P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Civilians

OK, we're out of the gates and away, civilian stuff now, and again there are all sorts of interesting things here, not least a corporate-looking St. Mary of the Little Baby Jesus, Elon Musk (not!) and some magnetic policemen!

As with the previous lot, these loaded in an order other than I intended,so I just ran with it, I don't know what Blogger's playing at these days, but it randomly reverses the order sometimes or - occasionally - just re-assorts them!

The two on the left here are the pair I shot in a car park years ago, like 12/15 years ago, they came with a very cheap 'Disney' castle facade and have hollow-backs, but it's nice to have them in the collection, as I seem to recall the car-park photo-exercise was because of instant discarding!

 

The skipper is Tim Mee, and adds to a slowly growing sample of them, I think we've seen the boy with dog in butterscotch plastic, and I think a few others are in the sample now. The chap on the right looks like a family of such figures in several sizes carried by several big-names, both sides of the Channel about 20+ years ago, They will get their own page, but Tesco, Woolworths/Chad Valley, Welly and others carried them with 'in-house' die-cast vehicle sets

The 'casualty' is probably a plug-in mechanic/fuel-attendant, from a play-set's petrol pumps? But new to me - new to the Blog!

 

I thought, at first glance that this was Our Lady, Hail Mary, Mother of God (you'd think I were't Catholic huh?!!), but she has an automobile in relife, on her cloak, so I'm guessing she may be a corporate (probably American) mascot, once seen as a hood ornament, possibly, and may well be an annual-conference, or sales giveaway of some kind?

 

A couple of figures after Commonwealth, but possibly neither actually by them, the figure on the left is the paint-your-own from an outfit called Doll Bodies Inc., and their 32 Dolls of Far Away Lands painting set, but the detail is more sharply cut (in a cruder or harsher fashion) and the figure is a bit flashy, around the join-line, so although it looks like unpainted Commonwealth, it may be licensed, or duplicate tools?

 

While the other is a clear copy, the smoother ones are a little smaller and must have come from Hong Kong or Mexico, from whence they found their way to the antipodes, where Sanitarium probably had no relationship with Commonwealth at all?

A trio of cake decoration dolls/brides, I have a fair few of these somewhere, all a bit tatty because of the delicate polystyrene nature of them, and I have them in different sizes and with or without plastic bows or fabric-ribbon bows, but I didn't have any with different headdresses until these showed-up! We have bare-head (most of mine I think?) a brides veil and a sort of inverted flower-hat?

 

Big babies, and little ones! Mostly Thomas I think, some looking more like Marx land-fill figures from the colours! But the green one on the end is a Hong Kong copy of the Britains Hospital merternity-set one by the looks of it, and along with the fat kid next to him, is new to me, Blog and stash!

 

Oh, it's Elon Musk! No . . . no-no-no, he did it, not me, and he did it twice in case anyone missed it the first time! Buy a Te-SS-ler Swastikar and be a true Nazi! Really, he's reaching for his - probably red and white flamenco-dressed - paramour/dance partner, still to be found And she will be found, sooner or later, as you can't have missed how these terracotta figurines keep coming-in!

 

Along with the Policeman, he is missing a hat, but all the examples I've seen have black cartridge-paper hats, and I have lots of black cartridge-paper somewhere, so a mend will be done on both, and you won't know they've been repaired!

Bits of a Marx Miniature Masterpiece farm set I may also be able to restore somewhat at some point in the future, but you will know to look at it, as you can't really hide the ripped paper scenic-base, only try to go over it with fine coloured pencils, to hide the worst!

 

A pair of firemen/firefighters from HTI (Teamsters) I think and a policeman from 'unknown', all grist to the mill, and one day there will be A-Z pages on these specific, recurring subjects to ID as many as possible in one place!

 

These are an odd lot, as they have all got magnets attached, and while most of them were added by the owner to what seem to be the unpainted Wiking civilians, which came on strips as we saw right back at the beginning of this Blog, while I think the two painted summer-uniform ones were also Wiking, and have the same added magnets, the other two are unknown to me (Dutch, Danish or French?) and may have come with their magnets as part of a magnetic play set.

 

There seem to have been a few of them in 1950/60's Europe, I have images somewhere of a large Swiss or Austrian set with magnetic street-signs, trees, micro-vehicles, animals and people, along with buildings and roadway sections etc . . .And obviously the way to expand such a set is to add more magnets! Remember all those 45/55mm magnetic civilians which I picked up at a PW show a few years ago, some commercial, some home magnetised? A mystery anyway, and help needed ID'ing the uniformed officers!

 

Theo Van de Weerden recognised them - " . . . those policemen in summer dress are Wiking. The other two are from Siku from the sixties. I think the reason they have magnets is that they belonged to a board game to teach children in school about traffic rules. We had this in my primary school." 

More of the ever-enlarging sample of small semi-flat race-horses, they can't be from board games, as there are too many subtle pose variations, and plastic colours now, but they are still a mystery too. Park the thought, as I'll be mentioning them again when we get to the Wild West post.

Another, with plugs, so if not a board-game piece, maybe from a spinning-top or something? The painted huntsman may be a food/margarine premium, but has also had a magnet added, so will have come with the others, above, And three die-cast or other accessory figures, the Corgi milkman, an ice cream seller (Dinky or Spot On?) and a Gondolier!

Some real 'odds' here, with a homemade woollen doll, after or in the style of those Peruvian worry-dolls, a larger scale rider I've seen somewhere but can't place (she's about 60/65-mil) and a standard doll's house doll, of the knock-off Hong Kong variety.

 

A fair few interesting HO-OO model railway figures, which you aught to be able to ID from last year's posts, but I never finished that 'season' and meant to do so over the Christmas just gone, but didn't, and we never got round to the Merit Driving School post, so I'm going to draw a veil over these for now, and try to get the railway civilians finished in/by March? The lady on the green square is a clippie (conductor) from a London Bus, Corgi, I think!

D is for Driving Test

Not sure how a couple of these images will show, but you'll get the gist if you're not already familiar with the set, which I thought we'd looked at here at Small Scale World, but we haven't, or I can't find it, it may have been in One Inch Warrior magazine, and it may not have been my penmanship or photography on that occasion, while today Jon Atwood has helped with images!

This was me a couple of years ago, combining some loose bits with the stuff that had been accruing in the attic (card box) and the master collection from storage in a Really Usefull Box Co's 35litre 'Euro-Box' which takes A4 suspension files one way and foolscap the other, a brilliant design, which accounts for them going from a little company, you could ring up and order factory-seconds from, delivered to your door from the Midlands, to a multinational with a second factory in the US, who now tell you your nearest stockist on the phone and explain politely that they no longer do deliveries, and no longer do factory seconds!

The railway stuff is all in the little 4x5½" self-sealing bags, upon which the Driving Test game sits, with everything else Jenga'd on top! You can see how the 'Banner/Bell' artillery are about to be brought together at '1' and the ark/circus animals at '2', but it's the Driving Test we're looking at today, and I'm just going to load the rest of the images and text them up as they land?

 

1970's catalogue image, and we have cool dudes with longish hair and polo necked jumpers! The game is fun, and it does work, there's a hidden pantograph underneath, the two sectioned, sprung arms of which manipulate a magnet in response to physical commands given through the 'gear stick'. With practice, you can even get the car or motorcycle to point forwards (or in the 'direction of travel') at all times.

Late 1950's or - more likely 1960's box, and she's ready to go to the nunnery, he's dressed for a day at the office . . . it was a different world, and I was there! I think my most embarrassing sartorial experience of that era, was the pink velvet cummerbund I had to wear as a page-boy at Aunty Christine's wedding, it hung around in my chest of drawers for years, although I don't know what happened to it, it sort of disappeared around 1980!

This is from feeBay and I have a feeling that while the motorcycles and cars are plastic (with small staple/paperclip type wire inserts of ferrous metal, to give the magnet a 'hook'), the rest may actually be bought-in from Mastermodels (BJ Ward/Wardie, seen earlier in this series, and who will be in the round-up at the end too), which would go a little further to explaining some of the cross-fertilization?

 

Particularly if the ideas-men and buyers from the 'toy division' weren't aware of what the railway guys were doing, or if they hadn't been told about Collis Plastics likely efforts for both companies, in the railway sizes? Conjecture, not gospel! None of these figure-sculpts were carried-over to the model railway range.

The board, over the years they have been issued painted and unpainted and, apart from the possibly part-metal set above (the metal items would have been non-magnetic Zamac/Mazak, so wouldn't get picked-up by the magnet), they were - commonly - all plastic components, and are simpler copies of Mastermodels, again suggesting a 'firewall' on information exchange between the toy guys and the railway guys at Randall's?

I used to think these were also Merit, I have a few, but this faux-Blue Box set turned-up on evilBay, sans cars, and proved me wrong! A Hong Kong copy, was there anything between the war and 1970 they didn't have a stab at reproducing?

 

Obviously, the original idea is to get round a set course and/or park in the plastic garage (fixed to the board), without knocking into any pedestrians or street-furniture, or leaving the marked roadways! Many thanks to Jon for images, and Ed Burg has, coincidentally, been showing the contents of a similar-concept, but table/carpet Marx set on his Blog over the last week or so.

M is for Micronauts

Not me at all, 1980, I was leaving school, wearing a denim-cut-off over a leather jacket growing my hair long, gardening and cutting trees at the weekends and going to art collage in the week, I wasn't interested, in bitty, lanky, movey, placky, Hong-Kongy and - looking at some of the vehicles - frankly, whacky, slightly tacky, large-scale figures which didn't tie-in with any frnachise I might have been interested in, but they need to go in that Tag List!

Airfix Micronauts;

And my view hasn't changed one iota since! You see them in rummage bins at toy shows, or looking forlorn and one-armless in charity shops, and I just walk on by! Sometimes one - presumably 'rare' - is sitting on a silly-money BIN-price on evilBay and I just walk on by! But, if they are your thing, I get it, youngster! I'm a man fathered by a child of the pre-Palitoy/General Mills iteration of Airfix, me!

 

The full - well, a potted - history's here (Airfix/Palitoy don't get a mention - bought-in end of line?!);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronauts

 

The funny thing is you can see the Takara heritage in the robots and smaller vehicles, some of which design-lines would reappear in the Bluebird-Kenner-Tomy stuff a few years later, the tracked robot looking very similar to the grey Tomy version of the  Blue Sharks one-man submersible from Manta Force, or the little robots from the same line.

F is for Found Objects - Four of . . . More

Back to the general detritus of lives lived, and where those remnants combine with the interests of the Blog or my collecting habits! Remembering that we've also seen the tub of Christmassy cake-decoration pieces, and the stash of things Mum 'borrowed' for her silversmithing. There was more cake-decorating stuff in the garage, but they were subsumed into the collection a few years ago, when I sorted the garage out.

 

On the left; a Tri-Ang clockwork key-winder, I think it's the same as late Hornby and probably some tail-end Mettoy or Minic toys, earlier, pre-war toys tended to have more original designs, sometimes quite ornate, often individually toy-specific winders.

On the right; a plastic Meccano spanner, probably held-on to became it also fit some of the plastic nuts on the loo-tank/cistern, and Mum felt plastic-on-plastic would do less harm to nuts and threads!

 

We saw the stone 'Shroom, when I Blogged the Giant space and Aliens back in 2021, it will be a false-coloured one, like some of the more garish stone eggs you see, porous rock is dyed under pressure, oven-dried and worked/polished to produce stuff like this surprised being!

 

And we saw the mini-pencils/pencil-tops in the previous post, which leaves two craft style felt animals, built-up on wooden-dowel sections, they were probably Heals or Habitat items, very 1970's in styling, but so moth-eaten when I found them, they went to the fire-gods shortly after this shot! A monkey and a cat . . . I think, it might have been a demented panda!

 

At the front are a Shell-petrol keyring, a pair of magnetic pigs who still have the kissing-power and a small ceramic horse, which will be a 20th century copy of earlier pieces I think, nothing 'Ming', but nice, and often done in Ivory, there's a nice set of eight ivorene premium horses in the oriental style from the mentioned-the-other-day Jacquet.

A vintage Christmas gift box (funny how so much of this stuff harks back to Christmases past, every post so far has had Christmas references), sadly stained, with a slice of crimbo-cake I suspect; the staining has that translucence of sugar or alcohol, and the browning of molasses!

But containing old cracker gifts/prizes/novelties, being a ball-puzzle, mini Yo-yo, key/magnifying glass (never understood the combination, but there was always one in a  cheap set of crackers), pirate's eye-patch and something I've already forgotten, it was either a whistle or a periscope?

And note Santa is riding a rocket. So quite a 'Sputnik-fever', 1950's vibe on the wrapping paper!

I had, in the past, supplied my Mother with empty Kinder-eggs, which she would put a few pieces of fine gravel in, to provide endless hours of fun to kittens and younger, or young-at-heart cats, and as they got lost under furniture, more capsules would be procured from moi!

 

Clearly, at some point, a non-empty one was sent to feline playgroup. Mum used to work as a volunteer at the Barnardo's charity shop here in Fleet (before it closed, and they were all laid-off their unpaid roles!), and she may have got this one from there, I don't think it's necessarily Kinder either, one of the Turkish or Italian minor-brands?

Balls! The Wham-O again I think, an antique, glass, codswallop bottle-stop in front of it, and something I've forgotten in the interim, but which is the smallest size of gum-ball capsule container from the look of it?

 

An eclectic mix here with two tortoises, one a PVC tub/tube/blister/header-bag type with full paint, the other a polyethylene glow-in-the-dark novelty with keychain loop, probably from a Christmas cracker?

 

A piece of non-Lego, a felt-tip pen lid, a pearlescent bead, a very small battleship's turret and a Native American, who could be the remains of my 1980 collection (we moved here in October 43 years ago!), or an errant piece of show-plunder from more recent years?

 

One half of the pyramid puzzle from crackers, we looked at these a few years ago, and there was already a bag of oddments, so this will join them, and I think I've said before, I intend in a year or two, to run that whole mini-season of novelty posts again, but with everything now in the collection, storage, then and since, in each category, and any extra-subjects after Christmas; it will be fun to compare them, day by day.

 

This used to be in each car's 'emergency kit' when we were kids. It's an unmarked generic, probably British rather than Hong Kong, but you never know, it's a lovely memory-thing to find, we used to love fiddling with it when we were kids.

Back then there were two standard promotional items from the tyre manufactures, small model-tyres like this with a compass, sometimes as a key ring, and larger replicas as ashtrays, with either a glass or tin-plate insert as the 'wheel', they would be marked up with Goodyear, Michelin, Pirelli etc . . . sometimes, even depicting a specific tyre type, or new range.

This is obviously a mid-century, rear, tractor tyre, so may have come from an agricultural equipment firm, and with farmers on both sides of the family back then, could have come to us via either?

M is for Magneto's Magnetic Men & Maidens

I'm not going to suggest Magneto is responsible for all the magnetic novelties copied in Hong Kong from the 1950's until, well, now! Nor will I suggest they were necessarily first with any of them, but I suspect they can claim ownership of some of the originals of/and or some classic firsts.

 

This all (a huge Google session) came about after Chris Smith spotted this in a charity shop cabinet and realised it was ID'ing a past unknown here at Small Scale World, it's the Oompah dancer in his Tyrolean get-up and his lady (not seen before) in her Dirndl outfit.

 

They have a mirrored drum to dance on, with - presumably - a pair of clockwork magnets under the glass/polished surface providing them with their gyrations. I would add that 25-quid takes East Anglian Charity Shops onto a retail universe all of their own, so Chris left it there!

A reminder of mine, on the right, and another Magneto on the left, he usually has a lady to dance around his 'rock', who looks nothing like him having a round base (which won't catch on his rock's corners), and from the styling, I reckon the white ballet dancer we saw on another occasion may be Magneto too, but I haven't tracked down her set yet.

Although when I say tracked down, it was just Googling, and I found all the usual cars, Scottie-dogs, frogs, flying carpets, bath beauties and the like branded to the same German firm, and of better quality than the HK versions, but these things go back to the days of wood, lead and ceramic toys, so the true origins are rather lost. I did purchase the non-magnetic farm by the same company we saw a month or two ago.

 

The one on the right has lost his magnet, while the one on the left, fully marked, has lost power (as has the ballet dancer), but these novelty magnets often do, I found a horseshoe magnet the other day with no power left in it.

 

When I have more time I'll track down a few of the better toys from this company, and we'll have a couple of posts box-ticking their output and comparing them with the British (Bell, Merit, Fairylite), US (Lionel, Commonwealth) and Hong Kong products, but that probably won't be for a few years.
 

However, thanks to Chris, Magneto are now ID'd and can easily be found as the general toy collectors knew about them all along, and they are regularly on evilBay, Etsy and the like, if you want to find them.

B is for Best Show on Earth! 8. Civilian Vehicles

Lead here by the two non-show purchase carts this afternoon and there is more horse-drawn stuff (along with elephants; another great favourite sidebar of mine), but we've got all sorts to look at.

 

We've seen this in more than one Hong Kong iteration, here at Small Scale World, but I have a fancy this one is actually French or Italian, someone like Cle or Jouplast issued them as beach toys I think, and supplied some (of the smaller ones?) as premiums to people like Bonux, while in Italy, think I they might have been married to Texas and their plug-in based figures?

But don't quote me on either point, it's only memory! Suffice to say the finish is sharper than the Hong Kong ones (previously we've only seen stagecoaches), and the plastic is chalkier. The design of this one is a tad ridiculous, with over-sized tools stuffed through two unrealistic holes in the removable, but not working, tailgate. However, if you're moving sand on a beach, quite playable, if not terribly practical!

Tudor Rose beach- / bath-toy tugboat, small Hong Kong pleasure cruiser and A Bruder vessel make up the merchant navy in this lot. I believe the TR Tug, was reissued by Springwell in a retro header-carded net bag!

 

There is a bag of the HK ones slowly growing, and when I think I've found most of the body-type variants I'll blog them, in fact there are lots of bags of similar things all slowly growing . . . or at least some are!

 

Mixed road transport, a magnetic racing car we'll look at below, Praline and Minic (Triang-Mettoy) model railway HO/OO (respectively) compatible cars, a jig-toy truck (which will join all the others) and two classic 'dime store' or - in the UK - corner-shop/pocket money vehicles; a car marked 'Made in England' which could be Kleeware (?) and a Fairylite road roller.

The steam road roller is either a phenolic plastic or an early, unstable polystyrene, and is beginning to warp, while the racing-car, also Fairylite is quite stable.

A handful of Quaker racing car premiums to be checked against the master sample, and a comparison between the number-3 car (also used - as a sculpt - by Parker/Waddington's board-game Monopoly) and the previously seen Fairylite model.

 

Which is here for a third look! A simple magnetic novelty toy where you used negative-to-negative to push the car around with the hand-stick, a simple thing for simple times, what would they make of today's all singing-all dancing, digital Frozen dolls, or Super-deform Star Wars Angry Birds!

 

The jeep is supposed to be Tudor Rose, but smaller and less accurately portraying the real-life version as we saw the other day in military guise, and being unmarked, I'm only considering it an 'unknown' vintage beach/garden toy for now?

The tanker is usefully marked Banner Oil, so clear piece of Dime Store tat there! And the old-fashioned car is another of the better detailed Hong Kong copies of a French original I think?

The motorcycle side-collection took a real fillip in the last few weeks with another Airfix the following week, a second French Bazaar police motorcycle and then two more Airfix a week later.

 

What we have here are, from the left; that French bazaar copy/late issue of Cofalux's policeman, a Hong Kong with the base we were lacking when we sorted all that out with PW's help a few years ago, the motor-trike by Poplar Plastics / Poplar Playthings (they used both, and Poplar Plastic Products!), and the two Airfix 'dispatch riders'.

So soon after the gold one from Chris Smith, comes a full colour Gondola in the larger size, Brain Carrick remembered these being sold (or cleared?) through Woolworth's, but as this would have been the beginning of the age of mass-consumerism we're now trapped/locked-in to, there is the secondary reasoning that rather than being clearance of unsold Italian tourist trinkets, they are aping the silver neff which the rich had on their dining tables or sideboards, in a more affordable material?

 

It seems to be missing a couple of components down by the Gondoliers feet, and there appears to be two hinge-covers for a storage-compartment flap behind the customer's throne, so I will now look out for a cheap bashed one which happens to have the missing pieces.

 

 

Finally, a couple of 'box scale' wagons from Kleeware, from US tools (Pyro-Bachmann-LifeLike?), note that the buggy driver is about HO/OO compatible, while the fire-pump's driver is closer to N-gauge! Same sculpt. I have a bunch of these somewhere and will look at them all one day.

Thanks to all for everything last month; Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans and Brian Carrick.

F is for Follow-up - Merit 'Tarzan And His Animals'

Last time we looked at this set (ten years ago!) I suggested an Elephant was the missing animal, and I'm pleased to say it was! I also said if I got a better one, I'd swap box lids, but I didn't, I got a worse one, however it did fit the new A3 scanner so . . . swings and roundabouts!

Figures first, and the immediate question is -  was the previously seen set home-painted? I suspect not; this game probably ran for a few years and like a lot of people at the time (Britains, Crescent, Lone Star), painting was seen as a quick money-saver and got dropped at some point?

So now 'Ivorene' flats, in a creamy-white, the dark spots are the anchor-points of embedded metal plates on the underside of the base, used for magnetic manipulation!

The cage you are trying to drag the animals to, if you are the horrid player (nice players [Tarzan] are trying to save them) with a hidden wand, it's half Driving School and half Answer Robot (both also Merit games as some point), missing it's door/gate last time, when I unpack I will save this board and the older box!

I will also have to carefully transfer the older pull-ring, and it will have to be careful, as this one was complete until I touched it, whereupon it fell into three pieces and I have to assume the other will be equally age-brittled?

The magnetic arm with which you locate, capture and drag the poor animals by any-which-way (even tail-first) possible, back to the cage!

Scanned lid; a bit tatty, but higher resolution/detail than last time!

Rules, also scanned as a high-res' for those who need to know how it ends!