W is for Wrangling Cats

Blimey, five out of the last six posts had a space theme, and the other was a political rant! If I'm not careful, I'll have to change the Blog's name to Spacebase One or something! So to save myself from that fate, here's a complete change of direction with a roundup of recent moggie-related purchases, and other such feline fun!

 

A white button jumping Tiger; I can't remember if it came from a charity shop or something more commercial, but seem to recall it was the only one of its kind in a basket with duplicates of a couple of other animals, so probably commercial a purchase, and I don't seem to have noted the brand, picked-up last August ('24).

 

Smyths had a whole bunch of the Schleich cats, the same month, so I grabbed one of each to tick that box firmly into the 'got' camp, possibly the best attempts at ginger-tabbies you'll find, and no horrid bald, wrinkled or skinny Human-ego breeds.

 

Last February I picked this up in Hobbycraft, thinking I might do something with it one day, I have some very small mosaic tiles, silver-backed, coloured glass, left over from some Art School project back in the early 1980's, which might look fun, if a bit kitsch, glued to this Papier Mâché foundation?

 

Left on the peg; but shot in TKMaxx back in March, you have to be some kind of hardcore cat-obsessive to buy some of this stuff, but it's fun, and figural, so I'll always get the camera out, when I see such things! Made by Joie, Kikkerland and unknown.

 

Back to Schleich, and this was on clearance somewhere, probably the Redfields garden-centre in Church Crookham? Schleich do these odd coloured animal finishes from time to time, to celebrate or commemorate things, either Schleich-related (90th year anniversary in this case) or something in the wider-world, and I think I shot a similar one at a London Toy Fair, which may not be on the Blog yet? They also do all-gold versions sometimes.

 

Definitely from Redfields, the Papo ginger-tabby, is not finished as well as the Schleich's, but is still a good effort at a difficult fur-type, and a nice sculpt, with plenty of character!

 

Toe Beans!

L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Dr. Barnado's Collecting House

One of the odder things to have happened at a show, where coincidence often occurs, or things you are only half looking for, happen to turn up was, my purchase of this little piece of social history, manufactured in papier-mâché, it's actually survived remarkably well. Scaled to a vague 25/30mm and sitting well'ish with Airfix'x old Lineside houses - the Dr. Barnardo's collection-box!

Sadly a victim of the development (under Thatcher and the post-thatcher years) of a propensity to steal these, or similar collection vessels from counter tops, by swiping. You won't find any survivors still in use now, but when I was a kid, these were pretty ubiquitous, often sharing shelf or counter space with the collection 'jars' of several other charity causes. The few survivors tend to be substantial plastic, chained to the counter or a nearby wall, and usually a lone/chosen cause per-premises!

I wanted one because of the cross-over with the Britains Lilliput and other scenic accessories, by W. Horton (or Hugar?) and had just been discussing with Adrian, Christian and Gareth, the fact that I had been looking for one, without luck, for years, and that I'd never found one on evilBay, when I saw this (literally, seconds later) near-perfect one on Ann Evan's table for a reasonable sum, and immediately grabbed it, expecting the gods to tap me on the shoulder and demand their pound of flesh!

E is for Elastolene . . . Geddit?

Not Elastolin; those filthy enemy toys only still available from Yorkville's Importhaus. Oh; no, no, no . . . these are good British toys, British made by plucky Brit's in stand-alone British Britain don't-yer-know!

Hurrumph! Fussa-russa! . . . you can see where Brwreakshit came from!

"Practically unbreakable", actually quite frangible! Although - to be fair - you don't see these with the same damage you can find on playworn Elastolin or Lineol, but that may be because once they start to go, they go all the way, quickly?

The work of Brent, these are the smaller - 54mm - figures and dated by the gas-mask cases on their chests, take us back to the early years of the war; to the BEF and Home Guard, but presumably after the war-privation of materials had come into effect?

I assume the fluffy padding in the Stretcher Bearers set is a modern addition, they would have been sewn onto card-inserts or set in wood-wool or something, the farm (coming next) had a slotted card but with a much deeper box.

The 'Group' set has slightly random contents with two duplicates (grenade thrower and advancing with respirator on), while missing two poses.

There were eight poses in total, I don't have the grenade thrower yet, and actually don't have all these now (swapsies), but within the sample you can see colour variations and the size/pose differences you'd expect from oven-dried [inedible] 'dough' figures!

Five of the poses in close-up; note the colour variations of the ready/sentry challenging guy (bottom right), weapon barrels are provided by small panel-pins, the head used to give the idea of a muzzle or flash-eliminator, I've never encountered Brent badly damaged-enough to reveal whether or not there is a whole wire armature, but I suspect not?

Three more; clearly there is an armature for the machine-gun, which is less Vicker's own and more Bugsy Malone's splurge-gun! The prone figure is similar to several hollow-cast shooters, but not connected to the 'unknown' early-British plastic prone figure I've had a stab at attributing in the past.

Also missing from my collection (and manythanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot his, from/and also the boxed sets above), the stretcher is a simple affair of cartridge paper wrapped round a couple of stiff wire 'handles', the casualty seems to have been involved in the same incident as Timpo's swoppet, maybe they banged heads getting out of little Johnny's biscuit-tin!

Differences between two examples of the same pose, I thought the shorter pack was down to a misplaced thumb or finger catching the top and squishing it down a bit! But in fact it's shorter at the bottom end, so different cavities, or separate moulds, these may have been produced with hand-clamp type tools?

Despite their crudity of manufacture, they are OK figures, and with no lead available, you'd be happy to find these under the tree at Christmas; if you were a toy soldier fan . . . did anyone do composition footballers?

I also have two of the 60mm versions (upper shot), we have to assume they did all eight combat poses in both sizes, but I don't know about the stretcher teams, nor do I know if one line replaced the other, or if they ran alongside each-other?

The lower shots compare one of Adrian's Brent 60mm's (left of each picture) with an unknown figure (stylistically different, they're probably not a third Brent line) marked 'British' (we will look at them in a separate post), who is closer to 80mm and has lost his rifle tip.

This lot was in the recent Vectis sale, I don't know if Brent produced the 'egg-box' papier mâché dug-out/bunker, but it's a beautiful thing, and god knows how it has survived in that condition! If you return to the top, you'll see there are various lines mentioned along the top of the box, maybe Chris's ceremonial Guardsman is among them?

E is for Eggtastic Eggstravaganda of Erzatz Easter Eggs

After the conservative nature of stone eggs, we're looking at all sorts in this post, as faux eggs or decorative eggs like other collectable miniature 'favourites'; frogs, bears, rabbits, owls, cats & dogs, barrels, pigs, elephants, turtles & tortoises, hedgehogs, gnomes, and - these days - bloody meerkats (seemples!), they come in all sorts of materials and sizes, and various things can be disguised as 'them'.

So we'll start with the oddest, an egg timer, perhaps not so odd but rather obvious! I bought this in Lidl years ago as a present for my mother (who's just celebrated her 80th!), while I bough myself a cow (to match my - free from Argos with my works van petrol points card - mookie sandwich-maker!), but they had several other designs, once you have a standard mechanism for a decorative but practical item, it's a matter of imagination and its limits as to how many versions you chuck-out . . . note to self; must look out for soldier (probably guardsman) egg-timer! Or robot?

Shot with it is the original 'Faux Egg'; a basic ceramic (in this case bisque) egg, used on the farm to keep a broody-hen sitting until you can get some fertilised eggs under her. This one is hollow, but I've seen solid clay or earthenware ones, and even glazed ceramics.

These wooden ones ('Treen') probably served the same purpose as the ceramic one in the previous shot, but could just as easily be 'apprentice pieces', showing skill with the turning or carving and sanding of wood. I feel that an apprentice piece would probably have a better grain with contrasting colours or some interesting feature or something and these are just for hen's nests?

As they are painted it's hard to tell if these are wood or papier mâché underneath? What is clear however is that three of them follow a trope, in that while they came from different places at different times, and are painted by different artists on slightly different-shaped eggs; they all have a song-bird on one side and a crested hoopoe (or something!!) on the other.

I think they are oriental, and there will be more to them; culturally speaking, some tradition with an attached story or something? The floral/geometric, salmon-pink one is about half the size (bantam egg) in real life, but was cropped to fit!

Equally colourful, but a cheaper technology (who says progress has to mean better? 'Progress' is only inevitable, directional but not necessarily an improvement!), these litho-printed tin ones would have had a small toy or confectionary in them in the same vein as Christmas crackers, and pre-date Kinder by decades!

By my childhood they were being replaced by decorative paper-veneered, 'stock-card' eggs (there's a larger one which would have held a full-size chocolate egg - as a card 'box' - in storage so we will return to these again one day) and now - as we know - have been replaced completely by plastic gift eggs, available all year round.

I think the cat's probably slightly earlier (overall quality) and I like that the rabbit is painting a giant egg, on a tin egg that might have contained mini chocolate or sugar-candy eggs!

These might actually be trying to be acorns, but they were with the other eggs, so I shot them all together! The larger one is for a pot, the smaller one for a single-cup serving and they are charged with tea-leaves and used to infuse the hot water to make tea! Both are plated brass.

Coming back to ceramic for a full circle on this post, we have a stenciled 'Blue & White' pattern china egg sitting in a 'Red & White' pattern china egg-cup which is transfer-printed - the reason model kits have transfers not 'decals' (whatever they are - some Franco-American, Cajun-Quebecois, I wouldn't be surprised to learn!), the water-slide transfer being historically much older than the model-kit!

The china egg may even be from China, but it's a modern one (you can tell by the less defined or fuzzy edges of the colour) and there is an attempt at a crackle glaze - created by flicking damp sawdust at the items while they are in the oven.