O is for Ostdeutsche Ordnance

Another prime piece of plunder from the September Sandown show, and another one where Google's AI failed to provide, as did Google in general, and doubly annoying as I've only just obtained the Lehmann book, however, it went straight to storage, so I can't read it, but I bet this bit of the history is dealt-with there? Hay-ho, another day!

 

Artwork is remarkably accurate, compared to many other contemporary or not so contemporary companies packaging, although the figures and cargo are fanciful additions, absent from the contents of the box! Gnom Sortimen (gnome assortment), is the only text, and Gnom was a sub-brand of the East German continuation of Lehmann, after the end of World War Two.

 

Contents, not played with, totally mint and with no paint-chips of note, but possibly taken-out a few times, as I suspect the truck should be in the separate, card 'corral', rather than the trailer? But similar compartments may be missing for the other items?

 

A small field gun, a field-kitchen or 'Goulash Canon', which can be limbered with either of the other two towed items, but all three can't be 'trained together', as the larger trailer, and gun, don't have rear facing hooks.

 

A lovely thing, although Lehmann purists will tell you these aren't that brilliant, or that Gnom isn't terribly collectable, but I can't fault it for charm, build quality or playability, and as an East German kid, I think I would have loved to get this under the tree at Christmas, but I guess it represents the oppression, of one of the more insidious regimes of the Eastern-Bloc, given the web of Stasi infiltration into every-day life, the other side of the wire?

T is for Two - Eastie Westies!

Technically it's three now, but there is a narrative through them, and a connection (spurious it has to be admitted) with the other day's Jean posts . . . and I'm not starting T is for Three! A few minor things which arose as I was sorting Wild West recently;

So, we looked at a couple of Indians the other week and I had a few cowboys too, all in a soft rubber-like material (which is closer to silicon that PVC, in its properties?) and all from Lisanto in the former East Germany (or Richard Hopf, I'm not too sure, but neither are some of the German websites!).

The 'spurious detail' is the horses - I'm sure I read somewhere that they sometimes come with Jean Horses, these two have (but they could have been added/switched by the owner), and the horses seem better painted than my Jean ones - which isn't saying a lot my Jean ones are pretty tatty, as we saw last week; they are the same as the coach-horses I shelfied on JB's stall though?

But, some sites show them having their own Elastolin'eque horses, so I have my own doubts over the Jean ones? Anyway, the figures fit them perfectly, so they will stay for now! Do you know the truth?

We were then going to use the Eastern-European connection to move to France (next image) but I realised I had these odd copies of two of the Lisanto/Richard Hopf (?) figures, one coming-in quite recently I think, the other was in storage.

They are a marbled plastic, but only from scraps rather that an attempt at colourfulness or decoration I feel, and while the donors have a three part mould leaving flat bases, these have gate marks on a two-part mould's split-line suggesting huge runners, the sort you might find on an amateur tool, or hand-operated injection machine?

They also have a French Santon look about them (phew - still got a link to two/three!), but I can find nothing on them, anyone else got any? Who copied who?

Which neatly mentions France while holding the Eastern link; the right-hand figure here, in both shots, is - I believe - from the French maker Guilbert (but there seem to be various versions of him from French makers?) while the figure on the left is attributed to the Polish firm/organisation of PZG and which - you can see - is a copy, bar the changes to the knife hand, and more blood on the scalped hairpiece, which is ostentatiously blonde . . . it'll be that General George Armstrong' a'dyin' again and again and . . .

B is for Best Toy Ever? Working Machinegun

It's time for another Best Toy Ever post, and like the last one, thanks are due to Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) who took this along to a show where I was able to get a few shots off. Not 100% sure to the maker, but some of the ammunition resupplies are marked Märklin which is probably a good clue to the original maker too.

The contents were less than pristine having obviously been played with, well; you'd want to play with a best toy ever wouldn't you! Basically, it's a firing machine-gun, and I don't mean it makes a noise like a machinegun, I mean you feed it a belt of pre-loaded ammunition and it bangs . . .  as it fires rubber-bullets; it's too damn cool for the SF-Cadre!

A scaled-down feed mechanism and cap-firing hammer are operated by the turning of the handle, which is not far removed from the handle found on a Gatling Gun. Painting is similar to pre- or inter-war toys, but the two instruction sheets are cruder than you might expect from a 1930's toy, also at least one (the pink sheet above) seems to be that purpleish thing which I think we used to call  a 'roneo' (spell?) copy.

So I suspect it is just post-war? But using a pre-war tool, and painting style, just to get a product up and running in a blasted economy, and apart for the unconvincing clues to a post war sale, there's nothing in it.

This was the best bit! An exquisite chain of small brass turnings each of which can take a cap-gun charge at one end (top), and a rubber bullet at the other end (bottom), all tied together in a series of sort-of Morbius-loops or - more accurately - figure-of-eights, which allow for flexibility and a 'belt' feel, but which arrangement keeps the strings tight to the 'rounds' so they don't foul the mechanism, it's very clever!

The original bullets were small vulcanised rubber (tyre rubber) shells, but seem to have been replaced - due to loss - with small wooden splints which could be jammed in the blast hole between the cap-charge and the barrel, which must have worked because there were enough for the whole belt (with signs of jamming-in) which you wouldn't bother with if it all didn't work.

I couldn't try it as we had no caps on site, and you wouldn't want to break something like this if you hadn't paid for it, not to mention the cotton 'belt' arrangement looked like it might need replacing with some newer threads! But I can imagine what it must have been like spurting rubber death at ranks of composition or hollow-cast toy soldiers - best toy ever . . .

. . . 'till next time!

E is for Eine Erzgebirge Stadt!

These have been sitting in Picasa since the summer of '17, waiting for me do something with them, and this would seem to be a good point to get them out and have a look at them in public! Shot on Adrian's stall at Sandown Park in the May of that year, they are a rather nice set of probably inter-war erzgebirge buildings.

A large hunter's or 'foresters' lodge, this is just the sort of place we used to stop for a glass or two of ice cold appfelsaft, wending our way around the Black-Forest and Donautal as kids. The ones now turned into tourist traps tend to have fancy veranda's, balconies, and summer seating off to the side of the car park, but the building underneath is often like this, although usually with lower-angled roofs for the snow to sit on, maybe this is more typical of the Erzgebirge Mountain region?

This is slightly different to the onion tower churches I remember from the South as well. One of the first bits of German I ever learned; zwiebelturm, another was bummelzug! But my proper first German word was Umleitung!

I didn't take very good pictures of this, but I think it says 'something'-Gasthhof on the side, so like an old coaching-inn? A big pub! And at least it doesn't have cows downstairs; our local in Neuhausen smelt so bad when you first climbed the open-riser 'ladder' stairs to the bar, you needed three Phauenbrau before the odours slipped-away to join the paprika roast-chicken and real-fire smells in general background warmth, then the egg-nog came out!

This has had labels applied to suggest a Hospital, but as the others have all their details stamp-printed over the paint, I suspect the labels have been added by an owner and it was originally meant to be a farmhouse or something? Size wise these are all ideal for war-gaming in the 10-15mm scales.

T is for Two - Wild West From the East

A combination of picasa clearance and follow-up here, with some larger stuff from the former East Germany in the first instance and the former Soviet Union in the second-half.

I believe these are both Lisanto, previously a composition maker, but swallowed-up by the Red's in 1945, they would eventually become a centralised, collective VEB, from whence era comes these two, if they are Lisanto, as there were several similar makers and once they'd been VEB'd who knows who had the tools that Friday!

If they are Lisanto they should be . . .

Numer 033 - Shading eyes

Numer 048 - Stabbing with rope

But even those numbers may be modern collector's numbering?

The weapons are crude, the tomahawk die-cut from a sheet of [I think] polystyrene, but it could be something tougher, a propylene or ethylene polymer? While the rifle is like an inter-war pop-gun or cork-firer, and a pretty standard polyethylene! They are interchangeable, as the figures are a softish PVC, but the one (axe) has stretched its hand, leaving the gun loose, while the other's (rifle) hand is tight for the tomahawk.

I also found this, clearly marked, it's made of polystyrene and you can see damage to the base from being in close proximity to the PVC figures in the past, the escaping thalates from the PVC softening the styrene's chains; I keep such things separate.

I may have a rider somewhere, probably in the two boxes we looked at over a year ago, which are still to be properly sorted - as I think I've said before; Wild West isn't a priority for me.

Above; That marking in full!

Below which are four figures from Chris Smith which were a follow-up to something I've forgotten! Flats of the demi-ronde variety, and Russian - I think - although Chris said they were sourced in Lithuania (or Latvia?).

I love these, I've seen them on the Russian forums and slightly envied them, I used to think they were rubber, but I think they look polyethylene too, and large'ish?

Chris describes them thus - "The black/charcoal one looks like it has been carved in a soft stone similar to some Inuit/Eskimo tourist knickknacks I’ve seen . The red ones look like they are carved from red plasticine." I know what he means I've put a Totem Pole up here exactly as he describes and seen those stylised whales (they're ocean-going mammals Mr President, not countries!) in the same blackish material.

B is for Box-ticking - Soviet Era Troops - East Germany

Given what else I've managed to garner in the ten years since I extended the scope of the collection to larger scales - purely to feed the blog . . . and because it's fun - it's odd that I've only managed five of these, as they aren't that rare!

PGH Effelder's rather large (75-80mm) rubber Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), with their distinctive helmets; unique to the East German forces and possibly the oddest general-issue helmet worn in the 20th century by anybody other than the rebel star-ship guards in a galaxy far, far away!

Manufactured in a similar material and style to the Czechoslovakian Bata figures, although - as far as I know - Effelder weren't a shoe-factory! As I say they aren't particularly rare, being quite robust, and issued in one of the wealthier of the Soviet-puppet countries, so quite numerous.

They also track the changes in uniform in the East German army with the figures also issued in the rain-fleck camouflage, white (winter war) and three-colour camo'. There are also many poses and pose variations, so only a small sample above, maybe TJF's mates can show us some more? He can't; he's a dealer not a collector!

This chap is a question-mark, obviously from a model vehicle, probably plastic, but it could be an older tin-plate thing, but unquestionably East German with that salad-bowl on his head. Nicely painted and in the style of pre-war composition outriders from Elastolin or Lineol.

It's a parade pose, with hands fisted on thighs (in the British Army you brace and stretch to the knees for parallel arms) and back straight. He's closer to 54mm and seems to be a standard hard polystyrene plastic.

Now known to be Plaho - Thanks to Andreas Dittmann!

V is for Vero

This is one of several examples of Model Railway stuff I have from behind the Iron Curtain, Vero seem to have been an East German concern, and while I first thought it would be a copy of Wiad or Faller or somebody like them, it seemed to be a quite unique design when I got it home. Dual language instructions in German and Russian were the pointers to it being from the 'wrong' side of the wire. Internal blackout sheet for electric lighting, this follows the practice of Kibri, Faller and co. in the West, although without all the curtains, screens and blinds that come on a separate sheet, for daytime displays. Majority of parts laid out, the three little paper bags contain two types of scatter material and all the small parts. The green 'propeller shaft' bottom left, is the sprue. Loosely assembled, in total contrast to most of the western manufacturers; there are no locating channels, stud-and-holes or anything, so the modeller would have to assemble the whole building 'by eye'. However there is the same attempt at a self-coloured kit we had over here - Airfix being the notable exception!