QAIMNS (R) is for Angels!

One of the more unusual things in my possession is this old kit bag, about twice the size of the one I was issued with in '84, but half the strength of material, being quite soft, compared to mine which is like a canvas belt material, only bags bigger!

 

The base is heavier though, to prevent wear on trains, mud-tracks and ferries! It's brown, I don't know if there's a colour code, but I think the Navy have always been white, ours were standard 'army green' and the RAF had theirs in the same blue as their best dress, so there maybe/may have been a code, with women's' forces or reserves in brown?

 

It's marked MK DALY - QAIMNSR - BEF, which is the name of the owner, the unit (Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve), these days you tend to put the 'R' in brackets, but back then they clearly didn't! And British Expeditionary Force, our troops in France.

A little non-arduous Googling quickly revealed some of her history, she seems to have served from at least 1916 sometime (one of some 10,000 women), probably earlier, with a war diary in the National Archive revealing;
 

"Recommendation for 1 months’ sick leave for Miss M. K. Daly, QAIMNSR, 1 General Hospital, suffering from neurasthenia."

A euphemism for what we later called shell-shock (see below), and now call PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), from Abbeville (the Somme) on the 15th October 1916, suggesting she had already seen more than most of our generation ever will, and most of it pretty bad.

However, they were made of sterner stock in Edwardian Britain, and the same diary's entry (I couldn't ascertain the name or sex of the author) for 15th June 1917 reveals;

"To Frevent (Frévent, about 18km NE of Abbeville, ed.), to 6 Stationary Hospital, arriving at 12.15 noon. Went round the hospital with Miss Daly, the A/Matron, and the CO, Lt. Col. Harding. All in excellent order – had been evacuating largely – about 350 cases in hospital at the time of the visit. Saw the new hut for officers suffering from shell shock – not yet in use, to be opened next week, which will greatly relieve the existing Officers’ Hospital, which was overcrowded on the day of my visit, owing to a large number of shell shock cases. 59 officers in hospital altogether. Had lunch in the Sisters’ Mess, most comfortable and well kept."

 

So, she had returned to work, and was helping officers recover from what she had herself suffered from a year earlier.

The third mention of her I could find was her gazetting in the King's birthday honours list for 1919, where the British Journal of Nursing reports on January 25th;

"The King has been pleased to award the Royal Red Cross, second class, to the following ladies in recognition of their valuable services : — . . . Miss M. K. Daly, Staff Nurse, Q.A.I. M. N. S. R. . . .  "

 

At no point was her Christian-name or middle-name revealed, there were at least two other Daly's, one seems to have spent her war in the hospitals at Colchester, the other gets a brief mention in Scotland (I think, it was 'in passing'?), and one wonders what happened to her, all three of them, or indeed, the many thousands who 'answered the call', after the war?

The Quims (as they were 'affectionately' known), would become the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC), in 1949, commonly known as QA's. I briefly dated a QA after I'd left the Army, and once fell in love with a Captain, but she (along with two nurses, who were 'in on it') played a terrible trick on me and 'Snoz' Reed, which is another story for another day!

T is for Two - Marx Fort Bits

A couple of bits I scanned last night while looking for other things, and while I could have sworn we'd seen this first one here already, I can't find it under the 'Marx', 'Forts', 'Paper' or 'Cardboard' Tags, so I must have posted it on Faceplant and then lost it somewhere?

No matter, fresh scan, these actually look a bit flimsy against the card building kits Britains was doing around the same time, but that may have something to do with scale, they are a bit larger, and are probably unique to Marx Swansea and the UK? A fort and Hospital, scaled for the Playpeople (Playmobil under licence), and it's interesting that in the blurb they are called 'Little People' which was actually a Fisher Price thing.

 

For years, I'd never encountered these or their remnants in the wild, so, wondered if they were they ever issued, this is from the 1978 catalogue, and '76-80 (the same years the Playpeople were available) is what you might call the interregnum, no; 'drawn-out death', with Dunby-Combex at the helm, and while some stuff did get out, it was all a bit hit-and-miss? However, I have now/since seen them on evilBay, so they did happen!

 

At a figure-height of 7.5cm things made for Playmobil could/can be used with larger toy soldiers and model figures.

Just the scan of the instructions for the Miniature Masterpiece forts, which we looked at here. It's a bit tatty, but might be useful to print out, if you're selling one without an instruction sheet?

15th - I did find it and it is now Tagged-up the same as this one, so it's now on the Blog twice, but that's just how it rolls sometimes!

E is for Emergency . . . Empire or Emson?

A closer look at a couple of the sets in the packaging-post from the other day now, with a look at the Blue Box emergency set, and what I've suggested is the Lucky 'version', however in preparing the images, it became obvious that it's probably not Lucky, but E (for Empire? Or Emson, see past article on Thames Trader trucks!), the people who made some of those Tri-Ang Minic ship knock-off's.

The two sets side-by-side, ignoring the illustrative card coming off the front side of the Blue Box carton, you can see the two boxes are roughly the same height and depth, but the unbranded one (sold as Lucky but probably Emson) is wider for double the contents.

 

The Blue Box turntable ladder truck is a bit of fun with a fully traversing, elevating and extending, sectional ladder (a very delicate structure in polystyrene, I don't suppose many have survived outside the packaging!), but purely fictional on a Bedford RL chassis I think?

 

The ambulance, on the same chassis, has been (along with the figures) quite badly discoloured by sunlight (ultraviolet), and you can see that while the far side isn't so affected, the cab/chassis moulding is untouched.

This confirms my own theory much expanded-on in an interesting thread on plastic diseases, on the old HäT forum, long since deleted, when H adopted the 12-month cut-off! Basically, I believe all problems with old plastic are related to errors on the day they were formed, with incorrect temperatures, pressures or additive quantities resulting in hidden flaws with will come out later, I'm guessing the body and figures were probably overcooked in the tools, while the cab-chassis went through their birth without problems?

The other set is aping the 77xxx series from Blue Box, with a window in front of each element, and similar packaging dimensions, and confirms the link between the round-based mechanics and the oblong-based firefighters, previously made here at Small Scale World.

I thought the artwork was rather atmospheric!

 

I don't know my cars well enough to call either of these, are they US vehicles, with that soft spongy suspension which makes kids car-sick, or are we looking at a Ford Zephyr or Zodiac for one of them? Corgi did an Oldsmobile staff-car, could one of these be a clone of that?

 

We've seen the figures before, they are copies of the Blue Box copies of the Dinky figures, but the sticker on the blue Police-car's door is clearly the branding of the 'E for Empire' toys, probably, actually Emson, seen on other toys of this type, which is not to say Lucky aren't in there somewhere, there was a lot of cross pollination between all those cheapo-platic makers, and having discovered that Blue Box (and Redbox) are only brands of Tai Sang, there's no reason to discard previous theories without empirical evidence, so I'll tag all three (Lucky Toys, Empire Made, Emson) until we know more!

 

The Thames Trader water tank (? Or tool-lorry?) is similar in lines to the real-life T55, but that was more streamlined, while the Dennis looks like a bit of a hybrid between a 1971 D600 (Mk 2) and the earlier F101. As different brigades would have replaced different numbers/types of appliances at different times, there would have been a gradual evolution in outline and fittings, as well as different decorations (some have more chrome), so it's a fair representation of a generic Dennis!

It was machines like this which attended our house, and saved it, back in the 1970's, when the heath caught fire (thoughts for the people of Maui, Greece, Portugal, Canada et al.) and the tar on the flat roof started steaming! The firemen gave my brother and I regular top-ups for our watering cans, so we could help 'damp-down'! We found tons of cooked Adder's eggs - sadface, and ended-up looking like a couple of Victorian chimney sweeps!

 

Being a local manufacturer, my childhood memories are filled with Dennis fire engines (and County tractors) being test-driven or 'shaken-down' around the area, and they often went through Fleet, sometimes as plain chassis, with the drivers' using motorcycle helmets and four-point, racing seatbelts, perched - as they were - on a temporary seat over the bare engine! I seem to recall the seats were held-on with a literal network of bungy-cords, but it was probably coloured rope!

 

While it is also similar to the Bedford RL 'Green Goddess' wagons of the Auxiliary [Army] Fire Service (AFS), and of the fire-strikes fame! All gone now, along with everything else in the cupboards - Thanks Tory voters, you know the price of everything and the value of nothing, least of all 'society'.

In both sets, the figures are slightly over-scaled at 28/30mm, but all the vehicles could carry-off service in 1:76/72nd scale armies or on HO or OO-gauge layouts, or maybe not the two cars; just the lorries/trucks?

M is for Medical Corps - Historex No's 771, 772 (1), (1)a, (1)b, (2) & (3) , 773, 774 (1), (2) & B, and 775 (1), (2) & (3)

There was no way to separate the figures and the wagon here, or not without tons of cropping and touching-up, so they're all in a bit of a huddle and you'll have to take what you want from them if you can find it!

The Boss!

The Wagon; I assume the wagons have the Gribeauval System at the front end, but the rear seems very different, it's fully sprung for comfort, for starters!

The uniforms . . .

There seems to be a cross fertilisation between human and veterinary medicine in the Corps, however I'm no expert and haven't read the blurb, I don't really follow the period, although I may be reading-up on it in the future, but I know some horse ambulances are open, so a conversion job/potential there?

G is for Gribeauval System - Sausage Wagon - Historex No's 676a, 676b & 30304

The 'Wurst' wagon ('chariot à saucisses', sûrement!)*. Take the caisson and add a padded roof for riding on and you can condemn your medical staff to the ride from hell! I'm guessing it was not a happy experience over more than a few hundred yards, and then only slowly!

* No, it was a 'wurst wagon' and please stop calling me Shirley!

Previously 676b (to the bare 676a kit), the vignette set with four figures and horses was re-numbered at some point, and the original black & white sketch was coloured at the same time.

The blurb in the middle image says it all; I know nothing, and I'm not even from Barcelona!

E is for Emergency Team

Just a quickie but it ties into the previous post, indeed it is the only real reason the previous post was published in the end! We've seen the current/more recent Halsall (now HTI) stuff here before, both as shelfies and collection, but this has been in the collection for 15-20 years I think and adds to the whole picture.

The obvious thing to note is that the contents are the same as Kentoys own-branded sets, so these are a contract-manufactured, or just catalogue-bought 'thing', with optional own-brand graphics set for Halsall, but originating with Kentoys.

However the Teamsters sub-branding or line brand-mark has - more recently - been used for stuff which originated with Pioneer! Yeah . . . it's almost been Pioneer month not Rack Toy Month this year, but that's purely coincidental - a lot of it was in the box I had to take-apart!

Quick close-up of the figures, always the driving force here at Small Scale World, the accessories have a lot in common with stuff in Supreme sets and as I said at the start of the month, one day I'll do comparison articles for all this stuff, and try to make more sense of it all for posterity!

Case in point here - this helicopter is a much poorer or cruder model than the Pioneer one we saw in a more recent HTI Teamsters set, but by itself, is far improved on a lot of these little EC-OH-Bell type small-seater models, out there from HK/China, the method of attachment and design of rotors and skids or wheels will be the final arbiter on how to ID most of them!

But there's more work to be done, and you do need the 'stuff' to make the calls, for instance, did Halsall take the Kentoys military set? I don't know! Were the figures in the two more recent emergency sets by/from Pioneer or Kentoys? They don't match these, but are close to the eight soldiers' sculpts, the bases being the clue, so maybe Kentoys, even though the other contents had switched to Pioneer . . .

. . . and that would give two sets/pairs of police and two sets/pairs of firefighters from the same source . . . it's almost never ending, but we will get as far as we can here in the years to come! And that's why I am still working on the firefighter page Brain and Theo have contributed-to and Chris has sent several figures for; time, it's all a matter of time!

S is for Sun Fung . . . Not! (Probably?)

Well, I mean Sun Fung might be a stand-alone manufacturer, but the lack of a logo in the full page ad' suggests they were probably some sort of 'middle-man', you know the type of thing; contract-agents, Hong Kong-based wholesalers or shippers of some kind? The stuff seems pretty generic and to have been seen in other guises?

Anyway it's another name in the cannon (and the Tag List); let's have a look . . . the above was cropped out of the larger inset-image and shows some figures as 'added-interest' or 'enhanced play-value' accessories for what look to be all or mostly plastic vehicles, and it's the firefighters we are going to concentrate on today.

I only have two I can say may be from the Sun Fung stable and one of them doesn't have the necessary paint! Both are manufactured in a softish polyethylene; one a match for those illustrated above, the unpainted 'other' being possibly a later one?

But . . . I do have these, in three-colour paint, over pink polystyrene and with an extra pose (we will study in a mo'), they are not quite the same with the bases on the 2nd (fire-axe guy) and 3rd (air-tank guy) figures from the left turned 90° from the Sun Fung ones, the pose it's hard to make-out in the advert' is the carrying a medium-sized (age 7-10) child guy, while the kneeling pose on the far right is . . .

 . . . carrying a baby? Carrying a dog or cat . . . or other pet (large gerbil?), carrying a small monkey? A piece of vital fire-fighting equipment? The Mystical Zoldorathian Girdle of Power? He's carrying something and has chosen to kneel on a piece of debris!

These two sub-Lucky copies aren't the orange ones above, although the kneeling guy in the advertisement seems to have been reversed in the studio so would look similar to this chap, the standing one has a different base.

In preparing these recent posts I've found around (it was dodgy counting) 59 samples of un-ID'd road-workers/mechanics in the small-to-medium scales box, some several hundred figures, and 20-odd in the larger-scale tubs, so plenty to go on and I added two samples (four figures) from Chris and Peter from the last few months, along with two Blue Box variants; also from Peter, and one day we'll have a session on the figures rather than the brands!

B is for Big Set!

Which is how it's been known in Picasa for nearly a year; RTM - Big Set. Peter Evans sent this as part of a parcel back last autumn, and I nearly posted it then, but thought it ought to wait for RTM, and so we'll look at it now.

Gotta' love the Spelling! Branded - if you can call a small, white, paper import-sticker 'branding' - to an S.B. Toys of Manchester, what I like about this set is that it’s packed with stuff! Almost 'Old School' rack-toy, except they tended to have less stuff, but I do have sets (we saw a Blue Box one the other day) where 'planes, ships, AFV's and figures in different scales were shoved together, sometimes with parachute toys (one set has parachutists in two sizes), and in that respect this is the same - although without a parachute toy or ship/boat!

The contents of the left-hand pocket contains the motorcycle which I did include in a post a while ago, but it's out now and nestling with the others in 'their' tub. Familiar figures we'll look at below and some scenic stuff of low grade/quality. I don't know if the flag is a vaguely accurate representation of one of the former Soviet Republics, or a strange Indo-Franco-Argentine hybrid!

The right-hand pocket is probably the more interesting with various figures in three sizes and some more odd's and sods including a more obvious Argentinian flag and some useful 1:32nd'ish POL drums with separate lids.

Below is the contents of the middle pocket, a shiny, semi-metallised play-mat (think: very thin crisp packet) and three larger vehicles/aircraft. Above is three piles, the left hand pile is 'keep', the middle pile is 'charity shop' (got to share the generosity and encourage the next generation of collectors - or I'll run out of readers before I've finished blathering!) while the right-hand pile is 'bin/recycling'!

The figures have been seen here before, associated with the odd brand-mark or two, but these are new, smaller and polyethylene rather than the PVC of the originals and there were only three poses in green, but all six in yellow.

The growing family, to which you can add sandy ones with red-oxide patches of camouflage which I think have been shelfied here in a boxed set with a large tank. The six to the right (which may have been the cause of the last look at these) are even smaller and like the originals are in a PVC or PVC substitute.

The new ones would appear to be second generation copies of a 'family' of figures already on to a third generation. The black one on the right would be even smaller if he didn't come with the thickest base!

This is rather neat, harking back to the 1970's with the Marx-copy stretcher and casualty, but the bearers are newer sculpts in a more generic 'Army Man' style. I failed to note the pillow and posed the casualty the wrong way round!

Three very poor copies of better US-firefighters make-up the rest of the useable figures as far as the collection goes, although the chap in a breathing mask would make a good alien in a sci-fi setting!

While Americans will instantly recognise the middle pose some other nationals may not; I think he's holding two of those slow-burning flares you sometimes see them using in night-time roadblocks in movies? They seem to stick them on the road, or spike them in (?) to direct or channel traffic into lanes.

A quick sizer tells us the stretcher team and firefighters are an almost perfect 54mm, while the modern GI's around 60mm.

The team! Some dodgy stamping-out of the flag-machine has left the new guy looking like an outlaw biker with an interesting 'colours' patch! He's also a slightly different moulding and probably the original donor for the three copies to his right.

Thanks Peter - you don't see sets as busy as this one very often, these days!

A is for Archive - Mattel's 'VertiBird'

I can just about remember TV ad's for this, but I may be getting confused with similar machines from Tyco, Airfix, Hasbro or someone else; there were a fair few around through the 1970's or early 1980's, this being originally released in '73 and later licensed to Bluebird as Air Police.

These are from the 1980 trade catalogue. As the rotor-blades don't have variable geometry, all the work is actually done by the red turret/gimball-thing on top of the box on the ground, but - you do get a figure!

Close-up of the figure, the sort of thing I'd expect to have in my 'unknown' sections, but I don't seem to have one . . . yet! The figure looks to be moulded into/onto the rescue sledge/tray, but is listed separately from a 'stretcher' and there seems to be a clip-in pick-up/carrying handle.

T is for Two - Card Forts

Competing with the Raytel (and other) forts in the mid-to-late 1970's (as seen here earlier today) were these card bulding kits from two of the bigger names in toys at the time - Britains and Marx.

Britains 1977 catalogue carried these four card play-sets, covering the main genres of their figures/vehicles and providing a quick and easy, affordable set of buildings or scenics. They reappeared in the '78 catalogue and then disappeared forever, I think? When they come-up for sale these days; they do fetch a premium price!

[Might take a minute to load, I accidentally scanned it at 600dpi, so it's ten-times the size of the Britians image, but I didn't realise until I was uploading it just now!]

Marx answered in their 1978 catalogue with these two, although they were scaled slightly larger to equip the world of Playmobil, known as 'Playpeople' in the Marx universe (the 52-page catalogue having no other figures in it, apart from the 12" Wild West dolls), they would nevertheless prove useful for 54 or 60mm figures.

The Marx kits are modular and slot-together for easy putting-away after play, the Britains' required gluing, another reason for their rarity today, but then I can't say I've ever seen one of the Marx ones, so they're probably harder to find! St. Marx Hospital . . . geddit!