I bought this early British bath toy from Steve Vickers
(who I think trades under the same name on eBay), like divers or parachutists,
these small submarines are becoming a 'side-bar' collection of their own, and
as we've recently had a quick round-up/recap on them; if I don't show it now it
might be ages before it's seen again.
Totally unmarked and with a semi-transparent
upper hull/deck/conning-tower in what can only be called cherryaide-red, lower
hull in a charcoal grey-brown and photographed on a mirror to take advantage of
the flat bottom; I once saw the Indian Ocean - as far as the horizon - this
still, flat and mirror-like.
Adrian Little had put this aside for me,
it's about N-Gauge compatible (maybe a little bigger - 1:100th?), and is marked
nicely 'Lemco No. ML 75', all wheels
go round and I think Adrien thought it was Scandinavian (where there is a Lemeco copying larger die-casts), or might be? I can't
find anything about a Lemco or a Lem Co., so it may be a tool-engravers typo? But isn't it a dinky little
thing?
A bit of a cheat as three of them are
extant (in the collection) from one or two years ago!
As I started saying on Tuesday, Mike
Harding had sold me three, he thought last year, I think two years ago? Anyway,
I was chatting with him toward the end of the show and saw he had some more,
"You have some more Gem skateboarders!" I said,
because there's nothing like stating the obvious! "Yes..." he said, "...you
had a couple last year didn't you?" . . . "Three, I had three but wasn't it two years ago?..." I replied
- yes; this anecdote is in danger of becoming wheels within wheels and
disappearing up its own fundament!
"...But
you've got new colours?" I continued, and began wracking my brains to
remember which colours I already had, luckily I'd only looked at them a few
weeks earlier when I had the box out for something else (footballers and over-moulding
posts - proper discovery!), and I knew there were only two of the 'flame'
colours and couldn't picture the yellow as clearly - in my mind - as the green
so I took a punt on already having red, orange and green and I knew whichever
'flames' I had were in rainbow-sequence and yellow would lead to green which I
knew couldn't be the case - Heay, this is how Aspergics work!
Which all turned out to be good
guesstimation as he had the red, orange and green again, but I took the blue
and yellow . . . phew! Then, when I got home and started sorting through the
plunder; I found Trevor Rudkin's bag had
a very nice subdued fawn-coloured one which is an unusual polymer colour for
either Gem or Culpitt - I think, the whole leading to the above squadron-in-line
images!
This was in a little tub of stuff from
Adrian I think, and what interests me about it is that it looks a lot like
those US-Emenee-Transogram/UK-whoever Fairy Tale sets we looked at here.
Now having tentatively suggested there's
still one set to be found (which should contain Jack & Jill), the 'rule' with
those sets was 5/6 figures and an accessory or two. Jack and Jill are two, with
bucket and a well; you still only have four items, could he be a play-value,
make-weight from the missing set/s?
I'm not suggesting he is, his sculpting is
poorer in my opinion, but he is the same 20mm lump of PVC and something went in
the 8th set - if it existed . . . actually I AM suggesting it, I'm just not
committing. Nice addition to the collection anyway!
We've looked at this before, but in green,
it's the Raphael Lipkin ConquerorTank,
but in red. I've never seen one in red before and presume it must be a
'Ruskie'-red one from a two-sides play-set of some kind, maybe Pippin Toys?
The green ones turn-up more often and I'm
hoping to find an otherwise 'clean' one going dirt-cheap with a broken barrel
so I can cannibalize the running-gear, which - missing on this example - led to
it's also being very reasonably priced!
Presumably from a large vessel toy's deck,
I'm tempted to remove the locating/mounting spigot, but I know that if I do
I'll immediately see the parent toy on evilBay, missing it's deck-gun, going
for a song, but equally; if I don't remove it, I'll probably never find the
originator model! I have some large, deep plastic washers somewhere, if it
needs displaying in can sit in one of them!
What I like about it is the throwback to
early US pod-foot figures of the Barklay/Manoil
type, where a guy (often smaller than his set-mates) is posed operating
some huge artillery piece all by himself. I think It's an anti-Dalek ray-gun! Does anyone know offhand where it's from?
All good 'Stuff'!
