I is for It's That Horse Again!

The best thing in the recent pick-up from Peter Evans is this Hong Kong Roman chariot, it's the third iteration, I think, on the Thomas/Poplar theme, but it has very different horses!

 

And they are puke-green! Arranged in the Western Wagon configuration, the figure is the only real connection with the others, seen here previously, although the other HK copy uses the same horses, but the artwork and shape of this chariot is very different.

 

Is it based on one of the earlier lead ones, both the British and the French have some nice slush-cast chariots in the archive? One of the draw-bar connectors is broken, but I think I may have a set of these horses in the unknown horses tub!
 

F is for Follow-up - Civilian Plunder Post

A few things related to some of the stuff in the previous post, and as I'm going through the files and folders looking for this supporting material, I realise there are similar bits for the odd recent purchase at the recent Sandown, so I think we'll see more of these, as I try to tell the story AND clear the stuff out of Picasa! Lucky police, construction workers and Thomas / Poplar today!

 

A couple of generic 'VEB's from the former East Germany, behind, in this old Vectis (I think?) image, but of note is the Poplar Plastics towed boat in the foreground, the woman driving the jeep seems to be the same blue rubber as the gentlemen we saw . . . Yesterday, now! Hence, my "possibly Thomas" for the similar bloke in that post, although as Thomas you'd expect them both to be in that flesh-pink vinyl-polymer.

 

A Blue Box blister-card, and note the lack of a wheelbarrow, apparently replaced with a rock, which might be the two-sided copy of the Marx Miniature Masterpiece rock? So, even damaged, they are hard to find, and with other damaged bits in the stash, hopefully, I'll cobble a good one together?

 

This generic set is interesting, as it has second generation copies of the Dinky / Blue Box guys (upper two), along with a pair of Marx copies from the recently mentioned Power Mite series of battery-operated trucks, Hong Kong had no favourites when it came to piracy, and they left few stones unturned!

 

While this later set from Jaru, has the polyethylene third-or-more generation knock-offs in bright colours, here pink and red, supporting similar multiply-copied versions of early-number Matchbox 1-75 series vehicles, although, when they were originally produced in the UK, as die-casts, I think the range might still - unofficially - have been '1-50' ?

 

An old shot of some of mine from 2012, being one of each pose, as far as I know they never got a wheelbarrow, despite getting the 'labourer' pose associated with it, I guess it was too complicated a moulding, for the 'bottom-feeder' pirates. He's looking pretty determined though, I think he's going to the stripey-tent to brew-up . . . "Cuppa'tea Lads?". 

 

I think I have yellow plastic ones, and possibly a pale purple, but it may be the same grey as the one from Chris, but the more, the merrier, to maybe get one of each, one day! And it's worth remembering, as we view these blobs, they were originally Charles C Stadden sculpts! 

 

Not the best shot, but it was downloaded years ago, when things were a bit simpler on the wibbly wobbly way! The Land Rover in the background is the normal Lucky thing, a probably Corgi copy in 1:423rd or so, but the figures have been modelled to match the larger-scale bike, at around 1:20?

B is for Big Box of Bounty - Wild West . . . and Pirates!

You can't know everything, and I learnt something pretty fundamental last week, while I was sorting-out Chris Smith's latest parcel to the Blog, to share with you lot, but let's look at the Wild West component first!

 

A card hoodlum, rearing on a tamed mustang! The hoof needs glueing, one of two miniscule victories by Royal Fail's vandalisation Elves this time, he's lost his Stetson too, but one supposes, some time ago! The Man in Black, a pound-shop Lee Van Cleef, looks a lot like some Supreme output, but is not from their well-known series, nor, as far as I am aware, did Papo ever do more than one modern cowboy on horse, which is a clue . . . ?

 

A Hong Kong, 45mm copy, of a Gulliver copy, of the Atlantic Sioux Camp seated brave, and another of the probably Euro', possibly premium, Indians (no cowboys have turned-up yet) set, of which I have quite a few now, but that Chris has probably found more of, than me!

 

The 40mm, AHM, Culpitt, Injectaplastic, Jouets Super Plastic (et al.?) set, and it's extraordinary that despite collecting these for years (as a small-scale collector), both poses and colour variations continue to turn up, I'm still looking for an Indian archer (and most of the accessories), I knew I needed the dancing guy in orange trousers, and the standing firing cowboy is a new (4th) colour variation! They will both get bases from other figures in the larger sample.

 

The Crescent hollow-cast/Lido Wild West chaps, and an oddity! On the left, grist to the mill, he's a bit bashed, but will still join the sample, to increase the size of the sample, against future looks/comparisons; we've seen several variations of the set over time.

 

In the middle, an absolute mint, 'Germany' marked, novelty pencil sharpener, an incredible find, and so generous of Chris to sent it here? And remember, as well as some of the better KT sharpeners, it was Chris who found the Ichthyosaur/Dolphin hybrid sharpener!

 

While the third chap could be Wild West, a clown or a farmer, and may be Hong Kong, or . . . French? Anyone recognise him? He looks like he should have a wheelbarrow, and may be a French farmer? He could be a Marty clown; paint and plastic are right, but also looks like some of those old hollow-cast cowboys with their furry sheepskin chaps and soft felt hats, so got sorted into this lot for now!

 

These were on the top of the box, so I spotted them straight-away, but baseless it's hard to know if they are French or Italian cheapies, or some Hong Kong knock-offs? But New to me and Blog for sure! Obviously taken from the Britains Herald 'Swoppets', solidified, does anyone know what bases they should have?

Small scale, Chris is very good at keeping samples of these separate, it's the only way to use them for research, the larger bag is a clean-looking sample of 'Wavymane', and while there's "always" a clean looking sample of Wavymane, I never turn away from such things, as it would be churlish, and you never know when a completely new horse type or figure pose might have been buried among them by a previous owner!

 

The smaller bag is more mixed, while the real odds are spread out in front, and include useful wagon parts for the Giant/post-Giant pile and the National and others' pile!

 

While up a band (25-30mm), we have, from the left; two Torgano Indian boys (or, from the rest of the set; boys dressed as Indians), both missing their bows (very delicate), and a Comansi horse, although, with the flash, and saddle-spike, possibly a Sobre or similar knock-off? And a small handful of the Blue Box smallies, to the right.

Finishing off with three interesting pirates, or 'a potential pirate', in the case of the right-hand figure, another one new to me, also with elements of Supreme/SP Toys output, but is he a cowboy, a pirate or a civilian of some kind? Possibly, a rather ephemeral figure from one of the many 'big box' pirate ship play-sets, over the years? Or, does he belong with the glossier, obvious cowboy (or detective?!) figure at the start of this post - I don't think so, but you have to look at every angle? Simply marked 'CHINA'.

 

On the left is a new-to-me, off-white, colour variant of the Thomas/Poplar pirates, we only looked at the other day, on the last Interrr'nationaaal Taark Like a Poirut Daye event, while in the middle is another of the revelations of Chris's box . . . 

 

. . . a marked Papo pirate, from the 1990's, who has nothing in common with the current range, which has been in the catalogue for years now, but that clearly provided the donor-sculpt for the smaller, Supreme pirate with similar blunderbuss?

 

Now, Papo themselves only claim to be 'nearly' 30 years old, so this (1999 CHINA) must be one of the earlier products in their range, and - I've just spent some time trying to Google them and only found the current set - so, I guess, A) they were a short-lived line, making this uncommon, or uncommon outside France (?) and B) the rest of the Papo set must be the other donors for the Supreme set?

 

And while I'm sure some people knew all or part of the above, nobody seems to have Blogged it, there's nothing on the Forums (or Papo's website), and nobody has pointed it out/corrected me, on all the occasions I've Blogged the Supreme set, which is now neither as old, nor as cool as I thought it was! Now I know, it's gotta'be about finding the others, and did Papo originally do the six SP Toys skeleton 'enemy' too?

 

And, all this is not to say I shouldn't have known, I have the early Papo catalogues somewhere, mostly donated by Peter Evans or another friend of the Blog (have they been in a show-report in PW magazine?), and, I guess, the set must be in some of them? But many thanks to Chris for sending it, and everything else above.

T is for Two - Four-Wheeled Wonders!

Between civil, military and space, there were lots of vehicles in the last lot of Sandown show plunder, but that's not such a surprise, given as how it started life as a train/die-cast show, those tables groaning under the weight of Furby 'plushies', Bratz dolls, Lego and Transformer stuff you see these days, are far more recent additions to the halls!

 

In its day, this must have been a common-enough pocket-money toy, as it's at least the third to be added to the stash I think, and while this isn't the best one, it comes with the driver, which previous examples were lacking, but which I probably have in the loose passenger/rider zone, so will hopefully now be able to properly crew the others with! It's a pretty-standard Poplar/Thomas PVC figure, but in white rubber, rather than the usual flesh/pink/brown tones; possibly to match the wheels he was shot with?

 

While this, Jean Höfler or Manurba (?) toy is another Mercer, and it could be the Mercer all the other plastic Mercers are copied from, but I don't think so, it's not even the best moulding out of all those US, French and Hong Kong ones we saw here at Small scale World, a while ago, so I suspect it's a copy too, from whichever was the better Mercer, one of the French ones, Schuco, Matchbox 'Yesteryears'?

 

I don't recognise the boy-logo, and Jean used a drum-logo, but the text is very much in the style of either maker. I've found the rest of the set on a locked foreign-language site, associated with the name Rosenberg, and have possibly ruled-out early Siku and Bruder?

S is for Sandown Starter

The last Sandown Park toy show (7th September) was an odd one, in that most of my purchases, were bagged, boxed, or otherwise 'stand-alone' type things, rather than the usual handfuls of this and that, so I think I'm going to work through them as a series of smaller posts, with a few other bits in-between, to that end, one of the more mixed shots I ended-up with, was this one, so we'll get these novelty bits out of the way first, and I'll lump the few other odds (some military and sci-fi figures), in the last post!

 

Clearly a wild west theme here, with two Hong Kong rack toys, and the UK equivalent of a dime-store item, issued by Thomas in the 'States, and in a roundabout way, also a rack-toy equivalent! The interest here being that the trio of canoeists and their vessels, are hard, glassy polystyrene, like the Indian family, as issued in the US, rather than the soft polyethylene associated with UK production - thankfully with all oars and feather intact, but on a Poplar Plastics card.

 

This destroys the last remaining 'rule' in my head about this set, that the hard plastic was US and the soft was UK, and with the Thomas-Pp-T*R rules looking increasingly shaky, it's anyone's guess who manufactured/issued/carried what, when, where and why!

 

And, you can see where the Giant 'Canoe Race' set came from, a direct lift of this set, but with an extra canoe, and probably a much reduced (as much as 50% less?) retail price-point, the frugal would have taken the other home!

 

We've seen both the horse and the rider/s in the past in mixed lots, donations or charity-shop plunder, we may even have seen them together, but the beauty (loose use of the word beauty!) of a small, sixpenny, or half-shilling generic like this, is the confirmation it brings, of what [rider figure] goes with what [horse type]! Note the flash on the rider's left arm!

While the jig-puzzle toy came as part of a novelty lot, with three other jig-toys and a Merit . . . no, I keep making that mistake . . . a Kleeware locomotive whistle, possibly a mould swap with someone like, or copy of - Lido, Pyro or similar, as it's a US type locomotive, albeit with simplistic wheels! The bowling-pin is new to the collection and the fire engine is a new colour-way.

B is for Big Jolly Boat

So, the other TN Thomas boat, the seller assured me there was a card once, and it was Thomas, not Poplar, but sadly, long gone now, while the bag was so dirty and so shredded it wasn't worth photographing, so you'll have to take my word of his word, but this is the Thomas big boy!

 

I don't know who was first, but there is a pattern to these, whether Ideal, Marx, MPC, or the two Thomas-Poplar ones (and remember there's that third set of 'believed to be' Thomas/Poplar who may have had their own - third - ship?), Marx have a single, central staircase to the poop-deck, MPC have deeper scupper holes, but the basic layout is the same for all five vessels, whether single or twin masted.

 

I suppose this is a 'ship', as it has a little yellow jolly boat! 

 

Confirmation on the oars we saw, when we looked, in reasonable detail, at these figures back in 2018, the Pirate 'logo' is the same plug-in style as the smaller vessel we looked-at earlier, but this boat has two masts. A two-part treasure chest can be carried by the figures with one arm down, again all similar to the MPC accessories.

 

Interestingly, when we looked at them last time;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/tp-is-for-taller-pirates-from-thomas.html

 

the colourways were the same, with green/blue for the larger and red/yellow for the smaller, so it may be they were limited production runs, as far as the colours run, goes? The green here is a much brighter 'highlighter' green, though. If I add the flag from that previous post's sample to this one, I think this one will be complete?

 

A comparison between all three of the small copies so far found, and their big brothers.

The middle red one is a cut-n-shut of two larger poses. 

 

Bird's eye view of the boats, I forgot to mention that the red, larger vessel has no marks.

Note there are ten position-plugs for the five crew. 

The red is missing carpet-wheels, the blue never had them.

L is for Little Jolly Boat!

This year's ITLAPD is, despite the first three posts, actually about pirate ships, more than the pirate figures, although all posts have figures, most of the remaining posts will be featuring boats, and that's the correct term, as they tend to be small, and the old ruling is "Ships can carry boats, boats can't carry ships".

 

I picked this up just after Christmas, and it's the boat for the smaller of the Thomas-Poplar pirates, in this case very definitely Thomas, not Poplar! You get one each of four figures, scaled down from the larger set, and lacking the tools/weapons of that larger scaled bunch of scallywags! There are four advertised, and four receiving holes for their foot-spigots.

 

The 'classic' seaside kiosk 'big bag', now very tatty, but clearly marked-up to TN Thomas, of Bridgend, Glamorgan . . . a very Welsh part of 'Great Britain', it has to be said! Now it happens that this year saw the latest (third or fourth) issue of Plastic Warrior magazine's Poplar Checklist/Special Publication, (and it's very good!), in which the previous relationship between Thomas and Poplar was rather divorced, and I think, as this is the third TNT product from the UK seen on these pages, that the relationship will have to be restored, in the next update, as clearly Thomas issued some of the stuff, as Thomas.

 

Sail and mast, showing how the scull & crossed-bones motif just plugs in!

 

Three poses, we looked at two previously, duplicates of these here, and I pointed out on that occasion they were still a bit of a mystery, so this post is very-much a revelation, confirming previous musing on the subject. It looks like only three of the five larger-scale poses were copied though; the Captain and two of the crew, although one hopes the others may turn-up?

 

The underside of the boat reveals a clear MADE IN ENGLAND (Wales!!) mark at the rear/stearn, and what appears to be the same message in a different font, deliberately obscured, near the middle, but toward the front/bow, which is not so clear in this shot, but I assure you it's there.

 

In comparison with one of the larger figures, we'll be looking at them later today.

They lose the hat/hat-spike as well as weapons/tools. 

 

Likewise, the boat, is a smaller, simplified version of the larger vessel.

L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown February - Vehicles

Two of the best pieces, which covered both vehicles and figures went straight to 1970 in Picasa and won't be seen until September, if I remember, but, if you've worked it out, they'll be well worth the wait! In the meantime, after a couple of quirt Sandown's in the second half of last year, I actually picked-up quite a bit the other week, and there were a fair few vehicles, several from Adrian, so many thanks to him as I got them cheap as chips!

 

This was the first thing I bought, from Alkwyn I think (?), during the 'car-boot' phase out on the terraces while everyone waits for the doors to open! What I loved about it, it's otherwise a pretty standard road-roller from Triang 'Minic', is the fact that it's a crossover piece with tin-plate body and plastic wheels, that the smaller details are turned-brass is just the icing on the cake!

 

A small sample of Hong Kong cars, unusual for being brittle polystyrene, less common for having metal axles, and, the more observant among you may have noticed, the same as four Chris Smith donated a while back; same colours but some different mouldings - an MG-type roadster and a drop-gate estate/station-wagon.

 

If I already have a few in the main collection, the three lots (or two - if I don't) make a better sample, and that's why I love this stuff - there's so much out there, finding it all takes an eon, and we don't get an eon, we only get an age - four-score-and-ten if we're lucky!

 

More conventional US-originating dime-store stuff, with one of 'those' cars (Banner version I think), at the back, and a similarly coloured one in the foreground which may be from another source/set (blocked-in windows), all have the simple moulded-on wheels.

 

I've had a knackered example of this in the stash for a while now, no trailer (which I didn't know about), missing the gun and steering wheel, possibly windscreenless too, so, it's nice to get a decent one, even if the box is a bit shot! Generic, or, if the HK in the shooting star is a brand-mark, related to all that ABC/CMV/HK piracy of Britains stuff we've looked at a few times here, over the years?

 

The trailer is pretty fictional, I don't know if it is based on any post-war camping/outdoors press-release, but google suggests they never actually got made/sold (too many ex-military trailers if you needed one, and fully-covered camper-trailer designs, for those who wanted to stay dry and relatively bear-free!), but one of the dimestore makers did one, and various rivals copied it, until Hong Kong picked up the design too!

 

Two Kellogg's Frosties Land-Speed record attempt cars, it was all the rage when I was a kid, I'm not sure Rochard Nobel/Andy Green's attempts have garnered the same place in public discourse, but it's a different age now, then it was all boys-own-annuals and cigarette cards, now it's the whole known universe on a hand-held device?

 

More here - they are all 'Campbell' cars!

The yellow one is more of a generic pocket-money job, probably German or French, or a Hong Kong copy of the same?

 

This is a step-up, in the world of dimestore vehicular modelling, he says in that faux-poshness he employs occasionally! Not marked, so, again, I hope it's in Hanlon's book, or somebody recognises it, the driver (not brilliantly shot) is a bit Pyro-like, but they didn't tend to this level of detail with the opening doors and boot? You feel Dick Tracy chased this down a canyon while someone shot at him, out of the back window!

 

Treats and treasures! The broken plane is a copy of the German premium/promotional we've seen before, so just for 'sample', while the red racer also seems to be a copy, of the yellow Rosedale we saw a few years ago, but this one is unmarked.

 

Behind them, two real veteran survivors, a carded Kleeware locomotive whisle, and what I've been told is a Poplar Plastic's novelty performing clown, but I'm not sure on the mark, and it may be a long-forgotten smaller maker? All four are polystyrene.

 

While this is definitely Poplar, it says so! Needs a good clean, what is it with ships, those MPC Minis from the James Chase collection had the same black smuts? Some sort of marine-subject only, polymer-loving mould! Bathrooms?

 

The red White's Scout Car seems to be an unmarked variant of the Gilmark, so possibly Bell? We saw a silver one in the Bell/Banner/Merit-related boxed set, along with a similarly red armoured car. So a mould-swap rather than a copy I feel, and it's on another Pyro-like piece, a fire appliance, missing its ladders?

 

The Silver Morris-nosed van is unmarked, as is the sports car, but while the van is hollow, the car has a matching maroon baseplate with engine/drive-train/axle details etched into it, I think it could be British, but I don't know?

 

Noreda; I think I have both vehicles already, but this was a new (to me) packaging, so in the stash it goes, in order that the A-Z will be that bit more complete when I get round to it! I need some thin (ship-in-a-bottle or crochet?) tools to hook the bucket back on to the lower arm!

 

The second carded item was this Raphael Lippkin train in the Pippin line, a bit of fun, and early'ish plastic, I think it's wheels would fit the plastic Playcraft infant train sets based on Brio, and later copied in Hong Kong.

 

The card will need to be straightened, at some point, and I think the gentlest way to do so, will be with a wood-frame and clamps, overnight, or for a few days?