B is for Billions of Blistering Blue Bi-Trons!

Well, over a dozen, and they're not all blue! Just a quick follow-up to one element of Chris Smith's recent donation to the Blog, purely to get them in the tags and attached, that way, to the previous posts as extra imagery for Pikit Toys/Gordy International.

I know that my storage sample of loose ones has more blues, or paler blues to be precise, and while the camera's flash has washed them out, the front pair of red ones are a discernably darker-red than the rear trio.

 

I mentioned last time how the turrets of the little micro-AFV's can be used as back-packs for the Bi-Trons, whether as turrets (which would require some severe bending forwards and looking at the ground around their feet) or as comm's packs is - I guess - down to the owner's imagination!

 

A small patrol of those AFV's out of their blister-packs! And as last time, a reminder that  there is a resemblance to some of the Votom stuff from Tomy-Takara, beyond the similarity of the line's name!

M-Toy is for Marty, May, Moon and . . . err . . . Sun!

This should have been combined with last night's post, but I was tired and running out of puff, so I just split it and went with the circus stuff first, although, as I then spent an hour or so, finding and adding the last three images in that post, I might have been better integrating this lot and leaving the others for another day, but there you go, some pretty fluid evolution here at Small Scale World!

The press page as presented in Bill B's catalogue, I've enlarged the relevant or interesting bits below, and we'll look at it all in more detail, bearing in mind that extracting decent imagery from a .pdf folder is never easy!

The company is called May Moon, but I don't think I've ever seen a toy branded to May Moon, or 'Maymoon', however we have seen here, an early (1960's) set of those I-Ton Humber mini-trucks in Maysun branding, while some of the Circus are marked Maysun, under the base, of which some come in M-Toy packaging, so we can extrapolate that it's all the same Maysun-M-Toy-May Moon, which leaves Marty, who again have some bi-branded cards (Marty and M-Toy)

The best place to go for the Marty story - which seems to be unique to the fantasy-Sci Fi set of aliens & barbarians (ray guns and axes!) is Shaun's site here, where one of the sets is in that same Gordy packaging as the Pikit sets we saw back at the start of this year's Rack Toy Month, so there may be a Pikit version out there, Brits?

As this catalogue is dated 1986 and makes no mention of Marty, we can safely assume from all the available evidence that Marty was a short-lived (one line) brand-mark and May Moon traded first as Maysun, then as M-Toy.

 

Any connection with Marty McFly (which would point to hellish-cynical marketing) is dashed by the fact that the toy set came out several years before the first movie!
 

Among all the usual rack-toy guff, I thought these two were worth enlarging as they are a copy of the Raphael Lipkin set we saw here, although they may have been changed to lay flat, but it might just have been arranged like that for the catalogue images?

The tractor/trailer seem to be a pure Timpo farm knock-off's?

While the above pair were enlarged for obvious reasons! The number of times I've seen these confused with Star Toys recently is a mystery, I mean, how do you confuse rubber copies of Britains with polyethylene copies of Airfix & Timpo? And years after other people have sorted it out? Well; because, the trouble with Faceplant is that some of these guys are whittering-away [as fact] from a position of pure ignorance!

I think we've seen the helicopter before, but nice to put a name . . . or three . . . to it! While I had the lower shot, of colour variation in the German infantry bodies, kicking around for a while, taken with a load of other stuff, so that's that out of Picasa, and Maysun, Moon and Star sorted out . . . d'yer see what I did there! I will do it all properly, one day!

L is for Last One for Now!

Still with Pikit Toys! I did a quick entry for Pikit on the relevant A-Z blog last night, it only reminded me of how little I've done on them and how much is still to do (and I thought by now I'd be settled and doing it . . . this time next year, he says, hopefully!), but it's there now anyway!

http://smallscaleworld-n-o-p.blogspot.com/2023/08/moneyitem-limited-piket-toys-limited-pt.html

Z is for Zoo Animals

Continuing to look at Pikit Toys carded sets here;

Another Pikit Toys import, probably shared with Gordy International, and - from the unpainted nature of the contents - possibly from Rado / Ri-Toys, I've added close-ups of the bright-pink Airfix clones to their posts;

Airfix Zoo Animals Set 1
Airfix Zoo Animals Set 2

These are the unused shots from that compartment.

A Rado Industrial Co. / Ri-Toys zoo set (isolated from a larger image in Bill B's catalogue), the similarities lead to the above comment, but, while it's not clear, the elephant is a different sculpt to the one in the Pikit import, so the Pikit set may have product of more than one maker and Rado can't be 'called', definitively, even though they may well have had more than one elephant in their inventory?

B is for Battle of the Bi-Trons

You may remember that back in 2020, Chris Smith sent us some robots in one of his donations to the Blog, and at the time I didn't have a maker, but a few months later (2021) I found this set, too expensive, on a Buy-It-Now, told Chris, and put a note on the original post and have since mentioned it cryptically, as and when we've seen bits from it, in other posts, I kept watching until the price came down, and I've now got one, so let's have a look at it! Robots & Space Tanks!

 

Due to the lighting on the day and/or the colours, photographing the whole card wasn't easy, but between the two shots I think I've done it justice, and you can make out most of the elements, the Pikit Toys sets (for that is where we still are, this early in RTM) with this bordered cartouche card-art, were also issued by Gordy International in the USA, with their info' overprinted along the bottom edge.

You get two sets of Bi-Tron robot battle suits, obviously ripping-off several Japanese Anime series including - I suspect - the 'mecha anime' series Dougram or Votoms? One set, here in blue, are the 'good robots' the other; bad!

 

As I wondered at the time, the plugs in the backs are for the turrets which come with the accompanying accessories, a slight daftness, as being single mouldings they can't be bent or animated into a pose where they can realistically fire at anything other than the sky!

Bad 'Bots are red! Whatever colour each 'army' is, you do get four unique sculpts in each quadrigeminal (it sounds more spacey!) team, Only two are carrying weapons, one in each team, here it's the chap on the right.

Early indications were that these yellow versions of the good 'Bots are Gordy and the Blue; Pikit, but then I was reminded that Chris's donation came in three distinct shades of blue (from more than one set, there were duplicates), so I suspect it was a bit more random, or they were issued by another brand, maybe at another time?

 

But this lot did come from the states, with 'normal' red Bad's, and I've seen a second set with yellow 'Bots, also across the Pond, so it may be a 'rule'; certainly a guideline?

Space Taaaaaannks! These are always green/red, and the same oxide-red as the naughty robots, some of which may be copies of the old Kenner Mega Force sci-fi'ish armour? Slightly larger than 1:600 micro-armour, they might be around 1:300?

AT-AT . . . not! There's also a walker, who comes with four jointed legs to be assembled by Junior, and then lost forever in the garden! I'm really not sure on any of the specific origins of any of these models, but I'm sure they are aping other toys, maybe Tomy and/or Takara stuff which never got Western distribution?

For instance, I thought this robot transporter was from the Takara Votoms range (as I pointed out previously; Bi-Trons - Vo'Toms . . . geddit!), but the one I was thinking of, has a rigid chassis and eight wheels/four axles, in-line, but I'm sure I've seen this prior to the Pikit set, so it's probably out there as something else!

Likewise, I think this might be ex-Takara, or certainly I think I've seen it in a Mecha' cartoon, it's a twin-rotor, very sci-fi, heavy-lift helicopter/sky-crane for recovering damaged 'battle suits', and a rather nice thing to find in a rack toy!

The final item on the set's card is an attack helicopter, and given advances/changes in real life attack helicopters since this toy was issued in the 1990's; quite similar to some in service or heading for service now!

 

As rack toys go, with or without piracy, this is a really nice little set if you have the sense of imagination for sci-fi/futurism, or are a fan of anime Mecha's, however, for simpler minds it would be a bit of "shit" to be left on the peg in favour of a farm, zoo or 'Army Men' set, or some Chinasaurs!

T is for Two . . . Birds with one Stone!

A quickie now, as a follow-up to the previous post, where we saw some non-Rado/Ri-Toys figures in a Pikit Toys set, to here where we see a Pikit set which IS Rado/Ri-Toys!

 

On the left; the 8th Army as sold by Pikit in the UK, on the right Germans in the standard Rado packaging, both being scaled-down copies of Airfix 1:32nd (54mm) figures, we know this because [with the exception of the French Infantry] they only ever have the seven poses from the larger sets! It's also easier to pantograph down than up.

 

A couple of close-ups of the Pikit-supplied figures, you can see the slightly hollowed underside to the base and the distinctive H·K mark found on all the figures of this line . . . sometimes!

Because, they can also be found unmarked, as here, where - from the crinkly, cellulose, carded, bottle-bag -  we can guess probably a set of JoMe 8th army, have the blank bases.

 

JoMe (which might be Jo Me, Jo-Me or Jome?) were a German importer/jobber, and from the 'China' rather than 'Hong Kong' on the packaging samples, were a later issue, so it's reasonable to assume the earlier iteration are marked H·K and the latter figures are the unmarked.

 

Another, definitely JoMe set with unmarked US Infantry, you can see how the logo might be interpreted any of four ways! Note how the flash affects the apparent / visual colour of the plastic! That's three birds . . . lucky shot!

 

The German's in the Ri-Toys pack above are also unmarked, but I have both 1:76th and 50mm Ri-Toys with the H·K mark, packaged. the sets copied by Rado (correctly: Rado Industrial Company) ran to eight, all Airfix copies;

• German Infantry
• Afrika Korps
• 8th Army
• US Infantry
• Australian Infantry
• Japanese Infantry
• Russian Infantry
• French Infantry (copied from the WWI HO-OO set, and scaled up to 45/50mm)

with the Airfix Australians replaced in the larger-scale range by copies of the Blue Box Australians, a subject I think we've looked at separately, once or twice! There's a lot more to all this, and we will return to these sets another day, probably on the Giant or What Blog.

Rado / Ri-toys also went heavy on ex-Marx figures, but they seem to have had access to the original tools there, so it wasn't the same kind of Piracy as with the Airfix / Blue Box clones. Marksmen carried a lot of this in the UK, but it too is all for another day!

P is for Pikit Toys

Have we had that title before? Many, many moons, and a fair-few new-moons ago, I posted some of the Tank Transporters here, and the unknown Hong Kong one, bottom left image in the collage (second picture down, in that post), is now known!

 

Or at least one of its importers is! Pikit Toys, a short-lived but quite prolific while it was going, outfit from Birmingham, and for those fatuous gits who keep posting stupidly ignorant questions on quora.com; no, not the new one in Alabama, the old, original one in the Midlands, England, Britain, the UK!

 

Some Pikit sets were also imported by Gordy in the US with a different overprint, I don't think this set was one of them, but someone else may well have done so - Laramie or Ja-Ru would be main likelihoods?

My loose one was (still is!) missing its rear ramp, I thought I'd mentioned it at the time, but I'd carefully hidden the loss with an Imperial staff car! What? Misleading journalism? In the 'Free West'? Surely not! Next, someone will be trying to convince you the Daily Mail and Sun are full of shit and everything that comes out of Trump's press-office is a lie! It's shocking, we're all going to the dogs!

Clearly cobbled together by a middle-man from the products of more than one of the smaller toy makers in the colony (there were 2000-odd registered there at the time), the transporter is a multimedia model with working metal axles, polyethylene tyres and a well detailed, roughly 1:76th in-scale, polystyrene main-body, while the two little tanks are common HK fodder, found in various sets from various makers and or under various brands/brand-marks, so, not much to learn there.

 

But the figures (Airfix 8th Army clones) do seem to be married to the Jeeps in origin (plastic colour), so a small clue against future research, they are similar to the Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) ones, but with solid bases against the slightly hollow ones of Rado, a bit bigger too, I think, in a year or two I will nail all this down on the But Is It Giant Blog, indeed I probably should have posted this there? Another day, new images!

Aaaaannnnnd . . . that's Rack Toy Month, off and running! You can all sod-off on holiday, and hope, maybe, I'll have something more worthy and meaningful for you in September! Those travelling incognito can find something similar to post on Faceplant!

H is for How They Come In - November Sandown Park - Transport Toys

I seemed to end up with a lot of wheeled toys at the last Sandown, which isn't that odd, as - for the longest time - it was primarily a die-cast and model-railway show, albeit now groaning under the weight of glossy new production for kidults and a ton and a half of Lego, Barbie and action-figures/LRG's, but I usually get the odd vessel or vintage plane, however the last show only produced a clean-sheet of wheels & tracks, with a post's-worth of land-based stuff!

I think this is APS-Politoys, but possibly via France where someone else carried it, it's in good nick, but missing it's five crew, however you will have seen loose crew going through the Blog over the years, from show-grabs, Chris, Peter, Michael et al., or the odd charity lot, so I'm sure I can crew-it-up, either with the Texas plug-foot types standing, fighting, slightly dancing-loons, or a fuller complement (3) of the plug-arse seated pose, of which there was one in Chris's last donation I think. Two of the locatinn holes are in the deck/well so will need standing/kneeling figures.

It's also quite a good model, until you get to the rear ramp - which is totally fictitious - and then realise it's the rocking-horse shit-rare 4x4 hens-teeth model, never photographed in the wild! There will need to be some hot-water action around the windscreen, which will probably require a balsawood former to hold everything in shape as the water is poured and allowed to cool?

A bag of small-scale AFV's also came home with me, but I can't now remember if Adrian gave them to me, or if he gave me some and I bought the others, but thanks to him anyway, and by maker we have a Kleeware copy of the smaller Pyro wrecker-truck, attending two late-production Beeju army lorries, one each of bonneted and cab-over-engine design, and both lacking their bodies.

However, I have a tub of smashed-up Beeju somewhere, where I know the problem is mostly broke chassis, missig wheels or cracked cabs, so I will have bodies for these in the fullness of time, and they are very useful additions.

While this lot of Tudor Rose gives me my first 'beetle' lorry with no marks or paint, all my others having either a painted roof and/or thermal-printed red cross or allied star, this one is as clean as a polished whistle! The 'Amphijeep' is also a good'un, albeit missing the windscreen but having a good aerial and both crew not mucked-about with. The Willy's is the same, just needs a windscreen off a bashed donor and I have a tub of broken TR's as well!

This was lovely, and quite cheap, it's 'only' Hong Kong, and unbranded at that, but look at the little figure! It's got a little figure with swivel-arms . . . get in! It's also in remarkable condition for one that's had so much play nearly all the silver paint's worn off the track-guards

It's almost a space-bulldozer with that light-up engine-bay and 'glass' bonnet! Lovely thing, but the tracks are thin and saggy, although still supple, so something will need to be done about them; involving old inner-tube I suspect! I have a selection of such tubing, for such jobs, but it might be easier to place tyres cut from cricket-bat handle rubbers over the wheels, to grip the insides of the track?

A small lot of Paramount farm were also procured for a few shekels, a rather grubby tractor from one seller and the rest from another, I had thought the trailer was new, but I think it's the standard one in FIM-2, of which I've only had the rear axle for years!

The tractors after cleaning! Actually I only had to clean the pale-blue one and I can't castigate whichever kid 'coloured it in' with Biro, as I have several memories of doing likewise as a small boy once I'd discovered that Biros worked on plastic! Note how the colour of the background (two right-hand images) totally changes the camera's view of the colour of the tractor!

Close-up's of the new trailer, the other one was a tipping model which we looked at here, thirteen-years ago, and a rather similar view of the rake-harrow I'm afraid, both clearly marked Paramount. There is a load of stuff about the European angle in the long queue, but it came in while everything else was happening and I've done little with it and lost touch with the contributor, but it'll all come out in the wash!

I did ask a few members of the old guard if they had a brand for this, and they didn't, so any help gratefully appreciated, I wonder if it might be Easter European, both because it's quite a heavy moulding, although nicely done, the single moulding of wheels and axle and also the silver plastic, but whoever made it, it's a perfect 54mm piece with a nice selection of accessories.

Pretty sure it came from Steve Vickers who had several I think, and he's on feebleBay as stevevickers if I recall matters correctly, so if you want one; try dropping him an eMail over there.

Marx AWI - cheers J - http://marxwildwest.com/revolutionary%20war/revwar3.html#cannons

The rest! The three multi-wheeled AFV's are from the 'robots' we had from Chris a year or two ago, which subsequently turned-out to be Bi-Trons,(Pikit Toys in the UK, Gordy in the 'States I think) the turrets of the near micro-armour can be attached to the stud-holes in the backs of the Robots/armour-suits. There is now a full set in the queue, and elements seem to be knocking-off Tomy-Takara's Votoms which we looked at here; geddit - bi-tron/vo-tom!

To their right are two shots of what must be an air-force/airfield tug-tractor, but by whom? Around 1:48th scale, Revell often had ground accessories in their kits (bomb trolleys, missile trolleys, crew-ladders and the like), so did Aurora (who also liked bright-colored plastic), while Monogram should join a list with both of them in it! But importantly - when buying this type of item - it's been put together well with no glue smears or obvious missing/broken/left-off parts.

Final shot is of a Wiking tractor (I think; it's been off to storage awhile ago without me taking notes . . . doh!) and a small truck, which is probably a German premium from Siku, Manurba or similar, but unbranded by whichever food, washing powder or tobacco company actually issued it.

S is for Sandown Park - May 2022 - 2 of 3

Part two of the Sandown plunder posts, and while it wasn't a particularly memorable show for nice things, I did get a pretty eclectic mix of bits and bobs, so let's have a look at a few more . . .

I think these were two separate purchases as I went round the tables, on the left a late, but still marked, Lik Be (LB) robot fitted with a key-chain loop and in soft polyethylene with a few stabs of silver paint. On the right a variation of the bath diver, this paler than usual, and unmarked so might be British rather than Hong Kong in origin, but not the - often overpriced - Tresco one! We looked at a few here.

Some more hollow-cast, lead 'gap-fillers' from Adrian, another red-legged Lone Star legionary (from Steve Vickers, who thinks it's a repaint . . . I don't mind!), and a bag of Pic-a-Pac (Prison Industries/Pridus?) Charbens Guards, who we have to assume are Scots Guards, from both the lack of a plume and the inclusion of a kilted piper - not rare, the seller had a box-full!

The price was taped to the catapult and was quite expensive - for a catapult, the rest were spread about the shelf a bit, so I asked it it was for the catapult or the whole lot and he said the whole lot, at which point the unit-price became very reasonable, so I bought them - the second 40mm Elastolin lot in two weeks!

Four crew and a wheelwright/blacksmith's assistant but take his spare/mended wheel away and he makes an excellent extra crew-member!

This bunch were in the lot too, various archery shield-works/screens for laying siege, wicker and timber mantlets with wheels to push about the place, and a more substantial wall, with modular construction.

Poor photo I'm  afraid, there's a couple of them as I was shooting against Boysey-Boy's freshly laundered fleece and it's so soft and fluffy (he loves it) that the camera didn't know what/where solid was! But yeah - Blue Box Russians, another HK radio-operator Adrian found in his post-PW Show sort-out and another Aurora kit figure Russian.

Two Marx 60mm sports figures, coincidentally the two most usually broken (I think I have the golfer WITH super-glue!), both have their flesh coloured-in which I think was an end-used addition? And a reissue (?) of the 54mm female jungle explorer

Box-ticking with the lead civilians! Charbens (or copy?) farmer - Crescent mechanic -Unknown (penny toy?) - Johillco milkmaid? I'll check them all against the books at some point! I love the farmer's matching neck-tie and handkerchief in polka-dots!

Seen before here, courtesy of Chris Smith, as 'unknown, a bit like Arco', now known as Pikit Toys 'Battle of the Bi-Trons' with a better post coming, probably in RTM?

A well! Since the two or three posts/follow-ups on these a year or so ago, Chris has sent me one or two, I've bought one or two, so the whole sample/side-collection has grown somewhat but is currently in several places, most of them buried in a shipping container, so it will be a while before we return to them, but we will and with a better picture than last time, and they told a reasonable tale then! This is the all lead version of the Barratt piece we looked at here, produced after Taylor had 'won' the T&B tool in the divvy-up!

Another one that's not quite in focus, we saw them years ago when I shot them on [I think?] Phil's table at Sandown Park, now I have a set, a nice box ticked. A bit pricy, and not as rare as some would have you believe, they found a load when the Elastolin factory closed about 15/20-years ago, so all the interested parties got a set at the time!

From the rears, the red one is quite a traditional, if portly 'crab-man', and the spaceman is very good if a bit uninspired, the other two however came from the fevered minds of a surrealist on drugs! The blue one is both inventive and wacky, but the monkey-faced, horned, flat-chested, ostrich-knickered, hoofed, rubber-stretchy hula-lady is the stuff of nightmares!

I wonder if there is a Perry Rodan connection with these figures; there isn't an 'overt' one as far as I am aware, but I thought maybe some of the paperback artworks might have inspired the sculptor/s?