HTI is for Halsall is for Welly is for China

Welly are more commonly a now China-based, previously German toy importer and now die caster, rivalling Carama for shelf-space in the cavernous Smyth's and reborn Toys-R-Us's of this world, at some point Halsall toys - now HTI - got hold of this circus set and shipped it into the UK.

 

 

Quite a boxful, for what wouldn't have been a great amount, being no more than a glorified rack-toy, as far as the toymen are concerned, although the Welly moniker would take it up a pricing-rung! 

From the bases one is forgiven for wondering if the figures came from Pioneer, another die-caster, but, as we've seen here before, often including figures, which usually have largish oval bases?

This time we get a seperate ringmaster and another white-dove producing magician (see today's earlier post), a clown and a performer who seems to have been designed for a piece of apparatus which didn't survive the planning/design stage of the set, having two arms which might have slid-down or clipped into something, now absent?

In addition to the loose animals above (tigers, elephants and a lion), we get two lions in a cage-wagon clearly influenced by earlier vehicles from Matchbox, Corgi Juniors or Majorette (see now, below), and it's demountable, more for ease of construction on the factory I'm sure, but it does mean you can drop them and their cage near the 'Big Top'!

 

The Big Top, is actually a big cage! But quite well modelled for such a set at such a size, with entry and exit points and some big-cat guide rails, which as we shall see in a minute, all go on a lorry!

 

Obviously the set is aimed at toy-car fans rather than circus aficionados per se, and as such contains a nice variety of vehicles, some carrying the logo of a fictional 'Circus World'. If the tigers go in the blue trailer, and the lion in the horse-box, that leaves the artic' below for the elephants!

 

"The artic' below' is now above! Two US style long-nosed articulated trucks, which technically should be called semi's (or sem'eyes, but there's me, being 'racist' again!). There aught to be a rubber-band, holding everything on the lower wagon.

 

A Majorette set as seen on evilbay a while ago, a smaller set, but from the image on the back of the box, part of a larger line of Pinder-branded stuff. Pinder are still going, France's main circus I believe, although originally Anglo-Scottish in origin. Also note that the two articulated lorries nearest the viewer in that image seem to be a larger 1:64th scale or thereabouts.

 

It's interesting that the three sets looked at today, Lidl/Padget, and the above pair, all appeared around the turn of the century, as animal circuses were going rapidly out of fashion, yet all three reley on animals to give them a circus feel?

S is for Shoot of Shelfies

I don't know what the collective noun is for Shelfies, but as it seems the term was invented here at Small Scale World (albeit only as a construct of 'Shelf' and 'Selfie'!), I think it's reasonable to assume Small Scale World can declare the collective, so it's 'Shoot'!

A few photographs taken mostly in October and designed more to ID figures in future mixed lots, but a couple of more stand alone items too;

Taken on the 12 October in TKMaxx these Halsall Toys International imports (probably from Pioneer) have a figure each in all the double sets, there's a couple more below, and I've since (30th Nov.) seen another police pose and farm sets with one-each of two figures along with a pair of animals (cow and sheep), which I forgot to take pictures of.

Majorette don't offer a human figure, but do include a nice selection of animals in this farm play-set. Around 1:64th, but with the tractors hopelessly out of scale with the pick-up truck, some of this stuff would be useful for railway modellers.

Shot the same day is this toob of dinosaurs, which I shot just to get a 'name' for some of my unknowns which I recognised behind the 'glass', however it's not clear, they are credited/branded to NBC Apparel, care-of a TJX Processing Centre (which I assume is TK / TJMaxx) and manufactured by Fast Champ Industries (or 'industrial') Ltd, of TST East, Hong Kong - which is the one I'll use.

A Trip back to TKMaxx on the twenty-third of October found this from NJCroce with two of their bendy Bat-blokes and a car. But the car is a non-moving display, so utterly useless for kids, yet not of sufficient quality to make a decent display model, being a pretty-cheap moulding in styrene or propylene.

The 28th of month saw this arrive in my inbox from Mr. Berke over in New York, and from a store apparently called Ocean State (Job Lot?), again the aim to to ID the construction workers/mechanics as they come-in, in the future.

Brian was eMailing again two days later with this toob set of armymen, can't see a branding, but there is a TJMaxx price-label and I think we've seen these as generics on one or two occasions in the last two or three years, so probably just new packaging for Christmas? But there is a 100 of them!

I myself was back at TKMaxx on the 11th of last month where I shot a couple more of the HTI sets, in both cases there is a one-colour paint highlight; a black walkie-talkie and a blue stretcher bundle.

TKM seem to have a high turnover, so if you want to purchase this stuff you need to be quick or try more than one outlet, but at this time of year their home furnishing subsidiary also carries an enlarged toy section. I'll wait until they appear in mixed bags from charity shops or 50p trays at Sandown Park!

I went in again on Saturday and caught this set of rather nice Marvel Avengers' figures in the 70mm bracket (?) from Jakks Pacific, a big over-muscled maybe, but not as bad as a set of cartoon-deform Avengers (or Junior Avengers?) I saw in the Phidal display!

Bigsheephornsman!

H is for Helmets

These are the Starlux helmeted infantry, and can be used as 1950's GI's, Bundeswehr or similar troops, although they will have been meant to be French Infantry or Foreign Legion.

The main shot here shows a group of these figures in a marbled plastic. The photograph bottom right shows an early figure with round base and an intermediate one with painted neck-tie and shell-case along with two late examples.

The lower left shot has various treatments of the stretcher-team and medic, early round-based to the left and a very late apple-green one to the top right, note he has a third base type - square, rather than the common oblong.

Like all Starlux they are produced in various sizes and finishes, the upper shot has figures in 35mm supplied to Solido and issued with their military vehicles in UN markings, the lower image has more die-cast accessories, the biggest is another Solido supply, this time unpainted, the two seated figures seem to be for a smaller model (Majorette or French Dinky?) while the last figure is from a turret or cupola, I have since - these images were taken - acquired a late apple-green version of this figure (with both hands!) so the model he was supplied for must have been on the market for a while.

25/30mm helmeted figures in various finishes, plastic colours and paint styles, note the sand bases on some of the dark plastic ones, the occasional painting of white gaiters, and a Solido type one in the smaller size.

F is for Frogs!

OK, despite my love of the French, they do produce the odd piece from time to time! Majorette are (were?) the French equivalent of Matchbox and occasionally they include figures to increase play value, these are all from the last few years...

From the top; A common type of Hong Kong/China copy of Airfix Germans, they came with military vehicles, but whatever nationality of the prototype - or era! - you only got three random Germans circa 1941.

The vinyl racers came with collectable sets of sports or Formula-1 cars about 6 years ago, two per set, but the pairs were always the same so you only needed to buy two to get all four poses.

The workmen and firemen obviously came with emergency or construction vehicles.

Some of the vehicles under discussion, the Helicopter is a bit earlier as is the Renault 'Safari' pick-up