L is for London Toy Soldier Show - 2 of 2

I must confess I didn't stay long at the show, and wasn't carrying much cash, but I bought a few bits off everyone I knew, and ended-up with enough for two posts of mostly interesting stuff!

 

I can't veer into 'new painted metal', but one should support one's mates in their endeavours, so I try to buy the odd piece off Matt from White Tower, and this lovely Mongol/Hunnish horse-archer came home with me, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper by Matt!

 

Three Reliable interwar 'doughboy' infantry from Canada, these used to be considered copies, but I think everyone now accepts they were a licensing deal, or cross-boarder mould-swap, as there's nothing in them bar the different marked bases.

 

Marx on the left, in the box, I believe he's called Bill Mason! Lido in the middle, the rider's lost most of his lasso, so I think the kindest thing to do, will be to pare-away the remnants, so he can concentrate on fighting the bucking bronco! An early kit figure, on the right, is the third American here!

 

Three from Eastern Europe, with two of the Drevopodnik figures from the former Czechoslovakia; a railway platform guard and a medic, while I think the third is what we call a fake, a deliberate attempt to deceive - I stand to be corrected, and he's marked Elastolin Germany.

 

But the material is all wrong, and I think this is an East German fake of something which, by then, was the other side of the wire? It looks to be a pumice type composition, not the correct wood-chip and linseed? If I'd been doing it, I would have stained the base with coffee before I painted the green on!

 

 

Obviously removed from a very big, probably mostly tin-plate jeep, this guy is a 'dolly' rubber, probably PVC, with a mostly-polystyrene gun, which had a glowing-tip at some point I suspect, there's the remains of wiring up the barrel (so also battery operated/supplied)?

 

And there's what appears to be the remains of a mechanism for traversing, probably as the jeep went along? The figure's roughly in the four-inch bracket, and his toes are pined-trough the plinth and the pins have then been heat-sealed.

A Starlux diver, bought to compare with the smaller ones, the Dinky one and the unpainted (Solido?) ones, he's the full 54mm, while I don't know the maker of the colonial soldier, but he's another French figure I think?

A Charbens press-ganger, LB (for Lik Be of course) Indian girl and one of Cherilea's Elizabethan types, an eclectic trio, but all nice enough samples, clean and with good paint!

 

Another trio of the Vilco copies of old Cofalu aluminium figures, except these are in a rather nice marbled red, hard polystyrene, so may be by someone else, I thought maybe Toumoulage, but without any evidence! I have a feeling, though, that I did get an ID for them in silver & bronze hard plastic at some point?

 

Whatever the truth, I have a growing sample of these now, in hard and soft plastic, painted and bare, and think they are among my favourite French figures, although only the four poses (the standing firer is missing here), so far?

 

A couple of Spanish bullfighters to finish, Reamsa I think, the one on the left is very brittle, and has been repaired and repainted at least twice, and is to be considered only a pose-sample, until a better one appears, and there may already be one in the stash?

L is for London Toy Soldier Show - 1 of 2

So, as I wasn't helping anyone this time, I had the luxury of a lie-in, and a more gentle mosey up on the train, not knowing there was a winter fixture at Sandown Park, meaning the train was well-equipped with early-drinking rowdies, until Esher, when more people seemed to get off the train, than it could have possibly held!

 

Fortunately, a few hours later, we raced back through Esher at some speed, the mostly now skint punters, a mere blur either side of the train, their 'How am I going to pay for Christmas now?' faces illuminated a pallid-yellow by the carriage's own lighting.

 

I didn't stay long at the show, missed Paul, although I saw him a couple of isles over at one point, but managed to catch-up with everyone else, and purchase a bag of bits! I then forgot to go to the Pub, and managed to get involved in a mini-adventure, or 'experience', back in the city centre, but, toys first;

 

Two Cherilea spacemen, I have a decent sample of these now, especially with the three based ones I added the other day, but I know that when I Blogged them (not that long ago) it was a cobbling together of archive, show-shots and my own samples, to get the story clear, so my own sample was small and probably still has gaps, so I tend to grab them when I see them, and these earlier, pod-feet ones are rather nice.

 

Between them is an early Kinder toy, in which the capsule itself is used, with pre-formed slots to receive the bits inside, and a sticker-sheet to produce a small R2D2 type 'astromech' droid / robot, with articulated arms.

 

More of the native-dress figures, in semi-flat polystyrene, the weight of evidence veers toward India, but a commenter at the time of last seeing thought Sri Lanka, so still technically a question mark, and we have several new paint schemes, and a new pose, so worth keeping-on buying them, when I see them.

 

Looked at here - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/i-is-for-asian-rack-toys.html

 

There's evidence on a couple of them, of having been glued to cards, maybe in window-boxes? 

 

More Kinder toys, the barbarian needs a weapon, the Indian needs some hair (both in the spares bags, I think) and a mini, cement-truck.

 

A third Kellogg's Frosties Campbell land-speed racer (on the right), to join the pair I found in February, along with a duplicate, which may be a useful swap for the missing fourth vehicle, in the course of time?

 

Seeing red! Another of the Pomeroy-designed game-playing pieces, a rather nice sub-scale Swoppet clone from Hong Kong and a piece of Bisque from a Christmas cake, or even a Birthday cake, I think it's a clown which is more generic, isn't it?

 

Another game playing piece, a small rubber dog, probably contemporary and off a kid's magazine, the third item is a WWF trophy, an accessory from a larger action figure set, but the two figures making-up the trophy-sculpture are almost perfect HO-gauge compatible. The final figure is a priest, possibly for wedding-cakes?

 

Rack-toy Submarine.

 

A handful of French production, there's a possibility that the last one is Polish, but he's hard plastic, so the feeling if more likely French. The Mokarex chap next to him is from the paired French regional-dress figure set, the small one is an integral-base (Kinder?) version of the usually separate base premiums, and the first figure has been paint-stripped - like Starlux, but not?

 

Matt Thier did tell me the origin of the lead lady being beheaded (Mary? French?), but I forgot it in all the conversations with everyone, the paper boy is an old Bergen-Beton figure in hard 'styrene, the mint-green chap is from a kit (Monogram, Pyro, Revell?) and the little corporal is a brass tourist trinket, from France.

 

Nice, probably French stand of fir-trees, with a bit of damage to the tallest one.

On my way back to Waterloo, I dropped off at Leicester Square, to check the bookshops in Charing Cross Road, and look for something for someone else (which has been another mini-adventure). While I was there I found a 'German Market' in the centre of the square, it was pretty shit . . . no German stalls selling hand-made wooden toys or blown-glass ornaments like the one in Berlin, the Bratty' stand was run by Asians and there was a stall from the 'Great Cornish Pasty Co.,', or something equally non-German, so all a bit naff really, and incredibly crowded.

 

Put on by a global entertainment corporate called 'Underbelly', it might be more bearable later at night, but I doubt it, as you'd just be adding the inevitable drink and drugs to the mix!

 

Walking back out and up to Shaftesbury Avenue to visit Forbidden Planet (which also depresses me these days!), I narrowly avoided being hit by a horse pulling a sulky! Closely followed by several more, which started parking on the pavements, willy-nilly, as pedestrians dived everywhere, so I dived up the Avenue, and bought a few books!

 

When I returned, about 20-minutes later, to head off up to the tube station at the big Tottenham Court-Oxford Street's crossroads, it became clear there were now nearly a hundred Traveller carts, wagons and racers of all types, and about 20 double-decked buses, going nowhere, who had advised their passengers to alight, the whole of Charing Cross Road, now a pedestrianised sardine-tin!

 

It turned out this was an annual thing, lost in the mists of time - all the travellers from Kent, Essex and North London, gather somewhere, and rally down to Central London, park wherever they manage to end-up, and while the younger ones look after the horses and pose for photographs with tourists, the oldster's all go off to Harrods, to spend what cash they've made, legitimately, in lawful enterprise - of course!

 

Poor Harrods was my thought, I was dressed better than most of them, and I wouldn't have got into Harrods! Non-branded jeans! But tradition, is tradition, and makes us, Britain, what we are, so I was rather glad to have been part of the whole chaos for a few minutes, to have seen it, I've never seen it before, and am unlikely to, again!

 

Apparently last year's 'event' was marred by an 'incident' involving the 'younger element' so there was a heavy police presence, and I was very disappointed by the Traveller's vehicles - a few had the old paint-schemes, but most were plain, and almost all welded steel, even the old-looking spoked wheels, were flat steel and welded-tube, while one of the sulkies had what appeared to be a pair of mag-alloys off a 1986 Ford Granada, with low-profiles!

C is for Cardology

Cardology are a firm I encountered for the first time at the Birmingham Spring Fair, and they couldn't have arrived soon enough, with the recent demise of Clinton's, where I've been buying nice fold-up cards for a few years now (we saw the Morris Traveller with cats one year, but I've given more away, as Christmas cards), the shots I fired off aren't the best, but the link at the end has all of them.

They are a tenner each, which looks a bit steep, but you are buying a crafted keepsake, which, with care, can be got out and displayed again, year after year, and, dare I suggest - become a collection of novelties!

Cardology website: https://cardology.co.uk/collections/christmas-pop-up-cards

N is for November's Sandown Park - Wild West, Animals and Odds

Winding-up the Sandown purchases from a month ago now, and it's mostly animals, and the Wild West, with a few odds & sods, cartoon, TV-Movie stuff and the like, to look at this time.

 

I have two beliefs about this set (which was a gift from John Begg, I think), one is that it's from the same series as the #445 Mobile Task Force, and Space Explorer sets issued by Gordy, Woolbro and others, this being one 'sock' instead of two, and a generic issue with no branding-overprint. The other is that we were bought a set each from Webb's the Newsagent, in Hartley Wintney, by Mum, one wet weekend, in the holidays!

 

There was a two-sock Fort Cheyenne under the 445-code, but that had a version of the fort, and different figures/horses, so this may be a lookie-likey , and leaves the first belief questionable for now, the second belief is 100%, I well-remember the colour samples, and trying to wiggle the horses hooves into the carpet fibres to keep them standing up!

 

I bought a second pirate set from the same chap as last time, and it's already been opened and shot for International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so a couple of months after the last one, and there are already two folders ready for next year!

 

A  mix of HK smallies, including several sub-piracies of the 2nd version knights, in red, I'd had a few yellow ones but I think these are new, usually you find both the Giant originals and the copies in silver or black. They probably belong on the horses to the right, but this is how they came!

 

Someone tried to 'mend' a broken tail, by rolling a scrap of faux-suede up, very tight, setting it alight, and stuffing it up the horse's jacksie! Given how common these are, and how many would come in even a small 6d set, that was a hell of an effort! Probably a 'favourite' horse? Kids are a bit like that, you can have fifteen white horses in the bag, but if one's slightly grey and becomes your favourite, you'll move Heaven & Earth to keep in going!

A rather tatty 2nd generation copy of one of the Hong Kong dogs we looked at in a couple of round-up posts a year or two ago, and the smallest King Kong in the world! Certainly the smallest I've seen, who wasn't moulded into a resin Empire State Building keepsake!

 

Probably a 1d-1¢, gum-ball capsule prize or Christmas cracker novelty, it really is tiny, less than 20mm! In all other respects it's the same as all other HK gorillas; soft polyethylene, with a basic MADE IN HONG KONG mark.

 

A sample of broken Cherilea dinosaurs, which Adrian gave me from his bits box. Useful nevertheless, against colour variations, or even to combine with others into dodgy Dr. Moreau subjects at a later date? I mean they are so rare these days, due entirely to their brittleness, that some are better than none, and they will be added to a bigger sample with some better ones we have seen here, previously, at Small Scale World.

 

Two Britains copies, a rather nice Hong Kong Herakd clone, from Hong Kong! And a damaged sub-scale rendition of the war-dancing Swoppet, also from the colony of intellectual property crime!

 

Kinder, all 1980's, I think. If you were to 'age' Kinder like comic-fans age their stuff, these would be 'silver age'! The head and hat, is from a slightly different set to the complete figure, I think, while the fire-appliance with two mini plug-in firefighters was late 80's, and I actually kept a few of the tractors at the time, so there's a tub of these to add-to, or cannibalise from, to make whole examples.

 

Damaged guard from Cherilea's executioner set, another Invicta dinosaur, a couple of Esci Americans and a partial pig, in the style of the Xandria key-rings, but all 'ethylene, and probably from another source?

 

Four 'funnimals', and all probbaly Holly rather than Lik Be, certainly the llama-like and squirel-thing come in a set with the known Holly guitar-turtle, while the cow was issued by Mail-Order outfit Colonial Studios, with a set of otherwise realistic (Briatins copies) farm animals.

 

This is just marked Hong Kong, but is not a bad rendition of Disney's Pluto, and holds-up against the Marx, Heimo, and early-Schleich stuff of the 1970's, a lump of stable-PVC, I guess the ring is the remnants of a key-chain?

 

More of the cartoon mini-animals often credited to Kinder, but which predate Kinder by a decade or two, and were issued as carded 'families', as gum-ball machine prizes and through other such novelty avenues. Kinder would issue similar 'hard plastics' in the 1980's, but usually larger models.

 

UK Cereal premiums, haveing other outlets elsewhere, here they were all cereal, with two jig-toys, three of the Aristocat figures and a Brian the Snail from the Magic Roundabout, and while we now know Brian could have been a Wavyline promotional, I think in this shade of blue, he might be a European ice-cream premium.

 

I think we might have the Little Baby Jesus (or Moses?) in red here, a rather tatty Marx Snow White (from Swansea?) and a lovely survivor of Japanese blow-moulded lightness, in the probable 'styrene copy of an earlier celluloid Santa Claus.

CGB is for Cool Glassware Buddy!

Another box-ticker from the Gift Fair at the NEC, and we're looking at glass animals from CGB Giftware, who are clearly some kind of marketing outfit for a cooperative of smaller, artisan makers, with at least two brands visible, Jasmine and Fox Fern.

 

Some of these are so clever, you have to work very fast, with molten glass, to get the techniques to work, and while there's an element of once you've designed one, you can reproduce it quicker and quicker, the nature of artists is that they will constantly have new ideas, so they are always trying new things, I love the giraffe with the bent neck, these two kerthunkersaurs, and, the ducks must be incredibly hard to get 'right'?

N is for November's Sandown Park - Erasers

And not just any old erasers, but that the bulk of them are probably Diener Industries, one way or another, the other factor being that they are also French premiums, but may, due to petroleum, also be British! I picked these up a few at a time, every time I passed the chap's stall, and wish now I'd hoovered up the last few, but they were mostly duplicates, I think!

 

These are probably not Diener, as they are proper eraser-rubber, but I thought they'd go very well with the Lik Be (that's LB of course!) and Holly anthropomorphic musicians, in a future comparison post / battle of the animal bands! They are also pencil-tops.

 

These are all clearly marked Diener Ind., with a '(C)' mark, and are a mix of generics, Disney, cute and a Fontanini clown-sculpt knock-off, along with an Easter basket of bunnies! And they may well belong to several sets, or even some of the sets below, as explained as we go.

 

These are unmarked, but are manufactured in the same smudgy silicon-rubber of all Diener's 'erasers', which were always shit erasers, as they just smudged pencil around the page, leaving everything looking awful! Again, they could be from more than one set, but the paint ties them into the premiums below. The red kitten is a slightly different sculpt to the yellow one in the previous shots - head moved to ease undercuts?

I can't work out if this is supposed to be some kind of anthropomorphic Viking, or a French TV character? Nor is it clear if it's damaged, poorly fettled or had a charm/key-ring loop removed?

 

These two, both Disney, are marked Esso and Disney Prod., and were a set of premiums, given away with Esso fuels, defiantly issued in France, the complete sets are to be found in the pages of Jean Piffret's book Figurines Publicities, but, as I think I've mentioned before, we had some when we were kids, not from this set, but from the set of woodland (or other) animals, some of which are in the upper shots.

 

Indeed, the slightly Beatrix Potter'esque pricklepin in the same flesh pink as the odd figure above, is one of the items on my nostalgia wants list, as it was in my pencil case until I was far too old to have affection for such things! And the three little pigs would also go with the other musical mammals!

 

While these are just marked (C) Walt Disney Prod., but you can see where the Esso has been obliterated on the tool, so there was probably a commercial issue too, at some point.

 

Therefore, I think a couple of the sets annotated by Piffret, as French, were issued here, also with Esso, at some point around the late 1960's or early 1970's, possibly without the paint highlights of the French and more commercial Diener issues. There were more sets issued as premiums in France, though?

 

Four other, non-Diener, non-Esso types, with, from the left a grotesque facemask pencil top, this was probably from the era of cereal-premium totem-pole funny-faces and the semi-flat African mask charm type premiums. Next is a vampire, or Dracula type, in his casket, and just waking-up, by the look of it!

The footballer is bigger that the Hong Kong painted ones, issued as either key-rings or pencil-tops, but may have been the inspiration for them, and he is a pencil top too! While the 'finger fright' rubber-jiggler just came with them to make a round-number! The first three being, again, 'proper' eraser-rubber.