H is for How They Come In - Sandown, February

At Sandown Park in February Steve Vickers gave me a bag of bits he'd been keeping for me, junk to him, and mostly grist-to-the-mill for me, to be sorted into larger samples, but there were, nevertheless, several useful bits and at least one new-to-stash figure, so let's have a look at them!

 

Always useful, there are several versions of these Hong Kong motorcycles, in each size, particularly the very small Christmas cracker type, and when coupled with numerous colours of each version, it won't be until I've done final sorting, that I'll know how many of these are new.

 

A Hong Kong bath-toy boat and two kit boats, there are many tubs of these and other small vessels, and while the larger one is damaged, it might be the only sample of that deck-type, the hulls being all the same, and every time I find some, there's at last one new - shape/colour/paint - one!

 

Probably all modern/current, but I can't assume I've got them all, until I can compare them, with all the stuff in storage!

 

Useful bits, the skeleton with a German army helmet, is from one of those whacky, daddy-oh, Ed Roth style model-kits, the cactus (Hong Kong copy of Crescent) may be a new colour, the chair has a tub of small-scale furniture to join . . . all good stuff!

 

Pretty sure, without checking, these are the Marty-M Toy-Maymoon stuff, and as useful spares, have a place, indeed with its sticker still extant, I may cannibalise another jeep to make this one the exemplar?

 

The new to collection figure here is the blue one in the centre, possibly a gum or ice-cream premium, I may have other's from the - European - set, but I've not seen this sweeping mouse before. Another of the many athletes is also very useful, and, in fact, I think the khaki chap, fourth from the right is new too? Maybe French? I'm also still looking for several of the Matchbox pairs, still connected, and this may be one of the (middle left)?

 

A camouflage New Ray signaller, harder to find than any of the many copies, is the highlight in these four, the Thomas/Taffy is a tad damaged, but the Lido GI may be original, the Lido German is an HK copy, but in an unusual grey plastic.

 

Kit figures, these are a future, major sorting, I have loads of them, but getting Italeri, Tamiya and Airfix 'Multipose' separated, is the easy bit, the US box-scale/odd-scale stuff from the 1950's-early 1960's is a nightmare, but one I'll have to tackle one day. 

 

The real grist-to-the-mill, you can't know if they are new, or common, until you compare them with all the others, and there are many others! Again, it's something I intend to do one day, and they will each get their own pages, although the Airfix clones will end-up on the relevant post of the Airfix Blog!

 

Likewise, there's a lot of this stuff, and the best way to sort it properly is to compare it to bagged/carded samples, and it's a big job, not helped by the fact that the main, or known producers of it, Ellem, M-Toy, and Star, were themselves pirated many times by their local competitors, and a western importer might carry one maker's one year, and another makers another year, sometimes in/on the same bag/card!

Many thanks to Steve for all these, he wouldn't take any dosh for them, and sharing them with you is the easy task, much sorting in my future, I see!

N is for November's Sandown Park - Vehicles

As always, I picked-up a fair few vehicles a month ago (where does it go, this time which is already so limited to us!), and a pretty eclectic bunch at that, but Sandown Park was originally a train and die-cast show! Anyway, let's look at 'em!

A bit pricey, at a tenner; I like mine around the five-quid mark, but it does have one of the MPC-copy astronauts, which are harder to find. I may already have one, but unlike my MPC sample (Golden Astronauts), I can never remember which Spacex ones I have and which ones I need, so there's a tendency to just buy them! Not that the MPC situation is any better, I know I have all bar one, but can never remember which one, so don't buy!

 

Couldn't resist this Hot Wheels model, it's the basic 110 'Defender' as we took delivery of, back in '86/87, ahead of the rest of the British Army, because the Berlin Brigade had a separate procurement / purchasing system! Although most of ours were soft-tops, and the CO got a windowed 'Safari' hard-top 'limo' with foot-steps and roof-rack!

 

Nice - probably copies of a Western novelty - all plastic, Hong Kong made, road rollers, two in one colour, the other - bagged - in another and many thanks to Adrian Little, who found these and put them to one side for me. They'll make a nice line-up with the Blue Box, Blue Bow and others, alongside the Montaplex ones!

 

Eldon, no, Elmont, a mistake I always make! An early British maker of road transport models in plastic, rival to Wells-Brimtoy, with similar fly-wheel, push-and-go motors, they are manufactured in an early, soapy plastic, similar to the French cart in Chris's last parcel, but less stable and prone to warping.

 

It's in a hell of a state, but . . . I have a red one with . . . green (?) cable drums, which is so badly deformed, I will cannibalise it to get this one ship-shape. This has a slight shrinkage dip in the cab-roof, which will need hot water, a wooden wedge and some super-glue to straighten again (for a decade or two?), but my existing one has warping through the cab, body and cable drums, so there was method in the madness, and it was barely any money!

 

A lovely French motorcycle, possibly Cofalux, and probably a team-support vehicle from a Tour de France boxed set, alongside the Matchbox scrambler one, but not the common yellow plastic, number '8', this red, number '10', was from a gift-set.

 

Baby in a boat . . . it's a boat, with a baby!

 

Seen before, but another sample, cheap!

Kamley/Kwong Shing

 

Magneto, a German firm which actually produced a few of the dancers and ethnic dressed figures seen here before, and there's a post in the pipeline, but for now - missing its propulsion wand, this is a magnetic push-novelty, where negative magnetism is used to propel the car.

 

Zero-Hour / Code Zero plane, someone had glued the broken tail stabiliser back-on, but back-to-front, which I've fixed, but it made it dirt-cheap! These have passed their silly-money point now, and there was a lot of Zero Hour stuff around the halls, most of it very reasonable, compared to evilBay prices of only a few years ago!

 

I was getting stuff from the horses-mouth on this Bluebird line, a while ago, but then he started sending it to other Blogs, so it lost it's exclusivity, and I realised it was more about promoting his site, than supporting mine, or contributing to fandom, so I dropped out, and have stuff I'll probably never publish, and which subsequently appeared elsewhere, anyway. I'll promote your site if I chose to, or because it's the right thing to do, not because you ask me to, or it becomes conditional! 

 

I tried to pay Steve Vicker's for this unmarked 'British' generic novelty, on Saturday just-gone, as he'd given it to me at Sandown Park, and I felt he'd given it to me because I'd told him the vessel was a German premium and didn't belong in the box, but he wouldn't take money for it, so I filled my boots with French, Canadian and American plastic, to even things up a bit!

 

Technically, it IS a German premium, it still has Sanella on the hull, but it must be clearance or some kind of unused-stock sell-through, and once I'd found the little cellulose sheet (bottom left image), and read the instructions at home, it became obvious, from the faint traces of dark-brown glue (Evostick as was - evo' for evil!) on the sheet, that it was the correct ship.

 

The set of premiums (Manurba, Siku, someone like that) can be found unbranded, usually in brighter colours as later rack-toys (Tallon like), or with branding, like the Sanella here (a German margarine for baking, still going), in a number of configurations, but all on the same hull, there’s a liner, tramp steamer, small tanker and this . . . exploration vessel/mail packet?

 

It says "Gives hours of fun", but I suspect it was minutes of misery, trying to get it to work, against a very sensitive chemical reaction that's too easy to muck up, and where would you get small camphor tablets these days? The threat of banning moth-balls was enough for the industry to withdraw them, and while the EU never passed the rule, they've never returned, and most of the ones you might find on evilBay or Amazon are fakes . . . another missed 'Brwreakshit benefit"!

B is for Big Box of Bounty - Vehicles, Bits & Bobs

Well, luckily I have a day off, today, as I have a ton of plastic shite . . . Sorry, 'polymer loveliness' to sort and photograph, from the BP Sandown Park toy fair, yesterday, where I had a excellent day, but before I get started on that, here's the latest instalment of the plunder-posts from Chris Smith's most recent donation to the blog, which is all the man-made stuff! 

 

This is rather nice! A probably French farm-cart, in that heavy, hard-toffee-like polystyrene material, which I suspected was probably French, but sent these images to the authors of FIM, just in case they hadn't seen it, however, they were familiar with it, and were also of the opinion it is French.

 

It has a lovely tipping-action, via a lever at the front, and may be missing a probably removable back-board or ladder-rave, wheels seem to be the same polymer, while the white tyres are a polyethylene, I think? Maker still needed though?

 

This is how it came out of the box, with a Pokémon (?) hitched-up!

 

A Blue Box Austin champ, which seems to have been deliberately cut-back, in preparation for some conversion, or super-detailing? It will go in the spares for now, while the little PVC Galoob knock-off is new to me, Blog and the collection.

 

The weird landing craft belongs with various generic rack-toy 'army men' and diver sets, and while having various holes in which it looks like something should be plugged-in, is found just like this, in sealed sets!

 

More rack-toys with a militarised executive jet and one of the MPC mini-plane piracies, all useful, and the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar (which Dad jumped out of, on many occasions), seems to be one of the slightly bronzed-silver versions which are harder to find.

 

The submarine is from a modern rack-toy, or rack-toys, and we've probably seen it here in sealed/shelfied set/s in recent years, and is a useful loose addition. The racing car is from one of those credit-card shaped (and material) novelty sets, I have dinosaurs in the collection somewhere, and there are several sets of jet fighters.

 

The sports-car with lenticular 'window' is an old 1d or 2p gum-ball capsule-machine prize, while the locomotive is a modern (possibly Kinder) take on the old erzgebirge toy, where several wagons, or coaches, would be hooked or tied-together as a full train.

 

Three cracker-toy type bikes/motorcycles in the front-left 'row', with the larger bike we've seen before in various greens or spray-camouflage, associated with the Supreme/Ackerman, 'Fritz-helmeted' PVC figures, while the chap on the right is a Hong Kong rider, I think, used for both motorcycles and the quad-bike type machines?

 

A couple of flags (Norway (R) and semi-fictional 'African', left ) and what I suspect is the top of an animal 'toob', being a spinning map of the world, possibly seen here as a shelfie, I can't recall, but it looks familiar? One feels it's just the accessory for a evil Doctor's lair in some superhero or Bond'esque scenario, as the conference table!

 

I'd love to know where the axe comes from or who it belongs to, the shovel will be from one of the eight or ten-inch Action Man/GI Joe rip-offs, the pistol looks like a Christmas cracker prize, and more specifically, the mini, tree-crackers? I think the lantern with clear-marble lens is a doll's house accessory, due to its diminutive size, similar tourist items tend to be larger and have a pencil-sharpener secreted about them!

 

Part of a rack-toy bridge, an oil-drum, which may be Airfix and a rather nice, probably Hong Kong made wheelbarrow, which could have conveniently been for that yellow figure (Chris reports Eric Critcley as confirming him being a French farmer and not a cowboy), but it's too big!

However, with so many farmworker and construction/road-worker figures in the 'unknown civilian' zones, I'm sure it'll fit someone, even if it doesn't actually belong to them! Soft polyethylene with a very small wheel, is it from something cartoony like Bob the Builder?

 

Bits of the 'Bucking Bronco' jig-toy puzzle, a Richard I label which may prove useful one day, clearly it belongs on the base/plinth of a statuette or figure of some kind, which may come in, or already be in the stash, without a label?

 

The other casualty of Royal Fail's comprehensive parcel-mashing programme, was the blob to the right, which deserves a restoration! It's got the Airfix Reconnaissance Set's German dispatch-rider at it's core, with the wheels of a US M3 half-track either side and something on the back, and would seem to have been a home-made sci-fi bike thing, with the rider, now headless, painted up like a Soviet general on May 1st!

 

Marx (?) on the left, modern rack-toy/play-set boulder on the right!

 

Manta Force from Bluebird/Tomy, both missing bits, but both usable, and while other Manta stuff is in the forthcoming Sci-fi post, one day we'll redo all the Bluebird overviews, which were back near the beginning of the Blog and well overdue for an updated treatment, and these will be useful for that!

G is for Gorgeous Grail Garnered in Great Gewgaw Gala

It's funny, but since I picked this up (at Sandwon), I've seen about ten on evilBay, all boxed, all with the handle-bars in their little bag, so it would seem someone has found a carton of ex-shop stock, and either broken it up at [hammer] auction, or divvied it out among a few dealer mates, and they are trying to off-load them at the same time . . . Well, either that, or it was once (mid-1970's?) as common as muck!

 

Box.

 

Our old friend Lik Be with their daft monster hugging an LB marque! 

 

And, it may well be that the latter scenario is the truer, as there is often one or two on evilBay, always silly money (I didn't pay anything near what the current ones are up for, mild water-damage to box), and I have vague memories of seeing them in newsagents when I was still quite young, and being raised to believe all Hong Kong production was poor, cheap, naff and 'no good', so I've always hankered after one, and it's nice to tick-off a proper grail item.

 

Somewhere between a 1960's racer (shades of motorcycle & sidecar combinations, in the fairing), and the Fireball XL5 Jetmobiles (other sit-astride future transports were available!), for now I'm leaving the handle-bars in situe, but at some point I may get them out for a better shot or two. There are colour-reversed versions out there . . . New grail?

 

Loosely related to their other space figures, but the suit on this 100mm-odd figure, is more motorcycle-leathers than anything USAF/NASA-issued, however the double air-tanks and pistol holster are similar to features on the other eight sculpts! Plug-in, moving arms provide help with dynamism, but odd moulding has resulted in hollow legs/feet.

 

And I nearly wrote 'simplified' moulding there, but looking at it; at the angles required to remove the product from the mould; and the 3-way-split join-lines, it may have been anything but simplified, and in fact quite a technically advanced 3-part tool, with 2-phase moving parts, in each moulding-cycle?

 

Vroom, vroom! Although, the artwork shows multiple rocket exhausts, so more of a xchkkkkkrrrrrrrrrrrrr! And is that a standard Honda seat, or a Kwaka!

L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown February - Other Figures

The final post in this sequence is the rest of the figures, I think we've caught-up with 'London Loot' too, but there will be some 'H is for . . . s' to come, with more Toy- and Gift Fair revues to intersperse with them! And Easter's coming, and there's other stuff in the queue, and, and, I seem to be in a productive phase!

 

A couple of hollow-cast WWI French (Britains?), although they went to war in 1940 with pretty-much the same stuff, just in khaki! Both from Adrian's pound-tray, with the little unknown tin-plate howitzer/gun from his five-quid box, of such gems! It probably fired little wooden balls or dowels?

 

Two post-Giant on the left and a Quaker mounted Gladiator on the right, square-up for a bit of argie-bargie, at the feet of Cherilea's Sphinx. I was so pleased with the Sphinx purchase, I got it out to show a mate, and he pulled the same one out of his pocket! I think we'd both bought them from the same seller!

 

Late Blue Box (polyethylene) Britains copies on the left, Blue Box for Triang-Hornby (polystyrene) on the right, also squaring-up for what looks like it will be a fairly uneven fight, so unfair! With an explosion between them, which I think is a modern re-mould of the old Lineol shell-burst?

 

Early Westair ECW type. In this packageing they predate Kinder by several, if not many years, the full story will be on the 'Mocherette' page, whenever I get round to it!

 

These are nice! Two of Charles C. Stadden's war-gaming figures, around 35mm, home painted in a glossy, toy-soldier style, I spent some time googling Nappie's marshals, before switching to 'Russians', with no more success, but other uniforms I found, suggested they were more likely to be Russians (1812) than French, but then I tried 'Prussians' and found images of Frederick the Great (not Blucher), which looked like the chap on the right, so we go back a ways, to the 7YW and all those successions, and find the chap on the left is probably Hans Joachim von Zieten? Seen here as a flat, the blue on the Stadden being a little too pale, while 'Old Fritz' should have a silver breast-plate with those shoulder straps!

 

Clockwise from the greeney; who is a1990's Lucky Bag piracy of Marx's Pecos Bill, and a Kinder piracy of Lone Star's 'Metallion', Pat Masterton, who's full sized version was seen entering the stash, courtesy of Chris Smith last August!

 

A Hong Kong copy of, or 'after' Crescent (I think), in the style of Blue Box, but not one of theirs, a Kinder knight, from the two-part horses, these are nearly always found with their weapons broken these days, very brittle shafts, so a good find, another of the Morestone Stagecoach drivers, and, in the centre, the old 1960's Lucky Bag Indian in gold 'styrene.

 

This is Thomas, but much mucked-about with, painted and with a replacement set of handle-bars, which are attached with a lump of god-knows-what, it could be play-doh! So, again, at some point in the future, I think I'll try it in the ultrasonic cleaner, and see what that leaves me to work with? Pretty-sure I have a good one anyway, so I can afford to 'try something' and see!

 

Adrian found a stash of Hong Kong farm figures while sorting his stock (he is semi-retiring as I write), and passed them to my stash, and while the hope is to attribute a fair few of these to makers and/or named-sets, one day, this isn't that day! So it's just eye candy for now.

 

I have tons of this, lots of it from Chris, Peter, Trevor &etc, tubbed (large scale) or bagged (smallies) by pose, and most of these will be duplicates, but you can see the many variations between them means a few will be the first sample.

 

Strangely, various makers (or issuers) used the same colour schemes - blue/white, red/blue or red/yellow, which I suspect is because lots of smaller makers (sub-pirates, all of them!) in the blocks of the Kowloon Walled City slum (demolished in the 1990's), were being employed to produce all the farm and zoo stuff for repeat orders, for the pocket-money/rack-toy jobbers of the west, a similar situation with all the sub-Giant Wild West, and various generations of 'Army Men'?

 

Differentials include size, base shape/type, base marks, holes or pin-release marks and plastic colour, and they are all copies of other people's sculpts, with the obvious exception of the New Ray 'Country Life' chap holding the lamb-poodle-piglet hybrid! He comes in different colourways too.

 

Again clockwise from the far-left, we have an Airfix motorcycle rider, of whom I still need a few for my fleet of machines, I'll leave the paint (chocolate brown, on chocolate brown?) for now, after the lesson with the bikes! Next to him is a construction-worker/driver, and I think he may be French? He's a hard polystyrene, and well detailed, so I don't think he's Hong Kong, and he may be in a vehicle catalogue somewhere in the archive?

 

The robber is Lledo, the race-horse and jockey will probably be from a board-game, while the seated figure would appear to be from a model railway line/range, but I don't recognise the figure, or the charcoal styrene under the paint?