Among other things! It's the bits and bobs, the accessories, the spares, the detritus, the orphaned elements of other toys or models, and peripheral/consumable stuff, which, due to the drawer of bits on show's-eve, is greater than some years, and full of things I can get a couple of lines of blurb out of!
Firstly; the accessories! These were new in
Replicants inventory, and are obviously designed to go with the cart we shall see in a future post, bundles of sticks, which are beyond kindling, or fascines, and may be for tool-handles or walking sticks . . . Proper cargo, anyway! Along with sacks (not bags, but sacks didn't alliterate!) and some useful looking barrels.
Amorces, I need'em for ma'forces . . . is one of the most often visited posts on the blog, creeping toward the top twenty posts, and while that traffic is probbaly more about the bombs, with a few other caps, in other posts, caps are worth a better overview one day, in the meantime these have come it to join the master-sample we saw then;
And while I well remember both the red and blueish-white rolls, along with the plastic strips and discs, the separate shots had been phased out by our childhood (the bulk of which was spent in the 1970's), and are more of a '50's thing, I think?
Bullets and shells, the sets of marbled ones in fives look familier, but I can't remember from which gun/toy the came, while the yellow rocket came with the
Dinky Striker (one of the Scorpion Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance, Tracked, or CVR(T) family of FV10*-coded AFV's. My brother had the build-your-own kit of it, and I well remember the missiles, all over the floor
There is a zone for these guys, somewhere in storage, and the hope is they will eventually be married-up with their original gun, cannon, catapult, vehicle or whatever! And , with regard to things like the Striker missiles, always nicer to have the originals, than some after-market 'replacement' fakes.
Tyres, and a
Dinky/Hornby sack-barrow; again always useful to have spares, I've been tasked with finding the wheels for a trolly bus, and I'm as likely to find it in the stash, when I get to it, as I am at a show like Sandown, but you have to look or you never find!
Road signs and street furniture; some of these look like they're from infant toys, and beyond the [pretty loose and wide-ranging] remits of the collection, but you never know, all sorts get thrown in rack-toys, as make-weights or space-fillers!
Older stuff, and all interesting. The set of cards are the 'mini' size, you get out of Christmas crackers, but have the
Quaker Foods logo, and were issued with Puffed Wheat in 1961, but could be another clue to a close, or 'closer' relationship between
Tom Smith and
Quaker than that already known? And previously hinted at here, only the other day, with regard to the set of ten ships? There was a set of full sized cards issued with
Quaker Oats and Bran more recently. Both on
Cereal Offers;
There's also a nice stained, bone counter or tiddly-wink, and three card stands from board-games, the ovoid one on the right, I think went with early versions of L'Attack, Dover Patrol and the others in that series. The green wooden one may be a home-made replacement.
A very small, but perfectly formed bell? It is unlikely to be from a Euro-rail kit, that pearlescent green is not a
Faller-Kibri-Noch-Vollmer-Wiad (
et al) church or chapel colour, yet it's too small to be a decorative Christmassy thing either? Possibly just a cracker charm?
The windmill is a new colour variation of one I already have several of, while the ad-hoc signage is likely to be from a model kit in the 1:35th/32nd bracket, maybe a car kit, or Western wagon, but more likely something military?
Mini spanners, I think they are the same size as
Meccano, but it's not their design, and their hex-nuts arrived quite late, so a rival like
Erector, or a knock-off? Or, having just mentioned the
Dinky kits, some kind of build-your own toy, or assemble at home car kits?
The clockwork keys are grist to the mill, with two marked Penguin (Frog) on the right.
Spares; The spanner is a styrene, novelty one, and is large enough to have been in one of those 'Pick-up-Sticks'/
Spillikins sets, with recognisable tools, although they are usually a bit longer/thinner? The
Crescent lance is very useful!
Farmyard and battlefield accessories.
A marble (modern), two balls (one wooden) and a palm tree!
Two board-game racing cars which escaped the vehicular post, they are both from mid-20th Century board-games, and I have other examples of both, or very similar beasts, as I recognse both desings, hopeful they are new/missing colours, but that's probably hoping too much!
The little packets are, I think, spare felt-tips for marker pens, and, with that square-section, possibly the old pump-action, liquid-filled Edding's I remember from my youth, but they make useful additions to the 'greeblie' zone!
Everything else! The two ladders are probably the best bits here, as I'm pretty sure they are both from small die-casts in the
Matchbox 1-75 or
Hotwheels bracket, but the yacht's sail is also a good find, as is the spaceman's helmet!
All this stuff, if not quickly reunited with its owner, has a tub, box or bag to live in, and the smaller stuff goes in three of those multi-drawer cabinets, the old ones from Argos (or Index?), back when they still came in spot-welded steel cases.
Again thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin
Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin for their contributions.
