D is for Donation - Peter - Wild West

Yee-haw pardners! It's the Wild West today, and again leading with Peter's stuff, some of which dates back to last autumn, and there are a few items of interest, so let's get stuck in;

An eclectic little bunch, with three relatively contemporary, and still findable in rack toys, Airfix Indian copies of the third or fourth generation, but cheerful enough, a Deetail original who needs a bit of hot-water treatment (and Deetail Wild West is an absence in my collection, no more than a handful!), the grey chap was Boley in the 'States and others elsewhere (Ackerman?), and is a sub-scale copy of an Airfix cowboy.

 

I think we had a wagon from this bunch, or possibly an Indian set, here marked-up to PMS, somewhat Britains Deetail in styling, and somewhat Supreme/SP in execution, and while the foot figures ARE Supreme copies, these - the mounted only, are, I think, all new sculpts? I'll have to check!

 

There was a recent debate about the chap on the left in Plastic Warrior magazine (issue 202 out now - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts), so suffice to say I think this is the UK version of a figure also seen out of Hong Kong, he should have a rifle through that loop and, I suspect, other accessories?

 

On the right, a common enough copy of Jean, from the 1980's/1990's, we looked at them briefly a while ago, there are several generations/issuers of these, from Hong Kong, and we'll return to them one day for a better overview.

 

I suspect the bulk of these are those flesh-coloured kits, as supplied to the 'States and pointed out to me in a past post on Elastolin stuff, when Ross Mac remembered they were sold from Henry Bodenstedt's shop in New England in the 1960's, the bases being uniform/flat yellow. The prone guy might be factory-finished, but I don't think so.

 

The mounted figure who came with them, another home-paint I think.

 

Picked-up the other day, the dobbin on the left is Cherilea I think, but missing a tail, and I'm not sure if the rider belongs on him, Wild West is a bit of a weakness with me, playing catch-up with the large scale since 2009, I've not paid enough attention to the West, and there's a hell of a lot of production, in all scales from many manufacturers!

 

A Tudor Rose late production figure in polyethylene, and a nice horse, probably from a French or 'W. Germany' novelty or premium wagon, or coach, and a lady who's lost her hands, see looks like she may be from a Christmas village, but has a huge lump of glue on her base, and might be from a music-box or something, but I'd rather have her in the stash, as a sample, than not know I didn't have her, if you know what I mean . . . oh my god, what else am I missing?! 

 

Culpitt's 2nd generation, I'm beginning to suspect the integral based eight, were not from the same source as the plug-ins also carried by Injectapalstic-JSP-AHM etc . . . but were commissioned by Culpitt, to undercut whoever they were getting the earlier ones from? Something Culpitt had a history of, doing the dirty on George Musgrave over at Gemodels, with his cake decorations.

 

Thanks to Peter Evans for all these, foot for thought, gaps filled and some nice ACW!

D is for Donations - Peter - Animals

The sorting of the animals is going to be one of the bigger tasks, one day, the hobby is probably bigger than Toy Soldiers, certainly, it supports several vigorous forums, and there are as many makers, if not more, while mine are rather in an anonymised heap within the bigger stash, but they keep coming in, and here's some more!

 

A nice cat, which looks like it might be an accessory from a non-animal set of some kind, the lizard is from the little small-scale, rack-toy play sets from Toy Major/Ackerman, while the bear is both a bit crude and a bit unusual!

 

A whole sub-genre are this smallish scale, softish vinyl sets from toobs, tubs or bags, which are sort of 35/40mm compatible, but really 'bag-scale' or unit scale, and while some are marked, other's easy to ID, many sets are to be found on FeeBay-Amazon-Alibaba, as generics or under obviously phantom brands. These seem to go together, but a couple of them are questionable. Nice, different, cactus!

 

Two generic rack toys, over-stickered to Toys As Fun, which I could have saved for Rack Toy Month, but I think there's plenty for then, and this is the next size up, again, a bit unit-scale (elephant undersized, pig oversized), but mid-sized animals are coming out as 54mm-compatible, which is useful for dioramas and vignettes . . . big cat stalking a patrol, that kind of thing!

 

A couple of proper antiques, I love these! The pressed-wood farmer seems to match the common girl feeding chickens we've seen here before, in point of fact, she or her chickens, turn up so often she must have been from a popular set, for several years, but this chap I've not seen before. Although the blue paint has suffered badly, the other colours remain in sufficient quantity to give a good idea of what he looked like new!

 

While the horse in tin-plate might be a cigarette premium, while we, here in the UK, had cards and silks, as giveaways, some brands on the continent had tin-plate flats, prior to replacing them with the numerous plastic flats used as premiums with other products too. You fold the base out, after the item has been slid out of the packet of cigarettes.

 

From a more recent pick-up in London is another Toy Major lizard (used as a dragon/monster/dinosaur in both the cavemen and medieval sets), two tree frogs and a very daft-looking sauropod!

 

Some larger animals, I think a couple were Triple-A marked, and the green pony is from the Tupperware interactive building blocks, we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/11/g-is-for-great-grey-green-greasy.html

 

Where they were used as, removable, playable rattles, in opaque blocks, unlike the transparent ones from Airfix and others.

 

A large lump of dense vinyl, makes a rather nice Hippo', and these are starting to grow as a side collection, purely by accident, and we did look at a load in a lazy post a while ago!

 

This is from PMS, and I ummed-and-arrred over whether or not to open it, in the end I though I had to, or I wouldn't know what I was dealing with, and was quite suprised to find a gold mokey!

 

I don't know wheather it's a 'chase' figure, or if the whole range is finished in a similar fashion, nor do I know how many there are as there;s no flyer/leaflette . . . probably a £1-shop thing, and therefore stripped to the minimum on unit-price!

 

Another group of - probably - related small vinyls - wild!

 

And another - domestic!

 

Mentioned the other day I think, and seen with a few others a while back, oh yeah, it was the post on mixed shots, a week or so ago. Anyway, here's the farm one, courtesy of Peter, and these sets annoy me, nice animals in a vague scale, so why add huge dogs and ginormous poultry! They haven't even got the excuse of box-scale, because there's plenty of room occupied by the plastic end-filler!? I know, it's a cost thing!

 

Again, many thanks to Peter for all these, they're not just grist to the mill, but also 'bricks in the wall', gaps filled in the archive.

A is for Another Retro-Rocketeer!

This one's courtesy of Peter Evans, I said we'd probably see more, before the end of the year, and this is current, PMS carried, and a slightly different take on the pull-back motor/white-button oeuvre, but again following the trend this year, for deformed NASA astronauts, and/or cartoon spaceships.

 

You push down on the Rocket racer's head, and an energy storage spring is set to fire, a quick release and off he whizzes, release slowly though, and you get a limp phutt! It's a bit of fun which will probably get passed-on to charity, but imagine getting this in your Christmas stocking, as a kid!

F is for First Flying Saucer

Except, they're not saucers are they, they're domed, and it's not my first, as I have the wonderfully lethal Marx Mystery Spaceship, and its half-controllable, 20-kiloton, kinetic-engine, with air-raid siren wind-up! But, this is my first 'full size' Hong Kong, placky-tacky, big-box toy, and I think it's one of the more common designs, not least than because PMS reissued it without stickers, a few years ago, also branded to a 'JS' (?), and claimed for China on a rack-card.

 

This is the older version, with NASA stickers, and while it was a bit grubby, which may have contributed to a cheap price, it cleaned-up near new, abart from playware to the gummed-paper flag.

 

What was known as a 'bump-and-go' toy, an eccentric steering, at the front, allowed it to escape obstacles by changing direction every few seconds, like a robot vacuum-cleaner, but it doesn't collect dust, or cats tails!

 

I don't know if the PMS issue had the original markings, or a new China-related message, but as far as I know the original was an unbranded generic?

 

One vinyl, one paper. Another Sanddown Park purchase, it ticks a box!

F is for Fugging-bluddery!

It's Rack Toy Month! It's fugging rack toy month and I totally forgot! To be honest I'm still not really in the mood, but at some point you have to get back on the bloody horse, don't you? Also, I'm not sure what I've even got in the bag for RTM, and I've promised to post a donation first, so, we'll see?

 

But I found these a few months ago in an almost deserted discount store in Borden, so they'll do, for a start . . . Rack Toy Month everybody!

 

Not a cowboy to be seen, I guess their sets had sold first! The slightly thinner copies of the Supreme/SP Toys Wild West, here under the banner of PMS International again, with two Indians and a plastic shrub per-bag, plus one of the previously seen scenic pieces, from the top: Totem Pole, 2 Tee-pee/tipi's, air-burial platform/lookout, and camp fire with tripod and pot.

 

And I think they were about one-fifty each, so proper rack-toy price!

UFO is for UAP - Imperial / CEM / PMS / Titan - Sammy Steel Series, Micro Adventure, My Adventure Journey, Space Adventure, Space Explorer

So, the last trio, except as Sammy Steel it extends to nearly a dozen sets, and two or three of them were issued as generics in France by the looks of it, but for the purposes of this post we're looking at the non-Sammy Steel sets issued in the UK and Germany, which are a trio.

 

For the Imperial US/Australian Sammy Steel story (which seems to include Titan Toys here, but I've not seen them in packaging), this is the start page for a four-page explanation;

https://mikestoybox.net/2014/07/12/sammy-steel-series-1-mighty-max-knock-off/#jp-carousel-6429

 

So, my two are in the middle, both PMS (which - at the time - might have meant a 99p Stores exclusive?), with the card back to the left and a generic from feebleBay on the right, although decent shots of the rocky one have escaped this post, it may be in storage?

 

We get two identical flying saucers, but only on the outside, as even then, they are different colours, while the inner liner is very-different between them both. To go with them is a rocky 'meteorite' based on what is supposed to be a volcano sculpt!

I didn't really notice that the German one is another card, and while I did shoot it in its entirety for the group shot at the end of the first post in this sequence, I don't have a decent single card shot! This was imported by a CEM?

I haven't opened this PMS set, but you can see the 'rest of the world' generics have all the contents of the Sammy Steel sets, but in new colours and without the Sammy character figures, although, I'm pretty sure I have him, the sabre-toothed smilodon (on the Blog somewhere?) and a couple of the other pieces not found in this trio, so they will all turn-up eventually!

 

Note the plug-in dish/ariel and fold out ramp, scudding about loose in the blister!

I did open the PMS version of this one after I'd got the CEM one to keep whole! The lizard man looks better in green than the Sammy Steel orange, in my opinion, although the fliver/flyer/hover-bike is probably better in the original grey? And these are all - sort of - 20/25mm compatible.

So, six true UFO 'saucers' and three more esoteric designs . . . I hope these posts have helped some with the ID'ing of these which have confused for some time, and as I say, these posts are a bit half-cocked, and we will return to them when I get everything in one place, and find the few missing bits (I may have the meteorite/cave), maybe do it as a single page, with all the sets/links together in one place?

And this is only what I've found, there's probably more; more packagings, more importers, more brand-marks, and while I don't often address money here, I was going to have a long paragraph or two ranting about the money being asked/paid for the US/Aussie sets, only to find someone has one of these PMS cards up on evilBay right now for 50-smackers? WTF? These are recent, cheapo rack-toys, you should hope to get, or pay no-more than 15-quid for, and - intrinsically - they are a fiver's worth of tat!

E is for Eggie Business!

A few more capsule eggs, nothing terribly exciting, I wasn't really thinking about Easter this year, so neither looked out for nor searched-out anything seasonal . . . Actually that's a small lie, I did pop-in to Hobbycraft, just to see if they had anything this year; they had the dinosaur 'decoration' set last year with the small eggs, but they had nothing this year, it's always hit-and-miss with the discounters.

I Can't remember where I picked this up? I think it may have been the local hardware store, but branded to World of Sweets, unusual for having a lengthways split to the capsule (less of a choking hazard?), and the fact that the relief-flat dinosaur is over-moulded rubber - the back's plain black.

 

Found these on Amazon, still there; it was only the other day, with various whacky brand-marks! Twelve dino's in twelve eggs, best egg-hunt material, but no chocolate, which will disappoint some! We may have seen some of these loose, in one of various visits to these smaller-size dinosaurs, which as I mentioned the other day I intend to ID eventually, all on one page.

 

An eBay lot, just as filler for a thin post! From the seller's description, I gather these are from PMS International, who we have seen several times here at Small Scale World now, and were/are called Putty Surprize! / Mystery Pets Surprise.  They seem to have been issued as blind bag type things, with what looks to be - from the left; a hippo, owl, salamanda (?) and Koala bear. I suspect they glow in the dark too!

T is for Two - Cowpoke's and Injun's

Been busy yesterday annd today, but not on toy figure stuff, so nothing for a while, but let's redress that with a quick pair now, off to the wild, Wild West we are . . .

Bought this morning; we've seen various elements of large and small sets from this unknown Chinese maker, on two continents and under a dozen brands/brand-marks (Maxxi Toys, Stobok, Funtastic, Aliki, Liberty Imports), this one is PMS, and possibly a McColl's exclusive, if you can find a McColl's still open, some seem to have been saved for now, IF they have a Post Office attached?

My favorite of the four; waving a sawn-off, up-and-under in his non-shooting hand, while keeping a firm-grip on his bottle of hooch with the left . . . "You're mah bloody best mate you are, gee'us a fight yer' varmint, hic!"

This was in Picasa and may be a variation of a previously seen shot, but let's get it cleared; how the horses are put-together. A while ago I broke-up the 'everything else' folder and created thematic folders which are easier to scroll through, the wild West folder, for instance has 149 images, the old one was 3000+, but it means I can start to find stuff for 'bitty' posts, or to add to posts like this!

Also in that folder and originally downloaded from Amazon (probably last time we looked at them), I didn't note a brand (there were several!), and it's the biggest version of the many sets available, with everything - wagon, coach, Indian camp, sky-burial platform and figures + accessories and scenics included.

While these have been in the Rack Toy Month zone for more than two years and missed being published both last year and in this August's RTM, just gone.You can see elements of both Britains Swoppet's and Timpo in them along with copies of the Lone Star separate bases.

To be honest I thought they'd gone-up here 14-odd years ago, as they were in the first bunch of 54mm purchases at one of those last Dave McKenna-run Birmingham Toy Soldier shows in 2008, 9 or '10? Anyway, high time Benkson joined the tag-list!

Of the various Hong Kong swoppet copies/piracies, these (available under various names and as generics) are the ones most sought-out by dodgy-dealers, as the spears get used with Crescent or Lone Star medieval swoppets, the tomahawks get thrust into the hands of Blue Box knights, and the necklaces get re-used on the Britains Swoppet originals as they are the same PVC - caveat emptor and all that!

Hugh's Handy Helpful Home Hobby Hints - Curtainsider!

H6-5! Best said in a West Country accent; Curr'un Cider! We're returning to the previous post with a simple fix for that rather leery truck we saw.

As it comes from PMS, stickered-up to within an inch of its life, and hardly the low-visibility or 'subdued' scheme you'd want on a military vehicle; with the sun on it, I fancy you could spot it from the International Space Station!

But they are all simple paper stickers and were mostly destined for the bin!

The removal revealed weirdness, moulded into one side as full cavities in a stencil style, the letters ABCOK, which is then fully mirror-reversed on the other side so you can see right through them both like the two ends of a tunnel?

Now does this mean ABC  OK, which might mean the vintage ABC is still extant as part of the modern Chinese toy industry (very unlikely)? Or is it poorly selected random letters because someone detailed someone else to select and cut some letters into the tools for some inexplicable reason? Or is it a more insidious hidden-behind-a-sticker thing, like the abbreviation for 'American Bastard Customer' or 'All Brit's Cocks'?

I doubt we'll ever know, if it was an Early Learning thing on un-stickered civilian versions of the toy it would be ABCDE or ABCXYZ or something wouldn't it? I suspect sample text on the CAD drawing which was accidentally transferred to the CAM tooling and reversed 100% for the other cavity! But there you are - spurious letters cut into the sides of the truck for no [apparent] reason!

I then cut new plain paper stickers from heavy parcel labels and coloured them in with a Sharpie! Simple, but effective, although the sides needed about four coats of Sharpie to lose all the pen-lines and hide the letters underneath. I used an old agate nail-buffer to smooth the sticker down especially round the edges and the four corners

Neatly converts a leery truck into a logistics curtainsider, although pretty fictional and we have to ignore the wheels for now! It's a sort of 5½-7½-ton rigid-bodied puddle-jumper (with a 'big-rig' cab!), around 1:48th/40mm compatible. And as you can see I left the 'sensible' stickers front and back for a bit of interest! And thanks again to Peter Evans of PW for the PMS Truck.

H is for How They Come In - November 2020

Right, now I have 26 posts in the 'H is for How . . . ' sector, and there were 25 until I turned this into two, so there may be 30 or more by the time we've worked through them all!

Also it's a year since I had to call the ambulance that would ultimately end in the loss of my Mother last January, and while I carried on blogging while she was 'only' unwell, it did tail off, to a complete hiatus in the new year, and one of the first things to go was the How They Come In posts.

Now life's all just the long slog of dealing with the estate (a nightmare for another day), it's time to clear these off the laptop, so, in the vague order they came in, that's what I'll be doing in the run-up to Christmas, alternating with other posts to 'mix it up'! And we're starting with this little lot that Peter Evans sent the Blog last November - shots taken on the 5th of that month, they may have got here a day or two earlier

Four modern rack toys and a loose bunch of bits, including the Culpitt's dove-ring we saw in a small poultry/birds follow-up a year ago. The loose figures are the rubbery Shing Hing (SH) we've seen before, they were (still are?) big-bucket stuff in big-store Smyths and are dominating evilBay-lots of this type at the moment!

These aren't in the main picture, so may have come from elsewhere (Charity shop!), but the photo was in sequence with Peter's stuff (taken half-an-hour later though?) and he's certainly sent similar to the blog in the past, so for now - they came with this lot! One or two maker's; sea life, they'll get sorted with all the others for a sea life overview at some point.

PMS blister-carded set; a few leery orange figures of poor quality, a weird gun which is everywhere on Alibaba at the moment and a truck with huge stickers which looks as if it's supposed to be advertising a fantastic movie or a two-player 'shoot-em-up' video game!

The artillery piece reappears in this set, nominally credited to an obvious phantom-brand (sticker, as an afterthought); Toys as Fun, and imported by Habib (UK) Ltd., from an unknown factory in Shantou City, the figures (two balanced 'armies' of randomly picked poses) also share poses with the previous set, but are different mouldings.

From the same source comes this farm set with the larger type of animal, although when I say 'farm' I'm following the packaging and ignoring the inclusion of a bison/wisent buffalo, and the palm-tree! I had actually found one of these in my local, independent, everything-cheap store a few weeks earlier, which I had de-bagged (Ooh missus!), so they are the photo-shot on the right, Peter's will remain a mint-bagged example.

Comparing the contents of the three sets; you can see that the figures (1-3) are very different in both size and finish, with the PMC's (1) much larger and yet cruder than the Habib/Fun set, who are finished to a higher quality. Likewise the farm palm (6) is larger, yet cruder that the also Habib/Fun 'combat' pair (5). A whole jungle (4) from a few rack-toys . . . you wouldn't get that from Airfix, Britains or Timpo bargain!

But the guns - from both sets  -are identical, suggesting the contents of both are bought-in 'mix-and-match' from more than one (or two) sources. While, from the construction method, the 'fire-brigade' helicopter also came from the gun-maker, and is a copy of slightly better ones we've seen before. The tank is what it is!

This, though, apart from the weirdly poor/odd wheels/tyres, is a bit of a zinger! I had seen them on feeBay and Ali' in various sets/configurations including singles from one of those multiple listings where wholesaled set-contents are broken down as a shopping-list, and I thought I'd got one, but didn’t find it when I put Peter's away, so may only have the one still.

But, wheels aside, it's good for Hong Kong/China shite! The forks would make it more of a Zundapp than a BMW, but in the heavy 750cc class, and it is perfect for taking the old Britains Deetail figures who; being pretty indestructible PVC; seem to survive their die-cast mounts in some numbers.

The other item was a large, infant's floor-toy of an insurgent's 'technical' pick-up truck with twin-cannon in the rear cargo-bed. It seems to have a hole in the cab-roof for an emergency beacon/light, so there may be construction, police or fire versions out there? Imported by Goodiez Ltd., another new tag for the tag list!

I really can't hold on to this larger, poorer stuff, so after photographing it (I take a dozen or so against future posts) it went off to charity in time for someone to get it for Christmas, and I thank Peter for sharing it with us first, along with everything else in this post.

*****     *****     *****     ******     *****

Added 20th Nov. 2021 - My version of the farm set turned out to be a blister-carded set rather than the header-carded bottle-bag set of Peter's donated one, contents were the same but under the added stickers was a clue to either a manufacturer, or another phantom-branding . . . 

. . . namely Wei Ni Da, who real or phantom are currently offering this on Egyptian Amazon! So wheels within wheels and another brand-mark for the tag list . . . as I asked on Moonbase the other a while ago, "Does it never end?"!