S is for Seen Elsewhere, and Seen Here!

But all new images, a bit of a reprise for the Torgano Wild West demi-rondes I got at last year's Plastic Warrior show, from Adrian Little, to remind those with a bit of spare time this Saturday, that if they get their arses to Whittton (Twickenham), they too might find something like this to take home, at the best Toy Soldier show in the calendar, but I'll be there, looking too!

 

Held at The Winning Post, a motel, inn and the Harlequin Suite function room (the important bit), technically at Whitton, which is the nearest station, it's a few hundred yards from both the headquarters of Rugby Union and the eponymous Harlequin's Stoop, both of whom consider themselves very much Twickers!

 

I nicked the travel details from Paul's PW Blog, I've been a bit lazy this year! 

 

Directions to The Plastic Warrior Show

BY ROAD

From Outside London take M25, M3, A316, go over one roundabout and entrance to the winning Post is after 500 metres on your left.

From Inner London, after Richmond Circus follow A316 and continue straight on over three roundabouts. You will pass the Winning Post on your right. At the next roundabout take the fourth exit (returning, back the way you have come, but on the other side of the A316 dual carriageway) and the entrance to the Winning Post will be on your left after 500 metres.

FREE PARKING. There is extensive free parking at the site and in the residential roads behind the Winning Post. The Harlequin Suite is to the right of the main building. The venue is in the London ULEZ charging zone so you will need to check that your vehicle complies with the omissions requirements or pay the relevant fee.

BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT

From Central London and the South of England by overground train (South Western Railways) from Waterloo or Clapham Junction to Whitton Station. There are two trains an hour and the journey time is approx. 30 minutes, this is a loop line so four trains an hour run from two different platforms at Waterloo Station.

From the North of England by train to London, arriving at Kings Cross, St. Pancras or Euston.

Take the London Underground Victoria Line to 'Vauxhall' and change for South Western Railways to Whitton Station as above. Whitton Station is just three minutes walk from the Winning Post. Turn left out of the station past Jubilee Avenue and Pauline Crescent, the next turning on your left is the back entrance to the Winning Post.

Should you wish to take the London Underground to Richmond as in previous years, the easiest thing is to change platform and take a South Western Railways service to Whitton Station as above, (four trains an hour from Richmond, journey time seven minutes).

Alternatively you could get a black cab or a 110 bus from the taxi rank and bus stop outside the station, a cab should take about 10 minutes, the bus is 24 minutes.

Oyster cards are accepted on all London Underground lines, buses and South Western Railways to Whitton Station.


The Winning Post Inn

Opens from 08.00 a.m. to 11.00 p.m. serving breakfast or coffee for those who arrive early. The pub serves drinks (alcohol) from 11.00 a.m. and lunches from 12.00 a.m. There is no cash point on site but Whitton town centre, with a full range of shops and cash machines, is just three minutes walk from the hall.

Within the Winning Post complex is a Premier Inn travel hotel for those who want to break their journey and stay overnight. 

 

Contact details as normal;

 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts
Blog. - http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/
eMail - pw.editor3@gmail.com (pw.editor@ntlworld.com)
Tel. - 01483 830 743
 

 See you there!

A is for Available in Any Colour, as Long as it's Fast!

I seemed to do quite well in the racing-car department, at Sandown, I rarely go to Sandown with anything like a shopping list, it's a question of what's there (and cheap) on the day! And, a month or so ago, it was racing cars, apparently?

Rather highfalutin instructions, and blurb, bigging-up a basic mechanism in this Maserati, which had been known to aficionados of balsa flying machines for several decades before this was issued? And the addition of a crown and bevel makes the 'starting handle' a harder wind than the propeller usually employed for the winding of rubber-band models!

 

To be honest, and given the quality of some more obvious 'facsimile' boxes I've seen recently, I have my doubts over the authenticity of this box, it's just too good, too clean? But the jeweller's loupe seems to suggest it's litho- or screen-printed onto an absorbent card, and shop stock stuff does turn-up, from time to time, but I'm not confident, either way?

 

This is my second FROG (Flies Right Off [the] Ground) Penguin (flightless bird), but is very different, the previously-found jeep being a heavy, vulcanised rubber, almost composition in consistency and weight, while this is a lightweight, plastic (early 'styrene?) and tin, novelty.

 

A future post (currently in storage) will be two of these helmets, one of which, in silver, is identical to the one depicted on this driver figure (the reason vehicles started to gain traction in the collection), with the set-forward or stand-off, drop-down perspex sheet, mounted around the front of a rigid visor.

 

They both came from 'Old Mr. Bening' (might be Benny or Benning), who was a silversmith, in a little shop/workshop, I think at the T-junction of the B3004 (Forge Road) and A325, just shy of Bordon, Hampshire, although the premises seem to have gone in a junction remodelling over the 50-odd years since he died, and we last visited him.

 

It may have been somewhere else, nearby, the memories are weak, and Google is no help with everyday, local historical stuff, there might as well have been no world prior to 1997! But he had been a racer in his younger days, and gave us a couple of his old helmets.

 

Ingap large scale Porsche F1, my first larger Ingap, and another in that classic fifties or sixties metallic blue plastic! I don't know if the box is original (packing from a larger carton?), or fashioned by a previous owner, but it fits well, and keeps the car protected, so I'll hang on to it! Both the above are about 1:43rd/48th scale.

 

Not a racing car, and closer to 1:35th/32nd, but just for fun, it was one of the items missing from my flood-damaged set, which we looked at prior to my discarding the packaging as beyond saveable a few years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/ab-is-for-vidalis-brothers-joy-toy.html

 

And given the price Greek sellers on evilBay want, for everything, it was a bargain! I guess it's trying to be a VW Carmen Ghia, or early Porsche Carrera? Bonnet's not right for either! Equally, the Greek Hellas sports-car, might fit (after a quick Google!), but whatever it wants to be, it's still, a nice find.

Z is for Zorro

I can't believe we haven't had that title yet, given Z is one of the hard ones to find decent titles for! Heay-ho, we've had it now, and the Zorro in question is a set of chocolate egg collectables from Maraja from a good while ago, and which I found as a complete set, probably on feeBay, back in 2022.

 

Piled with the insert sheet.

 

Good guys and babe!

Bernardo (Zorro's deaf & mute valet), Zorro (Don Diego de la Vega) and the dancer.

 

Bad guys!

 That's it, simple box-ticking exercise; gets them in the Tag list!

C is for Clone Charlies, Charly Clones, Charly's Clones?

I muttered about clearing some of the capsule toy backlog, and while not strictly capsule toys, unless the Kinder variant, these are . . . were (!) in the same section of Picasa and can go first! Dulcop's line Super Charly and his cousins.

 

These are half-and-half mine and Internet scrapings, and in the order they joined the folder, some have been seen before, I think, in a show-plunder post, but it's a better overview!

 

A lot on evilBay back in '21, which I meant to bid on, but either didn't, or failed to win, I can't remember now. Obviously from Soviet-era Eastern Europe, and bilingual, is it Polish and Russian? Hungarian/Bulgarian? Out-and-out copies.

 

Also from Eastern Europe, this was a Sandown Park jobbie, I think, last year sometime, again, a straight-up copy of Dulcop's American Indians, and which kicked-off the next few comparison shots. He's lost a feather from his headdress, and a bow.

 

I first became aware of SMĚR, just after the 'Wall' came down, when they started shipping copies of old Viking ship models into the west, here, to the UK, via Pocketbond, but these would have probably remained something more domestic, in Czechoslovakia, whether they are now Czech or Slovakian, I have no idea!

 

Mine, on the left, possibly a Hong Kong copy, I think he's supposed to be a medic, I'm not sure why he has a walkie-talkie? Dulcop original US Cavalryman from feeBay on the right. The Eastern copies, both from SMĚR and the unknown packs, have button noses, Dulcop, Kinder and Hong Kong pirates have rounded m-noses, like little piggy-wigs!

 

The lot which I think we've seen before, these are the sub-scale Kinder, probably under licence from Dulcop, or somebody with a Dulcop licence like CGGC/Grisoni? Above shot shows six complete figures, below shot, the 'bits  pieces', but with a bag of bits in the old storage lot, there should be a future coming together of parts to make more 'wholes'!

 

Two Kinder, the SMĚR and a Dulcop sized figure, which I suspect is HK.

Note the SMĚR has more ovoid feet/shoes.

 

So I felt I should add some actual Dunlop examples, and grabbed these off feebleBay not that long ago, two larger boxed sets of cowboys and Indians, and a smaller single-figure window-box of a confederate soldier, with hidden horse and cactus, and illustrations of several others, foot & mounted, on the back. Accessories are mostly from the standard 54mm figure range.

C is for Cone'ucopia - 2 of 2

This is still out there, I've seen it quite often in petrol stations (service stations), and some of the smaller convenience stores, or at least those which carry stock from BJ Toys, such as the Premier store in Pirbright, which seems to have replaced the NAAFI, and from which I got mine, at about the same time Peter Evans also found them, and mentioned them to me.

 

BJ Toys; blue cone is for blokey kids, pink is for less-blokey kids! I got a blue one!

 

A real cornucopia!

 

Clockwise from top-left; Rocky keyring and collector/backing card; sports themed puzzle and colouring book; a self inflating light-stick (read 'lightsabre'), which I haven't inflated yet; a multi-hole bubble-wand and bottle of bubble liquid; three packs of fizzy candies; a Dino' mini-set, which contains stuff we've seen in BJ carded sets here at Small Scale World; and, finally, a Letrabot blind bag.

 

The dinosaur, comes with a ridiculously over-sized egg, which is more chicken than dinosaur, so clearly the egg came first! And a new take on the current palm-tree design, in that it's a single moulding, with bi-colouring, dwelt-on before, here.

 

I see a lot of this stuff in the fish departments of pet stores or garden centres, even at The Range, and I suspect that industry might have had a hand, along with the fake flower people, in the multi-colour shot techniques becoming so common now.

 

Rather aptly, I got the letter H, and it's a simplistic transformer 'bot'.

 

Sub-branded Planet White, which may be a wave-indicator (?), the Letrabots (or Letr-A-Bots) are from an Italian outfit called Ciciboom Srl., and Letranimal, Kartbots, Numberbots (with symbols) and Letrazoo also exist!

The cones retail at £4.99, and with the equivalent of three rack-toys, and several other novelties, I think they are worth the money, for kids that is; this sample will be enough for me! Remember, sometimes we buy this stuff so you don't have to, otherwise we'd probably be desperately scraping flying saucer pictures off of that evilBay!

R is for Retro Moon Man

If you have a theme - stick to it! This is actually the last one in the queue for now, but that's not to say I won't find another in the next few weeks, or certainly over the next few months. We're back to Legami, with another retro/deform/NASA astronaut, and this one is a pencil sharpener, with a shavings-collecting back-pack/life-support unit!

 

 

  

He also has one of those movement-triggered LED lights, hidden behind his opaque visor, so when you pick him up or shake/move him, he lights up, like some near-critical loon, about to go nuclear!

T is for Tameo, but also; Question Time!

Roving reporter Brian Berke picked these up the other day, and sent them to the blog, and while he's pretty sure they're by Tameo Kits (TK) of Italy, the figures don't seem to be listed on the website any longer, so help with identifying the individuals' modelled, would be greatly appreciated, from any F1 or Italian model fans, who might be passing Small Scale World!

Personal or eMail-related stuff edited out, but in Brian's words;

 

"I won  [. . .]  some metal figures. From the listing photo, I thought they were in space suits, but it turns out they are racing drivers from an Italian firm called TAMEO that I had never heard of. Their present website does not seem to list them.

I make no apologies for not having a racing car to pose them with, not my area of interest, but I [found] a NASCAR diecast to indicate use. The figures are in two scales.

I don't know if the ID's [numbers on the bags] are from the [model-] maker or the . . . seller."

 

 

Unnumbered - "The complete standing figure seems to be based on an actual driver." I'm wondering if it might be either James Hunt or a young Schumacher (and I lean toward the former, that's a 1960/70's helmet)?

 

RD 3 (racing driver [model] 3?) - He is obviously stepping into a racing car's cockpit, and has a more modern fire-suit and helmet, the peg on his left foot, will be for fixing him to the intended vignette or diorama base.

 

RD 7 - The output of Tameo, still extant, is mostly in 1:43, and I suspect they are all supposed to be the same scale, but the seated drivers are a little smaller, possibly to account for the material of the cockpit walls being not scale-thinness, and they seem to have lost their toes, probably for the same reason? I think they are too big to be 1:64th, the next natural scale down?

 

 

RD 8 - similar to the last one, but his separate gloves, being designed to sit on the bonnet, edge of the cockpit somewhere, or even in his lap, suggest he's to be posed in the 'Paddock' phase, prior to the formation-lap, with all the reporters, crew, VIP ticket-holders, grid-girls holding number-boards, and such like?

 

That scrum which Tony Jardine used to fight to hear himself over, let alone get information to the rest of us, and yes, I'm dating my participation in F1, I haven't watched it, nor followed it, for years!

 

RD 10 - "[ . . . ] also shows what may be an actual driver." Again, I have an idea, which is that it may be Ayrton Senna, or another of the older drivers? Again a paddock pose, with him actually putting one glove on, while the other waits to be posed on the vehicle somewhere, or held by a member of the pit crew . . . and, were they also made by Tameo, at some point?

 

Unnumbered -  this guy's got both hands firmly on the steering wheel, and would seem to be racing, but his helmet is from a third generation maybe? Although it seems to me, with nothing but the visual evidence you can see, for yourselves, that the bare-headed chaps may well be intended character figures, and the helmeted guys, deliberately more generic?

 

All have been shot by Brian with the 'Hunt' figurine as a comparison.

 

'Hunt' again, posed with Ricky Rudd's Ford Taurus Whirlpool/Tide,  #10 Nascar premium from the 1998/99 seasons (thanks Google, useful for once!). There are various models of this car, including a 1:64th Hot Wheels, while Racing Champions did a 1:24 scale, die-cast, but this Procter & Gamble charity/advertising giveaway (?) looks to be closer to the required 1:43rd?

 

The Tameo website - https://www.tameokits.com/

 

And many thanks to Brian for sending us this, racing figures are one of those side-bars who will eventually get a page on the A-Z Blogs, along with Firefighters, road-crews, Police, Ambulance personal and other such figures who keep recurring as die-cast's accessories!

 

Added the next day, this bag went missing and the seller is 'moving house', so it may never turn up, but has tantalising clues including what looks like a 1990's Williams cockpit transfer, sponsor's advert graphics for Hitachi and NGK, and another driver.
 

So if anyone can flesh-out the back-story/history of these for us, that would be grand!

E is for Everything Else - Odds & Sodds!

There were a few smaller pieces and loose figures picked up at the Last Sandown Part show, which was, in some respects, one of my best yet for purchaes, but in conversation, there's a feeling that while prices are down, this stuff is coming out of the woodwork at the moment, I got a really nice, never seen before piece off of that evilBay the other day.

 

I've never really followed this stuff, nor felt the need to, poorly acted 'C' movies, for kids, in the 'over the top' style of kids programming, never grabbed me, but there is a big following for the whole Kaiju, Gojira, Ultraman, Atomic-boy stuff, and these are probably quite modern 'Ultramen', and may be from one source, but two are realistic 54mm'ish solids, well within the scope of the collection, the other two are a super-deform (right) and big-head (left), both of which, leave me pretty cold.

 

A Christmas cracker bike, and two micro-trucks from Italy, another 1-ton Humber knock-off, too close to the Dinky original to be considered the donor for all the Hong Kong copies, but could be based on the Pyro/Kleeware minis? And a post-war US 'duce-and-a-half' probably an M39 era/generation?

 

Very obviously an ex-Giant chariot, we looked at them on the Romans page (above), and eventually will look at them again on the But is it Giant sub-Blog, in greater detail, but for now, this one needs a good clean, or at least, the horses do!

 

A couple of bags of odds I picked up on a wander, the gum-ball robot will go in a bag with several others and bits, in the hope his arm turns up one day! Two lesser characters from the larger, 'styrene set of Noddy figures, a Fozzie Bear pencil top, and another of the Rupert Bear pencil-top torsos, I think I have four now, two Kinder and an LB for Culpitt spaceman!

 

Adrian found these two for me, French clowns in hard plastic of the polystyrene type, but being French could be Phenolic or a formaldehyde resin of some kind, although both are stable. Cyrnos, Clairet; someone like that?

 

A bit of fun, it links a common-enough piece of scenery to a specific animal, so not that useful, but it also links marks together.

 

Swoppet knock-offs!

 

A nice, early piece of, probbaly German composition, around 45mm, and unmarked, he's obviously a WWI-era German soldier, and I rather like him, as a possibly very old survivor . . . 1920/30's?

 

Isaac gave me these two lots, the Cherilea 60mm's are clean, but have lost 90%+ of their paint, while the karki infantry might have all been home-painted to match, or are a new-to-me paint scheme, the radio-operator is Benbros.

 

Seen in a recent book-post, useful little monograph on Selwyn Miniatures.

 

I'm guessing this is American, but it could be French, or from down the road! It's a solid lump of die-cast Mazac / Zamak or pure aluminium (not light enough?) with wooden wheels, and may once have been a penny-toy . . . a whole penny!

 

Make your own caption! How cake-decorations are born!