L is for Late Show Report - Introduction

So, the PW show plunder posts, a bit late this year, but things have happened! We had a couple of earlier posts on the ephemera and the lovely spinning top, from Michael, but I'll be going through the rest over the next few days, and we're starting with the sorting, and some items I shot at the show but didn't bring home with me!

This was how I got it home, and actually very little was show-purchases in the room, but some money changed hands for some of the stuff in the named piles, and because all those named either give me stuff or let me have stuff well below market rates/for nominal amounts/swaps, that's how I shot it!

 

And this year's posts will carry the same message as last year, but thanking, alphabetically; Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, with the Replicants stuff (Peter Cole/Weston's) also shot separately!

 

Once it has been sorted into themes, which was the Sunday job I think, it was a week or two before I got round to properly sorting it all out, but here we have (clockwise from top left) the scenics, ancient & medieval, combat, historical & ceremonial, Wild West, sci-fi/fantasy TV & movie-related, 'planes/trains/automobiles & vessels, farm & zoo, odds & sods and civilians (bottom left).

 

The vehicular component was sorted the same evening, and here from the left are; 'planes/aircraft, trains, road transport, vessels, motorcycles/bicycles and some component of unknown origin - bottom right!

While the things I shot the day before, at the Plastic Warrior show, included this fascinating piece, which is a 'cheapo' generic rack-toy with stapled blister, the animals obviously being Cherilea, but, also managing to ascribe - by association - some fence pieces, which may be in your 'unknown' zone, and which are taken from the hollow-cast/lead moulds, I believe?

 

Meractor Trading (Adrian) had a bunch of Blue Box/Tai Sang boxed sets from the home farm line which consisting of most of the commoner vehicular pieces, including tractors in two colours and with various attachments, the cart and a combine-harvester. Note also: the nice ID'ing of the Blue Box dog!

 

We've looked at these sets before, late Miniature Masterpiece window-boxes from Marx, with mostly polyethylene pieces, rather than the polystyrene that had run for years beforehand, this was missing a rider and had a tatty box, but you don't often see them so it was worth a shot. It differs from my Knights sets in having ten figures, as protagonists, rather than the three or four in my samples, seen here before, I think.

Ah, well; if you follow things in the hobby, these should now be familiar to you, seen in the PW mag, and on Stad's Stuff recently; coming soon from a new maker, based in the UK/Mauritius, and courtesy of Michael Mordant-Smith, these are re-issues of old sculpts (from the original tools) of a French company Cody March,.

 

Not common in the original, they will make a nice addition to the medieval oeuvre, still in development, the ready for production (back at the show's time) will be looked at again in the relevant thematic post in a day or two, while these two shots include those poses which were still needing tweaks and adjustments to the tooling - 'test shots'.

I thought I'd bought this, but I think I just shot it, as Brain Berke, our roving reporter in New York sent the Blog one a while back, and I wondered at the cavity on his back, then, so decided I didn't need a second one!

 

Welp, here is what fills it, a slip-in reservoir for baking soda! Marked - U.S. PAT. (for 'patent') 293291C FLIPPY MADE IN ENGLAND - which isn't coming up on the patent searches, but has a number near the smaller Kellogg's patent, we have looked at more than once here, so probably contemporaneous.

 

Over here it may have been an import (from the 'States) by someone like Fairylite, or an export which got a US Patent first, by someone like Poplar, Tudor Rose or Lipkin? We'll need to find a carded/boxed one as the next step in this particular mystery solving!

 

The Wendan/Timpo ape would have been here, but I tacked him onto the earlier 'ephemera' post a couple of months ago, and so it's many thanks to everyone named above, for another pile of plunder, and to Paul Morehead who, with two of the forenamed, puts the show on, every year.

T is for Two - Marx Fort Bits

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

Y is for Yabba Dabba Doo!

Who knew, who knew it had double-B's, who even thought to think of knowing you might have to spell-check yaba-daba-do? But there you go, the World's favourite allegory of the 1950's,  middle-class, suburban, American 'nuclear-family'? Actually the world's ONLY allegory of the 1950's,  middle-class, suburban, American 'nuclear-family', but I'm not splitting hairs!

Imperial Toys, these are a hard polystyrene, and hugormous, as we will see in a mo'. A ridiculously sublime exemplar of everything weird about my life alongside the rest of humanity in the late 20th/early 2st centuries. It makes absolutely no sense, is full of plot holes, anachronisms and plain idiocy, yet, it is absolutely perfect, and I don't know many people who actively dislike its daftness!

 

Marked Hong Kong and possibly cake-decorations, these are smaller and polyethylene. Fred and Wilma Flinstone and their neighbours Barney and Betty Rubble, live life as many american families were, or aspired to in the late 1950's, even to having cars, pets and salery-jobs . . . in a rock quarry, of course!

 

These are vinyl, and unmarked, so maybe knock-offs, or more recent playset stuff? Clearly based on the next lot down, but I've loaded them as I shot them. What would they make of the world we've created since, and I mean the people who watched as well as the characters!

Polyethylene copies (probably from the same tools) of the old Marx Minature Masterpiece set, these will almost certainly be from Rado Industries / Ri-Toys, but were not offered to the likes of Marksmen. Both Rabbit Angstrom and Willy Loman were, in their own ways the epitomes of Fred Flintstone, they both lived in and afforded (with troubles) the newish houses in suburbia, which they confidently hoped their kids' would, too.

 

Eraser to the left, Marx original to the right, as a sizer. Now, their kids can't get on the property ladder, and the longevity so sought 60-years ago, is the new millstone round the necks of people who have to sell those houses to afford healthcare over the pond, or 'downsize' for the cost of living, here?

 

Newer stuff from the eminently forgettable 'live-action' remake, along with a Bullyland Dino the Dinosaur - Wilma's been cut-off her base. But elsewhere in Europe, where they understand liberal-socialism, or social-responsibility, things are a little better, CEO's do not earn the same ridiculous amounts they do in the English-speaking world, healthcare is now usually better than Britain's, wages are higher and disparity is lower, while their old and infirm are cared-for, looked after.

 

Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, these are Imperial too. Done in a faux-vitrine style. All that promise, all that promise of a brave-new-world and a bright-tomorrow, built on the '"white heat of technology", and it's come to nothing for most, and the poverty index is climbing into the middle-class, even as we create more billionaires who've never done a day's hard work in their lives, either as aluminum-siding salesmen or rock-quarriers.

 

It's no coincidence that the Simpsons, knocked the Flintstones off their perch as the most financially successful and longest-running, network television, animated series ever, the gentle parody holding the hope of the former, replaced by the cynical, near-hopeless, satire of the latter.

C is for Canoes - 17 - HO-OO Scaled

A rather limp chapter in this canoe 'season', as I haven't done all the Merten/Noch/Preiser ones for a start, there's at least one metal one, and there are others, but here's a few which I happened upon as I was building these article folders

Atlantic have given us a trapper canoe in the Davy Crockett set and a raft in the Kit Carson set, smaller boxings would have one of each whole runner, sometimes cut into two with a smaller piece (the four - common/duplicate - mouldings beyond the obvious gap) and a larger piece with all that set's unique pieces on. Larger sets could have up to four or six complete runners, they aren’t rare; just over-hyped!

 

Woodland Scenics give us a pair of modern touristy/back-packing boats with obviously young people on a day-out/adventure, pre-painted polystyrene in the manner of the European figures mentioned above, but not painted to the same quality as Preiser or Noch.

 

The little Marx boats from various Miniature Masterpiece sets; silver paint only adds to the decorative nature of these, which were to be parked near the camp (there were no suitable crew/paddling figures), where matching toylike teepees were to be found, some of the other Wild West accessories however were much better, and the same camp would have a really nice little drying rack for an animal skin.

 

My homemade effort, I found it again in the recent moving of stuff, but it got damp in the 2007 flood and needs to be rebuilt, or just replaced! It was an evening's exercise in paper folding or curving; a boat is a dynamic shape, and a waterline model of one has it's own complications! Either side of it are the Thomas/Poplar canoes, painted with gloss brown by someone other than me!

 

Poly Pocket from Bluebird Toys, licenced to Mattel in the 'States, provided another leisure craft for the diminutive little madame to punt about in a flooded powder compact, but hide the seats with stores and paint it up, it's got the lines of a nice Native American boat?

H is for How They Come In - November Sandown Park - Marx Mini Space Sets

This was going to be a box-ticker for the two new sets, as I thought I'd posted one years ago, but I can't find the first on the Blog, so maybe I didn't! Or it's just not tagged right? Still a box ticker though, as Ed's done them in greater detail, but I'll put the link at the end so you at least scroll through these first!

A bit of a Christmas present to myself, as they weren't cheap, but you do go to these shows hoping to occasionally find something more 'grail' and less 'run-of-the-mill', so when I saw them I pretty much had to have them, and when I suggested a reasonable discount for the pair the seller was happy to go with it and they came home with me!

Originally 2000-Yen (about 8-quid/$10 in today's money, so back in the day - bloody expensive!), the 'Monument Valley' vignette has a hideous carbon-footprint and what is probably one of the better of the vehicles in these sets, but when I say 'better', most of them are considerably more naff than the cheapest LB rip-off cake decoration ones, mostly they really are a bit tacky, in the unloved 'rush-job' meaning of the word! The Space Tank (below) is probably the best of a pretty rum-bunch!

Ed's sets have different contents, so while there seem to be three backdrops (desert, temperate/tropical and frozen), there are more than four or five (?) contents, each being sewn/glued-in, in batches I would imagine, with the contents/vehicle type/figures being changed as stock of one particular piece ran out?

The 'Green Planet' vehicle is even more basic, and like the other sets comes with scaled-down space figures (usually three, but I've seen four and two) from Marx's larger-scale ranges, and there a lot of variety between them with some hard 'styrene, some soft 'ethylene polymer, and white, silver/gunmetal or orange plastic, painted or unpainted.

This is an old evilBay image of the best vehicle I've seen so far (which may be the missing set of mine? It's definitely the 'ice planet' backdrop of my first set, but I can't remember my vehicle . . . might be the Matt Mason 'walker'?), a real space-tank, which looks to be based on the Marx unnumbered 'poly' tank chassis, Moonbase looked at another in depth, a while ago, from Arto in Finland, so they got around a bit!

Anyway, Ed Burg looked at more of them awhile ago, with more close-ups, set variations, box-types and comparisons with the larger scale figures, so head over there as well. When I find the other one, we'll have a proper look at the three for a better box-tick!

M is for Marx . . . Marching in Asia

I don't know where to look at the moment, or what to shoot! I'm like a kid in a sweet shop, every box I open either has old friends, things I'd forgotten, stuff that came in as I was packing up or things which need to be combined with the stuff that's come-in since, this is a combining lot.

The loose Marx Miniature Masterpiece stuff outgrew their box years ago and looking for a line to draw I put all the WWII and medieval (? Me too?) in a new box, although if that pairing wasn't bad enough I also put all the gun teams in with them, despite the fact that the rest of the ACW (including the Limber crews) stayed with the Wild West, jungle, Disney, light brigade et al in the old box?

Anyway the old box ended-up here, so we've had dips in it for Disney oddities and Wild West Ri-Toy comparisons in the last few years, but in cross-loading the ones for the other box I shot these.

The Japanese - we have looked at them against the Rado ones I think, but here are my four main colour variations, the darkest ones (top row) are as common as the others, but seem to be confined to eight poses (I forgot to shoot one - the clubbing guy), so it may be that part of the tool was blanked-off for a specific order, maybe the smaller window boxes? The other three; yellower, paler and greyer have all the poses.

These are all soft polyethylene and the green, red and white paint on the bottom row is 'previous owner-applied'.

Close-up to show the colour variation more clearly; and also the variation in paint between batches/orders/contracts.

On the left are the two types of base marking found with these figures, some having the larger Marx stamp, others a smaller stamp and balancing 'blank' - as per the cake-decorating figures the other day - believed to be mould-release pin marks.

On the right are my entire collection of hard polystyrene plastic Japanese! It's funny, with the GI's I have a large bag of hard plastic, a much smaller bag of soft plastic and only one unpainted figure from the late window boxes, yet with the Japanese it seems to be the complete opposite?

I don't think there is any significance to that; like the Tinykins/Disneykins these were much marketed in various configurations and set types/sizes, and the vagaries of Marx's global production will mean different territories got different stock when it was ready/they needed it and from whichever factory was slated to have the tools at that time, in whatever material they were running!

However . . . it's annoying, because the US got lots of the hard plastic batch for the various sizes of their Iwo Jima boxed sets, and they have extra poses; second tool! Mine are all damaged, the additional poses are on the top row but I don't know how many of them there are to find, for the longest time I thought I was only looking for a third officer (drawing his sword), then these three turned-up!

When the Japanese went home the vacuum left while the various colonies waited for their French and Dutch [&etc.], administrations to return was filled by a strange temporary administration made of the odd British colonial who was kicking about, US military personnel, trusted members of the out-going Japanese forces and any resistance fighters or local 'figures of standing', along with anyone else who thought they could administer (and possibly some fledgling UN personnel?).

Anyway - it was all very much a mess of an ad-hoc, buggers-muddle and the locals got used to a bit of autonomy, so when the French or Dutch, Portuguese or even the Brit's returned they found they were no longer welcome in someone else's country - not that they ever really had been, just that the 'Go homes' were louder and more forthright!

I know I've plugged them before here and elsewhere on the Wibbly Wobbly Way, but anyone who wants a concise account of France's loss of 'Indo-China' would be well advised to read Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy (incidecently, mentioned in the Long Grey Line I think (or Chikenhawk) as being read by US junior officers in Vietnam a few years later, trying to make sense of their own Kafkaesque situation), while his Hell in a Very Small Place is a day-by-day, blow-by-blow, almost (and at times) shell-by-shell account of the final unnecessary sacrifice at Dein Bien Phu, in part from the mouths of the survivors - on both sides - who he managed to track down years later.

Marx - as we saw briefly the other day - visited the conflict, in the height of the conflict, the Daily Mail said nothing!

The top row is all marked 'Made In Hong Kong' the lower rows are 'Made In Taiwan' and Taiwanese colour variations, the Taiwan sourced figures seem commoner over here, but I wouldn't say I have large samples of either. The schemes are the same from batch to batch but there is variation with red/orange, various shades and hues of blues and a move through brown to grey.

They go very well with the slightly-smaller scaled Japanese celluloid tourist keepsakes I've been collecting as well as those Villagers we looked at - and here we see three Viet Cong running past a wagon while elsewhere one of their comrades directs local peasants away to safety while the Ride of the Valkeries echo's over their 'Ville' mingling with the Chop-Chop of the Hughes Aircraft Corporation!

The Hong Kong marking is to the left of each pair, the Taiwan to the right; they should be readable if you click on the image. The Taiwan cartouche has a slight step or shoulder round the outer ring, suggesting they are the later version, with a slight re-tooling to allow for different stamps which probably doubled-up in service as release-pins, being interchangeable rods running through the tool-block.

M is for Marx Miniature Mash-up

Both a lovely thing and a bit of a shitter! A 'lovely thing' because it contains very fine polystyrene animals which have - mercifully - not been damaged, yet 'a bit of a shitter' as it's clearly designed (as if the word even pertains here!) to exploit a TV franchise, by grabbing whatever is to hand and shoving it in an existing format box, with no thought other than to make a few bucks!

The box follows the format of the late window boxes; we've looked at here before now - several times. Quite dramatic artwork with the zebra-stripes, it is guaranteed to catch the eye and generate pester-power for a purchase! 'DAKTARI' writ large only increases the desire to 'own a bit' of the child's current favorite TV series.

But hold on! No people, no vehicles, no recognisable characters; human or animal . . . just a bunch of European-looking deer and some giraffes, all from the Noah's Ark sets. Also; a quick investigation of the contents reveal that they are not the soft [unbreakable] plastic usually associated with these window-boxes, but rather the very frangible polystyrene of the earlier Miniature Masterpiece Ark sets.

Of interest though is the attempt to add interest to the contents with pop-up, card cut-outs of the grass-clumps. Although the two largest ones at the back have been ignored by 'staple-machine person' back at the factory! I should add that the three types of palm and the 'tropical' plants are soft ethylene however.

The missing: 'r'

The deer! Least said soonest mended forgotten! If any of these walked the plains of Africa, it was a Hollywood Africa, probably filmed in Yugoslavia!

Made by the Taiwanese arm of a US company, shipped to and packed in Hong Kong for onward transit to the British arm's marketing men to 'tie-in' with a TV series set in Africa.
I still think you'd be bloody disappointed when you got this home and broke half the animals getting them off the cardboard they've been grimly glued-to with something looking like Evostick . . . rubberised, brown snot!

The carbon-footprint of this item is frightening enough given what we know now, but the intent to rip-off is more worrying, and points to reasons other than oil-crisis' and Eastern competition for the demise of some Western companies; they were taking the piss out of their customers!

B is for Bricks and Morter...or...err...Timber and Stone!

Struggling there, I know I've had F is for Forts...probably more than once...hay ho!

While I had the Marx odds and sods box down the other day, I shot a few comparison shots between the two main designs of fort in the Miniature Masterpiece range.

The - possibly? - commoner version is the lozenge or diamond shaped one, which fitted into into a smaller square box, which therefore sold for less that the larger oblong boxes. Seeing one of these mint is a real treat, and one day I will undo mine on the blog, it's in storage at the moment, but the way all the trees, accessories, knights (and sometimes Vikings), horses and the rest are stuffed into all the little gaps between the parts of the fort, stuffed into the smaller towers (which are stuffed into the larger towers) and stuffed into the castellated tower battlement 'drums' is quite extraordinary, and I'm sure that once it's been unpacked it will never go back in the box again!

The oblong version is different in a number of ways other than just the layout, elements of the model are less robust than the other design, the base is a landscaped hill-top with a mote'lette (invented word for the puddle) under the drawbridge, three of the towers have very European style 'pinnacle' roofs with soft ethylene flags, the castellated battlements are completely different designs and other subtler changes are also present.

One of the few pieces which is pretty similar is what passes for a barbican between the two gate-towers, which has a nice winding mechanism (chains missing on lozenge one) to raise and lower the drawbridge over the paddling-pool.

The Disneyland Fantasyland play-set contained a clear-plastic version of this fort, with pretty-much the whole Disneykin range and lots of useful accessories.

Close-ups of some of those changes, even the short wall section is a very different design when you study it. Whether one replaced the other or they both remained in the mould-bank is not something I've given much thought to, a study of when the sets were available in US department store Christmas/gift catalogues should answer that one if someone wants to do the 'legwork' from an armchair!

A few more shots, the towers of the lozenge design are clearly marked with the standard MARX-X mark. Some ladders; the one on the left is from the wild west sets and the log-fort, and finally playing around with the pieces and thinking of a glue-project with all the bits and pieces in the spares box!

F is for Foliage

This is more of a page filler than a full post on the subject, but will help identify some of the Marx Miniature Masterpiece stuff if you're new to the hobby - now or at some point in the future when in image search or 'Google' bring you here.

When they weren't copying Britains trees, Marx turned to another maker in the mother-country; Merit, and stole theirs!

This is the Marx fir with the Merit original on the left, to be fair to Marx, it's questionable who did a stackable tree first, but it doesn't let them off the hook, just that Merit may well have copied Faller before Marx copied them, we looked at them back in 2009 Here.

There are two main difference between the brands, the first is that Marx didn't carry the largest section, so included 16 of the next size to help make taller trees. Secondly; Marx had four trunk sizes to most people's three. Luckily both have marked their bases clearly, so unless you get both in one lot (in which case you have to start peering at the leafage with a magnifying glass to separate the makers fronds!) it's easy to keep them apart.

These tend to be found in the Jungle, Zoo or Arc related sets and are quite nice, clip together soft ethylene (although both types can be found in styrene), like the larger Date Palm we looked at the other night, they are tending to be a tad brittle, but some are still fine, all good tropical stuff for Marine Amphibious Landings!

We looked at the dead tree the other night too, I can't decide whether there are different sculpts, or they are all just poorly made, I'm afraid the latter seem the more likely truth! The hard styrene version of the tropical plant and the stump are from the Troll Village set - among others.

The Cacti are a great favourite of mine and they can be found with or without painted bases, I've only ever found them in polystyrene plastic.

Then we're back to Merit for more piracy, these of the Elm tree and here they have taken the lower largest section as well.

This pic. has been in the archive since 2009! And may have been posted on the blog somewhere already? Sorting Merit originals; there is quite a variety in plastic colour of the foliage, but the trunks have subtler shade differences. It's far worse than it looks, there's a bunch, sorted and bagged, out-of-shot and a few in the attic here that have come-in in the last few years! One day I'll cut them down to one of each variety...I will!