M is for More Balls - Bouncy Balls!

A bit of an image dump today, as we roll-up, on the balls! The first tranche are quite low-res, but illustrate a few points about how this stuff reaches the stores, while the others just show what's out there, often in the few remaining, smaller, independent Toy Shops, often in smarter towns (Farnham!) or the up-market or 'nice'  areas of larger conurbations. These are also exactly the kind of novelty you'll find in Gift Shops and Garden Centres.

 

I can't remember the company's name, but this was an online, trade catalogue for one of the Chinese factories, I think they might have been called Superball, rather unimaginatively, but here we have Wild Animals on the left, Farm/Domestic on the right.

 

Guinea Pigs & Otters!

 

Panda's and Dinosaurs, and, not those carried by Keycraft Global.

 

On the left Fishes, with a few cetaceans and penguins mixed in, on the right the set which Henbrandt obviously carried all those years ago, with plain, 'slush' and iceberg balls, and a crab?

 

While these last two are larger mixes, with fish predominating in the first set, and turtles/crabs (bottom feaders, shore/beach dwellers?) the second, but with cetaceans, sharks, fish and the odd polar animal mixed in. The point being that you (Henbrandt, Keycraft, Playwrite, Ravensden . . . whoever) go to the Chinese manufacture, and get a tailored selection, which suits the needs of your perceived customer base, budget or forecast trends.

 

The Playwrite (WH Corneilius - WHC/Success) catalogue from a similar time (2006), showing that they were carrying animal faces and insects, in addition to the more obvious stuff, as seen above. This, and the next two images, should enlarge properly.

 

Ravensden catalogue from the same era (2010's/20-teens), also has a full range of subjects, including some familiar looking ones, either from the recent, previous posts, or from the trade images above. And between them all, there must be a couple-of-hundred of these incredibly small sculpts, most of which are quite well done, and nicely decorated, down to species/subspecies identification, in some cases.

It's worth noting most of the above are either clear/tinted-transparent balls, or the bi-coloured, half-opaque ones, there are few of the background discs which were a feature of most of the Henbrandt imports. There are a few more in the last post of this series.

M is for Medieval Plunder

Back last May, I shot back over to Basingstoke House to shoot a few things I didn't shoot when I was there previously (2014, published here 2017 - ACW Tag), and I thought I'd check out the gift shop at the same time - here's m'plunder!

 

Poured resin suit-of-armour pen/biro, he'll get the same treatment as that regency lady a few years ago, and be cut flat and based, one day! While the medieval princess is from Papo, and actually a Queen!

 

Modern Westair, they've pretty-much phased-out the old Peltro sculpts now, and issue their own figures in a softer whitemetal, I grabbed Willy Wavelance and Queen Bess, and what I thought was one of the others, in poor light, only to find it was a duplicate playwright! But from the card we can see I'm looking for a Damien Lewis and Sir Francis of the Duck Pond!

 

A fun little activity sheet for the kids gives me two card flats, for that side-bar. You obviously bend the lances after cutting and glueing, and charge them at each other, down the tilts!

M is for Master Figure

This is an odd one, it's 'believed to be', so not 100% accurate, which is not the best start, but it is a lovely figure, which deserves a horse, and painting, but if it is a Master Figure, it should really be left alone, however, I can't find it in any of the HM of GB catalogues, flyers or colour post-card type things I have in the archive, so . . . Can anyone confirm this as an HM of GB sculpt?

 

There are three parts, an ornate sword in sheath, a head & torso and legs/saddlery, and I think -from the jacket/frock coat - that he's from the Indian Raj period, but he could be a Janissary or Marmaluke? Although I don't think HM were noted for the latter periods, but they did cover the Egyptian campaigns, and a Jubilee procession?

 

The two halves assembled.

Believed to be sculpted by a Nigel Farnhill, for HM of GB, it's fashioned from a hard material, possibly the two-part epoxy, neutral grey, Milliput, with hints of a wire armature, in addition to the locating pin.

 

Was he an extension, or planned extension, to the On Foreign Service range, or something more Delhi Durbar related? If anyone can add anything to this less than informative post, that would be great, maybe the sculptor's right, but the figure ended-up in another brand's range?

M is for Musings on Mini Mecha's

One of the problems with researching or collecting 'Kinder' (inverted commas used for a reason), is that, firstly they have been mythologised, especially by the more fastidious German collectors, to the point it's not even clear if they were the first company to the genre?

 

William Salice, who along with Michele Ferrero has been credited with 'inventing' the eggs, stated before his death that he was merely the "material executor" - 'exploitation' being an acceptable way for companies to find a way around intellectual property rights, on existing designs, but more especially, on existing ideas.

 

Secondly, they carried a lot of stuff which was either pre-existing as mini-novelties (like the Mattel 'Zowees', from Hot Wheels, which had been issued in 1972 (the first Kinder Surprise eggs were '74), and already carried as a Shell Petroleum premium/giveaway), or which was, on the little accompanying paper sheets, branded to someone else, often someone (like Marajà) who had their own capsule-eggs at some point.

 

The subject of today's post is a perfect case in point, as they are considered Kinder by those overly-intense collectors, yet are usually accompanied by Menotti Giocatolli papers, and still seem to be out there somewhere. So I'm going to try and put them in a sort of order-of-evolution, without the narrative having much weight!

 

Possibly the first iteration, maker/issuer unknown, but many of these humanoid figurals were issued back in the 1970's and early-mid 1980's, these were probably branded to Menotti Giocatolli, at the time of issue, if only because of what follows.

 

First they were robotised!

 

Then Centaur'ed

 

Definitely Menotti Giocatolli, someone has given them robotic torsos, a robot horse body, and angelic, mechanical wings, which one suspects are death dealing, they would have been in my toy universe, the alternative would have been too 'girly'!

 

Still with Menotti Giocatolli, and someone has said "Lets give the robot horses, robot horse-heads with a saddle for a full robot, who can dismount and act independently of the horse" . . . "Make it so", said the design department!

 

And it is in that iteration that they seem most numerous (these may not be Menotti Giocatolli, nor, necessarily, Kinder?), with at least four sculpts of horse-body, horse-head, mini-robot and robot weapon, which, while usually issued in an 'egg specific' configuration, can get mixed up, in a sample of the size seen here.

 

A couple which have (who have?) come-in over the last couple of years, both 'believed to be' Kinder, by me, but with no empirical evidence, they are another of the many Kinder (or similar) which have been rather distributed to the four corners of the stash, by dint of their bittiness, and the lack of serious sorting over the last few years.

 

But it'll give me an excuse to return to them, when they are all in one place, for a box-ticker on poses/colours, and hopefully, I have a blue robot to replace the incorrect red one, in the spares/bits bags?

 

Where Kinder are definitely involved in the evolution, is in these cartoony Wild West, who follow the same basic format (cartoon horse, element of 'swoppet' or plug-in, mini-rider) who are getting very brittle now, which suggest further, that Res Plastic (RP, not 'LP', nor LB!) were involved in the production, as a lot of their stuff suffers from the same brittleness now.

 

Note the 'Pharaoh-head' from the previous collage is on a green-bot's horse, with another horse waiting a rider, it'll be fun getting all the bits bags together and sorting out a better sample!

 

Two other Menotti Giocatolli designs, which have been credited to - and may well have been carried by - Kinder, the upper following the designs of the fantasy muscle-men and monsters we saw here, and the lower R2-DBot looking like the Bluebird Toys Manta'bots!

 

Another Internet image here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-is-for-audit-of-alien-astrofarers.html

M is for Maruzem Beretta 92SB

Yeah! Don't tell the Rozzers, they shoot you for owning shit like this! Fortunately, it's buried in a storage container, and is only a lighter! But it's made to resemble the real thing, and is unusual for being a lighter, these Japanese-licensed toy guns are usually air-soft BB pellet firers, not lighters.

It's actually scaled-down a bit too, maybe 30%'ish? But you wouldn't carry this around now, it really could get you shot! All the rage at a leisure-pit, keys in the fruit-bowl, bright, patterned skirts, long hair and flares, freak-off, in the early 1970's, how times change!

 

When we were kids, we loved stuff like this, we'd spend our pocket-money on it, on a day-trip to France with the school, but you don't even see it for sale over there now . . . my brother bought a flick-knife, a proper one!

 

It's a gas-burner, filled via a nozzle hidden in a small recess in the pistol grip, and a small flame-adjuster is hidden in a recessed slot near the trigger. 

 

There is a more obviously novelty one, petrol/lighter-fluid fired, but it needs work, the Bakelite handle has come loose with warping, and the mechanism is jammed solid, so, I thought, maybe, if I ever get the time, and manage to settle down, I'd do it as a project for YouTube, I've seen people work wonders with solid lumps of rust, this just needs a bit of TLC; disassemble, clean, straiten, lubricate and reassemble!

M is for Mohawk and More Military Miniatures

At the recent Sandown Park show I picked up a parcel from our roving reporter in New York, Brian Berke, which was very useful, as while I've mentioned them once or twice over the years, I've never encountered the sample while transferring things between different places, so they've remained rather absent from the Blog, but we can now tick that box - Mohawk's mini 'dimestore dreams'.

 

The one on the right is the colour of all my sample, so the pale herb-green ones, to the left, which made-up the bulk of Brian's donation were new to me, and this is a slightly larger version of the jeep we've seen before here more than once.

 

Brian also included a few marked-Lido mini's, so we can compare the two mouldings, as a full-stop to this original post, here, which compared the other three contenders for who's the pirate, who's the licensee, and who did the first version!

 

So that's six (Kleeware, Lido x2, Merit, Pyro and Mohawk) in total now, with the soft plastic Hong Kong version, Lido seem to have sanctioned themselves, toward the end!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/l-is-for-lido-not-load-of-limp.html 

 

The lorry on the left, a sort of 1950's pantechnicon, is also a homage to other mini 'readymades' of the era (the Pyro 'artic'), and also scaled-up, while the Ambulance is a more original moulding. I know I have a tanker, to look at another day, but I think I was missing the pantechnicon, so lovely to get both colours.

 

The car is also based on another model, and while less obvious, joins the Empire-Ideal-Kleeware-Lido-Pyro (2 sculpts)-Wyandotte family of small post-war family saloons, for an eight-count! While Brian himself sent us the Carzol coloured versions of the Tank not that long ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/07/n-is-for-new-stuff-from-new-york.html

 

Lido on the left, Mohawk on the right and there's more on the cars here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2013/03/s-is-for-siblings-take-2.html

 

Among the Lido's was a lovely bronzed version of the 'StuG III' which was new to me, and while rather washed-out by camera-flash in this shot (left-hand tank), is - in daylight - a distinctive goldish-bronze colour plastic, like some of the Captain Video figures!

 

At the same show Adrian had a few dime-store's saved for me, both of which are useful, having seen marked tractors and or guns from Banner, Bell and Merit, I'm not sure who issued this unbranded pair (left, the tractor has a 'Made in England' which I'll compare to others in the collection at a later date), but in a batch of British stuff, Kleeware, Tudor Rose or Merit (licensed or copy) are in the frame, and with the wreaker-truck a marked Kleeware copy/mould-swap of the Pyro, the clever money goes on Kleeware?

 

As with the Jeeps and 'Staff Cars', we've looked at many versions of the gun here at Small Scale World, already, but getting two new versions in one show is a feather in the collection's cap, with the unmarked green one, and a full-sized Hong Kong copy, in silver polymer, with eye-damaging ammunition!

 

There were a couple of more conventional/less contentious British 'Dime Store' AFV's from Tudor Rose, not copied by five other people, or licensed to anyone, the rather good Churchill IV, and the more dodgy armoured car.

Many thanks to Brian and Adrian, it’s all a dimestoretastic show-plunder and donations post, folks!

M is for More from London, Third of Three Plunder Posts

Finishing this run of plunder-posts with a right-old mix of Wild West, ancient & medieval, pirates, Sci-fi, cartoon, TV and Movie stuff, and as always, some interesting stuff, some stuff you'll be familiar with, but perhaps juxtaposed with stuff they're not usually compared with? I mean - waffling for the opening paragraph - these posts get the traffic, and people seem to enjoy an assortment of new images with some interesting items buried in them!

 

Red-on-red, what am I like! From the left; European, probably French 'bazaar' figure, small, Comansi 30mm, probably Novalinea, but in a colour and tinney polymer I'm unfamiliar with, possibly a sobre knock-off, or supplied as a premium?

 

Hong Kong Timpo'esque cavalryman, but from the legs, obviously copied from the Hong Kong rip-offs with their plug-on boots, a small Britains piracy, I have a lot of these but always in one's and twos, so probably 'Lucky Bags' or Christmas crackers?

 

A modern PVC figure who seems to be a short-short with truncated lance, and one of those from hollow-cast cowboys, who were Lido over there, and might have been Tudor Rose over here, nobody seems to know, but something must have gone with the hard plastic set of mounted Bergan/Beton-Airfix copies, with the Thomas/Poplar being for the soft plastic issues - but nobody seems to know for certain? And the only TR catalogue image I have is for another set altogether (the large scale stuff), a situation complicated by Hong Kong's own output!

 

An assortment of wagon crew, it's more about finding the last colour variations with these now, and I have many more riders/drivers/guards than I'll ever have coaches/wagons for them!

 

Discussed before, a major job one day, sorting all these out, and not much data you can trust, from a small, mixed sample like this, so they tend to go/be put separately,, against themselves being sorted, once I have worked out which torsos go with which legs, heads and accessories, information you can only get from comparing clean samples to bagged/carded sets.

 

The one on the left is a better pose, and if clean; interesting, while the two to the right look 'correct', but running-waving guy is well-dodgy! 

 

Nice from hollow-cast guard, a probably Airfix cadet, a Tudor Rose knight in a bit of a state, and I think the big knight was ELC, or unmarked (now defunct Wilco?). The guardsman is Hong Kong, and the little chap is some fantasy thing, from a mini-play set in the Blue Box 'Hidden Adventure' style of semi-deform.

 

Two pirates from the K&M/Wild Republic tube, modern PVC.

 

A board game man-at-arms taking on a bunch of spray-painted China clones of Italeri, Zvezda or similar, other Bloggers have covered these, which you find on evilBay or Ali Baba and Amazon in - often - large quantities, but of limited poses, here only two.

 

Four Phidal's, I think we've seen three before, the tall, slim babe possibly being from one of the Barbie sets, which I know I haven't looked at yet, I should keep an eye-out for one, while TKMaxx are pushing them through for Christmas!

 

Hasbro's Star Wars 'Command' Stormtrooper on the left, then a fascinating chap, who could earn 'best of parcel', as I already have a white one, I think, and possibly another, but clearly a Hong Kong parachute toy, taken from the Major Matt Mason bendies from Mattel!

 

We then have a common-enough MPC-alike, and a limited-articulation action figure, who's only a couple of millimetres over 54-mil, and who looks like I should recognise him, but I don't, so if anybody can help ID him . . . ?

A mixed bunch here, if ever you saw one (and you're about to see a couple more!), I think the grey chap is from Galoob's small line of Micromachine 'Alien/s' sets, which only went to a handful of cards with one or two - larger than other MM - figures per card, but I'm not sure?

 

Loose Thomas-Poplar PVC Santa's are probably more useful than Western wagoneers as I have several of the sleighs now, in two designs, so for the 'definitive' line-up one day, the correct number of clean, tidy Santa's will be required in the stash!

 

The rest are a mix of modern Kinder, a damaged Games Workshop skeletal horse (useful as it's glueable 'styrene), a Michelin Bibendum, a cake-decoration Santa, &etc.

 

An older Kinder 'steckfiguren', two novelty monkeys which seem to form a larger assembly if you find all of them and a capsule dragon-thing, which folds up into almost a ball, and may be Kinder, Pokémon, Ben Ten or something else entirely - there's so much of this small, blind-bag, limited edition and capsule-toy catoony stuff around now, it's impossible to follow it all, unless that's what you specialise in!

 

More Kinder, racing cars, of one type or another.

 

Again, mostly Kinder I think, the Gnome has a bit of age, but comes from a sub-set of Kinder 'solids', of which there were about eight or ten sets issued, maybe more, and with between six and twelve figurines per set, I'm nowhere near having all of them, but I do have a fair few, so we will look at them, one day.

 

Many thanks as always to Peter Evans for saving this lot, or spotting it at car boot sales, and saving it for me to share with you, here at Small Scale World.