E is for Eye Candy - Tootsie Toys Boxed Set

I shot this at the Sandown Park show in September 2023, almost certainly on Adrian's table, when he was still Mercator Trading, and it's interesting for two reasons;

 

The first reason is that it ID's that funny little man, in die-cast alloy, who turns up infrequently at the older toy-soldier shows, in mixed rummage trays of lead and hollow-cast stuff, of whom I have a few in an 'unknown' bag, now known!

 

And secondly; it's got the same trucks as those Charbens ones we've seen (and did Johillco have some?), but as it represents the US Militor 3-ton truck, Ordnance Department Model 1918, or Mack AC, I think it's fair to say Tootsietoys were first, and the UK-produced examples are copies?

 

As you also see various versions of the 'plane (half eindekker, half Lindbergh) about the place, it can probably be assumed these sets were imported into the UK at the time - between the wars, making piracy of the elements easier?

D is for Donation - Chris - Historicals and Ceremonials

A bit late with part two today, as it's tomorrow already, but I crashed-out after work. At the grand old age of 62, doing 80-odd miles, stuck behind hesitant fuckwits in KIA's whilst also doing deliveries, rather takes it out of you, and I keep nodding-off after work, waiting for the weather forecast, which I then only half-hear! Anyway, they can stay up for a bit, with maybe just a Capsule toy post later today, and another donation-pair tomorrow proper - Thursday? Chris's older era and ceremonial toy soldiers and model figures, sent to me, to share with you;

 

Medievals defend against a Roman attack! The de rigueur shot of post-Giant and Giant knock-offs, I've been quite fortunate, in accruing these over the years, especially as a small-scale only collector for years, and it's the only way to obtain enough of them to start drawing conclusions, sorting their horses from the many Wild West sets, working out which lot go with which fort, & etc., so the more, the merrier, there's often a Quaker in the mix, and red horse is he, this time!

 

As if the cowboy pencil sharpeners weren't enough of a find, these, also 'Germany', are lovely things, a bit outside the toy soldier sphere, but absolutely within the whole lucky-bag, Christmas cracker, dime-store novelty oeuvre.

 

I'm not sure the two 'stakes' go with them, and I haven't worked out how the triggers work, they don't seem to hold the band, and may need reversing or inverting, but very interesting things! The channel is match-wood dimensions, so careful with those eyes, kids!

 

A few days later, after an email tutorial from Chris - The notch at the thin end of the bar collects the rubber band (red is original, manila is a replacement), then one of the flat edges forward of the notch, locks behind the trigger, pushing the trigger down, when you touch the trigger, it pushes the bar 'arrow' back up, and the - tensioned - rubber-band does the rest! 'Health & Safety' disc on the business end suggests mid-1970's onwards?

 

And eclectic bunch here! The Piper is a modernish tourist keepsake, as is the Lifeguard, who, almost matching the Horse Guard I got at November's Sandown Park show, is another of the - previously seen here - G·G ones, to join the Guardsman we've seen in the past.

 

I love the Russian (?) OBE standard-bearer conversion, from a Herald Guardsman, and the little chap is a rubber key-ring, but can anyone ID the Mountie, I assume he's a Canadian Tourist thing, from the size, and casual pose, he's hard 'styrene plastic, with a quite thin base for his size/scale? Or, is he an accessory-figure from a 1:24/1:25th model vehicle kit?

 

Two of the many figures accompanying various versions of Noah's Arks, not Blue Box, not Holly, and not New Maries, nor the Arco one (which was also another brand's - RAE), who's Noah was fatter than the pink one in the middle, and moving on to him, although similar, and having one of the three-digit codes, I suspect he isn't Holly or LB (Lik Be) 'funny animal' stuff, either! So the search goes on for both origins!

 

Ah, not sure if these were Chris or Peter, I suspect Chris, but I found them down the back of the bed a few days after I had finished sorting both Peter's third tranche, and Chris's latest parcel! One of the newer discoveries on the right, he's missing the 'styrene icing-pick, one of my favourites in blue, from Christmas crackers, and a 1990's Lucky Bag jobbie, with a shit-ton of flash!

 

And it's the first time the two on the right have been compared side-by-side, they go well together, and are marching off the same foot, a big band could be possible! Equally, those cake-spiked red plastic ones we've seen here a couple of times, are lacking a bass-drummer, I wonder if they are the same size . . . but they are standing at attention? 25-30mm between the three of them, all polyethylene.

 

Two MPC original 35mm's on the floor, and a victorious Hong Kong copy, in what I think is a new colour, to me at least. I've said before I thought I'd blogged these years ago, but it seems I just imagined an article in my head, while handling them, back in Berkshire, and didn't even shoot them, so that article has yet to come, but will be worth the wait, as there's packaging for both types, but I'm pretty sure my HK sample only adds black as a third colour to the MPC red and silver? So blue is all new!

 

This is fascinating, Chris said he'd seen them described as wood (it's obviously plastic), and by Van Brode, I couldn't find anything online, until I added 'wooden' to the search terms, and then found chapter and verse on them. They were made for the Van Brode Milling Co., by an unknown company in West Germany, a sticker on the base stated, for the cereal offer 'Sculptured Treasures of History's Immortals', which was a mail away, one bust (of twelve) per request, for which 50 cents and 2 Crisp Rice wrappers had to be sent first, presumably if you had multiple cents and wrappers, you could 'request' more, at one time?

 

The source (Worthpoint! So ex-evilBay), stuck with the carved wood fallacy, but they are antiqued plastic, possibly polystyrene, although the sample sent by Chris is now cracking in a very convincing old-wood drying out fashion! The cracks are not crumbly, and there is no dust, nor stickiness, so a new form of plastic death? Too large a single-shot or density of moulding? But, given all the Cleveland, Kellogg's and Total busts around the same time, a lovely addition to the collection.

 

As is this, presumably a US tourist thing, it's a slush-cast pewter/whitemetal bust, around the same size as the Van Brode Napoleon, around the 3½-4 inch mark, and over-painted in a silver, which may have been brighter once?

 

A capsule-toy ninja, a rather nice knight, in the style of Schleich-Papo-ELC-Wilco, and possibly from the latter's now defunct range, and one of those possibly, originally Fontanini or Manurba (?) gnome sculpts, but common in various forms, materials and sizes, and various formats, here as a key-ring hanger.

 

The knight's 'heraldry' reveals his origins in China, where they've given him a very ornate and oriental embroidered surcoat, which is not following the laws of heraldry, or the rules of the Collage of Arms! Unless someone was granted five wind-wraiths, on a field azure, matallique!

 

Two, probably factory-painted, Assyrian flats, almost certainly German, but without the catalogues in front of me, I couldn't begin to guess the maker! The horseman's lance is too far-bent to risk bending back, but they still make a nice pair with some age.

 

A nice sample of the separate head guardsman, we looked at their fort, a long time ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/08/t-is-for-tower-fortress-with-soldiers.html

 

I'm after a bigger sample of these, while the rest are buried in storage, as I'd like to do a photo-shoot of all the 'legal' drill poses, possible with these, the At Ease, can only go on the Easy legs, but the officer, Slope Arms and bugler can go on three different legs for instance, and there is half-a-post in the queue, on that subject, but involving the larger figures with oblong bases! So thanks again to Chris, for these and everything above . . . and below!

 

Pirates . . . come back in September!

W is for Well, They're Not Plastic!

The last of the Sandown Park plunder from November, and I thought I was buying some of either of the two Marx issues, of the slightly larger than the Miniature Masterpiece Noah's Ark set's, plastic animals, and it wasn't until I got them home that I realised they were Line Mar slush-cast, or some kind of press-moulded alloy, metal animals from Marx's partner-firm in Japan!

 

The Hippo's box is a bit tatty!

 

I've probably got some of these, in the 'unknown' piles!

 

The kangaroo is no jumper!

 

These are really lovely for what they were, probably sixpenny / five or dime novelties. Each is wrapped in a little piece of rough tissue-paper, and the boxes are content-specific, which is nice, in something so ephemeral. Now to find the rest . . . and another kangaroo!

T is for Transports of Delight

I know I'm supposed to claim to be a toy soldier and/or model figure collector, but vehicles have always had a place, not least because of the Airfix 'readymades' when I was a small-scale collector, but just as scenics and then spaceships started to feature, alongside Dinosaurs (quite recent) and erasers or cracker/gum-ball novelties, so mini and micro-vehicles have taken a growing corner of the stash for their own.

 

The fact that collected brands like Manurba, Pyro/Kleeware or MPC gave-up micro-AFV's, or the little trio of gun/armoured car/carrier thing, which came with so many rack-toys, was the start, but once you're into novelties, vehicles feature quite often, and these have all been added to the pile this year!

Actually, the exception which proves the rule - this came in some time ago, if the bedspread is anything to go by, it's been in storage for well over a year now, I think! A soft polyethylene copy of the Matchbox Greyhound coach, possibly from an earlier 'styrene Blue Box one, but starting to get a bit truncated, almost a 'deform', and smaller than the original. This may have been a put-aside from Gareth Morgan or Chris Smith.

 

A die-cast Benbros Qualitoy Gypsy wagon, these were the sort of wagon the itinerant knife-sharpeners, tin-smiths and other crafters would take village to village, all gone now, but there were still one or two on the road when I was a kid. Now rich 'celebrities' have fake ones placed in their gardens! This also shows other ways vehicles sneak into the collection, firstly my side-interest in wagons, and secondly; small-scale horses!

 

Two pieces of slush-cast lead, probably British, and a die-cast fire-engine, probably American? These were saved for me/donated to the Blog by Adrian Little, a while ago I seem to recall, and help with ID'ing them would be gratefully received! They may all, also, be board-game playing pieces?

 

Picked up in the September Sandown Park show, we have four from one series and a racing-car from another, all polystyrene, and all Hong Kong product. We looked at all my 'moulded-on wheels' micro-stuff a year or so ago, but there's also tons of this working wheels stuff, a lot of it marked W Germany, but plenty of British and HK lots, so these will join their samples against a proper look at them all one day.

 

Two of them are marked Made In Hong Kong, while the other two have an additional stock or tool number, but wheels/axles tie them to each-other.

 

I'm loving this, I'm pretty sure I already have one, possibly in the same red, which may have been on the Blog already (another Chris Smith jobbie?), but I seem to remember it having damaged engine-nacelles, while on this new example they are all present and correct. I suspect this might be a slightly upmarket (but still budget-end) Christmas cracker inclusion?

 

 It's also a spinning-top, which looks as if it should also whistle or howl, through those slats in the bodywork, but I can't get a note out of it! Of interest is the three nipplettes arranged around the spin-nipple (all my own nomenclature!), which help to prevent it from tipping too soon, or wobbling, so, help keep it spinning!

 

The flying saucer (here seen after cleaning!) came with these and the items in the next image, all around the same size, but obviously from different sources, the plane here being a bubble-gum capsule, a small piece of generic pink gum, similar to that which came with the little tanks, being stuffed in the nose and wedged against the tapered body as the two were closed together.

The yacht could be another cracker prize, or a basic/budget bath toy, or even supplied with a piece of bubble-gum 'cargo'? It was a much produced/copied novelty from both W Germany and Hong Kong, back in the day, but this seems to be the best quality one (with realistic, relief-sculpted, racing markings on the marbled sails) in a growing sample of them (we've seen a few over the years, not least a whole card of Rado/Ri Toys ones!), and while unmarked, may be British?

The wheeled passenger-boat is all soft plastic, and probably the most modern thing in the post, maybe as late as the 1990's or 2000's, and could be cracker, gum-ball or rack-toy, while the HK copy of a Manurba mini-sub is one of several generations of piracy, previously seen on the blog as rack toys.

 

Once they've all joined their like-for-likes, we'll return to them here, hopefully with details to add, or just 'bigger-pictures' as far as numbers in sets, or polymer/paint colours go! I was going to add some Internet images to this post, but there's so many of them, they can be another - 'lazy' - post, another day! And thanks to all who save this stuff for me, in addition to those named above.

ITMA is for It's That Man Again!

The hype has been growing for a week or two now, with the BBC's Radio4 and World Service both covering a certain new movie more than once in the last few days, it's all about some Corsican chap 'Blownapart', from the Wellingtonian period, who did something notable, or infamous? And the talkie-format, moving-picture presentation opens worldwide, today!

He's been modelled a few times, indeed we've seen him here before, so often, he has his own Tag (yeap, it hurt!). And here we have a large fairing in the centre, flanked by two substantial home-painted model soldiers on plinths, in the 80mm bracket.

 

Then the smaller front row, around 54/60mm scale and from the left . . . 'Metallion' of the younger artilleryman, two French-made Jim, a JSB from Belgium, Hong Kong's Blue Box (courtesy of Chris Smith's forthcoming donation-plunder posts), another French plastic (Acedo maybe, or Cofalu/x, Guillbert/Clairet, someone like that?) and a faux-antiqued tourist piece in slush-cast base-metal.

 

******      ******      ***      ******      ******

 

On the subject of the title, for foreign readers; ITMA was the moral-boosting comedy sketch-show on BBC Radio from 1939-49. We lived, for a while, next-door to Clarence Wright, who had retired to Alderney, he played several of the well known characters, among whom were the Commercial Traveller and the Man from the Ministry, and I had the pleasure of chatting to him on several occasions, when he would tell the most irascible stories, which I couldn't possibly repeat here, even if I could recall them, but I remember him as a thoroughly nice man.

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 - Military Vehicles

So to all those vehicles, in point of fact I was more restrained than I thought at the last Sandown, I just took lots of shots and split them into five posts, but there's still a fair bit to look at!

 

I think I've managed to find a Sunderland already, probably posted here, but this one was quite clean, not too distorted and relatively cheap so I grabbed it, Palitoy, but now I'm looking for the clockwork version, and any other undocumented ones like the previous posting on the subject.

 

While the US dime store/slush cast Armoured Car from Barclay was also going for a song, and was also quite clean, a few paint-chips and some grubby wheels, which would turn the purists off, but I'm not so fussed!

This ends-up dominating the post, even though it's a piece of modern crap, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes! I have trays of this stuff, Altaya, Matchbox, Eaglemoss, DeAgostini etc . . .  and most of it is pretty, but also pretty run-of-the-mill, a lot duplicated, however I was quite taken with this.

It's a long-wheelbase, GS Truck, Unimax 85061 German Büssing-NAG Type 4500A (also available in a desert/yellow-brown scheme), with a half tilt and two passengers, and was just a bit different, and going for pocket-money, as without the packaging this modern stuff isn't worth a bean! Again - more-fool the purists!

A dodgy photograph, but it looks like it's whizzing past the viewer!

A pair of real box-tickers here; Britains 1263 Royal Artillery Gun, a gap in the collection filled, it was just a clean one and again, reasonable on the money-front, I don't think it's rare, but it was needed, was it the budget/entry-level gun, there's lots of them! And a Timpo siege catapult, which - mercifully - was complete!

Really pleased to find this, it needs the speaker/siren on the mudguard, but I've had the khaki one for years, very distorted now (probably on the Airfix Jeep page?), while this is manufactured a while later, and is a stable polystyrene, the red's a bit leery, but airfield-airside, it's good for fire/accident investigations!

I suspect this was a comic-cover giveaway or Hong Kong knock-off, of those we saw in a couple of posts a while back (lockdown?), the launcher, apart from being candy-pink, is quite a light/flimsy moulding compared to some of the branded ones, and the rocket is marbled from scraps by the look of it (not clear in the photo'), so a nice addition to that side-collection/sample!

L is for Lazy Post, Lazy Day!

Yeah, I had a bit of a session on the garden yesterday which left me a bit stiff this morning, and so I rather chilled today! I did get over to the flat and start shooting the PW Show plunder for forthcoming posts, however I still have the first of the year's London shows to Blog, and another lot from Sandown this Saturday-gone, so it doesn't rain, but it pours, however; I could have worse things to whinge-about, than to many toys!

Vehicular purchases from the weekend, I missed out on a Tudor Rose forked-lift truck, not that I wanted to buy it, but I meant to shoot the driver figure to help ID one of those primary-coloured ethylene seated figures which come in, before it sold, which I failed to do, however I did manage to photo a few others, and the Taxi here (also Tudor Rose) has a driver.

 

A second Surry (with a fringe on top!) means one can be un-bagged and assembled at some point in the future, while the PP marked version of the Donkey comes with a hay-cart which seems to be the donor for those Christmas cracker minis, and shares a wagon-frame with the Easter bunny we saw here, a few years back now!

 

A 'Military Police' jeep from Thomas is all polystyrene, and more stable than the phenolic polymer army-green one I have, which has been slowly folding-in on itself since before it was mine! Likewise the Ideal steamroller will be compared with the olive-green Banner and Pyro ones at some point in the future too, it's going to be a busy point!

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'.

S is for Some More Bloody Desert Rats!

The trouble with doing a thematic 'mini season' even one which jumps between theatres and nationalities is that you start to get a 'writer's block' on suitable titles, and having failed to start the blurb on this post twice because I couldn't come up with a humorous, alliterative or otherwise mildly erudite title, I gave up! It's just some more bloody 8th army! Charben's this time . . .

. . . and I'm missing the flamethrower. To be fair these seem harder to find than some of the others, and with brittleness become a factor on most of them now, particularly the chalky early British production of Timpo, Lone Star and these, the long, sticky-out bit of the flamethrower has probably rendered good ones few & far between.

But I'm relatively new to this large-scale malarkey (as I like to keep reminding you-know-who), and a flamethrower will come. It's like the Hilco 8th Army/ANZAC's, I've seen them, but they were outside my budget - stupidly I don't think I photographed them when I had the chance!

There seem to have been three generations, following (or followed by?) Timpo's set in the first instance with a change from/to black or brown weapons and a further issue in green plastic which may be supposed to be the 'Forgotten 14th'?

And following-on from the other day's comments - these chaps are definitely wearing 'footy-bags' rather than the shorts stipulated-for in Kings Regulations, Clothing, Troops, For the use of!

Yellow-tan on the left and greenies on the right, the Vickers MG is another of the family of mouldings with the ammunition feeding into the trigger mechanism - as earlier hollow-cast MG's had been more accurate (exception below!) - this has to be a case of lazy cloning by sculptors, the question is - who's came first; Timpo, Lone Star or Charbens? Both Timpo's water-cooled Browning (which lead to all the Kahki Infantry clones) from the ex-hollow cast US G.I's/W. German solids, and their later Swoppet Vickers were more correct.

I have late unpainted (or Woolworth's?) figures in the green and the grenade thrower seems to have the same leachate (is that even a word?)/leached deposit as the much later Matchbox figures would suffer from; some polyethylene Bergan/Beton were also afflicted with the same phenomena.

I have very few hollow-casts, good examples are way outside my budget, but along with a Crescent (or Timpo?) sailor, the Timpo launderer and the odd knight, cowboy or guardsman (I got two nice ceremonial hollow-casts at the last Sandown Park show), I picked this slush-cast lump of playfulness up at some point. It fires matches, or fishing-line weights, or gravel or inky-paper blots . . . bargain!

M is for Micro-Mush; Shackman's Slush-cast Smallies

To wit, the 'smallest' ever made? Are they? I think not, but they are pretty small! And they are among the smallest made commercially, with running wheels, although plenty of Edwardian and early post-war board games had smaller vehicles as playing pieces, some of which were hollow- or slush-cast.

The contents match the artwork in configuration (two each of three designs) but not in colour mix, where there is a less random mix than suggested by the artwork! A tad bigger than N-gauge (so Lone Star's Treble-o beat them for 'smallest' for starters!) and representing no actual vehicles?

Maybe a US taxi-cab or police 'Paddy-Wagon' (the green ones?), Ford Model-T (the red open-tops) and something French (yellow/blue)? Copyrighted to Shackman, they are actually sourced-in and marked Japan.

Some vicious flash on the upper-pair and finish - on all - is what you'd call un-fettled!

I've seen these in an O-Ei-A catalogue as being credited to Kinder, but they pre-date Kinder by fifteen or twenty years at least, the trouble with those catalogues is that if it fits in a Kinder-egg it tends to end up in an O-Ei-A 'Preisfuhrer' whether it was actually Kinder or not! Although - to be fair to the authors - over the years Kinder have sourced all sorts of stuff from half-a-hundred manufacturers!

They (Shackman) also did a train; Toot-Toot! You only get the four in this box and with only three different items of rolling stock, but I love the passenger-cars which look like someone took a Wells Fargo overland stage-coach and plonked it on some railway wheels - which is probably close to what actually happened!

My driver lost his head to a low bridge long before he came into my possession, but continues to serve his locomotive with diligence . . . and integral, semi-flat moulding! The pen-top is to give a further sense of scale, but again these aren't the smallest.

 

DeWitt Clinton train (1831) exhibited on latter-era flat cars.

 

Indeed with the exception of the tatty pencil-sharpener engine (top left) these are all smaller, apart from the grey car which is about the same size. I have more of this shite somewhere, but we looked at a few in the novelty posts a few Christmases ago, and I just happened to have these in front of me, so when I've got them all together we'll have a better look!

Gum-ball machine capsule prizes, gift-eggs, Christmas crackers, crafting sets/items, a pencil sharpener 'statue' and the grey car may be from an N-gauge scenics line?