O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Army Men and Combat Infantry

The meat and two veg' of Toy Soldier collecting . . . toy soldiers! I had quite a good run at the show this year on the khaki-front, in fact, I've just split the folder into two; troops and AFV's, as it was 27 images! So, this post is that plunder, less all the vehicles! And we seem to be starting with pretty-much the last thing I bought at the show, probably because it was on top of a bag, and got shot first!

 

One of the American dealers was over for the day, was it Matt from Hobby Bunker? And he had these, in most colours, I went for the pink! BMC's GI Janes! I've not got them out of the pack, as Brian Berke sent us a nice khaki sample when they first came out, so they can wait for another day, but it was a definite box ticked!

 

Two blow-moulds which I think we've seen before, but here they are again, and they'll be back soon, as Peter Evans gave me a pair not a week ago! He remembers them being part of a shooting game with [I think he said;] four each of these two and one officer?

 

A Marx six-inch British infantryman, and Blue Box (or BB-clone) five-inch GI, complete the larger figures found in June.

 

Not my finest moment, but we all make mistakes at shows, hurrying, poor lighting, trying to hold-down two conversations, but whatever, I bought a lemon - the lewis gunner team are mucked about with, I thought they were a pair, but actually the No.2 is a conversion . . . heay-ho! Some Chinese made Matchbox clones (Shin Hing maybe?) and an earlier Rado or similar Russian.

 

French, very early Starlux (ovoid bases), or Quiralu, I think, possibly from aluminium moulds? I should know, and if I spent longer going through the folders I would know, but nice anyway!

 

Bagged small-scale and a couple of loose figures.

 

The right-hand bag had some interesting mould-purge figures in green/blue.

 

I actually went to the show with only one thing on the absolute wants-list; Hilco Anzacs, and managed to get all three with a colour variation, from one stall, and a seller on the opposite side of the aisle had the Trojan 14th Army types, so I grabbed them at the same time! The Hilco's are cut-n-shut 'conversions' (in the loosest, just-escaping-a-plagiarism-charge, meaning of the word) of the Timpo 'solid' 8th Army poses.

 

Also picked-up two of the Airfix 1st version Para's neither of which seem brittle, a problem with them now, a Thomas/Poplar 'ubiquityman' (driver, gunner and stretcher bearer), Blue Box GI in 50mm and three Lido-clones.

 

More small-scale, with Corgi 'chocolate bars' from the gift-set, Blue Box Germans in 'styrene, a similar Hornby-Triang 'Battle Space' radio-operator and a few other bits.

 

To be sorted, mostly Hong Kong, mostly Britains clones, and mostly to appear on the Khaki Infantry page at some point, I haven't done as much on there as I'd have wanted to, due to circumstance, this last few years, but I did add a few bits there, the other day, and there is more in the queue.

 

More Hong Kong, copies of Airfix 8th Army and Monogram GI's, all very much grist to the mill, but all having a place in the oeuvre, and will all need to be sorted into the correct tubs and samples, to build the bigger picture.

 

For instance the two colours of 8th Army clones, are from two sources, one marked Hong Kong the other just HK, and a difference in quality between the two. The aim being to eventually get them all tied into the correct sets/packaging, and hopefully get the odd brand-ID on them, I happen to know the HK's are probably Ri-Toys (Rado)!

 

More thanks to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, who I have forgotten to add.

P is for Perfect Polymer Propine - Military

Apparently it's Scottish for 'sacrifice'! Theo, long-time friend of the Blog, has had personal tragedies recently, putting my own firmly into context, as a result of which he divested himself of his collection, but saved a few items of interest for the Blog, which arrived a while ago and have been sat on the laptop waiting for me to get a grip and post them, and, while I'd describe my grip as only tenuous, with many thanks to Theo, I'll try to get them posted over the next few days, interspersing them with a few new-purchase rack toys, to mix it up!

 

These were a real surprise, as they often turn up, but scruffy and weaponless, and usually only two poses, so to get three poses, with weapons and good-to-new paint was a real treat, and they were on top of the parcel, so got shot first!

 

And, these were with them, four different mounted figures in a similar state of near-new! Again, I may have seen the bowman, tatty, a few times but not the others, and like the foot figures, all are based on the Britains Swoppets, but you feel, probably hand-copied rather than anything as accurate as a pantograph?

 

9th Aug. - Peter Evan has suggested ABC for these, they are unmarked but could be, and I've posted a marked one on foot, ages ago, he also pointed out that the mounted legs are from the Herald Agamemnon, and you can see the sandals and greaves!

 

This may be the horse for the above, the other likely candidate would be the Timpo-copy with caparison (as found in the 'States in Ideal playsets), but I think they only have Timpo-copy riders. This one is a scale-down of the big Thomas/Poplar sculpt.

 

These are a useful addition to the Crescent Roman piracies, especially the chap far left and far right, who is one of the three Gladiator poses, and was missing when we looked at them last time, although I have an all-blue HK copy of the pose. It struck me that he would go well with the Charbens ancient set!

 

Marx 'swoppet' GI's, a real treat! I do have one somewhere, and a bag of bits, but there are three complete, here, sans one weapon, a B.A.R. I think, but at some point in the future it's going to enable a single photo of all the possible combinations!

 

An actual Crescent Roman! A damaged Cherilea knight, who may be the basis of a future conversion, he only needs a weapon to replace the missing lance, and one of many French 'bazaar' figures, or at least I think he's French (Koho, thanks to Theo - https://www.lastdodo.nl/nl/areas/4866119-koch-hofmockel-koho), and a bazaar issue, and he'll be sorted into the rest when they all come together, soon I hope, but I've been saying that since 2021!

Nardi and Lone Star, paint is good on both of them, and finding the Lone Star figure with complete spear is getting rarer, one of mine broke after the last photo-shoot, so being sent one and having him survive the postal services of Europe is another treat!

 

Three Cherilea; 54mm, 60mm and, err, gi'huge!

 

Two Tim Mee European issue, a nice Cherilea 60mm swoppet, first version with the separate boots, and four more of the smaller Monogram copies from Hong Kong, which will be filtered into a larger sample of them, for a definitive article one day, we had an interim look at them here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

with another set looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/08/t-is-for-two-khaki-infantry-rack-toys.html

 

And, it's the large number of variants of these Hong Kong knock-off figures, which makes all samples so useful, toward finding the full story of them, one day!

 

I can never remember who these are by (and I've been told often enough!), with scabards and base markings they are Timpo 1st version, but with plain belts and smooth bases they are . . . Charbens, Speedwell . . . someone like that?

 

Finishing off with a lovely, clean sample of the CMV-marked Hong Kong copies of 'khaki infantry' from old Britains Herald, Lone Star and Crescent sculpts, so clean they look like they were made this morning! Thank you, Theo, sorry it's taken so long to get them posted!

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 7 - Military & Marine

A shorter post, I suspect because Chris himself specialises in 'khaki', modern combat, WWI, II etc . . . and will hang on to any interesting things in that vein, although he sends plenty of shots as well as these donations, so it's no whinge, just an explanation for the shortage of images, also, I shot them in groups . . . but I've added Marine subjects at the end to make up the numbers!

Small scale; the most interesting is probably the chap on the far left, who needs a paint-strip, but seems to be a Hong Kong copy of an Eko copy of Airfix's first series 8th Army, we've seen similar here, but not that pose I think, and the base is the giveaway!

 

The US marine pointing is also interesting, as he's not from the Aurora 'HO' sets, but is in the same style, might be AHM? Three from Redbox's Motormax (ex-Zyll), a Blue Box vehicle-mounted equipment operator, three commoner Airfix piracies, a Skybird and a kit figure (at the back) make up the company!

The big guy is marked C-P Inc, which/who, I believe, are a subdivision of US Toy? They who make the sets of ten in two colours (five of each) mostly civilian 54mm rubber figures. These are a very brittle (from new) polymer, of the Nylon/Propylene feel, and I have some others somewhere (among the first large scale figures I got), and equally damaged on the extremities, so early-to-mid-2000's, maybe the late 1990's?

The heat-shrinkage Lido-copy German from HK, is fun for being a 'new' pose, albeit, dying backwards, and the Monogram which looks like many other copies, is hard plastic against the copies usual polyethylene, so may be one of the shop-display figures which came out of those early kit-makers, as the painting has a casual, but practised 'factory' look about it?

A 'Bonux' FFL shaking his fist at someone, but unmarked, normally the unmarked ones are in brighter colours, not the Bonux olive-green, so I think he's a useful addition? Some Hong Kong to sort, more of those Naval looking hard-plastic vehicle/vessel crew, and the one on the left is a colour-variaton I think, while the one on the right is probably home-painted?

 

Three useful HK copies to be sorted into existing samples, another US truck-rider and a couple of more interesting figures, the sandy one modern'ish, the other part of the ever-expanding 'might be Pioneer for somebody else' oeuvre?

 

Pitrates! It's all you're getting, as I never know, at this time of year, with an empty or near empty Pirate Zone, what I may have for next year's ITLAPD, so they have all gone there, in order that I at last have a few shots for the Intro-post! What can you spot anyway?

 

Ships and vessels, two of the Hong Kong copies of Triang Minic's waterline battlefleet, a smaller one with added hull from another maker, a yacht which looks like it should be from a board-game, but wouldn't be very playable with that keel, so maybe a 'working' sink/bath-yacht from a Christmas cracker, or a real-water race game?

 

The tug is another Triang copy, the raft is a Manurba copy, yellow boat is a Kellogg's cereal premium, and a more recent take on the old baking soda novelty and the orange cruiser is a novelty candle-holder for cake-decorations!

 

Many thanks again to Chris Smith for all these lovelies, and if you keep scrolling past the gold-lamé nutcrackers, I added a couple of images to yesterday's Crescent/Kellogg's knights post.

R is for Recent Purchases

Although I checked the image dates and one of them's from over two years ago, while another is over a year old now, but, sometimes I purchase a mixed lot, or a few parcels end-up being delivered on the same day and I shoot them for 'posterity'!

These were a few of the highlights of a big mixed lot I grabbed, for a single figure I think, or because it was going cheap? Anyway, I know there were more of the Weston's Mexicans, a lot more, but mostly the same poses, so presumably the ones the seller hadn't liked, used or wanted!

We saw the ex-flocked Womble when I posted the renovation/conversion, while the three Charbens African are useful, the Butch from Kellogg's Sooty set (probably by Crescent) is a slightly chewed box-ticker; I can never remember which figures I've got in which colours!

An LB cartoon American Indian is a bonus, the Palitoy (and others) kicking footballer is always fun, while the Imperial version of an Impro Triceratops is my first, I have all bar the Plesiosaur in the UK iteration, but Imperial's are harder to find this side of the pond! I think the Dylan is Corgi, but he's not the guitar one?

Seven parcels? French Albator boxing of Space Captain Harlock from Atlantic, and colour variations of - I think - the Goldrake Vega set, which I have on the runner in bright apple green (Brian Berke as sent shots of them in this sand shade, but they're still in queue, with 90% of everything!), above which is a bagged set of the Humber 1-Ton's with all six fire engine bodies, one of which is shared with the military versions (ambulance) but here in silver.

We saw the pair of die-cast Play-Me and 11resin pirates on ITLAPD, while the Hussar got sent to Plastic Warrior as a follow-up to Chris Smiths excellent article on Kwong Wah Industrial.

I can't remember if I've blogged the larger vehicles, but I'm not blogging that country's stuff if I can help it, at the moment, I was right to call out those promoting the wrong side of the Donbas line's products (earned me more opprobrium from the Morlocks and Yahoos at the time) when I did, and I try to keep to my own standards/principles!

So many ironies; Dave over at PSR has also stopped promoting/reporting on that nation's products for the duration (?) while some of the producers on the Ukrainian side are still operating - if they're not in the actual combat zones, they're desperate to keep their economy running as normal, while if we end-up in a nuclear exchange with Putler, you can guess the choice words - for some in our hobby - my last 'I told you so' post will contain, even if it never gets out to the ether!

These were a cheap 'small scale' mixed lot, which were about half-and-half non-Giant Cowboys & Indians I really didn't need, and other items, which I'll look at now:

I suspect these are probably accessories for a die-cast or plastic vehicle or play set of some kind, very similar to the sets on the back of the box of the space set we saw here, but a rival line - we've seen the firefighters and mechanics from the same line before, and they are a dense PVC to the other generic's 'styrene, with key-slots rather than peg-holes in the bases to lock them onto the cards. Obviously, yet more Monogram copies! 

Miscellaneous 'civi' types, most already in the collection, but again - from a plastic-colours point of view - you can't find too many of the Märklin HO track-gang, copies, nor the Dinky road-gang clones! The Matchbox hunter, on the other hand, is just boring now, he came with at least two 1-75 vehicles and I have a bag-full, one day I might paint a squad up as ACW Confederate volunteers!

These were what the bid/BIN went-in for. The Romans are poor quality Giant copies, but tracking them down is a slow process so finding seven at once is useful, and they came with a genuine Giant tower roof and flag which I know I need, a probably Giant medieval/Mongol horse and two yellow 2nd type Giant knights.

The Mongols only ever seem to appear in red or yellow, and I've never seen a 2nd version Knight in red, but alongside the common black & silver ones, these yellow versions do turn-up occasionally, where they're from the Helen of Toy 'Gold Crown' game/comic-offer with paper board, not Giant at all!

The other items of interest in the lot were the Airfix animal knock-offs, the farm have been pretty-much nailed now on the relevant blog page, with two or three generations and various pack types, but the zoo copies are still more of a mystery, with at least two generations, the flat colours and the washier, cream-coloured ones with the eyes dotted-in, or red-lips &etc.

And there's a few of each here, although one of the gazelles has been converted into a short-eared Llama . . or Alpaca, or whatever the other ones are called; Vicarious Guanos?

These only came in the other day, and were going unloved, again I have most of them already but as with the stuff Chris or Peter sends, it's the odd one you don't have which makes all the difference!

Here it's the HK copy of the Gem diver (top left), the runner, mid-left, the chap top right and the PVC Flintstone in brown - I have a few, but again - colour variations! The bloke who looks like a composition pirate in maroon coat is just a cut-about Spencer Smith AWI gunner!

Back to the chap top right - in the late 1990's/early 2000's, a company or companies unknown (there may be a brand on the die-cast forums) was producing these flesh/sand figures in various iterations and scales (at last four sizes?), which were sold as generics and home-branded to various volume sellers; supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury's), Woolworths/Chad Valley and etcetera, as well as other branding elsewhere

The only way to tell them all apart is by the base-markings which vary greatly between issuers, and must have reflected contract data, and the base shape. One day we'll look at them all properly, the commonest is probably the German firefighter (in fritz helmet) who seems to have been in everyone's range and every size! I annotated some of them at the time, which should help make sense of them, but I only bought them when they were on clearance! Smaller sets usually had one vehicle, but often with useful accessories like wheelie-bins, street-furniture, skips (dumpsters), recycling bins, etc . . .

There were also three of these Hong Kong flat railway figures, and this shot which I took a while back reveals that I needed the green lady with umbrella and red case, loose, to complete the line-up, now I have her!

I'd actually bought two lots of these mixed/vehicle accessory lots a few days apart and this is the other one, and while - again - not only do I have most of them, we've seen most of them in the mini-seasons onMatchbox and Corgi I did about ten years ago (still waiting for shouty-man's corrections?!!) 

These are the new, the better examples or the not sures. For instance I know I have the chap with the hose from Matchbox's airport fire tender, but I'm not sure about the chap with the axe, while to his right is one who matches the Monogram guys above. Can't remember if I have the green clown (Corgi), and there are about four versions of the Dinky Moon Rover/Chariot crew, so he may be needed.

Another of the believed to be Hornby rail staff/loco-crew, but in a new, lighter blue, with the boy from the late Corgi straw-stack next to him. The little black figure (probably a bomber pilot) is sculpted similar to the Kleeware/Tudor Rose Space Clipper or X-400 crews, so might be early 'something'!

The middle of the right is a cartoony character from something modern I suspect, but I don't know who or what and the skeleton will be one of those Mattel motorcycles, or a similar knock-off! It's all good stuff, which fills the holes in the story of 'Toy and Model Figures'. Lots more to come . . .

T is for Two - Khaki Infantry Rack Toys

This wasn't even in the quese until I found the .zip file from Chris in Downloads this morning and thought I'd better pull my finger out and get them up here before the end of the month, so then I thought I might as well add the others as they follow a theme!

Fairylite (whom I regularly confuse - in my head - with the antipodean Feathalite! Not here, yet, I think?) were an early British importer/re-packer, jobbing both domestic production and Hong Kong output (there is a Fairylite version of the Jimson tank and transporter for instance) and Chris Smith sent these as part of our further discussions (off Blog) on the African 'Zulus' the other-few-weeks back.

The set bears some similarities with the blue & yellow trays which turn-up on evilBay from time to time, and of which a good example was recently in Plastic Warrior magazine. The back has a strange 'envelope-fold' closure and wire-hanger which looks easy to tare, so that this has survived intact is a minor miracle.

Those other trays however have the Britains/Timpo copies, whereas these are clearly Lone Star clones, painted-up to UN service, which could be a clue as to approximate production date, after the 1948 Middle East deployments, the next UN mission which caught the popular imagination was the war/s and insurgencies resulting from the collapse of the Belgian Congo, so early to mid-1960;s for this set? the 'Empire Made' is another clue, by the 1970's most mentions of 'empire' on prodcts from the colony had been replaced by some form of 'Hong Kong'.

This contemporary set (dated '64 by the diligent - and legendary - James Opie) has been seen here before, but back when the Blog had forty visitors a day, not the number we have now, and I know some people don't bother with the tag-list much, so we'll have another quick look!

Past the Post, who I mentioned in those Zulu posts, as being a possible source of those figures, there's so little on them they may be a phantom branding for the UK (or other) importers, and I have seen larger trays like the one in PW, or the one above, but in the same red-yellow Past the Post graphics.

Copies of Monogram's PM35/8213 US Infantry kit-figures, there are several sets of these and we have looked at them briefly here at Small Scale World in the past, only the carded rack-toy examples though, and I will get round to comparing and contrasting all of them with the lose samples - one day!

The marking is neatly stamped in two parts 'MADE IN' and 'HONG KONG', despite also having the 'Empire made' on the box. These are smaller (45mm 'ish) than the closer to 54mm of the other sets mentioned/above.

ABC is for Another Building Collection

Just a quick follow-up to the previous post on the WWII copies from Hong Kong's ABC, I managed to get the officer in Sand off to Chris and he kindly shot them all together for us, so this is the ABC '8th/14th Armies', as they are currently known to exist.

Not that there's any empirical evidence for them being sold even as 8th Army, and almost certainly not as 14th, but . . . it's the shorts stupid!  The big question now (as it was last time) remains how many poses were there in total, and what poses remain to be found?

Chris is rather hoping for the Timpo/Kentoy (et al) Vickers machine-gunner to be among any missing figure poses, I rather hope someone (whoever was responsible for the known four) might have added shorts and an Infantry beret to the Monogram bazooka-team?

Which figures would you like to find loyal readers? I think it must be limited to one or two of the poses already in the Timpo 'solid', Crescent 8th Army or Monogram/Revell GI sets? And do you have any of the missing poses?

And many-thanks to Chris!

ABC is for Alarmingly Bad Copies!

Seen here at Small Scale World nearly a decade ago (!), loyal readers from way back will recognise these 'novelty' figures, but given how the traffic has increased over the years may be new to some of you. Chris Smith has only gawwn and found two new poses!

Running at under 45mm but mostly over 40mm, they are intermediate to the 'intermediate' scales! In Chris's own words . . .

"I finally picked up the officer last year from a job lot from ▲▲▲▲▲ on ebay. You don’t see them very often, then last month received two in a mixed lot off ebay that I hadn’t spotted when bidding."

"Two very interesting new poses; first up a charging with fixed bayonet pose, this is based on the charging with pack Herald figure but with the pack removed similar to the timpo copy you showed. Why they didn’t just copy the charging without pack pose? (Crescent had a charging figure as well, why not copy that?) The base is too small so impossible to stand the figure up without it falling over, blob of bluetack used for the photos."

"The 2nd new figure is walking with a walkie talkie, his DNA is from the Monogram GI’s but is a cut and shut of the upper half of the standing with walkie talkie and slung rifle and the lower half of the walking with slung rifle. I’ve got a few of the Monogram copies marked ABC so they would have them to hand. You can see the creases on the back of the figure are the same as the GI."

The full line-up with donors, they do - of course - fit in well with the 'pure' monogram copies and could be used with other 40/45mm figures, but I don't think there's much war-gaming with this kind of esoteric figure out there, they are collected for their own sake, and because they are a hundred-times harder to find than anything Airfix or Britains ever made!

Chris's eMails were all the excuse I needed to get mine out and shoot them again, despite them being the poor relatives now (I'll send one of mine to Chris by way of thanks for things and hopefully he's do us a follow-up shot of all four?).

The fourth pose being a pretty straight copy of a Timpo 8th Army figure with the same Crescent head-transplant as the others!

Base markings on mine; the officer is lacking the diamond-shaped ABC lozenge. ABC are quite good at marking though, even the cabs of their little 1-Ton Humber trucks (copied from Kleeware) had small marks, so this probably points to forgetfulness . . . or multiple cavities as . . .

. . . Chris then (a couple of weeks later/a couple of weeks ago) discovered they are also available in green! And he is marked. So - my two are now looking for at least six mates in two colours and some of you may [now] be looking for eight!

The size difference is down to camera angle and the sand one being a poorer mould-shot, compare the green one with mine and you'll see they are the same moulding. Again - the more we know the less we know, although this time - at least - we now know more but there's more to find, have you got fifth or even sixth poses, or more of the green ones?

Many thanks to Chris for sending these treasures to the Blog.