D is for Donations - Peter & Chris - Dinosaurs

As with the military and Sci-Fi, there was a fair amount of carded and bagged in the folders, particularly in the stuff from Peter, which has been sent down to 1971 in Picasa, where lay the RTM folders!

 

Consequently, I've combined what's left into one folder, and we'll have two blind-bag/capsule toy posts before the final pair of donation posts - Odds and Sods. Then we've got the recent BMSS and Sandown show stuff in the queue!

 

These should have been kept for Rack Toy Month too, but I happened to find them myself elsewhere, just before Christmas, so the whole set, and various sister sets are already in that queue! But these are currently to be found in more independent corner shops/hardware stores, and they are quite well executed sculpts, each identified as a specific species with a potted 'thumbnail' history on the back of a collector card.

 

Apparently generics, they carry product/re-order codes very similar to those of both Henbrandt's catalogues, or -  more closely - D&D Distribution? 

 

Interesting mix of car-booty or charity shop stuff here, I'd like to know the origin of the bright orange and blue Kerthunkersaur! And the Triceratops . . . 

 

. . . glows in the dark!

(and needs a clean!) 

 

These look to be from one or two sets, and are similar to the carded ones above, well executed, realistic sculpting and paint-jobs, it's only when you get all the odds together and sort by size, marks, plastic and even paint-colours, or, if you're lucky, against sets, or set images, that it all starts to make sense!

 

White button! I had no white button toys (excepts, unknown, the old childhood Christmas stocking yellow robot in Mum's attic), when this blog started, there's very little in the HO/OO oeuvre which calls for or necessitates white button toys, but since the expansion in scale, and extension into various realms of 'novelty', there's quite a sub-genre of them in the stash now!

 

Chris doesn't send so many Dino's, as he's not buying in that area, but nevertheless, the odd one gets through in a mixed lot, and he always saves the more interesting ones for the donation parcel, here we have the Holly 'Gygax' in red, which we previously saw, in the recent mini-season, as catalogue scans, and a nice very 'Chinasaur' [1] or gape-mouthed [2], rubber jiggler [3] - how does a crude rubber lump end up with three recognised, hobby-wide, terms of endearment? Childhood nostalgia is a powerful force!

F is for Follow-up - LJN Swivel Heads

Whinging Pom here - too hot to bloody sleep! 

 

So, it turned out that Chris had actually sent me shots of his LJN figures ages ago, and they were languishing down the bottom of Picasa (I look upon my numbering of image folders as a scrollable 'ladder'), while he sent me more the other day while conversing on them as part of the most recent donation, so let's have a look at them!

 

LJN were what you might call a medium-sized toy company;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LJN 

 

And like most medium-sized companies, they ultimately failed, being bought by a bigger fish, or at least one with deeper pockets, but for a while they were big in licensed products. The figures we're looking at here, were more of a generic catalogue gap-filler though, gotta'have a few toy soldiers or model figures in the listings!

Play-sets, tied into LJN's own property, a 12" knock off of GI Joe (Action Man), called Mr. Action, were announced in the 1975 trade catalogue, as E-Z-Fold giant action playsets, and Brian Heiler has them here; 

https://plaidstallions.com/reboot/1975-ljn-toys-catalog-emergency-the-rookies-mr-action/

 

On Plaid Stallions, but he's not sure if they were ever issued, and I think someone else has them listed as another US toymaker's product. 

 

But clearly they were LJN's, and came to market somehow, maybe as counter-top dispencer/pick boxes, and while I initially thought they might be copies, based on the French Cofalux's 60mm swivel-heads, I don't think they are, the kneeling with rifle is similar to a metal mocherette of Kit Carson, but he's waving his above his head, so it's no more than a passing sculptural similarity.

 

Two of the figures share a sculpt, with the hands' contents rendering one an 'officer' (pistol) and the other a rifleman, throwing a very dinky-little grenade. And obviously, they are Vietnam era/Cold War troops with M16's, minimal webbing and no packs.

 

I did however, instantly recognise the US Cavalry as Elastolin 'swoppet' copies, albeit welded together at the waist, and with most of their accessories also permanently reattached as a part of larger integral mouldings, only the neckerchief being still separate, along with head/hat.

 

Meanwhile, we looked at my small sample of the combat Elastolin's back in 2019, with help from Girly-girl, who, that March, was as alive as both my Parents and her son, all four gone now, with Covid, Putin and Trump adding to the mess Farage had already started!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/03/h-is-for-haussers-homage-to-half-n-halfs.html

 

And, you can see, the sculpts are not the same as the LJN GI's? So they would seem to be pretty unique, compared to the cavalry knock-offs.

Markings are a simple H.K. on the GI's, a fuller HONG KONG in a DIN font on the foot cavalry (both marks are quite common on various toys from the colony, the full-stops on the HK being possible clues to future ID'ing of true maker), and an LJN -specific marking on the horses bases, one has to assume it's the same for the Indians, and Peter Evans thinks there may have been cowboys too, both taken from Elastolin, although the thumbnail in that catalogue seems to show the crude Star/M-Toy types, mostly Britains, Lone Star or Timpo piracies.

 

Chris's more recent close-up shots of the six combat troops.

Returning to whether or not the sets were ever issued, as Chris pointed out in his correspondence with me; "Maybe the E-Z-Fold sets were never produced as the Vietnam war had just finished and maybe considered ill-timed or poor taste?", and with Brain H also having misgivings on their execution, it may be that the figures (already ready for the catalogue photo-shoot) were cleared as loose figures. This would have been at the same time Highlander were failing to get their Vietnam-era project fully off the ground.

Can anyone else add anything to the circumstantial evidence, and musings of Brain, Chris, Peter and me? Can you remember how you encountered these, back at the time?

D is for Donations - Peter & Chris - AFV's

On the Military hardware section of these posts, and both Peter and Chris have included a few AFV's in the stuff they've saved for the blog, which, being not figures, tend to be more incidental, so I've shoved them into one post;

 

Micro armour odds-and-sods, I think the hull is a challenger, and that these are probably GHQ, the quality is better than the Skytrex I had as a kid, and the lack of cut-wire gun-barrels also precludes them?

 

Largish jeep, from the wheels I'd say pretty modern, so kind of grist-to-the-mill, but still a useful sample, especially if I don't already have one!

 

Ideal board-game pieces, these are rather piling up in a tub somewhere, and I'll have to think of something to do with them, they are fictional, and fun, and there are a few variants to be sorted out, reverse colourways etc.

 

One of the mini-tanks we looked at some time ago, but will return to, there's more on them in a download folder somewhere, and a couple of trees which escaped the 'odds' folder, the one on the left, a copy of a Cherilea-Phoenix window-box accessory, the other a current'ish Poplar, and a very new re-sculpt/evolution of the old Lego Lombardy Poplar, whose evolution we looked at in a previous post once.

This was a superb find by Chris, as I have a pair of these bobbing-commander tanks, unmarked, and possibly in a darker green, which is how you can find them across the pond too, so this one with its clear Peter Pan marking adds a whole 'nother paragraph to the story, which includes a different tank and those easter-bunny trucks! Presumably - a mould-swap?

 

Three micro-armoured cars, which we will return to one day, as there are three types of these Daimlers, two types of the little gun which often accompanies them, and only one version of the 'carrier', but with sets to look at and different wheel-axle types, worth a proper dive, one day.

 

Behind them is a probable Kleeware, or Pyro original on the right, and one of the metal axle trucks from the river-ferry sets, I call Type 5 or 5/6/hybrids;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2011/10/m-is-for-mini-trucks-part-6-types-5-6.html

 

Click on the 1-ton Humber Tag, for more on them! And many-thanks again, to both collectors, for finding/saving/getting this stuff to the blog, for me to share with you.

D is for Donations - Peter - Animals

The sorting of the animals is going to be one of the bigger tasks, one day, the hobby is probably bigger than Toy Soldiers, certainly, it supports several vigorous forums, and there are as many makers, if not more, while mine are rather in an anonymised heap within the bigger stash, but they keep coming in, and here's some more!

 

A nice cat, which looks like it might be an accessory from a non-animal set of some kind, the lizard is from the little small-scale, rack-toy play sets from Toy Major/Ackerman, while the bear is both a bit crude and a bit unusual!

 

A whole sub-genre are this smallish scale, softish vinyl sets from toobs, tubs or bags, which are sort of 35/40mm compatible, but really 'bag-scale' or unit scale, and while some are marked, other's easy to ID, many sets are to be found on FeeBay-Amazon-Alibaba, as generics or under obviously phantom brands. These seem to go together, but a couple of them are questionable. Nice, different, cactus!

 

Two generic rack toys, over-stickered to Toys As Fun, which I could have saved for Rack Toy Month, but I think there's plenty for then, and this is the next size up, again, a bit unit-scale (elephant undersized, pig oversized), but mid-sized animals are coming out as 54mm-compatible, which is useful for dioramas and vignettes . . . big cat stalking a patrol, that kind of thing!

 

A couple of proper antiques, I love these! The pressed-wood farmer seems to match the common girl feeding chickens we've seen here before, in point of fact, she or her chickens, turn up so often she must have been from a popular set, for several years, but this chap I've not seen before. Although the blue paint has suffered badly, the other colours remain in sufficient quantity to give a good idea of what he looked like new!

 

While the horse in tin-plate might be a cigarette premium, while we, here in the UK, had cards and silks, as giveaways, some brands on the continent had tin-plate flats, prior to replacing them with the numerous plastic flats used as premiums with other products too. You fold the base out, after the item has been slid out of the packet of cigarettes.

 

From a more recent pick-up in London is another Toy Major lizard (used as a dragon/monster/dinosaur in both the cavemen and medieval sets), two tree frogs and a very daft-looking sauropod!

 

Some larger animals, I think a couple were Triple-A marked, and the green pony is from the Tupperware interactive building blocks, we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/11/g-is-for-great-grey-green-greasy.html

 

Where they were used as, removable, playable rattles, in opaque blocks, unlike the transparent ones from Airfix and others.

 

A large lump of dense vinyl, makes a rather nice Hippo', and these are starting to grow as a side collection, purely by accident, and we did look at a load in a lazy post a while ago!

 

This is from PMS, and I ummed-and-arrred over whether or not to open it, in the end I though I had to, or I wouldn't know what I was dealing with, and was quite suprised to find a gold mokey!

 

I don't know wheather it's a 'chase' figure, or if the whole range is finished in a similar fashion, nor do I know how many there are as there;s no flyer/leaflette . . . probably a £1-shop thing, and therefore stripped to the minimum on unit-price!

 

Another group of - probably - related small vinyls - wild!

 

And another - domestic!

 

Mentioned the other day I think, and seen with a few others a while back, oh yeah, it was the post on mixed shots, a week or so ago. Anyway, here's the farm one, courtesy of Peter, and these sets annoy me, nice animals in a vague scale, so why add huge dogs and ginormous poultry! They haven't even got the excuse of box-scale, because there's plenty of room occupied by the plastic end-filler!? I know, it's a cost thing!

 

Again, many thanks to Peter for all these, they're not just grist to the mill, but also 'bricks in the wall', gaps filled in the archive.

L is for Loose Lots - Sandown - Military

Military and ceremonial now, with a few interesting items, one of which is annoying me, but maybe you know what it is, or where they are from, but let's look at the pièce de résistance first!

 

A pretty clean Kentoy stretcher team, I may already have one, but this has good paint, and being new to market is properly 'clean' if you know what I mean, and I think it's a darker brown blanket than my existing sample.

 

I think these may both be duplicates, but I love a bit of [affordable] composition, and we have an 'olin' gunner from Germany, possibly a minor make, or from the budget ranges of one of the big-two, the other, more likely the duplication; it looks familiar, in pumice or plaster, and maybe British or French?

 

This pair are the ones that are bugging me, I'm sure I've seen chapter & verse on them, possibly in one of the glossy mags', but I can't recall, and/or didn't take notes, but equally, it might be on the dongles as an internet download? Poured resin, with wire armatures in the trumpets, I have a feeling they are scenic background for a poured-metal or 'new metal' solid set, from someone like King & Country, Figarti or Frountline?

 

Again, I can't resist a bit of litho-printed tin, when it's affordable, and these were on Steve Vicker's table, I actually picked the six better ones, but he sent the two casualties over, a few minutes later, via a mutual friend who was passing, and, to be honest, the red-coat could replace one of the Germans, if only for a future photograph.

 

From the left we have - I assume - a khaki Brit, two Germans, with possibly an Italian between them, and a couple of Russo-Japanese war types? On the ground are both Brit's I think, and all late 19th/early 20th century, in depiction, beween the two wars, in execution? 

 

Odds - A Timpo horse, which may have started life pulling a wagon or gun, but which has been married to a mounted figure's base, and a Britains Herald Highland officer. All play-worn, but useful spares or 'grist -to-the-mill'!

 

Crescent, with two of the darker-red plastic, behind, and a sand-textured one in front.

 

Not the best (signs of repainting), but a useful comparison shot between two similar poses from Lone Star (black bases) and Britains Herald (green bases), At Ease (left), and Royal Salute (Present Arms), on the right.

 

Cherilea - Highland pipers.

 

I don't think these are repaints, I think this is how Lone Star issued them, with simple, all green kilts, I also think they were on the wants list? So, a useful addition to the massed ranks of the Highland samples.

 

Paints quite good, on these Harald Lifeguards, but sticky fingers have reduced them to 'dirty', so someone had full play-value out of them! Having recently seen Argentinian (?) ceremonials in similar uniforms, they may get a strip and repaint with paler (than the Horse Guards) blue jackets, or something equally exotic from one of the Blandford books?

 

Odds & sods! There's a Skybirds rangefinder (for which the operator has been waiting several decades! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/s-is-for-skybirds.html), and pilot torso in the left foreground, and various useful 50 and 60-mil fellows from Cherilea, Crescent, Hilco and Britains.

C is for Confirmatory Combat Canon!

This is one of those useful pieces, which consolidate that which we know, but seem unable to prove, and should come as a relief to those of us who have developed a tendency to mutter 'could be one or the other', when dealing with unknown plastics, on the understanding we are referring to Rosedale/Tudor Rose and/or Kleeman/Kleeware.

 

Speaking as someone who was a younger member of the follow-on force in the hobby, but who is now looking at himself as an older (or ageing!) member of the next generation, watching younger people come into the hobby with weird notions on the intrinsic value of Lego or WWF action figures, I don't know why I just 'trust' the older guards insistence in a relationship, beyond, that they said so, and that the one, Rose-, bought the other, Klee-, but finding things like this underline the closeness of the two, as fact! Especially as those insistences were always about mould-tool sharing.

 

We previously saw this M55 post-war US self-propelled gun (SPG), three years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/05/afv-is-for-absolutely-feckin-vast.html

 

Clearly marked with a full set of Tudor Rose markings, and, in fact, have seen this Kleeware version before, as a show 'shelfie' nine years ago, so I was already pretty confident of the cast-iron connection, but still needed some introductory blurbiage!

 

The central mark above the reinforcing bulkhead is the same on both AFV's, but where the T*R model has two more ID discs either side of it, the Kleeware has a longer, untypical (for either make) mark, parallel to the discs, but below the bulkhead. However, and unlike some of the space crossovers from these two makes, there is no sign of the missing marks as faint, blanked discs, which you often find on the spaceships.

 

It may point to a rule - marked T*R is IS T*R, unmarked; probably Kleeman? It'll be worth a post one day comparing all the marks, as there are other marks, Kleeware having a small disc mark, and Tudor Rose having a longer written mark.

 

Anyway, I now have enough ammunition for both guns, and given that the Rosedale 25lbr came green with silver shells, it's likely some Tudor Rose M55's got them too? That's it, short and sweet, another chapter in a story which still has the odd question mark!