N is for Novelty Animals

I can't remember if someone mentioned these in a comment on an 'H is for How They Come In' post, or if it was in an email, but a conversation was had, to the effect that I would blog them more fully another day, and it turns-out I have more here than I think I have in storage, so here they are!

These cats, are the ones my collection started with, not these specifically, who have only recently build-up here, and I do have a better sample in storage, they are also, along with the frogs, the commonest, or at least that's my experience, I'm sure different animals prove more or less popular in different countries/sales territories and would have been ordered-in accordingly.

I'm equally sure any similarity with the Marx Minikins 'Figaro' from Pinocchio, is purely coincidental, as there were - between 1900 and the 1970's several similar short, fat cats in popular fiction or the arts/entertainment, including two Felix's (I think), Penelope Pussycat, [Babbitt &] Catstello, Muff (from Tom & Jerry's Fluff, Muff & Puff kittens), Corky, Fritz, Lucifer, Pussyfoot and others, so these were aiming at a well-worn constituency!

 

I thought I had a card in the archive with them all on it, as a 'rack-toy', but I can't find it - although I found other things to enhance the post - so I can't tell you if it was an adult with six kittens, or all six as small or large mouldings. The smaller mouldings are commoner, as they were chosen for gum-ball machine capsule-prizes, among other things.

Pigs are also popular, and the Hippo's seem to turn-up with more regularity than some of the others in the range. I don't know, but suspect they may have got themselves into Christmas Crackers at some point, or maybe only the larger ones? They don't all seem to have larger versions, though.

 

The frogs, with a gum-ball machine's insert card below, I have seven poses here, maybe more in storage and there seems to be an eighth on the card, which also has a duplicate for a five count.

 

Other examples, again; there may be more in storage, but you can see it's all the things people tend to collect - puppies, owls, moo-cows, chicks etc. . . I think there were small elephants? The kitten doing a hand-stand (like one of the pigs), is from a later set, not connected with the (1960's?) black ones. While, I didn't realise I'd hidden the tortoise!

 

The tortoise and the rodent (far left) may be from a line of Netsuke look-alikes, their decoration is finer, and they are more realistic sculpts, indeed the rodent may be an Asian water-rat or vole of some kind?
 

The hole in the underside is the unifying factor with all these, although as you can see here, some don't have one! The smaller kitten has the standard hole, while the whole set of pigs (with the exception of 'hand-stand') have one which is large enough to make them pencil-tops?

 

The prone kitten has an oblong hole, and smaller base area figures tend to get smaller holes, and the frog to the far-right has a medium-small one. While typically the large-sized ones have a larger hole, the pair of frogs here have a small and medium-small hole, just to be different!

There is a tendency within the hobby to call all this type of feature mould-release pin-marks, but I suspect that's not the case here, and it's more about minimising material-used, and/or preventing heat-shrinkage on tools with a fast cycle-rate?

I think these have both been on the blog before, but they turned-up while I was looking for the other bits, so here they are again! These three cats are in storage, but probably not yet with the 'master' sample, so you can see there will be quite a few in total.  The bear is later, and probably from a different company, but more on that in a mo'.

 

Just a quick-one on all these, they are similar to Kinder's 'hard plastics' and Kinder followed the concept of cartoony 'styrene animals, but the Hong Kong ones mostly predate Kinder by a decade or more, and while some of the above were claimed in early Kinder collector manuals from Germany, I think they've mostly been excised from current edits as there just wasn't the empirical evidence.

A set of clowns are within the oeuvre, usually sold as cake decorations, as were these Santa Claus figures mucking about, again, slightly newer and contemporary with the bears, we saw them here, with a Model Power iteration and links to Tobar (Hawkin's Bazaar) in the comments! Note the Greensward Leprechaun!

 

I also noticed, while sorting this stuff the other night, that those garden gnomes (hollow plastic, wheel barrow and garden-tools lot, and musician lot), have a smaller, solid iteration, which may be part of this extended range? Six clowns are also sold as cake-decorations.

I've tried not to lecture or pontificate this Rack Toy Month, but I often come back to one message in RTM, with this cheapo', novelty type stuff, you can only pin them down to a brand if you have the packaging with them, otherwise they are any one of several brands AND several anonymous/generic issues, and I'm sure a quick search of evilBay will pull Unique, Carousel and/or Grandmother Stovers into the fold!

To which end Wilton carried families of larger animals, glossy airbrushed; pigs, lambs, squirrels, poodles, pandas, rabbits, chicks &ect. Typically, they were two or three babies and one adult, Culpitt had a set of chicks, but they are larger, and mostly in storage (if I have more than one or two?), so can wait for another day!

F is for Follow-up - Model Power Train Sets

Another contribution from Brian, and another follow-up on a recent post here at Small Scale World, in this case the lose Model Power train set I purchased at a recent Sandown Park toy fair, and which has already had one follow-up!

Original article:

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/t-is-for-triffic-train-set-for-troops.html

First follow-up:

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/f-is-for-follow-up-khaki-runnings.html

The box is a bit shot Brian explains, but he managed to coble-up a couple of 'shop-stock' images which I've collaged into one. This is the other set I mentioned at the time, with the more modern looking diesel locomotive -  a Dial Drive GP9, a common design still in use but slowly being phased-out/coming to the end of their useful lives, despite many upgrades.

The contents, a larger version of the set (same product code - 1068) seems to come with buildings and stores/accessories. The other major difference with my lose set is that instead of a rocket-launching wagon, the rocket is on a six-legged (six-armed?) field-mounting . . . sextipod?

Brain also scanned the insert sheets, so here it is for people's archives;

If anyone has a spare launcher kicking around, with or without the rocket, I'd be interested. With many thanks to Brian again; another nice addition to the whole picture.

F is for Follow-up - Khaki Runnings!

I managed to grab the Battle Space, at the weekend after all, so managed a quick shoot of the closest Model Power  'twins' and took one of the military locomotive pool while I was at it!

Mobile missiles; both utilising their maker's flat-car, both spring-loaded and both having the large elevation tap-wheels, but otherwise quite different, the Model Power is err . . . underpowered, but as it's a polystyrene model, it would break quickly under the power of the Tri-Ang launcher which packs a serious, pre-H&S punch!

To which end, the Triang-Hornby missile is a rubber-tipped affair in softer polyethylene to take the strain, it also looks more like a Tallboy or Grand Slam (aerial bombs) than the Model Power's Honest John lines. "It'll 'av someone's eye out"!

Tank transporters; the earlier British one being a bogie well-wagon (that is a lower cargo 'well' between the raised twin-bogie (truck)-mountings) which reduces the height of the center of gravity, while Model Power utilise a clip-on set of chocks with a standard flat-car.

In fact, in the West, tanks are chained down with between four and eight chains which are screw-tightened, you only have to watch a few 'funny' tank-fail videos to understand the current Russian failings in Ukraine; while we winch-on and tie down, they rev-up and mount like dogs on heat and drive off, losing the thing at the next roundabout if it didn't fall-off on loading, or crush its own lorry!

Exploding cars; mechanisms were actually quite different (I didn't have time or space for more detailed shots this time, and while both have the look of North American 'reefer' wagons, Model Power go with a 50ft one, we Brits matched our road wagon limit with a  40-footer! Rememeber also HO is also scaled smaller (1:86/90) than OO (1:76/72), so the British model looks a bit 'chunkier'!

I have an old 1970's Walther's or two, and among the pages and pages of transfers for home-builders, mostly for reefers or passenger stock, are quite a few military ones, so you could with the two Q-Cars, this pair and a few kits, build a long, but visually rather boring (if more realistic) logistics train, but you'd need to glue these two shut first!

The loco's; we've seen the two main brands before, but of interest is the one down the front left, which is a clockwork 'cheapie' from Playcraft via Jouef of France. not specifically military, it happens to be the right colour, and adds variety to my fleet!

We loved our 'starter set' clockwork's when we were kids, and used to run them on a figure-eight inside our electrified double-oval, if we were quick we could get four trains moving at once without a crash . . . we weren't always lucky - figure-8's have a crossroad!

It's one of those quirks of toy history that at one point you had OO-guage train sets/lines from/branded-to Tri-Ang, Rovex and Mettoy Playcraft . . . all ultimately Lines Brothers! I should also mention the track, which happens to still be around despite having long lost its usefulness.

It's a sort of resinated or 'Bakelite' treated card (like the ties in old plugs which hold the cable tight), obviously for power-insulation, with the shiny (non-ferrous) rail fasteners (chairs or tie-plates) riveted through the card every forth sleeper (tie), I did have a brand name for it, well . . . it's somewhere in the archive, Hammant & Morgan maybe (our transformer was theirs), Hamblings, or early Hannants? One of the mail-order catalogues in the archive has/lists something which fits the description anyway!

It was the home-fitted rail on our train-set which was bought 2nd hand by Mum at Persons Auctions here in Fleet (long-gone, along with County Tractors and First Inertia), and somehow she managed to hide it (about 6ft x 8ft) from us until Christmas morning, I'm hoping, when I lift the boards in the loft, in the next few weeks, that I may find it's still there with its household gloss 'landscaping', but it may have gone years ago? It was old, crumbly, early (1960's) chipboard.

T is for Triffic' Train Set for the Troops!

Here's a book which needs to be written . . . a look at all the military train sets and the relationships between them? As we'll see, this set bears a lot in common with the old Tri-Ang/Hornby 'Battle Space' sets for instance, and while the modern Model Power branded, seems to be from older AHM tooling, so could be Japanese in origin as AHM worked with a lot of Japanese firms, or Rivarossi from Italy?

Anyway, I haven't got time to do it but I hope someone does, with the O-guage stuff as well as the HO/OO . . . but I might make a start in a while, after getting today's post's star!

I bought this HO rated set at Sandown Park for 30-quid which I thought was a bargain, and although I knew it was a modern (still in production?) set, I was right as Googling has revealed prices from $40-loose or incomplete to $250+ for sets, so £30 for a loose train, with no evilBay global rip-off charges, seems - indeed - to be a bargain.

The locomotive is what I - as a non American - consider to be a typical, even 'iconic' mid-late 20th century diesel unit and the caboose (brake van) is equally typical/iconic of its type, here marked-up as a troop carrier. We'll look at the other two in closer detail.

An Honest John lookie-likee, which rests on a launcher that bears a resemblance to the Tri-Ang one; but all in plastic and with a simpler push-&-click loading action. The real link is the winding wheel, which mirrors the Battle Space (and earlier non-Battle Space) Tri-Ang one.

A nice rendition of an M47 which apparently never saw combat service in US hands, but gave true birth to the M48/60 family, and here on a flat-car. The chocks are a clip-in single moulding, so could be put on civil-coloured (oxide-red) rolling stock, but it would probably have to be the same AHM/Model Power stuff?

In these though we get both closer to the older British models with an exploding box-car and further away with the huge rail-gun, while the one in the middle is a Q-car, hiding a nasty, if rather anachronistic surprise!

I think the mechanism is similar to the UK one, but mine are in storage, so I can't check them, but I'll try and dig them out over the weekend, if memory serves this is harder to get and keep together, but then it doesn't work when you trip the switch! Only falling apart when you pick it up to reset it . . . doh! And obviously because I only got the rolling stock, I don't have the track-side trigger, but the Tri-Ang trigger may work, or be made to work?

The 'Q-Car' has two Flak 18/36 German 88mm guns hidden it it! The Tri-Ang version had a twin rocket launcher, but employed the exploding car mechanism/body, while the Model Power one has simple (and preferable) click-shut, manually-operated, drop-down side panels.

While this beast has no comparison in the Battle Space range! It would benefit from a bit of detailing (stowed stores, hand-rails/guard rails, a breech of some sort, I've stuck a shell on the loading chute which was kicking around (Airfix or Lone Star SLR bullet?) in one shot. It could also use some more obvious support wagons than a cabose!

These are fun things and when I'm settled I'll try to track down some of the other obvious ones (Tyco, Bachmann, even Jakks Pacific) and we'll compare and contrast, one of them does a loaded Honest John on a articulated lorry trailer, there's a pricy three-coach Ambulance train from another and some more realistic ones from Lima, but they are top dollar!

V is for Variations on a Theme - Keep-Fit Santa's

This is the held-back and enhanced tail of a post from the summer on the Model Power sets Ed Burg sent me ages ago, as the more I dug-out, the more it looked like a whole other post, but first back to the obverse of the Model Power card;

The reverse of the card gives a hint at the range of sets available in this scale/size and the most interesting one is the Santa Land one, clearly designed to do seasonal front lawn or garden (front yard over there) displays in O-gauge/O-027, of the 'full Griswold' type! But they look familiar . . .

. . . not least than because I have Blogged one here years ago; under Culpitt or Anniversary House branding I think, might have been a smaller cake decoration supplier? We've also seen some of the second set (see below) under the Doric label before now.

You may have them as Wilton or Carrousel, but in 1986 two Hong Kong factories (from Bill B's catalogue) were both advertising them as 'new'! The truth is probably that Argeal made them and Greensward shipped them but a third contract manufacturer could have made them, with both Greensward and Argeal then taking them to load their novelty lines for wholesaling to Culpitt or Wilton . . . and now Model Power have them!

I only seem to have one (on shelf), I thought I'd got all of them, but they may be in with the Kinder stuff? A second, more modern set also exists, clearly influenced by the mid-80's set (possibly from the same source - decoration is spot-on - yet smaller belt-buckles), but six new poses, also doing things you;d expect to see in a gym, not from Santa Clause! We see three above . . .

. . . and the other three, with their icing-spike (pick)'ed twins. Whether the spike came first or second I can't tell you, but the spikeless set show no signs of the removal in the moulding (lump or scaring), and they may have been two sets?

The spikeless set are the ones we've seen before, I got them in a Christmas pop-up store in Basingrad a couple of years ago, probably as old stock, but not that old, so . . . last ten years? The Snowmen who accompany them have a large (almost but not quite pencil-top size) hole in them and each gets a crude'ish fir tree and a motto/sign for the cake.

A seller was offering them with sleds (sledges?) this time last year, but as 'assortments of three - six designs'. Looking at the sledges (sleds?) they are drilled for a string or wire (to a reindeer?) and might be the seller's marriage of two bulk purchases, rather than an original commercial offering?

A third set of six Santa's is out there, slightly smaller and probably another source, they either started life as gnomes, or where designed to be both gnomes and Santa's, having all the boot and hem trimming one associates with cake decoration Santa's, but clearly engaged in a spot of more gnome-like gardening . . . or mining - the chap with a lantern; is there a seventh pose somewhere?

Cheers again to Ed for the Model Powersets.

M is for More Model Power!

It was when titling the folder for the Model Power HO rack-toys (looked at earlier today) the other day and watching it default to 'Model Power_1' that I knew there was something wrong! I had a hidden 'Model Power' folder in Picasa, with two sets Ed Burg sent me ages ago, so first an apology to Ed for not Blogging them sooner, and second, let's look at them now!

I feel doubly guilty as I believe Ed went out and bought these especially as part of an exchange, I'd mentioned railway figures in passing in an eMail as I'd noticed he was thinning out his Marx and . . . whoever (Aurburn?) in a post on his Blog a few days earlier, then these turned-up! And he's chosen carefully to find two very different but interesting sets.

They are O-gauge or 027, which is a strange railway system where the rolling stock is nominally scaled to 1:64th (even more confusingly - 1:64th is US HO in the die-cast and slot-racing world!), while the figures are scaled to 40mm which is also O-gauge compatible, although strictly 1:45th, usually referred to as 1:48th . . . if I've understood it all right; basically they are O-Guage model-railwy, 40mm figures!

In fact I feel triply guilty as I have an O-Gauge set from ................... in ............. which he sent to the Blog a decade ago and which isn't even in Picasa yet - I keep meaning to do a Preiser versus Merten O-guage post and have never quite got round to it, both boxed are so full it's hard work dealing with one let alone two, and when I did the wagons and things a few years ago I put off the O-stuff!

Set No. 6193 Prisoners (Black & White Stripes); suggests other colour-ways are probably available, and looking at the HO-gauge compatible 'Roco' and Chinatroop sets earlier only reinforces that suspicion. In this style of uniform they are pretty-much 'steam era', but you can re-paint them to any, or your local prison or penitentiary!

All the tropes of a jail or gaol are covered, we have a Hispanic 'gang-banger' doing weights, a guy contemplating his crime with a ball and chain, two guys in a chain-gang (or are they digging a break-out tunnel . . . it's your layout, you decide!), someone waiting to see the governor with his hands cuffed behind his back and a Hannibal Lector type in full chains waiting for supper and a nice Chianti . . . ffth'ffth'ffth'ffth'ffth'ffth!

The other set is also interesting being the modern take on a set which - had it existed forty years ago - would probably once have contained all national postal workers, but which now covers the full gamut of people who come to your door these days.

The figures include a traditional postal worker in blue uniform, a UPS guy in brown, an internet gig'er on moped, a US Mail (?) guy with trolley and an owner-driver in jeans and a T-shirt subbing for a major carrier. You also get a posting 'stand' (pillar-box) and one of those uniquely-American end-of-the-garden-path post/newspaper holders, with the little tin flag (that gets flipped-over if there's something in it) printed on it.

The reverse of the card gives a hint at the range of sets available in this scale/size and the most interesting one is the Santa Land one, clearly designed to do seasonal front lawn or garden (front yard over there) displays of the 'full Griswold' type! But they look familiar . . . however we'll wait 'till Christmas for that one!

And many thanks to Ed for these two.

R is for Roco as Rack Toys

Should be an F is for Follow-up really, but there you go! Totally forgot these when looking at the others a few weeksback so we'd better look at them now!

They're not actually Roco-minitanks, but may be supplied by them or licensed from them, I just don't know. Model Power usually source their stuff from China, but - unlike the O-Gauge sets - these have no origin indicated so it's anyone's guess.

Issued as four sets, in green or tan, these are all 'peaceful' poses taken from the previously looked-at Roco sets based on the Monogram/Revell kit sets, and designed purely to enhance a model railway layout (or 'model railroad' layout, they're American after all!) by wandering around the landscape or concourse, or load the vehicles in it; the seated figures.

If you want violence on your railway layout, you can have it! I'm guessing 5697 is the same set in green or tan, but these guys (over-scale at 1:72nd) are dressed like the internal security services of some former Soviet republic circa 1999!

They are scale-downs of the common small scale rack-toy figures from the 1990's, being Airfix Para's and US infantry, originally 1:32nd scale and given generic 'piss-pot' helmets. The artwork hints at an assortment of poses going to at least an 11-count, with the Para's Bren-gunner, officer and kneeling firer also available - they certainly were in the standard, unpainted, rack-toy sets.

Painting is limited here, to a bit of black on boots and weapons and some flesh spotted on hands and face.

Want a couple of women for your Wild West town or ACW army and not got enough Merten or Preiser? There are two in this 'historical' set from the more conventional range of railway accessories, while the engineer with shovel would fit any era, as would the driver.

Although in the case of ACW armies, who'd take a baby to a battle! Yet, prior to the 20th century; battles were lost for the crowds of onlookers getting in the way of the manoeuvring!