B is for Benevolent Buys - 3 of 3

Along with the cats and turtle/tortoise (you'll agree it wasn't clear, but flatter = turtle?), came this bag of shrapnel at the start of October, nothing special, but all fun!

 

A Fiver's the top-end for this kind of thing, but it'd been a few days since anything joined the stash, and withdrawal was starting to itch, so what choice did I have?!!

 

A near-complete set of the 'Nabisco' Magic Roundabout, and in a follow-up I'll explain way I haven't italicised the Nabisco, and have placed it in single-quotes, but for now, strange that it's all in red, with no sign of the other colours normally associated with the 'cereal premium'?

 

Standard Erzgebirge houses and church, but larger than previous ones we've seen here, with an extra window each, The Church/Public building with Zwiebelturm (onion tower, one of the first German words I learnt, the dreaded Umleitung came second, Bummelzug third!) is one from our childhood, I've been after for years, so really pleased to add this to the pile!

 

 

Other wooden stuff of the Erzgebirge type, with the train possibly a later Kinder one, and the car probably from a board game. Some of it may go with the cottages in the previous shot, but it's not obvious, while styling, paint, varnish &etc. . . suggests several sources, and many years between oldest and youngest samples.

 

Mostly 1970/80's rack-toy scenic stuff, but the greenhouse is from the New Ray HO civil/model railway accessory range, and the two Poplar trees are new to the collection, and - with those huge bases - probably from something more infant-oriented, and also, probably more modern.

 

Odds & sods; the barrow looks like it should have a pencil-sharpener attached, but there's no sign of such an accoutrement having ever been attached, and I don't know what the blue-cap is from, or if it's even anything to do with toys whatsoever? 

F is for Flying Jeep, H is for Hafner, M is for Malcom, R is for Rotabuggy

Brian Berke, roving reporter in NY, sent me these a month or so ago, and they got put on hold because of Rack Toy Month (and everything else he'd sent the blog), and the fact that I needed to play a bit of catch-up with the queue, but it's a fascinating thing, which nearly 'happened', and was performing well in tests, when it was pulled, purely due to advancements in Allied glider capacity/abilities.

 

The R. Malcom & Co's., M. L. 10/42 'Hafner' Rotachute-Rotabuggy, Flying Jeep, it's a Jeep . . . wot flu!

 

Utilising the New Ray Jeep, itself a nice model I haven't tracked down yet (well, I'm miles behind with larger scale vehicles, and they aren't a priority!), Brian has built a model of the Hafner Jeep for his troops, and above is the work-in-progress shot, showing how he went about it.

 

Basically Brian seems to have used a stiff paper or card, over a plastic frame, and when I was a modeller, I often used tissue paper for vehicle tilts/canopies - after a couple of coats of Humbrol they became quite robust, if you use a stiffer paper - a bit of Basildon Bond or something - you're laughing, it's as good as plastic sheet. Also, some people now wash the paper with super-glue to get even more plastic-like rigidity.

 

Finished and posed with the Lone Star paratroopers, who seem perfectly suited to the task, it really looks the part, for more on this machine, there's always Wikipedia:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafner_Rotabuggy

 

Strangely I have a memory of seeing this in the Airborne Forces Museum, at Browning Barracks in Aldershot as a kid, but if the only one (at Middle Wallop) is a 1980's mock-up, I must be imagining it, because I'm thinking of '71/72? There was a long series of cabinets along the window side of the museum as you entered, which contained models made by the modelling club of Depot Para', and it's likely there was a model of this there maybe? But I have a - presumably false - memory of one, out on the parade ground with the air-portable Land Rover on Hercules pallet, and the similarly bound Humber Hornet with Malkara missiles, which were parked near the main-road past the barracks.

 

Fiddler's Green, a name we've seen here before, also offer an all card model:

 

http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/aircraft/Flying-Jeep.html

 

It looks more like a mini-moke, but it's a bit of fun. And, to be honest, their page (scroll down) is better than Wikipedia's for imagery and history! And it didn't fail, it wasn't unsuccessful, it was working, when it was pulled, because it was easier to land a jeep with its gun, from a glider, without a big hollow tail attached!

 

Funny how people get all excited about things like the German Maus, a monumental waste of time, money and material, while we were towing people down the runway in these! I hope all that window area was plexiglass, not real glass, you wouldn't want to fly hot into a war-zone with all that glass, 12-inches from your face?

Many thanks to Brian for the shots of this fascinating scratch-build.

R is for Rake of Rack Toys!

I mentioned, after the mad rush to collect and post the horror sets in time for Halloween, that David DeSoto had sent other figures too, and while I shot them at the time, I've only just got round to posting them, here, now! A bit more 'khaki' sneaking into the festive season!

An Imperial set, which, interestingly has those copies of New Ray, which I got quite excited about a few years ago, dating the set, as David writes; "The Imperial set with the New Ray knock-offs came out right before or shortly after Imperial Toys filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 here in the U.S.  [2020, ed.] As you may know, Ja-Ru, Inc. bought Imperial's assets and entered into a separate arrangement to purchase their operations in Mexico", David adds; "The two places where Imperial soldiers were once abundant, Wal-Mart and Dollar Tree, have not had soldiers on their pegs with any regularity since the transition."

Another, slightly older (?) Imperial set with a mix of the old, much pirated Tim Mee GI's, which I've always liked as they are 100% depicting the Vietnam era, along with some mof the more modern-looking GI types, straight outta' China! Colours are donor-specific, so it's Vietnam v's Gulf!

This is one of the more current generics, which we've seen a few of, in recent years here, however these are interesting for being the ones I've only shown as an online image, courtesy of Amazon or Ali Baba, and are the figures where each comes with his own larger-based scenic vignette of street-furniture or defence work! I will get them out and look at them properly once I'm settled.

Another generic, but this time a 1970/80's original, useful for being the copies of Britains/Lone Star swoppet Wild West, another long term project is to try and ascribe as many of these as possible, and while they are dead-common in lose lots, they are always mixed-up by the juvenile original owners, and sets like this help you work out which is which, as far as base-type, ethylene or PVC body parts or accessories, or even poses are concerned. Credited to a Triple D importer/Jobber.

 

These look to be the current (ish) copies/homages of Supremes hearald'esque Wild West, now credited to DL / Du Liang Toys (previousl;y Maxxi Toys, Stobok, Funtastic, Aliki, Liberty Imports and PMS-McColls), and consist of just the foot figures with a play-mat in that strangely metallic, slightly crinkley plastic.

 

I've also left this in the bag for now, as I've never seen one over here, and I don't think Steve Weston has them either, so I'm guessing these are a US 'show exclusive' whereby AIP (Armies in Plastic) get to shift end of line, over production or test-shots in mixed bags at an affordable price?

There's Colonial/Boxer rebellion, some ACW, WWI and a few Marlburian/AWI types I think, and a nice introductory sample to AIP's stuff, of which I don't have a lot, and what I do have is mostly WWI, I think.

There were also these lose AIP figures, which I know I didn't have, sold variously as Gulf War Infantry, Marines and US Peacekeepers, depending on the plastic colour, each in a set A and set B, of six poses each. I think these are the former two, and between them seem to be all the poses*, which some other-colour duplicates, so again a nice sample, and they are - undeniably - very nice sculpts, well animated.

 

It's not that I ignore this new stuff out of some misguided principle, but simply that A) there's so much else to find of either a vintage or more ephemeral (rack toy) nature, B) it's priced to sell-to, and does sell to adult collectors, so will probably always be around, in quantity, and C) as new production, it does get covered-well, elsewhere, not least Plastic Warrior magazine, but all samples are gratefully received nevertheless.

 

And many thanks to David for all the above, and the previously-seen Halloween bits, that's two additions to the Tag list . . . and archive too; DL and Triple D!

P is for Peterkin - 4 of 4 - New Purchases

OK, so, probably the best post of the four, as we get a bit closer to them, and they are three new sets! These were a few quid each, so I grabbed the three different ones I saw, and they are not carrying the contents of the sets we've looked at earlier this morning!

The My Farm (possibly the least original title for a set of rack toy farm animals ever!) seems to contain a set of totally different sculpts from the bucket, the Dog World hints at a Cat World, which I would have bought in preference if it had been there, but it wasn't, and it may just be wishful thinking on my part? While we have a set of soldiers, looked at properly, below!

 

The dogs are nicely executed, but let down by a rather nondescript colour scheme, with the dogs moulded in either a white or mid-tan polymer, but then decorated in black or a brown of the same shade? But they seem to be new sculpts, although - famous lasts words - they may well turn-out to be copies of Schleich or Papo or someone like that.

It's one of the big jobs in my future, sorting all this farm-zoo-bird-sea life-insect-dinosaur stuff out, and attributing it all properly, but hopefully when I get stuck into the A-Z blogs properly, it will all come together better, for now, we look at this stuff just to help ID some of it!

The horse has a rather daft face (the bucket horse is much better) but the rest of the set is reasonably good, and well decorated for the price-point/rack-toy type, while a smaller bag is stapled into the larger carrier, with the poultry in it, clearly they are a separate tool and get passed across the factory-floor after decoration/sorting!

 

The military set contains 16 figures around 54/60mm (depending on the pose), and they seem to be copies of the New Ray figures (which must be 20+years old now), but the quality of them suggests they may be from the New Ray tool, I won't be able to say until I've compared them all . . . 'them' being several other sets of clones, along with the originals!

 

They are numbered on the underside of the base (or the belly of the prone figure), which will also help with the tool comparison, and are that 'first' Gulf War (liberation of Kuwait) uniform style, US GI's. As you can see, cavity 5 is closer to 70mm if he stands up!

 

So that's Peterkin given more coverage that they probably deserve in one day, but nice to see someone importing that amount of cheap pocket-money stuff these days!

W is for Whacky Wheeled Wanderers

Picked this up the other day, relatively recent (2014) and not expensive, but possibly the best 'readymade' so far, so we will have a look at it, although while it's not a kit in the sense of Airfix or Revell's trim-and-glue offerings', it does come in pieces and includes two screws!

New Ray's window-boxed Space Adventure, includes the Command Module and Eagle Lander (in an indeterminate scale) and a Luna Rover 'Buggy' with supporting figures in approximately 1:50 (35mm).

The bits I'm less interested in! The Command Module comes as a single piece, the Landing Module is two assemblies, both of four pieces with the screws, and after assembly, they further clip together with the two holes just visible on the box-base and two spigots on the Rescue Module - which are different sizes so everything ends-up the right way round with the two halves of the exit ladder lining-up.

This is much cooler, a die-cast model with two clip-, or slip-in plastic instruments that can be glued, but I'll leave them loose to minimise future breakages . . . albeit increasing the risk of loss! the driver however is polymer.

The final item requires me taking a new 'line-up' photograph, so soon after I last updated the Airfix page! Indeed I've added some more to that page today, but not this chap yet. The base I'm using is - I think - a wall clock backing, and possibly a home-craft kit one at that, but I don't know, that's just a guess!

The Instruction sheet has no surprises, and no whacky language or syntax, indeed it has no words of command or guidance whatsoever " . . . and they did it all with a computer-brain smaller than a Nokia's!" But does have some easy-to-follow pictures . . . bargain!

So, here we have the nearest rival (bottom right) from Realtoy (so probably/almost certainly Pioneer, or Pioneer components - the driver for sure), it too is a die-cast mazac-alloy model, with a different layout of different instruments, given the effort that's gone into making these models, would I be correct in thinking they represent different mission vehicles, or different tasked journeys within a single Apollo mission?

Above it is the Tang drinks premium from the USA, it's had a bit of damage to a chair back, but I'm not in a position to be trundling such things into surgery at the moment so mending can wait. It is almost as simple as the Airfix one, and the positioning of the boxes on the front 'plate' have you wondering if they didn't use Airfix's as a starting-point for their bigger design?

The model is all polypropylene including the identical riders, and is about 1:35th scale, it has a motor-mechanism, running through the hollow rear-axle, which consists of a loop of thread-elastic (like you get round your spring-onions or gammon-joint sometimes) which hooks over two studs on the left wheel-hub, it is then wound by holding that wheel still and winding the handle on the other side, which the elastic is also looped through, which twists it up in the tube. Let go of the wheel and off it goes, dragging the handle with it? The handle may make a motor-noise, but I can't test it until I replace the now floppy, perished thread.

Finally the small one is from Safari's tube of Nasa's stuff; 'Space Toob', and is just as simple as the K&M one we looked at here (rather small images, but they do enlarge if you click on the main picture), and is in a similar material - substitute PVC.

The other three from the side, that's it; the other three from the side, there's no more blurb in the blurb jar!

I had a couple more shots which were too good to chuck! And . . . a bit more blurb; the instruments on the Realtoy model are integral die-cast with the main-body, so more robust than New Ray's, until they're snapped-off after-which they would prove a bugger to fix!

The Hing Fat one can be seen in a bag here, while the Montaplex one (or actually a rather dreary, grey plastic BuM reissue one) will get here eventually. I still have to track-down Redbox's recent version (a small black & white finished one), and a nice foam-puzzle one I saw from Buil-d-ream at some point.

And I thought I'd put the Galoob one/s up here, but I can't find the post, so I may not have (just thought about it with vivid mental imagery!), so i'll rectify that when I next have them to hand . . . they aren't in the drawers we saw briefly the other day, they are kept with the near in-scale Micro-Machines figures elsewhere!

C is for Contributions and Comparisons

As stuff comes in to the control centre here it doesn't always get sorted immediately, indeed, some sits around for ages - Chris sent me a box a couple of weeks ago, which I haven't shot properly yet, I've taken  a sorting shot I meant to get up on a Faceplant group but haven't yet, however I may do this evening (Wednesday).

But it means that sometimes things can be united with other 'additions' before they are fully reunited with things in the main collection (especially in the last few years with bits of it in storage or the attic, often both), while other things might be sorted quite fast and I may or may not do shots for a follow-up, this post is a few of those moments!

This was the simple bringing together of the rocketry in Chris's April lot with the similar items in Peter's March donation as they were still at hand and the rest had gone-off to storage already!

I have lots of this sort of stuff, and a whole folder of eBay images over-texted to ID them all one day, and there are many, from the little red or yellow bullets from the plastic hand-gun key-rings through Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox up to larger battery-operated or push-and-go vehicles from Hong Kong, and at the moment I have them in four bags - small, medium, large and model kit!

You can see it will not be an easy job, the two large white ones are clearly from different sources or batches with notable changes in tool-design, despite being visually the same missile. The spring-laucher won't launch either of them, suggesting a missing collar, washer or widget of some kind, while the grey one is probably from a Sci-Fi thing or larger, modern 'China' aircraft toy? But, one day, if I live long-enough, we'll get a good guide sorted.

We've seen these before, and they come in all the time, but as you can see, there seem to be an infinite range of colours! This is the 'master collection, combined with what was quite a large bagful I'd built-up here, and confirm what was suggested when I Blogged the 'here' ones a few years ago; two poses each of cowboy and Indian.

They are very small, maybe 15/18mm, in Peru they had a similar set of race horses with moulded-on rider, they look to be larger 20/25mm and with only the one pose and Rolo Roncallo at the Minitoys Peru Blog (about ten steps down the page) reports "Race horses: usually come with a card and die race track. Also variations.".

Now; while I have many of the Westerners, I have none of the racers (despite having lots of other small cracker or board-game riders), so it would seem to back-up something I've pointed-out in the past - these HK (now China) novelty/generics companies had many items in their trade catalogues, and different customers could order different items, it happens that someone in the UK (probably Tom Smith) ordered a load of the Wild West figures, while someone in Peru ordered the race horses.

Which of the two, or which others in the same style/colours were in your jurisdiction?

This is just putting away the mine-clearer, or not putting him away - I decided he was so different he'd need his own bag with all the generics until more of his mate's turn-up! Chris's donation figure is sandwiched between the Toy Story bucket figure and larger Burger King Toy Story giveaway. But anyway, this is the current extent of Tim Mee and their takes-off's as of 22nd March . . .

. . . I've since had a couple more lots come in including some multicoloured ones with both bright-green and red mine-detector figures, who are now waiting to join the others in their bag, in that box!

Meanwhile the Airfix dog flat Chris sent is a totally different sculpt to the one on the Airfix card! And it's becoming clear there are two sets/tools for these, which raises the possibility of two sources; Airfix and . . . Kleeware? We have several cows extant or listed (one of which is a bull?), two elephant variations, two lions &etc.

Left shot shows the collection to date with enough variations for me to have already got confused and had to adjust the little word-for-windows table several times, on the relevant page, when I next update it there will be Dog - Type I and Dog - Type II!

However, and in the meantime; Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior magazine has confirmed the greyhounds as being in an old, early Airfix catalogue (or price list), although there are six poses, I only have five.

I don't know if you (loyal reader) were here or recall when I got both excited and confused over these a few Rack Toy Month's ago, but it turned out the ones Chris originally sent had fallen down the back of a bookcase! I found them a couple of months ago, after the painted one (here on the right) had been added to the others and sent to storage, so the four on the left should be 'new' even if we've seen them before!

Basically I shouldn't have got so excited about them, I've since seen them a few times, there are several sources and they are recent-to-current and I think they were tracked-down to/as copies of New Ray originals? So Peter Evans and Chris Smith had ended-up sending me these, Chris twice, and one or two others have appeared, but thanks to both of them, for everything they send to the Blog.

N is for New Ray!

Following on from the previous posts and getting the obvious title above them, this is a quick look at one of the 1:32nd scale sets, non-military.

Taken from the Country-Life line, and in a third graphical style, I believe this set dates from around 1999 - the date may be on the reverse of the card but it went to storage before I bought the lovely A3 scanner I'm now using!

It is in the catalogue we saw in the previous post, but that example is in the brighter green graphics and sharing an assortiment code; 05232 with seven other sets - again, there may be a numerical with this one, but it'll be on the back with the bar-code, so whether it's the same or not I can't say!

Not the best shots I'm afraid, sometimes direct, bright sunlight just washes the camera out, it doesn't happen often, but summer seems to be when! Bottom left has the foot figure showing the course to one of the 'spare' horses, the other three shots are of the wall jump and show-jumper. PVC horses and figures, 'styrene accessories and 'ethylene plants.

Not up to the overall quality of the Britains sets/figures, it holds-up well against the Parker-Palitoy set and the less common Thomas Salter set with it's Hong Kong copies of the Britains, add the three Corgi figures from the alternate offerings of Horse Box and with all the above you can mount quite the equestrian event these days . . . Pony in my Pocket also had various obstacles for show-jumping.

E is for Ephemera - New Ray Catalogue

Don't know when exactly this catalogue dates from, but I believe it to be slightly earlier than the 1996 sets we looked at this morning, so maybe 1989-01'ish? These are high-resolution scans, but the catalogue was a low level three-colour dot-matrix printing, so a lot of it is not as clear as we would like, but seems to be a pretty comprehensive listing of their sets before the graphics change to the sets in the previous post.

 

These day's it's all online http://www.new-ray.com/html/products_catalog.php?id=1 but mostly larger-scales and mostly die-cast stand-alone models, rather than the range of polymer play sets seen above!