E is for Eye Candy - Blue Box French Resistance

As far as I know, Blue Box never gave these a title or name, so we don't know if they were resistance, revolutionaries, militia or for that matter, even French! But they are pretty unique, and having never been produced in the 50mm, a bit of a grail for some small-scale collectors, despite being a tad big at 28/30mm.

 

I'm really only using this as an excuse for a News, Views . . . as I have finally started updating the Parachute page, with shooting-sets added a few months ago, Imperial Poopa-Troopa's and similar cartoonish ones, a few weeks later, the Trojan Red Devil and others tonight, and a subsection of the Airfix clones. I've also added a lot of images throughout, and tweaked a few things, but there are still about nine-sections to do! And I think I need to spell-check it properly!

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html

C is for Carded Combat Crew

More minters from Sandwon, or, at least near minters, nothing 60+years old is ever that 'mint', bags fog with a million invisible folds, cards fade or discolour from sunlight or bleaches in the paper itself, but these two have held up pretty well;

 

No brand and a blank back to the card, so no clue to producer/issuer, and 43p (maybe around 50¢ US, at the time?), if only such things were still 43p! It looks like it might be the same quality as the Rosebud one seen here before, but I couldn't manipulate it enough to see whether there was anything in the parachute cavity? But still a nice item to add to the collection

 

I think these might be by Hugonnet/Féral, but it is by no means certain, they come in several different generic header-cards, but always unmarked/unbranded, so they could be another operation?

 

A site crediting them to Hugonnet pointed out that they are Starlux copies with the heads turned, usually through around 90º, and you can see for yourselves, they have been given oblong bases.

M is for May's Visit - Combat Troops

Sand, green and field-grey, the proper 'toy' soldiers, and there were a fair few in the bag, along with several paratroopers, who are always welcome here!

 

The blow-mould has suffered from a bit of a facial collision, but might be a new colour, the other three have probably all been seen before, but it's all grist to the mill, and there's always new colours, or new-sized copies-of-copies to be found.

 

China copies of Tim Mee's Cold War warriors, possibly a new colour in the washed-out sand, but they'll need to be compared with the existing samples before I know for certain.

 

Modern mix of Matchbox and newer sculpts.

 

Modern, and dodgy hollow-backed rack-toy rascals, but with several sizes, a few poses and severl colour-ways, it will be a while before I've got all of them, or even most!

 

Japanese infantry from Rado or Hing Fat, covered before.

 

Odds and sods, the interesting one here is the chap in the middle who would appear to be one of the Pioneer die-cast accessory figures in soft rubber, and a new pose, to his left, our right, a less common Manurba-Tallon in grey.

 

Seen on the respective Airfix Blog pages, the yellow figures are new to the collection, and that's the beauty of these lots, there's always something new! Many thanks to Peter for most of these, one of the paratroopers was a purchase, I think.

B is for Box-ticking Boy's Toys in Bottle Bags!

At the PW show, John Begg had a whole bunch of ex-shop, or out-painters stock (there were loose figures) from Charbens, and Colesmith Plastics (the moulds have a convoluted history which can be read in Plastic Warrior's Charbens Specialist Publication), to which I availed myself of what you might call a cross-sample, certainly not everything they produced, either figure or packaging wise, but a nice example for box-ticking their latter production, which I remember being in the shelves, when I was a kid.

 

Charbens own-branded packaging.

Unpainted Wild West.

 

A generic branding as 'Pic-a-Pack'.

Guards Band and Beefeaters. 

 

American civil war, an odd mix of plastic colours with the Union outnumbering the Confederates more than two-to-one, in both sets, with an apparently measured content count of one sky-blue figure, four dark blue, and two grey

 

More mixed ceremonials, here branded to Colesmith.

A Highland piper, and Lifeguards join the mix.

 

Mixed paratroopers (green bases) and Tommies (sand).

 

Comparison of the cards, I don't know why Colesmith got to brand some-up to themselves, maybe to pay off a debt, or just for a cheaper quote to Charbens? or did they inherit/hang-on to the moulds? I haven't got the Charbens Special to hand!

 

Note, also; the Artist's palette painting sign, used - rightly - on the unpainted Wild West set, but rather spurious on the pre-painted sets? I'm sure I remember the Colesmith sets in WHSmith around 1978/79?

 

"Jenny? What colour are Native Americans, really?"

 

"Dunno' love, try one of each!"

 

The 'Blues & Royals'.

 

Mixed, painted and unpainted.

Highlanders, Nelson, Lifeguard trumpeter and mounted cowboy.

 

Guards band in various treatments.

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 1 - Introduction

Oh . . . it'll do! It's a question of coming up with something fresh that isn't Chris's this or H is for that, and the two I initially came up with were a C and an S and we have plenty of them, but not so many M's, and there will be a few posts because Chris Smith's Christmas Cracker (yeah, you can see where one of them was going!), was stuffed like a trussed-turkey . . . shall I see how many seasonal puns I can squeeze into these posts! I'll try not to, it'd annoy me as much as you!

 

I've sorted the plunder into about ten folders, but some may get combined as I go, in the meantime these were the 'everything else' which I left in the original folder, and I don't know what to do with half of them, so I'll heave them up here in a lump, and blurb them as I work down the page!

 

Obviously the above is first impression, move the bags out of the way, and there's a very interesting diver, just sitting there, all "Look at me first", and possibly the best thing in the box, but you'll know as well as anyone now, Chris's boxes always have a few 'best things', so keep an eye out, these will be interspersed with Christmas posts, model railway posts, and anything else I can find, over the next week or two?

Had a bit of a dig, I think - taken a few choice pieces out, including the diver! More room for more rummaging! I've said before, the big bag/s of Hong Kong stuff get put to one side and will all be properly sorted/Blogged on the Giant site at some point.

 

If I recall rightly, it was a few weeks ago now, I had to shoot off and do something else that afternoon, so I emailed/messaged Chris my joy and gratitude (he hadn't told me it was in the post) and later I did the sort, while messaging him in Faceplant as I found everything else! I haven't labelled them, but you should get a flavour of each pile's theme, if you open the image.

 

Briefly, it's Medieval-Wild West-Historical/ceremonial up top, Civilian-Mad Figure-Vehicles down the bottom, with Ancient-Gwitarwrist-Odds-TV/Cartoon in the middle.

While this is Paratroopers-Animals-Buildings/Defence Works across the top, Military-Ethnic/National Dress/Pirates in the middle and Aeroplanes-Vessels-Sci Fi/Fantasy down the bottom, and that's literally the first layer of sorting, then animals say, become farm, zoo/wild, at the second level then insects, sea-life, arctic etc . . . at the third!

Can't have a Chris intro-post without the Paratrooper shot, not least because it's often a seen elsewhere shot, and this is a good lot, the big blow-mould is in army green, where they are often bright-coloured, and that Lion brand 'shooter' (second from the left) still has his parachute . . . funny how that 'file' has grown from a loose figure, through the catalogue scan, then a set with the trigger-poles missing, then some loose but complete, to this complete with parachute, over several years and several posts! And both Chris and Peter Evans have helped that journey, I think?

Oh lord! What am I supposed to do with this? I'm supposed to pray one of you knows the answer, that what I'm supposed to do! As I explained elsewhere on the day, he's in dense PVC-alike, about 65mm, modern'ish I guess? And I really can't tell if he's meant to be a cowboy, firefighter, circus performer, or Zombie-hunter!

Chris himself wondered if he might be a dinosaur wrangler or a modern day "child catcher"? Any help from the loyal readers with this one greatly appreciated, I suspect the sort of flat, big-box play-set A-Z/Paggett's might have imported? But farm, dinosaur or circus? Wild West or fire-crew?

 

Odds and sods, the soft plastic (silicon rubber soft) 'mine' has turned up a few times recently, and may, like that red-foam ball the other day be part of some larger game or craze? the Musketeers uniform is from a Kinder toy, the TV we will look at again in the Wild West post (it's fun!) and the [football?] cup, is interesting, and probably has some age, like 100-odd years? It's a very stiff foil, rater than plate, and could be for dolls houses, or home-theatres? Even a sample of some kind - very unusual?

 

I like the vehicle load too (the larger one, the small one, hard to see is from the Matchbox safari Land Rover), looks modern'ish, and from its squareness, not railway, so a pick-up of some kind, maybe a Model-T type thing in 1:24th? While the - homemade (?) - flags are just charming, and there's a whole unknown flag-zone they can go to.

Structural elements include the yellow 'roof' which I think might be a Kinder frog's umbrella! The sentry-box could be home-made, but it's so polished I suspect a hollow-caster's commercial piece, from a boxed/gift set?

 

The card portcullis will go in the tub of such oddments somewhere, the HK bridge is missing it's centre section, but there's a bag of bits for them somewhere too, and the benches are exquisitely home-made, carved, sanded, and varnished in an age where you had to do it all yourself, O-guage I think? The brown hexagon is from Atlantic's Abaline City.

This is all Kinder which would - otherwise - have been broken down into the various other pages, and I think one or two were re-shot for those posts, but here they all are together, except the paper Musketeer's outfit . . . and the frog's umbrella . . . and probably something else we'll see in a day or two - Doh!

The blue & orange monster is the last head type, missing from the post we had here at Small Scale World, not that long-ago, often how it works! The cartoon mini-Indian was one of very few victims of the Post Office's art, but I found the feather so it can be glued back on?

And the parts for the green hockey-player and the stickers for the red one are all both there (both-all?), while the pirate may be missing a hat, but has a spare pair of trousers - bargain! And I'm loving the red & blue medieval man-at-arms in the centre, my first.

I love this, I mean it's entirely homemade, crushed (post office again?) and seems to consist of the best half of an exercise-book cover, circa 1971 (I think History had the purply-grey in my school!*), but how charming, and what a survivor, only needs some reinforcing on the inside and it can go again!

While these could be military, historical or footballers? Anyone recognise any of the individuals, or are they generic after-market heads for probably WWII figures? I thought, Roman, Roman, Footballer, Rommel!

Many thanks to Chris for all this, only the intro, and we've all sorts of interesting things added to the pile!

* Maths was always red or pink, chemistry was yellow or buff, green was for geography, orange biology, what was blue? English? Lang or Lit? Latin was dark-grey in my first school, what colour was French, physics? More than 40-years ago was the last time I took mine out of the cupboard! What was your colour code?

H is for How They Come In - Brian, One of Two

I was trying to get them all in one post, but it wasn't going to happen, even with collaging, so I've split them sort of equally! A lovely parcel came from Brian Berke in New York about a month ago, and it was full of lovely things - you may recall we looked at the micro/space stuff the other day - and, of which these are the first half of the larger stuff.

 

 We're going to start with one of the real mystery suprises . . . my first thought with these was 'Flipper' the TV show (some Larami rack toy from the 1970's), because of the two dolphins (did Flipper have a mate?), but the characters just don't match, and these look much younger/newer, although they could just be clean and un-played-with?

 

But we have a girl (Flipper has two lads) who looks to be in medieval clothes, or 1950's snow-garb, she could even be a page-boy 'he', or a young (and poorly sculpted?) cheer-leader? With her is a ground-crewman of some kind (helicopter, carrier-deck?) and mechanic/sunbather/daydreamer, who's possibly the poorest sculpt?

They seem to have come along with some standard 'rack-toy' GI's copied from Airfix and more seventies in look and feel. Indeed, I did seperate them, but realised subtle changes of shade of the plastic colour were in both bags, so the soldier's bag is rolled up and placed in the character's bag, suggesting I'm not 100% either way, but don't want to seperate them until I know for sure!.

Now, come-on guys and gals . . . who knows what about these, someone must know something? That there are colour variations suggests quite a production run, and whether they were made last month or forty years ago, someone must know something? It's quite a hard polyethylene or nylon'y polymer? Can anyone help ID these, they need to be in the Tag list correctly!

 

5-5-24 - Brain himself came up with the answer the next day! But it took me a while to get a shot and wait for it to disappear from the sales site! They are Marx, from a late Dunby-Combex/Burbank era playset, Undersea Adventure, from about the same time as those odd, carded, 'shelf' vehicle rack-toys, or the late Guns of Navarone photo-art boxings. These khaki ones are reissues. I believe the vehicle stared in a few space playsets as well!

There were a nice bunch of flats, a couple of poses are similar to those ascribed elswhere to Cracker Jacks, particularly the bucking cowboy and baseball hitter, but they are not the same, and the [sports?] shooter too, while the ones in the larger image have the same bases as some Cracker Jacks, the others don't, so some other source maybe? The boxing kangaroo's "Put-em-up put-em-uuuuuup!" suggest an Australian connection?

 

I've divided them up (and photographed them) in three lots according to those bases, with the vehicles having quite angular ends, the bulk ovoid or 'cartouche' bases, and the other two figures something in-between, I suspect they all go together, but it helps to identify differences at the start rather than later!

We love paratroopers here, we love paratroopers in donation parcels! And this quite large one, is a different version, again, of one we've seen here before on more than one occasion, with quite high production values and a very small Hong Kong mark in the parachute case/bag.

These are US Cereal premiums, given away with Nabisco's Rice Honeys, and apparently manufactured by MPC, each has its name on it and there are some less common ones among them, and they are biggish with the Oarfish at 140mm/5½ inches, that's about half-a-banana, for some Faceplant readers! Clockwise from the flying fish;

• 17 FLYING FISH 20 IN
• 6 MANTA RAY 20 FT
• 17 NEEDLE FISH 5 FT
• 5 PORCUPINE FISH 5 FT
• 4 OAR FISH 30 FT
• 18 SAWFISH 20FT
• 3 GREAT WHITE SHARK 21 FT
• 9 BARRACUDA 10 FT

Ten feet? Ten phuqing feet? That's more than fifteen bananas! I thought barracuda were slightly-vicious, angry-salmon things you could punch on the nose, I don't think I'm ever going in the sea again . . . they come in herds, you know! Yes, there are two 17's?

 

Three lovely, full-on 54mm-compatible fantasy figures which I haven't found on Shaun's site yet and don't recognise, but they look a bit Tolkien'esque? So possibly a recent knock-off, although by recent, one has to remember how quickly the last 22-years have sped-by!

Lido Wild West, and originals, not the slightly insipid pastel ones from Hong Kong I have somewhere, so useful additions for future comparison shots, a modern AWI figure (Accurate/Revell or Imex?) and two very interesting copies of the M-Toy/Marty (Maymoon) barbarians, but in a smaller size, fantastic!

I can't remember who the big guy kneeling with the radio is, Marx, Ideal, or late Aurburn? But the others are the larger size of MPC, and are very useful as I have a few that are darker and lighter greens or metallic blue and silver, so these mid-olive green ones are a nice addition.

 

You know I struggle to thank these guys enough for these donations, and the best thanks is to share them enthusiastically with the rest of you, but many, many thanks to Brian, there are some real treasures above, and more to come, which, if I can blurb them up in the next hour or so, I'll schedule to publish for 9:30 our time (GMT).

And can anyone ID the dolphin 'playset' figures?

H is for How They Come In - Chris - May - 5

And so to the military portion of the goodie-box from Chris Smith the other week, excepting that two ceremonial's have snuck into two of the preceding posts . . . Doh!

Traditions creep-up on you, and it's a fact that as these posts have gone from 'highlights' to 'most', the poopertrooping parachutist shot has crept-up to regularly occupy pole position, whether it's a Chris lot or a Peter lot, and they both send parachute toys, most times, so who am I to trash a new tradition!

The first on the left is of interest, I think he's the largest of the less-common pose ones so far, while the dark green one, forth from the end, is unusual in the smaller sizes, although common as a larger blow-mould in which guise he's still around. Note also how the orange Airfix clone is a disarmed version of the red one!

The rest are grist to the mill, but you can see the variation here, in a small sample, so you can imaging what's happening in their box or boxes - there are three now; Airfix copies, others and novelty/space, with a  larger tub for the boxed, carded and 'toob' samples. So with my own purchases at four shows since lock-down, the nascent sections of the Parachute Toys & Novelties page (posted or not) all require updates, which will be a while yet!

And Chris sent three for the novelty sections too; an original Poopa-Tooper (pre- or unnmarked- Imperial), the newer copy/homage which we've seen on the card a couple of times now and a Super-Pooper Man Bat (AHI I suspect), posed with the larger one from the previous shot, to give an idea of the size/scale.

Assorted combat types, a nice PZG running WWII Russian, another Rambo set figure in the huge-size, the rack-toy German figure in blue is a heat shrink, now shooting at paratroops, into trees or upper windows, while the stretcher man is new to me, sadly missing his oppo' and a stretcher/case.

The three kneeling Airfix paratroops have the HGL marking on the base, while the Navy guy; seated, blue, is the third now, in various states of play-worn (in fact I think this is the best paint so far) clearly removed from a larger - probably Hong Kong, probably mostly plastic - vehicle or vessel, but still no clues . . . and I do keep my eyes open?

These keep turning-up and this one looks to be the best so far, so is probably the donor for some of the others we've seen, and needs to be compared with the rest to see whether he's a colour variation of the other good ones?

Mostly generics to sort into the 'master' collection, but a - possibly Revell - kit figure; center below, whose paint points to one of the store display models, but there's not much between store-display and 1950/60's home paint stab-and-hope!

There's another kit figure hiding in the top row, on the right at the back, while the three flats; bottom left, look to be a brighter green than most of mine, which we saw here. Well, I seem to have one, the flamethrower, so now I have four - thanks Chris!

The strange doorway, is actually the gun-rest from the Corgi armored recovery-vehicle! Smallies, with a Starlux Para, Galoob pilot, another kit figure (kneeling) and some rack-toy fodder. the three in the foreground are truck troops who have been separated at the shoulders!

Jean's sentry box, a lovely thing which is in two colours by the cleaver device of having the red moulding slide under the white one, to provide a colourful plaything, and another addition to the side-collection, or sub-category of sentry boxes!

We've actually seen these ABC and clones recently in the 'matters arising' post after the Plastic Warrior show-posts, where is was actually Chris who spotted the white ones on Brain Carrick's table, although I then filled my boots too! And with the darker one I found the other day, at least one of these is new to those we looked at here, while with the white one, we are up to eight or more variations now, not forgetting Chris has found green and red-plastic examples.

These are fascinating, I'm guessing French? [British] Both missing plug-in arms, so now I know they exist I will try to find more, with arms, but what lovely samples to get free in the post; ceremonial/colonial period (mid/late Nineteenth Century?), and probably 1970's bazaar toys [1960's], they seem to be a cut above the usual types in that category, so may have another origin/explanation? There's something Poplar or Tudor Rose'y about them too!

Anyone know anything about them? Arab officer, or white officer of an Arab unit (red) and someone looking like a Balkan or Greek ceremonial type (blue), or even a Cossack? I have a feeling I should know, I have a feeling they were in Plastic Warrior magazine many moons ago?

The next morning -  from Mr. Paul Morehead the legendary editor of the aforementioned Plastic Warrior magazine: ". . . those two mounted figures with missing arms on your site are Thomas Toys Two-in-One figures. For some reason you get two figures and one horse in a box. I think they're in our old Poplar Plastics Special [publication]." As I replied to Paul; I thought I'd seen them somewhere and it could only be there! I now recall there was a cowboy/native American Indian pair? And possibly a third?

Closing with the medievals; two Kinder, incomplete, but again - they go in the relevant bag until the right bits come in and I can assemble a good one, the silver Knight just needs a base (I may well have) while the Samurai needs a torso with a sword intact, a tougher call as the RP (Res Plastics) figures of that era (mid-1980's) are notoriously brittle in the fine-detail parts.

And two MPC mini-knights, the red a mounted original, the black a Hong Kong copy I think, I can't now remember, and while there's not much in it, the copies tend to slightly less well-defined detail, but copied the same MPC colours, while the MPC originals have a numeral in one of the release-pin cavities.

Thanks as always to Chris Smith for sending all this to the Blog.