B is for Big Box of Bounty - Vehicles, Bits & Bobs

Well, luckily I have a day off, today, as I have a ton of plastic shite . . . Sorry, 'polymer loveliness' to sort and photograph, from the BP Sandown Park toy fair, yesterday, where I had a excellent day, but before I get started on that, here's the latest instalment of the plunder-posts from Chris Smith's most recent donation to the blog, which is all the man-made stuff! 

 

This is rather nice! A probably French farm-cart, in that heavy, hard-toffee-like polystyrene material, which I suspected was probably French, but sent these images to the authors of FIM, just in case they hadn't seen it, however, they were familiar with it, and were also of the opinion it is French.

 

It has a lovely tipping-action, via a lever at the front, and may be missing a probably removable back-board or ladder-rave, wheels seem to be the same polymer, while the white tyres are a polyethylene, I think? Maker still needed though?

 

This is how it came out of the box, with a Pokémon (?) hitched-up!

 

A Blue Box Austin champ, which seems to have been deliberately cut-back, in preparation for some conversion, or super-detailing? It will go in the spares for now, while the little PVC Galoob knock-off is new to me, Blog and the collection.

 

The weird landing craft belongs with various generic rack-toy 'army men' and diver sets, and while having various holes in which it looks like something should be plugged-in, is found just like this, in sealed sets!

 

More rack-toys with a militarised executive jet and one of the MPC mini-plane piracies, all useful, and the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar (which Dad jumped out of, on many occasions), seems to be one of the slightly bronzed-silver versions which are harder to find.

 

The submarine is from a modern rack-toy, or rack-toys, and we've probably seen it here in sealed/shelfied set/s in recent years, and is a useful loose addition. The racing car is from one of those credit-card shaped (and material) novelty sets, I have dinosaurs in the collection somewhere, and there are several sets of jet fighters.

 

The sports-car with lenticular 'window' is an old 1d or 2p gum-ball capsule-machine prize, while the locomotive is a modern (possibly Kinder) take on the old erzgebirge toy, where several wagons, or coaches, would be hooked or tied-together as a full train.

 

Three cracker-toy type bikes/motorcycles in the front-left 'row', with the larger bike we've seen before in various greens or spray-camouflage, associated with the Supreme/Ackerman, 'Fritz-helmeted' PVC figures, while the chap on the right is a Hong Kong rider, I think, used for both motorcycles and the quad-bike type machines?

 

A couple of flags (Norway (R) and semi-fictional 'African', left ) and what I suspect is the top of an animal 'toob', being a spinning map of the world, possibly seen here as a shelfie, I can't recall, but it looks familiar? One feels it's just the accessory for a evil Doctor's lair in some superhero or Bond'esque scenario, as the conference table!

 

I'd love to know where the axe comes from or who it belongs to, the shovel will be from one of the eight or ten-inch Action Man/GI Joe rip-offs, the pistol looks like a Christmas cracker prize, and more specifically, the mini, tree-crackers? I think the lantern with clear-marble lens is a doll's house accessory, due to its diminutive size, similar tourist items tend to be larger and have a pencil-sharpener secreted about them!

 

Part of a rack-toy bridge, an oil-drum, which may be Airfix and a rather nice, probably Hong Kong made wheelbarrow, which could have conveniently been for that yellow figure (Chris reports Eric Critcley as confirming him being a French farmer and not a cowboy), but it's too big!

However, with so many farmworker and construction/road-worker figures in the 'unknown civilian' zones, I'm sure it'll fit someone, even if it doesn't actually belong to them! Soft polyethylene with a very small wheel, is it from something cartoony like Bob the Builder?

 

Bits of the 'Bucking Bronco' jig-toy puzzle, a Richard I label which may prove useful one day, clearly it belongs on the base/plinth of a statuette or figure of some kind, which may come in, or already be in the stash, without a label?

 

The other casualty of Royal Fail's comprehensive parcel-mashing programme, was the blob to the right, which deserves a restoration! It's got the Airfix Reconnaissance Set's German dispatch-rider at it's core, with the wheels of a US M3 half-track either side and something on the back, and would seem to have been a home-made sci-fi bike thing, with the rider, now headless, painted up like a Soviet general on May 1st!

 

Marx (?) on the left, modern rack-toy/play-set boulder on the right!

 

Manta Force from Bluebird/Tomy, both missing bits, but both usable, and while other Manta stuff is in the forthcoming Sci-fi post, one day we'll redo all the Bluebird overviews, which were back near the beginning of the Blog and well overdue for an updated treatment, and these will be useful for that!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Sci-Fi, TV & Movie

So, we reach the end of Chris Smith's latest donation, and while, obviously, toy soldiers/ceremonial, ancient/medieval, civilian and Wild West are the core of a collectors' stash, I always like this group for having some of the quirkier stuff, rarities and smaller production-run figures (even 'non-toy soldier'), and this lot was no exception!

 

A selection of Bluebird's Manta Force/Viper Squad and Exin Lines' Lego-likey astronauts, some arms missing, but the master sample will provide, or these chaps (and/or chapesses, they're all in suits) will donate!

A larger troll, a hard plastic, probably polystyrene, but could be a propylene polymer, robot type space warrior, who l;ooks quite recent/contemoray, but might not be, just clean! And a large PVC robot, who could be a specific character, I have a feeling I might have a smaller version in the plastic-pile somewhere?

A GLJ-Toyway astronaut, a Galoob Putty (?) from the Power Rangers franchise, a nice whitemetal Genie from some fantasy gaming range, an alien from Toy Story and a skeleton pencil-top guarding a keg of rum!

I think the Birdman is from Thunder Cats or He Man, while we saw the Star Wars Episode I/4 board game figures a while back, the daft lizard is from a recent Disney kid's thing, I believe, but is also a bendy and they have their own tub these days!

Have we seen these before? It's like all the cereal premiums, but in a soft PVC-type polymer. A mini Thunderbird 2, done here as a desk-toy hanger/fidget toy I think, but it could be flown in a Christmas tree, I wouldn't, I like my trees traditional, but many would, witness those Disney tree-hangers we looked at back in December, last year.
 

Speaking of Disney, one of the 7 Dwarfs, but not the usual set of generic cake-decoration/garden ornament ones (gardeners and musicians), although in the same two-polystyrene-halves, glued-together design, but a rather more obvious Disney character, I think Bashful, but could be Sleepy?

But back to the opening paragraph, and this was lovely, quirky as they come, and while I don't know how many pieces it left East Anglia in, Chris had put it in its own bag, so I'm assuming more than one, it arrived in five, one piece, being no more that a speck of dust, was ignored!

So, having had some success with the baking-powder/super-glue technique, recently, I prepared a station with a pad to soak up excess glue, a puddle of the same, some baking powder, a toothpick for applying glue and manipulating the white-mud, with a nail-file, filling-in for a snuff spoon! Once I'd begun, I remembered the applicator pen for Superglue Plastix, which helps speed everything up!

 

And a half-decent result was achieved! From the back it's a bit of a mess, as you would expect, but from the front it looks factory-fresh and ready to blast across the room from a sprung-loaded sucker-pad, although if I were to try, it'd disintegrate!

 

And, while cruder in the mirror-imaging than the previously found examples, it is another of the LB (Lik Be - it's so obvious when you give it some thought) knock-off's, given a less-robot, more-alien look, and raises the question of how many sculpts did they copy for the set, four, six, maybe three spacemen and three robots . . . only time can tell?

 

Many, many thanks to Chris for another fantastic parcel of odds, sods and unwanted's, those of you who know me, or who have followed the Blog for any length of time will know, I don't often wax lyrical about Britains or Timpo, Starlux or Elastolin, Marx or MPC, but rather tend to get excited by the ephemeral, quirky, oddities on the periphery of model-figure production, and it's all the stuff people save for me, give to me or donate to the blog which helps fill-in all the many missing links, such as the jumper-toy above. Thanks, Chris, much appreciated!

E is for Eye-Candy - Best of the Rest

After I'd done the first two posts/shots (posts below this one) I had a sort-out, and this is the rest of the odd's and stand-alone's, here at the moment, and an eclectic bunch they are too, but mostly bigger than the previous 'mini' Bots.

The large red one, to the left, is a huge blow-moulded, thick-walled, hollow PVC lump, possibly Japanese rather than Hong Kong, and probably 1970's, but unmarked, with plug-in PVC arms and ariels/helmet-guns. The other one, to the right, is one of the Arco-Mattel bendies, with plug-in 'ethylene weapons and a Hong Kong sticker on one foot. The other red one, between them, is unmarked apart from a 'C1' on one foot, and probably quite modern?

Four eraser-types (x2 silver, orange and yellow) which may have missed previous posts on the subject are front centre, while the right hand green one is another M.U.S.C.L.E. (also Mattel), giving us a scaler with the previous post's image. The other green one is actually more of an action-figure, in polystyrene, with a self-tapping screw in his back holding all the moving parts together.

The other articulated droid also has a screw in his back and moving components, and is a Manta Force Karnoid from Bluebird Toys, some - probably not this one - via Tomy.  While the yellow individual on the far left is more humanoid, but his head is all 'mecha', so if it's not a robot, it's an android of some kind. The best reason AI will have for keeping some of us alive, is to provide them with headless, locomotive bodies!

 

As a Brucey-bonus, and apart from the green one above, the only other 'styrene ones I have here at the moment, these are modern, marked China and obviously come in different colour-schemes, I don't know how many sculpts there are, but they are more like the previous 'minis' in size.

B is for Bluebird Toys - An Overview

So - Bluebird Toys (UK) Ltd Huh? They came, they made, they went! And contributed more to the small scale world in their short time than much bigger, longer lived companies...or did they really?

The 1997 Argos catalogue page annoncing the launch/availability of Havok.

Bluebird were formed in 1980 by Torquil Norman who was an old Model Toys man ( Berwick-Timpo owned), and one has to assume he had ideas about how to do things differently in a new decade with new mores. He started well with a 'Big Yellow Teapot' pre-school toy and other 'activity' toys for tots, and the company got off to a flying start.

Zero Hour catalogue pages from 1990 & 1992

However, all was not rosy in the garden and the company seems to have grown too fast, cash flow tightened and within ten years it was struggling. The answer was Polly Pocket, which quickly became very successful and refilled the companies coffers, she was then joined by Mighty Max, who sadly only lasted about 4 years. However Polly wasn't necessarily a Bluebird invention, she was licenced from a company called Origin Products Limited, possibly a wholly owned subsidiary?. Google gives about three 'Origins', one making trouser-presses in the Far East, a group of engineers in London and a dead homepage, so no clarity there!

Manta Force and Viper Squad pages from the 1990 catalogue.

A look at the acknowledgements 'small print' on the back of a late catalogue shows that - in fact - all the products being issued by Bluebird have dues to another source. The Manta Force, for instance was in the Tomy stable.

The fact that Hasbro have bought Mattel (a long time partner and eventual purchaser of Bluebird) while Takara and Tomy have married doesn't help with the research, this was all happening at the start of the 'modern' period of toy production where Tomy will re-use Starriors as RATS and use the cockpits on some Zoids while issuing separate licences to Hasbro and Kenner! It's all about quick profit, quick turnaround, making moulds pay and shovelling the residue to clearance houses for repackaging in Spain, Mexico or the souks of Istanbul.

If you go to the London Toy Fair regularly you'll know that companies come and go so fast, seem to grow and then disappear, or turn out to be no more than a brand or trade mark with a separate stand, it's hard to know who's what, and they're not that interested in the customer either. "The Customers Always Right" has become the customer will buy what we present to them or what we present to the kids until they pester the customer to see things our way!

So we find that Kenner/Parker, Fredrick Warne, BBC Enterprises, Tomy, DC Comics, Disney, Lewis Galoob and others were all getting a slice of the Bluebird pie.

Clockwise from top right; Polly pocket Catalogue page; 40mm Prince Charmings (?); and a Batman card.

In the end - which came at the end of 1997 - Mattel won a bidding war and bought their old trading partner and moved production to the US, swallowing Galoob as well...just before Hasbro swallowed the lot!

Mr Norman? Well, 'Sir' Norman went off to spend a lot of money on a theatre, which might help the more cynical among us (Me Sir! Me!) understand who was behind Origin Products? Note; Mattel are still crediting an Origin on the PP website...

M is for Manta Force (and Viper Squad) by Bluebird Toys (and Tomy Toys)

The oddest range I have from Bluebird is the Manta Force, only two (or three? see note on yellow figure) poses, in a few colours, and three distinct ranges of vehicles/accessories, very good ones which I think originate with Tomy, the Karnoid stuff which is of a completely different and poorer quality and some stuff in the 1990 catalogue which may never have been made here or in Japan?

Manta figures, the Gold one only came in a couple of sets and consequently as I don't actively search these things out I only have a pair of (broken) legs!

The yellow guy on the bottom row with the Pharaoh headdress is not visible in any catalogue photographs, so may be a late issue, or some body else's from some other range all together? (Terrahawks?) He is in fact from the Silverlit Multimac toys (Thanks to Bill Bulloch over at the Moonbase Central).

One of the early accessories, the build quality of this is very good and both the material and colours are reminiscent of some Ultraman or Gundam stuff from Japan.

Another from the same initial release, this used the good old 1950's toy cannon mechanism to fire 6 rockets at once, very safe, blunt rockets mind, this was the nineties!

Both Viper figures.