P is for Popup Games

Another new name encountered at the Toy Fair in Kensington back in January was Popup Games, a clever use of paper folding to produce games which can be taken with the players, mid-action, and carried on with at the other end [of the journey] by the simple expedient of opening the game up again, and finding the previous state of play popping-up, as it was left!

 

Ludus latrunculorum, latrunculi, or simply latrones ("the game of brigands", or "the game of soldiers" from latrunculus, diminutive of latro, mercenary or highwayman) was a two-player strategy board game played throughout the Roman Empire. It is said to resemble chess or draughts, as it is generally accepted to be a game of military tactics. Because of the scarcity of sources, reconstruction of the game's rules and basic structure is difficult, and therefore there are multiple interpretations of the available evidence.

 

- Wikipedia

Five Lines (Greek: πέντε γραμμαί, Romanized: pente grammai) is the modern name of an ancient Greek tables game. Two players each move five counters on a board with five lines, with moves likely determined by the roll of a die. The winner may have been the first one to place their pieces on the central "sacred line". No complete description of the game exists, but there have been several scholarly reconstructions, including Schädler's and Kidd's.

 

- Wikipedia

 

Tafl games, also known as Hnefatafl games, are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a chequered or latticed game board with two armies of uneven numbers.

 

- Wikipedia

As you can see from the Wiki' quotes, there is a pattern here, as well as being fold-away games, they are specialising in games which, while maybe not familiar to the man in the street, have been known to mankind for centuries, or millennia! I didn't see the Game of Ur, but it may only be a matter of time?

 

A more traditional game, instead of the playing pieces (which you will note were all figural), slotting down into a box-like structure, with the chess set, players get pieces with three-dimensional box-bases, where, provided one player keeps the boxes toward him and the other away, all will fold neatly, and tightly into the playing surface, at any point the game needs pausing.

 

Quite apart from the idea of folding games, and the plethora of ancient games re-imagined, there is also the ecological aspect of a 100% paper/card product, so I hope Popup Games do very well, and a couple of them rather reminded me of all those inter-war/post-war games like Tri-Tacktics and Dover Patrol.

 

Some pop-up retailers took the Popup URL a year earlier, so they can be found under the owners name, here;

https://www.hawcockbooks.co.uk/pop-up-games

E is for Ephemera - Plastic Warrior Show 2024

I really shouldn't be blogging right now, far too much going on in real life, of far more importances, or worry! And I will apologise to Jon Attwood now for putting the remaining railway figure posts on hold, when we were quite near the end, equally I've got to put Peter and Chris's donation-plunder posts on hold too (although I have taken the images, they aren't sorted/cropped/collaged yet), and the show reports might be a month or two away right now (I haven't even started shooting the thematic stuff), but I will pick at low hanging-fruit when I get the chance/time, and this is a few bits from the show, which have been shot, of a more ephemeral nature!

 

I picked-up a few pieces of ephemera at the show, in the 'paper' rather than 'semi-lost' meaning of the word! With three new 'special publications' from the show's organisers, Plastic Warrior, a useful guide to Leyla farm models, covering both the hard and soft plastic, painted and unpainted with packaging and other bits, and another set of the card figures, I know I've posted - but can't now find - before.

 

The important detail of the last one being, that on the previous occasion, I think I showed them without a maker, as they had already gone-off to storage, this time I can tell you they are by, and called - Kardsmen by Mackenzie, that is John Mackenzie Models Ltd., of London, and dated to 1979.

Now, last time it was two ceremonial sets, if memory serves, and in storage from a fair-while ago, I think I may have two or three more sets which came from the second-hand booksellers' in Wantage, which were also ceremonial subjects (and may, or may not be/include duplicates of those seen here last time?), but these are clearly more belligerent in depiction, being the battle of Culloden, and on the reverse of the card is a hint at a more esoteric output;

• Nelson & Trafalgar
• The Royal Family
• Willian Shaspeear
• Black Watch Pipe Band (seen here?)
• King Henry VIII
• Queen's Guards (see here?)
• Royal Marine Band (possibly in storage?)
• Guards Band (seen here?)
• Yeoman Warders (possibly in storage?)

Which is quite a touristy/museum gift-shop type listing, I think you'll agree? As I say, I can't find the previous mention, which I think was a show report, possibly Sandown, or the London show, but when I find them, probably while looking for something else, I'll tag them to join these. The plastic bases always seem to be the same bright mid-green.

So, to the three specials, they are quite different from each other, being a technical treatise on the vagaries of engraving moulds and cutting detail into the tool halves and such-like (specifically, working 'in reverse' on the tools, not the masters), a more conversational piece on the early figurative Herald artwork and artists, both slim volumes, and a more substantial run through the Britains catalogues from 1965 to 1971, with reminisces of the author's thoughts at the time, and opinions now!

 

All penned by Peter Cole, with Chris Hawkins co-authoring the work on engraving, and both Barney Brown and John Rafferty helping with the artwork volume. While two are Britains specific, the third, technical work, is a wider look at how certain things might have been done to various early British-made figures.

They are available separately or as a package from Plastic Warrior (details below), and all proceeds will go to putting-on the next show (as I am reliably informed "I suppose we'll have to do another next year" due to the success of this year's!), because, let's face it, the subscription to the quarterly mag' is pretty-much 'at cost' given the prices of printing and post these days, so dig-deep, to support the hobby.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts 

Blog. - http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/ 

eMail - pw.editor3@gmail.com (pw.editor@ntlworld.com) 

Tel. - 01483 830 743

Finally less ephemeral, yet more so, and possibly needing a new entry/folder in whatever information storage and retrieval system you possess, if you haven't already done so from the back pages of Philip Dean's book on Wend-Al, is this, from when they wound-up the aluminium production and took to flocking in a big way, a Timpo ape with ball (as supplied by Prindus (Prison Industries) ?), beautifully flocked by a flocking flocker (well, you can't resist the opportunity when it arises!) and in Wendan packaging - presumably; Wend Animals as opposed to Wend Aluminium?

A is for obviously, how could it possibly be anything else but, of course - "Avon Calling!"

I've scanned these 1:1, but have no idea how they will show on your system, and being press-out, it's not that clear where you will be required to cut, should you chose to try and make one, but I've darkened the instruction side to try and make it a little clearer, and the things to get 'really' right are the four slots in the engine tubes.

It's naff, it's very simple, and it was sold as a Christmas 'mobile', still, it probably made someone very happy way back when (1980), and was apparently supplied by Ccai Como, which sounds Italian? And it's a robot, so no scale, it can be a mile long or a nano! Avon calling, but not the 2nd Captain of the Liberator, although the walls are just as cardboard!

And - speaking of the BBC, for it was they - apparently as part of their maths programme; they made 4 (or 14?) 'Print & Do' Starships? Anybody know anything about that?

P is for Pressman's Paper Parade!

Shot on Adrian's table at yesterday's Sandown Park toy fair, these are lovely, box has collapsed a bit over nearly a century (WWII'ish), but Pressman are still with us as a games and puzzles manufacturer.

Simple die-cut press-outs, with seperate 90° slot-in bases, they are sort of Military Academy type 'proper' toy soldiers and I thought they were rather lovely! Thanks to Mercator Trading for letting me shoot them.

WHC is for Success!

We've probably had that one before! Hay-ho, a couple of items from WH Cornelius, now Playwrite, founded in 1911 and still going strong having seen their friendly rival H Grossman get swallowed-up in the last few years.

A very simple one, being a single copy of an MPC 'ring-hand' figure with a small runner of accessories, but just the thing to shut Junior up when out shopping . . . Until he starts losing the small pieces under the stroller (which was still called a pram in those days!), and probably from the era when it would have been sixpence, switching to Five New P in 1970!

 

This however, despite having quite dated graphics, can't be older than 1993, as that was when the CE mark was introduced? But, it may have been old stock getting a second outing with the addition of a sticker?

 

I intend - one day - to open this, just to construct and photograph the aircraft hangar! I've always dismissed the tank as shit, and back when I was a small-scale only collector, I sent several to recycling or charity! 

But here (with the turret reversed over the rear deck) it actually looks a bit like a British Scorpion, it isn't, it's still just a made-up thingy, but for Garden war-gamers (who don't seem fussy) it would make a usable CVRT! All the contents are common generics (except the card building), with Airfix clones and may well be from more than one source.

D is for Design Eye - Ultimate Explorers 'Ancient Egypt'

Sad that the series only ran to the two sets, but then the recent Klutz sets with figures only managed four titles, while the ones a contributor found in Europe for PW magazine was only two as well, I think, but between the three similar lines you get a clue as to what a larger run might include - Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gladiators, Medieval, Pirates, Space, Circus, Farm & Zoo . . . I guess a Phidal Disney for 5.99 is easier - more figures less craft faffing!

Because similar things lend themselves to similar photogenicity (if that's a word, and if it isn't; it should be!), so this post is almost the same as the last one, just with different images, which might make the blurb sparser?

Cover and contents here, similar mix, but paints and an ink-stamper up the ante on craft in the absence of a catapult! The 30 (3x10) HO figures of the medieval set are replaced by only 12 (3x4) in this set, but there's less play-value in civilians I suppose! The booklet doesn't seem to have a byline/given author this time and another board-game is printed on the back of another fold-down . . .

. . . of an imperial or religious monument, this being a conglomeration of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel (famously moved under UNESCO funding, several hundred meters, in my childhood to save them from being flooded by Lake Nasser after the building of the High Aswan Dam), married with a pair of obelisks and Karnak's restored Khonsu Temple walls as a backdrop.

They are rendered as they would have been at the time, so colourful and no missing heads! there's also a couple of Sphinxes and a pop-up religious procession, again it's all sized to use the small figure included in the set.

Card game playing pieces lye behind a two-sided painting guide for both sizes of figure, but the guide is clearly using larger-sized models of the three diminutive sculpts, it would take a master-painter indeed to get that level of detail onto the actual figures, also they look more Egyptian here!

The two finished 'wealthy Egyptians' actually looking more Babylonian or Biblical! I only have these in the hard polypropylene type plastic, I don't know if a soft PVC'ish issue ever occurred? The one thing I failed to record when doing these shots, was the other issuer (there's two versions [earlier publisher?] of one back-cover) and it may be that there's a link between issue and plastic type? I can add anything relevant to the A-Z post at a later date?

Upper shot is a reverse-order of the previous post's, the lower shot is the same image as last time - I forgot to take two slightly different ones! The Crescent 'berserker' was found to be only 50mm to his helmet top, so the king is approximately 54mm to his eye-line which is how some measure them anyway, you could call them 60mm at a pinch, it's all subjective and the Horus figure in this set has  a very deep base - he slips on to one of the card press-outs if I recall correctly.

Those press-outs include a number of Pyramids (about 10?) in various (7 or 8?) sizes, a gold-plated funereal-barge and attendant tender!

I also found an image which belongs on the previous post so I'll add it there later, while there are a couple of scans which will go on the A-Z entry, and which I'll try to get done later tonight.

D is for Design Eye - Ultimate Explorers 'Castles'

Looked at in Plastic Warrior's little brother One Inch Warrior, many years ago now, and not by me, but I made it my business to track them down once whoever had covered had done so!

Interactive books, or 'activity packs', there were two and we will look at the other shortly, Castles dealt - obviously - with medieval forts, and you get some figures in two scales (approximately 54mm and 15mm), some plastic jewels for craft projects (make a crown type of thing, a clip-together catapult, a booklet (authored by Susan Churchill), a scroll, some game-playing paraphernalia and the game itself, which hides . . .

. . . a fold-down fort! Specifically, the entrance to a Norman castle tower/keep with raised walk-way to a barbican gate-house, draw-bridge and mote. It's quite a complicated arrangement with several layers and various connecting pieces, along with a couple of other features.

Here on the left the rooms of the keep are revealed by a fold-back section of the wall being pulled away, while on the right a wooden portcullis can be raised and lowered - a slight 'continuity error' is that it takes the drawbridge chains with it!

The figures; Earlier this year I suggested elsewhere that the king might be based on a statue of Alfred the Great, but then spent a few days trying to track it down on Google and while finding several, including a couple in similar garb, none of them were the right pose, so it may be a more unique sculpt, or based on another statue (Richard I, or John - it still looks familiar?), he's compared with the similar figure from the other, Egyptian, set.

Above them are the three poses of small figure - crossbow, longbow and swordsman. I have found sevearl sets over the years (and lost one!), and I now have samples in both a hard polypropylene (left-hand trio) and a soft PVC or replacement material in a similar soft rubbery composition - right-hand.

 

Airfix figures of this age tended to 23mm, so they are getting on for 20, but the knights are a tad smaller, while the Egyptians have heavy bases, so 15mm or 'HO' compatible is a better bet, they can be used with the fold-down fort . . . or on the carpet.

The catapult is a little unsteady in that the swinging arm is rather suspended in thin-air and held in place by a rubber-band. On the left a pair are accompanied by Airfix yobbo's of the Sheriff of Nottingham's mob for size reference.

On the right the machine is compared with stone-throwers from Zvezda (lower, similar wheeled-catapult), Orion (white, a later Einarm with wrought-iron spring action) and the Elastolin Onagar, but here in its undecorated (and rather glue-smeared) for-France Ougan-branded guise.

Well, he follows me all the time and they were in the queue! Taken on 19th May, for those getting hot under the collar . . . and it's a question answered! Egypt next.

A few hours later - I found this in the folder for the Egyptian set, it's a cage behind sliding wall sections, there's a winder behind it (as artwork, not working!), so you can send your pitiful prisoners into the dungeon to rot!
 

N is for Nottingham Mafia

Which by now I'm sure you've worked out is my moniker for Games Workshop! It's not that I dislike them in the same way I dislike the management at Lego, and I love their products more than I love Hestair Kiddy Bricks.

But they are a bit of a cartel, and they do milk their more sycophantic followers (it's more than a fan-base, it's a cult!), and they have contributed to the inflationary drive of adult 'hobbying'. Still it's a successful strategy . . . hell, through last year's lock-downs their shares were giving better dividend returns than the best guilt-edged bonds!

Anyway, because they are self-aware enough of their failings to realise some people may have trouble investing fully in the 'franchise', all at once, at the start of the exercise, to - from time to time - issue card figures or scenic items in their magazines, to give you something to play-with/around, and here are a few of those figures.

The big blue 'Magnificent Sven' sheet came within White Dwarf magazine decades ago, I think, and you get 12 characters and a killer-wolf-dog-lion thing, all decorated in a cartoony style reminiscent of contemporary graphic novel stuff from the same era, you also get three figures and a couple of weapons to colour yourself . . . or use as wraiths!

The Lord of the Rings sheets use photographic images of someone else's professionally painted miniatures to encourage you to greater heights, they were 'army-builder' sheets in early issues of the part-work which were meant to be replaced by actual figures from later issues of the part-work.

While these four Orks (or whatever they are) are more recent, but I can't remember where/when I added them to the collection? I've probably got the details in the hand-written archive/manuscript notes and I suspect they were just taped to the cover of a White Dwarf in a little bag.

The three samples have different fixing systems, with Sven's mob and enemies being a  single sheet printed both sides with a fold-back base, giving a reversed L-shaped cross-section. The LotR and ork sets have two prints and two bases which can folded into an A-frame tent, or an upside-down T, depending on preference, the T however will benefit from a piece of scrap-card laminated to the base - dotted line - to provide the same rigidity/stability you get doubling-up the two layers on the A-frame.

T is for Toy Fair 2019 Reports - J Perkins (JP)

JP may well be known to you from your work desk or table where they may be present as bottles or tins of glue, paint or solvent of one type or another, and while I wouldn't expect real-flying model aficionados to be following the blog, they would know them for their fuels, lubricants or coatings, however they currently have a small range of traditional 'novelty' gliders.

As it's over a year since we last looked at these here and less than 660-days to Christmas, time we looked at them again, and we'll start with another report from the January Toy Fair . . . it's been a funny year!

Ohhh! Pretty Lady, what happened to you?

Forty-years of Thatcherite-Raganomic, bigoted, middle-England, parochial, reactionary, Tory-policy, that's what, and what they did to you they're now doing to the whole country! Although we can't escape from the fact you were only ever a planet-destroying, Anglo-French vanity-project for the very rich, so maybe museums are the best place for you?

It's a Concord glider, in laser-cut, coated-balsa wood, too cool for aviation-school! In the background an even more traditional - undecorated, plain balsa - glider, but with the added gimmick of adjustable wing positions to provide what I believe they call 'variable flight-profiles'!

Two more; there aren't many 'Icons of the Air' you can collect the whole fleet-of, but Concord is definitely one, with a few rub-down letters and a bit of Tipex you could make the whole BA-fleet!

Meanwhile, in the background you can see two more Icons of the Air, namely Spitfires and Hurricanes from WWII.

My favourite, I know the Spitfire was prettier, faster, more manoeuvrable . . . yada, yada, yada, but this did the bulk of the work and could take more punishment, it's the 'British Bulldog' to the Spit's greyhound!

The other one! I don't know if you've realised from the camera-shots, but these are much bigger than the pocket-money, enveloped, expanded polystyrene ones we were looking at in the main last time, this is around 1:48th, even 1:32nd maybe? I suspect that both fighter-plane models are based on Battle of Britain Memorial flight airframes?

P is for Puff-powered Paper & Puffy-Polymer 'Planes

In my day (he says; making himself sound like an old git!) they were all paper or balsa-wood, now they are mostly expanded polystyrene foam, but you still find the odd paper one!

This post is a bit off the beaten track of Small Scale World, and was in part the result of unexpected consequences, following that weird sycamore-Superman I showed back in February, in that Brain B sent a couple of shelfies of equally wacky playthings to the Blog, and it encouraged me to build a post round them, mainly because one set were . . .

. . . Cars tie-ins and I hate Cars like I hate anything, so probably would not otherwise have used the images! From Unique who do appear here from time to time as purveyors of quality tat and novelty polymer loveliness, they are four to a pack and probably as much-fun as anything else in their price-bracket.

There is a Marvel Avengers Assemble set as well - also with four models, but they all appear to be the same; both sets seem to be made from die-cut foam-core sheets which may make them a tad heavy, still; a sharp push into the wind and they should do the business.

And the business is . . . ephemeral fun, which if not timeless, probably goes back to well before the Wright brothers - if Da Vinci was drawing them, chances are kids were experimenting with toy ones?

As Mr. Berke was sending me his shelfies I had been buying this from Clinton's as a birthday card for someone who's hard to buy cards for!

I went back for a second; the wings were a bit loose until I worked out how to shove them back into a tightening section, not bad and all-paper! Despite the militaristic marking, it's unarmed, clearly a two-seater and probably based on a trainer or powered-glider of some kind.

Ah, yes . . . this, believe it or not; is HTI's Thunderbolt. Back in the day - the balsa-wood day that is - they were either outline printed in black on wood, or they came with a reasonable two or three colour screen-print; this has been fully litho'ed, but poorly and onto un-sized, expanded-polystyrene, which gives a opalescent look.

It has fold-up ailerons and stabilisers in the wings and tail respectively which the old balsa ones didn't, but we sometimes put them in our folded-paper 'planes at school, it usually resulted in a nose-dive or a tail-stand . . . followed by a nose-dive!

By now I was on a roll vis-à-vis getting a post together, and discovered that not only do women get less wages and pay more for their pink stationary, but despite making-up slightly more that half the toy-buying population, they pay more for their glider-toys too! This was £1.50 against the 99p's and flat £'s of the 'boys toys'! Investing in journalistic excellence, or being taken for a mug? Doh!

More like the ones Brian sent to the Blog as shelfies this one from Grossman's HGL is properly three-colour printed on foam-core board, and despite it's odd look, fly's as well as any . . . oh yeah; there's been ruthless testing!

Only this weekend I saw Tobar gliders of Dinosaurs, the same fighters we're about to go back to, and something else which I've forgotten, something cartoony and/or thematic? And I remember birds from when I was a kid.

But here's a thing - when I was rushing around looking for a couple of these to Blog a few weeks ago, at 5.25pm in a small parochial town that goes dark at 5.29 on the dot - I went into the discount store and asked if they had any and they didn't, but on Saturday - they had three different boxes of them . . . clearly; it pays to ask!

Although now I feel guilty for the little toy shop, as they did have them last time and that's where I ended up getting the four in this post, but now they have competition a few doors down, and it may be my fault! They had HTI and Tobar mixed in the same dispensing box, and after getting the Thunderbolt, I went back for a spitfire and Tomahawk, and half-wish I hadn't, as we'll see.

But first a comparison of the two packagings reveals that there is a slight difference in line-up, both companies are offering 12 aeroplanes, but only 11 are duplicated between ranges with HTI offering a MkII Spitfire to Tobar's Hellcat, as these sets always had a Messerschmitt Me.109 when I wer't'lad, I can safely assume they are both purchasing from a longer list offered by the Asian manufacturer. Also there's a couple of oddities on the list - Focke Wulf trainer?

Tobar's artwork shows them as they could be, HTI's as they are, you will notice there are only a few different pressings, with HTI the different artwork used is 'best as can be'; once you've opened the packing the actuality . . .

. . . is far more disappointing, with very poor QC, very poor registering within the cut lines, very poor pigmentation, very poor accuracy (we have a Japanese Tomahawk!), mirror-image of fuselage-halve artwork, leading to inverted lettering and reversed codes, all very poor!

The reason all the shots of the Thunderbolt above show the same side, is because the other side looked more like melted bubble-gum than aircraft artwork! And these were almost as bad, all over - a pinky-purple mess.

At least HTI aren't going to disappoint to the level Tobar's are!

I will look out for vintage versions and maybe come back to these in a few years - there were advertising premiums and some used to have a central balsa spar to which a rubber-band motor and wire-mounted wheels could be added, but if you're of a certain age; you know that, we all got through a couple or more - every summer!

I think I may have a four-engined Lancaster Bomber from a beach-day in the 1990's somewhere in storage, which was a better print, but the same sheet-foam construction - for now though; that's 'paper' planes!

29-03-18 (Very auspicious day!) Re- Tomolio's comment, these are being imported into the Antipodes by Pink Poppy - anyone recognise the logo on the stock-box?