T is for Tameo, but also; Question Time!

Roving reporter Brian Berke picked these up the other day, and sent them to the blog, and while he's pretty sure they're by Tameo Kits (TK) of Italy, the figures don't seem to be listed on the website any longer, so help with identifying the individuals' modelled, would be greatly appreciated, from any F1 or Italian model fans, who might be passing Small Scale World!

Personal or eMail-related stuff edited out, but in Brian's words;

 

"I won  [. . .]  some metal figures. From the listing photo, I thought they were in space suits, but it turns out they are racing drivers from an Italian firm called TAMEO that I had never heard of. Their present website does not seem to list them.

I make no apologies for not having a racing car to pose them with, not my area of interest, but I [found] a NASCAR diecast to indicate use. The figures are in two scales.

I don't know if the ID's [numbers on the bags] are from the [model-] maker or the . . . seller."

 

 

Unnumbered - "The complete standing figure seems to be based on an actual driver." I'm wondering if it might be either James Hunt or a young Schumacher (and I lean toward the former, that's a 1960/70's helmet)?

 

RD 3 (racing driver [model] 3?) - He is obviously stepping into a racing car's cockpit, and has a more modern fire-suit and helmet, the peg on his left foot, will be for fixing him to the intended vignette or diorama base.

 

RD 7 - The output of Tameo, still extant, is mostly in 1:43, and I suspect they are all supposed to be the same scale, but the seated drivers are a little smaller, possibly to account for the material of the cockpit walls being not scale-thinness, and they seem to have lost their toes, probably for the same reason? I think they are too big to be 1:64th, the next natural scale down?

 

 

RD 8 - similar to the last one, but his separate gloves, being designed to sit on the bonnet, edge of the cockpit somewhere, or even in his lap, suggest he's to be posed in the 'Paddock' phase, prior to the formation-lap, with all the reporters, crew, VIP ticket-holders, grid-girls holding number-boards, and such like?

 

That scrum which Tony Jardine used to fight to hear himself over, let alone get information to the rest of us, and yes, I'm dating my participation in F1, I haven't watched it, nor followed it, for years!

 

RD 10 - "[ . . . ] also shows what may be an actual driver." Again, I have an idea, which is that it may be Ayrton Senna, or another of the older drivers? Again a paddock pose, with him actually putting one glove on, while the other waits to be posed on the vehicle somewhere, or held by a member of the pit crew . . . and, were they also made by Tameo, at some point?

 

Unnumbered -  this guy's got both hands firmly on the steering wheel, and would seem to be racing, but his helmet is from a third generation maybe? Although it seems to me, with nothing but the visual evidence you can see, for yourselves, that the bare-headed chaps may well be intended character figures, and the helmeted guys, deliberately more generic?

 

All have been shot by Brian with the 'Hunt' figurine as a comparison.

 

'Hunt' again, posed with Ricky Rudd's Ford Taurus Whirlpool/Tide,  #10 Nascar premium from the 1998/99 seasons (thanks Google, useful for once!). There are various models of this car, including a 1:64th Hot Wheels, while Racing Champions did a 1:24 scale, die-cast, but this Procter & Gamble charity/advertising giveaway (?) looks to be closer to the required 1:43rd?

 

The Tameo website - https://www.tameokits.com/

 

And many thanks to Brian for sending us this, racing figures are one of those side-bars who will eventually get a page on the A-Z Blogs, along with Firefighters, road-crews, Police, Ambulance personal and other such figures who keep recurring as die-cast's accessories!

 

Added the next day, this bag went missing and the seller is 'moving house', so it may never turn up, but has tantalising clues including what looks like a 1990's Williams cockpit transfer, sponsor's advert graphics for Hitachi and NGK, and another driver.
 

So if anyone can flesh-out the back-story/history of these for us, that would be grand!

T is for All Moulding . . . Maybe!

Toumoulage; a French company, the meaning of which is probably no more translatable than Triang or Meccanno but which can produce the above English, or variations on it ('Mould All') in translation engines, so may well mean that (input from friendly French welcome!)?

A hard polystyrene plastic original, factory painted, behind, with a soft polyethylene premium in front, the premium probably isn't Toumoulage, but rather a piracy/licensed copy, reduced in size by somebody-for-Procter & Gamble France?

P&G had issued unpainted polystyrene versions in their soap power, which were shown on Ludo's old site, so I guess the smaller, soft plastic ones are a later edition for the same companies products? But they could be from another issuer, these premiums tend to 'do the rounds'?

I think there are eight poses in total (plus a mounted line, we'll look at another day), I've still to find the crawling Indian and cowboy with lasso, and you can see they are part based on the second set of Lido Wild West (also copied in Hong Kong), part based on the earlier Crescent/Lido from hollow-cast Wild West set (seen here a while ago), with elements of the Siku premium set maybe and even the Thomas/Poplar for Quaker cereal premium set.

This is not to say they are straight piracies, they have their own style (a sort of art-deco meets yellow-submarine!), but the above named companies would have been contemporaneous-with and clearly influenced these.

Close-up of a couple of the smaller copies, so far I've only found them in the soft polyethylene, but as stated above there was a hard polystyrene issue, while the Toumoulage are always 'styrene, but can be painted or unpainted.

Colours found so far, I shot these from a very small sample before I'd found the larger ones (there may be a few more in the storage lots?), so there's not much else to say about them!

Elkie the moose shall sing no more, but he'll taste good and make excellent moccasins! I think the moose (Hong Kong) and background foliage (which includes a coral!) were in a lot from Chris Smith which was to-hand and the moose was the right size to suggest the vignette!

The tree on the far left is particularly interesting as it's a variation on the stackable Merit type, but with a single stepped-trunk you drop the greenery over, unlike the more common plug-together stack of separate sections . . . I recently picked-up a larger one, which is former-Soviet, so this one may be too, I can't remember?

F is for Fairy Snow

Not the preferred 'powder of relaxation' and social-intercourse employed by - it seems - most Tory leadership campaigners (which is most Tories!) but rather a domestic washing/laundry powder; I thought probably from the Lever Brothers/Unilever combine, but it turns out Fairy Liquid and the earlier Fairy Snow are Procter & Gamble brands, 'non-bio' and originally produced in their factories at West Thurrock and the [now] Republic of Ireland.

I had no idea these existed, although I think I may have a baksheesh axle and tyres combo' in the spares box somewhere, so when Adrian Little sent me images I was very interested and managed to grab some more shots at a subsequent Toy Show.

Jaguar MkII 3.4 litre

We had a maroon one of these when we were kids (it even gets a mention in Charlie Beckwith's Delta Force memoirs!)* and Dad used to screech the tyres on every roundabout between the North Circular and Retford on the old A1 'Great North Road'! Back in the day - there were a lot of roundabouts!

It ended its life as a glider-tug at Farnborough, sans roof. I don't know if it was cut off as a safety measure or ripped-off by the slipstream on the runway after rust set in, but I like to imagine the latter - the roof skidding away into the mown-grass like a demented umbrella!

You could still see it down the back of the water treatment works, behind the old hangers' until only a few years ago, where - if visual-memory serves - it had a Scammell wreaker and an old AEC tanker as companions!

Kit is simple, with white rubber (not plastic-melting PVC) tyres to be fitted over the wheel-stubs of two clip-in axles which are placed in a belly-pan already attached to the upper-bodywork. All found in a heat-sealed polyethylene bag.

* "...Major Walter jumped into his flashy maroon Jaguar and took off for London..."

https://www.scribd.com/book/163581917/Delta-Force-A-Memoir-by-the-Founder-of-the-U-S-Military-s-Most-Secretive-Special-Operations-Unit

Citroen DS

Scale is largish; around 1:24/25th or 1:30th which would make them compatible with a lot of figures? And presumably it was a range of sporty types, or 'sports-saloons'?

That Jaguar had plenty of room in the back for two small boys, but the polished leather seats combined with those corduroy shorts which were de rigueur for small boys back in the 1960's meant that as Dad screeched the tyres, my brother and I would slid about like corks in a storm, the fold-down arm-rest saving us from each-other! We - of course - would over-emphasis the movements until giggling set-in and we were shouted-at to "Behave yourselves!" by some miserable 'grown-up' in the front!

So, there you go; plastic car premiums from Fairy Snow, blurb rather replaced by reminiscing, as the pictures tell you as much as I can, and thanks to Adrian for sharing them with the rest of us.