T is for Tail Ends

Well, more card Buses! You may notice that these are from P-Z, and think that's it, but you'd be wrong, I forgot to check N and O, I think, so there may be one or two lurking there, while a slew of them are in the queue from across the pond, although some have travelled there from here! And I've only been showing you those which fit A4 storage slip-cases, so there's still a box of bigger stuff to come at some point in the future!

Another giveaway from a Bus company, this time Strathclyde's Buses, and printed by Gordon Petrie of Stonehaven, a simple design, but with nice floor-pan reinforcing, and a complicated fold under the front windscreen!

 

I also have a full-sized (well, original?) sticker for the driver-operator's window, so I could start a fake Strathclyde Buses service . . .all I need to do is buy a bus, paint it to match the defunct company's buses, make sure it has a 'slot' and drive around collecting fares until I've got enough to drive-off into the sunset - flawless plan!

 

 

The other card of this two card model is behind, and there's no clue as to who supplied these to Richard Kohnstam (RiKo), who were importers/wholesalers to the hobby for many years, but it will be some small garage operation. It's complicated/detailed enough to be a Micromodels reprint?

Another chocolate freebie, from Suchard / Milka in Switzerland, this time, where it seems to have contained a stack of milk-chocolate 'tiles'? Simple construction, like most of the 'container' buses we've seen.

The windows are unfortunately filled with postcard images of the Swiss alps, which rather detracts from the usefullness of the otherwise well renderd and colourful card bus model!

A couple more corporate freebies, these for Tayside, and no other details visible, so might be in-house or printed by a third party, nice colour-scheme, for a regional bus/coach firm, I thought, all ruined by the Tories of course!

 

Thornton's toffee box! Nice inserts if you can be faffed with the folding, which I couldn't for the photo-shoot, and yes, I've since cut my nails! the wheels stick down, which must have made stacking them a bit of a nightmare? But they may have folded/packed them, per-order, behind the counter?

A very complicated one from Tramalan, with a decorate-it-yourself motif going-on there! Hardly surprising it's a tram, given the publisher's name, and a Blackpool one with two pantograph gantries and something else delicate looking - I'm not a tram expert!

 

 

As mentioned above, some of the card buses are too-big, or too-built to be in the folders, so I suspect the bus for this little diorama is in the big box. But we have small scale card-flat figures, which is the best yet! And coming at us from West Midlands Travel.

Tom Smith, cracker toy, Whimsey from Wade and Thunderbird figure purveyors to the masses for many years, also did indoor fireworks, which came in a box, that looks like a bus, bargain!

I love indoor fireworks, apart from the fact they leave the house stinking like a war-zone and your saliva tasting like rendered-down sugar-candy, and the best one is the volcano, which churns-out a grey rubber-worm, feet-long, if it works right!

Welcome Break! When we were kids, the few and far between Motorway Service stations were an excitement akin to the Starship Enterprise, now they are mostly run-down and/or hideously expensive places to stop at, for a snooze or to empty your bladder. And only the overly paid, or overly stupid actually purchase anything there!

 

It is probably the second-biggest single lie in Britain after the efficacy of TV detector vans, that somehow these sites, which were suually built on compulsorily-purchased green-belt/agricultural land and get their deliveries straight off the road-network should somehow be the most expensive petrol and retail outlets in the land? Yet, no one with any power or influence has ever questioned this obvious anomaly, of capitalist greed, writ large!

 

Go phuq yourselves Welcome Break, go phuq yourselves with your phuqing over-priced, ersatz happy-meal, from your ersatz phuqing 'pantry'; Julie? Schmoolie! In a green bus - which I have to admit - does have a nicely printed underside, da' phuq anyway, greedy bastards!

P is for Paper and Pulp (card)

A post full of coincidences tonight, some contrived, some pure fluke. The first is that while I've been planning this for a few days, it comes just after Mannie Gentile covered the Walkerloo figures on his blog; Toy Soldiers Forever and Scott B Lesch posted a nice sheet of Pelerin style French Fire Brigade papers on his blog; Things You'll Like. So a little bit of synergy moving wisp-like through the blogger-sphere there!

The second, accidental coincidence is that one of the reasons I've been planning this for a few days is that I'd read - a few weeks ago - that Edward Ryan had died and posting on Terry Wise reminded me I meant to do a tribute to Mr. Ryan too. Now when I caught the news of his demise (on Treefrog - I think) I assumed it was recent, but it turns out the initial announcement was a year ago today Washington Post, well technically tomorrow, but that's less than twenty minutes away so it'll be today before this post goes 'live' (he actually passed away 29th August).

Which is further coincidence, as I only took the photo's this afternoon in order to put something between the fort posts and I'm only splitting the fort posts because I started to rather by accident (I could have gone Part 1, 2 etc...As I had with VEB and others), more of that when I tie them all together in a day or five.

It's sad that another of the 'Greats' has gone-before, if I had to save only five of the books from my Library, his would be one of them, the depth and breadth of his research, over a lifetime was extraordinary and the shear number of companies and individuals mentioned in the text and/or appendices is second - in number - only to Garrett's great work. Paper Soldiers is not just a fine reference work, but also a beautifully illustrated casual read, or coffee table browse!

When we first moved here, I had decided to start collecting larger scales, as the 'whole picture' requires it and there was a slowing-up of new information in the smaller scales. Now I'd always collected card and paper in the small scales, so it was another coincidence when we went into Wantage for the first time - nearly two years ago, where does the time go?! - with directions to the local second hand bookstall.

[Side note; there were very good booksellers in both Wantage and Newbury, the Newbury one was Invicta, whom I remembered advertising in the modeling press years ago, sadly they closed this spring, although with hardbacks for a pound and soft-backs for 50p toward the end, I did 'fill my boots'! They will continue to have a bookcase or two in a corner of the Wantage arcade though.]

Well when we found the Arcade, they had these (Edizioni Storiche Europa) sheets of card Napoleonics for a couple of quid each, not the 19th Century stuff Ryan specialized in, but - and I'm guessing here - 1970's? Now I couldn't justify buying them when we first moved in as money was tight and other thing's were more pressing, so each time we went in to browse (hide from the rain!) I'd check they were still there and re-hide them (in full view - I give others a fighting chance!) until I was able to get them, by which time two had gone...Hay Ho! So the first Soldiers I purchased in our new home, were among the first large scale I bought. If not a coincidence; more synergy!

This only got photographed (Parragon/Simon & Schuster, 1991) because it was waiting around to go in the tub, which is half-way down a stack, behind something else and quite heavy, and I've pulled my back out fighting with a lawnmower, a stubborn choke and some long grass, not coincidence but fortuitous happenstance?

The crate in question! The beauty of card and paper is you can store a lot in a small space - if it's not made up! The Medieval Tournament above will end up in the stack of modern/current production you can see at the bottom of this crate, being Dover, Steve Jackson, Fiddler's Green and Usborne. The bus you can see is an old Riko re-packaging of something I think has been mentioned before? But that might have been on one of the forums, anyway until I get the crate out it'll have to stay Riko...(Price and Etheridge?). ANOTHER coincidence; The single-page list of small scale card/paper manufacturers was in a file on the floor, where I left it last night, meaning to put something else away!!

And with down-loadable war games paper becoming really quite popular at the moment, lets hear it for coincidence, spare a thought for Mr. Ryan on the anniversary of his passing and remember that in the wider world of Toy and Model soldiers, card and paper have a larger place than I've so far given them.

(Added 1st September 2012; It was Price and Etheridge! Repacked by/supplied to RIKO)

S is for more Shermans

Mostly not actually Shermans, but AFV's on a Sherman Chassis, starting with three more Shermans though;

Front of the row is the Manurba Sherman I've posted before, this is a little on the big side at around 1:65 scale. Next is a pocket money toy, probably by Kleeware, it's marked 'Made in England' and is a UK produced Gilmark U.S. dime-store 'bin toy', proportions are all over the place! Final mark in the line-up is the Midori push-and-go clip-together model, also produced for/in Riko (Richard Kohnstam) packaging.

Comparison shot of the underside of two Midori Shermans, I don't know if there is any significance to the different wheels, i.e. Midori/Riko batches, or just a change of wheel/motor-unit supplier at one point, but some people like this type of variation when collecting old toys, and it means you get to keep both...because 'you MUST have them'!!!

Here we have a slush-cast Lee/Grant (you wanna decide which it's meant to be!!?) and a Rocco Tank Destroyer, the M3 has an antiqued finish like the pencil-sharpener in the previous post but is probably 30 years older - if it's a day!

Two Priest SPG's, the one behind is a contemporary Hong Kong one, the nearer one of the two is a Gilmark original, missing the gun-piece. Compare this to the UK issued Sherman at the top; track units are painted and the US produced vehicle has thermal printed markings.