K is for Kibri

This one's a bit of a box-ticker, compared to some of the others, and I've duplicated an image by scanning something already on the blog, but there you go, it's still quite interesting as Kibri (Kindler und Briel) have had three generations of figures.

Jon Attwood's loose sample is bigger than mine! But are they Kibri or Leyla, if you recall we looked at the Leyla issue here, and while they are always shown in the Kibri catalogues as fully painted, or fully decorated anyway, I don't know if that's how they were sold, as I've never seen the early Kibri packs/cards?

 

So they may well have just bought-in the Leyla figures wholesale? Or even. as the Leyla logo on those late cards is disguised as a station name-plate, just put a Kibri sticker over them? Or, did they obtain the Leyla intellectual property, upon the demise of Leyla?

 

This is from a Walther's catalogue, around the late 1990's I think, and shows what were shipped, or orderable from the 'States, via the Teminial Hobby Shop, being a B&W version of the old Kibri catalogue images.

While this is that Kibri catalogue imagery (the duplicate!), which I dealt with here a while ago, check the Kibri tag to find it and a very interesting petrol station! But it clearly shows two generations, the 'Leyla' sets, three seperate six-figure/item sets and one combining the first two, then three sets which look like the Roco, or Preiser sculpts, along with some animals, ditto - or even Merten for the animals?

More recently, the only animals in the catalogues have been these two sets of the same cows with different decoration. Having not handled them, I can't say much beyond that they are some kind of polymer and look like reasonable sculpts of modern dairy cattle.

 

The more recent Walther's (this one's the 2000 issue) show the final, third generation, which are the strange, slightly over-scale figures, which are more suited to the stylised models of architects or town-planners than a model railroad? Note also, more cow options, but I don't know the difference between the two B&W cow listings?

The 2000 Walther's N-gauge catalogue also has them, they must be so fiddly to glue-together, it could drive you to suicide, as heads smaller than pin's go flying across the workspace for the umpteenth time!

Jon's set, mine are browns rather than blue/yellow, and can be seen in both One Inch Warrior magazine and a more recent Plastic Warrior, which is lucky, if you subscribe . . . http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/. The most interesting thing about them is it's one of only a few examples of over-moulding in small scale, with the heads moulded in one colour and then hats/hair moulded in a contrasting colour, pale-blue and yellow in the above sample.

 

There have been one or two other examples of over-moulding here, the Gem for Culpitt's experiment with footballers springs to mind, but there was another I think?

Also from Kibri catalogues, no figures sadly, although there are some in the studio shot, but lovely buildings for wargaming or role-play. I have three or maybe four of the five, in storage, and one day we'll get them out and have a proper look at them, but they are still mint/sealed, with their distinctive Kibri blue-ends.

 

Eko, from Spain, the great pirates of other-people's figures, lifted some of the sculpts for their civilian set, but whether they were pirating Leyla or Kibri remains lost in the mists of time - I suspect the former?

A is for Archive - K is for Kindler . . . and Breil?

These two were among the papers in the James Chase Collection which went through Christie's and SAS over several sales about 14-years ago; they were taken from an unknown paper or Model Railroad magazine, probably from 1947-49'ish.

Is this the Kindler of Kindler und Briel (Kibri) the European model railway accessory company, there is a lot of railway stuff in the above shot (albeit O-gauge rather than Kibri's later HO and N) of the pre-war stock? I used to think not, now I'm sure he is.

Not many US factories were 'burned in war' except by accident, but a German one almost certainly would have been, maybe he's visiting the New York Toy Fair, or drumming-up some press-coverage at the 200 5th AvenueToy Building; the German outfit began their journey through toys  in 1895.

I'd kill for one of these lorries, obviously and only if I was 100% sure of getting away with the er . . . mercy killing (well . . . if they'd lost their truck!); there'd be no point in obtaining the wagon and then going to gaol! Looking at them, they are Mercedes trucks with an Allied star huh? I think this is Kibri's Mr Kindler?

I can't work out if their wheels are on the forecourt's surface, or if they are attached to some mechanism that maybe moves them round to each-other's place? Has anyone ever seen one of these, at auction maybe, or on feebleBay? And what happened to Mr.Kindler, when did he meet Mr Briel?

A is for Archive - K is for Kibri

Looking at a quick scan from the 1977-78 Kibri catalogue, it only has the one page of figures but is interesting nevertheless for being/showing the cross-over between earlier and later figure types.

 

The first three sets are the 20mm semi-flats (copied in Hong Kong) we saw here at Small Scale World a while ago, the fourth (6540) a combination of the first two - which may explain why there are more piracies of them than the poses in set 6530 - there were more available to find TO copy?

 

The next three sets (6545, -50 and -60) are true HO; 19mm figures, in sculpting similar to Preiser but in execution more like Roco - unpainted (or at least I think mine are unpainted; a light-sand or fawn styrene), while the two sets of animals appear to be fully painted in the style of Preiser or Merten.

 

They were of course all replaced by the funny little over-mould figures I sent to Plastic Warrior magazine's little brother; One Inch Warrior years ago and which re-appeared in PW itself a while ago. One way or another I think I have most of them, but before finding the carded set of semi-flats last year, and digging this out the other day, I hadn't made all the connections so they are in at least four different places.

 

Kibri's 1990 catalogues had workmen as good as current Preiser, with some of the vehicles listed at the back of the catalogue, which I may also have somewhere, so when I've dug them all out and brought them all together we'll have a proper 15/20 image look at them in depth, with the HK copies again; but all of them!