M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 3 - Ceremonial & Historicals

Part-the-third, of the plastic plunder posts from Chris Smith's most recent parcel, brings us to the ceremonial and historical section, Royal Fail or Parcelfarce did their worst with these, as you can see from the first image in the sequence!

To be fair to Postie, I suspect there wasn't much in the bag when it left East Anglia, and was being sent as a sample of . . . Malleable Mouldings? But, yeah, it arrived as so much dust and two legs!

 

Funnily enough, the first Malleable horse I got (still somewhere in the pile) was found in the car-park at SAS, off the old A4, or at least, embedded in the gravel/puddle at the bottom of the steel fire-escape! It was/is missing both back legs and a base, and while I've handled several of Adrian's over the years, and posibly shot them for the blog, I have yet to find a decent mounted figure by Malleable! It'll happen!

Initially thought to be Italian, these are 30mm polystyrene Hungarian Imperial, or 'Royal' Guards, and - obviously - the same colour scheme as those 30mm plug-together 'swoppets' both Chris and Peter Evans have donated to the blog in the past. Lovely little things!

 

While the British 'Royal Guards' of the Household Division include two nice Hong Kong copies of Crescent (seen here yesterday), but in a Hilco style! next to them, the chap with the herb-green base is a real treat, he's the Reamsa copy of herald, and I think he might have been Reamsa No.1?

 

I personally love the eraser guardsman in purple, he's that silicon rubber which really just smudges pencil, but they were 'novelties' first and erasers second, always, I feel? The key-ring guardsman seems to go with some of the Highland pipers, one of the Welsh ladies and probably the fisherman we saw the other day, while the KT is damaged and the Rocco guardsmen need glue!

 

Cake decorations and premiums, we've seen the AWI before, and the French Dragoon (?) is from that set of premiums which used to have one name but now have several in two sizes, with base differences and Kinder joining the mix!

 

A Crescent lead, and Blue Box sailors (Merten copies) signal a Hong Kong copy of Airfix trumpeter to deal with some French interloper (HaT Industries) while a rather legless Lord Flashheart courtesy of Skybirds, recovers from a night on the juice, in the Mess!

 

In discussion, we think maybe Brazilian for this horse, although he could equally be Argentine? Missing a rider who may send it to the Wild West section, I posted it here, as this post only had six images!

And Postie again! But they were all missing their tails already, so just samples, and while I don't know what colours of this Rocco guardsman I have, if I need a white sample, I'll have one, once I've glued a couple of heads back on!

 

Many thanks to Chris as always for all these, and even the broken stuff has its place, as place-fillers!

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Added a few minutes later - I'd dropped some of the images in the Khaki soldier section!

 

It was looking at the damaged KT above and realising "Where are the other two?" that had me off looking in the other folders! Superb thing to get in the post without warning - two more boxed KT pencil sharpeners, and different boxing, both generic and serving the tourist trade, but aren't they lovely - I've already sorted the guardsman (forthcoming post) with a fully rifled replacement, so he's now a minter!

 

We saw him the other day, but he belonged here all along - the Blue Box Napoleon, which, with another figure in this parcel, get us closer to a complete pose-count, but we're still only half-way on the painted/chromed sets! Thanks again to Chris.

S is for Shot at the Show

I only shot one thing at the show, if you need pictures of tables about 20 were published on the Friends Who Like Plastic Warrior Faceplant page the next day! But I did shoot this as I thought it was a bit special.

Malleable Mouldings circus set, beautifully boxed and had you found this under your family's Christmas tree in the 1950's you would have been well made-up! Actually quite simple with two horse trainers, two clowns and six prancing horses, but most sets in those days were a bit simple and contained duplicates - it was only when Plastics took a full-hold that the variety we're used to now, became the norm, I guess that's why farm and zoo was so popular, their sets' tended to have lots of different items rather than six-to eight identi-men and an officer, bugler or standard bearer!

The outer is a generic gift box, laminated in patterned wrapping paper, and was probably bought-in for the festive season, it is very age-faded now, but was once a bright primrose background with scarlet and navy motifs.

Quite a Germanic or Scandinavian look to the repeat pattern, both must have had good paper industries with all those forests, maybe it came from the Hertz Mountains? All a bit Grimm or Hans Christian!

Not brilliant shots and I've placed them sideways to concentrate the eye on the colours, not the figures, but the marbling of the clowns' plastic was stunning, if you like such things (I do!); one having what seems to be every colour in the factory that day, the other centered more on the reds/yellows, but after the gloom and greyness of six years of war and blackout and ten-odd years of post-war austerity, these would have lit up the parlor/living-room when that lid came off!

A lovely thing and so rare . . . thanks to Mercator Trading for letting me shoot it.

I is for I'm Not Going to Embarrass Myself . . .

. . . by pretending I know anything of import about Turbans, Pagris ("pugerees"), Khullas or the wearing of Shemagh/Keffiyeh's as full headdresses! So the best thing to do is consult this page if you want the full 'gen.

We're looking at my small collection of colonial troops wearing such headresses, and hopefully I've sped-read the link sufficiently to not make any big boo-boos!

From the left; A Gormasa-'Soldis' reissue of the old Reamsa Spanish Moroccan legionnaire, Franco found a use for them (right wing Fascists have no principles!), and bribed them with a new mosque, among other things! They still exist, but seem to be confined to the Ceuta enclave in Morocco (sort of like, err . . . Gibraltar, but not won in a war!), they now wear an Ottoman style Fez and the new Spanish Right don't like them as much as Franco did . . . fancy that!

Next to him is a French hollow-cast take on a British Indian Army soldier, presumably in France (WWI), and made by Xavier Raphanel (XR), the firm apparently ran between 1895-1935 (thanking the plagiarist 'GTO' for that), I really like him, his bayonet means business and could hurt! A quick Google search reveals the dark tunic is an XR invention, and he should be all-over khaki.

Then the Malleable Mouldings chap, taken from Comet/Authenticast metal moulds brought over from Comet-Gaeltec in the Republic of Ireland, there is some debate over who exactly made these soft polyethylene versions (Malleable used either a frangible phenolic or a 'styrene polymer for most of their non-metal production), but as no one seems to have a name for the person (or persons) unknown who may (or may not) have taken over the IP of Malleable, they might as well be called Malleable Mouldings until more information comes to light . . . must check my Chase files!

Finally the little chap on the end is from Swedish-African Engineers (SAE), and, like the previous figure is a Holgar Erikson sculpting. From the painting, I'm guessing a French Colonial soldier is being depicted, but I wouldn't like to say for certain what type, Moroccan Zouave, 1939'ish?

As we saw in the previous post, this chap came in a few months back, and note he is a third sculpt, a Sikh I think, with bloused-trousers and no apron/frock coat (or whatever it is, trying to pretend you know about colonial uniforms is a slippery slope!). Basic painting suggests boots not leggings, and the plastic colour could indicate Indian Air force, I don’t think it does but . . . ? Another might be/might not be Malleable Mouldings, and again in soft polyethylene.

Now I had hoped to have the Charbens-Cherilea-Crescent Indians here, but they haven't turned up? I thought they were in the 'big purchase' of 2010, but if they were they should have turned-up when I blogged the Russians a couple of years ago, and they didn't, so I must have imagined them. It's annoying as I have passed on some nice lots over the intervening years, but at some point I will have to bite the bullet and invest in decent sets of all three!

Here are three pretty scruffy Cherilea Bren-gunners who have trickled-in with mixed lots, the best is probably the middle one, and you can find them with yellow, white and pale-blue turbans (in the Sikh style?) I think, maybe a bright green too?

I do have a reasonable sample of the King's African Rifles, also Cherilea, although I need more of the OG uniform chaps (bottom left), these are pretty whacky poses, but not quite as lunatic as the UN set, I suspect the same sculptor, and he improved quickly from the UN set.

I shot another one! No paint to speak of!

I have some of the Marx marching bloke in tall fez (reissues in bright colours), but they are with all the jungle stuff as German East African's or Belgian native troops heading into the 'Heart of Darkness'! I ought to keep the Cherilea with them.

S is for Show Report - Late, Sandown, September, Contributions Etc . . .

Adrian Little over at Mercator Trading always stalls out at the Sandown Park show, and often has a bag, box, tub or tray of bits for me to look at, sometimes several! Some require shekels, some get sort of chucked at me and because they do I always try to purchase something too! He was there in September and this post covers all those sources and . . . possibly a bit more - one of the shots is a bit confusing!

The easy ones first! We saw the plastic pumps in the previous post and they might have been on Adrian's stall anyway, but the Lesney die-cast definitely was, and I shot the two by way of an instant comparison at the show, as while I have one, it's in storage and although I probably included it in the Matchbox posts back in 2012/13 (?) I can't be arsed to look for it when this shot is enough! Note the Hong Kong maker (probably Tai Sang) has changed the finials to Shell branded pumps from the Esso of Lesney.

Below them is a bunch of Mocherettes (as you must by now realise I call them), nothing rare here, but the Egyptian is useful and the AWI (indeed all the Wild West with Kinder bases) are harder to find and come in several finishes, so I may or may-not need him to build or complete a set? The larger one is a more modern Westair, and is soft whitemetal, rather than the die-cast zamac of the earlier, smaller figures.

Some interesting stuff here, the top row are - I suspect - modern'ish aftermarket/garage figures painted-up and based, but they could be older and/or rarer, I just don't recognise them and there are many whitemetal railway figures out there.

The middle row has, from the left; three Horten for Trix and Britains Lilliput, then three which I belive are Comet/Authenticast (but probably not Eriksson sculpts), an unknown who could go with either of the preceding trios, but is probably another Horten for Trix/Britains, the final four are Hornby/Dinky 'Dublo'.

The bottom row is less clear, did Lilliput have a post box, if not probably Wardie/Mastermodels? The aeroplane could be from a board game, but I suspect with the three-colour paint-job, it may be a 'toy' toy for a dolls-house playroom? The gun is from a ship-model and is likely to be a commercial barrel on a homemade carriage.

This is lovely, and I was touched Adrian had saved it for me, as I'm sure he has customers for it, it's a slip-cast bisqueFlaK or Pom-Pom gun, and probably a German Winterhilfswerke (WHW) piece, the partial mark seems to be in the DIN font, which would tie-in nicely, but just a lovely thing!

I tried to photograph these through the bag, but as you can see the images were pretty awful, so I got them out! It's obviously the tale of Hansel & Gretel, with the witch and a cat which I don't remember getting a mention, but witch = black cat (familier)!

Plaho (Plastik und Holz - plastic & wood) were a state organ of the VEB system, build on the firm of Herpat in Steinach, in East Germany, and you can see the composition ancestry in these figures, we may even have seen the Lineol (or Elastolin?) originals here at Small Scale World . . . and courtesy of Mercator Trading I think?

This is where I get confused, it's also a poor image, sorry. The bag bottom right was definitely from Adrian, but I'm not sure if the rest were, or if I bought a bag of bits at the show and sorted them down to this image, then including some of Adrian's stuff, but I'll proceed as if it was all from him!

We'll look at the better bits in a minute, although it's all pretty interesting, but now I'm making more effort to get the Giant Or What? Blog turning a little more regularly (about 12 articles in the ready queue), it will mostly be seen there, but what can you see here?

A bag of smaller farm and zoo animals, various Giant and sub-Giant copies of Knights, Romans and Wild West, a small bag of Quaker Gladiators, a bit of Marx-Blue Box 1:64th American 'HO' stuff, three Tudor Rose farm animals in 'styrene, a nice vintage 'ivorene' charm, Manurba/Tallon trucks, Spencer Smith Nappy, Montaplex medievals; all sorts!

These are both lovely; the cowboy whistle in two colours is one of only a few novelty whistles I have, of which only two others are figural I think, a lion and a . . . bird? While the Sikh sentry is a very uncommon Malleable Mouldings figure in soft polyethylene polymer, taken from an old lead-solid Holgar Eriksson sculpt.

The whistle from a couple more angles (we'll see the Sikh again soon) and some modern gaming stuff (bottom right); I think the horse might be Minifigs, the pack animals are nicer, but probably quite new?

Top left however, is of more interest, and the left-hand figure came from Adrian, the set of four were a coincidental purchase at the same show and could have been in yesterday's post, but they ended-up here! lead solids around OO-guage/23mm.

I am sure I know the name of the game, and possibly the maker, as I took notes on one at SAS Auctions, when viewing years (14 or 15) ago, but can't find the note, they are (I'm sure!!) from an Edwardian board game with a simple name like 'Spies', 'Secret Agents' or 'Private Eyes' and I favour the latter one, maybe 'Private Dicks'? No sniggering at the back.

I'm guessing these must be French bazaar things; bags of unpainted 'ethylene mouldings of earlier often French but sometimes copies of Timpo, Elastolin or Spanish figures/products from the 1970/80's? The odd thing here is that the two adult chickens and the ducklings are quite realistic, while the adult duck and chicks are quite cartoony? But a really nice, very clean sample!

While these - being also a nice sample - will need a bit of research I haven't done yet. There are several sets of these, and similar poultry, some of which are claimed to be Prior premiums, others not, there seems to be a set like these, a set with nests and a set on more elaborate foliage, with several sets on plainer flat bases, while a couple of larger raptors have no bases, just big feet!

Most are a stiff, dense 'Macau' PVC and seem to have come through Injectaplastic of Portugal, so may also 'be' Jouets Super Plastic (JSP) of France, while some seem to have been premiums for other companies such as Arena, Aurea, Azur, Bisco, or Ehrmann, but some are softer rubbery PVC. Prior don't actually seem to have handled the birds at all!

So, more work needed! But, lovely toy figures.

Many thanks to Adrian for the bits he gave me and the bits he saved for me to look, at all of which I took - at well below retail - and the bits I bought on top, all-in-all a bargain!

M is for Mounted Malleable Mouldings' Men

Shot on Adrian's stall (link) back at the March Sandown Park show, sat in Picasa for a while, found them at the last minute and I was going to add them to the previous post, but though it would only complicate, so they might as well go here as a 'follow-up' kind of thing, especially as I've also found some other ceremonial type mounted's for a third post; make a day of it - it'll be tomorrow now . . . the time's slipped this week!

Royal Horse Artillery I think; they could be some esoteric Yeomanry regiment, but I don't think Malleable offered such rarities in their exhaustive, but complicated - to follow -  list (which I have somewhere and will post one day), so RHA until I know otherwise.

The figures appear to be hollow and have had their headdresses drilled to receive their hackles as very small slivers of plastic. Note also; the two very different bases, one; an integral moulding, the other; a glued-on piece of sheet material which appears (from the distortion) to be a phenolic or acetate of some variety. A situation which bears reflection;

There were other, earlier makers of plastics of interest to us, Bergan and German WHW types being the obvious, but Malleable were trying to invent a technology (or applications thereof) without the support the Nazi regime might have given their plastics industry before the war (IG Farben, polystyrene - 1929), or the booming economy of post-war America, but in an economy broken by the same war which had proved such a boon to the US.

Consequently, the fact that they produced such a variety of figures and figure types; whole mouldings, assembled kits-of-parts, integral bases, separate bases and soft polyethylene figures, hollow and solid; in such a short life and from both ex-metal and original moulds, in stable and unstable paint finishes, should come as no surprise to us now, and the work they did must have benefited those who came after . . . all of whom (Zang-Herald, Timpo, Charbens, Cherilea and Crescent) adopted the polyethylene Malleable were using at the end, but most adding chalk for paint adhesion!

And if you think that last point is a bit off-the-wall, keep watching this space.

A Life Guard or 'Royal', I've always preferred the Horse Guards or 'Blues', they are one unit now, anyway and that's him; blurb done!

M is for Malleable Mouldings 54mm Marching Marines

Title says it all, which leave me with a problem vis-à-vis blurb!

You were going to get Phidal Peter Rabbit in this slot, he'll appear this afternoon if things go according to a non-existent plan known as the 'see-what-happens' schedule!

I shot these on Adrian's stand back in September and they're actually cropped-out of larger images of a zoo I hope to Blog over Christmas, so I'm pleased they are as decent, image-wise, as they are!

I don't know if these are Eriksson's-hand; ex-Comet/Authenticast (Gaeltacht Industries), or latter production, if anything they are superior sculpts, while he's rated, he is formulaic; these have a more realistic countenance, I feel? Although the join-line is quite 'hollow-cast' or poured-metal in execution so I'm really just generating blurb!!

They appear to be in four parts; hat, two arms and body with a additional base that Malleable Mouldings seem to have cut from sheet material, pretty rough sheet material at that; puddled or rolled-out cellulose-acetate!