W is for Wild West Warriors - 1 of 2

I split the Wild West relatively randomly into two plunder posts, these are the ones shot with the same background, it was a pretty basic dividing system! But lots of useful bits here, and some new horses which are intriguing me!

 

The two bags of Hong Kong 'hollow horses' and a few of their associated foot figures, one from Trevor, the other from the vendor of the TNT submarine. Neither of them are 'clean' samples, so they will need future sorting, and for now, will be joining a pile of such bags, some mixed, some clean, some semi-sorted already, and then, every few years, I have a big sorting session, matching horses, riders and marks to sets, foot figures or accessories.

 

Papo Totem Pole which seems to have - thus far - escaped me, no longer, and a nice thing it is too, but with ten colours, I wonder at the four shades of blue, Mesoamericans and the Mesopotamian/Egyptians, managed blue from crushed lapis lazuli, and valued it as rare, as did, millennia later, the artists of the renaissance, but I'm not so sure the forest Indians of Canada, Alaska and the arctic circle would have had access to quantities of such a colour?

 

A huge horse fitted for wagon bars, is it Tudor Rose or one of the others, the accompanying mounted figures were discussed a few years ago! A Budgie wagon in good nick, but missing its barrels, which always get die-cast disease and break-off!

 

And a wagon team which could be a minor British make, or Japanese, they made a fair bit of that kind of stuff, along with some of the unknown coronation coaches, which turn up in a similar size.

 

American Civil War didn't feature heavily this year, with an MPC and diminutive post-Giant (unmarked) copy tag-teaming a couple of wounded Confederate officers from the Blue Box regiment!

 

In my attempt to find all these, I seem to have ended up with 8-10 figures in the last three or four years, hopefully, these are the ones I need to produce a set of 6 in decent to near-mint condition, with a few duplicates, one or two of which are a bit scruffy - Crescent's 60mm Mohicans.

 

Marx, each from a different set, and are, from the left;

• 45mm Indian
• 60mm Camp Indian
• 60mm Pioneer
• 54mm Alamo/Fort Apache Pioneer (missing sword but still usable as a US cavalry figure), and not the first one I've encountered in this paint scheme, did someone (Swansea?) do a painted set?

Small scale/novelty figures with two from the Lucky Bags, same pose but nicely marbled, the Betterwear cannoneer completes my sample in yellow plastic, a cracker mini (blue), the soft plastic semi-flat (red) I think may have replaced the 'styrene figures in Lucky Bags, and a teeny-tiny tee-pee!

 

Initial thought was "Four French", but I think the red geezer is probably a Reisler, from Denmark, he seems to be complete, but threatening/calling someone out, and isn't it funny how it's always the smallest guy in the bar who starts the fight? Still to ID the other three.

 

Small-scale bits include parts for a log-cabin, we've seen it once or twice now, but there's a post in the long-queue, a few Airfix bits and a some Atlantic pioneer types, all real grist to the mill!

 

A few bits, Kinder, front centre, and Hong Kong, but of real interest to me is the pair of horses in the middle, what I've dubbed 'Mexican', now known to have been the Texas horse, but the one on the right is a pose-variant, and while they could be French, Italian, Spanish or even Portuguese, they might be HK? I have a fair few of the standard pose, from various sources, but these a real mystery, and I like mysteries, as it means there's more to find!

 

Does the white mounted figure belong on one of the 'new' horses? He may be a sobre/sorpresa - see part 2. Pocahontas is probably Phidal Publishing, a broken Britains, Lido 45mm, HK copy and an unpainted version of the chromed-plastic copies of Metallions. The figure lacking a base is interesting, as, while you find many copies of them in similar paint, not usually with a separate base - another of those canoe crew!

 

Finally, a pair of Safari Westerners, and it's funny, but I got the two 54mm Indians a year or two ago, the tee-pee and wagon were given to me by Paul Morehead as 'small scale' a couple of decades ago, Peter Evans gave me the mounted chap a few years ago, and the buffalo came in at some point, possibly from Jon or Chris, so I only need the Indian woman & child vignette, and a Texas long-horn cow, to complete the set, the best way, by collecting it! The woman here is described as Annie Oakley.

 

Go-on then, here's the Internet image!

 

Thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, along with the others, above named, for help at the show, and over the years.

B is for Big Box of Bounty - Animals

The penultimate post of plastic plunder from Chris, and it's the animals, the least documented of the collection, simply because there are thousands upon thousands of them, and they've just never been a priority, and as the pile of unknowns grows, it gets, like any dark secret, too big to face!

 

But one day soon I hope to tackle it (there's realistic-sculpt Lik Be hidden in there, among other things), and when I do, it will fall into place, or at least some of it will!

 

A Dino-skeleton, a modern phenomenon which is contributing to that pile, although we have ID'd a few over the years, but they keep coming, and this one, one of those 'berry-heads' (Pachycephalosaurus) by the look of it, is larger than most and new to me, it's creeping-up on two arguing cave-men, who are now known (by me, other people knew all along!) to be HG Toys.

 

Small PVC jobbies, and a big job too, with many ID'd and many still to be, here I think we have examples of two modern/current'ish sets, a good [detail] and a not so good set, and one of more vintage, the green one with a splash of pink paint?

 

Not Dinosaurs in my Pocket (Matchbox and cereal premiums), but 'Dino Brites' by Happyness Express of New York (1991), originally Panosh, there's plenty on the Internet about them, this is a good précis on the subject;

 

https://www.littleweirdos.net/2012/02/dino-mites-dino-brites.html

 

 

Larger chaps, with an erasersaur, and one from my favourite rubber set, front right, in a bit of a state, but that state is interesting - it looks upon first glance to be a string, tied by a young owner, which has cut into the foot, but actually, upon trying to remove it, it became clear it was actually an inclusion, running through the leg, and exiting at two points, a piece of cleaning cloth, or hessian sack used to transfer batches of product around the factory floor, which got flicked into the tool? Amazing how it's survived!

 

Two recognisable Holly's (now we've had half a look at them here, as part of the Gygax posts), and the silver one is a nice, but unknown, moulding? Which leaves a softer, more 'Chinasaur' Stegosaurus, who may belong with the Protoceratops and red chap in the second image above?

 

I've seen this chap in mixed lots on evilBay and wondered if it was a copy of one of the Wild West charging/fighting bears, but I think it's a copy of an Elastolin (or Lineol?) composition model, perhaps for Roggatz's ZZ-brand, although not with those green eyes . . . a copy of a copy? Still a nice sculpt, though!

 

Two Airfix piracies, getting a good sample of these now, with and without painted eyes, two larger Hong Kong/China pieces, being a mouse/rat and copy of the Corgi farm dog, a Matchbox boxer-dog from the pick-up truck, and a Berlin-marked bear, with MAMPE, on the other side, a logo-premium for the 'Berlin Mule' kicker-spirit!?

 

A flocked kangaroo, believed to be a Hong Kong-supplied tourist keepsake, three Safari animals, another weakness in the collection, as I've concentrated on the figural sets, and a collectable-series monkey from Topps, who need a better post, along with those Yowies, still in the long queue!

 

Tupperware zebra on the left, chalkware lion from the Naturecraft Christmas crackers in the middle, and one of the two, or four, I'm still looking for! And another bath-toy swan (there was a blue one in the last lot from Peter Evans, and I think I have a pinkish-red one?), which is almost certainly an early post-war novelty, brightening the Christmases, and bath-time's, of the nation's baby-boom.

 

Farm stuff, the composition cow looks particularly interesting (Brent?), while piggy-wiggies and eeeps will need their own ID pages eventually, as there are many of them, and so many copies of known sculpts, it's a collection field in itself . . . Indeed I know a cow collector, who comes round the shows, and from just what I've seen him buy, his collection must be amazing.

 

Two modern horses, and a rather knackered, but still interesting (a sample is always better than no sample) wagon or cart horse, in a solid plastic, which may be Bakelite, or a similar phenol-formaldehyde resin / thermo-set?

 

A bit of fun on the left (but it's a sample!), probably from a modern kid's magazine freebies, and a more conventional beetle on the right, I have half an idea, one day, if I get the time, to mount them all in thematic, glass-fronted, deep frames, as if they are real entomologists exhibits, and ladybirds will be first, as I have a dozen, or more, already!

 

 

Vitacup premiums, mostly damaged, but 'styrene, so usefully glueable, and kept apart, against a future mending session! The baby elephant is more robust, and has survived intact.

 

Lego (?) fish, a Hammerhead, who is damaged, he's missing his lower 'gape mouth' jaw, but it actually, ironically, takes him from the realm of rubber-juggler, to something more realistic looking! A Safari White Shark, and a more generic . . . Mako? Marked China and 'Shark'!

 

Two stretchy 'rubber-jiggler' lizards, probably from two sources, the one unmarked, and flattish with fine sculpting detail, the other fully-round, with fuzzier surface detail (marked China), despite both being metallics, common on these stretchy toys.

 

The turtle is amusing, to me, as I have a blue one which I think is a childhood survivor, despite my not remembering the set, or occasion of its acquisition, it seems to have been in the toy drawer for forever, and nice to find his mate, in another fantastic parcel from Chris Smith.

N is for New Face!

I don't know how many Toy Fairs I've been to, not that many, probably less that twenty since I went to my first one in . . . the late 1990's? But I can't remember ever having seen Safari? Schleich and Papo are near each other on the wrought-iron edged mezzanine/balcony and have been for over a decade, while the others - Bully, CollectA, K&M, Mojo etc., are more on and off, with Battat being found on several other people's stands, but Safari never seem to have bothered, or at least not the years I've attended?

 

So it was a bit of a surprise to find them at Kensington Olympia this January past, with what looked like a hastily-prepared stand, mostly draped orange cloth over trestle tables (next time take a steam iron guys!) and pin-board/divider panels, so whether they got someone else's cancellation slot, or intend to build a presence in future years and just left preparation to the last minute, I don't know, but there were two newish things on display.

 

But first, the classic Toob's;

 

Trying to study these using Amazon is an exercise in both frustration and futility, one of the follow-up posts on the horses in Jon Attwood's donations was going to be a set of Safari, only they turned-out to be from several sets, and several more were on Amazon, so I rather gave up and put them back in the long queue!

 

Also, my recent misidentification of the Arctic vignette, lead me to discover there are two versions of that set, an older 12-piece set with two human figural items (in different scales), and a newer 'shrinkflation' version with only the ten animals.

 

I tried raising the difference with the display-team member who was guiding me round the stand, but he wouldn't be drawn on the subject, while on Amazon (and similar platforms) some traders are still selling the older versions of these sets (it's not the only one with a 12-10 cut, when you start looking), some are selling the newer sets, but off the old images (so a disappointment will arrive), and only fresher, or newer dealers are selling off the new 10-count images.

 

Which means that A) at some point in the future, some items will become 'rarer' and/or therefore, more sought-after, and B), there is a remaining window of a year or two, in which you can track-down the older sets, before they are replaced totally in commercial stock inventories.

 

One of the surprises for me, although I was led to believe they have been around for a while now, are larger animals, following the CollectA-Papo-Schleich market. I don't think I have any yet, not even in the Charity shop bundles which sometimes contain one or two of the others, although the Prehistoric Hominids set Brian Berke sent us, a few years ago, was a clue to larger scales braking out at Safari!

 

I need an albino hedgehog! But there are some nice subjects here, lizards modern and prehistoric, fantasy and domestic farm animals, something for most tastes? That octopus looks great too, and would make short work of pirates!

 

The other new item, actually released last year, I think the chap said, were these mini animals, which would have be going head-to-head with the Schleich-Minis, but I don't think Schleich offer them any-more?

 

Being 'unit sized' some will be useful for HO-OO use, some better suited to larger scales, some may even hold their own against N-gauge or something? They were actually hard to shoot, given the way their display stands had been positioned.

 

A few other shots;

 

The newer issues, from one end of the display table.

 

Not the world's best photograph, I'll grant you! I've checked the butterfly set against the Insect Lore set, and they are not the same, in the middle is the set Brian drew to our attention back in 2020, while a set of Planets is actually a Sun and eight Planets . . . poor bloody Pluto!

 

Also heading for a slice of the novelty market?

 

Useful larger-scale figures.

 

The other end of that table!

 

All-in-all, despite the Lothario's just-got-out-of-bed-sheets in tangerine, there was a lot of good stuff packed into one of the smaller stands, and while I may give the show a miss next year (? The plan is to alternate, but it's a nice day out, and I get to meet friends), I look forward to seeing what they have next time I do visit?

 

Safari's website;

https://www.safariltd.com/