O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Everything Else

So, we reach the last of the plunder, bought or donated, from the sort-of-fortieth PW show, at Whitton, in SW London, this June, just gone, and it's the bits & bobs, trees/plants, vessels, and remaining vehicular stuff!

A bunch of the Cereal Premium ships from Quaker Oats, we've seen the whole set before, here, and a previous lot of additional colours, but here's a few more!

Somebody gave me this at some point in the course of the day's proceedings, he came over and asked me about it, I said I didn't know, but that it looked both modern and really nice, and he said "Keep it" and left me holding it, I hope his name is in the footer acknowledgement, below, but if it isn't, eMail me! Sitting at it, is a larger scale Blue Box doll house kid, and smaller Britains Garden adult!

A fine rack-toy of the 6d/5p variety, a set of tools, which, had I seen it in the 70's, would have been purchased for Action Man! I reckon they would have fitted nicely in one of those silver Arctic Explorer crates, and could have been stowed in my Spartan personnel carrier!

 

Barrels from a die-cast Waggon , one of those Benbros-Charbens-Kemlows minor die-casters? A couple of road signs, one damaged, but it might be an only sample, and a badge probably from Brian, who keeps giving me his old badges, as I think he knew I'd kept all mine, and one day I'll have to sort them all out and throw them up here as a fun-post, on all the shows over the years! I've even got most of my Sandown stickers somewhere!

Scenics; including a small moon, or large cannon-ball, probably from a rack-toy bag, a Hong Kong hay-rick/stack clone, and what I suspect is a rabbit-hutch or poultry pen from Taylor, missing its front-door/mesh, but interestingly inscribed with the full For Good Toys slogan. It's probably taken from the lead original.

FG Taylor's 'squirrel-tree', a Lego Chestnut tree, a couple of Britains window-box scenics, and three smaller Barratt trees.

Largo's hydrofoil motor vessel Disco Volante (somewhat simplified!), from Gilbert, I have the carded one, so it's nice to now have a loose one, complete, if slightly discoloured by age (smoking or UV?), although I think an ultrasonic bath with diluted bleach can bring it back white, without taking the red off?

Mixed vessels, nothing too exciting, the smaller rubber-boat is Corgi I think, and the tug may be Springwell, a reissue of the Tudor Rose vessel, or one of the TR vessels (reader-driven post in the pipeworks, on that one!), several baking powder premiums and an odd colour of the usually silver/grey copies of Minic waterline ships 

Aircraft include a damaged and stripped Messerschmitt, a second Inter Cities Services Rota-Ship from Injection Moulders, a small spacy thing, probably from a board game and another Blue Box 'chopper', "I lurve the smell of vintage plastic in the mornin's!".

Another race-car, also Quaker, standard colour and number, but until it's checked against the master collection, I won't trust it! A large egg, from the discount-store rival to Kinder; Wow Eggs, an infant toy which will end-up going to charity, but is at least 'in the archive' now!

 

While the truck is - I think - the New Maries copy of the Holly copy of Blue Box's livestock truck from the Andy's/Home Farm sets, in all cases a sub-scale vehicle from those sets, but they were all mixed scale, with the Merit knock-off horses. probably fitting this nicely!

H is for How They Come In - Chris - Ancients & Medievals

So, we're back in time a bit from yesterday, with a look at the various bod's in armour, leather or chain-mail in Chris Smiths recent parcel to the Blog, only the two shots, but lots to cover!

Going vaguely clockwise from the big metallic maroon chap, who you may recognise as being the chariot driver (well; 'crew', he's hardly in control of a team of horses!) from the Hong Kong copies of the Thomas chariot, then we have one of the red copies of Airfix Romans, he's from the odd HK sets which come with a chariot but no wheels . . . and - sometimes - an ACW gun, in 54mm!

 

In the right-hand corner we have a Kinder Roman auxiliery cavalryman, with no damage (they can be brittle, as can the similar set of musketeers), and both halves of his horse! Below them the unmarked (smooth base) version of Giant Roman clones, seen here as Woolbro / Generics, with a Quaker/Tom-Smith gladiator's horse in the middle. So, it's all Mighty Rome in the ancients department this time, even if some of them are Trojan clones!

 

The Medievals are an equally interesting mix, with two of the Exin Castilos figures, these came with a Spanish Lego-likey building system, to add playability to an otherwise - really nice - infant toy.

 

But to their right, up in the corner is a very interesting figure, which I'm guessing is Eastern European, although equally he might be Portuguese, he's similar to those Starlux copy premiums, but isn't a Starlux pose? And I thought I already had one or two, possibly also from Chris, but I can't find them on the blog, so they may have come from somewhere else and gone to storage?

Below him is half a Kinder knight's horse, the other half is bottom centre! The other two on the bottom row are mentioned again below, while the silver/gray pair are the MPC small knights.

The white guy is also MPC, but from the larger set, and he's in one piece, I do have one or two in the 'master collection, ironically red and black ones I think, but they are scruffy and damaged, this chap is complete, they tend to break at the bow string or bow itself, so a very useful addition.

 

While the Lido clone (of which we have already seen hard and soft plastic copies with or without paint), is semi-flat to a thinness that qualifies as just 'flat'! Possibly a gum-ball capsule-machine prize? But might have had a rack-toy issue as well? I may have one or two in an orangey-red from years ago somewhere, so expect a return to these in a future 'odd flats' round-up!

T is for Tiny Trucks and Traffic Jams

This post has been slowly growing in Picasa for some time, 2016 I think was when Brian Berke sent the first to the blog, and I've been slowly adding bits to the folder ever since, to the point where some of it got shot twice and there are many more unused pictures, than used, ce la vie!

So Brian sent the red/green five in the first two images, while I was able to add three more much later; the yellow, tan and an alternate green. The vehicles, old 'Dine Store' novelties were made by Empire Plastics, but they may have bought some of this stuff in, certainly the relationship with Lido and Pyro's similar smallies is not as clear as some would have you believe, and the sculpts may have originated elsewhere!

Also the Parent was a Canadian firm; Caldwell Enterprises, and the Canadians often produced copies under license . . . or not! These are all manufactured in hard polystyrene.

These also came from Brian, and are far more interesting to me, as they are Hong Kong copies, another Empire came out of the colony while 'Empire Made' was a common moniker on the products of several other companies at the time (1950-60's). I also love the colours of these, they almost look edible!

Bottom-right is a comparison between the original and copy tow-trucks, the loss of what was already little detail, renders it less than clear what the copy is meant to be! The copies are all softer polyethylene.

The Cabriolet seems to have been much copied in Hong Kong (as a gum-ball machine prize?), and I now have three, different sculpts, each of which is very different from the other two, but clearly sharing the same DNA.

The modern equivalent, but not at dime-store prices, are the Rush Hour games from Binary Arts, and here we have some which came in in a loose lot from a charity-shop purchase or two, they have better engraving as far as detail goes that their 1950's ancestors, but are more cartoony or fictional than the earlier vehicles.

A more advanced version of the game for older players has more realistic vehicles (of smaller size/scale) attached to tiles, so you move the whole section according to a set of rules laid-down in the instructions, which also contains the various scenarios for start positions, which can be solved. The aim - in each case - is to get oe or more of the three emergency vehicles to the front of the queues.

I didn't need all that extra plastic (another charity-shop purchase), so proceeded to remove all the vehicles from their tiles, which started hard, but once I'd got one off, it was easy to see how to pop the others off with a  screwdriver!

They also do a steam-train version, safari animals and a junior variant of the original Rush Hour game, which I will look out for in the same charity shops, now they have their own tub!

And am I right in suggesting they are all based on a earlier Traffic Jam game? The trouble is this game - like Crossbows and Catapults - is much licensed and there are lots of current Gridlock, Rush Hour and Traffic Jam's out there!

Comparison between the full size Traffic Jam lorry (black), Empire truck (green) and civilianised ambulance sculpt (yellow) to the right, the left hand image being the screwdriver's 'harvest'!

I also have this set (part set!) of probably European (East Germany?) ones, marked PmL, they could be Hong Kong, or anywhere, and I can't remember where I got them, and can find nothing on them as a firm?

I actually have the equivalent of 12-liters of these civil mini/micro 'Dime Store' or novelty vehicles, in four of the Really Useful Box Co's 3-litre CD boxes, but what unifies the ones in this post is their integral-moulded wheels, all the others - for an/other day/s - have plug-in axle assemblies or plug-on wheels/tyres, none of the ones in this post do.

To which end these are a few more without working wheels! The upper shot is a set of Cereal premiums from the UK, being seven of ten BMC models from Quaker's Sugar Puffs, full set to be seen here.

The lower shot has a few odds; the orange one is almost a solid lump and possibly Hong Kong, the green truck is supposed to be another Empire one, but it too is a heavier sculpt with little in common with the above examples which have much lighter walls.

The 'old crock' is a Hong Kong copy of one of MPC's Minis, the truck in front is a cracker-toy/capsule-prize also from Hong Kong, while the little yellow truck is technically a half-track, usually glued to another Hong Kong product, the copies of Tri-Ang Minic's harbour wharves, where it's glued to the deck of the plastic copy of Minic's die-cast piece. And many thanks to Brian for both lots!

S is for Some Shots from Sandown Show

While I was at Sandown Park back in February I took the opportunity to shoot a few things on Adrian's Mercator Trading stall, some of which may still be available if you want to eMail them via the website.

Mentioned in the previous post; these are 8 of 10 sculpts from the Quaker cereal premium ship set. I have most of the colours seen here in my small sample, but I don't think I've found a yellow one yet.

Sticking with ships, this is confirmation of the 'believed' Zang for Timpo composition vessels we looked at a while back. An actual Timpo box, the label a bit faded and the set is submarine-heavy with a carrier, battleship/cruiser and two destroyer types, all painted in the same dark grey-brown and green camouflage scheme we saw with the loose set last time.

He also had this loose card (which may originally have had a smaller matching box- see thoughts below), however, this time they are all one colour, and the Battleship seems to have utilised an old slush-casting lead-mould?

A close-up of the carrier, which - with that heavy mast/tower - could be trying to depict the inter-war/early-war carriers Hermes or Eagle (both lost in the war to enemy action), and the rather scratched and faded Timpo labels on both sets. the simpler paint on the smaller one and corner label may hint at a 'budget' set, available from a counter-display box with multiple cards?

Bill & Ben, the flowerpot men! And Weeeeeeeeed! Hollow-cast figurines of the early 'Watch with Mother' TV characters, made by Sacul, there are repro's out there now, but these are oldies! I never really liked them, they were a little too close to those weird Eastern European TV-puppets, we used to import, for my taste and consequently it was years before I realised Weed was actually a sun-flower - Slava Ukraine!

This is a bit of fun, Adrian knows someone who makes fun figures from the remains of old, bashed, hollow-casts, and here we have a Pirate (or Gypsy - there were a few Gypsy wagon sets, camp-fires, knife-sharpeners and the like, back in the hollow-cast days?) playing a squeezebox, married to a farm foal!

Clearly a set of board game counters, but who or what I don't know, the figures and bases have a look of Crescent hollow-cast production about them, but what do I know about hollow-cast? Very little!

All nice things, and thanks to Adrian for letting me shoot them.

R is for Rainbow Warriors

The Quaker Oats 'Sugar Puffs' breakfast cereal premiums and Tom Smith Christmas cracker novelty Gladiators!

We've done them here before (link), there are comparisons on the Airfix Romans' page (link) and I helped Dave over at PSR with images years ago (link), but I really like them, keep collecting them and will return to them from time to time because they ARE eye-candy!

One of each; just to remind you of the set's contents. You get/got five foot figures and three mounted for an eight-count, probably in one tool with a three or six-cavity second-tool for the horses?Sorry; only realized just now it's the old image - new one next time!

Several of the foot figures make useful auxiliaries/allies (the three at the back) while the chap with a round shield looks more Persian or Asiatic. The other guy makes a half-useful slave-driver on-board ship, but is otherwise the duffer in the foot-figures!

With the mounted, only the one in the center is worth collecting for 'army-building' (and steppes/Franks/Goths rather than Rome?) the others having obvious gladiator armour (left) or a ridiculous shield for a rider - on the right, not that they can't all be thrown together with a mix of Airfix, Atalantic, Revell (Elastolin sculpts) and Giant (Marx/Britains) with newer stuff, to make Spartacus's mob!

I took this shot ages ago, and have forgotten why I numbered some of them! But I'll have a stab at most of the notes.

1 - Definitely a Tom Smith colour as that's how ours came in when we were kids, it's a sort of fawn-grey.

2 - This is a metallic green of the sort more usually associated with hard-plastic space-stuff from a decade or so earlier.

3 - Pfffh . . . I obviously had something world-changing to say about 3, once!

4 - This is the same colour as the late Airfix cream figures, and it is cream, not yellow! This is not to say Airfix was involved in their production, but that if two companies were involved, they were probably getting their granules from the same wholesaler.

5 - As per 3, can't remember what I was going to say, semi-translucent . . . which it is? The only pink one? Can't remember!

Ah yes - The Ford Mustang, available in every colour except black! Just the one sculpt for the horses! The whole point of the rainbow-shots is to allow you to consider the origins for yourself; my own feeling is that the only firm that produced the same wide range of colours was Hilco, or at a push Cherilea, both ending-up connected anyway?

But if the Quaker issue were the commoner, primary-colours, and if Tom Smith got access to the tool and farmed it out to a contract manufacture (Tatra or similar?) years later, even the colour range might not be much of a clue?

The obvious gladiator pose is the Retiarius, and the pile behind are the miss-moulded short-shots, the four in front are those with passable tridents, although - as you can see - the first on the left is not fully-formed. I don't often use the term, but finding a decent trident is 'rare' in the true use of the term!

And kids would not necessarily have known he has been posed as having just thrown his net? On a plus side, given both the size of the figures and when they were made, is that he's a very good likeness for a sub-Saharan African with cropped 'afro' hair, a heavy brow and full-lips.

The bases are very Airfix!

F is for Fleet of Five Free Fiddly Flyers

Generally accepted to have been Quaker premiums (Sugar Puffs - more here), and from way back, these have also had other outings and while the Quaker freebies will have been one maker/issuer, it's clear there have been other sources.

This was my collection late last year, lined-up by vehicle type; I've tried to find the vehicles [in real life] but haven't had much luck. I got out an . . . no, verily; 'The' Encyclopedia of Classic Cars by Martin Duckley from the Library, but it precludes racing cars, and confines itself to post 1945 vehicles! While I didn't know where to start online, nor did I have the time!

I then rearranged them all in colour order (it was a slow-news day, clearly!) and you can see they have come-in over the years at a pretty level rate as far as car-type, goes with two extra 4's and four fewer 5's. Colour-wise; metallic red seems commonest with flat scarlet, yellow, blue and silver together in close second. On their heels are the two greens, metallic and flat, for the seven colours issued by Quaker.

Now, I knew Adrian had a box of these as an inexpensive 'loss leader' on his table at shows, and asked him if I could run my collection past his stock, exchanging his colour or mould variations for my duplicates and he - very kindly (no money was mentioned!) - said yes.

So the re-adjusted line-up now looks like this, the former 88 vehicles is now down to 82 (with the previously not-shown Hong Kong copies taking the total to 84), so Adrian's box is up six, but mostly metallic reds, although they are the best colour-way by far, unless you're looking for Ferrari red's or Mercedes' silver!

But where it still looks like I still have duplicates, they are now all different mouldings; the rest of the post is a meander through them; by car number.

Car number 1 looks to be a pre-war design (possibly sharing DNA with the early Monopoly car?) with various differences between examples; a fatter driver with arms, or a small, blobby driver &etc.

You can see the metallic red one (bottom right) has larger vents on the bonnet (hood) and the figure '1' is one vent closer to the nose for instance, while the white one (a copy . . . or later re-cut tooling) has a slightly different floor-plan (look at the exhaust-tip) and is numbered '5' just to confuse!

Hong Kong was there as always, the plagiarised versions being sans-car number, pantographed slightly smaller and manufactured in thinner-walled, soft, polyethylene, rather than the sturdy polystyrene lumps of the originals. The gold one is - like the previous white one -  from another source/issue, but utilising the Quaker moulds I think, unlike the white one, or the HK copies.

The red one has heat-melt damage to the sides, which look shaped and possibly deliberate (remains of that toffee-coloured contact-adhesive HK used) and it may have been attached to some revolving novelty or something? Maybe sitting astride a pencil sharpener?

Also while the green one is faintly marked Hong Kong, the red one isn't and is slightly smaller still, so two sources in the 'Crown Colony' is a safe assumption!

The number 2 car - is it a Jaguar? You can clearly see at least three different radiator grills, and both long and short nose variants, with differences in the bulges forward of the cockpit too, and a whole-car width-variation.

It looks as if the Quaker mould was a fifteen-cavity tool (three of each car, all different) with the various pirates (at least two) employing smaller tools of five-cavities (one of each car) while someone in HK copied the 1-car and someone elsewhere produced a 2nd-generation piracy of the same vehicle - I've now seen three 1's, but none of the other four cars?

My favourite example of all my cars is this marbled/flecked purple vehicle, made from a mix of what looks to have been 50/50 red and blue granules, it's the only one I've ever seen, but they must all have been done in the same colour, at the same time? It seems to be one of the Quaker sculpts.

Car 3, a pre-war Mercedes racer? In the upper shot you can see clear differences between the better finished silver car and the poorer red vehicle, most notably in the drivers and the exhaust vents. There are also (lower shots) at least three grill types and the red example has thicker axle-stubs/fairings.

The number 4 car, some huge aero-engined beast about (in scale with the driver) 25-feet long!

The right-hand yellow one is shorter, carries a better defined driver and has a wider, flatter exhaust which doesn’t extend to the first port. It also has a smoother bow at the end of a more rounded nose, although you could go blind looking for all the little differences in these!

Number 5, another huge car and a lot of clear differences between both Quaker cavities and new/copy tools. The most obvious are the grills and drivers, but the exhausts as well are quite varied, with some further apart or closer together.

The white one - again - has a different number ('4') but also has a totally re-designed rear with a round-arc covering the duck's-tail of the other cars.

The two white ones with their alternate sequence numbers, the most obviously copied of the 'other cars', these were a bugger to photograph and I had to stop them right-down to get the 4-car in focus. They are much cruder, especially in the drivers who are very blobby and have hardly any discernible steering-wheel.

Colours so far found for other - non-Sugar Puffs' - cars, but it may well be that some of the 'official' Quaker colours . . . err . . . aren't. There is a paler version of the metallic red which is a pinker shade, the metallic greens and dark blues come in several shades, while some of the scarlets are actually a flatter, oxide-brown. The camera's flash also hides two distinct yellows and the fact that some silver cars are in fact grey.

The cream-coloured ones (as opposed to the pure white) carry the correct numbers, while the caramel one at the back shows signs of being another marbled one, but I suspect it's actually either sun-faded on the pale side, or heat-damaged in the factory on the darker side?

The fact is, these are so common compared to other cereal premiums of the day (1957) that one suspects there were many other issues; gum-ball capsule-prizes, lucky-bags, Christmas crackers, comics maybe? And that those issues came from several sources, as well as the HK soft polymer copies, the small size and simple designs making them hard to tell apart.

It may even turn-out that a board-game carried a set - red, yellow, light green, light blue, caramel and cream . . . or grey, although it would have to be a game with large 'squares' or a linier form? Or a 'Grand Prix' version of those ratchet-handle/canvas or rubber-sheet horse race games, where they jerk down the course? It would be nice to find black ones, 3 and 5 would look stunning in jet-black.

An idea of scale, albeit accepting that they aren't in scale with each other or the real-life vehicles they may be based-on, the Airfix 'Mighty Antar' readymade tank-transporter and the similar 'dime-store' Pyro Jeep.

Finally this is one of those posts were I have to thank everyone who's ever given stuff to me in the past or made blog donations, whether cheap or free, as there's often one or two of these in the bottom of a 'junk' bag, or a rummage lot, so that’s Trevor, three Peter's, Jim, Paul, John, Brain and Brian, 'Lego' Dave, Matt, Graham, Andy and a big thanks to Adrian!