Bits in salmon-pink are later additions, notes or further information supplied by others.
Bits in Khaki-green are 'work-in-progress' listings and anyone is welcome to add missing details, whether single items or whole chunks.
Most photographs are between 6.5 (old Fuji's), or up to 40mpx (new Olympus) with a Samsung and several Nikon's (the best all-rounders) come and gone, and most will blow up to greater than screen size if you hover on them and click. However, I've noticed some of the older images aren't enlarging, this is probably a Blogger/Picasa/date/traffic/auto-archive thing?
If you think you can add some information, or identify any of the 'unknowns', please use the comment feature rather than emailing me.
Bold; denotes 'real-world' product titles or nomenclature - sometimes!
Please report any dead links, and suggest any links you think should/could be added.
Note I have now found out how to switch-off the slide-show thingy, so just clicking on the photographs will open them on a whole page where most will then enlarge further with another click - if the cursor is in a 'plus' sign.
This doesn't seem to work for some of the older posts, this is a Blogger/Internet coding change thing I can do nothing about, one day I'll update or replace the more important ones but that's years away.
While waiting for an ok to join the RPG Bloggers network, I became a bit
frustrated.
So, here is a current blogroll of 1000+ English Language RPG blogs, an...
... and with strange aeons even death may die.
I'm not dead, just working on something else. That "something else" should
be released before the end of the...
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
We haven't had a 'news/views' for a while, nor have we had a 'toys in the media', so here's a quickie, using a couple of dodgy shots I took off the screen, from a puff-piece on sci-fi movies on YouTube, where if you watch one, you get another hundred in your feed!
"Movies which broke the studio", "Sci-fi movies nobody saw", 10 sci-fi movies which everyone's forgotten", Sci-fi movies which never got a cinema release", 20 best erotic sci-fi movies" (tamer than you could possibly imagine), "20 Italian Sci-fi knock-offs" that sort of thing, they show you the same clips of the same few dozen sci-fi flicks, most of which were actually on VHS in three versions for the whole of the 1980/90's!
Among which is The Terrornauts, a 1967 film which utilises a fleet of Pyro/Tudor Rose Space Clipper toys, previously also seen in the 1950's Spaceways Annual;
But all new images, a bit of a reprise for the Torgano Wild West demi-rondes I got at last year's Plastic Warrior show, from Adrian Little, to remind those with a bit of spare time this Saturday, that if they get their arses to Whittton (Twickenham), they too might find something like this to take home, at the best Toy Soldier show in the calendar, but I'll be there, looking too!
Held at The Winning Post, a motel, inn and the Harlequin Suite function room (the important bit), technically at Whitton, which is the nearest station, it's a few hundred yards from both the headquarters of Rugby Union and the eponymous Harlequin's Stoop, both of whom consider themselves very much Twickers!
I nicked the travel details from Paul's PW Blog, I've been a bit lazy this year!
Directions to The Plastic Warrior Show
BY ROAD
From Outside London take M25, M3, A316, go over one roundabout and entrance to the winning Post is after 500 metres on your left.
From Inner London, after Richmond Circus follow A316 and continue straight on over three roundabouts. You will pass the Winning Post on your right. At the next roundabout take the fourth exit (returning, back the way you have come, but on the other side of the A316 dual carriageway) and the entrance to the Winning Post will be on your left after 500 metres.
FREE PARKING. There is extensive free parking at the site and in the residential roads behind the Winning Post. The Harlequin Suite is to the right of the main building. The venue is in the London ULEZ charging zone so you will need to check that your vehicle complies with the omissions requirements or pay the relevant fee.
BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT
From Central London and the South of England by overground train (South Western Railways) from Waterloo or Clapham Junction to Whitton Station. There are two trains an hour and the journey time is approx. 30 minutes, this is a loop line so four trains an hour run from two different platforms at Waterloo Station.
From the North of England by train to London, arriving at Kings Cross, St. Pancras or Euston.
Take the London Underground Victoria Line to 'Vauxhall' and change for South Western Railways to Whitton Station as above. Whitton Station is just three minutes walk from the Winning Post. Turn left out of the station past Jubilee Avenue and Pauline Crescent, the next turning on your left is the back entrance to the Winning Post.
Should you wish to take the London Underground to Richmond as in previous years, the easiest thing is to change platform and take a South Western Railways service to Whitton Station as above, (four trains an hour from Richmond, journey time seven minutes).
Alternatively you could get a black cab or a 110 bus from the taxi rank and bus stop outside the station, a cab should take about 10 minutes, the bus is 24 minutes.
Oyster cards are accepted on all London Underground lines, buses and South Western Railways to Whitton Station.
The Winning Post Inn
Opens from 08.00 a.m. to 11.00 p.m. serving breakfast or coffee for those who arrive early. The pub serves drinks (alcohol) from 11.00 a.m. and lunches from 12.00 a.m. There is no cash point on site but Whitton town centre, with a full range of shops and cash machines, is just three minutes walk from the hall.
Within the Winning Post complex is a Premier Inn travel hotel for those who want to break their journey and stay overnight.
Probably had that title before, but I think a few duplicates have slipped through over the years now!
♪♫♪♪♫ It was forty years ago, today . . . ♪♫♪♪♫ * We were confined to barracks and light duties, due to reports coming out of the - then - Soviet Republic of Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR), about some shenanigans in a place called Chernobyl. As it happened the radio-active plume spent several days curling round to the South East, South, and then West of Berlin and dumping its shite on other people, we got it around the 4th May, by which time we'd all stopped taking precautions, and got a full dose of whatever was on offer . . . low levels of caesium I think? I mention it only because there's lots about it in the media at the
moment, and I keep thinking "I know, I was there!", when I wasn't,
really! And, we was robbed . . . if it had been strontium, we all would have become super-soldiers, huh?
*No we didn't, nobody knew anything about it until the evening of the 28th, when the Soviets deigned to admit what was going on! So we probably got our frowny, concerned pep-talks around the 29th!
We have family in Penrith and their sheep were still being tested and rejected years later. They didn't get a major blast, but the plume did hit in early May, and hung around for a bit, so I guess, rather like the rainstorms which occasionally flash-flood Aldershot or Guildford when they meet the Hog's Back and decide not to slip over, the plume hit the hills there and deposited a lot of caesium on the grass?
It's why I'm not a fan of nuclear power. Wind, solar and wave, yep, bring it on, but nuclear . . . Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, Windscale . . . when it goes wrong, it's serious, it costs billions, and it affects millions, for several generations, and that's without the growing problem of what to do with the waste.
I was quite busy yesterday, I added some follow-up stuff to the parachute page;
I also added a lot more to the WWII Japanese page, and blurbed it up, I'd rather forgotten how many of the posts over there still need text, and the Japanese was one of them!
And I'm not going to escape with a text-only post am I? So here's some 'seen elsewhere' stuff, involving mixed lots - proper eye candy!
This was a bag of bits Peter Evan thrust at me at a London show in Camden I think, they may have got a subsequent breakdown post nearer the time (2023), but there's fun stuff to spot.
I seem to recall this was an evilBay lot (2022) which I won, but which Chris Smith had brought to my attention, as it had a couple of the German premium bandsmen (bottom right) and some small scale copies of the Manurba Wild West swivel-waist figures, also done as premiums or wundertüten, in solid form?
These were the February 2023 purchases, and some is still in the queue (the Buzz Lightyear movie stuff and the Fortnite keyrings), some has been blogged (dinosaurs and jig-puzzles), and some went straight-on to storage, however, Peter just included the farm animal set in his latest donation, so I should get that up soon, or maybe RTM, it's not that far away now. It's the one with the cows head on, the others were amphibians, dinosaurs and wild animals.
This was my 2021 attempt at an arty set-up! The book is the family recipe book and seems to date back to the 1840's or thereabouts? We've seen most of the figures in individual, donation or show-report posts, but yeah . . . It's all about the composition, innit!
While this was my attempt at 'concrete poetry', while at Kingston University back in '93/94, I was quite pleased with it, it has a certain rhythm or metre, and refers to its own shape, which is the main point of the exercise, or it was how it was given to us, as an over-the-weekend exersise!
And finally, how fucking cool is this? And it's approximately 1:32;
Garden war gaming never looked so good!
"Godamn, I love the smell of solenoids in the morning!"
Heads-up, it's the BMSS (British Model Soldier Society) show tomorrow, in Reading, Berkshire, And, it's a full moon tonight, so lock up any lycanthropes' in the family, lest you fall out with the neighbours, big-time! I happened to need to go to Reading last weekend, and managed a quick trip to a couple of old collectables shops I know . . .
. . . of which the first, to be fair, is mostly comics and the usual Star Wars action figure type stuff, while the latter is a more eclectic shop. They are both next door to each other in one of the few remaining Victorian covered arcades. We used to have one in Aldershot, but it was ruined, blocked-off at one end, and replaced with a rebuilt fake, a couple of decades ago.
However, I did manage to find one of 1993's Captain Scarlet SPV soaps from NAPA Products, which had seen better days, but was, nevertheless a bit of fun, and which, being modern, in my eyes at least, will probably end up being used in the bath!
The dust of ages, or, at least, 33 years!
The vehicle - marginally smaller than the Corgi model - was more battered than the box, but you get the idea, and there's not a lot I can add to the photographs, it's a soap, with no rope! But I thought the colour was well-chosen?
After a bit of a wipe with a damp cloth!
If you do happen to go tomorrow, both shops will be open, and are minutes, or hundreds of yards from both the station and the show venue.
Oh yeah! Winging its way to me just before I went off to work yesterday . . . no, it had been there for a while, but I was ill the day before, and a bit slow yesterday! However, I promised to post it by last night, only to realise I couldn't extract the image from a PDF, Doh! So a bit late, but, in case anyone hasn't seen it yet (it's been on John's, Stads' and PW's Blogs already!) here's notification of . . .
. . . the 41st year of Plastic Warrior'ing! Some of you may notice it's slipped another couple of weeks in the calendar, but if you're one of those whose spent out at Sandown Park in May (guilty as a Perp in Mega City One, m'lud), you'll now have seven or eight weeks to save-up for Twickenham's polymer-fest . . . Bargain!
4th July? That rings a bell? . . . Hummmm, 4th July . . . oh yeah! Battle of Klushino, upstart Russia taught a lesson by the Poles in 1610, that'll be something to commemorate! See you there!
I sort of ran out of Mojo on Thursday night, only temporary, had other things to do, so should be publishing again by tomorrow, but in the meantime, I saw the bestest shooting star ever last night, the tail must have been 40/100-miles long, and as it broke-up it burned-out turquoise through to ultramarine, it was worth being born, just to see that split-second of wonder!
Anyway, I tthought I'd remind everyone it's Sandown Park toy fair today!
Welp! I have finally published - with all faults - the composition page I started editing about fourteen or fifteen years ago! It was near-ready about ten or eleven years ago, and I sent off edits to a few people to proofread, and I must thank Paul Morehead of Plastic Warrior for being the only one to get back to me, with an edit (which I hope I've corrected in the current draft!), the other's know who they are, and have disappointed, but that's pink-monkeys for you; always disappointing when they can!
Brent - smaller version
After the above, was ready to go, the whole article disappeared, poof! Like some negative-reaction magic trick! And I never got it back, while Blogger/Google have yet to reply to my eMails of ten-odd years ago! Anyway, while I started again, I was rather disheartened by the whole business, and rather left it on the back-burner!
Luckily, I had the draft I'd sent out, and could get the images back off the dongles, although by the time I was about to publish, I'd reworked most of the second section, and that's now quite different, and probably not as good at it was first-time around, these things tend to flow better in the initial attempt? Or they do with me?
It's incredible! He has to have the same story, a better story or something similar scrapped off evilbay! Like the braggart in the playground, who won't be bested, yet always, only reacting!
I mean, I'm not saying he made it up, but timing's everything, so no sympathy here! I lost a bigger, better, more erudite document, not five minutes ago . . . not! Little tosser.
Japanese composition Wild West
While I know I've lost some links, and I've since added most of the British makers here, in individual posts, but they're not linked to, on the new composition page yet, so there will be more editing, and there are a couple more to go up here, to finish-off what I have on early British composition. But I have checked the links there, and updated one, although, the STS Lineol link keeps defaulting to Kinder here, but I think that must be a 'me' or 'my machine' glitch, if it happens to you, 'copy' the link and go through Google.
Three lead and a bisque pilot, with variations of Timpo/Zang 'Timpolin' airmen
The page remains a guide only, and 'work in progress', with the 'Rest of World' maker's list particularly poor and bitty, so any help there will be gratefully received, but at least it is 'live' now, which is an advance on yesterday! Much shorter pages will appear at some point on ceramics and tin-plate, with polymers and size/scale/ratio/gauge, still some way off!
Unknown leopard - a plastic copy of a probably Lineol animal,
heralds the end of composition.
I must also thank Adrian Little, who has let me shoot all sorts of interesting things, on his tables, over the years, not least a lot of the stuff on the Composition Page;
As far as I know, Blue Box never gave these a title or name, so we don't know if they were resistance, revolutionaries, militia or for that matter, even French! But they are pretty unique, and having never been produced in the 50mm, a bit of a grail for some small-scale collectors, despite being a tad big at 28/30mm.
I'm really only using this as an excuse for a News, Views . . . as I have finally started updating the Parachute page, with shooting-sets added a few months ago, Imperial Poopa-Troopa's and similar cartoonish ones, a few weeks later, the Trojan Red Devil and others tonight, and a subsection of the Airfix clones. I've also added a lot of images throughout, and tweaked a few things, but there are still about nine-sections to do! And I think I need to spell-check it properly!
Time for another collection of Internet memes I've sidled away for such a rainy day, and it was a very rainy day today! I nearly published than last night, but gave up and went and did something else, somewhere else (photographed toys), however I found the last one, just now on Faceplant, and it spurred me to action!
Can't shoot, won't shoot!
The revenge of Tim Mee was brutal!
There are several R2D2 one's like this kicking about, but Bungle is priceless!
Noooooooooo!
I love his grin!
One of my oldest friends is taking parcel after parcel of HO-OO stuff in, for his brother, so the brother's wife (no names, no pack-drill!) doesn't cotton-on to how bad it's got, they are both in their 60's, so it's no great crime, but I immediately thought of them when I saw this!
Ooops!
Hot off today's internet, I thought the following comment, from a Gary Karst deserved to be wider-shared;
"It's commemorating the courageous efforts of the U.S. Army Corp of Landscapers in this underwhelming battle. Semper Ficus."
So, 4am here, and I've run out of puff, sorting the plunder pile! Yeah, I had a snooze earlier! There were three new Plastic Warrior Special Publications launched at the show this year, and the embargo has been lifted on them being announced, so they are:
A brief look at VP, not much added since the last issue, but all now in full colour for the first time, which with the sister volume . . .
. . . on UNA, means all five (Kentoys, Speedwell, Trojan) of the problematic Britains/Timpo-copy Khaki Infantry issuers have now been updated and colourised, I think?
While this overview of Poplar Plastics, and it's relationship with Thomas, is also an update of a past title, with much more added, and again, in colour for the first time. They areare available separately for varying prices, or all three are in a bundle for £15:00, but I don't know how long that offer will last, before they revert to individual list items, or one of them runs out, so get your order in now!
Peter Cole and his label Replicants had a 40th Anniversary (of Plastic Warrior magazine) figure, and four pairs of English civil War cavalry on his tables.
In a departure for Replicants, there is a new horse with separate base a' laBritains/Timpo, and the 40th Anniversary figure is of a spy, saboteur or 5th columnist, with headphones, using a morse-sender/receiver, in a suitcase. Whether this is a metaphor for PW's revelations on the secrets of plastic toy soldier production over the years, I didn't ask, but it seems apt! He may, of course, just be getting the football results?
**********************************
Graham Apperley reminded me he has a Blog now, which I had read on Brian Carrick's pages, but forgot to action, so this is the URL:
It's nice to see a resurgence in Blogging, especially in our field.
It was a fantastic show as always, and credit is due to Paul, Peter and Brian for putting it on, I don't know when I'll get the plunder posts out as there's a ton of stuff in the queue before it, even if I get stuck back-in, which I'm not sure I'm ready to, but it'll all be here in the end!
I'm not 'people'ing' right now, too much other shit going on, but I will be my usual cheery self tomorrow, at the world's best Toy Soldier show, being the . . .
Usual contact details and travel stuff from the usual sources:
And, given the success I had last year, pre-mentioning the need for a blue astronaut/paratrooper, this year I'm hoping to find . . . No; you don't tempt fate!
Here's some eye candy for stuff you may find though, and I will get round to answering comments/eMails, next week if I can.
"Sad day, we have done our quarter one review. Sales are down quite a bit. It must be a combination of three things, firstly the world climate is stopping people buying due to costs and fear. Secondly ebay has added costs to our products, more of that later. Thirdly we are possibly making too much.
So something will be changing, our products will no longer be on ebay. It is marking up prices, gouging on postage and making listing very difficult. Its not worth it, so go to our website to gain free shipping cheaper prices and the full range of our products. Secondly the price of metal has skyrocketed so production costs are beyond sales, so we need to tread more carefully. This means we will still release the next two batches but after that until we start to break even I will use you good people to pick what gets made, I will sculpt figures and put them to a vote.
Sad but needs must till things balance out. Please help me find new customers by sharing our Facebook and website with people you might think will be interested. And you at least will have a say in what goes into production as I will not be able to subsidise the width or figures I sculpt into production. A bit gloomy I know but as a one person operation I can not bankrupt myself for a hobby."
So grab anything you need off of evilBay if you use that platform, before he delists it, or remember to use the website from now on; https://whitetowerminiatures.co.uk
I've also added three posts to the But is it Giant Blog, which, with the first being published on the 15th, was, I think, before the recent flurry of Giant-related posts elsewhere, always better to be found leading than following!
Trying to find the Kennedy space set on Ed's Blog, now found here (cheers Robert) - https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2012/06/marx-4625-action-cape-kennedy-carry-all.html - I found his Tags were stuck at Hing Fat, mine are stuck at Maerklin, I hope this is a Blogger/Google thing, and that they are working to fix it, the other day my Tags were stuck in the B's, so they seem to be making progress, it only seems to be affecting those who have adopted the marginal, linier, alphabetical-list format, people with blocks or the random size-for-number ones (cloud/frequency stuff) seem unaffected? But for now, you'll have to use the search-box, which is quite good, I often use it myself!
Also, might as well remind you now - Sandown Park's Toy fair on Saturday! Be there or be unable to spot the bargains!
Random toy shot!
I bought these back in March '23, and never got round to Blogging them! They are part of a long-queue project to look at all these! Interestingly, the bright-coloured and white ones are soft polyethylene re-issues, dating between the originals and the Glenco set. While the dung-green one is a hard polystyrene version of the usually soft Hong Kong copies!
I had an email from the Command Centre at PW Towers, courtesy of the editor himself; Paul Morehead, earlier today, with a firm date for the next Plastic Warrior Toy Soldier Show at Twickenham (Whitton), next year:
It's a bit later than previous shows, but won't clash with Sandown Park, while for those who don't do Sandown, it'll give you another Month to save-up plunder-funds! It'll be the best show of the year!
Brian's posted all the relevant details, and I'll probably do something similar nearer the time. It'll be the 40th aniversary of Plastic Warrior magazine too!
Paul also sent me an image which shed more light on the Lilliput shop-stock box we looked at the other day, with a final contents-total, so thanks are due for that!
Well, this is new, I was going to write 'weird', but it's not really weird, just 'new', I'm coming at'cha from a car-park on an industrial estate having paid 4.99 for an hour's internet, which seems excessive but that's end-stage capitalism! However, I happen to have an hour to spare, and remembering to tell you about this at midnight, would be a tad late!
Going to give the London antique toy fair a go tomorrow, I suspect it will all be wooden games. barley-twist marbles, balding Teddy Bears and old dolls, but there might be something of more interest, and it beats sitting at home avoiding showers, and definitely beats going to work!
So . . . the light finally expanded to fill the view, as I escaped the tunnel, but there is the small matter of another tunnel ahead, the find-buy-move tunnel, which I'm sort of ignoring for a few weeks because I just need a breather! Having Asperger's, I find it all very stressful, it's too complicated and multilayered to compartmentalise in the way autistic's need things to be, we like logical steps, not multiple layers of chaos!
And it's funny, because while I sort of think, or like to think I'm going to blog it all one day as a warning/guide to others, the fact seems clear that, A) everyone's been here, and B) having escaped/moved on, there is a tendency to never revisit it all, so it remains a mystery that each person has to experience anew!
Plenty of people will - after the event - come out with "I could have told you that", or . . .
"That happened to me/us"
"HMRC always do that"
"Watch the agents, they all prioritise the buyer"
"Where there's a will, there's a relative"
. . . and a hundred other epithets, but . . . nobody comes to you at the start and warns you about any of it! I don't think I've properly grieved for my late Mother, I haven't had time, nor for Boysey-Boy, who died last October, or even his mother who started the miserable sequence in the autumn of 2020, so a stable situation which had existed for about ten-years has left me in a dodgy bedsit, after two expensive weeks in a Holiday Inn, with three container storage units, girding my loins for house-hunting, something I've never done and don't know where to start with!
In the meantime, the local foxes have decided to use my car as their new lookout . . . oh Christ! What have they done to the image-upload system? You take three weeks off and everything changes . . .
And this was after a dry night, last week, so god knows where it/they got all that muck on their feet, but one feels a marker was put down, so I haven't cleaned it!
Also, we are obviously in Rack Toy Month, for which I haven't got much lined-up, and while there is the stuff carried-over from previous years, I will probably find the same procrastinatory reasons to carry them over again! Moreover, I have all the Chris Smith donation stuff, Plastic Warrior show stuff and some stuff from Peter Evans to post, so I'll just dive in with a mix of articles. Brian Berke has also sent some nice things to the Blog, and new names from the readership have sent 'follow-up' material (Christmas cracker rings, Monogram Pocket Force and home-casting moulds), so there's plenty in the near-ready queue!
And many thanks to Adrian, Gisby, Tim and Jan for showing concern over the last few months, and Paul and John for favours; you find out who your friends are when you're going through the mill, and they certainly aren't on fucking Moonbase! Hay-ho, still; 'sincerest form of flattery' and all that, and I'm not the only blog who seems to be providing them with ideas! While a hatchet was buried on the 18th May!
So, watch this space again, I'll try to post something later tonight, but I have to go and move plant-pots now . . . still a few loose-ends!
For those not used to Blogger, the below 'index' allows you to find similar posts by their content, just click on the label (word) that best suits you search needs. I have tried to label by
- Country of origin of toy - Country represented by toy - Maker - Material - Scale/Size/Ratio - Era represented by toy - Whether subject is civil/military - Other 'themes' Etc...
Re-annotating the index is an ongoing project, in the meantime to save on space (there is a limit on the number of characters and the number of labels) I have started using abbreviations, which are as follows:
All other abbreviations are part of the recognised name of a company or organisation.
The hiarachy of the listing pushes non-standard letters to the end of the section so Märklin (with an umlaut) is the last 'M' &etc...the Cyrillic lettered brands are at the end of the whole list.
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