H is for How They Come In - Sandown, February

At Sandown Park in February Steve Vickers gave me a bag of bits he'd been keeping for me, junk to him, and mostly grist-to-the-mill for me, to be sorted into larger samples, but there were, nevertheless, several useful bits and at least one new-to-stash figure, so let's have a look at them!

 

Always useful, there are several versions of these Hong Kong motorcycles, in each size, particularly the very small Christmas cracker type, and when coupled with numerous colours of each version, it won't be until I've done final sorting, that I'll know how many of these are new.

 

A Hong Kong bath-toy boat and two kit boats, there are many tubs of these and other small vessels, and while the larger one is damaged, it might be the only sample of that deck-type, the hulls being all the same, and every time I find some, there's at last one new - shape/colour/paint - one!

 

Probably all modern/current, but I can't assume I've got them all, until I can compare them, with all the stuff in storage!

 

Useful bits, the skeleton with a German army helmet, is from one of those whacky, daddy-oh, Ed Roth style model-kits, the cactus (Hong Kong copy of Crescent) may be a new colour, the chair has a tub of small-scale furniture to join . . . all good stuff!

 

Pretty sure, without checking, these are the Marty-M Toy-Maymoon stuff, and as useful spares, have a place, indeed with its sticker still extant, I may cannibalise another jeep to make this one the exemplar?

 

The new to collection figure here is the blue one in the centre, possibly a gum or ice-cream premium, I may have other's from the - European - set, but I've not seen this sweeping mouse before. Another of the many athletes is also very useful, and, in fact, I think the khaki chap, fourth from the right is new too? Maybe French? I'm also still looking for several of the Matchbox pairs, still connected, and this may be one of the (middle left)?

 

A camouflage New Ray signaller, harder to find than any of the many copies, is the highlight in these four, the Thomas/Taffy is a tad damaged, but the Lido GI may be original, the Lido German is an HK copy, but in an unusual grey plastic.

 

Kit figures, these are a future, major sorting, I have loads of them, but getting Italeri, Tamiya and Airfix 'Multipose' separated, is the easy bit, the US box-scale/odd-scale stuff from the 1950's-early 1960's is a nightmare, but one I'll have to tackle one day. 

 

The real grist-to-the-mill, you can't know if they are new, or common, until you compare them with all the others, and there are many others! Again, it's something I intend to do one day, and they will each get their own pages, although the Airfix clones will end-up on the relevant post of the Airfix Blog!

 

Likewise, there's a lot of this stuff, and the best way to sort it properly is to compare it to bagged/carded samples, and it's a big job, not helped by the fact that the main, or known producers of it, Ellem, M-Toy, and Star, were themselves pirated many times by their local competitors, and a western importer might carry one maker's one year, and another makers another year, sometimes in/on the same bag/card!

Many thanks to Steve for all these, he wouldn't take any dosh for them, and sharing them with you is the easy task, much sorting in my future, I see!

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Circus

Because I made a major purchase the day of the show, there's enough for a Circus post this year, instead of shoving them in with the civilian/sports post, and what a purchase it was, and very welcome, even though we've seen all the separate elements before. Fingers crossed they load in the right order . . . 

 

. . . and they did! Wouldn't want to re-sort these one at a time, plays havoc with the formatting! A nicely labeled Crazy Cown Circus from Frazer & Glass (F&G . . . like LB for Lik Be, just sort of works, always has!), lovely 1950's (or late 40's?) lining paper/gift wrap on the box, and similar to some Italian stuff we'll be seeing in these show-plunder posts soon.

 

How you bought your cheap ['er] plastic toys in the years immediately before I was born, loose in a box! Or singly from glass compartments in Woolworth's! A complete set, the seller admitted it's made-up to completeness (I think he has a perfect one in his collection), but after 70-odd yeas I'm not complaining, and would have made it up from my loose ones, if it was incomplete, anyway.

 

One-ring circus!

 

Always nicer when it's yours, rather than an Internet image!

 

Balancing and Tumbling Acts, I don't know what I was thinking the other day, of course you could get a single one, without any signs of glue - the A1 Clown! But here with base, unlike the baseless one we saw the other day.

 

Three in line, and note: different spots, shape, base v baseless, cone hat size &etc.

 

Juggling Acts.

 

Ringmaster is a standard clown with no top-hat?

But he does have the red trousers.

 

Equestrian Acts.

 

Seller had added the band! I have recently come-across a dog, with top hat, in the same vitreous 'styrene, which I believe may be another late addition to this set (to go with/accompany the hoop-clowns?), it's in a forthcoming post, somewhere, I think, if not, I'll dig it out and get it up here with a few links back and forth. On the subject of links, the last time we looked at a few question-marks and variants, on these, was nine years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/c-is-for-crazy-clown-circus.html

 

But the F&G Tag or Crazy Clown Circus will get all the thoughts/posts in one hit! 

Another marked Maysun set, of Crescent copies, adding confirmation to previous utterings here about them/that! With a couple of loose horse that have good paint, and one will need to be used to replace the brittle on in the bag, whose lost it's legs!

 

Charbens, a nice clean sample, with opposite colours of both clowns!

 

Late Corgi, I think, on the left and another M-Toy on the right.

Thanks this year go to, alphabetically by surname, Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Thank you all.

L is for Lots of London Loot - Four is for More (Sandown, Last September)

It all got a bit mixed-up through the second half of last year, so while this is 'the' Sandown Park show pictures/report, I genuinely can't remember if they are only purchases, some freebies, or Adrian bits which may be free or very cheap, so they're just going up as they are, and some of it might have been filtered out to other posts already, like the ceremonial one a while back?

 

Anguplas Mini-Car DUKW, I don't know what it's made out of, it seems to be a 'styrene, but I suspect - from the ongoing deformation - that it's actually made of a polymer from within the celluloid-cellulose acetate family?

 

It was re-issued by EKO, who inherited the tool in 1967, in a stable polystyrene, so a better version can be found, they are described as 1:87th scale (Anguplas) and HO (EKO). We've seen an EKO one here in the past, and I needed this one for a full - future - comparison!

 

Not 100% on this one, obviously Hong Kong knock-off of the Crescent Saladin in plastic, it's probably the M-Toy (May Moon-Marty) version, but there are several? You can tell it's copied from the Crescent matchstick-firer, as they have retained the channel behind and above the gun-mantlet where Crescent's trigger-bar sat in the fired position, although they have filled-in the cocking 'T' channel!

 

A small group of mini-vehicles to add to all the others, with the exception of the 'Manurba' wagon, they are all the slightly better and/or larger ones with separate wheels, to the moulded-in wheeled ones we looked at a while ago in more detail, but three or four manufactures are here, and I didn't take notes on any marks, so for now, just a pretty picture!

Nice painted paratrooper, probably a BR Moulds one, rather than the Airfix version (no pin-mark at the front of the base, slightly smaller), and useful parts for a whole and two half Kinder horses, although the connector is interchangeable, the colours not so!

 

Then a lovely Arab on horseback, in pretty-much 1:76th (HO-OO compatible) scale, standing on a box-plinth which could be for snuff, but it's more likely aimed for something like pills, or dressmaker's pins; matches even? The whole in a celluloid I suspect, and likely from Japan, although unmarked?

Four oddments, a Blue Box cable-car passenger, a Donald Duck, which from plastic and paint type/quality, I suspect may be an Argentinian product or piracy, and two Tin Tin figurines, from the Europeans, but I'm not sure which set and don't have the PW special in front of me!

 

Marx sentry, I can't remember if he was still a 'want' or if I'd got one a while back? Well, he carried two names in one of the issues, so I suppose two is the minimum required! A small novelty racing-car, probably Hong Kong, and chrome-coated, with another Processed Plastics Cadillac soft-top . . . I'm building a fleet! New colour!

 

Die cast wrestlers! Actually removed from key-rings issued by Placo Toys back in 1998.

 

These are a mystery, I think the mortar, which came with them is the Ougen issue of the Elastolin 40mm model, something about the paint maybe? But it could be the German original (painted metalwork?), I just don't know. When I bought them (off Adrian, I think), I assumed they were a home-modelled conversion set.

 

But the figures, don't look familiar, seem to match, may be home-painted but don't appear to be conversions, and that small-square base on the nearer one is ringing no bells, despite being close to some Cherilea stuff, while the guy behind him, shouting and pointing looks more Marx or MPC in the base department, but again, I don't recognise the figure . . . so anyone with any clue, idea or opinion, remarks gratefully received in the comments!

 

As a side note, the three figures are styled after the kind of fashion seen in Victorian or earlier depictions of Romans in art? The third figure is similar to one of the Charbens Greco-Roman, but I've rather hidden him in this shot. The helmets are very distinctive, but if they are the 'conversion', are very well done . . . ? Are they just some modern production which I haven't paid attention to?

 

Three pipes from a Matchbox 1-75 Series lorry - useful spares!

 

Love these! Four tinplate demi-ronde European infantry of a generic (but probably specific - if you know what you are looking at) unit of late 19th/Early 20th century troops, possibly Mediterranean or maybe South American, they might even be the Russo-Japanese war? I only have a handful of this type of stuff in the stash, and have photographed one or two more over the years, so to get four, cheap was a real treat!

 

The footballer looks like he could be home-cast, but the diminutive size says he's probably from a board- or table-game of some kind. The Timpo US Officer will be for comparison shots with the plastics and the mortar looks like a squat version of the Lone Star plastic one, did they do it in metal first, is it Crescent, or did someone clone it?

 

Classic rack toy! Jumping spider with air-balloon and hose . . . Brilliant!

 

Spanish rack-toy! The other 'Tin-Tin'! Funny, as someone else posted this a month or two ago, at Christmas time? And I saw another dealer with a box full of these last Saturday at Sandown's 1st show of this year, so like the Emirober Beatle's a couple of decades ago, or the Comansi rubber Thunderbirds, someone has found a warehouse full of these recently, it would seem!

 

These all came in a job-lot, with no riders and a fair bit of badly damaged stuff, in the 'car-boot' scrummage on the stands before the show's doors open, immediately dismissed by people in the know as worthless 'second grade', sub-scale Elastolin budget range.

 

I rather like them, and they are nearly a century-old, so there! AND, there's a motorcycle, and a medical vignette which is just as good as the 70mm range, and wasn't reproduced in the 40mm as far as I know, and if they are 'unloved' by the BMSS brigade, they may not survive in the same numbers as the 'posh' ones, which would make them rarer?

 

Thanks to Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, as he probably gave me some of the above, and if he didn't, he definitely gave me some stuff at the show, we've either already looked at here, or will be looking at in future posts, shortly!