W is for What do You Think Readers?

I've been trying to ignore the sniping from across the road, it's mostly low-level and trying to 'tick' my Tags into your Tag list with evilBay scraping's isn't exactly the height of sophistication, when 99% of my stuff is original copy, but it's all getting a bit silly, isn't it! Nor is posting 'LP' every time I post LB (Lik Be), especially if you have to shake-down feeBay to do so!

 

These are mostly internet images, and are only the ones in Picasa, I haven't looked at the dongles, but we saw most of them as a follow-up to a mini-season on farms, using the set from my own collection, back in April, and there's always more to say!

 

One origin of the guitar-playing turtle!

 

Although the lower set is on a Wilton's catalogue page alongside Lik Be (that's an LB, because it's B for Be), I think the set is actually by Holly although some of the animals are similar to those issued by Colonial Studios, so were probably also supplied by Holly to them.

 

But the zoo-keeper is certainly, like a number of the animals, in the style of Lik 'the LB' Be's products, although here "Created by Jak Pak" ? . . . I don't think so!

A mixed internet lot with some US stuff down the foreground, but with the Lik Be (where we get LB from) tractor in the background, it's a safeish-bet these two more realistic farmers went with the more realistic farm stuff from LB (for Lik Be), which I think I've mentioned before! Perhaps , as I write, Copisey is scraping some off evilBay, or Worthpoint, what do you think, readers?! Certainly the bases are similar to others in the L for Lik, B for Be oeuvre!

 

This farmer with rake/hoe, though, is more likely to be Colonial Studios, Holly, or another maker, being one of the 900-coded mouldings with no 'A' or 'B' prefix, actually just number 943. Note readers, how he's not got a base, like the zookeeper! I wonder if our Forest Friend up there in the Wirral is busy searching Worthpoint for the original image, even as I edit this?

 

"I love these silly little Colonial farmers", he'll say, as if he knew all along! What do you think, readers?

 

The one on the left is Farmer Straw from Noddy 

The one on the right might be a beer or tobacco promotional. 

 

There's tons more of this stuff out there, and there's plenty more in the archive, but I try to post empirical stuff, I've seen and handled, and only really use internet stuff, in context, to enhance a post with my stuff in it, and while 'if you can't beat them, join them' has led to my using more images than I have in the past, some of these have been on several devises without ever being used (this one came-into Picasa in 2014), and that's how I hope to continue.

 

But if Sticky the Woodentop wants a fight, he can have one? I used to get on with him/them, but then about three/four-years ago (?) he just started niggling, and ignoring the drip-drip of his nonsense hasn't been easy; I've had a couple of pops back, but this last few days it's been so obvious, it's getting silly!

 

Bad enough they post 'antipodean' aircraft the day after me (without, apparently, either of them knowing the relationship between Matchbox and Universal, or the logo of the latter), or pretend he's just discovered the Buck Rogers erasers (a couple of months after commenting on my post, on the subject), or try to tick-off Tags missing on their site, but seen here, often with the most spurious post of the thinnest gruel, however Forresty is older than me, and should be wiser?

 

What do you think readers? Should I quickly tick-off the few dozen Space and TV-related Tags he's got which I haven't, either from my archives, or a quick visit to feebleBay? Or should I just carry-on doing what I'm doing, and ignore the petty little phuqtard?

 

Am I a 'founder and administrator', readers? Or just a bloke shouting into the void, what do you think?

 

Comments are not required, Blog Traffic can go up or down, other Blogs' are available. 

L is for Lego's Dirty Little Secret

One of the drums I keep beating, one of the windmills I will continue to tilt-at, is the theft by Lego of the Hilary Page design of the Kiddycraft Mini Bricks, a scaled down version of his pre-war self-locking bricks.

So - as we shall see in a second - when I saw this German language version of one of the first sets we had as kids, the stand-alone 'pre-fab' garage, I had to get it up here.

 

One of the 'excuses' Lego have used for the similarity of their product in recent years has been that they 'improved' the product with the addition of the rods and tubes at the centre-points between the studs, to 'jam' the bricks together, and as those huge propagandist tomes from Dorling Kindersly have had to address the plagiarism, that's the line that's been taken, to explain the fact that the one is a copy of the other!

But here we have a set, admittedly early, and European, yet manufactured some time after the brand had become popular outside Denmark, and sometime before they lost the court-case brought by Kiddycraft in the UK, in which the rods between the studs are absent. These are a direct copy of the UK bricks, with the exception of the weight-balanced door, and the two specialist receiving bricks, but by then Airfix had similar bricks in their Betta Builder!

 

So, when Jørgen Vig Knudstorp said in 2009 "On January 28, 1958 the LEGO (R) Group patented the LEGO (R) brick with its now well-known tubes inside..." He was being a bit disingenuous, as the Kiddycraft design was the one which had gone International in '56! What we have here, are Hilary Page's self-locking 'Kiddybricks', stolen by Ole Kirk Christensen and exploited by his son, Godtfred.

And the thing is, the later tubes/rods were an innovation, or 'novel addition', they did not change the outward appearance, nor the function of the bricks, very important in Patent Law. The very patents Lego would use for years against all-comers including Tyco, and it was not until the courts protected Mega Bloks, after these facts started to gain wider recognition, that things changed and some began to realise Lego are just another 'evil empire'!

The early products were made from cellulose-acetate, which tends to warp over time, and while you can use hot water or a hair-dryer to restore shape, there's often associated shrinkage, so the bricks and components no longer interact with others, or the modern product. Not a problem on Kiddycraft's original urea-formaldehyde bricks, nor Airfix's polystyrene or Blue Box's polyethylene ones.

 

Other Points

Apparently 'Award-winning' journalist Erin Blakemore writes "LEGO says Kiddicraft told the company it was fine to use the design, but in 1981 they formally bought the rights to Kiddicraft bricks from their inventor’s descendants.", and while the "but" is telling, she fails to mention that they had already, by that point, lost a UK court case and been fined a large amount of money (for the day), neither a fine nor a subsequent IP purchase would have been necessary, if they had that permission.

 

And they bought from Hestair-Kiddycraft (to save their arses), not the 'decendents', his widow had, by then, sold her stake in the Kiddycraft company to Hestair.

 

On the Brick Fetish (and other) website/s, the story is told that "Although Hilary and Oreline visited Ole and Godtfred in 1949, and perhaps, even left drawings and samples, Page was never aware that Lego produced a version of his brick.", yet while it is true Hilary (who would commit suicide a few years later) never knew the depth of the deception, not even Lego have ever claimed that there was a meeting. Indeed, with their mawkishly-sentimental animated history of the product (which you can find on YouTube), they claim he found the bricks (made - in the video - to resemble the much later Tri-Ang 'Pennybricks') at a trade fair.

The idea seems to come from a Daily Wail article by Adrian Lithgow, back in 1987, and the truth is likely that the trade-fair exhibitor, from which the bricks were stolen by Ole, was probably Hilary or someone from Kiddycraft?

 

While Miniland states "Along with the new [injection moulding] machine, Ole received several sample parts showing its capabilities. Among these were samples of a toy brick made by Injection Moulders, Ltd, of London. It was Hilary Fisher Page’s Kiddicraft brick. Interlego A.G. v. Tyco Industries [1989] 1 A.C. 217. During cross-examination, Godtfred indicated that He and Ole had received Kiddicraft samples, which served as the basis of the original Automatic Binding Brick.", ie, no trade fair, let alone no meeting?

 

However it happened, it was theft, straight-up, pure & simple thievery, piracy, plagiarism. 

Without the Star Wars franchise (which can't have been cheap), Lego would have gone under in 2004, and in producing figures with lightsabres and ray guns, not to mention 'star fighters', they broke their own golden 'no war toys' rule, except . . . they had already broken it with the knights & castles, the Wild West and the pirates & Red/Blue-coat soldiers, so, even within their own mythos, Lego are a bit crap!

And the above all matters; had they paid for a licence, Hilary Page may not have felt the need to kill himself (over something else), and yet, without a licence fee payable, they remain the most expensive bricks on the market, by a country mile!

News, Views Etc . . . Bit of a Round-Up

I had an unexpected day-off today, so having had a lazy night last night and not popped-out the two posts I had planned, I'll try to get them out later tonight! But I did faff-about until the early hours, going through a stack of catalogues and ephemera, scanned a few things and archived some stuff from Bluebird, Comansi and Klienbahn, so it wasn't a wasted time!

In the meantime, someone eMailed me to ask if the article in January's Collectors Gazette was plagiarising the Blog, and the honest answer is, probably! A while ago I noted, here, at Small Scale World, that several articles in that publication bore a more than slight resemblance to articles posted here, a few weeks, or months before they appeared there, and while I thought they'd knocked that silliness on the head, you can't have missed their coverage of military trains, so soon after we had several visits to them here?

 

When the author (who knows me, and is known to me) waxes lyrical "...these little harbingers of the plastic revolution are often overlooked - but I'm about to rectify that situation", he seems to be ignoring all the work done here by me and contributors, or elsewhere as mentioned in six posts, over eleven years! And his total number of models is out by at least two, maybe more! [I think there may be a little helicopter of the 'grasshopper' type]

 

Let's not forget he/they published two articles on me in their November 2005 edition! And, I probably get more traffic in a week, than they sell issues in a month! He seems to have nicked the image of the Armstrong Whitworth 'flying wing' and added the data from this Blog's article, I don't know, and his 1930's date . . . where does he get that from? None of them were flying then!

 

It's actually a bit tragic, you have the two Paul's pretending they haven't seen the blog (one of them's regularly commented on), so they can post the same stuff a few weeks later, as 'never seen before', Ramses the 5th pretending he doesn't get his few facts from here, TJF and his cock-wacking monkey-lizard and their shite, the Vichy wholesale downloading my stuff, and the AFD, one of whom still pretends to be my 'mate', but only after Stad's has left the building! In point of fact - one of the Brit's does that as well, but usually before Stad's has entered the building!! And people making shit-up, all over the place!

 

Onwards and upwards . . . it's still the 6th! One of my neighbours down the corridor made a lovely little Christmas display on the door of his flat, and taking the lead from him, I managed to buy the last door-hanger in the hardware store a few days before Christmas!

So I made this, with some of the stuff in the 'Gay Tree' top-up box, which happens to be here! It was the sum-total of my decorations this year, but I had three shiny robots and an astronaut on the windowsill behind the laptop, which were joined by two large gold bows from my Crimbo' prezzies, so some effort to celebrate was made!

 

I used my surprise day-off to pop into town and obtain the offending CG, and while in WHSmiths, who I normally try to give as little money as possible to (I try to always use the much-cheaper Rymans after watching Staples fold), I found this Schleich boxed-set, at half-price! Shit shots, but I rushed them a moment ago! Well worth the seven-quid-something, for four, given they start at a fiver for the small ones in the toy shop, a few doors up!

 

I'll leave them in the bags for now! I wonder if this isn't just clearing the 'blind bag' stuff, I've seen them (the blind-bags) in Smyths, but who's going to shell out six or seven pounds for something they can't see, a pound maybe, even two or more now for the Lego minifigs? But more than a fiver?

 

I'm on the last of Lidl's Favorina bears, and gave the After Eight's away as a late gift, but I haven't started the chocolate orange, and still have most of the Belgian truffles and three Lindt mini-bears, so edible-Christmas will extend 'till at least Valentines Day! Shops are already full of it! So a proper Happy New Year to loyal readers, and to the plagiarists, copycats and annoying little tick-turd golems, may I wish only, my recent luck, on you!

F is for Follow-up - GI Flats

Here's a fun one, ready to publish a while ago, but stuck in the long-queue for obvious reasons; forewarned is forearmed! Remember when we had a look at what used to be the Bonnie-Built flats which have grown to encompass all sorts of figure-issues, on three continents, in two sizes and several plastics . . . well, check these puppies out!

I found the Armoured Cars! Argo at Loeser's, was one of the two brands I added to the canon on that occasion, unlike TJF I don't brag 'Discovery' all the time (although I did brag a bit at the end, that time!), but whatever they are, whatever you want to call them, there have been plenty of them here, over the years, and this one - like the next - came from the late James Chase collection, back in 2005/6.

 

What is known in legal circles as a 'manuscript note', that is an unattributed (or handwritten) document or part document, usually undated, which nevertheless adds to the evidential 'bundle'. In this case, a newspaper cutting discussed in the previous post, as was the likely 'Loeser'.

 

The shot on the right was an accidental no-flash, which came out well-enough to give a better idea of the true or everyday colours, but has reflected off the rust to make the underside look far worse than it is!

 

 

I still need to find the Ambulance at some point, but it's nice to be able to explain the weird artwork in the advert to myself! Clearly some BB's are fed-in through the hole in the roof and the wheels drive a firing mechanism, spraying pellets all over the place - parents must have loved it!

I'm not 100% sure quite how that system works however, and when I have time at the other end, I will unfold the floor tabs and strip the spare olive-green-one down to see how it works, and decide whether or not they all need restoring, I suspect they might be jammed-up with old pellets! Or worse - Junior's 'replacement' pellets, whatever they turn out to be!

A reminder of the other figures I added to the canon in that post, the Spencer issue, as Jan put it so wonderfully at the time, 'Pancake Soldiers'! An image also from the Chase collection, and also disassembled in the previous post.

 

An image which aught to be exclusive to this Blog, as I scanned-it from the original cutting, cropped it, cleaned it up and produced a rich-text version of the blurb to accompany the finished image.

 

Over the intervening five-and-a-half years, since that previous post it's become pretty obvious all the Spencer's are Spencer Gifts, still extant with 600 outlets in North America (USA & Canada).

 

Which only leaves the question of why, after stealing the image from me, did Kent Sprecher decide to tell everyone they were English? Screen-cap above, he's probably got a Spencer's round the effing corner from where he's at!

Not 'British', not from the 'UK' but specifically; "English"? You need empirical evidence to make statements like that, and the only evidence we have here, is the phrase 'Corpsmen' and the Dollar price? Two very American things!

 

An image thief, AND stupid. He literally didn't even read the article he was stealing the image from - probably in a guilt-hurry to download the .jpg and get back to pretending he's never seen or found the blog!

He's had that up there for at least four five years (I published on the 16th October 2018, it was on his site by the 8th December, having not been there on the 8th November), completely made-up and false caption for an image he hasn't asked me for . . . and yet he's decided to get off the fence and take the gloves off, while TJF has weighed-in! Well, learn to take your spanking like a man, 'cos there's plenty more of it to come.

___________________________________________

Later the same day - Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive! Kent wants us to believe he got it from a sales list???

 

What a sales list from 1961, full of tons of similar rare stuff he hasn't shown us yet??? A sales list of images from my Blog? A modern sales list using complete imagery from 1961 newspapers he decided to crop identically to mine??? A Sales list that informed him England has a chain of shops called Spencer (maybe he's thinking of upmarket clothing retailer Marks & Sparks!), that operated in dollars??? Which he just happened to find days after I published??? How stupid does he think everyone else is?

All he needed to do to save some face was blame an anonymous contributor for sending it to him, and take it down with a mouth-drying apology, but no, he's chosen to double-down on his theft with a cockamamie stack of implausible horse-shit lying! In my book, someone who is a liar and a thief, is a crook. If you are not straight, you're crooked.

R is for Rootin' Tootin' Six-gun Shootin'

Like the figure we looked at the day before yesterday, this started life in Herald's stable, got taken-in by Britains, simplified and sent to Hong Kong for its sins. It also got copied by nearly every Tom, Dick, and early British plastic producer, along with several in the colonies!

This image has been on the blog before, so we'll get it out of the way before we look at the original, most of these are now in storage, but more have joined the staff here until they can all be reunited! And the trio of 'early British' were photographed again before incarceration, while the Britains are here.

The top row - Britains, Britains - Hong Kong, Paramount, Hong Kong

Middle - Hong Kong, Speedwell, Speedwell, Trojan

Bottom - all Hong Kong

So, the original Britains chap was a bad-guy (all in black - probably smoked, almost certainly liked Country & Western music and definitely cheated on his women!), greyed-out in PVC after the move to Hong Kong production, he was finally brightened-up with a bit of a denim two-piece! He also got the separate base. I don't think I have all the versions, but the blue one has extended the sample slightly!

 

I don't know if my 'bad guy' is a shrinkage variation, or that the moulding was simplified in HK, but he looks cooler spitting death with his face hidden, even if you couldn't hit a barn-door at twenty paces with the brim of your Stetson over your eyes! But really - he's slotting some dude sneaking out of a side-alley, two cool for gun-play school!

The guys have swapped places from the first image, so we have Trojan dropping the hat to effect 'originality' on the left, while Speedwell - middle and right - didn't bother and just went with a straight copy, However with hat, shirt and sometimes 'kerchief' painted different colours, they make for more interesting figures than the Britains herald original.

Two recent additions, all the Speedwell figures are two-part moulds with a split-line across the base, and I'm always hoping to find a hatted figure with a smooth base, as neither UNA nor VP seem to have been associated with this pose yet, and a three-part version might be from one of them, but no luck so far!

Another Paramount has also come in; theirs is quite a different pose, although influenced by the Britians figure; he's an older, sheriff type, with a ten-and-a-bit-gallon hat, swanky boots with a cavalry turn-down type thing going on there, more balanced stance, he's begging you to think he fired six - feeling lucky? Punk!

Painting on this one's fuller than my storage copy with the hat, boots and fringe painted black, and further red-highlights on the fringe.

This chap has also been seen here before, but for completion - here he is again! The base marked MADE IN HONG KONG and 634. Following-on from Wednesday's post - I don't know if Benbros had a version of this figure? I certainly don't have one/haven't found one, although both Lone Star and Benbros have a whip-handed chap with similar posing.

K is for Ker'neeling Firing

Mentioning the piracy which was rife in the early toy industry yesterday, I thought it would be timely to have a look at what the Brits were up to, and mostly they were up to taking the piss out of Britians!

So, this is the chap we're looking at today, the Britains 'Herald' kneeling firing cowboy figure. Here are six, at the top the Multi-colour originals in brown, chalky ethylene plastic, the yellow-shirted chap having six paint-colours, the red shirted chap seven.

Below them is a pair of the later 'simplified' paint scheme figures, with four colours each on a more stable grey plastic and at the bottom a final pair of Hong Kong manufactured rigid PVC vinyl cowboys.

They too are four-colour, but changing the colour of the plastic makes them 'go further', while re-sculpting or a new tool has led to them shooting upwards more markedly, not quite the skywards of Airfix's paratrooper, but at the sneaky guy who was always in the upper-floor of the saloon!

UNA actually improved the figure slightly with a decent foresight on the rifle, they are also easy to spot with their television-screen shaped depression in the base underside of a three part mould. Speedwell are marked round the edge of a two part mould with the split-line running straight across the base. They are also slightly smaller figures.

The last figure in this line-up is unmarked and unattributed, but the suspicion is that he's a Hong Kong copy, both from the glossy paint and the glossy plastic. He has also had his head tilted over slightly and along with a general loss of detail over the previous figures is slightly thinner, a pointer to pantographing.

On the left is a definite HK version, courtesy of Darius who sent him from Italy, he is joined by another two Speedwell figures. The grey one looks different but only because some vandal has clipped his rifle tip, only for his pistol grip to be lost later to brittleness!

Markings on the HK copy include a very feint HONGKONG on one side of the base and either 03001 or 100ED on the other - I favour the former but it's not clear.

Benbros made some effort to pretend they hadn't bought a handful of Britains Herald originals before starting their own set, and Trojan - seeing an opportunity for 'originality' (bloody-hell Hugh - you've used single-quotes correctly!) among pirates - stole the Benbros cut-n-shut rather than the Britains rifleman!

For which you have to admire their chutzpah and logic; you can't be sued for pirating a pirate (by the pirate) nor are you as likely to be sued by the originator for a while, who will be after the first pirate, first - if at all?

Lone Star (above) also spotted the guy in the saloon bedroom, but clearly with help from Britains, although I think a previous owner may have spotted the shirts? While the chap from Cherilea (lower four) is a new moulding, only similar by dint of doing the same thing; not because he's a copy.

Helping the different look; he's wearing gloves and his holster is further round, and we see three base versions here with the small oblong depression in the base underside to the left, two with the shallow penny-depression and one (darker plastic) smooth.

For completion I include - here - the two kneeling figure poses from Hilco, these are pirated from earlier French hard plastic (or even metal?) figures and can't be mistaken for anything else with their wide-brimmed sombreros and dinky-little, chorus-line, cowgirl-booties!

The ultimate ignominy; Britains Hong Kong contractor is allowed to retire the kneeling guy and replace him with this piece of bent-rifled shite, a squatting, one-shot-and-he's-on-his-arse pose, apparently painted by trolls with broken-fingers! Four colours, separate base.

But it's not the end of our journey; as the cut-n-shut merchant at Benbros was so pleased with his six-gun conversion of the cowboy, he decided to use the cast-off to create an Indian kneeling rifleman; taking the head and legs of Britains archer to marry to the rifleman's torso.

Really - it's probably the topless torso from the standing Indian firing pose, but it's a nice idea! Trojan copied this pose from Benbros too, but I don't have one to show you, sorry!

Which gives us an excuse to visit these again (we've looked at them before here), just for the comparison. Two six-colour early figures to the left (the first is damaged, or maybe it's the the rare firing-last-arrow variant!), two four-colour intermediate, simplified-production in the middle, then from Hong Kong - a PVC integral based figure (five colour) and a late separate base on the far-right; four-colour paint-job.

News, Views etc...Posting Elsewhere! (rant alert)

I know my posting rate has dropped-off this year, but with real life stuff and the fact that I'm running out of stuff in the attic to blog, while everything else is still in storage have both affected what I can post, but there will be a steady'ish trickle of new'ish stuff...

This week I was also posting on another site - the STS Animal Collectors Forum;

Airfix

 JK of Hong Kong

 Tudor Rose

If you collect things other than military figures I would recommend it, they are a friendly bunch without the out-and-out competitiveness or bitchiness you get on some forums. And they have an animal-wiki attached;

Toy Animal Info.



I've also been posting original content elsewhere without my knowledge or permission....



This little shit;

Jimdo

...has copied all the documentation and most of the other images from my two EKO articles, presumably this means he doesn't mind me taking his stuff and putting it up here in English? As he seem to have stolen a lot of stuff from other people/books, I shall refrain!



While this plagiarist thief;

 Ghislain Oubreyrie

...has taken the diver images from the Kellogg's post and carefully cut round them! He's also cut round the Toysmith divers regularly found on eBay and is passing them off as Kellogg's originals, but the Toysmith ones have aluminium alloy plugs while the originals were tin, which tended to rust. Again, the little-dick has lots of useful stuff I could take reciprocally and post here in the universal language - if I chose to?



All you thieving pirates (Henk, Rudik, Ward as well) need to understand one thing...if/when I can afford it I will engage legal representation in your own countries and sue you (or your web-service provider/publisher/printer) for the price of a small house!

I publish original content, OR I credit fully with permission/link-backs, OR I flag up dodgy origin with a caveat, I also understand the law of copyright both off and on the internet. You don't; you're all inadequate, poxy little neuro-typical, farty-arsed fuckwits relying on others to do your 'work' for you.


So....lots of 'Smallscaleworld' on the web, just not all of it published here in the last few days, and not all of it original!

News, Views etc...Tatra Plastics, New Book and - sadly - Plagiarism!

But not in the New Book! More on that in a mo...

Tatra Plastics

First; I have been contacted by a Philip Gwynne from the PR company working with Tatra Plastics on their 50th anniversary celebrations, with the following message;

Last year you corresponded by email with Tatra Plastics Manufacturing ref plastic cereal box toys. You may be interested to learn that Tatra is launching a nationwide hunt for any of its toys that might have survived, as part of its celebrations mark the 50th anniversary.

Don't know if you and your fellow collectors can help with the search, so I'm sending you some info just in case. Please let me know how you get on...

As my collection of Tatra is all in storage and a bit non-get-at-able since my Volvo was written off by a petulant Audi TT driver, if anyone has nice examples of the sets mentioned on the original post, or complete sets they might like to lend for any events, or decent photographs, let Philip know, his email - suitably coded to cheat spam robots - is;

philip[at]thenakedcompany[dot]co[dot]uk

Especially if you live in West York's! The futher information is as follows;

TOY STORY!

Company marks 50^th anniversary with hunt for oldest cereal box toy made in Yorkshire

Do you remember when small plastic toys came free inside your box of cereals? And how you shook the box to make the toy fall out into your bowl? Did you know that they were probably made by Tatra Plastics Manufacturing, whose factory is in Norwood Green, near Bradford?

To help mark the company’s 50^th anniversary, Tatra Plastics Manufacturing want to track down any of their toys that have survived down the years.

"We’d like to hear from anyone who still has one of plastic toys,” says MD Karl Hesmondhalgh. “We know there are serious collectors of this kind of ephemera and there may also be a few plastic figures that have remained hidden at the bottom of old toy chests."

The era of free toys in cereal boxes was brought to an end by health and safety and “small parts - choking hazard” warnings. But for an entire generation growing up in the 60s and 70s, they were a special treat at breakfast… and a proven marketing tool for cereals manufacturers

"It would be nice to know if any survived,” says Karl. “Especially if the owner lives in West Yorkshire, because of the strong local connection

New Book

Barney Brown and Peter Cole, both known for their previous publications on the iconic brand that is Britians; Barney with his in depth looks at Farm, Zoo and Garden plastics and Peter with two editions of his comprehensive look at the history of Britians plastics; Suspended Animation - have come together to produce the next instalment in a growing archive; Herald Civilians - The Golden Years, which covers all the civilian figures not covered in Barney's previous three volumes.

 

Here's a book wot we wrote! (with appologies to Eric Morecambe)
Peter on the left and Barney, with their 'baby' and looking justifiably proud!

It is a lovely work, with all the little things that don't normally get covered in any great depth like the Ethnic and Ballet Dancers. However for those of you who like your gun-play they have covered all the Cowboys and Indians, which are technically 'civilian', however I have a slight point of order to raise with the authors...when a country has two armies - fighting each other - that doesn't make both of them 'civilian'!!

However - they are hard to catagorise and having the ECW figures covered (and photographed) in some depth, will be the best reason for your rushing out and buying it post haste...in fact, you don't need to rush anywhere, just write to Barney for details here;

Cobweb Cottage, Lyminster Road, Lyminster, West Sussex, BN17 7QQ, or eMail him here;

barney_brown[at]sky[dot]com

I believe he has some copies of the earlier publications left as well, so well worth a quick note if you are new to the hobby or missed them frist time round.



Plagiarism

It has come to my notice that a major UK publisher, known to a fair few of you has allowed one of it's authors to get a clear infringement of this blogs copyright past its editors. I will be taking the matter up with the publishers and trying to ascertain when a blog (started in 2008) becomes "pretty old", if the Internet as we know it is barely 15 years old, but in the meantime please make sure you've read (and understood) the legal notice at the foot of the blog-page. It's crap, I know, but it's to protect me and the effort I put into this, and it's not the first time.

Piracy - It's a bit crap! (ABC)

I have absolutely no problem with people downloading images, text or even the whole blog (as happens about twice a month) for their own use, against the possibility that the Internet will cease to exist some time after lunch tomorrow (which never comes), indeed there is no way to stop people doing so, and I do it all the time, but I try to rename anything I download with an 'X' to remind me I can't re-use it.

While it's very hard for me to pursue a private publisher over the pond - using my photographs without permission, to pad-out his interminable and error-filled list of new poured-resin -  it's far more easy to have a word with someone closer at home and I will pursue this.

Please - don't use the stuff without asking...Henk? Are you reading? You clearly visit or you wouldn't have been able to steal the vac-form pictures would you?..stealing my traffic at the same time! If you don't have the stuff to photograph yourself, you link to someone who has. Clearly you've misunderstood the meaning of 'Inter-Net', it's not a Trawl-Everthing-that-Takes-Your-Fancy-and-Drag-it-Back-to-Your-Place-Net! Bloody Dutch Buccaneers, always were a problem.

If you don't understand the [International] rules of/on copyright, intellectual property rights or plagiarism, the answer is simple...don't copy anything until you do! Rant over.