L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown February - Vehicles

Two of the best pieces, which covered both vehicles and figures went straight to 1970 in Picasa and won't be seen until September, if I remember, but, if you've worked it out, they'll be well worth the wait! In the meantime, after a couple of quirt Sandown's in the second half of last year, I actually picked-up quite a bit the other week, and there were a fair few vehicles, several from Adrian, so many thanks to him as I got them cheap as chips!

 

This was the first thing I bought, from Alkwyn I think (?), during the 'car-boot' phase out on the terraces while everyone waits for the doors to open! What I loved about it, it's otherwise a pretty standard road-roller from Triang 'Minic', is the fact that it's a crossover piece with tin-plate body and plastic wheels, that the smaller details are turned-brass is just the icing on the cake!

 

A small sample of Hong Kong cars, unusual for being brittle polystyrene, less common for having metal axles, and, the more observant among you may have noticed, the same as four Chris Smith donated a while back; same colours but some different mouldings - an MG-type roadster and a drop-gate estate/station-wagon.

 

If I already have a few in the main collection, the three lots (or two - if I don't) make a better sample, and that's why I love this stuff - there's so much out there, finding it all takes an eon, and we don't get an eon, we only get an age - four-score-and-ten if we're lucky!

 

More conventional US-originating dime-store stuff, with one of 'those' cars (Banner version I think), at the back, and a similarly coloured one in the foreground which may be from another source/set (blocked-in windows), all have the simple moulded-on wheels.

 

I've had a knackered example of this in the stash for a while now, no trailer (which I didn't know about), missing the gun and steering wheel, possibly windscreenless too, so, it's nice to get a decent one, even if the box is a bit shot! Generic, or, if the HK in the shooting star is a brand-mark, related to all that ABC/CMV/HK piracy of Britains stuff we've looked at a few times here, over the years?

 

The trailer is pretty fictional, I don't know if it is based on any post-war camping/outdoors press-release, but google suggests they never actually got made/sold (too many ex-military trailers if you needed one, and fully-covered camper-trailer designs, for those who wanted to stay dry and relatively bear-free!), but one of the dimestore makers did one, and various rivals copied it, until Hong Kong picked up the design too!

 

Two Kellogg's Frosties Land-Speed record attempt cars, it was all the rage when I was a kid, I'm not sure Rochard Nobel/Andy Green's attempts have garnered the same place in public discourse, but it's a different age now, then it was all boys-own-annuals and cigarette cards, now it's the whole known universe on a hand-held device?

 

More here - they are all 'Campbell' cars!

The yellow one is more of a generic pocket-money job, probably German or French, or a Hong Kong copy of the same?

 

This is a step-up, in the world of dimestore vehicular modelling, he says in that faux-poshness he employs occasionally! Not marked, so, again, I hope it's in Hanlon's book, or somebody recognises it, the driver (not brilliantly shot) is a bit Pyro-like, but they didn't tend to this level of detail with the opening doors and boot? You feel Dick Tracy chased this down a canyon while someone shot at him, out of the back window!

 

Treats and treasures! The broken plane is a copy of the German premium/promotional we've seen before, so just for 'sample', while the red racer also seems to be a copy, of the yellow Rosedale we saw a few years ago, but this one is unmarked.

 

Behind them, two real veteran survivors, a carded Kleeware locomotive whisle, and what I've been told is a Poplar Plastic's novelty performing clown, but I'm not sure on the mark, and it may be a long-forgotten smaller maker? All four are polystyrene.

 

While this is definitely Poplar, it says so! Needs a good clean, what is it with ships, those MPC Minis from the James Chase collection had the same black smuts? Some sort of marine-subject only, polymer-loving mould! Bathrooms?

 

The red White's Scout Car seems to be an unmarked variant of the Gilmark, so possibly Bell? We saw a silver one in the Bell/Banner/Merit-related boxed set, along with a similarly red armoured car. So a mould-swap rather than a copy I feel, and it's on another Pyro-like piece, a fire appliance, missing its ladders?

 

The Silver Morris-nosed van is unmarked, as is the sports car, but while the van is hollow, the car has a matching maroon baseplate with engine/drive-train/axle details etched into it, I think it could be British, but I don't know?

 

Noreda; I think I have both vehicles already, but this was a new (to me) packaging, so in the stash it goes, in order that the A-Z will be that bit more complete when I get round to it! I need some thin (ship-in-a-bottle or crochet?) tools to hook the bucket back on to the lower arm!

 

The second carded item was this Raphael Lippkin train in the Pippin line, a bit of fun, and early'ish plastic, I think it's wheels would fit the plastic Playcraft infant train sets based on Brio, and later copied in Hong Kong.

 

The card will need to be straightened, at some point, and I think the gentlest way to do so, will be with a wood-frame and clamps, overnight, or for a few days?

H is for Hong Kong Hounds?

The reason I was digging out old images of Dorset hounds was because I was raiding the unused 'Dogs' folder, for the Hong Kong dog images, which tie-in to those Adrian gifted the Blog, a few weeks ago, and of which I mentioned at the time, a follow-up was in the queue, this is that follow-up!

However, first I'll raise a few points over this shot, which I took as a load of stuff headed-off to storage, back in 2021, and which were mostly - then - recent acquisitions, also including some of the attic stuff, but not the storage stuff from Berkshire, which was somewhere else!

 

Those starred in yellow are the Kellogg's premiums, issued more than once, and probably manufactured by Crescent, their other production for Kellogg's neatly bracketing the issues of these, but that is speculative, and the only point to note is the variations of caramel or butterscotch, one being a darker orange, the other a paler yellow. 

The five starred in white, however, raise several questions, not least who made them and how many sets are they from? The two boxer-dogs in creamy-white are most likely to be Marx, Swansea, the smaller (which I used to think might be a Bulldog, to the larger boxer, I know, legs are too long!) is a dead-ringer for the US/Hong Kong productions of Boxer dog, from several Marx sets, while the Pekinese also resembles the Marx version, but is not the same, while the short-tailed setter/spaniel type doesn't equate to any of Marx's as far as I can tell, and the Dachshund, smaller than the Kellogg's one, is, like the Peke', not exactly the same as the Marx one.

Obviously, Marx wouldn't issue two different sized Boxers in one set, while the lack of sculpt-similarities with the other three suggest three or more origins for the five, and any help from readers would be welcomed. I think the slightly smaller Corgi on the Cereal Offers page may go with some of these five?

Below them is five-of-six of the Airfix dogs, from their early days, fully covered on the Airfix Blog now, here (mostly toward the bottom of the post/page), these had slowly revealed themselves to the hobby, on these pages while I was in Fleet, but with the final one coming-in after this 'conversational' shot was taken - added below.

Below them are two of interest; the inner pair, one of which is a perfect scale-down of the Airfix fox-hound, the other - an Alsatian type - being little alike the Airfix sculpt. They may be Christmas cracker prizes? While the outer pair are from of the Hong Kong set, we saw the other day, and are about to look at fully below.

Quickly though, a reminder of the sixth Airfix sculpt, a Spaniel, seen before here, but clearing Picasa and getting all six together for only the second time, it is intended to shoot all six together, properly, in the not-to-distant future!

These cards seem to be aping another set of larger dogs, made in the US by Ajax (Blue Ribbon Canine Pals, as Joy Toy), and titled Blue Ribbon Kennel Club [now added at the end of this post], not to be confused with Marx's Blue Ribbon Dogs which are smaller, usually hard polystyrene and factory painted in Hong Kong.

 

The actual dogs are copies of Tim Mee and are reported to be slightly smaller. As I have no definite Tim Mee ones, I can only go on sight, and, well, they look alike, with the quality of the two sets being so similar as to suggest the tool may have made its way to Hong Kong?

 

And I say this, not to stoke controversy, but because a UK seller has a whole bunch of these, and I bought a set a while ago, and shot them before the six came in from Adrian They are lacking the caramel ones of the Hong Kong cards, but have additional black plastic examples*, and knowing there was Tim Mee European production, I wonder if these are in fact the Tim Mee versions, the colours - apart from the lack of caramel - are the same.

 

And, until I can compare them to the six from Adrian, the two I shot a while back, and any others in the stash  (and there WILL be more in the stash, there's a whole 'really useful box' just of domestic dogs, somewhere!), I can't say whether there's any size differential between any of them!

 

*To further confuse, Adrian's six includes black and caramel, along with two shades of the oxide-red!

 

A slightly washier white version of the Alsatian was kicking around at the time, so I managed to shoot a comparison with him and a duplicate Boxer. Whether they are all from the Tim Mee tool, or from two sets of moulds, they are not rare!

I can say there's a size differential here, though! The one on the left being a clear copy, probably from gum-ball capsule machines or, again; Christmas crackers, and I know there are plenty of these in the stash, we've seen a fair few here over the years, particularly sheepdogs, but others too.

 

The kind of Hong Kong sets the above yellow jobbie appeared in, they also tended to be found in the previously mentioned crackers and as capsule toys. Quality is usually pretty poor, with deformation, flash, miss-moulding or short shots getting past the - non-existent - quality control!

 

This is actually a better set, again there are probably a few in the main stash, and when everything is brought back together, we'll have a revisit of all this stuff, if I live long enough! I'm not sure who's sculpts they are copying, but they will be copying someone's!

As a full stop to the post, this strange combo' is a doll's clothes set from Germany, out of Hong Kong, and included is a charm-looped dog, very similar to the copies of Thomas's dogs, as we saw back here, and may very well be part of a larger set, catalogued by a Hong Kong producer for various end-users to chuck in crackers, gum-ball machines, or, indeed, doll's outfit sets!

 

There was a follow-up to the Thomas post, here.

 

As a 'Brucey Bonus', the Ajax dogs mentioned above, from old evilBay lots, you can see the similarities with the Hong Kong cards. These are much larger though, and one of the amusing things about researching toy dogs, is that Marx, Ajax and Kellogg's all did almost identical Poodle sculpts, which were then copied endlessly, and there are so many variations out there (also saw a few here once), from the huge blow-mould infant/beach toys down to direct copies!

I is for International Rescue

Shot these on Mercator Trading's stall at Sandown the other day, purely as eye-candy. we looked at them years ago, but they were sitting there, so why not? The character figures from Thunderbirds, who were added to the existing Ovni ('UFO') line from Comansi at some point.

 

Bones and the Boss are obvious, but as far as the brothers go, it's a case of what colour you paint the sash, I think! There may be some clues for the more dedicated aficionados, but I'm only a casual, childhood-nostalgia type fan!

Seen with a couple of the smaller cereal premiums from Kellogg's, which also got issued by Tom Smith in a set of Thunderbirds Christmas crackers. You can find them in a more stable polyethylene, but these are more of the soft PVC ones, which were kicking about in large numbers a few years ago, and tend to get squished in the pack.

Home painted, we have Bones and Lady Penelope, although different sizes, both sets get across the woodenness of puppets quite well I think? That's it, just box-ticking some eye-candy!

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?

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 7 - Military & Marine

A shorter post, I suspect because Chris himself specialises in 'khaki', modern combat, WWI, II etc . . . and will hang on to any interesting things in that vein, although he sends plenty of shots as well as these donations, so it's no whinge, just an explanation for the shortage of images, also, I shot them in groups . . . but I've added Marine subjects at the end to make up the numbers!

Small scale; the most interesting is probably the chap on the far left, who needs a paint-strip, but seems to be a Hong Kong copy of an Eko copy of Airfix's first series 8th Army, we've seen similar here, but not that pose I think, and the base is the giveaway!

 

The US marine pointing is also interesting, as he's not from the Aurora 'HO' sets, but is in the same style, might be AHM? Three from Redbox's Motormax (ex-Zyll), a Blue Box vehicle-mounted equipment operator, three commoner Airfix piracies, a Skybird and a kit figure (at the back) make up the company!

The big guy is marked C-P Inc, which/who, I believe, are a subdivision of US Toy? They who make the sets of ten in two colours (five of each) mostly civilian 54mm rubber figures. These are a very brittle (from new) polymer, of the Nylon/Propylene feel, and I have some others somewhere (among the first large scale figures I got), and equally damaged on the extremities, so early-to-mid-2000's, maybe the late 1990's?

The heat-shrinkage Lido-copy German from HK, is fun for being a 'new' pose, albeit, dying backwards, and the Monogram which looks like many other copies, is hard plastic against the copies usual polyethylene, so may be one of the shop-display figures which came out of those early kit-makers, as the painting has a casual, but practised 'factory' look about it?

A 'Bonux' FFL shaking his fist at someone, but unmarked, normally the unmarked ones are in brighter colours, not the Bonux olive-green, so I think he's a useful addition? Some Hong Kong to sort, more of those Naval looking hard-plastic vehicle/vessel crew, and the one on the left is a colour-variaton I think, while the one on the right is probably home-painted?

 

Three useful HK copies to be sorted into existing samples, another US truck-rider and a couple of more interesting figures, the sandy one modern'ish, the other part of the ever-expanding 'might be Pioneer for somebody else' oeuvre?

 

Pitrates! It's all you're getting, as I never know, at this time of year, with an empty or near empty Pirate Zone, what I may have for next year's ITLAPD, so they have all gone there, in order that I at last have a few shots for the Intro-post! What can you spot anyway?

 

Ships and vessels, two of the Hong Kong copies of Triang Minic's waterline battlefleet, a smaller one with added hull from another maker, a yacht which looks like it should be from a board-game, but wouldn't be very playable with that keel, so maybe a 'working' sink/bath-yacht from a Christmas cracker, or a real-water race game?

 

The tug is another Triang copy, the raft is a Manurba copy, yellow boat is a Kellogg's cereal premium, and a more recent take on the old baking soda novelty and the orange cruiser is a novelty candle-holder for cake-decorations!

 

Many thanks again to Chris Smith for all these lovelies, and if you keep scrolling past the gold-lamé nutcrackers, I added a couple of images to yesterday's Crescent/Kellogg's knights post.

K is for Knights in Armour, FREE! From Kellogg's

So, the other scan from Brian Berke in NY, I had hoped to shoot the set yesterday, but sadly my dealer-fixer/pusher-man (Mr John Begg!) failed me, but he had the missing archer, and between what he had, what I'd shot, and a quick paint-stripping last night, we can see the whole from the sum of its parts, because it's all a bit bitty, and was shot in several batches and collaged likewise, I'll load everything, in whatever order Blogger fancies, move Brian's image to the top and waffle down through them!

The advertisement - in Comet again, this time a full-page ad' rather than the quarter-page I cropped-out for the Guards the other day, while the Guards were simply unpainted Kellogg's-marked Crescent figures (as were the Robin Hood, natural 'enemies' to this set), in the case of these knights, they were presented to Kellogg's in new colours, a powder-blue and creamy/ivory off-white.

 

The Crescent originals (weird miss-mould/experimental (cake candle-holder?) figure to the left) were in a metallic silver, which could vary to the gold'ish hue on the right here, the left-hand figure being the common shade.

 

With the two shades of Kellogg's premiums being here, I guess, that while in the Crescent inventory/on the shop shelf, the Robin Hood could provide a good foil for the silver knights, Kellogg's wanted the scions of late-Empire to hone their belligerent aggressivity over the breakfast table, by providing two distinct 'sides'!

 

Note also the different plume on the blue guy, Crescent often show marked sculpt differences between cavities, which I guess makes them a little more collectable? We've seen similar differences with the American Indians, and with bases. Indeed, 'Bluey' has a smaller base too!

 

Three Kellogg's painted at home, the archer was one I didn't have here, and we see, under the paint, two creams and a blue. Some years ago, possibly actually nearly two decades ago, I posted the small scale (Giant et al) versions of the axe-man in One Inch Warrior magazine, with derivatives, and it's quite a common pose, with two from Airfix, and both Italeri/Zvezda and Accurate/Revell managing similar sculpts, one via Elastolin!

 

Two Crescent originals, also home repaints, if the Sheriff of Nott's is in the Robin Hood set, can we make the chap on the right King John, or Gwuidergisbourne? I jolly-well think we can; they're ours to do what we want with!

 

I had these four also home-painted, but necessity dictated they lost their paint yesterday evening, so in the self-seal jar they went with a slop of bleach, and . . . after a few dozen shakes, over a few hours, a quick scrub and some tooth-pick work, to get the silver residue out of the armour-plate's corners, later . . . four pristine Kellogg's medievals!

 

This chap was shot earlier in the month as my only blue example here, I'm sure I've a few more in storage, but I'm not sure if I have all of them, in either colour, or between both colours, they are not as common as the Guards, or the Robin Hood figures. 

 

So I think, one way or t'other, that's four of them in blue, five in cream and all six overall, with a few silver Crescents! Kellogg's also carried the Wild West from Crescent, but they were in the same colour (Indians) and some of the colours (Cowboys) of Crescent's own output, so it's only getting the base-mark, with these Knights, it's more interesting!

 

Thanks to Brian for the scan and the nudge, to John finding what he could at short notice, and letting me shoot them, and to Sainsbury's for fast acting bleach!

 

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Added the next day!

Apropos the comments below, the 'Crusader' axe-man has quite some company, in small scale; in the upper shot we have from the left -

 

Airfix Sheriff's man, Italeri/Zvezda (behind) Giant knight, Giant Mongol, Accurate/Revell (behind) and Airfix Ancient Briton.

 

and the lower shot is - 

Giant, Giant, post-Giant 'rock on a pole' copy, Airfix, Airfix, Accurate, Italeri, with the swordsman from Airfix's Ancient Britons missing from both shots, he's very similar to the Sheriff's man. Quality is poor as they are scans of old photographs. I suspect there will be an older 'first' version, maybe a Courney or one of the earlier French plastics, can you think of another candidate?

While I found this in the 'junk folders', I must get better at checking them, there's tons of stuff down there in Picasa's 1951! I think these were a 2013 shoot, and had probably come in with that year's Plastic Warrior show plunder, or the 'big-purchase' from Southsea, a year or two earlier, which really completed the first-lap of my other-scales collecting? Original paint, silver plastic, Crescent-marked. Note the 'cavity variation' in the half-moon of chain-mail over the crotch of the upper pair, much finer on the right-hand figure.

The irony is, I know I have several archers, yet he's ended-up the least represented in this post! Another one who's similar to an Airfix Sheriff's set pose.