A is for Ancient, African & Agricultural Animals

I know, but I started with the alliterative titles, and I'm determined to get to the end of the plunder-posts with the same trope, so some are going to be a bit weak! Also, I've been a bit blearh, for the fortnight since the show, the heat, work, and a persistent cold, have left me a bit deflated, but I've sort of kept posting . . . if not regularly, becasue I'm rather just going through the motions! Anyway, I've shot the animals, the bits & bobs, and the civilian stuff, so they will be next, with ancient, medieval and 'combat' (the 'proper' toy soldiers!) still to face the camera!

 

Because I included several things from the Friday or Sunday afternoon in the total plunder-pile of 'PW Weekend', the fact that I managed to get to the Car Boot Sale at Bordon, on the Sunday morning, seemed to be a good reason to include my only purchase - I rejected some Corgi military on one stall, and similar Dinky's on another.

 

Somewhere in storage is the old childhood family set, also Merit, but in an older, litho or screen-printed box, and I bought this intending to replace a few missing and broken pieces, in that much-loved and over-played set, only to find it's got an orange beetle, instead of a red one, so I may still need a third, but could end up with enough good parts for five players!

 

Not that you have to build them all one colour, half the fun was making a multicoloured one! Called Scarabee in France, Escarabajo (scarabs!) in Spain, and Cootie in the US (WWI troops slang for body-lice! And which were love-bites over here, when I was a kid?), I'd be quite surprised if a UK collector didn't know they were called Beetle Game, indeed, one might think he was just a dealer all along, not really paying attention!

 

I got this from MM-Smith, who didn't have any new figures in his own range this year, due to the kind of personal shit, we're all suffering, however he did stall-out, and had these, they're quite modern, but he said he remembered having the exact same animals as a kid, which is both believable and likely.

 

Sometimes a maker can be left with a ton of stuff from a cancelled contract, or just a stack of stillages in a warehouse somewhere, filled with over-production, and where it can hang around for years, before another buyer, or selling/marketing opportunity arises, or someone remembers it's ". . . at the back there somewhere", and digs them out, so it's entirely possible, this is old stock in a new CE-rated card.

 

And I've had both the uncommon Hippo sculpt, and the turned-head 'Black Panther' for years, they're having come in with vintage lots, so it's nice to find they go together, and what goes with them!

 

Similar, but much older fayre from Jecsan, as their unpainted/pocket-money JC line, a mix of caveman-like native warriors, and wild animals, a bit of a packaging box-ticker, but equally I don't have any of them in the stash, or I didn't, before the show! Both bags contain two animals, three figures and a cactus!

 

This is the CollectA Quetzalcoatlus, a huge flying dinosaur, which was the idea behind the movie Q: The Winged Serpent, albeit, an inaccurate representation of an Aztec mythological creature! I'm not a great fan of horror movies, but a giant pterosaur picking bikini-babes of the roofs of New York was quite amusing!

 

Beautifully made and decorated, matching the best Schleich or Papo can offer, they tend to be a lot cheaper, but you have to find them online as brick & mortar retail stockists seem thin on the ground. The baby-sauropod snack, in scale, is slightly larger than a human! While the beak is slightly more curved than some reconstructions?

 

Mixed, mostly smaller ones, including a vinyl turkey, Matchbox horse and pearlescent cracker elephant, but that semi-flat red plastic moulding, back left . . . 

 

. . . defies description! It appears to be a lion, eating either a monkey or a human? It's quite damaged, with the legs/lower torso of the 'meal' missing, along with the Lion's other leg, and the tip of its tail, with the result that we don't even know if it had a base, or was a baseless 'charm' of some kind.

 

Does it get any more esoteric? What else was in the set? How bloodthirsty was the rest of the set? Cracker or gumball? Literally, the most interesting thing to come out of the show this year!

 

A couple of funnies, on the right, an Airfix ancient horse bing made to look like an unpainted whitemetal casting, for WTF? reasons! On the left a Merit dog, Hong Kong copy of Merit pony and a piece of Timpo hedge are brought together to make a rustic vignette.

 

In the past I would have stripped these down, but now, I'll probably hang on to them for a while, indecised (is that a word? Undecided-) as to what to do with them, then pass them on to the next generation of collectors in a mixed lot, similar to those they came in!

 

Sold to me as Starlux (!), the Corgi circus elephant, from the Jean Richard 'Pinder' playset (Gift Set No. 48). I think it's been repainted by someone, and is a hollow polystyrene moulding, glued together from about four or five parts.

 

A couple of Erzgebirge, the cow being pretty bog-standard, but the horse slightly above average, with the extra shaping of the legs. Along with a full-on piece of ivory, a tusk, probably from bookends, or similar decorative pieces. Also, two legs; one plastic, one metal; which don't appear to belong to any of the other animals in the plunder pile, so will be heading to a spares tub!

 

Three metal figures, even a plastics show will turn-up the odd piece of metal!, the goat might be a game piece? The mini-dino' is interesting, and a thing a weird shop in Wantage, where I got a wizard years ago, might have had too (in which case I may have one already?), but the Irish Wolfhound may be a jackpot find?

 

It's die-cast aluminium, as a flat. And we've seen such things before here at Small Scale World, but before I place the link, this casting (metal IS cast) has Wolfshond (with an 'o') on the base, now, it's not clear, but I think the Germans would say Wolfshund (with a 'u'). So, if this producer of aluminium flats is actually Dutch, that would help make perfect sense of this outstanding question mark;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/09/r-is-for-return-to-nazi-flats.html

 

The Dutch got a bloody hard time from the Nazi's, and it would make perfect sense for them to produce a satirical, caricature set, soon after the end of the war, and with sources of aluminium like crashed allied and destroyed German aircraft, pontoons, landing craft and similar, all over the place, aluminium might have been a good choice to try starting up a novelty/toy company?

 

And while the base on the dog, is slightly different, and has the title mark missing from the smaller farm and wild animals sets, and the figures, the parallels outnumber the differences? Does any Dutch collector/historian know anything about a flat/semi-flat manufacturer in aluminium? It could equally be Luxembourgish, and they got a hard-time too?

 

And, in fact, all three pieces are die-cast, with the T-Rex and goat both being in some Mazak/Zamac alloy, which is why I suspect a board-game playing piece for the goat?

 

Domestics, the interesting ones here being the unmarked, non-spiggoted version of the Blue Box Japanese officer's horse, here possibly from one of the Red Box factories, or one of the Singapore factories, but could be a knock-off by a rival.

 

The other interesting item is the semi-flat horse, in the style of those Mokarex/Figurines Hostoriques we saw again the other day, marked "CAROLINGIEN" on the facing side above, and "760" on the other side, I'm guessing a French premium, possibly missing a rider in the style of the Kilty/Bonnie Built (et al) US officer, but an ancient Carolingian?

 

Modern vinyls! Schleich Baby Girrafe.

 

Britains polar bear in need of a clean, and a crocodile Adrian gave me, as the show was packing up, looks Hong Kong, but is unmarked and could be an Argentine copy of something Spanish, they had some lovely animated wildlife!?

 

Another Airfix beagle/foxhound, and a rat from one of the Games Workshop/MB Games crossover board games of the 1980's? Probably Hero Quest?

 

Finishing with a Kinder dragon or dragon baby, and four dinosaurs without marks or with generic marks which will need to be sorted into the vast pile of such stuff, against more definitive posts another day, the carnivore is reasonably realistic, and the rather pale sauropod might get matched to his set, by those distinctive eyes!
 

So, that was the animals, thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again.

F is for Feelin' Feline!

An obvious title, I'm surprised I haven't used before now! We actually had a roundup of cat stuff not that long ago, and while half the stuff in this post is recent, some of it was found elsewhere in the unused archive!

A largish resin lump I picked-up at a charity shop back in '22, made by Sheratt & Simpson, I guess it's from one of those overpriced series of such stuff in jeweller's windows? But it's a reasonable sculpt, and when £20-something becomes 50p or similar, I ponce . . . like a cat!

Boysy-boy eyeing it with a modicum of suspicion! I still miss him every day, his weight on the end of the bed, his little complaints when he thought he ought to have a treat! But I miss both his Mum's too, and that's the burden of getting to this age, dealing with more and more death, in one's life.

Large Japanese blow-mould, marked on the other side with a three-leaved clover mark, and Japan in ink, and moulded on the body.

This is a modern set from Shing Hing, the people who brought a four-nation 'army man' tub to Smyths a few years ago. There's a lack of imagination in the decoration, but otherwise they are reasonable sculpts for a rack-toy type thing.

Three from Schliech, we looked at five back in October and I think two are duplicates, but the Egyptian-looking one is a definite paint variant, and the long-haired Persian is a new addition.

They are no better as cat's, than they were as dog's, who buys this shit?

Shelfied in Home Bargains.

Oh . . . I do! I actually grabbed these at Waterloo yesterday, a series of mini-adventures I could have done without - Travellers closing Charing Cross, football hooligans, and cancelled trains - led to my browsing the 'boutiques' on the new mezzanine, and I thought these were particularly stupid! The cord already hangs over the side of the vessel, how is a cat's tail going to make any difference, or improve things, one iota?

I found they preferred to sniff the fumes of sloe gin!

What? It's Christmas! 

S is for Seen elswhere - Siberian Tigers

Well, some of them were, which was useful as Taos managed to ID one for me! Not an overview, there are dozens and dozens when you know what to look for, not all mine, a few more have come in, and some were still / are still in storage, and no real narrative of any consequence making itself obvious, so enjoy the eye candy!

 

It's huge!

 

Nayab from both sides.

 

About 1:10th scale? Too big for Action man?

 

Chasing tails!

 

Needs a meal too!

 

Unknown recent addition?

A bit bigger than the Schleich cub. 

D is for Discounted Dino's!

A quickie now, a bag of dinosaurs I got from a charity shop a few months ago - the trouble with having had two months away from the blog this year, is that everything is 'a few months ago'! But it was a better than usual bag, with three Schliech and several other nice examples.

 

The three Schleich's first; a stunning Brachiosaurus, a Triceratops and a kerthunkersaur called Salchania, all dated 2002 or '02, and among Schliech's earlier models, certainly a cut-above your average Hong Kong models of the time, but they have helped raise the bar, with some modern dinosaurs from China, just as good as the Schleich/Papo world!

 

A chunky-monkey from China, Dimetrodon, usually my favourite, but I'm not keen on the frayed, goldfish fin edges to his, or her sail! Most modellers, over many years, have given them stretched skin, like bats wings or the web between a human thumb-forefinger?

 

The Jaru and others (?) reissue of an old Holly sculpt on the left, and an actual Holly Pterosaur on the right.

 

"Slava Ukraine!", says . . . err . . . Bi-ceretops! A better quality, modern Chinese dinosaur from Happy Kin Toys, depicting a Nedoceratops, which had been called Diceratops until someone realised there were also wasps with the same name!

 

Based on a single skull found in Wyoming . . . it may not exist!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedoceratops

 

Compared to the Schleich.

 "Why habben'd you god a lumb on your dose?"

 

More traditional fayre, from China, and above average, but more in tune with older Hong Kong stuff, there has been an attempt at overwashing/overspraying a bit of realism! Fiver the bag, gives the ten a 50p retail cost, per animal, which is how I like to get these larger models!

W is for Wrangling Cats

Blimey, five out of the last six posts had a space theme, and the other was a political rant! If I'm not careful, I'll have to change the Blog's name to Spacebase One or something! So to save myself from that fate, here's a complete change of direction with a roundup of recent moggie-related purchases, and other such feline fun!

 

A white button jumping Tiger; I can't remember if it came from a charity shop or something more commercial, but seem to recall it was the only one of its kind in a basket with duplicates of a couple of other animals, so probably commercial a purchase, and I don't seem to have noted the brand, picked-up last August ('24).

 

Smyths had a whole bunch of the Schleich cats, the same month, so I grabbed one of each to tick that box firmly into the 'got' camp, possibly the best attempts at ginger-tabbies you'll find, and no horrid bald, wrinkled or skinny Human-ego breeds.

 

Last February I picked this up in Hobbycraft, thinking I might do something with it one day, I have some very small mosaic tiles, silver-backed, coloured glass, left over from some Art School project back in the early 1980's, which might look fun, if a bit kitsch, glued to this Papier Mâché foundation?

 

Left on the peg; but shot in TKMaxx back in March, you have to be some kind of hardcore cat-obsessive to buy some of this stuff, but it's fun, and figural, so I'll always get the camera out, when I see such things! Made by Joie, Kikkerland and unknown.

 

Back to Schleich, and this was on clearance somewhere, probably the Redfields garden-centre in Church Crookham? Schleich do these odd coloured animal finishes from time to time, to celebrate or commemorate things, either Schleich-related (90th year anniversary in this case) or something in the wider-world, and I think I shot a similar one at a London Toy Fair, which may not be on the Blog yet? They also do all-gold versions sometimes.

 

Definitely from Redfields, the Papo ginger-tabby, is not finished as well as the Schleich's, but is still a good effort at a difficult fur-type, and a nice sculpt, with plenty of character!

 

Toe Beans!