the Pawns where some look visually quite different, simply by being a millimetre higher, or a little fatter or thinner, and I think one Castle (first image above) may be a replacement, but it's quite a good, sympathetic one, just a slightly shallower battlement/longer neck.

 

The black side was fully coloured before fiddling cleaned/wore the threads. I suspect the whole side has been 'enhanced' with a marker pen, and at some point I will give them an alcohol dip and rinse, to remove anything like that, and then either re-stain with old India ink, or rub melted boot-polish into them with an old toothbrush, and buff with a soft cloth! Nice find!

K is for Keycraft - Spring Fair, Earlier This Month

So, to the reason for clearing all the previous shots out of Picasa! This year they had a very big stand at Birmingham, and I shot a lot of stuff, the doing of which resulted in a useful conversation and the two free samples (squidgy mice and bendy astronaut) we've already looked at, a while ago, the posting of which led to Wood's juvenile reaction!

 

That spaceman for the last time, with some squeezy/stretchy Shuttles!

 

Stretch [Neil] Armstrong! He's transparent and filled with a clear liquid, which seems to have light-enhancing/magnifying properties, so you get maximum reflections off the glitter suspended in the filling, so he glistens like some universal god-head in a home-remake of 2001 - A Space Odyssey! He also comes in a purple shade.

 

Huge spiders, actuallu quite realistic red-Legged, bird-eating, Tarantulas, for when you want to make your mother hate you for a week, by coming up behind her at the sink and saying, "Look what I found, can I keep it!"

 

Those wooden robots are still in the inventory, and someone has folded some of these up so you can see how they fold and turn many ways.

 

The Hedgehog thing! Sqishies.

 

The golden fleece is still there!

 

Giant insects and another spider!

 

Squishy cats.

 

Smaller, but still large insects, with caterpillars.

 

The Dinosaur 'toob', they don't seem to have any others (farm, zoo, sea-life etc.)?

 

Bigger Dinosaurs.

 

The set we've seen here several times now, nice sculpts, with simple paint schemes which keeps them cheap. I'll try to get them all as I want to compare them with that WHSmith set from a few years ago, the poses are different, but the painting is similar, the eyes especially, and they may be two halves of a larger Chinese line?

 

Another line of medium-giant Insects!

 

New packaging or a third line? I think they're new?

 

Distribution point. I think the new Toyhouse in Basingrad has a two-sided one?

 

Butterfly inclusion-balls.

 

Giant slugs!

 

So, that's Keycraft properly represented on the Blog, and up-to-date on outstanding posts. I'll try to find the other Dinosaurs in the medium-sized set (there's only four illustrated on their website, and I've found at least eight different ones so far), and keep an eye on them, as they have had some cool stuff over the years, and will continue to, we hope!

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/

K is for Keycraft - Keycraft Fumfings

It wasn't the 2020 show report which got posted, it was a cross-reference to that spotted-dinosaur in the Tobar show report! These are the 2020 London pictures! And it clears up a few of the things already mentioned under the Keycraft Tag label!

 

Firstly, that the - illustrated on the box - yellow one was there in the stretchy monsters!

 

Note the mice (green box, top right) were already on the scene in 2020!

 

 

 

I obviously came close to posting the Keycraft report, as I'd scanned the catalogue for this image, if I recall correctly the catalogue was a vast tome rather like some of the old combined Hong Kong Toy Development Council ones. In the style of the mice, with holes in the 'moon' (very small asteroid!) for the stretchy astronauts to weave in and out of!

Likewise with Kittens and a ball of wool, Unicorns and a cloud.

 

Metallic stretchys, we've seen the similar dinosaurs (below) as part of the stash.

 

The rack-toys were also carried by Tobar, without the Fumfings addition to the card, it was in that guise we saw them here at Small Scale World previously, and as they may be in the stash, via Hawking's Bazaar in Basingrad or Camberley, before their demise?

 

Very-much in the vein of K&M (Wild Republic)'s toobs, these are cheapo-dino's from China, and are still in the inventory, indeed, I think they are in both forthcoming posts!

 

The Dinosaur balls and eggs! In point of fact, the balls are mixed animals, there is a post coming on these, as Henbrandt, from the 1990's, so we will be covering the whole 'inclusion' range in the fullness of time, although I think we did have a brief look at them back at the start of the blog, including digging a few out of their balls, to find they are teeny-tiny, even over their look in the balls, as the balls have a slightly magnifying effect on the models buried within!

 

Again, yellow, the obvious colour for the Smiley, was missing from the previous post, but is out there, I think I have one in the Bendy-toy tub, but a vintage one from the 1970's, not this chap? Along with the mini 'emoticon' one, from the capsule toy Brian Berke sent to the blog a few years ago.

 

Since obtained, Blogged and Tagged, with more images in the Parachute Toy page's queue! And seen in several brandings I think?

 

Those stretchy dinosaurs, I thought one set (the smaller ones on the right) was the same as the Henbrandt ones we looked at years ago, but I think they turned out to be subtly different poses. The slightly larger ones can be considered Keycraft / Fumfings originals, until they turn-up in other branding/s!

There's a possibility that the oddly-spelt Fumfings sub-brand, is as such, due to the fact that there was a previous Fun Things, which was part of the 1980'90's marketing of the small-scale Supreme/SP Toys stuff by the likes of Ackerman, Titan and co., in the researching of which, I seem to remember finding the name Fun things had been registered by a jewellers (?) by the 2010's?

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/