O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Circus

Because I made a major purchase the day of the show, there's enough for a Circus post this year, instead of shoving them in with the civilian/sports post, and what a purchase it was, and very welcome, even though we've seen all the separate elements before. Fingers crossed they load in the right order . . . 

 

. . . and they did! Wouldn't want to re-sort these one at a time, plays havoc with the formatting! A nicely labeled Crazy Cown Circus from Frazer & Glass (F&G . . . like LB for Lik Be, just sort of works, always has!), lovely 1950's (or late 40's?) lining paper/gift wrap on the box, and similar to some Italian stuff we'll be seeing in these show-plunder posts soon.

 

How you bought your cheap ['er] plastic toys in the years immediately before I was born, loose in a box! Or singly from glass compartments in Woolworth's! A complete set, the seller admitted it's made-up to completeness (I think he has a perfect one in his collection), but after 70-odd yeas I'm not complaining, and would have made it up from my loose ones, if it was incomplete, anyway.

 

One-ring circus!

 

Always nicer when it's yours, rather than an Internet image!

 

Balancing and Tumbling Acts, I don't know what I was thinking the other day, of course you could get a single one, without any signs of glue - the A1 Clown! But here with base, unlike the baseless one we saw the other day.

 

Three in line, and note: different spots, shape, base v baseless, cone hat size &etc.

 

Juggling Acts.

 

Ringmaster is a standard clown with no top-hat?

But he does have the red trousers.

 

Equestrian Acts.

 

Seller had added the band! I have recently come-across a dog, with top hat, in the same vitreous 'styrene, which I believe may be another late addition to this set (to go with/accompany the hoop-clowns?), it's in a forthcoming post, somewhere, I think, if not, I'll dig it out and get it up here with a few links back and forth. On the subject of links, the last time we looked at a few question-marks and variants, on these, was nine years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/c-is-for-crazy-clown-circus.html

 

But the F&G Tag or Crazy Clown Circus will get all the thoughts/posts in one hit! 

Another marked Maysun set, of Crescent copies, adding confirmation to previous utterings here about them/that! With a couple of loose horse that have good paint, and one will need to be used to replace the brittle on in the bag, whose lost it's legs!

 

Charbens, a nice clean sample, with opposite colours of both clowns!

 

Late Corgi, I think, on the left and another M-Toy on the right.

Thanks this year go to, alphabetically by surname, Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Thank you all.

H is for Happy Birthday to Me!

Yeah, it was a while ago, but before I get into the other April/May donations and show stuff, Adrian gave me a nice parcel for my Birthday, so I'm Blogging that first!

Having already supplied several of the missing Circus M's (M-Toy, Marty, Maysun & May Moon), along with the poodle (see previous posts), Adrian had found another lot of the Circus stuff, and look what that monkey in a vest - previously seen from Chris Smith - sits on...

A Unicycle! Which leaves, as far as I know, the rearing version of the Britains Baby Giraffe as the only item in the line, still to be found loose, but it may not be that simple? The lot also contained a Festival clown and a teeny-tiny 'styrene clown, which may have been an early Christmas cracker or gum-ball capsule-machine charm?

The clown is - I think - the first I've found with the Maysun mark, usually, but not always found on the Ringmaster. While the wheel seems to be an odd one from something else, the stub-axles having a square cross-section, which I suspect are meant to lock into a heavy metal object, allowing the monkey to balance on a 'high-wire'?

The reason I'm not sure what's still to be found in the line, is because these were also in the lot, and while they look like Blue Box (or Holly), I suspect they may be part of the M's sample, and there's nothing to place the zoo fencing with the figures, beyond the fact that they were all in the same 'mixed' lot? A family of three different sizes of the same ex-Britains sculpt crocodile.

These semi-flats were added to the tub, when I picked it up at the BMSS show, the two Brits are a mystery, seemingly being die-cast and quite crude sculpts, they aren't known to be home-cast mouldings, and are relatively unique poses? The German or 'Euro' gunner is a more common home-cast piece.

 

A lovely art-deco take on a 'Greek' war horse (?) cocktail glass decorative ornamental in blood-red, transparent polystyrene, originally credited to the industrial designer Don Manning, and they (a range of between 8-12 sculpts) were first produced in the USA, in larger sizes as Lucite ornaments, before NOSCO reproduced them, smaller (in several sizes) as novelty cocktail-glass/cheeseboard/finger-buffet decorations, in cheaper materials, as we see here.

 

Again probably Blue Box, but could be Holly Toys, New Maries or another maker altogether, what's interesting is the goose family (common in the Blue Box and Sunshine Series sets) is joined by copies of Britains hens from both the hollow-cast and Herald eras, of the British donor's production. Indeed, Britians ran the central ex-Hollow-cast mould in plastic themselves.

 

The nearer sculpt is quite common, but the rather chewed one behind it is my frst sample I think? It has the raked-bow of the WWI-era 'Dreadnought' classes, and I suspect is from another source to the commoner one, possibly from a board game, but more likely a budget-price, cracker prize.

 

The de rigueur handful of Hong Kong, post-Giant, hollow-horsed Wild West mounted figures, we will dig down into all these on the Giant Blog eventually, but this seems to be quite a clean sample, with just a couple of interlopers from another source?

 

Bag of bits! Two useful Lone Star rockets and some hand weapons are joined by the radio ariel from Airfix's Comet tank (I think?), a Corgi sack, and a lovely hand-saw, in an early polymer, probably from a toy truck/van's tool box?

 

The brown cat is from a set of early learning things which could be placed on one of those mini-whiteboard/peg-boards you could get for the playroom, Merit or Bell, Raphael Lipkin maybe? The little kitten looks modern'ish, but the other might (and it's a big 'might', I'm not calling it!) be Gem or Festival?

 

This was an interesting find by Adrian, it's the 20mm composition pilot, from Zang (for Timpo), but aping the Skybirds lead pilots, in having a white suit . . . for 'civilian'? Although, probably painted over the more common khaki (broken one lying at his feet), it appears to have been done in the factory, as the pink face matches my other samples?

 

I think the flocked puppy is probably Polly Pocket from Bluebird Toys, while the teeny chick has a W GERMANY mark on it's base, so small you need a magnifying glass, or jeweller's loupe, to read it! While the Mini Mouse is of unknown origin?

 

A collection of railway and die-cast accessory figures brings this eclectic little gift to a close. I got quite excited by the figure on the left, thinking it was one of those celluloid figures from Japan, until I realised it was an over-painted Hornby figure!

 

PVC chap on the right was Corgi, and the silver boy/driver is probably Dinky or Spot On? My gratitude to Adrian for a lovely suprise, which came between shows, and gave up all sorts of new bits!

F is for Follow-Up - Hong Kong Circus

Having finally tracked-down and Blogged the plate-spinning Gorilla, earlier in the year, my Christmas-present from Adrian was a loose lot of the Marty/M-Toy/Maysun (May Moon) circus animals, with duplicates of most of the performing animals, including a second Gorilla and the, then, still sought Poodle with tyre!

 

Seems a bit cruel really, but that's why animals have been all but phased-out of most circuses, certainly those in developed, enlightened countries/regions. I thought it was missing from the forehead, but it's perched on the nose, and it's not a small tyre, it's a whole wheel/tyre assembly of wheelbarrow, or bigger variety! Below are the rest of Adrian's with one or two I had here/screen-caps, for a visual check-list.

With three of the previously seen animals.

More paint on the plate!

Commoner Crescent piracies.

Ex-Crescent people.

The main sample are in storage, except the female animal-trainer who is here on the carded set, I am still seeking the rearing Giraffe, a Britains baby-giraffe conversion, which should be the last to find, but new sculpts do keep turning-up!?? Thanks, Adrian!

M-Toy is for Marty, May, Moon and . . . err . . . Sun!

This should have been combined with last night's post, but I was tired and running out of puff, so I just split it and went with the circus stuff first, although, as I then spent an hour or so, finding and adding the last three images in that post, I might have been better integrating this lot and leaving the others for another day, but there you go, some pretty fluid evolution here at Small Scale World!

The press page as presented in Bill B's catalogue, I've enlarged the relevant or interesting bits below, and we'll look at it all in more detail, bearing in mind that extracting decent imagery from a .pdf folder is never easy!

The company is called May Moon, but I don't think I've ever seen a toy branded to May Moon, or 'Maymoon', however we have seen here, an early (1960's) set of those I-Ton Humber mini-trucks in Maysun branding, while some of the Circus are marked Maysun, under the base, of which some come in M-Toy packaging, so we can extrapolate that it's all the same Maysun-M-Toy-May Moon, which leaves Marty, who again have some bi-branded cards (Marty and M-Toy)

The best place to go for the Marty story - which seems to be unique to the fantasy-Sci Fi set of aliens & barbarians (ray guns and axes!) is Shaun's site here, where one of the sets is in that same Gordy packaging as the Pikit sets we saw back at the start of this year's Rack Toy Month, so there may be a Pikit version out there, Brits?

As this catalogue is dated 1986 and makes no mention of Marty, we can safely assume from all the available evidence that Marty was a short-lived (one line) brand-mark and May Moon traded first as Maysun, then as M-Toy.

 

Any connection with Marty McFly (which would point to hellish-cynical marketing) is dashed by the fact that the toy set came out several years before the first movie!
 

Among all the usual rack-toy guff, I thought these two were worth enlarging as they are a copy of the Raphael Lipkin set we saw here, although they may have been changed to lay flat, but it might just have been arranged like that for the catalogue images?

The tractor/trailer seem to be a pure Timpo farm knock-off's?

While the above pair were enlarged for obvious reasons! The number of times I've seen these confused with Star Toys recently is a mystery, I mean, how do you confuse rubber copies of Britains with polyethylene copies of Airfix & Timpo? And years after other people have sorted it out? Well; because, the trouble with Faceplant is that some of these guys are whittering-away [as fact] from a position of pure ignorance!

I think we've seen the helicopter before, but nice to put a name . . . or three . . . to it! While I had the lower shot, of colour variation in the German infantry bodies, kicking around for a while, taken with a load of other stuff, so that's that out of Picasa, and Maysun, Moon and Star sorted out . . . d'yer see what I did there! I will do it all properly, one day!