A is for Ancient, African & Agricultural Animals

I know, but I started with the alliterative titles, and I'm determined to get to the end of the plunder-posts with the same trope, so some are going to be a bit weak! Also, I've been a bit blearh, for the fortnight since the show, the heat, work, and a persistent cold, have left me a bit deflated, but I've sort of kept posting . . . if not regularly, becasue I'm rather just going through the motions! Anyway, I've shot the animals, the bits & bobs, and the civilian stuff, so they will be next, with ancient, medieval and 'combat' (the 'proper' toy soldiers!) still to face the camera!

 

Because I included several things from the Friday or Sunday afternoon in the total plunder-pile of 'PW Weekend', the fact that I managed to get to the Car Boot Sale at Bordon, on the Sunday morning, seemed to be a good reason to include my only purchase - I rejected some Corgi military on one stall, and similar Dinky's on another.

 

Somewhere in storage is the old childhood family set, also Merit, but in an older, litho or screen-printed box, and I bought this intending to replace a few missing and broken pieces, in that much-loved and over-played set, only to find it's got an orange beetle, instead of a red one, so I may still need a third, but could end up with enough good parts for five players!

 

Not that you have to build them all one colour, half the fun was making a multicoloured one! Called Scarabee in France, Escarabajo (scarabs!) in Spain, and Cootie in the US (WWI troops slang for body-lice! And which were love-bites over here, when I was a kid?), I'd be quite surprised if a UK collector didn't know they were called Beetle Game, indeed, one might think he was just a dealer all along, not really paying attention!

 

I got this from MM-Smith, who didn't have any new figures in his own range this year, due to the kind of personal shit, we're all suffering, however he did stall-out, and had these, they're quite modern, but he said he remembered having the exact same animals as a kid, which is both believable and likely.

 

Sometimes a maker can be left with a ton of stuff from a cancelled contract, or just a stack of stillages in a warehouse somewhere, filled with over-production, and where it can hang around for years, before another buyer, or selling/marketing opportunity arises, or someone remembers it's ". . . at the back there somewhere", and digs them out, so it's entirely possible, this is old stock in a new CE-rated card.

 

And I've had both the uncommon Hippo sculpt, and the turned-head 'Black Panther' for years, they're having come in with vintage lots, so it's nice to find they go together, and what goes with them!

 

Similar, but much older fayre from Jecsan, as their unpainted/pocket-money JC line, a mix of caveman-like native warriors, and wild animals, a bit of a packaging box-ticker, but equally I don't have any of them in the stash, or I didn't, before the show! Both bags contain two animals, three figures and a cactus!

 

This is the CollectA Quetzalcoatlus, a huge flying dinosaur, which was the idea behind the movie Q: The Winged Serpent, albeit, an inaccurate representation of an Aztec mythological creature! I'm not a great fan of horror movies, but a giant pterosaur picking bikini-babes of the roofs of New York was quite amusing!

 

Beautifully made and decorated, matching the best Schleich or Papo can offer, they tend to be a lot cheaper, but you have to find them online as brick & mortar retail stockists seem thin on the ground. The baby-sauropod snack, in scale, is slightly larger than a human! While the beak is slightly more curved than some reconstructions?

 

Mixed, mostly smaller ones, including a vinyl turkey, Matchbox horse and pearlescent cracker elephant, but that semi-flat red plastic moulding, back left . . . 

 

. . . defies description! It appears to be a lion, eating either a monkey or a human? It's quite damaged, with the legs/lower torso of the 'meal' missing, along with the Lion's other leg, and the tip of its tail, with the result that we don't even know if it had a base, or was a baseless 'charm' of some kind.

 

Does it get any more esoteric? What else was in the set? How bloodthirsty was the rest of the set? Cracker or gumball? Literally, the most interesting thing to come out of the show this year!

 

A couple of funnies, on the right, an Airfix ancient horse bing made to look like an unpainted whitemetal casting, for WTF? reasons! On the left a Merit dog, Hong Kong copy of Merit pony and a piece of Timpo hedge are brought together to make a rustic vignette.

 

In the past I would have stripped these down, but now, I'll probably hang on to them for a while, indecised (is that a word? Undecided-) as to what to do with them, then pass them on to the next generation of collectors in a mixed lot, similar to those they came in!

 

Sold to me as Starlux (!), the Corgi circus elephant, from the Jean Richard 'Pinder' playset (Gift Set No. 48). I think it's been repainted by someone, and is a hollow polystyrene moulding, glued together from about four or five parts.

 

A couple of Erzgebirge, the cow being pretty bog-standard, but the horse slightly above average, with the extra shaping of the legs. Along with a full-on piece of ivory, a tusk, probably from bookends, or similar decorative pieces. Also, two legs; one plastic, one metal; which don't appear to belong to any of the other animals in the plunder pile, so will be heading to a spares tub!

 

Three metal figures, even a plastics show will turn-up the odd piece of metal!, the goat might be a game piece? The mini-dino' is interesting, and a thing a weird shop in Wantage, where I got a wizard years ago, might have had too (in which case I may have one already?), but the Irish Wolfhound may be a jackpot find?

 

It's die-cast aluminium, as a flat. And we've seen such things before here at Small Scale World, but before I place the link, this casting (metal IS cast) has Wolfshond (with an 'o') on the base, now, it's not clear, but I think the Germans would say Wolfshund (with a 'u'). So, if this producer of aluminium flats is actually Dutch, that would help make perfect sense of this outstanding question mark;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/09/r-is-for-return-to-nazi-flats.html

 

The Dutch got a bloody hard time from the Nazi's, and it would make perfect sense for them to produce a satirical, caricature set, soon after the end of the war, and with sources of aluminium like crashed allied and destroyed German aircraft, pontoons, landing craft and similar, all over the place, aluminium might have been a good choice to try starting up a novelty/toy company?

 

And while the base on the dog, is slightly different, and has the title mark missing from the smaller farm and wild animals sets, and the figures, the parallels outnumber the differences? Does any Dutch collector/historian know anything about a flat/semi-flat manufacturer in aluminium? It could equally be Luxembourgish, and they got a hard-time too?

 

And, in fact, all three pieces are die-cast, with the T-Rex and goat both being in some Mazak/Zamac alloy, which is why I suspect a board-game playing piece for the goat?

 

Domestics, the interesting ones here being the unmarked, non-spiggoted version of the Blue Box Japanese officer's horse, here possibly from one of the Red Box factories, or one of the Singapore factories, but could be a knock-off by a rival.

 

The other interesting item is the semi-flat horse, in the style of those Mokarex/Figurines Hostoriques we saw again the other day, marked "CAROLINGIEN" on the facing side above, and "760" on the other side, I'm guessing a French premium, possibly missing a rider in the style of the Kilty/Bonnie Built (et al) US officer, but an ancient Carolingian?

 

Modern vinyls! Schleich Baby Girrafe.

 

Britains polar bear in need of a clean, and a crocodile Adrian gave me, as the show was packing up, looks Hong Kong, but is unmarked and could be an Argentine copy of something Spanish, they had some lovely animated wildlife!?

 

Another Airfix beagle/foxhound, and a rat from one of the Games Workshop/MB Games crossover board games of the 1980's? Probably Hero Quest?

 

Finishing with a Kinder dragon or dragon baby, and four dinosaurs without marks or with generic marks which will need to be sorted into the vast pile of such stuff, against more definitive posts another day, the carnivore is reasonably realistic, and the rather pale sauropod might get matched to his set, by those distinctive eyes!
 

So, that was the animals, thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again.

T is for Tilnar Art

Something completely different now, chunky 'arty' aluminium, but we don't get many chances to get the Aluminium Tag dusted off, so it's overdue! I saw these Tilnar Art products, at the Spring Fair in Birmingham, back in early February, and loved the fact that they had the same deep, metallic lustre as those Jada figures I like, so here they are!

 

Various products, including dinosaurs and penguins.

 

Longhorn Cattle, or not so shaggy Highlanders!

 

Deer.

 

Also drilled for keychains.

 

Love these, deep, almost glassy-red Elephants, in various sizes!

 

Art Deco'esque Elephants!

A blue family of the other design, just visible in the background. 

 

Puffins.

 

relief-flat Angels.

 

I had a chat with the chap behind Tilnar, and it seems to be pretty-much a one-man band, although there were staff, so a growing enterprise, and by using recycled aluminium, helping to try and save the planet!

Obviously aimed at the gift and tourist markets, expect to find them in little bijou boutiques about the place, or gift-shops, while on your travels.

T is for Two . . . err . . . Four, Engines!

I picked up a couple of rather interesting aircraft models a week ago last Saturday, neither of which seem to be elsewhere on the Internet, so we'll look at them both and thoughts are welcome on these two mysteries, the first is a kicker for Brit's . . . 

. . . as I suspected first that Victory Toys were likely a US firm, before finding it (as an aluminium Jeep manufacturer) in the archive as being a Dutch/Netherlands maker, but the point is, it's inescapable that this composition B17 Flying Fortress is a world away from the lumpen models we've seen here previously from Zang for Timpo. I don't know if the dodgy-looking characters (possibly a dog, a human and a duck) have any significance, or are a further clue to anything?

 

I wondered if at first it was aluminium, Victory seem to have made figures in the same material, as well as the Jeeps (all around 60mm), but it's definitely a composition; you can see where light rust on the prop-shafts is just starting to split the cases on the port-engines. Also, the varnish, where it hasn't worn off, is starting to bubble, like the unit/nationality shield transfers on a WWII  German helmet I used to own - clearly reacting with the paint underneath.

 

Only, it's a very finely finished model, as you can tell from this comparison of another recent airborne discovery here at Small Scale World, the Zang B29 Superfortress, you can see it's a much cruder beast altogether, and you wonder if, at that level of finess, we don't still have composition toys, but that's forgetting the frangibility of the material, and the fact that it's only survived because the box has soldiered-on, getting a bit battered, defending the contents!

 

Typically, the B17's from Zang which we also only recently looked at, are in storage, but that will give us an excuse to return to the whole Air Wing one day, as there are some lead ones too, and a wax one!  Going by the scale on the wing of the next, below, these are about 1:300th scale?

 

The other 'plane I found that day was this cast-aluminium MR2/Mk.2 Shackleton, long range maritime-patrol/reconnaissance aircraft. The official recognition model was a 1:72 scale celluloid/phenolic model, made by Cruver, and most of the desk-models I could find are far more detailed/larger, so I was minded to suspect an apprentice piece, however, the 52/986 looks like a stock-code, so it may still be a recognition model, or perhaps a targeting-aid, but I'm not sure that I'd be very happy if our gunners were practising on models of our own aircraft?

 

Now, 52 could be the year, and 986 is close to codes used by Avro for both the Shackleton (696/716) and Lincoln Bomber (694/695), so this could be an Avro factory/design office model? I can see there's still more to learn about this!

 

The small recess shows no sign of glue or fixings, so seems to be designed to fit easily on a stand of some kind, and be removed again, while the yellow-brown paint is crudely done, compared to the all-over green, but seems to be original?

 

And here's another thought, the Shackleton has direct descendancy from the Lancaster, via the Lincoln, and I wonder if the fact that around the world, three Lancaster's have now (I believe) been rendered airworthy, is down to the number of Shackleton parts still kicking around here or in South Africa?

H is for How They Come In - Sandown - September, Part 1

Catching-up with the show-repots as another Sandown swings towards us, I was as frugal at the last show as I had been in London earlier in the year, but still managed a fair pile of plunder to share.

These were cheap as chips, probably cheaper, these days! The sort of stuff we used to find in our Christmas Stockings back in the 1960's, Japanese, litho-printed tinplate whistles, it was the cowboys which attracted me, but in the end I bought one of each as there is a large'ish selection of novelty plastic and tin whistles, pan-pipes, whizzers, kazoos, clickers and the like kicking around, so one day they can have their own page!

 

A handful of the Marty/M-Toy (May Moon Industrial) fantasy warriors from the 1980's, I have some and we've looked at them once or twice, but it's worth buying them when they are reasonably priced, for the weapons, which are always short?

 

My expense of the day, there are two wheel/axle sets missing, but the armoured-car is a duplicate, so a bit of cannibalism will get these Triang Minic's back in road-order! Civilian versions of the lorries and car can be found, while we've seen dessert versions of the two AFV's (and the caterpillar-tractor?), and the whole set also comes in RAF blue-grey.

 

Metal from Adrian's cheapie-tray, all aluminium, and one first supposes, all French, but I'm not sure on the scarecrow? The Drummer is Quiralu, not sure about the machine-gunner either, but I think it's actually the British Wend-Al which is probably the attribution for the scarecrow too?

 

The Marx mini-animal, in its original Hong Kong generic box, over-stickered to Combex, who were part of the tail-end of the Marx UK story, so that all makes sense! Adrian had put it to one side for me, so many thanks to him!

 

Not sure on the kennel/out-building, while the Grant's Whiskey premium (die-cast by Britains), is an ongoing thing; I have lots of them in several places, and I don't carry a wants-list, so I tend to grab them when I see them going cheap, against one day bringing them all together and working out what I've got, what I need and how many duplicates I can offload to pay for any missing ones! High numbers tent to be harder to find.

 

Adrian also had these for me, he'd been following the previous posts on the subject, three Lone Star and one Charbens, to be sorted into the collection when the others turn-up from storage!

 

Tudor Rose boats, I actually took the mast from the white one, to complete the bi-colour! Later re-issued by Springwood Mouldings in netted bags as beach toys, which is pretty-much their original purpose! These are marked Tudor Rose.

 

I think this was Poplar Plastics, but we may have just mused on it being so? Can't remember if it was marked, it's big, about 10-iches long, or approximately 150mm figure, and if not Poplar will be Tudor Rose or Kleeware?

 

A small selection of smaller farm and zoo, nothing particularly rare or exciting, but it was a 50p or quid bag? The deer is a little Japanese blow-mould (polystyrene), and the polar bear will be a cake-decoration, also hard 'styrene. The Britains calf is near mint-paint, so probably the highlight.

C is for Canoes - 20 - Wend-Al (and Quiralux?)

Just a box ticker as the two folders (Brian's and mine) thin out to a finish! This was on feeBay about two years ago, and while I did have a couple of other images of colour variations, I noticed the other day they are still on sale! So I won't use them now, but, Dude, if you've relisted something for two years; your Buy-It-Now is set too high?

 

As I've said for years to anyone who'll listen (attracting a few more 'eemies' along the way), none of this stuff is 'rare', it was all mass-produced!

 

Playful, chunky and almost indestructible! for such a 'solid' material, the figure is a nice animated sculpt, but the boat is definitely toy-like, and too short. Wend-Al and maybe Quiralux, in different paint?

 

But retuning to the previous point for a second, I was perusing this Faceplant site earlier today;

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/270886240594726/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=1000722010944475

 

 . . . and there are guys on there with boxes of Astrid, or trays of Miniajouets or a shed-load of Gulliver, Pech, Comansi . . .  or whoever, literally; none of it is rare.

 

The rarities are the exceptions, where a set was never issued (Britains 'Superdeetail'), or the mould was lost on the first morning of production (Lone Star Musketeers) or something equally catastrophic, or the firm was very small, and it was a long time ago (some of the early 'from hollow-cast'), but for everything else, it's just a question of waiting!

C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Transport

'Planes, Ships which might have seen trains and automobiles'! Some interesting items were among the vehicular portion of the parcel from Chris, and we're looking at them in this post, starting with my favourites . . .

. . . two anodised aluminium artillery pieces! One slightly crushed! I mean on one level they are the cheapest of cheap tat (and Chris is in agreement on that point I think, I'm not slagging-off a donation!), and as Chris pointed out, probably made yesterday, but on another level they are fantastic, you will by now have figured I like the eclectic, the unusual, the not necessarily seen-before, and these tick all those boxes!

Imagine for a second, these, on a shelf, with some of those 'home cast' spirit painted semi-flat colonials, or sub-scale hollow-cast penny toy soldiers, in shiny pink, heliotrope red, apple green or turquoise? D'you see? Fantastic!

So really pleased with them; they are constructed in a similar fashion to tin-plate toys - slots, folds and soft rivets - but are all lightweight aluminium, and while you may well find similar in an Asian import emporium tomorrow, equally, items like this have been around for years, and this kind of stuff barely ages if looked-after, so they may have some age?

I think the 'napoleon' gun once had some kind of wire or tube trail, which slotted into these two fold-backs, so I will at some point make a replacement with a piece of heavy-gauge brass wire, or tubing, but to stop it tarnishing I'll have to varnish, I suspect? Bending tubes this small is hard without kinking them and would require long thin springs, so it'll probably be wire . . . a sharp A-frame with two tabs to slot into these channels?

Likewise - with the naval gun, I have inherited a brass ring-sizer, and various tiny silversmith's hammers, so I think some gentle tappity-tap-tapping will restore both ends of its barrel and a gentle squeeze in the middle with a leather wrapped pair of pliers will sort the whole thing out . . . then I'll probably find one, pristine, in a charity shop! 

The truck on the left is marked Snap, so had to be Kellogg's Rice Krispies, and there's a page for that! Cereal Offers have the whole story! I had thought it might be a Kinder Unimog upon first sighting, but that'll be for another day. The bulldozer is one of the early, post-war replacements for the card counters in Monopoly sets!

These need further work, probably French premiums, others exist but I don't recognise the ASM mark on these. In 'the stash' I have several sets of these; Bonux has a set I think and they are similar to EKO's commercial set (Spain), while some of INGAP's are already on the Blog, but they were probably copied from someone else and 'W.Germany' was in there too?

On the right the Hong Kong copies of the MPC 'Minis' we've seen before, but there are variants and it's always worth checking them against the rest, while on the left is what I suspect is the forth model in the British comics giveaway we've also seen here, but not this one, which is a Stirling Bomber I think?

This makes sense as the other three I've found (bits of!) are two figuters (Spitfire and Me.109) and a German bomber (Heinkel?), and they were sold in packs of two, so maybe you got two bombers or two fighters, OR two Allied or two Axis? Anyone get Fury, Valiant or Warlord back in the day and can tell us?

The little concord is a mystery, possibly a cereal premium, but a bit small so more likely a capsule-machine/Christmas cracker type, I may have one, in red or green? The rest are 1/600 scale naval aviation machines from model Aircraft Carrier kits, the twin bomber probably being from a USS Hornet kit of the 'Doolittle Raid' (Revell?). Look how big the Tomcat is compared to its WWII ancestors; it can probably carry more war stores than the weight of one of the old planes!

Motor cycles consist of a rack toy in chrome-finish which is new, a cracker/gum-ball type in hard plastic (never have too many of them!) and Indie's ride, loose which will help future comparison shots, along with two larger scale figures for the tub of such chaps, one of whom appears to be an Evel Knievel knock-off!

While on the vessel front we have another lovely Viking tourist memento, but, is it from Scandinavia, or York? The motorboat is a real treat, I have somewhere a survivor of childhood in a badly painted (by me) MTB, which came as a set of four, and while I've seen them on the card (a whole trade carton full at the NEC show), the seller wanted far too much for them, so I passed, therefore it's nice to have one come in, out of the blue.

The two life-belt rings (another came-in today, red/white one!) will go in that bit of the spares zone dedicated to such things, they are often off-the-shelf separates in various sizes, sold through Hobbies, Polk's or Billings and turn-up in loose lots when collections get dispersed by surviving relatives! While the last item is in one of the canoe posts already, and lacks a Smurf crew-member!!

Another 'thank you' to Chris Smith for all this, it should have published much earlier, but today was bitterly cold, and the fire nearly went-out twice, keeping me busy staying warm, or keeping Boysy-boy warm . . . what - he's got four bare feet!

S is for Shiny Shelfies!

While in TKMaxx the other day, I shot these ornamental lumps for two reasons, one being that they cover a subject we cover here, and secondarily to show how a lot of what might be appearing in local auctions rooms as 'apprentice pieces' might have been made five-minutes ago from recycled drinks cans in Mumbai!

By far the better piece and at £12.99p affordable if it tickles your fancy that much, but not something I need, a vague Mosquito look, it would go well with Tintin figures in a display cabinet maybe? It had a stern label stating it's "...not a toy" and is "...for decoration only", which is probably to save TJX Europe from law-suits for broken toes!

This was frankly ugly, and is the sort of hidiosity you might see in the background of one of those navel-gazing movies about the making of the movies where it would be owned by some unspeakable Hollywood mogul who's Bel Air mansion would have been entirely furnished by an 'interior designer' anyway, but then you can say that about a lot of the stuff in TKMaxx's home-furnishing section!

It also looks a bit like some of the designs in that movie with Jude Law I can't remember the name of (the one with the flying aircraft carriers - and Angelina Jolie as a pilot-babe?)? It had the better propellers though, the ones on the 'mosquito' are vary crude and heavy.

Both were marked 'Made in India' which is forth entry in the tag list I think, and reminds me there's still some 'India' in the queue, from Mr. B!

T is for Two - Of The Few!

As we lose the forth-to-last remaining Battle of Britain fighter-pilots, here's a couple of really very interesting model 'planes, the first is the less fascinating maybe, being a chunk of Alli', the other is a real treat. Both shot on Adrian Little's Mercator Trading table at Sandown Park, but photographed several months apart.

I think this is probably a 1st-year or 1st-term (Christmas) an apprentices or engineering student's test-piece, due to its crudity and lack of true mirror-symmetry . . . and the fact that the engines point outward, or that it lacks a notable or noticeable cockpit!

However, one or two people who saw it at the show thought it might have had a more commercial aspect, remembering similar stuff from their childhoods. Being older than me I'm not going to argue with them and will leave it to your judgement.

It's an aluminium casting, but appears to have been poured, not pressure-injected, resulting in softer lines and a rougher surface, and might be trying to be a Bristol Blenheim fighter-bomber?

We know what this is because it's written on both wings! A De Havilland Comet, but issued in a natty army-green, rather than the more famous racing scarlet! It's also marked with the B&s cipher of Barratt and Son's - similar to the cipher of the Bergan Toy Company (Beton)!

What I find so fascinating about this slush-cast lead-alloy (whitemetal) model is that it's almost identical in production values or properties to the early Supermarine Spitfire and Bolton-Paul Defiant models from Palitoy, not because it's copying them, but because they were aping the previous technology, prior to discovering the full potential in the properties of the new materials.

The way the propellers are fixed on with nails set into the casting, the whole profile of the wings and fuselage, even the marking position and style is similar!

Thanks to Adrian again, for the photo-op'.