F is for Follow-ups - Various, Old & New

A few follow-ups which have been accruing over the last few years, and an eclectic mix of bits enhancing older posts and a couple of more recent ones.

 

 

A couple more KUM pencil sharpeners, these being a small pistol, and a revolver with a drum magazine! We looked at KUM, with more relevance to the Blog's interests here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/search/label/KUM

 

While this is an advert for pre-printed bookplates, with an emphasis on Sci-Fi / Fantasy, there's also a more traditional, even 'monkish' design. Found on the Internet and credited to David O. Knuttunen, it's the back cover ad from IF (not Galaxy), October 1966, and enhances this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/04/b-is-for-bookplates-1-overview.html

 

BEM - Bug Eyed Monster, an acronym which has faded from favour!  

 

Meanwhile as a backup to the recent posts on Holly, Lik Be (LB) and the 'Gygax' monsters, on the left here is the copy of the Monster Manual, which I was using along with the later lever-arch file.

 

The other two, which came in at roughly the same time, are a fascinating book on the Tommy Gun rival to Action Man, made by Pedigree Toys, and it's surprising how much Tommy Gun stuff my brother and I had, thinking it was Palitoy-Hasbro, because most of our stuff tended to come from the Church fêtes and Jumble Sales of Heckfield and the surrounding environs, or the local tip (dump)!

 

While the other book is a useful history of Marx, an updated volume, I still don't have Vol.I in any version . . . it will turn-up, everything does! 

 

The Mechanoid bits in the smaller inset, came in a while back, and the two ladders are the real treasure, as none of mine had them, now two will be completed, and the radar disc will finish the green one, while a near complete one came-in recently, with nice turquoise legs - also needing a ladder!

 

Looking at them, I think I may have a couple more spares in the 'unknown ladder' drawer of my old multi-drawer cabinet! So when it all comes together I should have three complete, another one with two-each different coloured legs and the gold-accessories one still needing a ladder, along with a few bits - that's a fleet!

 

 

A couple of rather poor images of a set of the Marx copies, and a generic set of the same copies of Cherilea astronauts/spacemen, I actually managed to buy the foot-pump set, twice from the same seller, because I'd forgotten I'd bought the first one (generics from Italy), so we will look at them properly another day, but all three above adding to this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/03/e-is-for-expelling-few-myths.html

 

While this will add a bit to this post from two years ago

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/05/e-is-for-eggcellent-effigies.html

 

He's a Humpty I shot at Sandown Park this weekend just gone, is a lead-solid from Sacul, and has had the base repaired/replaced.

KUM is for Rotor Ship!

Very much a follow-up to this old post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-article-has-been-long-time-in.html

. . . and it's been ready to go for a while, but I hadn't got round to it, until I mentioned it in the previous post and thought, "Yep, nice bit of Dime Store tat for Christmas!".

So first-up are the two from storage, which I managed to dig out of the Garage and shoot in the autumn before all the heartache with Katie-cat and Mum, after which I sort of lost interest for a bit, the military one has lost two blades, but still looks the part and has the RAF roundel/National marking missing from my other khaki example. While the blue/white combo' is the one in Fairylite marked packaging.

 

All four 'on the tarmac', except it's now-five-and-a-half, as we shall see in a minute, no, it might be six-and-a-half, because I think I ended-up with the ACME one, but it went straight to storage.

 

I re-shot the Injection Moulders' (IM) Rota Ship's box again, it had a good outing last time, but what the hell! I love how the end folds down into a launching garage, which has all the graphics of a 1950's amusement at Coney Island!

 

And this is the rather tatty Fairylite box

 

But this is new, joining the fleet in February '21, according to the photo's! This is the Cheerio (UK) packaging of the same machine (all marked - REGD DES Nº  844987) from Thomas/ACME, and it goes one better than Injection Moulder's box-end, the whole box (less the bottom panel!) is an aircraft hangar!

 

It's more simply marked ACME HELICOPTER, suggesting it came via the Canadian parent of Cheerio, via Thomas/ACME themselves. The other two shots are from the Intermaweb-thingy, and show a really nice colour combination in grey/red and a lovely marbled-heliotrope one, rather ruined by the extremities, in a red which is from a different part of the colour-wheel and clashes!

 

Quick one, it can't have escaped your notice that after 15-years of rubbing along happily, someone has decided to competitive-blog against me? I haven't the faintest idea why, but he's been doing it for over a year, and he did stop responding to eMails a few years ago, his mucker didn't, but he did, and now his mucker seems to have joined-in anyway?

 

Anyway, I like to Blog my collection, and increasingly I have the archive to hand, or, at least about 14 meters of it (A4), there's a similar amount in the storage unit, and if I wholesale scanned that, the tag-list would take half-an-hour to scroll at full speed!

Now, in blogging, my collection or archive, along with submissions, I will use the occasional eBay or other image, to enhance a post, like this one, 90+% mine, but if I started using the stuff I've kept off the Internet, wholesale, as they do, we'd be here 'till 2525! And, apart from submissions, that's all they've got? eBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates and Google?

 

If they really think that it's a good idea, to start a war, now? I'm up for it, I'll start digging out all the stuff I tend to leave to them, or in the past have sent to them? Think about it. What is it about Christmas that brings out the worst in some people?

While this, this is the KUM! And it's the dog's bollocks! It's a W. Germany knock-off, of the Thomas/ACME gear-ratcheted helicopter with a truncated tail, and enlarged crew-compartment for the fitting of a pencil-sharpener! How cool is that? Too cool for cyclical flight-training school, that's how!

 

They might be planeings, but they're not helicopterings, are they! The shaving-compartment, which was missing off the one we saw earlier today, although that had the pencil-feed from the back. KUM have produced a wide range of novelty pencil-sharpeners, and could be worth a side-collection on their own. And this collage was made in April 2022, coincidence happens!

 

I loved it so much I shot it thrice! This is the 'half' referred-to above! Here posed with a combination of Atlantic Italian Air Force and Preiser Luftwaffe accessories! So there you go, yet more on the Thomas-ACME-IM-Fairylite-Cheerio-KUM et al (don't forget the French and Scandinavian versions!) helicopter!

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 8 - Transport

There was a lot of interesting traffic in Chris Smith's recent donation to the Blog, and in this penultimate post on the parcel's contents, that's what we're looking at, right now, as soon as I've loaded the photo's!

Mostly mini-cars, with four Kinder types at the bottom, a Blue Box Jaguar and a funny little kiddy-thing which might have carried a water-based paint pastille in a little tray (?), also Kinder, while the one at the top may be a cereal premium of some age?

 

Four of those educational supplies vehicles, one taxi and three racing cars, along with a soft polyethylene - probably Christmas Cracker - copy of the premium cars in brown, with a maroon original next to it, and another of the lesser version Formula One cars in front.

Below is a bicycle which I fear failed a battle against the mores of Postie! But they are clean cuts, and it'll go back together easily enough as it's polystyrene, although the cross handle-bar is missing. It's big too, occupying, probably. the same area as the three 'beetle' cars, so sort of 60mm compatible, and no sign of a base, so, roof-rack load from a Hong Kong big-box jobbie?

A Pair of modernish rack-toy fighters and a rubber-catapult glider, it's a long term goal to take them all outside and test them, as there are a few now, including the Hornby Battle Space one!

 

Marked W.Germany, this will be KUM, ooh-err missus! Still going, and nearly 100 years old (the firm, not the sharpener), and there's another in the queue. It's in need of new propellers, and is missing it's front/cockpit, which is detachable to empty the scrapings . . . sharpenings? Shavings. Planeings! And very unusual.

 

 

Two rack toy 'planes, sans cockpits and propellers, but useful spares against not having the type in/or the colour, if you know what I mean and plug-ins can be moved about for photo-seshes! The deck-plane is from Airfix's HMS Victorious I think, and should be a Sea Vixen, it'll be on Scalemates or Britmodeller I'm sure. The Concord was a Christmas cracker novelty, with a bomb and a rack-toy which looks like a Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, workhorse of the Vietnam war?

 

 

The orange gun is one of those things I keep forgetting, If I recall correctly, it's a smaller copy of an American piece from the dime-stor era, should be German (DOM Plastik?, but might be a sobre type thing, the attribution is in the archive, and may be on the Blog - somewhere?! While the little wooden one is probbaly homemade, but the red-ends have half a look of commercial 'meant' about them, so I don't know, it might be an erzgebirge Christmas tree-hanger?

Horse-drawn equipment includes my favourite, a Christmas cracker cart, body orientation corrected in the lower shot, a small wagon (mine cart?) from a play-set of some kind and a Blue Box canopy from the small scale copy of Crescent's Wild West pioneer wagon.

Military matters include the Hong Kong (and Speedwell) tank, a blue box motorcycle whos seen better days, but is polystyrene,, so modifiable, and off to the spares, a mini Humber truck and a wooden wheel which must be off something like out childhood staff-car, but it looks unplayed with, so must have been lost quite soon?

 

To their right are a bunch of the micro-vehicles which used to fill a blister in early rack-toys, as seen here passim, the blue one however is the cracker version with better wheels - a future post, there are three varients of A/C, two of the gun, only the one 'amphi-carrier'!

And finally - this lovely little thing from Hungary, it will have been from those mixed-content kiosk bags as we saw here a while ago from Vorsas Games, in fact something quite similar was illustrated on the header? Half-T34, half Jagdpanther, all cool!

A lovely thing to find in a parcel of free-stuff, from Chris and I thank him for it all, we will finish off with the Wild West in a day or two, but then the posting rate may drop off for a while, I pick up my new uniform tomorrow, then I'm off out, on the road for my sins!