B is for Big Box of Bounty - WWII & Modern Combat

The next instalment of Chris Smith's latest donation to the Blog is the 'meat & two veg' of Toy Soldier Collecting, unless you specialise in ancient & medieval, the Wellingtonian era, space, Wild West, Britians ceremonials, farm or zoo, but you know what I mean, and that's the introductory paragraph taken care of, phew!

 

Three paratroopers this time, all yellow, but from three sources and a nice pair of Airfix Red Beret LMG-gunners, to compare in future addition to the parachutists page, while the holding-reserve pose is unusual in yellow, even at this smaller size, where the odd blue or red one has turned-up over the years, they are usually green!

 

One of the Galoob-like, or supplied by Galoob, sailors, from the Realtoy-Dacron et al. sets, and three of the tentatively ID'd as Pioneer or supplied by/to Pioneer, copies of the same set, the copies being manufactured in a softer silicon-rubber, to the denser PVC-replacement of the Realtoy figures.

 

Unknown seated's, four of the common'ish US moulding ones, in two colours (and there are a lot of colours to find!), and three others; the big chap may be from a battery-operated Jeep or similar toy, the middle one anything, the chap on the right of both shots is one of the crewmen from any one of a number of Hong Kong, fictional/Sci-Fi'ish, novelty rocket launchers, also/sometimes known as Crickets, in this shade, possibly the Codeg 'Rocket Firing Armoured Car'?

 

And the smaller chap here is probably the Codeg driver, while Chris had managed to ID the big fella', he's from the Mecanno Mogul range of Tonka-rival heavy steel-plate toys, namely the eponymous Army Mogulwagen. and I have a feeling Chris sent the driver many parcels ago . . . not sure you can have 'Namely' and 'Eponymous' in the same sentence?

 

And there seem to have been two versions, or a pre-production/press (with integrated MG) one, and this version, which is probably another Stadden sculpt, from the Havent factory, they are about four-inches?

 

These are interesting, I think I have a small sample somewhere, but new poses here, and obviously Marx 45mm copies, which is why I had some - borderline small-scale! But they are a tinny polymer, maybe 'propylene, and quite poorly finished or 'flashy' possibly from that late 1980's/arly 1990's plethora of re-issues from Hong Kong, Brazil or Mexico? Does anyone know for certain, from whence they hail?

 

A handful of "Aitchkay" rack-toy fodder, but all interesting, with two of the 40mm Monogram copies, a small Aussie knock-off, a Japanese Deetail clone, but not the more common chrome-coated, Kwong Wah one, which have the ovoid base, but a full oblong-based copy, along with a pair of the recent, but relatively unique sculpts, copies of New Ray, I think it was decided, in the end?

 

A similar line-up of the smaller scales, with - from the left - Supreme 40mm, Galoob 20mm Micromachines, 30mm Airfix Para' clone, a new colour of Galoob 30mm (Battle Squad?), and another 20mm, along with the roughly 28mm Universal-Matchbox MG-gunner who is 'after' Galoob!

 

Saving the best to last and sandwiched between two of the GI Flats, are two figures who are both familiar, and totally new to me. The chap to the centre-right, is obviously the Timpo GI radio-operator, but not the usual early-British 'Khaki Infantry'', rather a soft PVC polymer, possibly Polish, or East German? He's painted as UN, but that could be home-paint/repaint?

 

While I'm sure I've seen the other guy, but I'll be damned if I can remember where or when? He's a marbled polyethylene ('polythene'), with an interesting pose-sculpt of changing his magazine, the base is closest to the bigger PRB swivel-heads, with a pronounced bevel, while the sculpting and pose are vaguely Marx-PMC 54mm GI-like, in execution? He also comes across as being a bit cereal-premium'y? Is he French, Greek?

 

Can anybody add anything on either of the middles figures, now Chris has kindly sent them to the Blog?

F is for Four Fingers of Fictional Fun

A few Sci-Fi bits and bobs which were kicking around various corners of the Laptop, and which might as well be shoehorned into one post to clear the decks a bit!

Star Wars key-rings; We've seen a few before now, but I thought a comparison was in order, and we have - from the left - an LED torch, Lego 'maxi' Darth Vader, followed by three normal 'minifig' sized rings, then an Applause young Anakin/Vader, which I think is part of the avalanche of merchandise which accompanied the fourth/first movie.

I don't know how many there were in the Applause set, so the gap is for the missing Vader in an otherwise complete set of the capsule key-ring figures, cleared through The Works a few years ago, then to Pound-Plus, branded TPF Toys for shipping-in by STL.

ET's, a planetoid's worth of ET's! The three to the right are licensed LJN, and from a set of six (or eight?), while the chap on the left is marked J.A.R. Sales, and may be more of a knock-off than an official product, but both lines are dated 1982, so may both be legitimate?

I have no idea how many of the JAR ones there were and scale on them is 'big' as he fitted in a bikes shopping basket I seem to recall (never seen it, have no intention of seeing it!), so about 1:18^th or larger? I guess there was half-an-idea for them to be compatible with dolls, for playing-out the movie scenes?

Ignore the Greek, he's been joined by three of his compatriots recently and will be Blogged separately at some point. I managed to pick up both the Remco divers from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea last year, but they have been separated already, one here, one in storage - funny story; TJF managed to score a brownie-point with this one when I posted it elsewhere, but really, Journey to the Centre of the Earth / The Land that Time Forgot / 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea / 10,000 BC and a dozen other movies of the time were basically variations on a theme!

The metal-detector/mine-sweeper one is missing the base-stud, but as it's only used to lock them onto the floor of their retail carton, it's more a question of Do I remove the other one?

The chap to the right is supposed to be Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the head's all wrong, so I'll leave it to a jury, preferably a Bristolian one! He's a soft polyethylene and Argentinian.

Picked this up cheap a while back, as a sort of follow-up to the other day's Lunar Rover post; it's Dinky France selling-off the Zygon War Chariot crew figures as 'astronauts' in their spare-parts program! Daft in'it . . . got tub full's of orphaned seated figures and I go and get three more, but it's always about the packaging!

The funny thing is I know I have a metal Gort somewhere but can't find him, and there are more ET's in the post, so we will be returning to both those subjects in the not too far future!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Amerang / Smart Fox

I really only shot these as the Toy Fair 2020 show came a couple of weeks after I'd Blogged the various construction systems on display at the local (Fleet not Woking!) library this Christmas just gone, and it was interesting to see more Meccano-likey! There was nothing else of note on Amerang's stand.

Dr. Who licensed stuff, no one had tied to build the Dalek, so it was a K9-unit and a TARDIS which were on display, it's a good way to get kids into construction engineering, and if the original Meccano had read the writing on the wall and got into Star Wars, after their army-set had come out, they might have had a very different trajectory to the one they subsequently did have?

I've already seen these in Waterstone's book shops (which are increasingly Waterstone's books, games & gifts shops!), and they represent (olong with the previous) the domination of licensing in the modern toy industry.

There are now trade-magazines and whole 'expo's or shows devoted to licensing rather that the toy makers or sellers, another good example is the Natural History Museum dinosaurs we saw from Toyway the other day, K&M's Wild Republic are also carrying NHM stuff, but different stuff from Toyway, the museum is now a brand, in its own right, with some desirability, and once you've approached them, got the licence and supplied their gift-shops, you're free to market them as widely as you like.

Here it's the Imperial War Museum being used to shift some pretty crude representations of the marques on the box, but, still better than late Meccano - in both meanings of a deliberately pun-line!

Did I say there was a Dalek in evidence? There was a Dalek in evidence!

C is for Christmas Exhibition - 5 of 5 - Low Display Table

The exhibition extended to a side table, where some of the earlier systems get a second outing with ephemera for a more nostalgia-related display than the ready-to-play stuff in the upright cabinet . . .

. . . which looks like this! The two items which aren't further looked at in the next four images are firstly; the late green/red Meccano set (bottom centre), I know it's late as it has a yellow plastic tray insert to hold the components, but the earlier colour scheme with grey wheels. My brother and I had yellow vac-forms but blue/yellow plates and silver-anodised beams, so ours must have come just after this set.

Note also the aircraft engine, propeller and wing-struts (along with non-standard wheels?), all job-specific parts, but the piece I like most is the bolt-on RAF roundel!

The other item of note here is a catalogue of exhibits for an exhibition of construction toys at the Science Museum, issued by the Ministry of Education no less! I can't make out the date but it looks to be either 1945 or '55, and would be a wonder to view now . . . are the items still in their archive?

Trix catalogue and parts, as I mused a couple of posts ago; I think this is a licensed product re-branded to Trix (or from Trix?) and that a US company is also known for these triple-pierced beams? The cog and disc are very similar to Meccano parts, but the spanner has the added value of being included* into a model . . . so long as you have a second to tighten the nuts!

*I tried 'assembleable' but it seems to be a new-word too far!

Minibrix; we didn't have this system as kids but many of our friends did, I found it a bit boring, as (like Bayko, missing from this year's exhibition at Fleet Library, but seen in past displays) it can only make endless variations of a few basic building types - no cranes, no spaceships, a crude crocodile maybe, if you tried hard enough and had both a good imagination and good visio-spatial planning skills, but not realistically set up to model anything other than another 'box' with or without pitched roof!

In its defence it was made out of a very stable vulcanised rubber, like vehicle tyre-rubber (unlike that Italian stuff which has melted vast tracts of Toy Soldier history to sticky, furry lumps of nothing!), and while you sometimes find it with a perished surface (a sort of flaking hardened 'varnish' as a top layer), most is as useable now as it as when it was made 50 or 60 years ago.

Note the door; along with the windows, small points top and bottom of the element locate into dimples along the surface-edges of bars or bricks. And - like truck-tyres - it was bloody heavy!

We saw the ballast/mineral wagon in an earlier post, here's most of a passenger coach! The image seems to be of an auction lot and shows a whole set which also builds a windmill, a rail crane and section of track looking to be about G-gauge or 'Big' in plastic parlance!

Masterbuilder handbook and parts; again very similar to Meccano, but actually the 'rims' are better modelled than those of Binns Road's system, in separate scales they wouldn't look out of place on a Morris Minor or a Massey Ferguson!

The whole collection is still on exhibition now and to be seen in Fleet Library (North Hampshire - Berkshire - Surry triangle), and should - if previous years are to be a guide - continue 'till the end of January 2020.

C is for Christmas Exhibition - 4 of 5 - Frank Hornby's Meccano

I'm not sure who invented the first pierced-steel construction system, nor which side of the pond, or Channel, it first occurred on and how much the first influenced the subsequent lines of their rivals, but just as stone-age kids played with stones and bronze-age kids played with bronze figurines (well; they might have, if they were rich enough!), so it was only a matter of time before someone in the industrial age invented something which looked like Meccano, and I suspect several sets appeared independently, at around the same time, with similar properties, but here in the UK we tend to think (and be told) Frank Hornby was first?

Certainly, it was [arguably] the most successful, and despite a few hiccups . . . survives today, as a French-owned brand with a tenuous link back to French Hornby or French Dinky, and would survive for longer - if it went final tits-up tomorrow - through the many clones coming out of mile-long factories in Szechwan and Guangdong!

Ancient and modern . . . little and large!

Although several of the components are vintage, especially the boiler, it has been put together with the modern bolts, which contrary to my previous comment in the preceding post aren't cross-cut Phillip's, but small (3 or 4 mil') hex-drives.

The racing car is built to a vintage plan but seems to be mostly recent components, or at least components I recognise from my childhood Meccano - 1960/80's, while the 'plane would seem to be referencing Tin-Tin's, and thus is probably from a larger French set?

Some more shots of both.

Some more small pieces and a wounderful vintage aeroplane which has a many model-specific parts or 'shapes' as the Metalcraft Spirit of St. Louis in the previous post, something I have to confess I wasn't aware of.

We had tons of yellow/blue, our cousins inherited a multi-drawer cabinet of red/green heavy-gauge vintage, and while I knew there were the odd specialist part (the motorway-construction and army sets in the 1970's had a pre-formed lorry-cab I think?), this is quite a specific model, of a De Havilland Moth? Hawk, Puss . . . Tiger?

C is for Christmas Exhibition - 3 of 5 - Metal Construction Systems

The lower shelves of this year's display are on the metal building systems and again the upper of the two has non-Meccano, the lower all Meccano, this post addresses that first, upper, Meccano-free tier.

Two from the same manufacturer at 1 and 5, one being Tobar's contract manufactured Junior Engineer's Workshop Racing Car and five a Bulldozer credited to FIA Toys marque; Nuts and Bolts Engineering. You can see the plastic parts are identical despite the plethora of brand marks!

The scales (9) seem to be a direct copy of- and contemporaneous with- early Meccano, from Masterbuilder of Loughborough, Leicestershire. While at ten we have an army Land Rover (Series One I think, or is it a Mini Cooper! See previous post!) from the Gift Box Co., who sound like another importer.

In front of the Lanny we have a vintage crane on a rail wagon from AC Gilbert's Meccano-similar Erector sets (6), note the nice truss-girders used on the arm. In the foreground is a snowmobile form German brand Eitech.

Hidden by flash reflection the 3 on the roof of the blue truck announces a Breakdown Truck from the department store chain Marks & Spencer, who credit it to Germany, as it has the same Phillip's driver holes as the Eitech, that might be a clue, but to be honest; I think even Meccano (still going as a French-owned brand) have gone over to crossed, from slotted?

The footbridge (7) is another vintage rival to Meccano; Trix, although I think it's a licensed US product, I just can't remember who, the third line of holes in the beams is the giveaway.

At the back is a nice looking Harley-D (11) type from Remco in the US, but not vintage; it's another modern Chinese import (and thanks to Chris Smith Remco will be reappearing soon have now appeared here recently!), brand-marked Steel Tech.

The two new ones here (from the previous picture) are another import from China; the little plane (4) is branded Metal Mechanic and credited to Padgett Brothers (A-Z), another rack-toy importer we've seen here before, while behind it we see a very old rail wagon from Primus Engineering (presumably the same people who made the camping stoves for the old Empire's expeditions and military?) with pre-shaped, real wood parts.

This doesn't have the flexibility of the other systems (although the engine, wheels and struts are re-usable) and is probably aimed at adult collectors? Credited to Metalcraft Corp., of St Louis, and unmistakably the Spirit of St. Louis which that wotisname fellow crossed the pond in.

Yep! Definitely a Series One!

F is for Fleet and Crookham Historical Society - Again!

We had a quick look at their exhibition last year, well; they've done it again! Some duplicates (the Fuzzy Felt looks familiar) some new stuff, the (earlier) Bell version of the Merit stacking set is particularly interesting (a Merit gyroscope and SEL steam-engine also Randall's are both in the display as well), as are the Knex figures, which look to have some age, but had escaped me!

On show at Fleet Library (North Hampshire) for the time being, if you're local - or visiting - get down there for a proper look, if you're not, see what you can spot! Apologies for the photography - as last time, camera-flash, glass-cabinets and strip-lighting combine awkwardly!

I'll look-out for another exhibition next year!