P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Sports & Civilians

Off and running with Chris's donation parcel from late March, and it's the sportsmen and civi's first, with some interesting bits and a couple of all new ones.

 

This is a set I'd always hankered after, not so desperately that I sought it out and bought it, but unless you specialise in Merten as a core section of your collection, there is so much stuff by them, you just grab what you see, when you see it, if it's affordable, but I'd always looked at them in the catalogues and thought "That's a useful set", and here it is courtesy of Mr. Smith!

It's one of two sets in the catalogues, and if you were a wargamer, making an Italian Army, these would slot right in to an alpine unit, with the Esci-Ertl, Atlantic and - if you're lucky - Co-Ma Alpini figures! Also, I don't think there's a comparable set from Preiser, their's are walking with slung rifles I think? Something to check for another day!

 

Note also that an untouched set has the figures in the same configuration as the catalogues, a continuation of the very early issues where they were sold with the runner (incorrectly 'sprue') still attached to their heads.

A couple of the footballers usually associated with Parker/Palitoy, but there is more to it and a longer article is in the long queue, these 'novelty' games tend to generate copies and/or get licenced out to other brands or as cheap generics.

 

The fact that the blue one was in poor condition has allowed me to show some of the components, and you can see how the bent wire runs down the spine and hooks into the thigh, allowing a spring in the body to operate the kicking action when you press the head.

 

Another of the little Spanish terracotta figurines who have been slowly growing as a group, over the lifetime of the Blog, most as gifts from Chris or Peter Evans, or charity-shop purchases, I think we are over the baker's dozen now! I believe this chap is a shepherd?

 

Speaking of shepherds', I suspect this is German, I think I've mentioned before, when we were kids, (1969; so I was only five) we had a motoring holiday of Germany, and one of my abiding memories is of this mountain, possibly on the NATO side of the Erzgebirge, up against the Rhine (?), which was called something like Dwarf Mountain, and had a kind of Greek-columned building at the top (which was buried in low cloud the day we visited), and where A gift shop had this kind of stuff. I'd love to know where it was/what it was really called, if any German readers can recognise the description!

 

10 years later the shops in Bad Tölz were still full of similar stuff, but, while the later stuff was mostly real, wooden Erzgebirge, this is plastic, after the wooden patterns, as were the little chromed-gold dwarfs we bought that day, up the mountain!

A Betterware gift spoon with figural handle, this was actually the second thing ever blogged on the Blog, back in December 2008, but that one was a pinkish-maroon (what fashionista's probably call 'cherry yogurt'!), so a nice colour variation here, and presumably more to find?

 

Assorted sportsmen, I think the riders are Christmas cracker types, they may be from a board game, but I've never found it, while these little toys turn-up in most mixed lots of small scale, and have many colours and quite a few pose variations, while also being quite crude flat/semi-flat sculpts, so one suspects cheap novelties.

The wrestler is probably contemporary/near-contemporary, and is actually a mini action figure (points of articulation), but at this size tends to stay in the collection, as the Galoob Action Fleet types survive! The blue & white footballer is a cake decoration in search of a base (with one of the earlier, better football strips?), and we've seen the athletes before, many to find in a dozen sizes and loads of colours/base types. The fallen figure is Subbuteo I think, one of the oversized players you used for defending goal or taking throw-ins?

The other civilians include a sub-piracy of the Blue Box copy of a British race official, a turquoise lady, probably from a boardgame, a Lledo baker's boy, a dimestore vehicle figure (? I think we may have seen them in other colours, so maybe also a boardgame counter-piece?), Blue Box road worker copied from Dinky and an ex-Britains zoo-keeper sculpt, whom I suspect is from a set of rack-toy firefighters.

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these.

B is for Back to America!

We are getting there, but there's still about eight posts-worth of stuff before the final tying-up post, which I may do as a 'Page' at the top of this page? And it's all scans today, and all from over the pond.

This is a kit from Ayers of California, but the text refers to Weston as being behind the interior fixtures and fitting, so they must have supplied the little train guard, or 'Conductor', as he's in an American car!

 

Just box-ticking with these two survivors, the upper one has a manuscript note on the reverse in James Chase's hand, stating "Merten 818-819", so presumably the card carried the tourist set, while the other has five closed staples and may have held something fine, like sign-posts and not figures at all? It's coded on the back A34:250, in a rubber-stamp, but my archive has little else on Aristo-Craft. We've previously seen Preiser circus wagons from Aristo-Craft, and did somebody mention Comet/Authenticast in an earlier comment? So clearly a jobber, repackaging all sorts.

 

As far as I know the only figures they ever did, small shot injection-moulded, and carried in Walther's/Terminal Hobby Shop, for the longest time, but like so much of this stuff, sliding out of sight in the last decade or so.

 

These Lytler & Lytler are funny-ironic, as I had this catalogue/image, long before I got the 'unknown' figures, which were subsequently ID'd by Mike Cozart, and I revisited the same image with some crops here, it looks like I may have the whole range, including the drug-store cigar-Indian!

Another one from Walther's, these are Master Creations (MC), and I could have done a few scans, but this is probably the best of a line which also didn't change. Cast brass . . . you'd have to get the smithing tools out to work these!

T is for Two - Foreign Minor Makes - HO Railways Figures

Many thanks again to Jon Attwood, as these are all his images, I brightened them up a bit in Picasa, and can add a few points of note, but mostly, just eye candy as we box-tick a couple of the lesser makes, but, if you were a Spanish or Danish railway modeller in the 1960/70's, they wouldn't have been that 'minor' to you, as you feasted your eyes on the display at your local hobby shop, so these things are always relative!

Now Aneste Datank, and offering a basic range of Preiser in their own-brand, as a catalogue box-ticker, originally Dat Ank or Datank (?) are a Spanish railway model maker, who, for a while, under the semi-cold war conditions of being in Franco's Spain, were free to produce knock-off's to their hearts' content!

 

And they seem to have settled upon Walter Merten as the target of their plagiarism, although, the lower set may be old Preiser sculpts? Nevertheless, for metal copies of finely-detailed plastic figures, they aren't bad, quite colourful, and were clearly quite plentiful, as, since Jon sent me these images, I have seen quite a few on evilBay.

 

One is reminded of the efforts of Bermania, from Argentina, but these are a superior finish.

 

While up in the colder, wetter north of the continent, Reisler was producing these in an early Cellulose or glass-like polystyrene. We have actually seen these here before, or something similar, different sculpts, but at the time they were 'unknown' or 'maybe Märklin', now maybe Reisler or maybe Lego! They really only have the heavy bases in common.

While these have no bases, and the farm we also looked at previously here at Small Scale World, have very thin bases? So an odd range of sets, which may be bigger than listed on the Tohan site, until someone ID's those others, we won't know!

C is for Centaurs!

I've been wanting to track these Merten oddities down for the longest time, and eventually bought a mixed lot of ex-factory stuff off the German eBayer who seems to have inherited a shed-load of them! 

 

As far as I know there's only the three, and they must be quite a late thing as they don't appear to be in the early catalogues, but they are rather fine! The spear is a seperate moulding, for a ring-hand, and for now I've left the excess runner pieces and flashing in-situ. I think the dirt may be a combination of long-storage somewhere dusty, and mould-release agent 'going off'?

I do have one factory finished one, and the debate is do I try to paint the others to match, or do something more home-custom on them? That rather typical Merten-pink is a bit too bright for my liking, Mediterranean God's offspring would have been olive-tanned I feel!

 

From the 40mm range, and with no other fantasy figures I know of from Merten, I guess they were to be fielded against the medievals, to do battle with the many arm-variations of them and seduce the equally numerous medieval maidens which are another favourite of mine from Merten!

 

Comparison between the two like-poses. The runner remnant might be an actual 'sprue' it's quite solid-looking and cone-like, but the cone is facing the wrong way for a typical sprue, and one would assume all three would be on one still smallish tool?

TITM is for Toys in the Media - Preiserlike Persons

I've been saving these up for a while now, and had so many they'll need breaking down into separate posts, and this one deals with the popular trope of using model railway figures to help sell us stuff. We've seen plenty of artists using these figures to great effect, but here it's all about promoting other things, although some are simply illustrating articles with a view to gabbing our attention with an eye-catching image.

IFLScience (formerly 'I fucking Love Science' . . . the conformist cowards!) start us with their group of people hanging around illustrating the header for a hot-linked article on Faceplant about a psychological disorder involving seeing little people who aren't there.

Me? I see idiots, everywhere, selfish, stupid, climate-change denying, nationalistic idiots but I don't believe I'm imagining them as part of a delusional condition, I just see selfish, stupid, climate-change denying, nationalistic idiots everywhere!

IFLScience is behind the upper image here too, while The Conversation also carried it, so not only is it clearly a stock image, it's one of the ones which comes-up first in search results for such things! Neither credits the agency/library, so I don't know who's behind it.

Both stories deal with ageing AND the negative benefits of doing so, one more generally, the other specific to those who have had a severe dose of Covid-18 (SARS-Cov2), or who are suffering from Long-Covid.

A British policeman surveys a keyboard, I imagine a story about computer crime or on-line fraud? I didn't take a note on this one and there not much of a clue in the title, also; the figure seems to have a squared-off base, so not sure of the origin of this one, but about 1:72nd scale?

The uniform is somewhat archaic now, officers on the beat haven't dressed like this since the 1980's, but I believe it remains their academy/parade/disciplinary appointment uniform, and is the one still popularised in tourist trinkets and post-cards, while some strategically placed officers in tourist hot-spots may dress like this to feed the need of the tourists to see a 'British Bobby' on the beat!

Very skinny looking, I think the image has been pulled on the North/South axis? The note with this one (which we may have seen before in a past 'News, Views Etc'?) says "Organisational Structures and Resourcing Hero Image" which I'm sure has you riveted to the point of searching for what must be a world-changing article! I'll move swiftly on . . . (whispers . . . I must have read it to have found it!)

Another common trope with these (we have seen several here in the past) is money and/or financial articles, some have the figures, some have small change, the ones we're most interested in have both!

Upper shot seems to be showing Euros and Euro-cents and was from an article entitled "As part of the Unequal Democracies project", the lower image has pounds and pence Stirling, and is an Ian Johnston shot for Shutterstock, used here for research purposes

This was an article on weight-loss drugs, I don't tend to read such money-grubbing/emotional garbage, so it must have been an add' in my feed? The purple ones might be the Wonka Works Blueberry Pie meal-in-a-pill-deal!

This one's a bit sad! I think he may be Merit, although Preiser did do some chunky sculpts in the 1970's, all those track-gang and construction worker sets were heavier sculpting? Anyway, I suspect one of the artists who set these out in the environment (we've seen a few here already and there's more to come) didn't look after his and it got painted over. Indeed the paint may be partly the cause of the heaviness?

Because a freshly painted wall is to graffiti artists what a fresh dog-shit is to flies, it's since attracted a half-dozen or so re-paintings (original caption says seven layers), in a  rather bland pink (inner-city pub?) and will soon be no more than a blob or pimple on the wall!

H is for How They Come In - December 2020 - I Adrian

Because we were all in lockdown for the umpteenth time, this time last year, there was no 'Christmas' Sandown Park toy fair, and therefore Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) kindly sent me the little pile of bits he sometimes puts aside for me and which I would otherwise have picked-up at the show.

I managed to absent-mindedly shoot them with an eBay lot which arrived in the same post (cordoned-off in top right-hand corner!), so we'll look at them in close-up in a minute too. Highlights were the Zang composition aircraft, the De Havilland Mosquito is undamaged, the other three (two Spitfires and a Gloster Whittle) will need restoration at some point.

Merten deer set, two smallish horses (one modern PVC, one vintage HK PE) and Hong Kong copies of Gem's golfer and  Robin Hood also stand out, along with the circus lion, he's cartoony and I think I know where he comes from but it's hidden in the files . . . a Cecil Colman window-box import or Cowen De Groot/Codeg?

The little train is delightful, the rolling stock are PVC or full rubber and have moulded-in wheels (no locomotion), with staples as coupling-hitches. TMR could be Triang Miniature Railway?

I suspect there should be clip-in roofs, possibly tin-plate, and they MAY have had candle-holes? The things which look like release-pin marks may be for the bases of candles, allowing the train to celebrate up to age-nine's! But I don't think it's likely, far more plausable is its being a dolls house train set for 1:12 doll's houses?

While this Beeju canoe (my third) reveals/confirms (?) that while the hull and upper deck are always mono-coloured, the sandwiched interior 'deck' and paddler single-mouldings are always a marbled polymer, so far; always with red as one of the colours.

The other parcel was a mixed lot of Soviet era Russian toy soldiers which I bought for the paratrooper, he's a copy of the Acedo who was then further copied by Trojan, so getting another version was very pleasing! Around the same time I got another Acedo and he's different from my first, so the number of variations of the one pose continues to grow.

The row down the bottom are similar to the Malysh (Kid) Napoleonics in material (PVC rubber) and colours, so I suspect they ARE Malysh and will say so in the tags (assumption huh?!!), while top left is an early Progress figure in hard 'styrene, the same material being used for the unknown pink sailor.

Many thanks to Adrian for the little parcel of goodness!

I is for Intermediate Scales - 40mm Wild West; Introduction

The following image is the comparison shot for the three posts which should have appeared immediately below it.

Both images consist of a Merten 40mm Wild West figure on the far left of the line-up, followed by - from left to right - an early Culpitt's cake decoration with separate base, also issued as carded rack-toys in France by Jouets Super Plastic (JSP) shipped into Portugal by Injectaplastic, a late Culpitt's version with integral base, a - probably Hong Kong - copy of Atlantic in that tinny plastic of the 1990's and a similar Waddington's clone - except it may not be a clone, but more on that in the relevant post below this, so scroll down if you want more on all four types.

I couldn't find the Elastolin box, so I couldn't add one each on the right of the line-up, as I had intended, but they are much-of-a-muchness with the Merten's, only Elastolin's sculpts tent to be slightly sharper in the sculpting/finish.

ITLAPD is for It's Time Lost - Away Pirate Dudes!

Small but perfectly formed! keeping the best for last!

All over for another year; I must say I had worried the stuff in the 'For ITLAPD 2019' folder wouldn’t amount to much, but in the end I think it betters last year for post numbers, if not figure quality, but that's a metter of opinion and there is some nice stuff this year, with plenty to dig into if you have a quiet moment over the weekend!

Closing with Merten's diminutive pirates, these chaps are 18mm/HO-gauge compatible, and are taken from the sets;

Box HO-2024 - Pirates #1

Box HO-2025 - Pirates #2

Although I'm missing one! I've arranged them as ship's deck crew (swabs?) above and ship's rigging crew (aloft) below, but the two sets contained 3 & 3, so you could crew a model kit of the appropriate size with only one set. If the AWOL scabrous-rotter ever turns up, I'll do them again in their sets!

And many thanks to Peter Evans who's contributions have been heavily leaned-on this year, to Chris Smith, Brian Berke and Jim who have all sent stuff which helped or got a mention and thanks to whoever keeps taking this stuff to Charity Shops!

It be only twelve month'odd 'till Internationaaaal Talk Loik a Poirate Day be rownd again, me'harrties, whatch thaat horrrizon furr thur soin o'thurr craaah'ssed-bones. . . Aahhaaaarrrr!

F is for Follow-ups - Various Recent Posts

A few bits and bobs pertaining to previous posts; we'll start with the recently seen African native set ID'd by Peter Evans the other week;

Chris Smith had one with three colours, the shorts and red-clay'ed hair of my better sample but with the addition of silver for the spear tip, studying mine under the looking-glass I can find no hint of silver and I think it really is an example of how the paint was slowly reduced to cut costs, perhaps dating the set to the midst of the oil crisis?

Chris also has this lovely marbled rhinoceros which came in the same lot/sample, whether they go together or not is still a question-mark, but it's a fine beast! It is also however a bit Asian-looking, rather than an African black or white?

Which leads me on to the wheeled crocodile, I don't know why I didn’t spot it at the time, but there are little spigots on its tail and little dimples on the roof of its mouth and on its tongue . . . it's only from a crocodile 'train', or crocodile 'crocodile'! How cool is that? Too cool for first class!

I dropped into the party shop at Clapham Junction when I was up in The Smoke for the Toy Fair at the end of last month and they did have some blue teams left, the shop-assistant had to go in the basement for them, but I stole-away with one . . . after passing over the requisite shekels!

Giving me six team strips from three brandings, and enough figures for an interesting five-a-side competition. There must be some war-gaming style rule-sets you could use for such a venture, maybe some of the board-games with footballer figures could supply ideas for a skeleton rule-set without a board? Playable on a Subbuto pitch maybe!

Chris also sent in the autumn parcel a soviet-bloc, flat figure for which I already had a clone (seen before), but mine is a poorer quality copy; something which sometimes happened 'behind the curtain' as we saw with all the versions of Progress cavalry, and as it did here in the West.

The new one has been mended with a combination of an Evostick-like snot and some fag-lighter, heat-melting, so cowardice has decided me against trying to clean it up for fear of doing more damage! It’s a new colour anyway, and as I say - a better sculpt - Thanks Chris!

As a follow-up to an older post, I recently got another bunch of Merten copy Victorians/Edwardian (Wilhelmian?) civilian cake decorations (from Peter Evans I think? Cheers Peter!), with a colour variation of the pink lady we looked at before.

N is for Nude Naturists, Natural Nudies and Naughty Naked Nymphs!

Well, like the best plot or part-work, one should keep the promised excitement until the end! Don't deny it, I can guarantee that a year from now this will have had way more hits than any other post this year . . .that's human nature!

Although I notice a post from a couple of weeks ago is garnering a lot of traffic, can't think why; too much text, not enough pictures was my opinion, but Blue Box always proves popular!

AND they're not all naked, AND there's at least one more Preiser post in the pipeline, but there's interesting stuff among the titillation of 18mm high pink plastic people with little or no clothing . . . painted on!

My five sets, across the board with two Merten, two Preiser and one - actually - Faller (which has been on the blog before . . . last time we did nakedness I think!), supplied by Preiser.

Below them are - on the left, a comparison between painted and unpainted sculpts of Preiser's older nudes and on the right some odd Merten's waterskiing; although my Merten's are all clothed they did do nudes as well . . .

. . . and as we can see, the Merten nudes have been to a Brazilian clinic if you know what I mean - next to Preiser's, they are err . . . very well endowed young ladies!

I rather like the skiffle group - dates the set somewhat! And to their left, what my odds look like as a full set.

The real reason for this post and one of the reasons for the whole season, this runner (left) has all the figures (but not the props) for at least three of the old catalogued 'six-figure' sets from Preiser, although it's never that simple.

The sets are 106 - Artists, Sculptor, Models and Accessories (of which the part-set top right was supplied to Faller - as seen, with painted figures and unpainted accessories), set 107 - female bathers and accessories (seen above and below as 10107) and 108 - Doctor, Patient, Revue Girls and Accessories (not currently listed, although the doctor and his patient are in the new 'single figure' series).

The budget version of 106 used to have five figure, but I can't remember which one gets dropped, I think one of them also appears in a vignette 'at the window', so it'll be that one!

Over the years the lump of stone the sculptor is working on has taken on more form, it used to be more of a shapeless block, with the beginnings of the side of a head chipped out of one corner.

All three creative's live-on in the new premium range, but only two of the models; now the sculptor has nearly finished sketching-in, but the seated artist has gone off to paint landscapes and his model is now on the beach as 26073!

The other 2607x sculpts are newer designs while the Doctor and his patient are sold together, giving a lie to 'single figure' series, the working girls having been dropped from the catalogue for now.

More nudity, now in the bathroom and the older sculpt makes yet another appearance as a bright-orange shop-fitting dummy/mannequin at a car-boot sale!

Because Europeans generally have a healthier relationship to nudity than us Anglo-Saxons - either side of the pond (speak for yourself Hugh!) - with less of the giggling, smirking or hypocrisy; it was often a feature of the coin-operated layouts you used to get in main stations and termini (do they still have them?) to have a nude (usually from one of these sets or the Merten one's (above) hidden in the window of an attic garret, or bedroom, for the grown-ups to find while the kids watched their train go round and round and disappear into and reappear out of the tunnels.

The two Merten sets I have with a third family group to their right on the top row, and various others sets from Preiser including a newer 'FKK-Strand' (nudist beach) set, again with a family element, it's really not about the titillation or 'stag' element (unlike the larger figures from Marx!), but rather allowing for the modelling of what are - to more enlightened societies - everyday things like tractors or station-trolleys, mechanics or moo-cows.

Remember that while Brexiteer Britains (or American Trumptons?) will get quite hysterical about child-safety at a large public baths (these days read 'high class, tourism related, end-destination, leisure facility, water-park') and see any unaccompanied male over 40 as a potential 'Facking Paedo out to brutally abuse YOUR kid and ruin house prices in YOUR area!', it is considered bad-form to wear clothing into the communal sauna at a German water park, and was back in the 1980's, whatever your age or gender, as the sauna contained people of all ages and both sexes.

Hard to date this one, as the early sets tend to be better painted with Merten, and attached to their runner, while later sets: poorer paint on paper-thin bases. Also Merten kept the same codes and packaging for, like, ev'ER, but these wouldn't suit bases, needing the runner, and with the poor paint - a late'ish set I think.

Below are the contents of the modern 107, the large number of signs are useful, if I had the time, money and space for railway modelling I'd use every sign I could get; try counting the number of free-standing signs in the high street next time you're there, the let-down of any large urban diorama is the lack of signage!

Originally 70 and 71, these were the first beach-sets from Preiser, and were used in the funny little range of 3xx coded sets we looked at briefly the other day, with their instructions on how to make cave-men! Unlike most Preiser beach-sets where the costumes are just pained-on; here they are modelled onto the sculpting.

The 308 contains two-each of most of both sets with one-each of the other four poses, I'm guessing a different four poses in each of several sets to make clear the contents of the 'spare' part-runners?

A couple more from Merten's catalogue, the canvass deck chairs in the lower set are a childhood memory, while comedians have obtained much mileage from the older wooden type, vis-à-vis people falling-off or through them or having them fold-up upon the victim: my memory of those steel-tube framed, canvas-covered one is that that was exactly what they did . . .

. . . if you sat in them too hard, or sat up too quickly, or turned-over to cook the other side too abruptly they would fold over you like some great, damp, sandy, clam, or catapult you onto the beach, earning you a mouthful of grit, much to the merriment of those around you - until it was your turn to laugh at the mechanism-failure of their own idiot chair!

ome more images; it's not just the wagons I photographed the hell out of! Half-hearted attempt at a pose comparison on top, close-up of the other Merten set in the middle and a few loose figures with the lilo's at the bottom, the lilo's were meant to be bendable into shape for leaning against - see some of the catalogue illustrations.

More sets from both makers, the Merten 'Nightlife' is a lot more explicit than the Preiser 'Revue Girls', coming complete with poles for the pole dancers it leaves little to the imagination, whereas the Presier girls can be (and in some sets are-) used as 'just' undressing - for the beach or bed.

Speaking of beds (and other pieces of furniture), Noch have a range of 'adult' sets that make this Merten one look tame, I do have a couple in storage, but they are for another day. The ethylene readymade figure makers of Eastern Europe have gone much further, while Preiser run with humor, having a little kid run off with big-sisters bikini-top!

If you get all the sets in this post you can build a busy beach scene, but what would it have to do with a model railway? Note how the wooden grid that comes with the beach-chair can be used to close the chair, as a platform/footway or as a wind-break or screen, even as a clothes-horse for drying towels!

Someone was listing the Preiser 'Adam and Eve' sets the other day, somewhere else (the bough of amphibiousness!), but forgot to mention the HO set; those big-scale purists huh?!!

Catalogue Picture of 1:22.5 / G-Gauge set

Very useful sets aimed at the real scratch-builder, like a naked 'multipose' set (err . . . because it's a naked multipose set!), you can create the pose you want from a kit of parts and then build-up clothing from a modelling compound and the spare-parts box.

Another one from the new single-figure prestige range is this 'streaker' from the old concert set, originally flashing some 1D-Beliber type fuckwit, she's apparently now undressing!

I saw one in the modeling shop in Basingrad the other day in the same colours as the original (red shorts, black top), so with all Preiser paint now to roughly the same high standard, I guess these are more about selling single figures for too much money, than about real exclusivity?

The rest! The set with the three African skin-types (providing the other 2607x poses above) was first issued about 15/20 years ago (?) in the larger scales (1:22.5 / G-gauge?) and is now in HO as well; I'm not sure where the photographers swimming-suit came from, but he's very-much a 'HE' anatomically, if you know what I mean, and shouldn't want to be seen dead in something so little removed from Borat's 'man-kini'!

That's enough bare-flesh to excite the lonely, the virginal and the puritanical, foaming-mouthed bible-belters (it's only the third group that worry me!) - back to wagons next time!