V is for Very Vast Vac-formed Village!

I had an eMail the other week from Graham Smith who'd found the Selcol page on the A-Z Blogs asking me what I knew about these (below); I had to point out that I knew no more than was on that page, which was . . . nothing! By the time you read this though, these will have been added!

Selcol, large scale village

Graham writes;

"I am interested in model villages and have seen your "Small Scale World" website. I have some SELCOL buildings made from white plastic which have to be painted and they lose the paint very easily, as you can see from the attached photos. I wondered if you have seen any others (I have a Market Hall which seems to be a different scale) and also if these buildings were based on those in or near Braintree near their factory which you mentioned."

Now, having established I know nothing about the buildings as Selcol per se, it has to be pointed out I am no expert on Braintree or its environs either - I had a school-friend who lived in Brentwood!

Given that we will sort most of it out to some extent in the next few minutes; can anyone from the Braintree area or with knowledge of these buildings (or indeed; Selcol's wider production) help; particularly with that last question?

I asked around at the Sandown Park show with no luck but to draw an interesting selection of blank faces and have asked a couple of other experts to no avail, yet, as with all these things, dozens of people must have been involved in the design, production and marketing of the buildings, and - at least - hundreds involved in the purchase and use thereof, back in the day?

A close-up of one of the little (not that little!) thatched-cottages; they seem to be blow moulded, or rotary-moulded (the larger hole?) polyethylene, hence the failure of paint to adhere, and to have been filled with expanded polystyrene-foam, for rigidity.

The subsequent/resulting plug is clearly marked Selcol, so the one fact which is known is that they are Selcol! Now, there's a possibility that they were originally beach-toys, sold unpainted to place round your sand-castle, but I think that's clutching at straws, and that they were designed for garden railways, being scaled somewhere between O-gauge (building dimensions) and G (figures in the next shot).

A couple of the people I've spoken to on the subject have drawn the obvious parallel with the Spot-On village from Tri-Ang/Mettoy, but that was 1:42/48'ish, against the 1:35/32'ish of these, and I can imagine the PoplarPlastics bus drawing up to this rotunda/market cross/corn exchange to pick-up the [not so] little people and take them into the nearby city!

You can see - from the damaged sections - the polystyrene foam inside, and Graham's railway viaduct in the background! He runs O gauge trains including Triang, Big Big, and Timpo rolling stock and has been doing so for 46 years!

Any information on these, such as when they were advertised, any other buildings in the range or whether they represent real subjects - from Braintree or anywhere else; would be much appreciated by Mr. Smith - and other Garden Rail, or Model Village fans - I'm sure.

As an aside, does anyone know if John Ruddle's buildings have been featured in any works other than the one shot shown in an old modelling magazine? Graham; being a fan of such things, is keen to see them, and having been lucky enough to 'have the tour' myself, I know they are worth a look - being taken from Victorian Edinburgh to Kabul, via Khartoum and back via Calcutta, in a walk round a modest suburban lawn is a real treat!

News, Views Etc . . . Not Really Resting!

I've added some listings and company details to the Selcol-Selmer page and edited it a bit . . . and yesterday found this useful stash of stuff on downloadable/savable .pdf files;

Canadian Museum of History - toy catalogues.

Now I'm off to enjoy the last of today's sun in the garden . . . Ray! Gardening . . . not-so-ray! Well, I love gardening, but it's bramble-pulling this 'arvo! And nettles!

C is for Coincidences, coincidences!

It's funny how things sometimes come together; if with divine purpose it's synergy, if without: coincidence, I think this is the later, as it falls at the last, but it's worth recounting anyway . . . the blurb has to come from somewhere.

Back in December the 169th issue of Plastic Warrior's magazine dropped through the door with - among many other things - a British issued (Selcol) version of a Lido medieval set; King's Knights. So far so good, last weekend I went to Sandown and saw these, they were quite reasonable and the seller told me these was another mounted hidden in the pile - twice before I took it!

I thought; "ohh, they must be those ones in the last PW, I'll have them to go with my Lido (and Selcol!) unpainted sample". Meaning to Blog them after I'd looked-up December's PW; I shoved them in a folder and left them on the desktop last-night (Wednesday).

Of course; this morning PW 170 fell onto the mat (review; next week - hopefully), with a letter from someone referring back to them and I read it with interest to see if they mentioned what I thought I'd 'discovered', but they hadn't (phew!), only for me to look up the older issue this evening (Thursday) and find that the Selcol's are either unpainted as per the Lido, or all-over painted and I hadn't discovered more than that there are HK copies, which I already knew!

What I thought I'd discovered was that the British ones were from Hong Kong, but I hadn't bought the British ones (I thought I was buying), I'd bought some more HK piracies! So I turned to Kent Sprecher's ToySoldier HQ where there is a little more clarity with the painted ones shown as copies (he's added a lot more to the page in the last couple of years), however, while my horses are clearly marked 'Made in Hong Kong' . . .

. . . the foot figures seem to be in every other way, the same as Lido's, just with paint. The foot figures are soft polyethylene, the horses - hard polystyrene.

Kent's site gives a nice time-line of the company's many incarnations and the moulds seem to have gone every-which-way and I wonder if the knight's mould might have ended-up in HK? It would be easy to add the 'made in...' stamping to the mould-tool, while other Hong Kong clones exist (see pink chap below), but smaller and/or marked - as tended to be the case, or 'as you'd expect'!

Anyway, I then went into the attic just now, to get the Lido knights tub, only to find it's not in either of the medieval boxes because - as I remembered after the fact - I'd give them their own tub (Really Useful 3-litre CD box, brilliant for 4x5½ bags) with each pose (US (or UK) and HK) in a separate bag together, as they are a favourite of mine, the toy-like quality appeals to me and I buy them whenever I see them - I'd just forgotten the painted ones!

So, here's a few, all Hong Kong, although all bar the pink one seem to be as Lido/Selcol, I thought I'd posted them here before but I don't seem to have, so we will return to them when I get the tub out of storage. In the meantime there's PW 169 and 170 (and earlier issues for sure) and Kent's page to help!

D is for Dunderheads (Sterwin Watch)

Well, it's like shooting fish in a barrel isn't it? They wanted to open a new front on the day-to-day ID'ing of figures, spent last week not knowing their own space figures or failing to comprehend the term Amerindian and then this priceless piece of fuckwittery from TJF turned-up;

It's Selcol you dimwitted dunderhead, you think to correct me on a foreign figure I said I didn't know, yet appear incapable of copying a name from the magazine - presumably - open in front of you! Still - it's nice to see I'm not the only one driving your output in 2017, you have no original ideas in you, do you; no imagination?

I'm so surprised he thought it was the non-existent 'Secol', in fact I'm so surprised . . . went to floor . . . and x else . . . Yadayada!

After Mr. Churchill - the dog!

Sacul - Oooh yes! Oooh yes! (British, Mr Lucas)

Salco - Oooh yes! Oooh yes! (British, Salco-Toytown)

Secal - Oooh-nononononononoo! (See Sacul or Segal?)

Secol - Oooh-nononononononoo! (Invented by Paul 'The Jabbering Fuck' Staddinger)

Secor - Oooh yes! Oooh yes! (US, Jerome Secor Manufacturing)

Selco - Oooh yes! Oooh yes! (Portuguese, Leeway Selco)

Selcol - Oooh yes! Oooh yes! (British, Selmer-Selcol (MPI), Selcol Products Ltd)

Segal - Oooh yes! Oooh yes! (British, Phillip Segal)

Segom . . . (that's enough sec's and sell's! Ed.)

Of course - it's only a typo (albeit repeated!) but if he's going to pick me up on minor points I'm going to remind everyone he gets it wrong several time s a week! Pot and kettle, goose and gander . . .

From the 'here's how it works' Department.

First the cock-wakin' monkey-lizard is sent to Vichy France to demand answers;

Who made it !??? Not even a 'please'; now he may be intending to be polite, but because he clearly gets an illiterate 5-year old to do all his typing it's hard to tell!

A couple of hours Googling later (allowing for the differences between British and European Summer Time and Eastern Standard Time) and he's waxing lyrical, well maybe not 'lyrical' chapter-&-verse as if he's the 'Walking encyclopedia of toy solders' one of his more sycophantic supporters put it a while ago.

No he isn't; as I've said before and will say again, he makes it up as he goes along when he's not stealing other peoples efforts without credit, he didn't even thank the chap who told him where to look - for reasonably common 1970/80's Polish figures?

I'm so surprised he thought it was French, in fact I'm so surprised . . . went to floor . . . and x else, etc...etc...! Too bloody funny; these Muppets are too bloody funny.

". . . more Central and or South American . . ." try 'Amerindian'! You're both Too Funny!