B is for Big Box of Bounty - Vehicles, Bits & Bobs

Well, luckily I have a day off, today, as I have a ton of plastic shite . . . Sorry, 'polymer loveliness' to sort and photograph, from the BP Sandown Park toy fair, yesterday, where I had a excellent day, but before I get started on that, here's the latest instalment of the plunder-posts from Chris Smith's most recent donation to the blog, which is all the man-made stuff! 

 

This is rather nice! A probably French farm-cart, in that heavy, hard-toffee-like polystyrene material, which I suspected was probably French, but sent these images to the authors of FIM, just in case they hadn't seen it, however, they were familiar with it, and were also of the opinion it is French.

 

It has a lovely tipping-action, via a lever at the front, and may be missing a probably removable back-board or ladder-rave, wheels seem to be the same polymer, while the white tyres are a polyethylene, I think? Maker still needed though?

 

This is how it came out of the box, with a Pokémon (?) hitched-up!

 

A Blue Box Austin champ, which seems to have been deliberately cut-back, in preparation for some conversion, or super-detailing? It will go in the spares for now, while the little PVC Galoob knock-off is new to me, Blog and the collection.

 

The weird landing craft belongs with various generic rack-toy 'army men' and diver sets, and while having various holes in which it looks like something should be plugged-in, is found just like this, in sealed sets!

 

More rack-toys with a militarised executive jet and one of the MPC mini-plane piracies, all useful, and the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar (which Dad jumped out of, on many occasions), seems to be one of the slightly bronzed-silver versions which are harder to find.

 

The submarine is from a modern rack-toy, or rack-toys, and we've probably seen it here in sealed/shelfied set/s in recent years, and is a useful loose addition. The racing car is from one of those credit-card shaped (and material) novelty sets, I have dinosaurs in the collection somewhere, and there are several sets of jet fighters.

 

The sports-car with lenticular 'window' is an old 1d or 2p gum-ball capsule-machine prize, while the locomotive is a modern (possibly Kinder) take on the old erzgebirge toy, where several wagons, or coaches, would be hooked or tied-together as a full train.

 

Three cracker-toy type bikes/motorcycles in the front-left 'row', with the larger bike we've seen before in various greens or spray-camouflage, associated with the Supreme/Ackerman, 'Fritz-helmeted' PVC figures, while the chap on the right is a Hong Kong rider, I think, used for both motorcycles and the quad-bike type machines?

 

A couple of flags (Norway (R) and semi-fictional 'African', left ) and what I suspect is the top of an animal 'toob', being a spinning map of the world, possibly seen here as a shelfie, I can't recall, but it looks familiar? One feels it's just the accessory for a evil Doctor's lair in some superhero or Bond'esque scenario, as the conference table!

 

I'd love to know where the axe comes from or who it belongs to, the shovel will be from one of the eight or ten-inch Action Man/GI Joe rip-offs, the pistol looks like a Christmas cracker prize, and more specifically, the mini, tree-crackers? I think the lantern with clear-marble lens is a doll's house accessory, due to its diminutive size, similar tourist items tend to be larger and have a pencil-sharpener secreted about them!

 

Part of a rack-toy bridge, an oil-drum, which may be Airfix and a rather nice, probably Hong Kong made wheelbarrow, which could have conveniently been for that yellow figure (Chris reports Eric Critcley as confirming him being a French farmer and not a cowboy), but it's too big!

However, with so many farmworker and construction/road-worker figures in the 'unknown civilian' zones, I'm sure it'll fit someone, even if it doesn't actually belong to them! Soft polyethylene with a very small wheel, is it from something cartoony like Bob the Builder?

 

Bits of the 'Bucking Bronco' jig-toy puzzle, a Richard I label which may prove useful one day, clearly it belongs on the base/plinth of a statuette or figure of some kind, which may come in, or already be in the stash, without a label?

 

The other casualty of Royal Fail's comprehensive parcel-mashing programme, was the blob to the right, which deserves a restoration! It's got the Airfix Reconnaissance Set's German dispatch-rider at it's core, with the wheels of a US M3 half-track either side and something on the back, and would seem to have been a home-made sci-fi bike thing, with the rider, now headless, painted up like a Soviet general on May 1st!

 

Marx (?) on the left, modern rack-toy/play-set boulder on the right!

 

Manta Force from Bluebird/Tomy, both missing bits, but both usable, and while other Manta stuff is in the forthcoming Sci-fi post, one day we'll redo all the Bluebird overviews, which were back near the beginning of the Blog and well overdue for an updated treatment, and these will be useful for that!

D is for Dustbin Lids

That's 'lid' as in helmet, not top, I know, it doesn't really work, but there you are, or, here we are! I want to leave this up for a day or two, so procrastinated and posted nothing for nearly two days while I thought about it, heay-ho! I'll still leave it up for a while, which will give me time to photograph a fantastic parcel from Chris Smith, which has all sorts of goodies (and bad guys) in it!

 

We're looking - in depth - at the First Version, Cherilea, 'Swoppet' Knights, here, because I have been lucky enough to go from a handful of bits to a master-collection, in less than two years. With a small but significant purchase at the Plastic Warrior show back in 2024 (possibly from Adrian at the now defunct Mercator), a smaller bag at PW this year, and the box above them which was a private purchase, to which I added a helmet (which had almost certainly fallen out of one of the three samples, and a plume, from a bits-lot.

 

There may be a few more in storage somewhere, but unlikely to make much difference to the whole, above. And the point of this post is to try and pin-down all the variables, a task which I may fail at, and which Matt Thier may have done a better job of back in the late 2010's in PW's magazine, when he went through all the Cherilea swoppets in some detail.

 

Poses first, and I am confident there are only six figures, five knights and this kneeling archer, who's a bit large, and a bit gawkish in posture, but would slip in-between the Britains and Lone Star chaps, but dwarf them slightly!

 

He is the only pose who doesn't wear a helmet, so his head is always painted, and a good one has three or even a formal four-count, of small arrows stuffed in his tube-quiver. 

 

But he comes in two versions, some with a 'ring hand' and the bow stuffed through the hole, some with a 'stud-hand' and the bow attached with a small plug-hole and stud, at the hand-grip. I have no idea which came first or why they may have replaced one with the other, as they both seem to work well, But maybe it's easier to lose the bow (even in the shop-stock boxes, at the store), from the plug-together version, and so that was the earlier, replaced one?

 

Three sword fighters, and this one seems to be the only one to officially get the cloak? Striking down, overarm, he's about to make a mess of someone who lost their footing, or who has tired, from existing wounds?

 

Striking around at waist height, he's in a fight to the death with an equal!

 

Ready, or parrying with his shield.

 

The standing waiting chap, never that useful in a fight, and I don't know if either lance is correct, the one with the dragon is associated with the mounted 2nd type, from the Sharna-Ware years and the rather compact castle play set, while the nicely, vicious-looking one is lovely, but the colour's not quite matching anything else?

 

The sixth sculpt is also a swordsman, but easier to separate out as he's striking overhead with both hands.

 

I've only noticed two different heads, one looking more like Charles I, the other looking more like a page-boy, or a Conquistador, but I must confess I didn't look that carefully, so there may be more. And while the archers' always have painted hair, it seems they gave-up painting the head inside the helmets quite quickly, with unpainted being more common than painted, overall.

 

Helmets, there are six dustbins, and two more traditional closed Burganets, but as I only have single examples of one or two, there may, by extrapolation, be more? And that's the rule for all the following!

 

I should point out that while they are mostly looking forwards in the upper shot, and backwards in the lower shot, it's not that simple, with the ones on either end of the row possibly facing forward in the lower shot and vise-versa, while the second from the right isn't clear at all! I also noticed the white plume is a fourth design! 

 

Single-headed Imperial chickens and two designs of cross, on the classic 'shield' shaped shield, of 13/14th century design, with a raised edge. A plug on the hand pushes through the shield and into the decorative element.

 

Earlier 11/12th century lozenge, or 'kite' shields with a more ornate chicken (looking the other way) and a fleur-de-lys (or, 'lis, a stylized lily or iris symbol, associated with French royalty, and symbolizing purity and the Virgin Mary). These shields seem to have been both moulded poorly, and then fettled poorly, and can be lumpy, misshapen or both!

 

I also have a double-headed chicken, but it's missing a wing, and all these are on the more decorative 15th century shields, which also have the raised rims.

There are two versions of three-point plume, and both seem to have sub-variants, which may be generations, or multiple cavities? This is the 'tumescent' one with two pointy-uppies and a drooper.

 

While the other variant has two droppers and one sticky-uppy, and is therefore the 'limp' one! Again, signs of different versions or cavities?
 

The only other crest design I have is a Wyvern (four limbed dragon), and again, as with helmets, shields, and shield achievements, I have only one of some of these, so there may well be more. So if you have items not shown here, or obvious variations, let us know!

 

All references to chicken/s should read eagle/s, I blame Artificial Intelligence!

QAIMNS (R) is for Angels!

One of the more unusual things in my possession is this old kit bag, about twice the size of the one I was issued with in '84, but half the strength of material, being quite soft, compared to mine which is like a canvas belt material, only bags bigger!

 

The base is heavier though, to prevent wear on trains, mud-tracks and ferries! It's brown, I don't know if there's a colour code, but I think the Navy have always been white, ours were standard 'army green' and the RAF had theirs in the same blue as their best dress, so there maybe/may have been a code, with women's' forces or reserves in brown?

 

It's marked MK DALY - QAIMNSR - BEF, which is the name of the owner, the unit (Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve), these days you tend to put the 'R' in brackets, but back then they clearly didn't! And British Expeditionary Force, our troops in France.

A little non-arduous Googling quickly revealed some of her history, she seems to have served from at least 1916 sometime (one of some 10,000 women), probably earlier, with a war diary in the National Archive revealing;
 

"Recommendation for 1 months’ sick leave for Miss M. K. Daly, QAIMNSR, 1 General Hospital, suffering from neurasthenia."

A euphemism for what we later called shell-shock (see below), and now call PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), from Abbeville (the Somme) on the 15th October 1916, suggesting she had already seen more than most of our generation ever will, and most of it pretty bad.

However, they were made of sterner stock in Edwardian Britain, and the same diary's entry (I couldn't ascertain the name or sex of the author) for 15th June 1917 reveals;

"To Frevent (Frévent, about 18km NE of Abbeville, ed.), to 6 Stationary Hospital, arriving at 12.15 noon. Went round the hospital with Miss Daly, the A/Matron, and the CO, Lt. Col. Harding. All in excellent order – had been evacuating largely – about 350 cases in hospital at the time of the visit. Saw the new hut for officers suffering from shell shock – not yet in use, to be opened next week, which will greatly relieve the existing Officers’ Hospital, which was overcrowded on the day of my visit, owing to a large number of shell shock cases. 59 officers in hospital altogether. Had lunch in the Sisters’ Mess, most comfortable and well kept."

 

So, she had returned to work, and was helping officers recover from what she had herself suffered from a year earlier.

The third mention of her I could find was her gazetting in the King's birthday honours list for 1919, where the British Journal of Nursing reports on January 25th;

"The King has been pleased to award the Royal Red Cross, second class, to the following ladies in recognition of their valuable services : — . . . Miss M. K. Daly, Staff Nurse, Q.A.I. M. N. S. R. . . .  "

 

At no point was her Christian-name or middle-name revealed, there were at least two other Daly's, one seems to have spent her war in the hospitals at Colchester, the other gets a brief mention in Scotland (I think, it was 'in passing'?), and one wonders what happened to her, all three of them, or indeed, the many thousands who 'answered the call', after the war?

The Quims (as they were 'affectionately' known), would become the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC), in 1949, commonly known as QA's. I briefly dated a QA after I'd left the Army, and once fell in love with a Captain, but she (along with two nurses, who were 'in on it') played a terrible trick on me and 'Snoz' Reed, which is another story for another day!

E is for Excellent or Ephemeral Everything Else!

Bits & bobs, odds & sods, scenic & spares . . . the rest of the contents of Jon's parcel, and there should be something for everyone in this lot! Randomly shot, and then collaged to reduce the image-count on the page, it's in no particular order, but covers the whole gamut of toys and models and other things!

We might as well start with soldiers, that being our raison d'être here! A nice resin tourist piece from Norway, of a Viking, they celebrate their violent colonialist past too! And a WWI German (Airfix) who was so keen to surrender he escaped the box with the small scale (previous post) and was found under the arm of the Viking, in among the dinosaurs!

 

I think this might be Tamiya, although it could be Italeri or someone like that, basic wall sections for early experiments into diorama building . . . a lot of us went there with mixed results!

 

The significance of the booklet (actually a trade catalogue) will become more obvious, further down the page, but suffice to say it's an old school catalogue from the 1950's with explanatory pages, drawings and nomenclature. While the Viewmaster sheet will join a few others I have somewhere - there's often one in a mixed lot of exactly this parcel's type! It will help me remember where my Remco divers did or did not come from - depending upon their plastic colour!

Some random die-casts, the Majorette trailer (circus) is a lovely thing and ID's a loose lion I think I have somewhere, similar to the Matchbox, or Corgi (?) one, but a tad bigger, while the police car is one we had as kids, so lovely to see again, and in pretty-much the same condition ours was in, when I last saw it!

 

Having a driver figure in approximately HO, it'll definitely stay, another (The Austin/BMC 1100 I think) had a dog on the parcel shelf . . .

 

Thought for the day; Why were they called parcel shelves, when all they ever had on them were tartan 'picnic' blankets and/or boxes of tissues, in addition to the odd dog, or nodding fake dog! Parcels went in the boot or on the back seats?

The green racing car is Mattel for Burger King, and reminds me of a holiday my brother and I had once where we found some cheap, generic Matchbox 1-75 style racing cars in a local seaside shop and bough one each, black and yellow I seem to recall, and spent hours racing them down a steep dirt track we'd smoothed out, and built jumps over the exposed roots of!

While the larger one is the Corgi Yardley McLaren-Ford and, of course - both have diminutive drivers . . . bargain!

The greenery, pretty straightforward for those who know what they are looking-at, but the highlight is definitely the trio of single-piece piracies of the multi-piece Britains willow trees, almost a temple to the copyists' art, they must have been very complicated three or four-part mould-tools, too?!!

 

An eclectic mix, with a lovely Matchbox Yesteryear fire appliance, this is the big-scale brother of the Matchbox and Lledo smallies we've seen here in the past, and you don't often see it, I suspect because it's so nice people look-after and hang-on to theirs?

 

A Christmas cracker ship flat (polyethylene copy of 'styrene Euro-premium), a copy of a Bruder 'plane, a copy of the Minic waterline tug and a copy of the Spanish Play-Me parrot-rifle artillery piece.

A bunch of Hong Kong pull-back 'stocking fillers' which I may be able to ID from Bill B's catalogue, or similar stuff, and a lovely Penguin boat. The box is a bit knackered, but there's enough there to scan the important bits, and it's an interesting line as it includes a vulcanised rubber Jeep and other oddities, clearly Frog for older kids!

 

Cable drums! A late Hornby-Triang in brown (the earlier one was green with different transfers), the Randall/Merit pair, one open, one closed, and a poorly glued Airfix, you can find it with blue or black cut-outs to glue on, then a couple of lesser makes in the centre, the two-colour styrene one marked-up 'NordKable', the other possibly from a large set of boxes and crates etc . . . which Märklin's sub-brand Primex carried at one point, but which may have been Preiser or Faller or someone originally?

 

Which brings us back to the blue booklet at the top of the post - it's full of little details about cable drums, with sketches! Fantastic! Even though most of mine are in storage I'm going to do a cable-drum post, just to thank Jon for feeding my enthusiasm for these esoteric things!
 

On the right, street furniture and other bits and bobs, the long marbled grey/brown pieces seem to be polystyrene sections of split-rail fencing, of the sort you'd want if modelling the American Civil War, but I have no idea who made them, while the stop/go signs and silver accessories at the front are from the late Britains mechanics in the Deetail style, so very useful.

And then there was this! Bits of that, bits of the other, bits of Kinder, and a very amusing rugby game I will post separately! There's some Chap Mai I think, some Britains, pencil-tops and an Action Man knock-off pair of bino's . . . they all have their place, their bag, their 'zone'.

Many, many thanks to Jon Attwood for what was a huge parcel, and we'll be returning to bits of it for years to come. Indeed, to that end, there are already a few follow-ups/comparisons of both his and Chris Smith's stuff in Picasa, so along with Christmasy stuff and railway bits, December should be busy here at Small Scale World.

 

Something filthy later today . . . got to get it out before Christmas proper starts tomorrow!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 1. Introduction

So, it was the best show on earth three weeks ago, and a bloody good time was had by all, well, most, the Army lost the Rugby to the Navy which is a sufficiently rare event to consider them to have had a shit day! I filled my boots with nice things, and other people helped, but I've decided to treat the plunder like one of Chris's donations and show it thematically.

 

All sorted!

 

So having started to shoot it in a more random fashion as in past years, with individual donations highlighted, I re-shot it by subject-matter, and thought I'd do an Intro' to use up some of the otherwise unused images, and thank everyone at the start.

 

Fantasy & Sci-Fi

 

But I'll add a 'Thank you' paragraph to the end of each subsequent post. I know I get a bit anal about thanking people, but if they've gone to the effort of giving you stuff, saving-up stuff for you or let you have stuff cheap, it's only proper to thank them.

Bag of bits from Brian Carrick

Bag of bits from Trevor Rudkin

Bag of bits from Peter Evans

Bag of bits within Peter's bag of bits!

We have a toy charity here, have you encountered it yet?

Other countries have them too, but nobody seems interested in them!

Heehee!

I also bought this, for a bit of fun, I'll read it and do nothing with the knowledge! I do actually have lots of war gaming books in the library, a testament to past pretensions for something - possibly - better than blogging toys! And for the often very useful appendices!

 

Odds, mostly small scale.

Andreas Dittmann gave me the three on the right.

We'll look at it all in subsequent posts.

The Replicant's purchases all together!

Very blue this year!

We won't look at all these in subsequent posts, as this is the shot of things which got left out of an earlier thematic photo-shoot! Another - probably French - soft plastic Captain Video robot, and another Hong Kong - probably Blue Box or New Maries/Lee Chung - water well, this one with the bucket! A Hollow-backed sheaf (or 'stook') of corn which I've never seen before and a large gull which may be Spanish or Argentine?

 

The little blue lady is from the Morestone TV-tie-in Wagon Train, an Airfix huntsman, a straw-bale which is based on the Scalextric one, but is not, neither is it the flimsy blow-mold usually found in HK racing sets, but is actually a heavy injected polyethylene, so equally new to me?

 

Boat and barrel will join similar piles, eventually, and the spear, a fearsome weapon which looks like it should be wielded by a 70mm Zulu, is actually from those 54mm plinth-based Spanish museum figurines I think, and may be quite a ceremonial/presentation type?

A few Civilian types.

I must also thank Adrian Little for lots of sold well- below value stuff, and Gareth Morgan likewise, whose stuff took another week to sort-out, and then needed sorting into everything else for the big shoot, so didn't get an overview-shot! Lots to come, but like the 'Canoes Season', I'll intersperse it with other posts, to mix-it-up a little!