BJ is for Bagged Jobbies

These were in some corner-shop a while ago, and I grabbed one of each, I dare say there are more in the set, and there are so many Dinosaurs out there, you never know if you're looking at all new stuff, or just re-branded stuff you've seen before?

 

To be fair, there aren't that many actually re-issues, as with the old 'army men' rack toys, most people seem to source something original, but one or two lines get more numerous clients. Equally, with these new (ish, they've been around for over a decade now) hollow, softish polyethylene figures, in two halves, they all look the same until you compare them, when they often turn-out to be new sculpts.

 

Paint is basic, compared to some of the rival products, but at a price-point of barely anything, that's hardly unexpected. Those WHSmith ones I was buying about 10/12 years ago, have had several re-issues (I saw them again the other day somewhere), but being higher production-values, they need a longer life to pay for themselves, profit-wise!

A reduced-scale sauropod and a nobbly kerthunkersaurus, BJ include a bog-standard palm tree, and the now almost de rigueur egg! The fact that any dinosaur in-scale with the two presented, trying to carry or pass that egg, would die, is apparently lost on the Toymen of China!

G is for Grendon Underwood . . .

. . . a place I actually know quite well, and it's a half-horse hamlet, which in the 1960's would have quite literally been in the middle of nowhere, like all those villages in the greenery between London and Birmingham!

 

I'm absolutely positive this set, or one very similar from the same maker has been shown on the blog already, as an 'unknown', but I just can't find it anywhere, but neither is it waiting to go, in Picasa, so I don't know?

Grendon Valley Toys from Ornamental Alloys, sounds grand, and it gets two new entries in the Tag List, but I suspect it was a bloke in a shed, with his mate who had a mate who could print stuff?!! I may be totally wrong, but I have a vision of pots of lead going soft over a camping stove, while the wife spends her Sunday afternoons painting tigers!

 

I've definitely shot a similar set (it might have been five animals and no natives, though?), and I'm sure I blurbed it with the usual 'probably from Schneider moulds, or those supplied by Agasee, or someone like that, commercially sold as a sideline, maybe at Christmastime?

 

Anyway, the whole point was to ID the previous set, which I can't find, so it is what it is; a minor-make, producing a commercial product from home-casting moulds, in the years immediately after WWII, I would imagine? Thanks to Mercator Trading for letting me shoot it (the original, and missing one).

 

Added 12-03-2024 - While thanks are due to David Fisher, who let me shoot this one on his stall the other day.

R is for Rubbed Out

I know, but I'm in a hurry and they did all go extinct! Back to the Iwako 'Dinorasers' or Erasersaurs, and I did manage to get one of the new 2020-launch sets back in 2021, so as a bit of a box-tick, here they are, and the backing cloth really seems to be that colour, I can't remember what it was, but the erasers are all relatively colour-true!

 

Packaging

 

Parts count

Assemblies;

Spinosaurus (poor man's Dimetrodon!), Sauropod and a Kerthunkasaurus!

 

I think this means I have all the known Iwako dinosaurs now, but not knowing if the Dimetrodon I found, or these above, will have other colourways, while knowing I still have two colour variations of the Paralophosaurs to find, means the search goes on!

F is for Further Follow-up - Gay Gem Hawaiian Dancers

We looked at the Britains-copy Hawaiian dancers here, and then there was a quick follow-up here, and I've now found this in the archive, it's not much use without the figures, but from the illustration it would seem to be one of the straight piracies rather than the clip-on skirt versions, and with the tree, probably the ones in the latter images of the above link.

Gay Gem, who often turn-up on evilBay with this kind of stuff, as I say; not much use, but it's in the tag-list now, under 'Hawaiian'. This would have been from the James Chase collection, and as the figures weren't with it, they probably went through the main auction at Christies, while this was in the ephemera-dump/polymer-overspill sale at SAS Auctions a few months later, all back in 2006, I think?

H is for How They Come In - Chris - Civilians & Scenics

I fucked-up earlier; I was trying to alternate between canoe posts and other things (which happen to be Chris's posts for a few more 'moves'), but managed to post back-to back canoe posts, and not notice until a few people had seen it, at which point sliding it back into 'Edit' became not-an-option! No matter, the Japanese stuff is bookending itself now, the rules are only mine and there's no real urgency behind them, so, now, here's a quickie on more of Chris's donation!

 

 

We actually used up most of the civilian stuff with the Introductory post, so this is the rest! Of particular interest is the chap next to the Gondolier (who we've seen before), the new one seems to be in the style of those 1950's Japanese celluloid trinkets, but he's clearly more of a Mogul warrior or guard, from the Indian subcontinent?

 

He also seems to be polystyrene and what I though might be an incorrectly re-glued umbrella/sun-shade, is actually a moulded-in shield - he's missing his weapon (possibly a spear or lance), and is consequently; another of the  'best of donation' figures!

In the opposite corner is a waving boy, also of Asian appearance and equally unknown to me, possibly from a kit . . . did anyone do a 1:48th Saigon Embassy, Heuy kit? Is he from a sampan boat kit? The other notable is the lady in white, bottom right, next to the Frog/Krugozor lifeboatmen.

She is, in many regards, the same as those other two (possibly sculpted by CC Stadden), and would appear to be captaining a longboat? Her arm resting on where the large tiller-arm would be, her garb, very outdoor and foul weather. Did Frog do a canal boat next to the lifeboat, I can't find anything on Scalemates? So, I'm guessing, possibly a generic sold as a ship modellers 'spare part'? Merit maybe, Peco or Slaters?

Other highlights include the golfer keyring, the little chap, bottom-left, and the blow-moulded baby who will join a growing pile of unknown Hong Kong babies, who fill several bags now; smaller, larger, PVC, copies of Thomas, and copies of Britains & Mettoy hospital newborns! To which end - identification - I bought a babies bared crib/day-bed at PW's show last Saturday! I buy (or get given!) this stuff so you don't have to!

Foliage; the rather leery orange seaweed/coral will go very well with the Magic Roundabout trees, in providing alien landscapes in future photo-sessions, which had occurred to Chris when he chucked it in the box . . . something missing from the blog are the bigger set-piece shoots I did once or twice in the first year or so (the Spencer-Smith/Tudor Rose advance to contact, and a similar ACW 30 v 40mm photo-shoot), and which I hope to return too soon, I have plans for a proper photography 'station' with permanent features - but that only raises the constant dusting/maintenance problem!

 

The two halves of fir/pine tree don't butt-up against each-other, as they are identical mouldings with no central line of symmetry, so are probably forward facing snow-globe accessories, or from some touristy box-diorama?

 

The palm tree is lovely, and will need to be compared with all the others, while the separate base version of the common'ish poplar is new to me I think, and they all (there are dozens of slight variants) go back to the Lego poplar I think?

This is also interesting and will hopefully be ID'd in a vintage toy catalogue at some point, it is similar to stations in sets by Kader (before they were a major European rolling-stock contract manufacturer), Moonbow, Blue Box and others, but while their little rural/suburban stations were stand-alone, this appears to have plugged into a larger component or base board, could it be the short-lived Tomy system with Lego compatible parts?

Odds and sods, you can never have too many bits & bobs for completing sets etc . . . and while the highlight here is the Starlux Totem Pole (as issued with 20 and 30mm figures) scaled down from the 54mm range's one, there are other interesting bits, like the plug-in horses-head which I think comes from a Hong Kong (or European?) copy of Timpo teepee/tipi?

The desktop PC eraser, carries a kid's 'wants list' of toys, sweets and erasers on its screen-sticker! While the temporary-tattoo booklet of waterslide transfers will join others in the novelty/cracker-toy zone!

And finally all four corner towers for a post-Giant fort copy, again they have to be compared with all the others to work out where they belong, and I have plenty of little bags awaiting that job, including lots of green and orange tower roofs with various flags, so one day we'll give them the same treatment the black plastic ones have already had over on the But Is It Giant? blog.

H is for How They Come In - Recent Purchases

Just a Picasa clearer; a few things I've managed to snaffle in the last few months, which were shot and sitting in Picasa waiting for a job, and this is it!

These were two or three lots/sources I think and we may have see some of them already in show reports, but here they've all been cleaned, some of them were very dirty. I just love 'em and will always grab them when I see them going cheap (£€$12 or £€$24 per figure on eBay gets ignored - they're not rare!), as there are a lot to find.

Here we have three of the late phenolic/early - less than stable - 'styrene ones in bright colours, with, upper left, three similar-aged silver ones, so probably all original Lido or Winco Condar, while the rave-dancer, top right, is a more modern lightweight polystyrene one with a better finish.

The blue one had black spots on, which might have been a past-owner's paint, or a slow-growing mould eating something in the polymer, I couldn't tell, but it hasn't fully removed despite some serious chemicals, so the now pale-purple staining seems permanent?

Going un-bid-on on evilBay, this was Jecsan or Reamsa, I can't remember, the former I think, to go with those over-sized nativity figures I bought in a charity shop a few Christmases ago? And it's big, about 8 or ten inches, gone to storage now, so I can't give you a definitive size, but more Palm-tree comparisons (we did some of the flats a while ago) are in this Blogs future!

I got a eMail from Chris Smith with a link to this lot and one bid secured it! I have some of most or most of some, but as grist-to-the-mill it was worth a speculative bid, and the highlights were the two musicians and the four Wild West, which I think are 1970's French bazaar copies of Dom-Heinerle, Siku or similar, earlier, German premiums?

The pile of pastel Cowboys and Indians are also interesting as they are late, sub-piracies of Giant's own Britains copies, while there are a few plug-in US Marines from rack-toy rubber-boats, a lovely little dog, two Thomas paddling Indians which may be the Giant-copy size, but later production than them (so French copies of Manurba's version?), a Chinese Villager and . . . the rest - cheers to Chris for the heads-up!

A is for 'Animal Wild'?

Branded to a Wabro of Argentina, I have no idea if the contents of this tub, purloined from a charity shop for no shillings and a few pence, are original; I suspect they are, with a generic label (I didn't shoot clearly!)* and different contents tub-to-tub, but it may be a curates egg, or the contents (complete) of another tub?

* Well, I was trying to get the 'wild' animals and the text in one shot!

The point being it was used and played-with, and shows wild animals  . . . and a goat! Not the dinosaurs it's actually filled with? While three-bar fencing was pretty uncommon 200-million years ago.

Animals; I'd call them medium-small, but judging the myriad throngs of cheapo-Chinasaurs that have come out of the East is not an easy science! Still no bloody Dimetrodon, unless they expect me to fall for the red thing with half a fin?!

Other sides/ends; it's just not a Dimetrodon is it? Some Spinosaur who's regressed to four legs, more like, the other Spinosaurs call him Fourlegs Fatlad! The white Pteradactyl looks quite good from the other side, and the rest are much of a muchness. Funny, if my favorite was a Triceratops, Stegosaur or kerthunkasaurus, I would be much happier, as they are nearly always present!

Accessories; we've seen those two-colour moulded palms before, not that long ago either, which may be a clue to something, but as there's already too big a question-mark over the set/whole lot, any clue is lost. The fencing also doesn't sit right, but could be a space-filler, worse things turn-up in rack-toy tubs!

D is for Dinky Dino Egg

Under their Dinosaur Adventures label comes this third (?) offering from The Works, a quite large capsule egg, filled with quite small Dino's! Contents are nothing remarkable but they're fun for kids and more models for dinosaur collectors!

Typically the bottom unscrewed first, but with no clue as to which is the right end, you go with the flow until you realise both ends come off, but only the pointy-one is actually open!

A dead dinosaur is a bit macabre, I guess the toy-maker was thinking along the lines of "It's a fossil", but is a tub of 'live' dinosaurs; it's just a picked-clean dead one, isn't it? Also of interest is the triple palm-tree in the common/current style of the typical pair in front.

You can see from my pointing finger how small these are, not the teeny-size of those micro erasersaurs which were around a year or two ago, but small enough!

Most of the favorites are there, but no Dimetrodon (fussa-russa!) and two of them are bigger and may have been seen before in other sets, probably as generics? Note also how the larger pair are up-scales of; or down-scaled to; their smaller clone, suggesting all are out there somewhere in both sizes, possibly as part of a bigger pose-range?

R is for Red-Dino-Deer!

Well, the last 'quickie' ended-up being a bit wordy - and I added two images! This will be a real quickie, by way of a follow-up to Brian's B's dino-post of the other day; Red Deer, a brand both Peter E and myself keep finding, sometimes the same sets, sometimes different, sometimes the same sets on different packaging, this found about a week ago here in Fleet!

Small 'Toob' of mini-dinosaurs, some of which we may have seen here at Small Scale World already, as unknowns in a Charity-shop post, standard fare, with the tube packed-out with spurious scenics (useful for war-gamers) and a handful of dinky-dino's.

Here are the dinosaurs; all manufactured in a dense polyethylene rather than the more common PVC-substitute these smaller dino's tend to be found in these days. Each then sprayed from above in a single colour, some of which appear to have a metallic sheen, which isn't there when you look closely, so I suspect a slight translucence or inkiness to the paint, like old-fashioned glass-paint?

The accessories, two rocky outcrops and a couple of palm-trees, following the usual pattern for them these days  - a pair growing together in a semi-flat countenance, with plug on foliage. That's it, out there now in independent hardware and 'everything else' stores; Red Deer's imported 12-piece dinosaur set.

TM is for Tactical Missile, Technical Manual, Threat Manager, Trade Mark, Trench Mortar . . .

. . . or Toy Major! In this case it's also for Ackerman, Hornby Hobbies and Dollar Tree, among others, I'm sure!

Bit of a toe-treading on this one, as EY posted these the other day (Mini Carry Case Playsets), but in my defence I had already photographed the six (or five-and-a-half; one's been opened) sealed sets as I sorted them out to storage, but was waiting for the lose stuff to turn-up and a couple of Hornby AFV's I knew I had in the TBS pile to tell the whole story.

Agency on these was the aforementioned Toy Major, with further branding to end user Ackerman here in the UK, in the US the packaging remained generic but the sets were an exclusively Dollar Tree thing? Modern combat, medieval-fantasy and a prehistoric mash-up - Homo's and Dino's together - were the three choices.

The US sets also have limited quantities per case in a little bag, the UK sets (retailing at two-quid in the late-nineties/early-noughties) got a larger sample in separate blister with more play value, which still fit easily-enough in the case; the crinkly-bag was the logistical constraint with the US issues!

Artwork is shared, but photoshopped about a bit to fit the different packaging options, so it was all a question of which format you ordered back in Hong Kong from the TM agents!

Some of the lose stuff, they don't seem too uncommon here, with the odd few in several of the donations from Chris, Peter and Trevor over the years, while I suspect the palm-trees (included in every set) also got a cake-decorating/crafting issue, possibly still extant on Alibaba or something similar, in bulk?

They are quite small, but fill out a war game's scenic jungle well enough and can make good thick secondary jungle in the larger scales. I donn't know why I wrote Toy Masters on the tree-tub, they are a retail toy-chain here in the UK, so I might have bought some of them there?

You can see the constraint placed on content-count by the little bag very well here, with only six monsters ('Dragons') and six figures, each split equally between two colours, you aren't going to get everything in a set, with the British issue that is less of a lottery, although you may still drop one or two poses in one or the other colour-way?

The 'cave men' are copies of late Tim Mee/Processed Plastic's larger figures, although the stone-axe man has been converted to a dagger-man!, the prehistoric hominids are also the exception proving the rule of the others in having only one colour iteration.

The knights are copied from the Supreme 2nd (of three) types, as seen here at Small Scale World before, from several brands and in several sizes, and - this time - you get six poses in silver or black. They fight each other and/or a bunch of whacky creatures which are barely dragons, and not that monstrous, indeed; the unicorn is more of a unicornet and a bit of a sweetie!

Dinosaurs have a five count; relatively crude Dimetrodon, Diplodocus, Stegasaurus, T-Rex'y meat-eater and Triceratops, although its bi-cera's are so small it almost qualifies as a proto-cera'! You can see that despite a tub-full, I've yet to get a loose 'Dipy' in yellow, so all set-contents are clearly random.

As you may have noticed the animals come in/as two paired colourways - green-yellow (which appears commoner) and a mauve'ish purple-orange combo'.

Less than an hour later - there is a fourth caveman pose with club, I thought he was an artwork/pre-publicity thing, but there is one in my sealed set, you can just make out his back! So EY's right and I just don't have  a lose one.

The combat infantry are rather nice, six poses in tan or olive-drab fatigues, reminiscent of similar figures from Revell, Silvercorn/LP or Galoob's 'Micro machines', and original sculpts of some quality. Also reminiscent of Tim Mee/PP's GI's in colour offering, but unsurprising as they - Toy Major - are responsible for a set of Tim Mee knock-offs in the 54mm range.

They are clearly in that time period between the current era and the back-end of the Cold War (sort of 1971-91'ish), vague 'fritz' helmets on a couple can be painted-out, so they will still go well in a Vietnam setting.

None of the sets are currently listed on Toy Major's site, but they are still carrying the larger GI's and one of the many 50mm iterations of Supreme's knights.

The combat figures were also issued in a theHornby train set 'Battle Zone' back in the noughties, and while I thought the cave-men might have been in its sister set; the Jurrassic Park knock-off 'Dino Safari', they weren't . . . the set got a handful of PVC Chinasaurs, but is linked through the AFV's.

Probably a Hornby Hobbies thing, rather than Toy Major, so a tenuous link, but it ties all the loose-ends together, we have seen them before here I think, more than once, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometime.

An M1 Abrams tank lookie-likey with running-gear and hull shape closer to the variable geometry of the predeceased MBT70 program's prototypes (they could drop their noses to enhance the 'hull-down' low-profile aspect) and a rather nice Hummer, which can be found in both sand and drab to match the troops. The Hummer has a removable tilt with very delicate locating-studs which tend to be found snapped-off.

And that heading . . . it also means or has meant in the past - Tape Mark, Target Material, Tasking Memorandum, Task Memory, TeaM (as Tm. or tm), Team Materials, Team Member, Technical Maintenance, Technical Management, TeleMetering, TeleMetry, Temperature Meter, Temperature Monitor, Terrain Masking, Test Manager, "Thanks Man" (or "Mate"), Theater Missile, ['Landsat'] Thematic Mapper, Tone Modulation, [to receive] TeleMetry, TradeMark, Training Manual, Transmission Matrix, Transverse Magnetic [field], 'TROPO' Modem, Type Model, and Too Many [bloody abbreviations!].

M is for Menagerie Meander

Yeah . . . well . . . when you keep returning to the same thing, you run out of ideas for titles!

This is one of those posts which grew from a couple of images I wasn't going to post as I wasn't terribly happy with them into something which should be of some interest to someone, through a sort of organic growth, which had me getting everything out for another shot, and another, as I kept thinking of new angles!

Starting with those two poor images! They were part of the big lot of Blue Box and other rack-toys I shot back in the summer, good idea - I thought! Take them out in the sun, keep them in the shade, use flash . . . but it was just too bright and lots of them really need doing again.

Anyway, with these one is colour true (left-hand image) the other has less reflection off the bag, so here's a bit of both! The animals have long-since broken-free of their perished elastic-bands, but the palm tree (again! But more in-context this time) has resolutely remained in-situ!

The base of the palm-tree is marked 'Made in Hong Kong', but I have seen them with the "Blue-Box" mark (more  commonly found on the WWII Figures and blow-moulded accessories) I think? Same as the other-day; copy of the larger Britains one in flat/semi-flat style.

What I could get with the light, the tatty polyethylene-bag and a bit of mucking-about in Picasa! The contents were arranged like a five die's dots (:∙:), the four animals in the corners with the trees in the middle and species vary from card to card (or batch to batch?), certainly I've seen other variations.

The 'gorilla' is supposed to be an orang-utan I think, and there are lots of them out there; here we have the same Blue Box one as from the set, on the left, a SINGAPORE-marked version next to him, a copy-of-a-copy and finally a cheat - an actual gorilla in brown!

I've marked the other one 'Tai Sang' as it (or the Singapore-marked issues - generally) has/(have) been associated with both Red Box and Blue Box (whose name was on the Singapore factory), although smaller; it is the earlier original from which the larger Hong Kong marked one was taken.

Some people will tell you endlessly that copies are smaller because they were pantographed, but they don't understand how a pantograph works - depending on the operator - a pantographed copy can be a little smaller or a lot smaller, a little or a lot bigger, but in skilled hands and with some luck thrown in for good measure; a copy, via pantograph, can be the same size.

You do lose a little of the fine detail, which will often be added back-in by a finisher or tool-engraver; here - for instance - you can see the fur is finer on the original, smaller Singapore animal, and lost on the larger Hong Kong copy.

The same thing can be seen here with the Hong Kong hippo' - larger, yet poorer than the Singapore animal which has the same flat-feet of the Timpo original. They are both three-part moulds, but the HK-one has run the joint-lines over the soles of the feet, Singapore ran the joins round the edges of the foot-pads, as Timpo did

Inset - bottom right - are some more of the Britains-clone gorillas compared to the brown orang-faketan, nothing special, they are mostly sub-sub-piracies, with three HK-marked above, two unmarked (to the left) and a 'China' (far right) below.

I didn't have the crocodile to hand by either company (and I don't think I've found a Timpo one yet?), but knowing where the development of the post was going, I shot the kanga' instead; earlier, painted, Timpo-original 'solids'

With their doppelgangers'! The kangaroo also comes in both Singapore and Hong Kong-marked verities; these are the Hong Hong ones. Note how the orang-utans are closer to big-feet-yetis than the ape they are supposed to be representing, and as if to confirm the species liquidity, Timpo gave theirs a head of raven hair - go; Cro-Magnon Man, begat homo-not-so-sapiens and install him in Pennsylvania!

This is not supposed to be any kind of definitive article, but rather a meander through a few points as they fell-together (or were stuffed into the post by me!), one day I'll pull them all together properly, but they (both farm and zoo) are spread about a bit at the moment and as a case in point, this lot came-in the other day; a pretty-clean sample of Blue Box farm and zoo mixed.

Not sure about the trailer, but it will fit the Blue Box tractor and has higher production values than a lot of these generic Home Farm/My Farm trailers, especially the donkey-drawn versions! Perhaps it's Hing Fat . . . 'course it isn't!

Some of the base-marks associated with the animals and accessories of Blue Box and Redbox; both marques of the Tai Sang parent - whatever anyone else has said. It's worth noting with so many HK marks out there, that the Tai Sang animals - when they have the Hong Kong only mark - have no gap, thus; HONGKONG, it's not an absolute rule but it's a useful guide.

And  - between the two brands, there are maybe a half-dozen 'sets' of animals, both Timpo and Britains-clones (the joeys above) along with a few other Western-brand's animals (the cart-horse above is a Charbens-clone I think), and some unique ones - one set from Redbox were pretty original.

E is for Eye Candy - ANZAC Patrol

Mucking about with Lone Star Australians and a lovely bunch of coconuts! I colourised it to try and give it some atmosphere . . .

 

Papua New Guinea, 1944

P is for Palm-flat Palm Flats

Another one which missed tree week, although the planting in the UK (it was 'our' tree week I think?) of palm trees outside of the South Cost, Scilly- or Channel Islands can be a bit of a fool's errand, but as the climate inexorably changes I dare say the line of success is moving firmly northwards!

On the left is Britains set of coconut palms which was based on their old Hollow-cast palms, if not actually from the same mold-tool? Much copied in Hong Kong we have two better ones from Blue Box (For Cheyenne among other sets!) and a more recent generic both of which designs have bracing across the trunks, probably to try and prevent warping upon removal from the mould?

The three together; you can see how much smaller both the copies are and the loss of detailed etching on the 2nd generation copy, which is also manufactured in an insipid, wishy-washy polymer which would benefit from a paint-job.

Charbens cheeky chimp climbing for coconuts! Actually he's easy to remove resulting in a far more useful tree in any scale which - going on the size of the monkey - is otherwise, a very small tree in quite a large scale!

Above; we have variations in the bases of the Charbens trees which 'had some work' at some point, I'd like to think one was from a hollow-cast mold or something, but the hollow-cast tree was quite different and had no stupid monkey!

Below; are two designs from that Manurba (Manfred Urban) / Heinerle süßwaren Wundertüten (confectionery surprise bags) / Dom (Domplast-Domplastik) group. They did produce a larger double coconut palm and a banana palm, but I either don't have them or have put them in the Manurba box, which is still buried in the garage! A rather nice tree-fern (Australasia) and a fruitless 'generic' palm.

I think this is Starlux, but the mark (in a little recessed cartouche) was obliterated by glue or early-removable from the tool, so it could be Befoid or Clairet? Any way it's supposed to be a coconut palm, by the look of it?

A Modern hollow-backed pair of bass-relief coconuts from some 'armyman' set; it may be a make-weight in some pocket-money rack-toy thing, but it adds to the collection of palm-flat flat palms!