A is for ♪♫♪♪♫ All-in-All, Theyyyyy're All Just Bricks in the Wall ♪♫♪♪♫

Definitely ticking the 'other collectables' Tag, these are a fun novelty which seem to have been with us forever, or at least the mid-1970's, when I got my first, but, being a magpie, I now have four! Fake sponge bricks!

 

The collection,

"More than two of anything . . . "!

 

My original Christmas stocking brick, one of the 'practical' gifts which were always included; novelty soap, toothbrushes, combs, wiggly straws, things which, however-much fun they were, were also meant to be used daily! It's a soft bath-sponge material.

 

This was my second, it's a harsher foamed polyethylene, still a batheable foam, but more like garden-game balls, or pet-toys, and was given away at corporate newspaper events, or even with a daily-paper? I can't remember the promotion now, but I dare say, given it's The Sun, that they were for throwing at 'Lefty' politicians, or foreigners?

 

Once I had two, the track was inevitable, and over a few years I picked up two of these, more modern brick design, and made of recycled foam-rubber granules, much heavier, and not so good for washing!

 

In the US, they remain a strong, current phenomena, with corporate logo's to the fore, I think they are for throwing at referees' in disgust at their decisions, although I've never seen a clowud of them hitting the pitch, so I guess, once you've paid money for one, your desire to retain your investment in bricks & mortar, mean you hang on to it and just shake it threateningly toward the Man In Black?

 

While this is Art! A design by Alexander May, for a concrete-block sponge!

 

There was a trend for mattresses made out of the same heavy, granulated-foam, of my third brick, but often in greys or neutral colours, and they were a favourite of early fly-tipping when they started to break up, and you'd see this stuff in the rubbish pile, odd-shaped lumps, which looked exactly like concrete!

 

A very commercial one here, from Milton Bradley (MB Games - that's almost like LB for Lik Be!), and hitching a ride on the trend . . . nay, 'craze' for all things Karate, back in the 1970's - "Ah, Soh, Grasshopper!".
 

Contemporary one, available, new on the Internet as I write, this is expanded-polystyrene, and looks to be pre-coloured, so a few chips or a knocked corner would only add to its aura of realism!

 

Also current, but a bit naff, and more of a face-cloth? There's a sponge-foam core, but it's covered in a printed-pattern fabric 'pillow', sewn-flush, and over-printed with crude holes, I'd leave this on the self, as the point of the collection is that they look vaguely like bricks, and this doesn't! Although, I guess it does, if you don't display the 'holes'!

R is for Rack-Toy Gliders

Quick apology to Mr. B - our support in New York; he sent a set of the Superhero gliders we looked at last time to the blog for closer inspection, but I've misplaced them in the attic somewhere so they aren't here. What we do have are some more of the 'traditional' or bog-standard, pocket-money ones in envelopes and a 'pack of three'!

These are in the local pop-up discount store, and you get three colourful jets, two with vaguely Asian or Asian-reminiscent markings (South Vietnam (orange) and China/North Korea/North Vietnam (blue) ?), the other even more generic in yellow and all three the same die-cut design. Red Deer - it's the fourth or fifth item from them, found by Peter Evans or myself in the last couple of years, so some importer's nom de jour!

I shelfied these awhile ago, but they still have them and I may purchase one (for the life-changing amount of a whole quid!) for next time, as when I was putting everything away in the garage a year ago I found the storage lot and - as I mused before - there is a four-prop Lancaster! . . .  and several older promotional/advertising freebies/giveaways in balsa, so another post due on these in a year or so  . . . got to top-up the tag occasionally!

I was so intrigued by the FW Trainer on the pack-back listings last-time, when I saw them together somewhere, I bought both to compare, as with the others (about five brandings now, these are Rex - London (Rex - International)) the printing as been allowed to deteriorate with age and the change in material they are printed on - they used to be balsa but have been expanded-polystyrene sheet for a couple of decades, or more now.

You can see where the original German crossed have been Photoshop'ped out (although that probably happened before 'Photoshop' ever existed) which is odd as it's the swastika that has the cultural-association problems attached; not the cross?

The 'A-4' looks like a Focke Wolf, I fear the 'TA 152H' trainer (an Eocke Wolf!) is using the same dies as the Japanese Zero!

Red is for Arrows

This was part of a whole bunch of Red Arrow merchandise cleared through Cancer research charity shops, earlier this year and may represent a series of tragedies, steaming from the original crash on the A27 which has recently finished going through the legal process. I shot lots of images on two occasions fitting the wings the other way the second time!

Pieces and packaging

If the first tragedy was the crash, the second was the new rules almost immediately brought-in which as good as prevented any kind of inland air-display where urban areas are within the flight path; something we've seen here, with Farnborough severely curtailed, and the Red Arrows reduced to a single-pass, slow-speed fly-by, in formation behind a transport-giant last year.

Put together

Obviously that lack of public presence will have had a knock-on effect on the sales from the gift stalls' set-up at the shows, in turn affecting the revenue-stream to the RAF Benevolent Fund and/or the RAF Association, the third tragedy.

The Army Benevolent Fund having suffered a similar reduction in stature and public-familiarity as first the big Army Show in Rushmore and then the Earl's Court's Tattoo (and similar regional events) were scaled back and eventually scrapped by Tory cuts through the 1980's and 1990's.

Detail shots and 'Flying Wing'

(it didn't fly - it's a diver!)

The upshot on one level is a ton of stuff to be cleared via-donation to charity, the other is more need is ex-servicemen, and less ability by the established srvice charities to meet that need, leading to all sorts of private charities springing up in their stead; Help for Heroes, Helping Heroes, etc . . .

Of which some are perfectly legitimate and worthy, but others are run by Right-wing or far-Right organisations whose main aim is not raising money, but raising their own profiles and publicising their own agenda. While the landscape of many charities with similar names or aims, gives succour to out-and-out fraudsters, collecting for themselves - The fourth tragedy!

Wing the other-way up . . . correct?

This (above list of tragedies) is not to be wondered at, it's the ultimate goal of everything the Tory grandees (also behind Brwreakshit) have been working toward for the last 40-years, and one shouldn't be surprised.

Not that I'm saying the rural wealthy and urban elite have deliberately organised an air-crash with nefarious aims - that would be conspiracy-theories' gone mad! But, that it has helped reduce the fabric of society and quality of life of the nation, is exactly the sort of convenient, coincident synergy, those pretentions, preening old-Etonian prick's feed on, nay; thrive-on!

The Red Arrows, unable to perform as they used too and no longer raising funds for charity will face the axe that 'did for' Gemini, the Black Diamonds, the Blades, the Blue Chips, the Macawas, the Poachers, and the Red Pelicans . . . that saw-off the Naval Gun Teams, the REME Jeep Race and the White Helmets.

V is for Very Vast Vac-formed Village!

I had an eMail the other week from Graham Smith who'd found the Selcol page on the A-Z Blogs asking me what I knew about these (below); I had to point out that I knew no more than was on that page, which was . . . nothing! By the time you read this though, these will have been added!

Selcol, large scale village

Graham writes;

"I am interested in model villages and have seen your "Small Scale World" website. I have some SELCOL buildings made from white plastic which have to be painted and they lose the paint very easily, as you can see from the attached photos. I wondered if you have seen any others (I have a Market Hall which seems to be a different scale) and also if these buildings were based on those in or near Braintree near their factory which you mentioned."

Now, having established I know nothing about the buildings as Selcol per se, it has to be pointed out I am no expert on Braintree or its environs either - I had a school-friend who lived in Brentwood!

Given that we will sort most of it out to some extent in the next few minutes; can anyone from the Braintree area or with knowledge of these buildings (or indeed; Selcol's wider production) help; particularly with that last question?

I asked around at the Sandown Park show with no luck but to draw an interesting selection of blank faces and have asked a couple of other experts to no avail, yet, as with all these things, dozens of people must have been involved in the design, production and marketing of the buildings, and - at least - hundreds involved in the purchase and use thereof, back in the day?

A close-up of one of the little (not that little!) thatched-cottages; they seem to be blow moulded, or rotary-moulded (the larger hole?) polyethylene, hence the failure of paint to adhere, and to have been filled with expanded polystyrene-foam, for rigidity.

The subsequent/resulting plug is clearly marked Selcol, so the one fact which is known is that they are Selcol! Now, there's a possibility that they were originally beach-toys, sold unpainted to place round your sand-castle, but I think that's clutching at straws, and that they were designed for garden railways, being scaled somewhere between O-gauge (building dimensions) and G (figures in the next shot).

A couple of the people I've spoken to on the subject have drawn the obvious parallel with the Spot-On village from Tri-Ang/Mettoy, but that was 1:42/48'ish, against the 1:35/32'ish of these, and I can imagine the PoplarPlastics bus drawing up to this rotunda/market cross/corn exchange to pick-up the [not so] little people and take them into the nearby city!

You can see - from the damaged sections - the polystyrene foam inside, and Graham's railway viaduct in the background! He runs O gauge trains including Triang, Big Big, and Timpo rolling stock and has been doing so for 46 years!

Any information on these, such as when they were advertised, any other buildings in the range or whether they represent real subjects - from Braintree or anywhere else; would be much appreciated by Mr. Smith - and other Garden Rail, or Model Village fans - I'm sure.

As an aside, does anyone know if John Ruddle's buildings have been featured in any works other than the one shot shown in an old modelling magazine? Graham; being a fan of such things, is keen to see them, and having been lucky enough to 'have the tour' myself, I know they are worth a look - being taken from Victorian Edinburgh to Kabul, via Khartoum and back via Calcutta, in a walk round a modest suburban lawn is a real treat!

T is for Ptobar's Pterosaurs n'Ptings

Just a quick follow-up from the I pay for this shite so you don't have to department; I mentioned when looking at 'paper' 'planes the other week that the discount store had several and that I might go back for a couple, well; I did!

I also said I couldn't remember what the third thing was . . . well, it was insects! Along with dinosaurs and the same 'planes as HGL and HTI, these are all badged to Tobar, and it turned out the Sikhs had got them in because I'd been asking for them a few days before . . . so I had to buy a few, although they were already going out like hot cakes with all three dispensers more than half empty, after only a few days.

Pterodactyl was purchased as the signature species! But three other designs are available and I would imagine they will be a lot of fun for people of a certain age? However . . . spot the deliberate mistake . . .

. . . you can't get the wings through the hole! To do so I had to carefully extend it without creating a cut-line that might spread, and one has to wonder how such a thing occurred or how it was allowed to leave the factory? And it's not a question of QA or QC, it's a technical problem 'at the coal face' . . . very odd!

The ant, I wanted a dragonfly, but they had all gone . . . verily - fussa-russa! But the ant's bearable, he has an odd tail-plane and stabilisers which I suspect are supposed to be a bit of foliage or something; there's no explanation, but the alternative (if you know about these things) is a brain altering, lethal fungus - hardly child-friendly?!!

The bee is just silly . . . and a near-duplicate of the ant (wings are different), while the two beetles are also cut from the same die, the mantis looks to be a cut-above and . . . I really would have preferred the dragonfly!

Back to the 'planes; I got the Hurricane Mk IIC . . . it might as well be a sausage. I think it's trying to be a Western desert theatre airframe, but suffers from the poor print resolution and reverse code bollocks I pointed-out last time we looked at them.

Now, along with the oddities alluded to above, this sort of think bloody annoys me . . . I know they are 'cheap and nasty' or pocket-money toys, but . . . the artwork was done once and costed-in, I suspect decades ago, and it's about time they were all upgraded/replaced. The overall cost would be peanuts in an ocean.

These are clearly selling well, and constantly as a 'traditional' toy, They are now in three outlets locally, in Basingrad I saw the HTI ones in the Entertainer, again with plenty of room in a once full stock-carton, so they are probably selling in their millions world-wide. They come in very basic paper envelopes (like Sobres), and consist of a few scraps of Styrofoam/expanded polystyrene (which will have to go back to balsa or card as the - overdue - polymer backlash gathers pace).

All-new artwork for the twelve/thirteen known aircraft could be CAD'ed-up in a weekend by a couple of commercial artists and the cost per unit, over time would be fractions of a penny. And there's a misrepresentation element here, under consumer legislation, the artwork on the outside of the envelopes is not depicting what falls out of them.

The problems are not to be seen on the dinosaurs, the insects or the foam-board/foam-core unicorns we saw last time, suggesting the war-planes are relying on print-plates which probably go back to the 1970's - come on guys, sort it out; you muppets! Get on to the Chinese supplier and tell them to sort-out the printing (and the insects wings) before some local authority's Trading Standards unit sues you!

P is for Puff-powered Paper & Puffy-Polymer 'Planes

In my day (he says; making himself sound like an old git!) they were all paper or balsa-wood, now they are mostly expanded polystyrene foam, but you still find the odd paper one!

This post is a bit off the beaten track of Small Scale World, and was in part the result of unexpected consequences, following that weird sycamore-Superman I showed back in February, in that Brain B sent a couple of shelfies of equally wacky playthings to the Blog, and it encouraged me to build a post round them, mainly because one set were . . .

. . . Cars tie-ins and I hate Cars like I hate anything, so probably would not otherwise have used the images! From Unique who do appear here from time to time as purveyors of quality tat and novelty polymer loveliness, they are four to a pack and probably as much-fun as anything else in their price-bracket.

There is a Marvel Avengers Assemble set as well - also with four models, but they all appear to be the same; both sets seem to be made from die-cut foam-core sheets which may make them a tad heavy, still; a sharp push into the wind and they should do the business.

And the business is . . . ephemeral fun, which if not timeless, probably goes back to well before the Wright brothers - if Da Vinci was drawing them, chances are kids were experimenting with toy ones?

As Mr. Berke was sending me his shelfies I had been buying this from Clinton's as a birthday card for someone who's hard to buy cards for!

I went back for a second; the wings were a bit loose until I worked out how to shove them back into a tightening section, not bad and all-paper! Despite the militaristic marking, it's unarmed, clearly a two-seater and probably based on a trainer or powered-glider of some kind.

Ah, yes . . . this, believe it or not; is HTI's Thunderbolt. Back in the day - the balsa-wood day that is - they were either outline printed in black on wood, or they came with a reasonable two or three colour screen-print; this has been fully litho'ed, but poorly and onto un-sized, expanded-polystyrene, which gives a opalescent look.

It has fold-up ailerons and stabilisers in the wings and tail respectively which the old balsa ones didn't, but we sometimes put them in our folded-paper 'planes at school, it usually resulted in a nose-dive or a tail-stand . . . followed by a nose-dive!

By now I was on a roll vis-à-vis getting a post together, and discovered that not only do women get less wages and pay more for their pink stationary, but despite making-up slightly more that half the toy-buying population, they pay more for their glider-toys too! This was £1.50 against the 99p's and flat £'s of the 'boys toys'! Investing in journalistic excellence, or being taken for a mug? Doh!

More like the ones Brian sent to the Blog as shelfies this one from Grossman's HGL is properly three-colour printed on foam-core board, and despite it's odd look, fly's as well as any . . . oh yeah; there's been ruthless testing!

Only this weekend I saw Tobar gliders of Dinosaurs, the same fighters we're about to go back to, and something else which I've forgotten, something cartoony and/or thematic? And I remember birds from when I was a kid.

But here's a thing - when I was rushing around looking for a couple of these to Blog a few weeks ago, at 5.25pm in a small parochial town that goes dark at 5.29 on the dot - I went into the discount store and asked if they had any and they didn't, but on Saturday - they had three different boxes of them . . . clearly; it pays to ask!

Although now I feel guilty for the little toy shop, as they did have them last time and that's where I ended up getting the four in this post, but now they have competition a few doors down, and it may be my fault! They had HTI and Tobar mixed in the same dispensing box, and after getting the Thunderbolt, I went back for a spitfire and Tomahawk, and half-wish I hadn't, as we'll see.

But first a comparison of the two packagings reveals that there is a slight difference in line-up, both companies are offering 12 aeroplanes, but only 11 are duplicated between ranges with HTI offering a MkII Spitfire to Tobar's Hellcat, as these sets always had a Messerschmitt Me.109 when I wer't'lad, I can safely assume they are both purchasing from a longer list offered by the Asian manufacturer. Also there's a couple of oddities on the list - Focke Wulf trainer?

Tobar's artwork shows them as they could be, HTI's as they are, you will notice there are only a few different pressings, with HTI the different artwork used is 'best as can be'; once you've opened the packing the actuality . . .

. . . is far more disappointing, with very poor QC, very poor registering within the cut lines, very poor pigmentation, very poor accuracy (we have a Japanese Tomahawk!), mirror-image of fuselage-halve artwork, leading to inverted lettering and reversed codes, all very poor!

The reason all the shots of the Thunderbolt above show the same side, is because the other side looked more like melted bubble-gum than aircraft artwork! And these were almost as bad, all over - a pinky-purple mess.

At least HTI aren't going to disappoint to the level Tobar's are!

I will look out for vintage versions and maybe come back to these in a few years - there were advertising premiums and some used to have a central balsa spar to which a rubber-band motor and wire-mounted wheels could be added, but if you're of a certain age; you know that, we all got through a couple or more - every summer!

I think I may have a four-engined Lancaster Bomber from a beach-day in the 1990's somewhere in storage, which was a better print, but the same sheet-foam construction - for now though; that's 'paper' planes!

29-03-18 (Very auspicious day!) Re- Tomolio's comment, these are being imported into the Antipodes by Pink Poppy - anyone recognise the logo on the stock-box?