B is for Bibliography - 1 of 2

I've had a fair few books come-in over the last 18/24 months, and the folder was getting unmanageable, so I've split it into 3, arbitrarily, as photographed, not as they came in (like you care!), and will chuck them up here, as two posts on collectables books, and one on non-toy stuff! This is the first of those collectable's posts.

Back in the 'day', the Burn's guides were THE guides, rather eclipsed by the excellent Scalemates website, now. They provided a good guide to what had been around when, and this came in a few months ago, I have also got the Sci-Fi specific volume, which was a little earlier, this is one of the later 'whole' lists I think.

This was recent show plunder, and I only got it because someone else had left it on the guy's table, after being tempted! Anything New Cavendish is worth a punt, and this is both an authoritative and academic work, and also beautifully illustrated, and has a comprehensive listing of toys made by the iconic tin-plate manufacturer.

One of several general books on games and/or puzzles, but each always has the author's own favourites, or unique finds, so each has something to add, and between them, they have most of the odd lead-flat or microscale wood vehicles and things, I post from time to time, and one day I'll sit down and ID everything, and we'll have some roundups here of ships, cars, horse racers/riders &etc. It may, however, be a duplicate in the library, I'm getting familiarity-vibes, from the cover?

Bought for 'completion', a kids book really, a primer on what to collect, or sugegstions for collecting, but even a basic book will have something to give, especially if it includes fields outside your own interests. Language/jargon, tools, renovation or cleaning hints or techniques, from other hobbies/pastimes.

It's funny, you can be involved in collecting from an early age, and still be totally unaware of a book, which, when you subsequently research it, becomes clear is quite common and well-known - this is that book, for me, recently! I have a couple of the other 'Advertorial' books; 'The Hornby Book of Trains', which ran to several editions, and would, after the amalgamation, include Tri-Ang, but this had slid totally under the radar.

 

To be fair, none of them add much, being only 'chatty' illustrated catalogues, but they are nice coffee table eye-candy, and would have been popular dream-time, wish-list reading for kids, at the time.

Becoming slightly comedic now, but also very useful. Originally Chris Smith (who's Mum worked for Hawkin/Tobar) sent, first images, then a whole copy, to enhance/back-up stuff being blogged here at Small Scale World, after I'd shown a photo or scan, I couldn't remember where from, then I got confused about what I'd shown, when. Then, earlier last year, sorting the whole library, I found a couple more, one in with the books, one or two in the box-files . . . then these three came in from the Late Micheal Hyde's estate!

 

So, allowing for a duplicate or two, I should have five or six of these, from the early 1980's through to the 2000's, with the odd page in a couple of the general catalogues, giving a good overview of the 20-odd years the tin-plate ran for.

 

And it's clear this was a membership thing, a collector's club for a whole sub-branch of the hobby, with regular/annual issues of these catalogues, each of which has a mail-order form, and where all the ZZ/Rogazz, Shilling, Japanese imports and German/Russian reproductions all sit side by side with Chinese retro/fakes! But all accurately described, sometime s with a potted history of the origins of how the tools/stock was found, put into production, or reproduced, etc . . . 

 

Above are from 1983 (October), 1996 (Cristmas) and the Spring 1998 editions. 

Mentioned the other day, one of two or three issued in a rather fantastical sting/fraud which seem to have been set up over several years! There's an interesting reference to it here;

 

https://www.qualitydiecasttoys.com/articles/35 

 

and I quote "We even had Jeffrey Levitt (of Mint and Boxed infamy) calling in as he passed by on his way to Maidstone Prison. He was serving his time on weekdays but allowed home for the weekends. He did this for about a year, still trying to deal in toys whilst jailed for masterminding a massive fraud dealing in toys!" 

Another general book, or that's what it looks like, but this is co-authored by the parents of 'our own' James Opie, and they did more for the early research of all aspects of 'modern' Childhood, than anyone else, and - while better known for their work on playground/colloquial rhymes, fairy tales and children's song - they also covered the toys, and this has some very interesting chapters on play.

 

The social science of play and childhood is a fascinating field, with the well-meaning Jocasta's of Islington trying to raise 'gender-neutral' offspring, only to discover, on a walk in the woods, that the boys will pick up sticks and use them as guns or swords, the girls will pick up fir-cones and treat them as pets or babies!

 

And as a life-long Radio-4 fan, I've absorbed some of it, indeed, I dare say I've listened to one or other of the Opie parents' discussing it over the years, I've certainly caught James' brother being interviewed on consumer products, more than once!

I think this was an eBay grab, I can't honestly remember, it may have come from John B, and it's the commercial edition, of a book I may also have bought (without the shiny resin badge) as a self-publish/print-on-demand jobbie, from that there Wibbly Wobbly Way, a few years ago? It's a superb, single-subject work, with all the Reamsa rarities.

I was lucky to get this! It was earmarked for 'The Doctor', but he only wanted to check a couple of images on a specific page, then he left it, and I grabbed it with glee! Slightly deflated by realising there are several more volumes in the series! But it will help me ID stuff I know little about - French lead!

L is for Lots of London Loot - Eight is for Late

December's London Toy Soldier Show, was a quiet one for me, not much purchased, and of that, we've seen one or two bits already in other posts, and one of the larger sets has gone to the archive, because I'm not Blogging them at the moment, but here are a few things which may interest some loyal readers!

 

A couple more of the Charlie Chalk figurines/pencil-tops, of which we saw one a while ago. Then, I hadn't heard of the show, now I've genned-up on it, but still haven't seen it, and it doesn't seem to be as iconic as some of his (Ivor Wood's) other stuff.

 

The Trader Joe seems to have had his hat crushed by the factory machinery, which, to me, makes it more interesting, the figures (I think there are seven) are always the same colour, so finding a normal one is inevitable, but a factory-damaged one is a different take on the subject.

 

Paul from the South Coast had a basket of these, and I saw them at the start of the show, and said "Oh, I'll have a few of them mate", forgot all about them as the show got busy and by the time I found them at the end of the day, only one Officer was left and colleagues on the Friends of PW site have posted better samples!

 

I have a few others, including Reamsa originals of these, which are probably Gormasa/Soldis reissues, and it's one of those corners of the collection which is building slowly but surely, as a decent sample of post-war Spanish troops.

 

Board game pieces, not sure which game, but I think the answer is in the archive, so they'll end-up on the correct A-Z page one day!

 

Two Phidal Buzz from Toy Story figures, a third would come in Peter's January lot (which we've just seen here), but Peter may have brought a bag to the show, that's one of the reasons why all these posts are getting the same title, they all got a bit mixed-up over the winter!

 

The other reason I forgot about the Reamsa reissues, was I bought these Eyes Right figures, from Britains, off Paul, at the same time, they're hideously brittle, but absolutely mint, they were worth the gamble to get the shots before they become micro-polymer dust, forever! The Band Major didn't survive the lift home!

 

The Royal Marines standing band, they don't seem to be as brittle as the red ones, but it's not like I'm going to test that theory, with any robust stress experiments! The Eye's Right (and some of the Swoppets) really are the high-point of toy soldier production, the finer detail leaving both hollow-cast and composition figures, in their dust, but soon-enough replaced with lower quality shite out of Hong Kong, after losing out to Timpo's, cheaper, technicolour 'sweeties'!

 

A couple of the 'Middlesex' regiment, the sword failed and will need a gentle glue-spot to get the better shot. This was the standard band's uniform of 'County' line regiments, like my own Glosters, now mostly light-infantry (the horror, the horror! Some awful grey and black arrangement with busbies, now!), but a paint-conversion will be easy!

 

We've seen these before, and it's not like I 'need' them, but as I have them unassembled in Almark packaging, and assembled (and factory painted) as Minimodels, it makes sense to have the other iteration, for the ultimate comparison/look at them all one day!

Bit of fun! About . . . 2007 (?) these started appearing all over the place (Marx websites and evilBay); novelty skiers, both civil like, this and Disney types, of interest in that they are manufactured in the same dense, flesh-coloured, stable PVC as the Injectaplastic-JSP-Culpitt-AHM stuff, AND some late Corgi die-cast vehicle accessory figures. The hint [from me!] being that they all come from the same factory, possibly Tai Sang's Blue Box Vinyl Manufactory in Macau?

 

A hollow-cast boot, for very small peep's to live in! I had a chat with James Opie about this purchase, he has one, and Joplin put one in one of his books, but as yet, there's no known maker for it, there is another, which is known (Segal), an upside down one, in red leather, but this - possibly a cake decoration, or miniature 'Japanese' garden ornament  - remains elusive.

 

Rounding off with a PZG or similar polish Napoleonic type, there must be a handful of hollow-cast missing from these show-purchases (I've got in the habit of always raiding Adrian's 50p/£1 trays at the end of a show), and some space-stuff, I think, but it did all get a bit muddled-up, and the point of these mixed posts is eye candy and the odd question-mark rather than an accurate diary of how it all comes in!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Historicals and Ceremonials

There's no better-or-worse with these groupings, it's just the easiest way to begin the sorting, as most of the large scale collection is archived thematically. The small scale remains mostly alphabetical by company/maker, with only the unknowns thematic, but in the larger scales it seems better to separate them by theme, within which they are all equally valued, and equally useful, in their section of the whole! Today it's the more colourful soldiers from Chris's recent donation parcel!

This was actually a purchase from Chris, which was put in the box to save on postage, and turned-out to be a Reamsa cavalryman, Royal Escort Squadron, I believe, and doesn't seem to have been in the Gormasa-Soldis tranche of reissues? Now he just needs a horse, but as mentioned in related-articles passim, I think I have some somewhere!

 

Novelty Ninjas from Panosh flank a larger unbranded/several branded (generic!) figure, who is a more contemporary (or still recent) capsule-toy type. All three are manufactured in soft PVC style polymers.

 

From the left: a base for the via-Portugal premiums used by several French products, which had here, been paired with one of the smaller Kinder issue figures, which his locating pegs don't fit! A ceramic priest type, from Japan, a slightly damaged Marx Miniature Masterpiece knight - I have more damaged than not, and will have a modelling session with their polystyrene arses one day! Finally, a new sculpt of Welsh lady 'redcoat' to put the fear of god into French marines! She was obviously another (most of the previously-seen were) tourist keepsake, keyring

 

With sizer - a bit blurred, without sizer - a better shot! A home-casting mould Prussian, a naked lead figure around 40mm, he may have had a brand, but with everything that's happened recently that mental note has been lost, and what looks like a French (or Spanish?) copy of a Reisler (?) Band Major, he could be quite recent, he's very clean, and very flashy, almost a test-shot? The sizer is an Airfix clone.

 

Lovely novelty ceramic drummer, about 45mm? He's smaller than the others we looked at a while ago, and we will return to him/them, as more of the others came in a while ago, but have gone off to storage, so a better overview of them - as a genre or trope - is definitely in the pipeline!

 

And a nice bunch of slightly battered Oojah-Cum-Pivvy's, from India, via Shamus Wade, but being terracotta, they will restore quite well, both with superglue and modelling clay, while the powder/poster paint is equally easy to touch-up, so I will get decent samples of each uniform type from this lot. And again, many thanks to Chris for all the above.

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 3 - Ceremonial & Historicals

Part-the-third, of the plastic plunder posts from Chris Smith's most recent parcel, brings us to the ceremonial and historical section, Royal Fail or Parcelfarce did their worst with these, as you can see from the first image in the sequence!

To be fair to Postie, I suspect there wasn't much in the bag when it left East Anglia, and was being sent as a sample of . . . Malleable Mouldings? But, yeah, it arrived as so much dust and two legs!

 

Funnily enough, the first Malleable horse I got (still somewhere in the pile) was found in the car-park at SAS, off the old A4, or at least, embedded in the gravel/puddle at the bottom of the steel fire-escape! It was/is missing both back legs and a base, and while I've handled several of Adrian's over the years, and posibly shot them for the blog, I have yet to find a decent mounted figure by Malleable! It'll happen!

Initially thought to be Italian, these are 30mm polystyrene Hungarian Imperial, or 'Royal' Guards, and - obviously - the same colour scheme as those 30mm plug-together 'swoppets' both Chris and Peter Evans have donated to the blog in the past. Lovely little things!

 

While the British 'Royal Guards' of the Household Division include two nice Hong Kong copies of Crescent (seen here yesterday), but in a Hilco style! next to them, the chap with the herb-green base is a real treat, he's the Reamsa copy of herald, and I think he might have been Reamsa No.1?

 

I personally love the eraser guardsman in purple, he's that silicon rubber which really just smudges pencil, but they were 'novelties' first and erasers second, always, I feel? The key-ring guardsman seems to go with some of the Highland pipers, one of the Welsh ladies and probably the fisherman we saw the other day, while the KT is damaged and the Rocco guardsmen need glue!

 

Cake decorations and premiums, we've seen the AWI before, and the French Dragoon (?) is from that set of premiums which used to have one name but now have several in two sizes, with base differences and Kinder joining the mix!

 

A Crescent lead, and Blue Box sailors (Merten copies) signal a Hong Kong copy of Airfix trumpeter to deal with some French interloper (HaT Industries) while a rather legless Lord Flashheart courtesy of Skybirds, recovers from a night on the juice, in the Mess!

 

In discussion, we think maybe Brazilian for this horse, although he could equally be Argentine? Missing a rider who may send it to the Wild West section, I posted it here, as this post only had six images!

And Postie again! But they were all missing their tails already, so just samples, and while I don't know what colours of this Rocco guardsman I have, if I need a white sample, I'll have one, once I've glued a couple of heads back on!

 

Many thanks to Chris as always for all these, and even the broken stuff has its place, as place-fillers!

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Added a few minutes later - I'd dropped some of the images in the Khaki soldier section!

 

It was looking at the damaged KT above and realising "Where are the other two?" that had me off looking in the other folders! Superb thing to get in the post without warning - two more boxed KT pencil sharpeners, and different boxing, both generic and serving the tourist trade, but aren't they lovely - I've already sorted the guardsman (forthcoming post) with a fully rifled replacement, so he's now a minter!

 

We saw him the other day, but he belonged here all along - the Blue Box Napoleon, which, with another figure in this parcel, get us closer to a complete pose-count, but we're still only half-way on the painted/chromed sets! Thanks again to Chris.

N is for New-Old Find!

I was moving stuff up to the storage unit yesterday and was looking for a couple of small boxes in the garage to make up a load when I spotted a rather crushed bankers box under something else and though "What the hell's in that?", dug it out and found it was a bunch of missing tubs, split between 'colonial era' and wild west . . . most of which I'd totally forgotten, and a lot of which has now been duplicated over the last few years!

Two of the tubs on the bottom had been deformed by the weight, which had pushed the end of the box over a hard edge, and there was some damage to the contents, but more due to age and three or four moves rather than what's happened to the box!

Anyway I shot a few for some box-ticking posts, and we'll look at a some in a sec', but you can see one of two tubs of Timpo Arabs (top left, the other - underneath - is the grey/white/pale blue poses), the Supreme (as supplied to various others) Wild West (middle bottom), which will make for an interesting comparison post at some point in the future, as it was only last year - I think - that I Blogged the newer versions and noted at the time there were colour variants out there.

We're about to look at two of the others, but bottom right is the 'early British' FFL and Arabs, something I know has been added-to over the years, and which requires a bit of research to get right, so only a glimpse today! Although we did look at some back at the start of the Blog I think.

Altogether there were 25 tubs, and I put them in a 35-litre Really Useful 'Euro' box last night, where there was room for five more, so for now, they got the Polish lollipop-figures (from Chris Smith) and three other's that were hanging around waiting for a home, but the Wild West and Colonial 'master' collections both have other boxes; already in storage, so this lot will be broken down in the near future and sorted into them.

Marx reissue generals (names and solid bases), and copy (? names removed, hollowed-bases) Wild West Characters, nothing special, they were common a while back, and you still see the odd lots' of them on evilBay, I think Marksmen imported the blue ones, not sure about the brown, but I have the WWII Generals/Admirals somewhere in green, blue and brown, so I guess it was all from Ri Toys?

Quick box-ticker of the Crescent Wild West, they are really quite nice figures, anatomically, somewhere between the quality of all the early Swoppets and the hyper-realistic late Timpo set, six of each pose and mounted versions available on the three standard Crescent horses, they fall down on the limited plastic-colour range.

A small lot of mixed Arabian/North African types with two French bazaar copies of Reamsa French (or Spanish) Foreign Legion, a colonial cavalryman (Pech/Reamsa) and two Marx Arabs, one of whom will require the superglue! The chap on his camel (and the camel) are a vulcanised rubber and may also be French, he looks a bit like Quiralu/Wend-Al FFL, could he be from a aluminium mould, anyone know? Next day - JIM or JIM-copy? See comments - following post.

Anyway, that's a taster, there's a few more quickies to come, and when they are all sorted back together we'll look at the rest one day!

R es para Romanos A Caballo

Literally translates as Romans on Horseback, means Roman cavalry! More box-ticking and we have seen one of them before here, as a late-Reamsa/re-issue moulding in unpainted silver, who commands my definitely Co-Ma, not RP (. . . or Basa!) squad of ring-hand Romans.

Having failed to get the frames square on the images in the infantry post, I got these dead square without thinking about it and didn't even think of scanning them! Also they did have the clear plastic sheet (but no film), so have stayed in their box for now.

Five mounted cavalry on two horse sculpts, there are two officer types - if you measure such things by plume size/type - but with such an eclectic set of shields and an un-armed 'trooper' doing a Caesar impersonation, in gold armour, I think they are too toy-like to get excited about on that level and are best called 'auxiliary' cavalry, late Empire!

The two horse designs are a bit chunky, and are reverse poses of each other - apart from the tails! That's it another couple of boxes-ticked, Reamsa-Gormasa Romans from the Soldis-Históricos 'big box' line.