T is for Third-Party Theory?

Following on from the previous post this one is of interest, if only for further muddying the waters of Hong Kong's contribution to toy production in the 1960's and '70's, and illustrates how impossible it is to ever fully know the whole history of that former colonies activities, and therefore proof of an eternal hole in the history of toys . . . or novelties!

 

A quick reminder of the latest recruit to the stash, courtesy of Chris Smith, and I'm only reproducing it as - not collaged - it's easier to see that the polystyrene figure has been glued to a polystyrene sheet, so effectively it had to be cut out, or rather I suspect it was broken out, deliberately or in an accident is a moot point, but an accident would have more likely broken him off at the skate.

 

I suspect he was glued to something, probably with his lady friend, which would have looked like this . . . 

. . . pair of ne'er-do-well's from Toytown! These are more often encountered as stand-alone figurines, but were, I think, sold as cake decorations, but I'm not sure, and they are one of three sets of Noddy characters I know of in 'our scales', the other two being the smaller set of polystyrene figures from Marx and the Kellogg's from Crescent polyethylene cereal premiums.

 

You sometimes find these described as Marx too, and they may be, I don't know what licence relationship Swansea had with the Estate of Enid Blyton, but it would have been a Marx UK 'thing'. This set has about eight or ten characters, while the smaller one may extend to ten or twelve (we've seen one or two here, but there's better samples of both in the collection, against a future post or two). I've also seen them credited to Codeg I think?

But here they have been glued to a Happy Birthday decorated plastic plinth, and by whom and where may never be known. However, they are almost certainly a third party, buying-in the figures and the plinths, and marrying them together, with added paper stickers, to create more attractive pieces, which looks more substantial, and can therefore be priced at a higher rate than the cost of the components, when sold separately!

These were on feeBay a couple of years ago, and seem to suggest that the third party, or one of them (?), might have been based in the UK, because the Tom figure is clearly the Gemodels original in soft polyethylene, but if Culpitt were behind these novelty decorations, they could have sent UK produce to Hong Kong to have the work done, again - we'll probably never know?

But here we have artificial foliage, UK and HK figures in two polymers, and a wire/brush-fir in a wooden barrel, all added to the same plinths and given paper labels, one Birthday themed, the other a Christmas piece, neither requiring any creativity on the part of the cake-maker, just plonk the vignette on the icing!

And then I found these, adding to the chapter on KT, with an all-Irish line-up of novelties, where, again, the right-hand Leprechaun has been glued to a thermometer! On a similar base to the above, and obviously from the tourist trade, I have no idea whether these were from the Republic or Ulster, if one, I'd favour the former, but I dare say they were seen/available for purchase on both sides of the boarder?

 

Now firstly, we have two new sculpts to add to the KT listings, which have already enjoyed a bunch of these plinthed ones, mushrooms, a smaller astronaut and the larger Diddyman, but secondly, we can see the Leprechauns here are based with smaller, chunkier bases matching their stature, while the Irish Dancer has the finer steps to her base of the other figurines in the oeuvre?

 

And, in adding a thermometer to the already found pen-holder and pencil sharpeners, it means we may well be looking for sand-timers, letter racks, money-boxes, jewellery stands/music boxes and so on. And it may be that KT were behind the larger copy of their beefeater, even if not named on the HCF set?

 

I've also added the KT tag to a couple of the earlier 'unknown' figure posts, and in doing so, you can see how help from Chris Smith, Brian Wagstaff and Adrian Little has been invaluable in revealing the KT story, with links on the KT posts revealing Brian Berke helped with the old hollow-cast cowboys who also became pencil sharpeners! Many thanks to all of them.

F is for First Show of the Year - I

And so we all trekked-off to Sandown Park for the first show of 2024, a lovely day in the end, given it seems to have rained every other day since the beginning of February! I didn't buy much, but there are some nice bits among all the make-weights!

 

How cool is this? Adrian gave me this Fairylight magnetic-novelty at the end of the show, when I asked him what he had on it? We like cats here, and there's a surprising number of mice in the stash too; rubber, cartoon, Erzgebirge/wood, I think we saw some musician mice one time, so adding one of each, in the same box - bargain!

 

These are under embargo until they appear in the ongoing Railway figure posts!

 

Two early Wiking 'planes, I think we looked at a good one a few years back, these are missing bases and the wire hanger, along with their little clear acetate 'propeller sweeps', which clip over the nose-cones and can be replaced. Both dive-bombers/ground-attack types, a German Junkers Ju 87 'Stuka' and what I suspect is a Japanese Nakajima B5N'Kate' or, because the tail's not right, a Grumman TBF 'Avenger'?

An eclectic mix here, which, from the top left includes, a Linde premium buffalo/wisent type, a Barrat & Sons flocked cow, and an interesting use of the Impro tooling; an eraser-rubber version, with the full marking of the originals, also left on the brightly-coloured Imperial reissues.

Below them are two Vitacup animal premiums, one in a darker than normal ivory shade (which may only be a smoker's house jobbie?) and two Kellogg's premiums of Sooty characters, actually sweep and whatsit-cat . . . Googles frantically . . . Kipper! Kipper the cat.

And I'm sure most of you will recognise the Charbens circus elephant, it's easy to ID from this side!

 

A couple of cheap lots of smaller (35mm) flats, actually the upper lot are technically semi-flat, being a bit fatter, German troops painted as Fins, by the simple expedient of painting the flag Finnish! I'm not sure on the lower flats, but they do have base markings under the paint, which I shall address at some latter date, there is a fair bit of material to dig into on these.

And this was also a gift, Christian Hatley had mentioned them a while ago, and not recognising me with my Spring haircut, it took him a while to realise who I was, then gifted me this Diddy Man, who, I found when I got home, is another KT novelty figure! And there are probably at least three more to find, if they are aping the Cherilea ones?

F is for Follow-up's - Various Recent Things

Running over a few additional details, info or images of a few bits we've seen here in the last few weeks, no particular order or sense to it, just things I fancied doing extra/more/follow-up shots of!

The sports pencil top Chris sent, alongside one I had here of a boxer, we both think we've seen a football one, and it would be interesting to find out what others there were, as a set they probably went to at lest four sculpts?

 

The Hong Kong-marked KT figures I have here, about half of them went to storage a while ago, including the pen-stand thing which started the whole odyssey, so one day we'll look at them all together, as there are probably pencil-sharper and stand-alone versions of all of them, along with other novelties for some of them . . . I haven't found a sand-timer yet, but I'd happily put a tenner on one being found.

 

And the pencil sharpener version of the guardsman with its replacement figure. Luckily the old one just popped-off, but I had to do some careful knife-cleaning of one of the foot-studs on the replacement, who had a lump of his old stand still attached as that bubbly-glue patch stuff!

 

Also, while the damaged figure popped-off, he did leave one locating-stud rattling around inside, which I caught by well-glueing the hole with liquid-poly, and shaking it around, upside-down, until it sopped rattling, meaning it had got stuck to the glue . . . something to confuse future archaeologists!

 

That green Tatra figure from Chris, next to the two most common colours, although, these days, you see more and more of the red and blue too, but you can see just how green he is, under the gold-residue?

 

Following on from something in the comments, these are the athletes which have come-in over the last 18-months or so, we looked at them originally as mostly small scale here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-post.html

And revisited them more recently here, to look at the larger scale;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-is-for-athletes-vintage-plastic.html

so with this sort of quantity being added every year or so, when we return to them properly we should have a better idea about which sets/types had which poses, and are therefore, in the two or three seperate 'families' of piracy?

Remember I said I had another Morph, well here's Chris's donation, standing on himself! Too cool for art school! And the brown colour which Morph was made in (his later mate Chas was a neutral beige-gray), is the same brown everyone's Plasticine went after it had all been mixed together in the toy-box!

Plasticine Flash Mob!

 

Oh yes, TJF had such fun correcting my 'brain freeze' when I said they were from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, when they were from some Disney knock-off, but they were also from a different-again board game, and having found the four copies a while ago, I now have a slightly damaged Lost in Space original, also Remco, in yellow, with the missing figure, and 3 more board-game pieces to find we will return to these!

 

Left to right;

 

4x Homecast resin/3D-printed (?) copies of Remco - Lost in Space figures

1x Remco - Lost in Space original

1x Remco - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 3 - Ceremonial & Historicals

Part-the-third, of the plastic plunder posts from Chris Smith's most recent parcel, brings us to the ceremonial and historical section, Royal Fail or Parcelfarce did their worst with these, as you can see from the first image in the sequence!

To be fair to Postie, I suspect there wasn't much in the bag when it left East Anglia, and was being sent as a sample of . . . Malleable Mouldings? But, yeah, it arrived as so much dust and two legs!

 

Funnily enough, the first Malleable horse I got (still somewhere in the pile) was found in the car-park at SAS, off the old A4, or at least, embedded in the gravel/puddle at the bottom of the steel fire-escape! It was/is missing both back legs and a base, and while I've handled several of Adrian's over the years, and posibly shot them for the blog, I have yet to find a decent mounted figure by Malleable! It'll happen!

Initially thought to be Italian, these are 30mm polystyrene Hungarian Imperial, or 'Royal' Guards, and - obviously - the same colour scheme as those 30mm plug-together 'swoppets' both Chris and Peter Evans have donated to the blog in the past. Lovely little things!

 

While the British 'Royal Guards' of the Household Division include two nice Hong Kong copies of Crescent (seen here yesterday), but in a Hilco style! next to them, the chap with the herb-green base is a real treat, he's the Reamsa copy of herald, and I think he might have been Reamsa No.1?

 

I personally love the eraser guardsman in purple, he's that silicon rubber which really just smudges pencil, but they were 'novelties' first and erasers second, always, I feel? The key-ring guardsman seems to go with some of the Highland pipers, one of the Welsh ladies and probably the fisherman we saw the other day, while the KT is damaged and the Rocco guardsmen need glue!

 

Cake decorations and premiums, we've seen the AWI before, and the French Dragoon (?) is from that set of premiums which used to have one name but now have several in two sizes, with base differences and Kinder joining the mix!

 

A Crescent lead, and Blue Box sailors (Merten copies) signal a Hong Kong copy of Airfix trumpeter to deal with some French interloper (HaT Industries) while a rather legless Lord Flashheart courtesy of Skybirds, recovers from a night on the juice, in the Mess!

 

In discussion, we think maybe Brazilian for this horse, although he could equally be Argentine? Missing a rider who may send it to the Wild West section, I posted it here, as this post only had six images!

And Postie again! But they were all missing their tails already, so just samples, and while I don't know what colours of this Rocco guardsman I have, if I need a white sample, I'll have one, once I've glued a couple of heads back on!

 

Many thanks to Chris as always for all these, and even the broken stuff has its place, as place-fillers!

------------------------------------------

Added a few minutes later - I'd dropped some of the images in the Khaki soldier section!

 

It was looking at the damaged KT above and realising "Where are the other two?" that had me off looking in the other folders! Superb thing to get in the post without warning - two more boxed KT pencil sharpeners, and different boxing, both generic and serving the tourist trade, but aren't they lovely - I've already sorted the guardsman (forthcoming post) with a fully rifled replacement, so he's now a minter!

 

We saw him the other day, but he belonged here all along - the Blue Box Napoleon, which, with another figure in this parcel, get us closer to a complete pose-count, but we're still only half-way on the painted/chromed sets! Thanks again to Chris.

T is for Two - Alien Academic Accoutrements

Oh, we like a bit of novelty stationary and stuff here, whether it's WWI rulers from France, 'Erasersaurs', or pencil sharpeners, and in particular, recently, the KT-marked pencil sharpeners, and, related - very recently - the cake decoration astronaut, so we shouldn't be surprised to find more KT novelties . . . 

. . . even when they are a PVC-flat/Ethylene-cap combination, rather than the polystyrene of all the previous finds! Aren't they lovely? Over-sprayed with random blasts of transparent 'glass-paint' giving the soft vinyl a metallic sheen, the black cartoon outlines over-rolled.

 

Did they belong to cheap 'Biro's', or were the caps designed to be universal, they are a bit narrow for most writing implements, so the feeling is they were specific to something? But what? And are they 'Bots or humanoids . . . humanoid droids!

I present a new tongue-twister: A Human boy, called Floyd, annoyed a humanoid droid, named Boyd!

 

The clear K.T. mark, as seen on all previous examples with the distinct full-stops, and they are modelled after one type of cookie-cutter, with the detail raised as low walls on an otherwise flat slab of PVC. The googlie-eyes giving them a certain character, which paint, or raised black-lines wouldn't have!

 

We actually saw this guy (girl, hermaphrodite . . . insert crude joke about female couplings here, well, it's an Alien; it could be a polyp-reproducing hive-mind for all I know!) the other day on a comparison shot, but he obviously got shot a lot! A modern 'CHINA' pencil top, nothing else to say about him, out there still, probably, somewhere!

**********************************

31st Dec. 2023 - Shaun Hite over at Pod Stallions, quickly ID'd the pencil-tops as being characters from Robocon, a Japanese live-action 'Tokusatsu' children's TV comedy, from Toei, with the short fat chap being the eponymous and hapless Robocon, the silver one is his boss-creator/teacher-mentor called Gantsu Sensei I think, while the other might be RoboWaru? Images from a third party, if they are yours, and you want them removed, that's not a problem.

 

From the Mai Kee (MK (T)) catalogue, 1986, courtesy of Bill B

 

Shaun was looking for similar flats to his, and while they are the same as mine (flat yellow, black cartoon line 'walls', transparent red/green spray-wash patches), his are key-rings (with the same gold-anodised connecting ring) and represent characters from another set, possibly Anime, of the Transformer type, not Tokusatsu. So these tops were part of a larger line of items - note the sharks and dinosaurs.

I is for In Space No One Can Hear You Blow Out Your Candles!

Cake decorations, not rack-toys, but the price-points and ephemeral nature of the products are pretty similar, and as I say most years, a few days in, RTM isn't just for RT's! Wilton today, and their quite eclectic output of Space Toys over the years, and probably not all of them but the ones I've been made aware of.

 

These are all generics, in that the rocket also comes as a stand-alone cap-bomb, and while I think I have one now (might be on the Blog?), it wasn't here when this post started to take shape.

 

Likewise the MPC copies are pretty common, these seem to be not the best copies, but not the worst, and from the colours (which I like) may be the same ones issued in rack-toy bags by . . . errr . . . Payton? Someone like that!

While the Ajax-Archer copies seem to be the soft-plastic with paint, Hong Kong figures also issued as both rack toys and bagged parachute-toys, in which guise the later, unpainted mouldings, are quite common. But the helmets would seem to be unique to the Wilton issue copies?

I can't find these in the catalogues I have, so they must have been a short-lived item, if they were Wilton, I was told they were but can't find anything definitive, I believe there's a second pose, I only have the one at the moment, but note, on his back; the same KT in an oval cartouche, as the firm which issued all those statuettes and pencil sharpeners, stationary stands etc . . . we've been looking at here at Small Scale World in the last few years !

 

He (previous shots) may even (with his mate) have been the production versions of the two in this catalogue image, with the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) or lander, as I don't think I've seen these either? Revell scale-ups? Behind them is the Gemini craft with two larger scale astronauts.

 

Here's the three of them, what do you think, could he be contemporary with the other two, having replaced the 'mock-up' press figures, or am I still looking for three other astronauts? And the bigger guys served to ID others in the 'unknown seated pilots' zone! the KT is about 45mm (50 with the domed stand), the other two 60+mm

We have also looked at the loose candle-holder figures here, not that long ago, but there was a second set with a UFO and one each of the two figures, so Junior could have space-cakes until he was eight, on two purchases! Then, if he makes it, the nursing-home staff could get them out for his eightieth!

 

The collection, as it stands, minus my loose UFO figures. The catalogue image above seems to show a transparent red-nose, mine is a totally opaque, flat red. And I'm not sure if the figures are even in the bag? I think they're stuffed into the ship, but I can't check as it's gone to storage.

 

 

I think I nicked this off evilBay to remind us of the figures without opening (or having to find) my bagged set!

S is for Sharper & Sharper!

Really, an 'F is for Follow-up...' on pencil sharpeners, but as the collection of these 'KT' and related figural pieces grows, there's a sharpness there to the sample as a whole! And I've said before not every title works, but that was my thinking, and if I try to think of a better one, I'll lose interest and can-it for another few months!

 

 

I managed to acquire the guardsmen on a sharpener, confirming a previous suggestion that he was part of this set, so I get to use the 'Told You So' tag again, which annoys my 'eemies' and pleases me! Anyone out there in the hobby who thinks I'm going away hasn't smelt the coffee yet. Anyone out there who thinks I can be cowed hasn't been paying attention.

In all the follow-ups, contributions and acquisitions of these I forget what's what and what I've got, but suffice to say we saw the boxed one a while ago, and I've now found the pair of non-pencil sharpener dancers, just for completion, there may be a connection with Magneto (post forthcoming), and if Christian Hardy goes and looks it up he could be a day ahead of me instead of a day behind, I'd say the same to Mr. Ripoll but he's too busy clutching the monarch's shaft! I had no idea I was being followed that closely, here and elsewhere, by all these nonentities!

I've also picked-up both the Asian dancers previously supplied as images by Brian Wagstaff, so there's more completion there, and despite looking out for others, it seems to be the same ones which keep turning-up?

 

Likewise, the Indian girl, who we saw last time we looked at these (a straight lift of the Commonwealth sculpt), was needed as a physical entity, but she does suggest a cowboy might still be out there (on a round sharpener) in addition to those we've seen from 'W. Germany'.

 

 

Comparison of the bases revealed that the new guardsman has a slightly different sharpener with an opening in the 'wall' of the sharpener's case, at the far end. Probably only a batch/age of design thing, or a KT specific thing, the guardsman is the only KT-marled plug-in, but I'm not about to start looking for another version of each found so far! The other four additions are the unmarked ones, with the base and figure as a single moulding.

 

 

Finally, I saw these, and thought they were fun, some age to them; 1950's I'd imagine?

 

And for those who missed it, or have forgotten it, here's a link to a completely different subject, which I posted elsewhere yesterday, in all innocence to help a chap out - seems to have caused a ripple, in the lake of idiocy!

M is for Matters Arising

A few things which got a closer shot or a comparison of one sort or another as this year's show plunder was being put away . . .

A quickie comparison between the unknown cloaked fantasy figure on the left and a Dimensions for Children (DFC) cloak wearer on the right. The unknown one is more sci-fi than swords & sorcery though and I wonder if it might be from the large Toyco set which contains the solid copies of the Colourform space alien figures?

The pilots in close-up, the larger one is a patch above Zang to be honest, and like the better versions of the standing infantryman, has a much neater base, so I think definitely another maker, or a later second version?

Cleaned-up the Airfix bikes; but they're shot to bits! I needed two riders and I didn't have the cap-wearer, so they are useful, and two pairs of blue wheels will prove equally useful at some point in the future I'm sure. I suspect the 'cutter' was trying to make them look more like scramblers, and I may clean them-up by removing the stunted remains of the mud-guards and guard supports

Because they were both to hand as I was putting-away; comparison between the Cavendish (etc.) on the left, and the KT/Shackman et al, novelty plinth/pencil sharpener figure on the right. Cavendish is a stiff 'At Ease', the other is 'easy'!

I thought he'd gone up here already, but I got the left-hand figure a while ago, the one on the right - last Saturday (Sandown tomorrow!), they are the fourth Airfix non-beagle dog, so I now have all four which will go on the Airfix Blog's Bergan/Beton page shortly! I think it's meant to be a Springer Spaniel, which means they are all working/hunting dogs - Setter/Lurcher-Greyhound /Alsatian . . . or; farm dogs.

Three of these are from forthcoming posts on the latest donation from Chris Smith, one was here and five came-in on Saturday. Colour, shade, base marks, copies - the more we find, the more we discover we still had to find! Mostly ABC (or their tool) but there are others!

Two of the figures from PW's show needed the old hot water treatment to get them standing up, one also wasn't shot clearly the other day so I've re shot him here, I suspect another Argentinian figure (silver paint) but more original in the sculpt than the other five which were added to the pile last weekend.

The Jecsan circus (clairvoyant/soothsayer?) figure didn't really respond to the hot water, despite two pouring, straight from the kettle! She stands better, but not flat, the infantry man did much better but needed a jiggit pared-off first.

Well, the blue one didn't clean-up as well as I'd hoped, the black marks seem to be some kind of bituminous splashes which have stained the substrate, so I'm stuck with the 'new' faint ones but he is an improvement on a week-ago!

While the silver one did need a clean, it was only the flash than made him look cleaner, the two other colour ones however have cleaned-up to the point where the flash has rather washed them out! On the left a 5th which was hanging out in the 'TBS Space' tray, from Chris as well I think.

Not quite as nice as the other one, and more Romanesque than Greek (I've seen them online as 'guerrier Grec/Romain', so it's an acknowledged factor of the set), but still a lovely figure, this one has had his replacement weapon blobbed to his hand with glue, at the 'other end' I will drill the hand out as with the previous find.