F is for Follow-up - Artillery

As an addendum to last year's post on Artillery this is the stuff that's come in, in the last four years, as I said in the first 'round-up' post: I will redo these, or just start an Artillery page one day, but for now, here are a few more!

The upper one is the little cannon claimed by Kinder collectors as one of theirs (and may well have been in the eggs at some point), but has been available long before, and from various sources as a tourist trinket, key-ring &etc.

The lower gun is (I suspect) an apprentice piece, handmade from high-quality brass-plated steel, with hand-cut wheels and a leather finish to the barrel (lizard or snakeskin by the looks of it), it has a loop for a charm bracelet but is a tad heavy for the purpose. maybe and engineering student's end of year thing, or jewellers first piece...even a bit of 'War Art', but the quality is really too good for that?

The upper shot here is a lead solid Skybird's howitzer, it makes a super mountain-gun for Airfix Australians or Gurkha's to drag through Burma...or even to be given to the Japs! The lower shot shows the wooden ones from the sorting post earlier today, in better detail...home-made or austerity/craft 'manufactured'? They elevate by means of a panel-pin pushed through the barrel as trunions.

Above; classic and common 'antiqued' pencil-sharpener gun of the 1800's, issued by several brands over the years and a favourite with museum gift-shops and tourist kiosks the world over.

Below; Kleeware large-size cannon from the yellow, marbled-plastic, clip-together forts.

The six together with a plastic ship kit Naval gun for scale and (inset) a French penny toy from SR in lead with a heavy wash of pale-grey gloss paint.

T is for Tobler (or SR?)

This was being sold by the dealer as an SR item, but I suspect it's Tobler, only because it matches the illustrations in the Tobler catalogue doing the rounds a while back - I'll leave you to decide! Is it a Renault?

As with a lot of early metal makers, Tobler's range was given as being 55mm, but the vehicles were sub-scale, presumably to keep them within a price bracket? As a result this is perfect for small-scale/25mm WWI and inter-war stuff, as shown by the Blue Box German officer flagging it down!

Right...and err...wrong! See comments, it is SR and it might be Tobler...wondered what all the points were for! Got Tobler in the Tag-list though...

W is for more Wagons

Following on from the W&T post, and the realisation they copied the Britains Lilliput horse (itself a scale down of a hollow-cast 54mm horse, latter produced in plastic!), I thought it was time for some more wagons.

Here the Britains Lilliput are the green hay (Tumbrel) cart and blue dairy cart/milk float in the centre, the two - also metal - copies are probably someone like Morestone or Budgie, while the log-wagon is - I think - Benbros. The chariot is probably the French penny-toy make of 'SR' and the little Handsome-Cab at the front was probably from an early Christmas cracker.

The larger of these coronation coaches is by Hill / Johillco, the broken thread was originally threaded through the rings in the horses flanks as a rein arrangement. The whole thing is sort of 28/31mm or around the 1:48/1:56 mark. The smaller coach is totally unmarked and could be by any one of several dozen companies, as this coach has been mass produced in various scale/sizes for three coronations and a trillion tourists, not to mention one cancelled coronation, all in the period when lead/die-casting was the predominant technology! A lot of that production actually taking place in Hong Kong or Japan.

What can I add? Coach, check; Hong Kong, check; No. 505 in a probable range of one!...er that's it!

Ultra modern production, head for the pinky/mauve area of your local toy shop or Toys'r'us and you will find dozens of these fairy tale, Cinderella, pumpkin type things, trouble is they're always attached to a massive grate pile of heliotrope castle with blue towers! Still they turn up at car-boot sales a few years later, very cheap!