F is for Formula Freebee!

Well, I got into the groove and though we could have the rest of the day on vaguely HO or OO-gauge compatible racing cars, although we saw the first of these a while ago, the Tito trio should be new to Blog, and are a better 'fit' than the diminutive cereal premiums.

A sizer with a Hong Kong machine, from the previous post, to the left, the cereal - and other - premium in the middle and a Tito Elf-Tyrell on the right, the Tito is the odd-one-out here; being a soft polyethylene to the 'styrene of the other two.

As I say, we've looked at these before, and I put a couple of them together, properly,  at the time, so I've just emptied the bag for a quick shot to get across the part-count (+/-13) and colour variation (at least eight colours or shades).

I will return to these again in a year or a few, but not until I've sourced more pale-blue, orange and white examples!

Bonnet-numbers indentified so far are 2, 5, 22 and 28, but there are no vehicle types marked on them, so whether you got that from the packet-artwork or kid's comic adverts/publicity material or just have to guess them I don't know?

Tito's Ice Cream premiums, reading from the left and following the bonnet-numbers system with advertising moulded-on in raised-relief (in brackets), we have;

11 -Tyrell-Ford (Ford-ELF-Goodyear-Champion)

14 - McLaren-Ford M19 (Ford-Gulf-Goodyear-Champion-Yardley-Lockheed)

3 - March-Ford 721 (Ford-ELF-Goodyear-STP)

Which may mean these are Formula Ford? I seem to recall there was such a thing, although I recognise the Tyrell-Ford as what we called an Elf-Tyrell when we were kids, I'm sure it's the same one which got the short-lived (and destroyed the opposition before being banned) 6x6 conversion and they were both Formula 1?

Each comes as the same number of parts/basic components on a frame-runner, probably in a baking-paper envelope, and I assume there must be at least a forth model out there somewhere, maybe more?

Close-ups of two of the rear wings with their relief-moulded advertising. So - if I recall correctly - The 11-car should be a sort of Prussian-blue, the 14 a pale-blue with orange stripes (? The sports-saloons' famously were!) and I don't know on the three, lots of cars had the STP ovals?

News, Views Etc . . . Dancing Dolls Page - Contribution

I've added a nice contribution from Brian Wagstaff (near the bottom of the page) and some more Scot's dancing 'Gerrils' (in their section) to the above mentioned page

Dolls! - Rush Job!

S is for Shilling

The following appeared in the letters section of Plastic Warrior magazine - issue 170 (1st quarter/March; 2018) just over a year ago, I reproduce it verbatim below;

" Dear PW

Re issue 167, New Zealand figures. As well as collecting toy soldiers I also collect cereal toys. I wrote to Craig L Hall about the New Zealand figures: he has written and published a book called Breakfast Barons, cereal Critters and the Rosenhain & Lipmann Legacy.

I enclose the letter he sent me in reply.

David Pye.

We quote from Craig's reply as follows [Ed.].

"I think the author of the article, Paul Stadinger, has done a great job on the research and is correct in what he says except that these were not made by R&L, as there was another company, more established in the 1960s, called Consolidated Plastics, who made this type of toy."  "

Now, if you live in an entirely non-digital universe, it may well appear to you to be pretty straightforward, although you might - almost at once - use your own logic abilities to ask A) why would a modern publisher be operating in a non-digital world and B) why do these two seem to need to hold each other's hands . . . it's not quite kosher, is it? Still, this post is in the digital world, so presumably these two idiots (above named) won't see it!

And - on a purely obvious level; nice plug for one's book, by the other! Why only quote a section of the reply, why the middle man? Plug your own book! Well, the answer is, shilling! Not the currency; ex-Empire and still used in Kenya, but the issuing of an aggrandising shill letter, to support TJF, probably (no evidence!) with the knowledge and/or input and/or instigation of The Jabbering-Fuck himself?

The facts are;

21st February 2016 - After much independent research over about three years, and with full acknowledgement of all relevant sources (and a few irrelevant ones!), I published the Dolls of the World/Dancing Dolls page. I didn't acknowledge Mr. Hall's book, as I haven't got it, haven't seen it and therefore hadn't used it in my research (and still have no clue what he has, or has not said on the subject). As part of that research I revealed that the [still] mentioned elsewhere as 'Unknown Australian' figures, were from three sets of figures issued with Sanitarium breakfast cereal, AND, on the separate, supporting A-Z Page entries published three days later, posted links to some of the Antipodean sites that were doing great work publicising the Sanitarium stuff we (in the West) had missed.

November 25th 2016 - TJF published his colonist's set, pretty much claiming to have solved the problem of his unknown figures all by himself, and discovered Sanitarium . . . with the help of an Aussie seller, of the kind I had pointed out! We now know - after early denials - that he follows this Blog '...very closely...'!

June 16th 2017 - I posted the Colonialist set on Lodoprimofiles - nicer figure-colour spread!

June 19th 2017 - I posted the NZ set on the Blog as well - new photo's more text, box ticked!

June 2017 - The naked emperor reposts his article in PW167 with no new imagery and no new blurb.

July 7th 2017 - Stadinger (TJF) mentions the dancing dolls, still describing some of them as 'unknown Australian' (they're New Zealand!) and claiming they don't interest him!

March 2018 - the shill letter appears, crediting TJF with the work actually done by . . . well . . . quite a few other people!

If these two muppets knew so little about the background to the reposted article, why did they feel the need to put pen-to-paper? And/or to have the results of that mutual cud-chewing published? It's not like we see a mass of letters congratulating all the other authors of all the other articles for their '...great job on the research' in either PW or all the other magazines; whether the articles are accurate - or not? Nor - it has to be said - do we see a regular stream of such factually inaccurate letters!

If it was to get the book plugged, then it only needed one of them? If it was to get the book plugged, then; well done, it's got another mention here; three-cheers for me!

If it was to correct the false accreditation to Rosenhain & Lipmann, it fails, as it only seems to 'suggest' an alternative? I looked at a couple (of possible sources, to which you could add Toltoys) in the original article and we mentioned a couple more the other day (January posts) - there were lots of plastic manufactories in that part of the world at that time. If you are to correct someone, you need to be firm in your correcting, the last line in the quote only seem to offer 'an' alternative? And again - only requires one author!

Does that make sense? What I'm saying is . . . IF you know; correct the idiot TJF's "... strong working knowledge..." (he was calling early Zang-Herald "Crescent" the other day - it's tragic!), but if you don't know, why the need for the fucking letter in the first place? It's the idiocy of people in a very small hobby pretending they have no knowledge of and/or haven't seen several large chunks of it (the hobby generally, and/or specifically; the war with me!), when they almost certainly have intimate knowledge of it!

No; this was a concerted effort to 'big-up' TJF's self-appointed 'legend', with ignorant or deliberately unfounded 'facts' which bore no relation to the actual course of events. I've never met either of these fools, they've never communicated with me - as far as I know, and therefore their actions were designed to credit the one person who did the least research into the matter!

On the way; subjugating the efforts and integrity of Mr. Hall himself, the other Antipodean website or blog-owners and myself, and - call me a conspiracy theorist if you have to (TJF has - several times without justification - at least this time he has good reason to scream 'fake news' like a deranged president!); it is damaging to the hobby. Damage I predicted would be forthcoming, two and a half . . . nearly three-years ago.

Do you see? I found - and credited - the Aussi and NZ sites in my research, they in turn may or may not have used Mr. Hall's book in their web-building - and/or credited it. Equally he may have used them? While Mr Standinger played no part in any of it, except to use the existing, published information, but then tries to take the credit, with the help of a ('the') shill letter; I - as always - claiming no credit for myself!

Apparently written by people drawing lines or choosing sides (within the hobby) they didn't need to or have to, because the naked emperor or his minions' asked them to! Worms; they're a couple of worms!

Let Mr. Paul Stadinger have the last word . . .

Is that like a very small Tribble? I don't have any Tribbles, I gave them all to that 'Bones' chap, I don't know what he did with them, but I heard a Federation Spacefleet engineer ordering an awful lot of Starship corridor ducting-plates and inspection-hatch covers the other day? Spacefleet list Tribbles as vermin, you know? If only we could likewise register TJF, the PSTSM and their associates!

C is for Crazy 'Crazy Pirates'

Phew - it was the power lead (forty-quid) not the receiving-port (sixty-quid, plus parts and another two weeks without the laptop!), so here's the antipodean pirates . . . a bit late!

=====

===============

==========

I know - it's not International Talk Like A Pirate Day (ITLAPD) yet, but this was the other jewel in Glenn Sibbald's parcel, and as they are cartoony, and the pirate 'rule' has been broken (with whole ships) two Christmas's running, we're having some more pirates out of pirate season!

And believe me; there's already plenty in the TLAP folder for the 19th of September - six or seven posts-worth so far.

Now, I think most of these were sourced from New Zealand, certainly 'in' NZ, but a couple have an Australian origin, where they were issued (or are believed to have been issued-) by Nabisco in 1971. Four of eight poses (the other four will be along in a minute) in various colours of a soft (Airfix type) polyethylene and almost certainly sculpted by the same chap who did the Working Dogs (Crazy Canines for Kellogg's here in the UK; November 1972).

In Australia they were given names known to be (from the left above);

Black Captain Cutlass

Long Thomas Thumbscrew

Pierre Pegleg (who I've dubbed Peg-legless Pete!)

Sir Swashbuckler

But - there's no evidence of them being given the same names in New Zealand, or of them even being a Nabisco promotion, both Sanitarium and Griffins being more likely as the issuer, but no packaging or advertising seems to have come to light . . . yet?

I think it's worth reminding ourselves here, that while people tend to block them together (much to the chagrin of the locals), Australia and New Zealand are much further apart than say Britain and France, or Britain and Holland (or the US with Mexico or Canada), and their markets and brands, their 'household names'; differ just as much as ours, as anyone's does with their near neighbours.

The rest of the motley-crew; again naming from the left, we have;

Hook

Mr. Jonathon Greed

Scarface (Dagger-legged Derek!)

The Right Dishonorable Roger Jolly Esq.

Is it me, or are the three to the right all cousins of Dick Dastardly!

Glenn has been trying to get a 'complete' complete-set, e.g. one of every pose in every colour, and while it's proved harder than he anticipated he's getting there, but the number of colours and the relative rarity of the figures down there has been exacerbated by the fact that they are quite hard to find in good condition.

You can see that Scarface/Dagger-legged Derek (my favourite!) has at least six points of vulnerability, and Roger Jolly is very hard to find with his rapier A) still attached at both ends and B) still intact. All eight have either thin, sticky-out bits or very narrow pinch-points, most have both!

And for that reason - again - I can't thank Glenn enough, as while we've benefitted from his duplicates; he has also made to send the Blog complete, undamaged and shiny-clean samples, which is incredibly kind of him.

He has in fact sent us six which his research leads him to believe are the [also] New Zealand colours, with two - probably - Aussie [only] one's he couldn't spare in NZ-origin pigments.

The Oz collectors list - in alphabetical order - thirteen colours;

Aqua

Blue*

Brown*

Green

Grey

Lemon

Lilac

Lime*

Orange*

Pink

Purple*

Red*

Yellow

Those with an asterisk are the [only] six colours Glenn believes were in the NZ Issue, while in the quarto above the outer pair are New Zealand  or believed to be NZ colours, the inner pair are the Aussie set's two, but clearly; there are more colours or shades than those listed. It should be noted that elsewhere they were issued in still other colours.

And I don't want you to think they are New Zealand exclusive colours, it's just that six of the colours out there are those commonly found in NZ, the Aussies seem to have got some extra colours, among which is an unlisted, second red, assuming one of the above blues is 'blue' and the other 'aqua'?

Scame in Italy produced a set of eight 'homage' copies as tourist 'mocherettes' (a word of my own invention, which I will explain, one day!) for museums and gift shops; these were also carried by Ferrero in their Kinder Eggs, in the 1990's - if memory serves?

Some sources state that 'some figures' are marked MADE IN AUSTRALIA or plain 'AUSTRALIA' but Glenn - who has seen more of these than most (I suspect) - has yet to find one. Other collectors 'down under' wonder if they were from a British designer/sculptor, and while they are credited to Rosenhain and Lipmann (R&L), there's a lot of stuff credited to them which I - for one - maintain big question-marks over.

Glenn has a note to the effect that a Consolidated Plastics in Auckland may have produced these for the NZ issue, he's not sure where the note comes from, but thinks there's some mileage in it?

He also talks of "...some scuttlebutt...", re. the moulds ending up in Mexico (sometime in the 1980's), however, given the number of premium moulds known to have ended up somewhere in South America, a cursory search reveals that indeed that seems to be the case so it's probably not scuttlebutt, but the reality?

Many, many thanks to Glenn for donating these to the blog, he calls them his 'Precious', yet he sent eight to this 'orrible little 'obbitsis! If I remember - I'll do a comparison with other caricature pirates in September; just to get them up here again!

NZNAM is for New Zealand National Army Museum Figures - On Guard . . .

. . . the magazine of the New Zealand Model Soldier Society Inc. Now sadly defunct it seems, I have tried to contact the named individuals through the NZ Military Historical Society, to no avail, however there may be hope, a call's going out to them in a forthcoming newsletter, courtesy of Jeff Atkinson at NZMHS? It's only to clear the use of the image, if anyone knows where they are?

Let's remind ourselves of the figures first, alongside the tan ones we looked at yesterday were sold these, in tropical OG's! The plastic is probably a dense polyethylene, but it's so dense it has the properties of a polypropylene.

Although in the late 1970's 'polyprop' wasn't being used in the toy industry like it is now, it was starting to creep-in through action figure components and Japanese space-toys, or larger infant-toys which needed a rigidity/robustness but without the sharpness or frangibility of polystyrene, so, with New Zealand positioned on the Pacific Rim and trading across it, either polymer could be the one used here.

Anyway I'm using both tags to cover my proverbial!

As you may have gathered in yesterdays post; from one of the prizes, these figures were made by Lincoln Industries Games (commonly; 'Lincoln International'), and having missed-out on (or passed-up the opportunity really) a boxed clip-together/readymade Thunderbird 2 by Lincoln a few years ago, I can say it's the same slippery-smooth plastic as that.

The set was covered in the NZMSS's magazine not long after the main launch of the promotion if yesterday's dates are any judge, and it's a fair appraisal from someone I'm guessing was more toward the BMSS's hollow-cast, flat or solid-lead collecting flock, than our polymer-loving branch of the hobby? 'Kit Review' text reads;

Dave Morris

"OPERATION HERITAGE"

     By now most of us would have seen the soldiers put out

to raise money for the Army Museum. The museum is to be

built at Waiouru; and in fact the foundation stone has al-

ready been laid.

     The retail outlet is the Woolworths chain of stores, &

Lincon Industries manufactured the models.

     They are sold conjointly with a competition, the entry

form being inside the plastic bag pack. The price of $2

a pack (6 soldiers) is not very good value for money. How-

ever nobody is filling his pockets as the proceeds are go-

ing to the museum.

THE MODELS

     There are six Soldiers in each pack, on one sprue ['runner' - ed.], each

depicting an era of military history.

1.     The Militia.

2.     Boer War.

3.     W.W.1

4.     W.W.2 (Desert)

5.     Post W.W. 2 Malaysia

6.     Today— Ceremonial. (SD's with Lemon Squeezer)

The soldiers come in two colours; Drab green and khaki

     As model solders the effort is very disappointing.

There are several errors which should not have happened.

1.     The height of soldiers are only 50mm.

2.     The soldier in Service Dress has breast pock-

        ets somewhere down around his lower ribcage.

3.     The bayonet on the WW2 soldier is depicted as

        a No 1.  Although not completely incorrect

        He should be better displayed with a No 4 bay-

        onet. Right alongside on the WW1 soldier is

        a No 1 bayonet.

 4.    The numbering on the accompanying leaflet of

        soldier identification has two numbers back to

        front; No 5 and 6. [On the artwork - ed.]

     However to look on the bright side, the soldiers have

A "now" vogue look of the original toy soldiers:     Thin,

lean, faceless and flat without dimension.     The packs on

their backs are merely a raised line.

     And flash; Surprisingly there was none.     There was also

no flaws in the manufacturing.

I take slight issue with the Malaysia reference as the SLR didn't enter service until after the Malayan Emergency was coming to an end (1960), and I think it's really Vietnam that's being referenced - if it's a campaign? Although the weapon could be an M16, or the reference could be for Borneo ('66). And - as we saw yesterday - the accompanying-flyer gave that particular figure a much wider spread than Malaysia, geographically, and 30-years to cover in one sculpt!

The fluidity with the weapons' ID (it's more SLR than M16) is mirrored in the bayonets, which are both modelled as mere sticks, but I know what he's getting at, one should be longer - if they WERE hollow-casts . . . it would matter - you can't do it with paint if it's not there! Neither has any connection with the musket at the bottom of the page which is just editorial decoration I think.

As with the Tan ones, Glenn kindly sent us both a loose set and a set still on the runner, you can see it's the same order and layout as the previously seen one, which you might think is obvious, but tomorrow we'll find it isn't!

Let's do the grizzled-old colonial settler with a very Victorian beard to death shall we (actually - it looks like a bee-beard!); on the left a close-up of the militiaman from the Maori wars, front and back and in all three colours; on the right a comparison with the garrison troop from Sanitarium's premium-regiment!

And a reminder Glenn can supply limited numbers of sets still on the runner and most figures in most colours loose - email me (maverickatlarge[at]hotmail[dot]com), for the passing of your details.

NZ is for New Zealanders

You should have had this on Friday afternoon but it was postponed due to another unpleasantness, and while I said I'd do it for the next day I couldn't be arsed to bimble up the library on Saturday, so today's the day.

Also I've noticed he leaves his attacks on me at the top of the page for a day or two, so giving him a bit of his own dumb-juice medicine and ensuring the maximum number of visitors will have found it over the weekend, won't have hurt!

I was alerted to these by another blog, no need to name it, it gets enough self-publicity from its monkey-lizard's back-link posting about the place, and was itself alerted to Sanitarium by my Dancing Dolls page, prior to the publishing of which, the firm was 'unknown, probably Australian figures' to the Euro-US collecting community!

As a result it's only a box-ticker which will enable me to simplify the links on the A-Z page for Sanitarium by getting these in the tag list and deleting a now-spurious link over there.

A full set consists of two white settlers (farmstead couple), a white dignitary in top hat (carving-up someone else's land in the name of the Great White Queen Vicky), four Maori and a native levy type soldier for an eight-count.

They're big boys! "If only we could get them to stop fighting us for their land and learn to play rugby", said somebody, somewhere, probably!

As with the posts the other day I've measured them both from foot sole to eye-line and from under-base to top of headdress. Semi-flat (demi-ronde), softish/soapy polyethylene.

Some of them have a fade-out of the colouring dye, which remains in the crevices like the old Airfix HO Guardsmen and they all have two little dinks on the upper side of the base, which may point to some production technique or process which remains a mystery to me.

Cereal Premiums. Sanitarium. New Zealanders. Box ticked.

C is for Clip Together

No more than an overview with these today, it was a bit of serendipity and a reader contribution which led to this post and I have many more in storage so we will look at them properly by company/type another day (or: other days!), for now, let's just get an idea of the wide range of mini (or micro) model-kits which were available as - mostly breakfast cereal - premiums, many - but not all - supplied by R&L (Rosenhain & Lipmann) of Australia, primarily (in the UK) to Kellogg's Foods.

Kellogg's liner which we've seen here on the Blog before and racing cars which were also issued by Sanitarium in the antipodes, as well as someone on the continent (Portuguese food company?), so they often turn-up, but with all the little pieces (especially the wheel hubs); are rarely whole. I do have another bunch in storage including orange, red and white examples so we will look at them again one day. The driver moulding is the same for every car, so you can build him half-and-half - two colours, he looks good in black and orange!

Various ages and generations of bits for the Montaplex Bi-plane, I picked these up as a single lot in a larger bag of mixed bits; someone was obviously building himself a 'circus'! Between the bits I can still get one airborne!

These are all soft ethylene plastic with the WWII fighters (and sub-scale Heinkel? Mostly bits) having been given-away in the UK with boys comics (Fury, Valiant and Warlord), as part of the hype surrounding the release of the movie Battle of Britain - I believe? Sellotaped to the cover as an unmade kit on the chunky frame...for years I wondered (not being a 'plane guy') if they were Atlantic, the frames are chunky enough!

The Concord (I think?) is one of three (or four) in a set with The Tupolev and Boing efforts, possibly from Quaker Foods or Weetabix?. I say "I think" as there were several sets with Concord in and I'm not sure which is which!

I bought the bagged ones at a car boot sale quite a few years ago, the chap had loads of them in a fruit basket, so I assumed they were a new issue or a re-issue of older moulds which he'd picked-up as a job lot or as clearance, so bought one of each, but I think they may be the 1970's originals, now, which is annoying as I would have grabbed them all, he only wanted pennies... The broken-up bits have come in with mixed lots over the years and I think between the two shots are aircraft from two different sets?

While the ME109 is probably a modern 1:144 kit, but he's in with the medium-smallies in the unknown bag!

Jet Petrol (gasoline) stations issued this lovely set of 10 (?) cars for quite a while, so they are not too uncommon, and while I'm missing one or two, I'm hoping I might have them in storage, but if not they will turn up one day!

One made-up and broken into its constituent parts, a pair with a colour variation and two soft-plastic (polyethylene) cars from Europe - Spain or Portugal I think...Tito? I do have some Ford and Vauxhall rally cars in this style marked Tito, but these two are unmarked.

The  next four images (below) are all courtesy of Andrew Boyce who sent them to me ages ago (before Christmas?) and I said I'd be publishing "soon", "in a day or two hopefully", "probably tomorrow" then in the February splurge...only for time, Nathaniel and Voda'fail to intervene in their timeless fashion! Can time be timeless? There's an existential debate for a cold winter's evening!



A lovely shot with samples of various sets Kellogg's issued, along with both Gerry Anderson sets complete. I also remember a set of clip-together Tony the Tigers', with another set of train kits coming out of Italy.

Of interest to me in this shot is the set of blue wheels on the red estate car (station-wagon) as the ones I have all came with black wheels and the helicopter which I was unaware of.

This shows the kid's comic ad. for the Captain Scarlet vehicles shown in Andrew's image above, I think I have the Patrol Car somewhere, and shot the SPV before Christmas here on the blog, it's a lovely little model, almost 1:300th scale, with all the little wheels (10 of them in two sizes!) separate.

I suspect these were from a different source than the others, they are much chunkier with only a few (or no - TB4) parts, and lack the finesse of the R&L stuff. It was including some of these in the novelty posts before Christmas which triggered Andrew's contribution, which in turn led me to gather up a few bits and bobs to photograph for this post.

Sugar Stars and Coco Crispies gave-up this set of six vehicles which we will return to one day as I have a tub of whole and partial ones somewhere! Like a lot of these cereal premiums, they were issued elsewhere by other brands or products, sometimes in different combinations, so some seem commoner over here than others, the train and 'Rocket' seem easier to obtain than the car, while I think I've seen the bus (still on the frame) in a small box as an Italian pocket-money toy. 

 Finally; an old scan intended for an article on wagons in Plastic Warrior magazine's little brother 1"W which never happened! A rather damaged London taxi from the 100 Years of Transport above (1834 Hansom Cab) it came with a horse and I think a better version in blue was shown on the Cabinet of Curious Things posts, but I haven't got the images here (editing away from the internet) and the tag list may not help!

I don't often deal with the filthy subject of money, but seeing some of the buy-it-now (BIN) prices of things like this, it's worth considering this: even though you are always competing with other collecting field's aficionados; train buffs, space fans, 'plane-spotters, more general premium collectors, kit guys, TV & Movie fans...so prices are often high even for common examples, you should always remember they made millions of them and you should set a limit and stick to it, I aim at no more than a pound a piece.

Let's do some hypothetical maths; Say two [popular] cereal brands (from the same manufacturer) run a joint-promotion with comic and early-evening TV adds, of a random-packed set of 4 models for 4 months in 1975, selling (even as early as the 1950/60's) maybe 100,000 packs a week to a population of approximately 12,000,000 baby-boom households (now closer to 16 million, but with less school-age kids per household).

100,000 packs x 16 weeks x 2 brands / 4 models = potentially 800,000 individual units of your searched-for 'rarity' were once out there! It's 'ball park' but it's not fancifully way-out there.

'Family Sized' packs may have two models (or five against three, three against two) which might push our fictional total to a million-odd, better known or more popular brands like Cornflakes might issue 500,000 packs a week? Three months (or two years) later the models are run again, or in another brand, or with another foodstuff, or in another country, or the model you're after is put in another set... Tom Smith get the mouldings (Quaker Gladiators) for 25,000 boxes of budget Christmas crackers, in four designs - six years running, or in more 'promotional' boxes (Thunderbirds figures)... a HK company or two copies them (jig toys)...finally some warehouse lets the remnants go by the bagful (Coca-Cola animals) as clearance or pocket-money toys to another country.

There's so much more to these, and as a specific collection, they can take-up surprisingly little room, but take a lifetime to track down as colour variations, mint in pack examples etc...but please - keep it in perspective, a 5-quid or $10 BIN is not worth the pain, when mixed lots might be had for 99p plus postage.

And many thanks to Andrew for the additional images.

Next day...Brian Berke sent this image of a "rubbery" plastic copy from Hong Kong of one of the R&L toys [2023 - probably Rubenstein rack-toys], still on the frame, he remembers the Rocket loco and has a Hansom Cab in the same neutral colour of soft polymer...remembering also they came from a 99-cent store in NY; approximately 1986. And that's a New York pound for scale!

News, Views Etc...New Page

I have posted a new page:

Dancing Dolls

It has taken 18 months to research and collate (on and off) and four or five weeks to unload, finish and edit, so I hope you enjoy it...understanding - of course - that most toy soldier fans couldn't give a feckin' heel for small plastic 'dolls'!

I will add the four companies histories to the A-Z pages tomorrow and add the links here and to the DD page when I've done so.



Two day later....Needless to say I didn't get that done yesterday and Vodafone (the Prince of Internet Darkness) have decided I'm library bound again! I have got a Van Brode draft up though, and a Clinton Mfg. cross-ref., so it's slowly hapening!

Commonwealth on the A-Z
Sanitarium on the A-Z
Van Brode on the A-Z

All done!