C is for Centurion

Bit of a box-ticker, this one; another Sandown September purchase, and I didn't really take enough shots for a whole post, but it's been off to storage for a while. Nevertheless a useful beast to add to the pile, not terribly rare, but interesting, and it will need comparison with the Dinky one I picked up in that Charity Shop plunder, a few years ago . . . and the various Hong Kong plackys!

Not the US Premier (Premier Products Co. / Premier Plastics), the  Palmer subsidiary, of Brooklyn, on the opposite bank from Pyro, it's actually manufactured in Japan. The box is a bit tatty, and I need to track down the correct ammunition, which I'm lead to believe was plastic, but the tank itself has been well looked after and is very clean, it will be even cleaner after a dusting!

Arguably the Centurion was the best tank ever made? While others were very good at specific times or for specific purposes, the Centurion brought together everything we'd learned about tank warfare in WWII, combining the best of both British concepts - Cruiser Tanks and Infantry Tanks - into one 'main battle tank'; fast, yet heavily armed and armoured.

It gave rise to the whole post-war Vickers family of  Centurion-Chieftain-Shir-Challenger, and it's ideas, design concepts and DNA are to be found in the M48/60, AMX30 and Leopard I, it performed well against T34, T54-55 and 62/72, and the aforementioned M48/60's in wars from Korea, through India-Pakistan and the various middle-east conflicts, and went into Angola with the South Africans, who still operate a heavily modified and upgraded version called the Oliphant, while Jordan (and possibly the genociders next door) still use the chassis for various specialised or second echelon vehicles.

Aiming at the US market with the number sign, or 'octothorpe' (Bell Labs), now known as a 'hash' (British Telecom) or 'hash tag' (Chris Messina), rather than the '№' which would have been the acceptable symbol in the UK at the time, and online it seems to be known as the Premier #144 Tank.

It has a novel firing mechanism, with breech-loading from the turret-end of the barrel, and cocking via  a leaver which leaves a rather unsightly slash through the top of the turret, while firing is achieved by pressing down on the commanders head!

Somewhere between 1:50th and 1:60th in scale, only a side-by-side with the Dinky will settle that for me, unless you know for sure? It's a mostly die-cast alloy model, with a tin-plate baseplate, and what I suspect are silicon rubber tracks of some recipe/compound, due to their lack of drying, brittleness or deformation over, what, 50-plus years?

T is for Two - Tinplate Tuk-Tuks!

About as far from plastic toy soldiers and/or model figures as possible, but the collection has extended its remit over the years, and micro-mini's has been one of those extensions, through such things as the mini 1-ton Humber trucks, and somewhere there is a small tub of mini tin-plate novelty vehicles, so this pair from Peter Evans are gratefully received additions.

 

Both imported by a Mechato, of the Netherlands, the single Tin Treasures sports car in a faux matchbox is made in India, and while the set of five racers says Made in Japan, I think it might be a facsimile reproduction of a 1960's or 70's card, and actually be from the same Indian source? I'll tag both though.

 

Note how the No.5 driver has been given an element of eccentricity, by riding roughshod over the rules established with cars 1-4, having rings round his tail numbers, a more pointed arrowhead graphic and a pair of feet motifs on the nose of his car - my kind of driver, I'm off down the bookies to put a fiver on him, each-way!

T is for Two - Tanks!

Hard to believe, but we don't seem to have had that title before! I managed to pick up two rather nice tanks at Sandown Park's last show, nice for different reasons, and a possible 'sublime to ridiculous' scenario, but which is which, depends upon the personal loyalties of the viewer!

 

This would be an antique toy enthusiast's ridiculous, but the sublime of a 'plastic warrior', being the large scale donor for a whole generation of pretty inaccurate US 'Patton' tanks (sometimes wearing German stickers), in various scales, materials and finishes. We looked at its own little brother here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/07/b-is-for-back-to-blue-box.html

 

Where it's found with three different muzzle-breaks, I don't know if the same will prove true for the larger one, but it's a nice box-ticking of a near-mint, boxed example, with friction motor!

 

While the antique guy thinks this is sublime, while a plastic warrior thinks it's a ridiculous novelty 'what tank IS that?' I think they both have their merits, and the beauty of this is it still has both tracks! A bit saggy and perished, and there is one break, out of sight, but getting these with tracks is hard, you see many examples of both Japanese and German tanks with their shiny, or surface-rusty wheels, but tracks are rarer, and while you do find modern replacement tracks, they are too new!

 

I guess it wants to be a Renault F17 or similar, and Japan took various early tank designs to China, before the World War was a 'world' war, so given the yellow-dun shade, I'm also guessing that's where this particular "Foreign" import came from, rather than Germany, where grey or 3-colour camouflage were the norm.

D is for Donations - Peter - Animals

The sorting of the animals is going to be one of the bigger tasks, one day, the hobby is probably bigger than Toy Soldiers, certainly, it supports several vigorous forums, and there are as many makers, if not more, while mine are rather in an anonymised heap within the bigger stash, but they keep coming in, and here's some more!

 

A nice cat, which looks like it might be an accessory from a non-animal set of some kind, the lizard is from the little small-scale, rack-toy play sets from Toy Major/Ackerman, while the bear is both a bit crude and a bit unusual!

 

A whole sub-genre are this smallish scale, softish vinyl sets from toobs, tubs or bags, which are sort of 35/40mm compatible, but really 'bag-scale' or unit scale, and while some are marked, other's easy to ID, many sets are to be found on FeeBay-Amazon-Alibaba, as generics or under obviously phantom brands. These seem to go together, but a couple of them are questionable. Nice, different, cactus!

 

Two generic rack toys, over-stickered to Toys As Fun, which I could have saved for Rack Toy Month, but I think there's plenty for then, and this is the next size up, again, a bit unit-scale (elephant undersized, pig oversized), but mid-sized animals are coming out as 54mm-compatible, which is useful for dioramas and vignettes . . . big cat stalking a patrol, that kind of thing!

 

A couple of proper antiques, I love these! The pressed-wood farmer seems to match the common girl feeding chickens we've seen here before, in point of fact, she or her chickens, turn up so often she must have been from a popular set, for several years, but this chap I've not seen before. Although the blue paint has suffered badly, the other colours remain in sufficient quantity to give a good idea of what he looked like new!

 

While the horse in tin-plate might be a cigarette premium, while we, here in the UK, had cards and silks, as giveaways, some brands on the continent had tin-plate flats, prior to replacing them with the numerous plastic flats used as premiums with other products too. You fold the base out, after the item has been slid out of the packet of cigarettes.

 

From a more recent pick-up in London is another Toy Major lizard (used as a dragon/monster/dinosaur in both the cavemen and medieval sets), two tree frogs and a very daft-looking sauropod!

 

Some larger animals, I think a couple were Triple-A marked, and the green pony is from the Tupperware interactive building blocks, we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/11/g-is-for-great-grey-green-greasy.html

 

Where they were used as, removable, playable rattles, in opaque blocks, unlike the transparent ones from Airfix and others.

 

A large lump of dense vinyl, makes a rather nice Hippo', and these are starting to grow as a side collection, purely by accident, and we did look at a load in a lazy post a while ago!

 

This is from PMS, and I ummed-and-arrred over whether or not to open it, in the end I though I had to, or I wouldn't know what I was dealing with, and was quite suprised to find a gold mokey!

 

I don't know wheather it's a 'chase' figure, or if the whole range is finished in a similar fashion, nor do I know how many there are as there;s no flyer/leaflette . . . probably a £1-shop thing, and therefore stripped to the minimum on unit-price!

 

Another group of - probably - related small vinyls - wild!

 

And another - domestic!

 

Mentioned the other day I think, and seen with a few others a while back, oh yeah, it was the post on mixed shots, a week or so ago. Anyway, here's the farm one, courtesy of Peter, and these sets annoy me, nice animals in a vague scale, so why add huge dogs and ginormous poultry! They haven't even got the excuse of box-scale, because there's plenty of room occupied by the plastic end-filler!? I know, it's a cost thing!

 

Again, many thanks to Peter for all these, they're not just grist to the mill, but also 'bricks in the wall', gaps filled in the archive.

L is for Loose Lots - Sandown - Military

Military and ceremonial now, with a few interesting items, one of which is annoying me, but maybe you know what it is, or where they are from, but let's look at the pièce de résistance first!

 

A pretty clean Kentoy stretcher team, I may already have one, but this has good paint, and being new to market is properly 'clean' if you know what I mean, and I think it's a darker brown blanket than my existing sample.

 

I think these may both be duplicates, but I love a bit of [affordable] composition, and we have an 'olin' gunner from Germany, possibly a minor make, or from the budget ranges of one of the big-two, the other, more likely the duplication; it looks familiar, in pumice or plaster, and maybe British or French?

 

This pair are the ones that are bugging me, I'm sure I've seen chapter & verse on them, possibly in one of the glossy mags', but I can't recall, and/or didn't take notes, but equally, it might be on the dongles as an internet download? Poured resin, with wire armatures in the trumpets, I have a feeling they are scenic background for a poured-metal or 'new metal' solid set, from someone like King & Country, Figarti or Frountline?

 

Again, I can't resist a bit of litho-printed tin, when it's affordable, and these were on Steve Vicker's table, I actually picked the six better ones, but he sent the two casualties over, a few minutes later, via a mutual friend who was passing, and, to be honest, the red-coat could replace one of the Germans, if only for a future photograph.

 

From the left we have - I assume - a khaki Brit, two Germans, with possibly an Italian between them, and a couple of Russo-Japanese war types? On the ground are both Brit's I think, and all late 19th/early 20th century, in depiction, beween the two wars, in execution? 

 

Odds - A Timpo horse, which may have started life pulling a wagon or gun, but which has been married to a mounted figure's base, and a Britains Herald Highland officer. All play-worn, but useful spares or 'grist -to-the-mill'!

 

Crescent, with two of the darker-red plastic, behind, and a sand-textured one in front.

 

Not the best (signs of repainting), but a useful comparison shot between two similar poses from Lone Star (black bases) and Britains Herald (green bases), At Ease (left), and Royal Salute (Present Arms), on the right.

 

Cherilea - Highland pipers.

 

I don't think these are repaints, I think this is how Lone Star issued them, with simple, all green kilts, I also think they were on the wants list? So, a useful addition to the massed ranks of the Highland samples.

 

Paints quite good, on these Harald Lifeguards, but sticky fingers have reduced them to 'dirty', so someone had full play-value out of them! Having recently seen Argentinian (?) ceremonials in similar uniforms, they may get a strip and repaint with paler (than the Horse Guards) blue jackets, or something equally exotic from one of the Blandford books?

 

Odds & sods! There's a Skybirds rangefinder (for which the operator has been waiting several decades! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/s-is-for-skybirds.html), and pilot torso in the left foreground, and various useful 50 and 60-mil fellows from Cherilea, Crescent, Hilco and Britains.

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Sci-Fi Library (1) Toys

I shot these for a Faceplant group, over a-year-and-a-half ago, and unlike the other shots in this occasional meander through my library, these were all cover-scans, taken at the time, rather than the more casual shots of the previous posts (see: Bibliography Tag), and most subsequent posts, which will take a year or two to get through at the current rate, with some duplication, because shooting them all was a bitty business, as they were recovered from the garage, reunited with the stuff in the house, added to on the hoof, and/or sent off to storage, in batches!

 

Beautifully illustrated with, yeap, a thousand images, actually more, and even more items, as there are a few multiple shots, however, the beautiful illustrations, a trope of all Taschen publications, is tempered by another trope of theirs, a 'coffee table' lack of text! It's really just a captioned guide to some of the loveliest Sci-Fi toys ever made.

 

And yes, I need both the figures on the cover! But they are likely to turn up in some mixed-lot from Adrian,  Chris, Peter, Gareth or Trevor (the guys who regularly save me this odd, ephemeral, unknown stuff), as they are likely to turn-up in a rummage tray, at a toy figure show!

 

 

In it's day a lovely book, albeit a cheap softback, it's now a bit dated, but still a useful reference work for quickly flicking through to find the robot you may be trying to identify, or to ID the robot a more generic toy might be based-on, so worth grabbing if you see it.

 

This is a lovely guide to what appears to be one man's collection, and from the given dates (1972-82), there's a suggestion other volumes may exist coving the 1950's or 1960's, but as I bought it for next-to-nothing as a remaindered import from one of the shops in the Charing Cross Road, or more likely, a vast, bare floorboarded, enterprise selling straight from the cartons, on the Wandsworth Road, or Lavender Hill (I can't remember, it was more than 30 years ago!), I've never known?

 

 

These two are less useful, being more in the style of the Taschen, but less well illustrated, and with a fair bit of duplication on the more common robots and spaceships from Horikawa, Masudaya, Yoshiya &etc. but the text is more useful, being as how, while both are also in the coffee-table style, they do have more author's input and narrative text.

 

Think 'Pulp', and this is the meisterwerk! But, it barely covers the tin-plate stuff in the five tomes above, concentrating more on the 'Western' pocket-money ranges of the 'Dime-Store' plastic-era's, bagged and carded toys, and the related peripherals such as board-games, home casting sets, hollow-casts and the like, with chapters on the books, magazines, comics and annuals . . . masks, helmets, costumes . . . cards and artwork, ray-guns, pin-ball machines and such like. But, the modern 'Bible' on plastics, with a very good chapter on Dr Who stuff, contributed-to by an old colleague of mine.

 

More of the same but with a wider remit and covering a bit of everything, it's quite a good primer, and worth having on the shelf, to try, if you can't find something in one of the others!

 

While this is a private, or semi-private publication, I think, very much in a recognisable US style of a certain kind of collectables book, I have quite a few of, now, cars, planes; usually a guy sharing his collection. And, in this case what he shares is quite thorough, but his collection parameters are quite tight, so it's very useful for what's in there - Colorforms, Matt Mason, Zeroids and a couple of others, but that's your lot!

 

While these three are, really, only 'shelf-fillers'! Some nice imagery, mostly borrowed from bricks-&-mortar auction-houses, who may or may not have a commercial interest in the title, post-publishing, beyond the name-checks?

 

But the contents of all three are common or popular stuff, aimed at the general or casual reader - the same-old-same-old, big name toys, few of us collectors have forgotten, or really need to re-learn about, and which now have whole sites, forums and wiki-pages dedicated to them, so/also, of limited use as research-tools and adding nothing to better works! The third is a more general title and could go elsewhere in these posts, but was included here for its connection with the TV-Movie related theme.

 

I still buy them, 'just in case' there's something new, interesting or useful, but usually when they are remaindered in The Works or similar, although, in recent years remaindered book stores have all but disappeared, indeed, on the high street it's The Works or nothing, but you can often find them on Amazon or evilBay for next to nothing, and grab them as shelf-fillers/box-tickers.

 

But PostScrip, the mail-order people, often have useful collectables books in their lists, especially the autumn lists, with all the coffee-table titles for Christmas presents! And there's Books2Door, which I haven't tried yet, have you; are they any use?

O is for Ostdeutsche Ordnance

Another prime piece of plunder from the September Sandown show, and another one where Google's AI failed to provide, as did Google in general, and doubly annoying as I've only just obtained the Lehmann book, however, it went straight to storage, so I can't read it, but I bet this bit of the history is dealt-with there? Hay-ho, another day!

 

Artwork is remarkably accurate, compared to many other contemporary or not so contemporary companies packaging, although the figures and cargo are fanciful additions, absent from the contents of the box! Gnom Sortimen (gnome assortment), is the only text, and Gnom was a sub-brand of the East German continuation of Lehmann, after the end of World War Two.

 

Contents, not played with, totally mint and with no paint-chips of note, but possibly taken-out a few times, as I suspect the truck should be in the separate, card 'corral', rather than the trailer? But similar compartments may be missing for the other items?

 

A small field gun, a field-kitchen or 'Goulash Canon', which can be limbered with either of the other two towed items, but all three can't be 'trained together', as the larger trailer, and gun, don't have rear facing hooks.

 

A lovely thing, although Lehmann purists will tell you these aren't that brilliant, or that Gnom isn't terribly collectable, but I can't fault it for charm, build quality or playability, and as an East German kid, I think I would have loved to get this under the tree at Christmas, but I guess it represents the oppression, of one of the more insidious regimes of the Eastern-Bloc, given the web of Stasi infiltration into every-day life, the other side of the wire?