N is for Northfield Products

Do you remember this image, from one of the earlier donations from Chris Smith;

 

A resinated slate (or coal?) lady on the left, what turned out to be Tringa Toys, via Toyway in the middle, and a Britains Highland Piper, trapped in a bottle. At the time I said of the right-hand item: "The final piece is very interesting, clearly a Scott's tourist thing, he is a HK-production Britains Herald piper, held on a cork plinth with a piece of textured green Plasticine . . . and a blob of glue? The tartan band, other than hammering-home the Scottish nature of the item, is probably hiding a clever join at the base of the bottle, or a not-so-clever join bodged with glue?"
 

And, a few months later, I found marked items on feebleBay, of a similar nature, employing the same tartan ribbon, which have been in Picasa for a few years, waiting for the right moment to show, which following a purchase at Sandown four weeks ago, is now!

 

Revealing themselves to have been entrapped by a Northfield Products of Edinburg, I fear they are a little disingenuous as to their London design or Hong Kong manufacture! The contents have actually broken loose, and slide up and down, but you can see how the figures are landscaped onto a piece of hardboard, with green Plasticine, and shunted in from the wide end, before the join is hidden with the tartan tape!

 

My hand looks strangely stunted in that third shot, I can assure you, I currently have perfectly normal hands, and will blame foreshortening, or AI? . . . buzzztt . . . pling! "Northfield Products refers to several different businesses, most prominently Northfield Farm, known for high-welfare free-range pork, beef, and lamb sold online and at markets like Borough Market; Northfield Furniture, offering handcrafted wooden items like toilet seats and trays; and Northfield Freezing Systems, an industrial brand by JBT Corporation for large-scale food processing. Other mentions include school uniforms and even a shoe model." 

 

This is a wind-up music box, with the mechanism hidden in a tartan gift-box, and the same bottle as the loose one, Chris sent to the Blog. It also has the Frea Scotland (from Scotland) sticker, which is missing on the new, larger band-bottle from Sandown's show.

 

And the shipping box the larger bottle came in, this also has the sticker. Now the next question, because there's always a next question, is: were there earlier ones which used the better quality, UK-made, Herald figures? Anyway, for now, that's another one put to bed - Northfield Products, purveyors of quality tat, to the passing tourist trade!

 

And I bet there are other Northfield items, you could probably build a nice little niche display or cameo collection of them?

 

As we're doing an 'Answer Time', here's confirmation, via a couple of dodgy colour scans of B&W copies, of the earlier (pre-RHA figure) Tringa line-up of 90mm figures, sold through Toyway, and also aimed squarely at the tourist trade.
 

B is for Britains - Seen Elsewhere, Eye Candy and Odds & Sods

Although, some of this might hurt your eyes, but even the mighty falter and in the end, everything dies.

 

Toward the end, Britains tried to get away from 'war' war, and the whole WWII, 'Boys Own', ♪♪♫Two World Wars and . . . ♪♫, "I mentioned it once . . but I think I got away with it / You started it!" type toy theme which had served British kid's so well since 1945, by adopting first this generic UN theme, then some of the silliness below! Standard farm version of the Short Wheelbase (SWB) Land Rover, given a United Nations makeover. Here missing its 'hard-top'.

 

Using the late version US Infantry (solid sculpts, no moving, plug-in arms), accompanying UN troops (Task Force Action Figures) were provided, along with several other paint schemes as 'enemy' or just other units, only available for a couple of years in the mid-1990's, they should be rare, but many retailers were left with unsold stock, and a few years ago most dealers had mint sets on their tables!

Arctic warriors?!

 

Sold with a desert version of the Land Rover as 'Desert Storm'!

 

75p was still a fair-bit of money for a kid in 1996, and that's for one figure!

 

 The final indignity - Task Force Special Units

 

I showed a few of the other-coloured ones on the Airfix Blog;

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2020/02/1983-cold-warmodern-sas-special-air.html

with more shots on the Modern British Infantry post. 

 

Slightly safer ground with these, the two standard packagings for the earlier WWII-themed support weapons 'Combat Weapons', here the British Mortar (also given to the Germans) and the US Recoilless Rifle (also given to the Japanese!). There was a longer card, which was the display one, designed to sit across the top of the counter-top box, and sold last, after the box was empty.

 

 

There was an attempt to relaunch the range in the mid-2000's by First Gear, who had bought the intellectual property rights and a few of the moulds (most are with DSG in Argentina), and a couple of 'realistic' paint issues were forthcoming, I think these are the second tranche, the first having matt-green bases and better paint?

A is for Alien Partworks - Real Aliens, Really, Really Real Aliens, Everbody . . . They're Real, They ARE!

Yeah! Did I over-egg my belief-position on these in the title! I picked up five 'Aliens' at Sandown Park, which are interesting, and as non-articulated plastic figures, certainly deserve a place in the collection, but with sets on Star Wars and Star Trek running into the hundreds, not a bandwagon I'm ever looking to jump on, but, well, here's five!

 

Four of them are from 'The Real Alien Collection', from 1999, ladies and gentlemen, these are all real aliens from Alienville, Alieniania! Actually, it's worse, with long description of where they're 'really' from and who they are!

I just wonder why they always visit the dysfunctional drunk on a Tennessee trailer-park, a lonely Montana farmer, or the odd bloke with the Hapsburg Chin, in the council bungalow on the edge of a Norfolk village, rather than popping-down to Westminster, Buck' House or the UN General Assembly? Why do they frighten people retuning-home from the Pub, rather than frightening POTUS into behaving himself!

PVC figurines attached to a 'styrene or 'propylene base, they were mostly stuck in with sticky-pads, and for now I haven't decided whether I want to defenestrate them or leave them as they are, so imagery isn't brilliant, but you're hopefully getting the picture!

 

The Alien Collection flyer has the look of having been designed by next-door's unemployed teenager, in a Windows 98 version of poster-maker! But a quick perusal suggests they were quite serious in their delusions! There are, or have been, several alien-themed attractions or exhibitions in Blackpool over the years, including Tussauds, and clearly this lot was tied-into one of them!

 

I've had a quick hour of research into this set, and my conclusion is that only twelve figures ever made it to the light of day, that is, the eleven mentioned here as "Available now", and one further one, which probably 'broke the bank', and which I can't identify, as it's not too clear, without packaging, which is which, but it could mean I already have a quarter of those extant, to find!

 

'Followed for 23 minutes . . . '

At those speeds, it'll take them a billion-years to get home! 

 

One had come loose, so we can enjoy him, her . . . it, with detailed cosmic history!

 

Yeap, 'no longer in this form', but had the decency to let us know!

Hahahahahahaha!

'Four fingered hands' . . . no opposable thumb!

None of them, ever, seem to have opposable thumbs!

ET had opposable thumbs, and he was in a kid's production, FFS! 

 

A few years earlier, in 1996, Shadowbox also did a set, they seem to have managed about seven or eight figures, before folding, and took themselves slightly less seriously, including movie characters, like a 'man in black'. The fact that neither series went anywhere interesting, gives an idea of just how niche UFOlogy actually is?

And I say that as someone who has seen at least one UFO, but I'm a cynic and a rationalist, and I know that there will be a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I saw, which excludes all the above nonsense!

 

I do vaguely remember seeing some of these in the old Forbidden Planet shop in New Tottenham Court Road, back in the late 1990's, so they did everything they could, distribution wise, but there just wasn't the clientele?

 

And finally . . . . 

 

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!

P is for Plastolin Plasticine!

These may be the only examples in existence, or rare survivors of a small production run, we just don't know, but they are listed on the new Composition Page, so I need to get them up here, in order that a wider audience is made aware of their existence!

 

The label reads;

 

PLASTOLINE

Model Manuf: Co:

Set X1. Gestapo H.Q.

With Officer at Desk

NO.03.

Plastoline - Hand Made, enamelled,

Hard and glossy, copyright, patent.

 

And one has to assume the '03' is the number in a series of similar vignettes? There is nothing on the 'web to suggest any of it was ever patented, and copyright's a long shot, given some, most (?) modellers could copy it to a much higher standard!

 

This is the item described above, he has broken-off at ankles and stool, the shaft if which has been lost. The whole made from Plasticine, probably hardened with Banana Oil, otherwise known as 'Dope', or isoamyl acetate (also known as isopentyl acetate), painted and vanished in a deep gloss to give a lacquered appearance in the 'Old Toy Soldier' style.

 

Also in the box is this WWI'ish (?) machine-gunner, listed as (3) in the list below, as WWII, and which differs from the previous example in also using embedded wire for the machine-gun, not that it's prevented the gun from curling slightly over time.

 

Which, by a process of elimination, and considering the fact that no other suitable figure was in the unknown 'Question Time' post, also dealing with this make's figures, here, must be the number two item - Mexican irregular from the wars of the turn of the last century?

On the underside of the inner box, we have further clues as to the originators of these figures (the Mexican is really quite good, albeit a tad 'footless'), with this label, origianlly in Biro, but added to at a latter date in pencil;

 

(1)GERMANY-GESTAPO   -   C 1940

(2)MEXICO - IRREGULAR   -   C 1900

(3) GERMANY - M. G -    C 1940

(1) By  .  D. BROWN .

(2) By     M, LEECH .

(3) By  .  D  BROWN .

IN PLASTOLINE  .

 

So the clues, would suggest that a D Brown, and M Leech, attempted to manufacture, in Plasticine, a small range of figures with a commercial bent, when and for how long were they in production is anyone's guess, except those who might actually know?

 

And the three figures from Chang-Kai-Chek's Imperial Chinese forces, and the odd chap in a respirator, seen previously, were also stuffed in the same box. Anybody know anything else about them?  I believe, although I haven't found them yet, that there were adverts in the back of the periodicals of the time - Military Modelling, Battle, and/or . . . the other one . . . Campaign?

News, Views Etc . . . Composition Page

Welp! I have finally published - with all faults - the composition page I started editing about fourteen or fifteen years ago! It was near-ready about ten or eleven years ago, and I sent off edits to a few people to proofread, and I must thank Paul Morehead of Plastic Warrior for being the only one to get back to me, with an edit (which I hope I've corrected in the current draft!), the other's know who they are, and have disappointed, but that's pink-monkeys for you; always disappointing when they can!

 

 

Brent - smaller version

After the above, was ready to go, the whole article disappeared, poof! Like some negative-reaction magic trick! And I never got it back, while Blogger/Google have yet to reply to my eMails of ten-odd years ago! Anyway, while I started again, I was rather disheartened by the whole business, and rather left it on the back-burner!

Luckily, I had the draft I'd sent out, and could get the images back off the dongles, although by the time I was about to publish, I'd reworked most of the second section, and that's now quite different, and probably not as good at it was first-time around, these things tend to flow better in the initial attempt? Or they do with me?

It's incredible! He has to have the same story, a better story or something similar scrapped off evilbay! Like the braggart in the playground, who won't be bested, yet always, only reacting!

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/11/sometimes-great-lotion.html

I mean, I'm not saying he made it up, but timing's everything, so no sympathy here! I lost a bigger, better, more erudite document, not five minutes ago . . . not! Little tosser.

Japanese composition Wild West

While I know I've lost some links, and I've since added most of the British makers here, in individual posts, but they're not linked to, on the new composition page yet, so there will be more editing, and there are a couple more to go up here, to finish-off what I have on early British composition. But I have checked the links there, and updated one, although, the STS Lineol link keeps defaulting to Kinder here, but I think that must be a 'me' or 'my machine' glitch, if it happens to you, 'copy' the link and go through Google.

 

Three lead and a bisque pilot, with variations of Timpo/Zang 'Timpolin' airmen

The page remains a guide only, and 'work in progress', with the 'Rest of World' maker's list particularly poor and bitty, so any help there will be gratefully received, but at least it is 'live' now, which is an advance on yesterday! Much shorter pages will appear at some point on ceramics and tin-plate, with polymers and size/scale/ratio/gauge, still some way off!

 

 

Unknown leopard - a plastic copy of a probably Lineol animal,

heralds the end of composition. 

 

I must also thank Adrian Little, who has let me shoot all sorts of interesting things, on his tables, over the years, not least a lot of the stuff on the Composition Page;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_25.html 

D is for Dustbin Lids

That's 'lid' as in helmet, not top, I know, it doesn't really work, but there you are, or, here we are! I want to leave this up for a day or two, so procrastinated and posted nothing for nearly two days while I thought about it, heay-ho! I'll still leave it up for a while, which will give me time to photograph a fantastic parcel from Chris Smith, which has all sorts of goodies (and bad guys) in it!

 

We're looking - in depth - at the First Version, Cherilea, 'Swoppet' Knights, here, because I have been lucky enough to go from a handful of bits to a master-collection, in less than two years. With a small but significant purchase at the Plastic Warrior show back in 2024 (possibly from Adrian at the now defunct Mercator), a smaller bag at PW this year, and the box above them which was a private purchase, to which I added a helmet (which had almost certainly fallen out of one of the three samples, and a plume, from a bits-lot.

 

There may be a few more in storage somewhere, but unlikely to make much difference to the whole, above. And the point of this post is to try and pin-down all the variables, a task which I may fail at, and which Matt Thier may have done a better job of back in the late 2010's in PW's magazine, when he went through all the Cherilea swoppets in some detail.

 

Poses first, and I am confident there are only six figures, five knights and this kneeling archer, who's a bit large, and a bit gawkish in posture, but would slip in-between the Britains and Lone Star chaps, but dwarf them slightly!

 

He is the only pose who doesn't wear a helmet, so his head is always painted, and a good one has three or even a formal four-count, of small arrows stuffed in his tube-quiver. 

 

But he comes in two versions, some with a 'ring hand' and the bow stuffed through the hole, some with a 'stud-hand' and the bow attached with a small plug-hole and stud, at the hand-grip. I have no idea which came first or why they may have replaced one with the other, as they both seem to work well, But maybe it's easier to lose the bow (even in the shop-stock boxes, at the store), from the plug-together version, and so that was the earlier, replaced one?

 

Three sword fighters, and this one seems to be the only one to officially get the cloak? Striking down, overarm, he's about to make a mess of someone who lost their footing, or who has tired, from existing wounds?

 

Striking around at waist height, he's in a fight to the death with an equal!

 

Ready, or parrying with his shield.

 

The standing waiting chap, never that useful in a fight, and I don't know if either lance is correct, the one with the dragon is associated with the mounted 2nd type, from the Sharna-Ware years and the rather compact castle play set, while the nicely, vicious-looking one is lovely, but the colour's not quite matching anything else?

 

The sixth sculpt is also a swordsman, but easier to separate out as he's striking overhead with both hands.

 

I've only noticed two different heads, one looking more like Charles I, the other looking more like a page-boy, or a Conquistador, but I must confess I didn't look that carefully, so there may be more. And while the archers' always have painted hair, it seems they gave-up painting the head inside the helmets quite quickly, with unpainted being more common than painted, overall.

 

Helmets, there are six dustbins, and two more traditional closed Burganets, but as I only have single examples of one or two, there may, by extrapolation, be more? And that's the rule for all the following!

 

I should point out that while they are mostly looking forwards in the upper shot, and backwards in the lower shot, it's not that simple, with the ones on either end of the row possibly facing forward in the lower shot and vise-versa, while the second from the right isn't clear at all! I also noticed the white plume is a fourth design! 

 

Single-headed Imperial chickens and two designs of cross, on the classic 'shield' shaped shield, of 13/14th century design, with a raised edge. A plug on the hand pushes through the shield and into the decorative element.

 

Earlier 11/12th century lozenge, or 'kite' shields with a more ornate chicken (looking the other way) and a fleur-de-lys (or, 'lis, a stylized lily or iris symbol, associated with French royalty, and symbolizing purity and the Virgin Mary). These shields seem to have been both moulded poorly, and then fettled poorly, and can be lumpy, misshapen or both!

 

I also have a double-headed chicken, but it's missing a wing, and all these are on the more decorative 15th century shields, which also have the raised rims.

There are two versions of three-point plume, and both seem to have sub-variants, which may be generations, or multiple cavities? This is the 'tumescent' one with two pointy-uppies and a drooper.

 

While the other variant has two droppers and one sticky-uppy, and is therefore the 'limp' one! Again, signs of different versions or cavities?
 

The only other crest design I have is a Wyvern (four limbed dragon), and again, as with helmets, shields, and shield achievements, I have only one of some of these, so there may well be more. So if you have items not shown here, or obvious variations, let us know!

 

All references to chicken/s should read eagle/s, I blame Artificial Intelligence!