T is for Two - Foreign Minor Makes - HO Railways Figures

Many thanks again to Jon Attwood, as these are all his images, I brightened them up a bit in Picasa, and can add a few points of note, but mostly, just eye candy as we box-tick a couple of the lesser makes, but, if you were a Spanish or Danish railway modeller in the 1960/70's, they wouldn't have been that 'minor' to you, as you feasted your eyes on the display at your local hobby shop, so these things are always relative!

Now Aneste Datank, and offering a basic range of Preiser in their own-brand, as a catalogue box-ticker, originally Dat Ank or Datank (?) are a Spanish railway model maker, who, for a while, under the semi-cold war conditions of being in Franco's Spain, were free to produce knock-off's to their hearts' content!

 

And they seem to have settled upon Walter Merten as the target of their plagiarism, although, the lower set may be old Preiser sculpts? Nevertheless, for metal copies of finely-detailed plastic figures, they aren't bad, quite colourful, and were clearly quite plentiful, as, since Jon sent me these images, I have seen quite a few on evilBay.

 

One is reminded of the efforts of Bermania, from Argentina, but these are a superior finish.

 

While up in the colder, wetter north of the continent, Reisler was producing these in an early Cellulose or glass-like polystyrene. We have actually seen these here before, or something similar, different sculpts, but at the time they were 'unknown' or 'maybe Märklin', now maybe Reisler or maybe Lego! They really only have the heavy bases in common.

While these have no bases, and the farm we also looked at previously here at Small Scale World, have very thin bases? So an odd range of sets, which may be bigger than listed on the Tohan site, until someone ID's those others, we won't know!

L is for Lego's Dirty Little Secret

One of the drums I keep beating, one of the windmills I will continue to tilt-at, is the theft by Lego of the Hilary Page design of the Kiddycraft Mini Bricks, a scaled down version of his pre-war self-locking bricks.

So - as we shall see in a second - when I saw this German language version of one of the first sets we had as kids, the stand-alone 'pre-fab' garage, I had to get it up here.

 

One of the 'excuses' Lego have used for the similarity of their product in recent years has been that they 'improved' the product with the addition of the rods and tubes at the centre-points between the studs, to 'jam' the bricks together, and as those huge propagandist tomes from Dorling Kindersly have had to address the plagiarism, that's the line that's been taken, to explain the fact that the one is a copy of the other!

But here we have a set, admittedly early, and European, yet manufactured some time after the brand had become popular outside Denmark, and sometime before they lost the court-case brought by Kiddycraft in the UK, in which the rods between the studs are absent. These are a direct copy of the UK bricks, with the exception of the weight-balanced door, and the two specialist receiving bricks, but by then Airfix had similar bricks in their Betta Builder!

 

So, when Jørgen Vig Knudstorp said in 2009 "On January 28, 1958 the LEGO (R) Group patented the LEGO (R) brick with its now well-known tubes inside..." He was being a bit disingenuous, as the Kiddycraft design was the one which had gone International in '56! What we have here, are Hilary Page's self-locking 'Kiddybricks', stolen by Ole Kirk Christensen and exploited by his son, Godtfred.

And the thing is, the later tubes/rods were an innovation, or 'novel addition', they did not change the outward appearance, nor the function of the bricks, very important in Patent Law. The very patents Lego would use for years against all-comers including Tyco, and it was not until the courts protected Mega Bloks, after these facts started to gain wider recognition, that things changed and some began to realise Lego are just another 'evil empire'!

The early products were made from cellulose-acetate, which tends to warp over time, and while you can use hot water or a hair-dryer to restore shape, there's often associated shrinkage, so the bricks and components no longer interact with others, or the modern product. Not a problem on Kiddycraft's original urea-formaldehyde bricks, nor Airfix's polystyrene or Blue Box's polyethylene ones.

 

Other Points

Apparently 'Award-winning' journalist Erin Blakemore writes "LEGO says Kiddicraft told the company it was fine to use the design, but in 1981 they formally bought the rights to Kiddicraft bricks from their inventor’s descendants.", and while the "but" is telling, she fails to mention that they had already, by that point, lost a UK court case and been fined a large amount of money (for the day), neither a fine nor a subsequent IP purchase would have been necessary, if they had that permission.

 

And they bought from Hestair-Kiddycraft (to save their arses), not the 'decendents', his widow had, by then, sold her stake in the Kiddycraft company to Hestair.

 

On the Brick Fetish (and other) website/s, the story is told that "Although Hilary and Oreline visited Ole and Godtfred in 1949, and perhaps, even left drawings and samples, Page was never aware that Lego produced a version of his brick.", yet while it is true Hilary (who would commit suicide a few years later) never knew the depth of the deception, not even Lego have ever claimed that there was a meeting. Indeed, with their mawkishly-sentimental animated history of the product (which you can find on YouTube), they claim he found the bricks (made - in the video - to resemble the much later Tri-Ang 'Pennybricks') at a trade fair.

The idea seems to come from a Daily Wail article by Adrian Lithgow, back in 1987, and the truth is likely that the trade-fair exhibitor, from which the bricks were stolen by Ole, was probably Hilary or someone from Kiddycraft?

 

While Miniland states "Along with the new [injection moulding] machine, Ole received several sample parts showing its capabilities. Among these were samples of a toy brick made by Injection Moulders, Ltd, of London. It was Hilary Fisher Page’s Kiddicraft brick. Interlego A.G. v. Tyco Industries [1989] 1 A.C. 217. During cross-examination, Godtfred indicated that He and Ole had received Kiddicraft samples, which served as the basis of the original Automatic Binding Brick.", ie, no trade fair, let alone no meeting?

 

However it happened, it was theft, straight-up, pure & simple thievery, piracy, plagiarism. 

Without the Star Wars franchise (which can't have been cheap), Lego would have gone under in 2004, and in producing figures with lightsabres and ray guns, not to mention 'star fighters', they broke their own golden 'no war toys' rule, except . . . they had already broken it with the knights & castles, the Wild West and the pirates & Red/Blue-coat soldiers, so, even within their own mythos, Lego are a bit crap!

And the above all matters; had they paid for a licence, Hilary Page may not have felt the need to kill himself (over something else), and yet, without a licence fee payable, they remain the most expensive bricks on the market, by a country mile!

F is for Follow-ups - Space Stuff

Sorting folders I've found two readers contributions following up on stuff from ages ago, so I'd better get them up here before they get any older!

Apologies to all, you will by now have realised it's organised chaos at this end, and with about 800 folders on toys and toy stuff, things do just 'disappear'! Sometimes they actually disappear; it seems that from time to time Picasa will just stop showing a folder on the scroll, so every year or so I try to find an hour or two to go through the 'My Pictures' folder, looking for both empty folders and folders which have been lost / forgotten or hidden by Picasa's ornery rules!

This was sent to the Blog by a loyal reader in Finland (he's since sent me something equally interesting, which is on-hold due to current events in the Independent Republic of Ukraine), and shows playing pieces for a board game which you will recognise as the Reisler spacemen (one shown) but in plain / primary coloured plastic; red one damaged. We partially tied them to Thomas's space figures here.

The game is by a Danish manufacturer Adolph Holst of Aalborg and called Avaruuspeli or 'Space Game', published in Danish there are also Finnish language versions ('rare birds' in the contributor's words!).

The same company produced a WWII type board game; Taistelupeli (or 'Conflict Game'), an example of which can still be seen here, but it's a sales site so it won't be there for ever! You can see it also has undecorated Reisler figures as playing pieces, the rather generic 'combat infantry'.

While Ed Berg sent these as a follow-up to Brian Berke's follow-up to a spring-launched missile post I did!

They are another version of MPC's rocket launcher, the missiles are very different to those shown in the original post. A smarter version still can be seen on Ed's excellent Blog here, while this is awesome!

Cheers guys, it's all bricks in the wall! It's all appreciated and it all makes it here - eventually!

H is for How They Come In - Francophone Lot

I was round a mate's a while ago, John Begg, who many of you will know as PTS52 on feebleBay, and he talked me into a junk lot, well, he sort of shoved it at me and I accepted it with an unbecoming over-eagerness . . . I'm addicted to this stuff, but you've probably worked that out for yourselves by now!

Four 'SINGAPORE' marked animals; without the box, or a bit of research I can't say whether they are Blue Box or Redbox, but Tai Sang owned all three (? see the Blog passim) factories, so it's all a bit academic! Along with a Jean Höfler one-humped Arabian camel; with that factory paint - I think an earlier version.

A charming polystyrene cockerel which I suspect might be French, or Danish? Pretty little thing either way and new to me, new to the collection  . . . and now - new to the Blog! Can you tell I had no blurb for this? It's factory-painted!

Interesting but damaged solid copy of a Britains Swoppet Indian, again, possibly French (hard plastic) rather than a Hong Kong knock-off, a nice Wagoneer, who is Hong Kong, but a cut above the usual pirated swoppet crud, with a separate vinyl jerkin and PVC whip. He's not rare, but it's nice to get him with the whip.

While the loose 'styrene flats, are downscaled copies of the Gibb's ones, and finding a few more loose justifies my not de-bagging the set we saw here, and nice to find a couple of the teepee/tipi's, but still waiting for the cavalry to turn up? They are also Hong Kong.

I have quite a few of these, they have a distinctive 'drum' of plastic, usually around the feet or on the base, which might be a mould-release pin-mark, or something more technical, and I assume French 'bazaar' or Spanish late-production?

This sample increased my pose-count and revealed that they come in two sizes, or were themselves copied - the bright, fluorescent-yellow chief could be younger as well as smaller! Remember the Hugonett beretted combat figures had a saluting chap in a smaller size too? Lifted poses are a mix of Britains and French figures I think?

These are mostly Cofalu and include my first mounted Indian from them. I'm not sure about the hard-plastic chap, he's similar to my 60mm swivel waist Cofalu French infantry, but he is glued and doesn't have the swivel head, if neither Cofalu nor another French producer; might he be an Italian make?

Medievals; again, I think mostly French and a fair-bit of home-paint, but the important one (bottom left - Cyrnos) is still in his factory finish. The figure next to him could be Hong Kong or French bazaar and is clearly a copy of Timpo's early swoppet line, the two top right are Cofalu again I think, while the Elastolin siege-engine crew copies are more (home-painted) bazaar output.

Combat infantry; a Reisler wire-cutter from Denmark leys alongside two 'multipose' kit figures, and while the DAK MG38 operator may be Airfix Multipose, I suspect the Italian is Italeri (or Italaerei as the name probably was when the kit was first issued!), or even Heller?

Behind them two Starlux 35mm's which from the state of the paint (cursory flesh on one, none on t'other) I suspect are 'for' Solido (Belgian) die-cast model vehicle accessories.

While towering over everyone is other Belgian, a WWII/Post War infantryman, in his British inspired beret and battle-dress (poor Belgians!), who's base is thinner than the Durso one's I thought were here somewhere, but I think they must be on the languishing composition page, so he maybe by someone else?

These are interesting, in that I've not seen them before (but did see a lot again the other day!), and they are based on the larger Silver Knights by Supreme, but without the moving arms, and some of the poses of the smaller Supreme figures we've seen here before, and my suspicion is that they probably are Supreme, but possibly a specific contract for someone else, maybe even a generic?

Soft PVC in black and chocolate brown, the reborn Starlux 'brand' had a similar set in silver/black a while ago (Le Chateau Noir), which was a partial re-badgeing of a Simba set (also Supreme contents) and given the French/European nature of most of the contents of this tray, it may be a rival product from that market? I think the painting has had 'help' at someone's home!

Everything else! Three flat lead, horse-race, game-playing pieces, two Giant horses and a cowboy, Matchbox Adventure 2000 (boy, were they a few decades out!) spaceman, early British intermediate-scale horse (Rocco Household cavalry), Minie Mouse (Combex or Heimo?) and a Supreme pirate who is a color variation of those previously seen here, I think?

Which leaves the chap all tied-up. Now I was sure I should know who he was, and searched quite hard, but I'm stumped, he's similar to the Domplast/Heinerle/Manurba one, but his chaps are far more flared, Jean's is moulded integral to the tree, while I have a similar one somewhere, tied to the tree with little button-thread ropes, but I think he's smaller (storage!) and possibly Timpo, so, I'm out of ideas - he could be French bazaar (given the rest of the lot), and I wondered if he may be from a helicopter toy's casualty basket (with flared jeans - very 1970's!), but I would like to know for sure!

Anyway, all useful grist to the mill and many thanks to John for saving them.

N is for National . . . Tree Week!

Yes loyal readers, it's National Tree Week - if you live in the UK (if you live elsewhere it's probably National Something-else Week?) - and the various parties currently competing for power in our General Election spent the weekend arguing over who was planning on planting the most trees! I think the highest bid was 40-million, by Boris, but you know that's a lie!

The National Tree Week people what us to plant 1-million between us, which should be doable, there's about 68-million of us so one in every sixty-eight citizens need to plant a tree in the next twelve months?

As covering the whole of the British Isles in trees wouldn't undo what's been lost in the Amazon this year, it's all rather academical, but you should plant trees because they're nice!

Anyway . . . by way of a bit of gratuitous band-wagoning; here are some trees!

Lego flats! But Lego from the 'acceptable age', that is the age before that pesky Small Scale World bloke reminded us all they are rip-off, corporate, plagiarist pirates, and before they apparently set out to cover the whole planet (including its oceans) in four-centimetres of plastic bricks!

The early set (upper shot) were stand-alone trees with small, flat-bottomed bases, and six designs produced seven trees by the expediency of painting-in flower-candelabra in red on some but not all of the horse-chestnuts. The later set (lower shot) had bases which griped the studs on baseboards, or the studs on spaceships - Lego is pretty flexible that way!

A couple of the latter set's trees were redesigned, and 'big round tree' was one of them, as was the hedge - they were given more lumps!

There is a minor variation on shade with the firs, but it's not as marked as with some of the other trees, while Samsonite had a franchise in the USA for a while and produced the middle tree in the upper shot, it's the standard tree, given two slats which lock-on to the studs and may have led to the second full-version coming to life? They treated the hedge (below) in the same way.

I ought to be able to tell you who made the two vague copies (lower left) as I have them on the dongles somewhere, but I'm buggered if I can find them, they came with a large boxed play-set of erzgebirge type stuff if memory serves, and while these are a little different from the Lego sculpt; the same name may be responsible for a couple more down the page.

The modern ones are actually quite cartoony, but equally more Lego'y! the early designs had sharp edges and although softish polyethylene and pretty innocuous, they were nevertheless redesigned with rounded extremities.

The small fir was the first to receive the kinder tips, and - as far as I know - there are no hard-edged versions, however when the two full sized trees were re-done, a second version of the little one appeared, also (as per the two full-sized trees) slightly taller than its predecessor.A forth design is a Lombardy Poplar, but I may not have one, or it is somewhere else!

The Lombardy poplar was softened in the clip-on tranche with the loss of the 'sand-tex' finish. It is also the most pirated of all the Lego trees, but all the piracies are in other tubs, in another crate out in the garage so we'll have to look at them properly another day! China firms are still using various sub-generation of this tree today, and one or two have been cobbled together below - final image.

On the right; touring in France, before they cut them all down to save the lives of drunk drivers . . . I would have put concrete blocks round their bases, after a decade you'd have had a leaner population with no drink drivers and you could remove the blocks!

The horse chestnut; in the upper shot are the basic versions with the two modern 'big-round tree', below are more variations of the early flat-base version. However, the two to the bottom left may not be Lego at all, and may - in point of fact - be either the same maker as the firs above, or another maker all together?

Both are finer, busier sculpts, but both are the same colours as the known Lego trees? A true HK copy is in the final image below.

The boring ones! Although the hedges are very useful for war-games scenery as you can build quick lines of natural obstacle from them, and in 1:330 type mirco-armour gaming each make a nice stand of trees or a coppice.

Note; the far right birch is also by another maker, possibly the same maker as the two look-alikes (firs and chestnuts) above? And there's a related hedge from Wing Luen below.

Between the flats and the full-on polyethylene lumps, there was a short-lived pair (I think it was only ever the two shapes . . . did they do a hedge; they may have done the hedge too?) where plastic granules in green were attached to formers or 'armatures' in brown polymer.

These were from the cellulose years, so acetone is the best solvent, useful, as they are hard to find, and when found have usually lost some of their granules which will be found scudding about in the bottom of their container.

But note that the conifer has large granules, while the 'deciduous' has smaller granules, I have a part-fir in small granules so assume both/all three came in either format. I'd imagine the parental swallowing-fear of granules which came lose, or could be prised-off, often in multiple-granule lumps, hastened their short life?

Mega Bloks came to my attention with a range of large (8/12-inches) dinosaur 'big-box' models (long before Lego did dinosaurs), which came in lovely shades of purple, brown, dark mauve, khaki and various greens (long before Lego offered such colours) and the shrub in front/to the left here, came in those sets.

The Lego grass tussock also has some age now, and is here to compare, as a red one (or other colours); it's sea-weed, or - I think - it was used as an alien planet's shit at one point? There's loads of greenery in Lego's inventory now, but there's nothing exciting about modern Lego, except . . . walk a mile anywhere in the UK and you'll find some in the environment!

I cobbled this together from scraps after the above was pretty much done, from the left we have the modern iteration of the poplar, it's Lego DNA all but gone; a generic which may or may not be the same as the Wing Wha screen-capcha next to it; a Hong Kong copy of the chestnut, a Wing Luen hedge which seems to be half Lego and half Gem? Finally a comparison shot with the relatively common Jean-Big-Manurba-Dom-Heinerle-Leyla-whoever, marked W.Germany on its base.

News Views Etc . . . Khaki Infantry Page Update

Finally got round to texting-up the latest tranche of images for the Khaki infantry page including the brilliant stretcher comparisons from Chris Smith, the rest of my Reisler along with a shot from the late Dave Scrivener and a Britains 'Hong Kong' shot, which have been sprinkled through the page, with the stretchers given a separate section, as the mortar's already had, but located alphabetically in the 's' slot!

F is for Foreign Fellows on Phut-phuts

Heay, I don't care - anything for an alliterative heading, me!

So soon after the last two-wheeled round-up, but I was re-jigging the garage stuff to make room and found several boxes I was happy to re-acquainted myself with, including the motorcycles box, and so we're back to them with a quick look at some of the larger ones from foreign makers.

Across the North Sea Reisler were turning this out in various guises including civil and police colours as well as the 'Friendly' (with rider) and 'Enemy' (abandoned!) force colours seen here. Made from an early polystyrene, it has a soft, warmness to the touch and a naturally glossy finish, to which they added minimal paint-highlights.

Some Spanish outfit - I'd better not try ID'ing them in case it says something else in TJF's bookie-wook, leading him to another on-line rage'gasm. In the shot bottom-right, you can see the holes present in all machines for a side-car, and both variants seem relatively common, sharing the swoppet elements of figures by Manuel Sotorres with the moveable arms also seen on the smaller figures from Torres Maltas, this rider though has more in common with the larger output credited to Juguetes Teixido . . . damn! Committed myself . . . helmets on!

From the land of Uncle Sam came this rather nice machine, sans rider, a Harley' or an Indian? Milwaukee steel-horse anyway! Made by Pyro as part of their dime-store military range and also included in some of the larger 'big-box' sets, it never had a rider as far as I know and was out of scale (larger) than most of the other vehicles in the range.

Covering Germany from Italy, comes this crude'ish sculpt which can be taken as a BMW R75 or Zündapp KS 750 due to the front forks being an accurate rendition of neither!

The Atlantic figures are stiff and the machine is chunky, and I think my back-seat may be a battlefield modification from an anti-aircraft mounting . . . you can't win 'em-all! This is a later issue in a leery colour, probably from the blister-packs with collector stickers.

From 'Chye-Nah' as the Orange Loon refers to them; comes a modern road-bike/tourer type with 3-spoke alloy wheels, a camouflage paint-job and convoy/escort beacon. New Ray's is a lovely model but the equally well sculpted (yet rather over-burdened - given his storage pannier's size!) rider cannot be made to hold the diminutive handle-bars which is a pain and something which should have been sorted-out at the production stage; maybe he's from another machine?

A few more shots of the New Ray pairing!

Warh! Err . . . Well . . . , this isn't foreign, what's it doing in this post? Someone must have sneaked it in here to advertise another post? Ah! That's it; check this out . . . Airfix, don't you know!

T is for That's That Bloke From May! The One With The Magnet!

Did you spot it earlier?

I'd done all the photo's, all the image editing and most of the blurb, when I thought "He looks familiar, but he's not quite Dinky? Hold on; I've thought that before . . .?" I thought! Dug the old pictures out and sure enough . . . he's now in the Reisler tub!

Confirmation shot! The farm hand from Riesler was the figure used on that magnetic rubber advertising premium we saw a while back, from a Formeta. And; while I had found several Formeta's, none of which matched the logo, I seem to recall one or more were from the Low Countries?

Where Reisler clearly had contacts - if not an active sales team - providing these (not uncommon) carded-sets for Bois Manu (a furniture and shop-fitting design house exhibiting at the Expo '58 World's Fair in Brussels) in Belgium. Clearly a tourist keepsake, similar to the stuff you found in London from Timpo or Cavendish, but smaller; these are all 40mm.

 From the left

Flight attendant; traffic cop; police detective/Gendarme (?); motorcycle patrol-man; ceremonial Guardsman and a 'Red Cross' nurse.

From the left

Belgian Bois Manu Export figure; Danish version (both that softish but soluble polystyrene Reisler used), then three polyethylene (PE) figures; Danish policeman, 'Friendly Force' dispatch-rider; 'Enemy Force' dispatch rider.

D is for Diminutive Danish Dirt-diggers!

That's 'farmers' to you . . . sometimes the alliterative titles don't work properly, blame the pink-monkey on the keyboard!

When I posted Reynolds' HR Products a while back now, I said I had in the past wondered if they were Reisler and that I had a few more in storage, well, I had a disappointing one in storage! So I won't be doing a follow-up to them for the foreseeable future; in the meantime, here are the Reisler ones instead!

Typical boxed-set includes everything you would need for a little scene or a couple of vignettes on your model railway layout, in this case pigs being 'mucked-out' and a cow being milked while granny looks-on from a bright red bench!

My loose samples hint at at-least four other sets; horse, cow and chicken-based, along with a a pack of fencing? There is a website with all of them, which I'll post a link to at the end of this post when I upload it, on Monday.

At a true European HO 'scale', those chickens are shorter than cooked grains of rice, but about twice the height, and not as small as Noch's N-gauge cats!

The fencing got marbled production with the colour-mix differing from batch to batch. I also have a rather fine bull but I didn't do any comparison shots for the Airfix page, I'll try to do some in a day or two?

All Reisler on the right; you can appreciate from the left-hand shot how small those chickens are! That's it; Reisler's HO Collectors Series farm - box ticked.

Link - You have to click on 'HO', then 'Sortimenter' and possibly 'Figuroversigt' but that doesn't seem to do anything?