S is for Sorry, I'm Having a Rather Lazy Week!

I've just sat here for two hours and not posted anything, as I also couldn't be arsed to this afternoon before I went to work, but here's something from the unsorted folder!

Domage et Cie ('et Compagnie, like our &Co.,), who would go on to be known as  Aludo, producing aluminium toys, then Acédo, as a producer of polymer-acetate figures, were first branded D et C, where they could be found making these pastoral subjects, among other things, also in an early plastic, but with more of a recycled polystyrene feel?. Here the shepherd meets his paramour, while the farmer's not around!

Beautifully marked-up on the base, leaving no real doubt as to their lineage! And only about 60-mil, so a nice 54mm without the heavy bases, which have been modelled to resemble turned-wood! 'Unbreakable' it says (in French, and they know what they're talking about, they all speak it!), and to be fair, neither of these has any damage, but both Domage! And are they replacing earlier wooden or composition figures from the same line?

E is for Essem!

I knew I knew! It's Essem, by Morestone! That coach which had the little plastic cowboys we keep seeing here, with the 'I know but I don't know' caveats, anyway, I had a folder with this in, and I've found a link to tell you everything else, as I don't have the stagecoach yet!

 

Gets them in the bloody Tag-list at last! That link - Nicholas Martin Diecast;

https://www.diecastvintagetoys.co.uk/essem-stage-coach

 

And while the brown plastic would appear to be rarer (the link poster has a darker brown one), the red-plastic one would appear to be even less common? They are a type of phenolic or early styrene, a dense and heavy plastic.

T is for Two - Machine Gunners

As I may have intimated, I acquired a few machine-gunners the other day, and while most of them will just be filtered into the collection for future use, there were one or two which are worth a closer look as stand-alone figures.

This is the Belgian firm of JSB, you may remember I had a very poor figure from them which I seemed to save with a thick coat of plumber's sealant a few years ago (he was still fine and stable last time I looked), he was also a pretty realistic figure, not something which can be claimed for this chap, who's channeling American 'dimestore' sculpts from the likes of Barkley or Manoil; single-highhandedly engaging aircraft (or cliff-top dwellers) with a 40mm pom-pom!

His barrel was very bent (further up, like a priapic flaking flak gun!), but I mannaged to bend it the other way with the hot-water system, although I was very careful and had several incremental goes, as I do't know what polymer this is, some phenol, formaldehyde or cellulose-based material I suspect? Proper toy soldier!

As is this fellow, a seven-part assembly of blow-moulded and vac-formed polystyrene (or celluloid, but I think the former in this case) sheet from Japan, he has moving arms and may have had a moving head once; it's now glued, fixed to the front. I don't recognise the logo-mark, which seems to be a single China-Japan-Korea compatible ideograph character ' 金 ' ?

But what a fantastic survivor of 1950's novelty tat. And; out of six successful bids (and one bidding war) to get most of them (one lot was lost to someone else), not to mention some mail-fail, probably my favourite out of the whole lot!

S is for Shot at the Show

I only shot one thing at the show, if you need pictures of tables about 20 were published on the Friends Who Like Plastic Warrior Faceplant page the next day! But I did shoot this as I thought it was a bit special.

Malleable Mouldings circus set, beautifully boxed and had you found this under your family's Christmas tree in the 1950's you would have been well made-up! Actually quite simple with two horse trainers, two clowns and six prancing horses, but most sets in those days were a bit simple and contained duplicates - it was only when Plastics took a full-hold that the variety we're used to now, became the norm, I guess that's why farm and zoo was so popular, their sets' tended to have lots of different items rather than six-to eight identi-men and an officer, bugler or standard bearer!

The outer is a generic gift box, laminated in patterned wrapping paper, and was probably bought-in for the festive season, it is very age-faded now, but was once a bright primrose background with scarlet and navy motifs.

Quite a Germanic or Scandinavian look to the repeat pattern, both must have had good paper industries with all those forests, maybe it came from the Hertz Mountains? All a bit Grimm or Hans Christian!

Not brilliant shots and I've placed them sideways to concentrate the eye on the colours, not the figures, but the marbling of the clowns' plastic was stunning, if you like such things (I do!); one having what seems to be every colour in the factory that day, the other centered more on the reds/yellows, but after the gloom and greyness of six years of war and blackout and ten-odd years of post-war austerity, these would have lit up the parlor/living-room when that lid came off!

A lovely thing and so rare . . . thanks to Mercator Trading for letting me shoot it.

T is for Two - Cake Guards!

Actually by the end of the post we'll have seen five lots from at least three sources, but we're concentrating on two recent additions to the pile, both from the 'plastic smalls' end of the spectrum, so we'll just give the PTSM a few moments to grind their chairs and leave the room . . . Hairband! Your satchel . . . Sell - I saw that . . . Stadinger - I heard that! Right, that's better; fancy not rating plastic smalls, they lose-out on so much!

These are quite early I think (like inter-war period maybe, or just after the 2nd? 3rd on the horizon; thanks Putin, if anyone could trump both 2020 AND 2021!), and are either a phenolic resin or an early unstable polystyrene, both losing colour and starting to faintly blister on the flat areas, but, still - how cool!

Sort of French Wellingtonian line-infantry - with the buttons up the seam of the trousers - and fitted for novelty/party candles to be placed in their hats.

Lemon Madeira cake I think? It was a while ago!

The other set are a tad smaller, and while I thought they might be copies of Airfix when I first saw them, and Britains Eyes-Right after they arrived, I actually think they are channeling the later, taller Charbens bandsmen, which should mean there's a trumpeter out there still to find, for a set-count of six?

Painted as a US marching band (they came from America) with white trousers, there may be a darker painted version for the UK market or Denmark (do the Danish have cake decorations - a very under-covered subject; cake decorations?), and I think they may be after, or the donors for, the bright-coloured set we looked at here, which would mean I'm looking for (or might be looking for) a standard bearer, rather than the extra brass instrumentalist?

Quite short spikes (or 'picks') on the earlier set and only the one design as far as I know . . . I only have the four? While it took me an hour or two to realise the pick for the second set (hard polystyrene) could be removed from the soft polyethylene figures.

Unfortunately the Frenchies went to storage before the other set were found, so they are missing from these comparisons, but you can judge them from the cork in the previous shot.

Here on the left we have various cake decoration ceremonials, from Gemodels, Wilton in the 'States (copies of Marx's sculpts from the Disney production Babes in Toyland) and the recent addition, which might also be Wilton, but could be someone else - Carousel, Grandmother Stovers, SSCO &/or-etc.

On the right the newer one compared with one of the standing cake Guards we saw here, the one in the shot arriving yesterday in a nice lot from Peter Evans, and triggering my getting this out of the long-queue and dusting it off for publishing!

It's a scone (rhymes with song) not a scone (rhyming with stone).

And don't forget the wooden set!

And the funnies!

The next day - I found another image while preparing today's post! I think it might be the seller's original shot, it's better than the others anyway! You can see the beginnings of the same distortions/decay some of those F&G clowns suffer from, which might even be a clue as to the origin?

Beeju is for EVB Plastics

The title of this post was the complete opposite, but when I went in search of the latter link, I found I'd already used it!

From before the idea of rack-toys as we know them, these would have filled the same pocket-money niche, and the early ones date from the late 1940's, so contemporary with other early plastics makers like Airfix, Bell and Randell.

Graces Guide tells us they were making a patent application for "Improvements in and relating to the attachment of axles to toy wheeled vehicles" as early as 1946, while by the following year were listing "Moulded Plastic Toys, Cars, Aeroplanes, Boats, Tops, Dolls, Trains, Plastic "Mah Jongg" Indoor Game, Prototype Electric Toy Motors...", of which my samples are pretty pathetic, but there's enough for a post on the civil stuff today (although I think we've seen most of them before?), and the military another day!

Comparison between an early dairy lorry collecting the churns from farm-gates (as was still quite common when I was younger) on the left and a later (1960's) version, not that while the silver one is perfectly stable in a bog-standard, brittle, 'kit' polystyrene plastic, the yellow one is a more unstable styrol or phenolic/ureic polymer of some type which is - like most of their early production - starting to distort.

Also, while the later model is a vaguely recognisable long-nosed Bedford or Morris lorry, the earlier example is (or 'was' in its day -) a more futuristic-looking fictional design.

Cleaning algae off a Penn

Plax fish-tank ornament!

A mid-era fire appliance/turntable ladder-truck, you can see from the remnants it should have three crew; one sat further-down from my headless ghost-rider, the other behind him on the opposite side. I think they had so many of the old 1950's production figures in a bin somewhere that they went on using them until the company faded from the scene, consequently the figures tend to be very brittle or are often missing altogether.

This version has no passengers in the cab (compare with the yellow milk truck) as it has no floor/chassis.

A 'proper' fire engine, with what is actually the same ladder, but locked in as a load, although you can slip it out to play scenes, it does have a floor and crew! It is also building a coating of dusty-pink 'leechate' which I didn't think to clean-off until I was putting them away again!

The last iteration (still with the same ladder) is not trying terribly hard to belong to a fire brigade, possibly becasue it's a telephone company truck (the difference between fire-bell and cable-loop is marginal, but this would appear to be the fire bell?) being in multiple colours (it has red wheels!), as a lot of the late production was, just attractive 'pester-power' stuff for no money. I think it's supposed to be an incident-control wagon; the same body was issued as an ambulance and - with a camera in place of the bell - as an outside broadcast TV unit.

In the lower shot you can see three generations of underside, the later ones having a more realistic arrangement of 'things'. Beeju also had friction versions with a more substantial chassis-plate to take the weight and stressing of metal/flywheel mechanisms. In the larger scales/with larger toys they also offered battery-operated and clockwork internal mechanics.

This is probably what EVB Beeju are best known for amnoung toy-fair brousers, they did many vertions of single and double-decked coaches, buses, trolly-buses (here on the left) and open-topped omnibuses, in many colours - we looked at these in close-up a while ago [check tag list] so I won't wax further!

A couple of other pieces marked Beeju, we only recently looked at a better version of the Native American canoe, but I mentioned this one on that occasion, so here it is, you can see where the oar used to be, and comments are the same as for the figures really, although I wonder if some antique-dealers back in the day may have whipped some of them to make faux 'ivory' spoons for Chinese snuff-bottles.

The little car is more of a puzzle; approximately N-gauge compatible (but probably too early for that system), I have images of similar designs being used with a larger, boxed, car-ferry toy, or being used as loads on flat-bed versions of some of the lorries above, but none are the same vehicle/design as this, and none have a hole in the driver's seat (UK side).

The hole could be for fixing to something, or for a driver-torso, but the other micro-cars have no figures (larger 1:43rd'ish toy cars do), so it may be from an - as yet - unknown playset, or car transporter?

As mentioned above, I'll look at the military another day, but I also have a small WWII mosquito (seen here passim) and a little boat, neither of which have been sorted to the Beeju tub yet!

T is for Toot-Toot!

Back to novelty-corner for a prime piece of post-war, plastic play-thing! It's the ultimate blow-job ". . . just put your lips together and. . ."

Kleeware novelty whistle, I suspect it is actually from a US design, a lot of Commonwealth's novelties had a 2nd life over here, and the locomotive while possibly needing to be that long for the purpose of getting the note out (doubtful; there are whistles in all sizes) is more of a US type 'iron horse' with the cow-catcher (they didn't catch them, they momentarily eviscerated them and exploded them out of the way!) and the enclosed engine-driver's cab?

A 0-6-4 is an odd configuration too, but it is primarily a novelty whistle! I love this stuff; it's ephemeral but it survives! The blue one is a stable polystyrene, but the green one (presumably an earlier batch) is a less stable phenolic resin or celluloid-type plastic.

News, Views Etc . . . Additions

I've added a couple of pieces to the Airfix 'Early Figures' page courtesy of Danny O'Neill in Australia . . .

. . . and some Britains boxed sets to the Khaki Infantry page which I shot on John Begg's table at the Plastic Warrior show two years ago; the show review post wasn't strong so I'm cannibalising it for useful images! Actually this one is not the best image, but it is useful!

JIM is for Jouet Incassables Modernes

Or Jouet Incassable Matière [plastique] if you're the Limp-dicked Hussar!

Well, TJF 'saw' my two, with two of his own, so I'll 'raise' him six! Hey; it's his rules, I just feel I should carry-on playing, if only to give him a chance to win-back some of his legendary kudos!

I don't know which was the more amusing; the four of them (fuck-monkey, Hairband, Dildobreath and the Jabbering Fuck himself) spending a fortnight, over two posts, both in the blurb and the comments pretending they didn't know anything about Plasticom's Solabar, or TJF thinking he had to match my two JIM's with two of his own? It's tragic, that's what it is!

With Herforder Bierbar running-off to the Facepalnt to talk shit about PGH Effelder and/or Hungarian flats the day after he was corrected on Ingo Roggaz's ^Z_Z, this gang of idiots are doing a lot of damage to the hobby in pursuit of their petty, vindictive, envy-driven vendetta, or are they just even stupider than I've suggested they are?

We have a regular infantryman, a Foreign Legionary, a chap in blue I will assume is a marine/sailor, but he might be one of those Alpine Chasseur types, so I won't assume anything of the sort . . . Never assume, never assume! I'm not even going to attempt to ID the other three beyond the fact that they are all North African (Algerian/Moroccan) colonial troops of some kind; Tirailleurs . . . Méharistes, Spahi? JIM will know!

They're heading straight for me, are they Vichy? Time for me to scoot . . . !

M is for Mounted Malleable Mouldings' Men

Shot on Adrian's stall (link) back at the March Sandown Park show, sat in Picasa for a while, found them at the last minute and I was going to add them to the previous post, but though it would only complicate, so they might as well go here as a 'follow-up' kind of thing, especially as I've also found some other ceremonial type mounted's for a third post; make a day of it - it'll be tomorrow now . . . the time's slipped this week!

Royal Horse Artillery I think; they could be some esoteric Yeomanry regiment, but I don't think Malleable offered such rarities in their exhaustive, but complicated - to follow -  list (which I have somewhere and will post one day), so RHA until I know otherwise.

The figures appear to be hollow and have had their headdresses drilled to receive their hackles as very small slivers of plastic. Note also; the two very different bases, one; an integral moulding, the other; a glued-on piece of sheet material which appears (from the distortion) to be a phenolic or acetate of some variety. A situation which bears reflection;

There were other, earlier makers of plastics of interest to us, Bergan and German WHW types being the obvious, but Malleable were trying to invent a technology (or applications thereof) without the support the Nazi regime might have given their plastics industry before the war (IG Farben, polystyrene - 1929), or the booming economy of post-war America, but in an economy broken by the same war which had proved such a boon to the US.

Consequently, the fact that they produced such a variety of figures and figure types; whole mouldings, assembled kits-of-parts, integral bases, separate bases and soft polyethylene figures, hollow and solid; in such a short life and from both ex-metal and original moulds, in stable and unstable paint finishes, should come as no surprise to us now, and the work they did must have benefited those who came after . . . all of whom (Zang-Herald, Timpo, Charbens, Cherilea and Crescent) adopted the polyethylene Malleable were using at the end, but most adding chalk for paint adhesion!

And if you think that last point is a bit off-the-wall, keep watching this space.

A Life Guard or 'Royal', I've always preferred the Horse Guards or 'Blues', they are one unit now, anyway and that's him; blurb done!

DUK is for "APION" Amfibies Jeep!

This is an odd one; sometimes I just don't understand how the hobby works. What we have here is a never seen before, may never see again, South African toy of a military vehicle in 'around' a 54/60mm compatible scale, yet having shot it at length back in the early spring, [not] watched them not-sell on evilBay, watched them not sell at the Plastic Warrior show and bought an orphan - at the end of the show, I wonder how that happened?

Most 'large-scale' collectors, or at least the more generic or ephemeral collectors, the completist or competitive collectors or the curious (which is all bar the subject-specific collectors, i.e. most of them) would happily have a bright red Tudor Rose Land-Rover or bright yellow Pyro or Banner 'dimestore' Jeep in their collections, yet no one wanted these?

Yet, I also half-understand, as despite sliding the first image between the two introductory paragraphs, and sticking another above this continuation of my opening point, I am going to struggle to find enough blurb for the post, as there's hardly anything to say about them, but having taken a load of images when I first saw them and some more of my example (red one) I now have five collages to write up! Now obviously, the next paragraph can be all about the Box . . .

Which comes in at least two colour-ways, both are three-colour processes, but different colours, litho'd, not dot-matrix, so green/orange are reproduced by overlaying. Each box also has two panels and one end with the the written details in Afrikans and the other three faces in English . . . like the contemporaneous stamps!

This leaves maker and the vehicle to describe; but you've already seen it as I spread the images through the text! It's an amphibious Jeep in leery colours, reasonably accurate for an infant toy, and in a phenolic resin which is starting to distort - in the case of the yellow; particularly so. Opposite colours are placed as 'small parts'; red on the yellow vehicle and vise-versa.

Final image leaves us with the maker . . . African Plastic Industries (Pty) Limited trading as Apion and the price . . . three shillings and ninep'nce, for something this large, which has probably been sent half-way round the world on a tramp steamer, places them in the nineteen-fifties I suspect, while there's nothing on Google!

Phew! Got there, can't understand why no one wanted them, can half-understand why they generated so little interest, but . . . humans are weird! Still they join the Haarlem and SA marked SAE in the collection, what next from that part of the world?

F&G is for Hidden in Plain Sight!

Remember the F&G question posed by Collin Penn some time ago now? And remember when in the PW173 review I said "Speaking of Colin Penn, his F&G 'Crazy Clown Circus' is revealed by Michael Bonnefoy of the Plastics Historical Society to be made by . . . [Subscribe!]"?

Balancers & Bouncy Balls

Well, hopefully you were tempted to subscribe (if you weren't already), and with PW174 out now (review currently in the 'short queue'), I think it's OK to reveal that the F&G was Fraser & Glass Ltd., who are further fascinating for carrying the same mounted figures as Airfix, but that's for another day, the thing was, they had been on the PHS's website all along! Like Tatra, they were hiding (from plastic figure collectors) in plain sight!

Musicians & Master's of Mayhem
(the one on the bottom-right has a cellulose/celluloid
drum which is almost powder now)

Anyway, it wouldn't be right to cover all the stuff in the magazine's article, but I say the above because I've got the storage tub . . . err . . . out of storage! And as a follow-up to my own previous post, am showing the [old] newbies here while re-tagging the related, previous, posts to Fraser & Glass!

It's a satisfying conclusion, too, for those of us who were never happy with the two-horse race's favourites - Airfix or Kleeware, as the plastic wasn't really right for either. But if the mounted figures provide a link, the Airfix-plumper's will have a joint first!

Indeed, while the likes of TJF and his ilk may resent my knowledge (and try to invent their own!) it's satisfying to read my earlier musings on the maker (three years ago) and find it stands-up adequately to the recent discoveries!

Were Morestone (also 'something & something'; Morris & Stone) situated near F&G, or did they (F&G) supply Airfix with both horses/riders and clowns, or licence production to fill large Woolworth's orders? There's always another question or two!

The Shrapnel

The bottom of their tub contains a few bits which will be combined with the attic-lot to make-up some of the missing formations! One of them actually still has his mates head between his feet so must be from a pair formation, so I'm hoping I have a headless one in the other sample!

The piece of card (CIRCUS?) came with one lot, as did the wooden pole with a plastic finial which seems to match some of the Crazy Clown's yellow stuff? Equally it could be a non-functioning component of a 1960's washing machine, or part of a lawn-game! I've also tried various solvents on these (and the other larger, sample) and they are mostly polystyrene, only a few are cellulose or celluloid types.