A is for Ancient Archaic Antagonists of Antiquity!

Into the final furlong as far as the 2026 Plastic Warrior Toy Soldier Show plunder and loot is concerned, and I've split this lot into ancient and medieval posts, with the older soldiers first!

 

So, we'll go back 3000-odd years, to the siege of Troy, a probably real event, heavily fictionalised, the facts lost to national and region mythology, and the demented whitterings of priests, or bards, or priest's bards, no doubt, and thanks to Matt at Hobby Bunker, who brought these over.

 

I'd actually bought three other sets from him, either at last years show, or at the London Show in December (?), either way, I forgot to shoot them, and knowing these two were still to be found, never got around to it, but in all there are five sets of 'Troy' era figures, these two, and the sets:

• LOD 015 - The Amazons
• Figure Set #1 - The War at Troy - Commemorative Set, Ten Years of LOD
• Figure Set #19 - Amazons, Aeneas and Ajax

And the aim now is to open them all, and have a decent photo-shoot of all the pre-classical Greek sets from LOD, my first by them, and probably my last, just because I'm not doing the post 1990 stuff in the larger scales, there is tons of it, other people are collecting it, other sources are annotating it, and I haven't got the room, or budget for it, with so much vintage still to be found, but I do like ancient Greeks!

 

Similar point of discussion with these Supreme sets, I buy them as box-tickers when I see them cheap, we've done the Knights - of all types - to death, here at Small Scale World, and looked at the Romans, Crusaders, and was it the Vikings? I think we've seen three of these now, and while I haven't tracked down the Arabs/Saracens, one of their camels is in the Egyptian set above, and these both have one each of the two common horse poses.

 

Interestingly, the Greek looking commander figure and archer sculpts, usually smaller, from some of the medieval sets, aren't actually included in the pose-count for the Alexander set! But with their segmented-armour, knee-pads they'd look a bit silly, or even sillier than normal!

 

Unknown, probably still on Amazon if I look hard enough, and marked 'CHINA', I'm not sure if they are supposed to be cavemen, predating Troy by about 500,000-years (give or take a few 100,000), or 19th-20th century Zulu warriors, but they are fun, and were in one of the donations I think, so basically free, to share with you and tick the box! AND . . . they're not that bad, as sculpts, but the axe is a bit OTT, and the lady isn't going to be doing much damage with that hand-trident!

 

Two lovely sculpts, both purchases, the Athena is probably not that rare, being a tourist souvenir, but he joins a foot one we saw years ago, while the Nardi is quite a bit less common, and you can tell I really like them - multiple shots; gotta' do them justice!

 

Despite being late to the larger scales, as far as collecting goes, there aren't many massive holes or gaps in the UK collection, but this is one, and while I have the Cleopatra somewhere I think, on her chaise-longue/daybed thing, and, you may remember, I picked-up the Sphinx a year or so ago, I don't have many of this double set, half tan-plastic Egyptians, half brown Nubian slaves/captives.

 

And, yes, I know the Nubians were in charge under the Kushite kings, but Cherilea decided to sculpt them in chains, holding fans or cowering! Also, I've really got to get the cheetah and handler. But in the meantime these are a useful addition to a couple of play-worns, and maybe some reissues? I'd forgotten how colourful the series is, too!

 

Roman Gladiators as issued by Quaker Sugar Puffs and Tom Smith Christmas crackers.

 

Lucky Clover and other non-Giant Romano-Greek stuff.

 

Non-Giant Vikings.

 

The small scale stuff, as sorted mostly from Trevor's bag, and the similar early-purchase bag of hollow Hong Kong horse stuff, The Quaker have been done here, the Vikings, gold 'Trojans' and black forts have been covered on the But is it Giant Blog, the rest are pending, but some are covered on the HK Romans page above.!

 

Thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again, there's a fair bit of their stuff above. 

B is for Bags, Barrels, Bases, Bits & Bobs, Boxes, Bullets, a Barrow and a Bell!

Among other things! It's the bits and bobs, the accessories, the spares, the detritus, the orphaned elements of other toys or models, and peripheral/consumable stuff, which, due to the drawer of bits on show's-eve, is greater than some years, and full of things I can get a couple of lines of blurb out of!

 

Firstly; the accessories! These were new in Replicants inventory, and are obviously designed to go with the cart we shall see in a future post, bundles of sticks, which are beyond kindling, or fascines, and may be for tool-handles or walking sticks . . . Proper cargo, anyway! Along with sacks (not bags, but sacks didn't alliterate!) and some useful looking barrels.

 

Amorces, I need'em for ma'forces . . . is one of the most often visited posts on the blog, creeping toward the top twenty posts, and while that traffic is probbaly more about the bombs, with a few other caps, in other posts, caps are worth a better overview one day, in the meantime these have come it to join the master-sample we saw then;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-is-for-amorces-i-needem-for-mahforces.html

 

And while I well remember both the red and blueish-white rolls, along with the plastic strips and discs, the separate shots had been phased out by our childhood (the bulk of which was spent in the 1970's), and are more of a '50's thing, I think?

 

Bullets and shells, the sets of marbled ones in fives look familier, but I can't remember from which gun/toy the came, while the yellow rocket came with the Dinky Striker (one of the Scorpion Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance, Tracked, or CVR(T) family of FV10*-coded AFV's. My brother had the build-your-own kit of it, and I well remember the missiles, all over the floor

 

There is a zone for these guys, somewhere in storage, and the hope is they will eventually be married-up with their original gun, cannon, catapult, vehicle or whatever! And , with regard to things like the Striker missiles, always nicer to have the originals, than some after-market 'replacement' fakes.

 

Tyres, and a Dinky/Hornby sack-barrow; again always useful to have spares, I've been tasked with finding the wheels for a trolly bus, and I'm as likely to find it in the stash, when I get to it, as I am at a show like Sandown, but you have to look or you never find!

 

Road signs and street furniture; some of these look like they're from infant toys, and beyond the [pretty loose and wide-ranging] remits of the collection, but you never know, all sorts get thrown in rack-toys, as make-weights or space-fillers!

 

Older stuff, and all interesting. The set of cards are the 'mini' size, you get out of Christmas crackers, but  have the Quaker Foods logo, and were issued with Puffed Wheat in 1961, but could be another clue to a close, or 'closer' relationship between Tom Smith and Quaker than that already known? And previously hinted at here, only the other day, with regard to the set of ten ships? There was a set of full sized cards issued with Quaker Oats and Bran more recently. Both on Cereal Offers;

 

https://cerealoffers.com/Quaker_Ltd/quaker_ltd.html

 

There's also a nice stained, bone counter or tiddly-wink, and three card stands from board-games, the ovoid one on the right, I think went with early versions of L'Attack, Dover Patrol and the others in that series. The green wooden one may be a home-made replacement. 

 

A very small, but perfectly formed bell? It is unlikely to be from a Euro-rail kit, that pearlescent green is not a Faller-Kibri-Noch-Vollmer-Wiad (et al) church or chapel colour, yet it's too small to be a decorative Christmassy thing either? Possibly just a cracker charm?

 

The windmill is a new colour variation of one I already have several of, while the ad-hoc signage is likely to be from a model kit in the 1:35th/32nd bracket, maybe a car kit, or Western wagon, but more likely something military?

 

Mini spanners, I think they are the same size as Meccano, but it's not their design, and their hex-nuts arrived quite late, so a rival like Erector, or a knock-off? Or, having just mentioned the Dinky kits, some kind of build-your own toy, or assemble at home car kits?

 

The clockwork keys are grist to the mill, with two marked Penguin (Frog) on the right.

 

Spares; The spanner is a styrene, novelty one, and is large enough to have been in one of those 'Pick-up-Sticks'/Spillikins sets, with recognisable tools, although they are usually a bit longer/thinner? The Crescent lance is very useful!

 

Farmyard and battlefield accessories.

 

A marble (modern), two balls (one wooden) and a palm tree!

 

Two board-game racing cars which escaped the vehicular post, they are both from mid-20th Century board-games, and I have other examples of both, or very similar beasts, as I recognse both desings, hopeful they are new/missing colours, but that's probably hoping too much!

 

The little packets are, I think, spare felt-tips for marker pens, and, with that square-section, possibly the old pump-action, liquid-filled Edding's I remember from my youth, but they make useful additions to the 'greeblie' zone!

 

Everything else! The two ladders are probably the best bits here, as I'm pretty sure they are both from small die-casts in the Matchbox 1-75 or Hotwheels bracket, but the yacht's sail is also a good find, as is the spaceman's helmet!

All this stuff, if not quickly reunited with its owner, has a tub, box or bag to live in, and the smaller stuff goes in three of those multi-drawer cabinets, the old ones from Argos (or Index?), back when they still came in spot-welded steel cases.

 

Again thanking  Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin for their contributions. 

W is for Wild West Warriors - 2 of 2

I shot these first, of the two post's worth, but they ended-up as the second post for reasons I've already forgotten, half the bagged/carded stuff, and a bit of detritus at the end, but all good stuff!

 

Sorpresa . . . Italian for Sobre, Spanish for surprise! And Natale Luigi (NL) is a new one for the Tag list. I remember ten lira being about half-a-p in 1977, so it's not going to break the bank, not even the piggy-bank, pocket-money being the target of very small 'lucky bags'!

 

Apologies to Peter Burgner, I was chatting to him about this find, which he'd observed at a distance, and I said they were the same figures as the Lucky Clover sets, but they're not. The foot figures are larger, while the mounted are the standard 'Giant' size.

 

Still a useful find. I suspect two sets of mounted are missing from the top of the card, and while you could do without the shop-keepers stickers, they do at least date the thing to the mid/late-1970's, the sort of thing which was sixpence in d-money, and became 5-new-p, briefly, before the oil crisis 'invented' modern inflation! Who remembers when 1st class post was 3p!

 

While we had the Sorpresa/Sobre equivalent in Lucky Bags, at the larger end, here in the UK, these were the equivalent of the smaller ones, cheap polymer stuff, sourced in Hong Kong, or occasionally, especially with tin-plate, Japan.

 

A painted figure, marked Hong Kong, of the same size, against the unmarked bases of the figures in the bags, which came-in the same day. All Britains copies, and these 35mm's were cracker fodder, too.

 

Alkastep; a scruffy card, and a ripped bag, but a sample is better than no sample, and it means we can look at the figures. All marked 'France', on the rear-edge of the deep bases, these are to be found as other premiums I think, or were supplied as such to third parties, without rebranding?

 

Post-Giant wagons, the buggy was branded National and others, the small gun-team a cracker prize, while the larger gun and limber combo' was issued with unmarked copies of Giant's ACW and Napoleonics. The other three are more generic.

 

The Poplar-Quaker Foods-Tudor Rose wild west set, really just looking for colour variations or gap-filers now, they aren't rare, and most mixed lots/donations, or show plunder has a few! They could mostly use a god clean, common with these, that obviously got a lot of play back in the day.

 

Likewise, the Crescent hollow-cast and Bergan/Beton copies, these are two Airfix late type (back right, the Indian has been given black, fabric-tape chaps!), and the rest hard styrenes which may also be Tudor Rose, in the case of the mounted certainly, the foot figures seem to have been carried issued by several unknowns, at some point.

F is for Further Follow-up - Micro Vessels

I'd forgotten I'd picked the bits up from the storage unit, to do a comparison, so here's a bit more on the small or 'micro' vessels we looked at a couple of days ago, and some more bits from the Internet downloads folder on naval stuff.

 

Both this and the previous should be viewed in the context of the original post on the very small vessels, which was part of a series of seven articles;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/s-is-for-ships-and-other-vessels-part-7.html

 

There were also some comparisons in the MPC series a few years later; 

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2015/05/mpc-is-for-mini-ships-part-two.html

 

Which was a two-parter, both series have become dated by the scope of the collection now, and one day I intend to re-do all seven of the first lot, in the same order, but as longer, fuller articles, in the meantime a few more points arising . . .

 

. . . including a colour fan of the Quaker samples which are here at the moment, I know the original sample with all ten mouldings, and other accrued duplicates is elsewhere, so a better version of this shot is in the Blog's future, and looking at these, I think there's some merit to my hypothesis re. Tom Smith?

 

Furthermore, I'd suggest that whoever made these ships, made the Gladiators, both are relatively common in small quantities (down to single samples in mixed 'junk' lots), more common than other cereal premiums, and while there are none here, the metallic green in the original post, is matched perfectly in the Gladiators, originally, also Quaker.

 

Nine of ten, by size, with a hole for the missing one!

 

The two Sanella superstructures I have here, there are at least three, and they have a common hull, sometimes found loose, sometimes found glued together, like that water-film novelty I got from Steve Vickers recently. However, I'd forgotten . . .

 

. . . the larger., better finished liner, also marked Sanella, which is almost certainly a later model? The Manurba seem to have three hull types, not the two mentioned the other day - my bad! Pointed, rounded and flat sterns, and maybe only three matching superstructures? Although, like the Sanella - lots of colours, albeit brighter/primary, as opposed to Sanella's more muted or pastel hues.

 

Recently, with the help of Chris Smith (pink, middle), and - I think - another purchase (red, front), I've picked-up three vessels with WWI/turn-of-the-19th-Century forward sloping prows (there was a silver warship, from Adrian Little, still in a separate bag!), and it turned-out I'd found them online some time ago (2020);

 

Apparently sold in waxed-paper bags of twelve vessels, there are possibly only four sculpts/mouldings; twin-barrelled warship, single-barrelled warship, merchantman/tanker and liner? But with three marking variations (prow - my red one, stern - this set, and none - silver warship), there really aught to be more in the collection than there are?

 

The fate of all this Hong Kong bottom-end/pocket-money stuff is that it was always unappreciated and mostly went to landfill decades ago. So, if you have any going spare, bring them to the Plastic Warrior show, this Saturday, and I'll give you real Earth money for them!!

 

Finally, found in 2021, and as an addendum to that part-7 link above, another game which contains a micro-navy, to add to the games in that post, is the Ariel Games one, Manoeuvre, also sold as Strategy, from 1973;

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8905/strategy-the-navy-game-for-all-the-family

 

Which is quite bloodthirsty, if you contemplate the number of troops you can have on a troopship! I'm sure there are more games with these micro vessels, and - of course - we've ID'd the slightly larger Silvercorn stuff, since those early posts.

A is for A Few Follow-ups!

A few things raised by stuff we've looked at recently, and despite a slower than usual posting rate so far this year, we've covered quite a bit one way or another, and here are a few bits and pieces related to some of the odds & sods, seen here in the last couple of months, or so!

 

This was an internet sales shot I downloaded a few years ago, I download a lot of stuff which illustrates stuff I don't have, but which it's not worth bidding on, or because I'm not - at the time - bidding, and this is one such. I downloaded it for the little blue Bisque pilot (whom I didn't know was bisque then, I assumed composition!), and, of which I've since picked-up a sample, seen in this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/06/bmss-is-for-more-plunder.html

 

The other stuff above is mostly common lead, some of which I've obtained in the last few years from Adrian's rummage trays, but it seems I'm still looking for the sub-scale chap. top, far-right, or is he the Crescent pilot (which I do have)? And the guy next to the blue pilot, also slightly smaller than the 54mm's. I think the sailor/lifeboat man, two along is a modern production, whitemetal solid?

 

While this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/05/d-is-for-donations-peter-animals.html

 

Reminded me I'd downloaded these wooden flats, when I saw them on sale, again, not the common poultry girl and chickens, but in the same vein, and like the farmer in Peter's donation, slightly better decorated. I've never seen the Wild West figures before, but will look out for them.

 

On the subject of the mazes we looked at, on the London Underground, it struck me, back in April, that the tiled panels at Warren Street (geddit? Warren = labyrinth, maze), should get an honourable mention! I think there's a deliberate mistake in this, but need to check it with the other panels, and there are several per platform and four platforms to check.

 

But if you look at the 7th tile along from the left in the second row from the top, it's not right? Breaking at least two rules - two red lines adjacent, and a shadow-wall falling away at the wrong angle?

 

The various Hulk's we've seen since Christmas! I think the oldest is the pencil top, and there are others to look at one day, so we'll return to Hulks at some point if I'm granted the time, by the powers that be, but the weather this week has suggested we might, none of us, have the time left, we've been hoping for or counting on!

 

I've got the blues! I thought there were six shades here, but actually there are seven, so the early works on Kellogg's jig-toys were pretty generalised in their colour lists, and clearly there were many runs of the tools, and cereal premiums was only one of several issues, for these polyethylene jig-toys.

 

These got left off one of the Peter Evans' donations, and are mostly Hong Kong small scale with a few kit-figures and other bits (central bag), but all grist to the mill! When I'm better organised, these will all go on the But Is It Giant? blog (no, none of them are!), and with both my own quite large collection of carded, bagged and blister sets, and the many I've also downloaded from the Internet over the years, we will make sense of them all, and annotate most of them!

 

Further to the recent purchase from Isaac's friend at Sandown Park;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/06/t-is-for-two-diver-sets.html

 

I took this image from evilBay back in 2021, and you can see the same soft 'polythene' ships (sans the hard 'styrene submarine), with one version of the sailors, taken from Britains hollow-cast US Marines, but what it would seem to suggest is that there's an ABC-CMV-HK link to some or all of these sets, more work needed, or a couple of confirmatory finds!

 

Sticking with vessels, these are a purchase a while ago, of the Quaker cereal premiums, we added five the other day, courtesy of Chris Smith, including a new colour (white), and while I haven't managed to shoot them all together, one day we'll unite them all and cover all the colours and all the vessels (ten?), however, I suspect, from the breadth of the colour range, these, like the Gladiators, found their way into Tom Smith crackers at some point?

 

I should have credited the seller at the time, name long-lost, and they probably don't even know of the Blog, let alone follow it, but this was a cheap BIN I got back in February '23, and this is how they arrived in an otherwise standard envelope, and I thought they were beautifully packed to ensure they arrived as they were seen in the auction shots.

 

The cereal premium submarine has all four periscopes/air-tubes/exhausts up, which was the real reason for bidding, the Quaker and Manurba vessles (middle pair) were grist to the mill, and the yacht might be from a board-game, but the keel suggests not? Maybe the water-bowl equivalent of Blow Football?!

 

And mentioned in passing in another plunder-post recently - the Tallon (UK) packaging of the Manurba vessels, I have quite a few Tallon packs now, but this one has eluded me so far, it'll come; nothing made after 1950 is 'really' rare!

 

There are two common hulls (flatter stern and pointed at both ends), to which two or three superstructure types are added, to each hull. We've also seen similar ships from Sanella, who had the one hull, and several suprestructures.