W is for Wehrmachtsmodelle

Wiking, the company best known to railway-modellers as a manufacturer of HO vehicles, and now owned by Siku, began life before the Second World War, as a maker of a larger range of small-scale (1:1250) ships and vessels in a lead-based Zamac, these ships were used as recognition and training models by the German Army, and were joined by 1:200th aircraft models, a range to which, AFV models known as the Wehrmachtsmodelle line, were added, and that's what we are looking at here.

 

Sadly not in my collection, I shot these on Mercator Trading's table about six years ago, and the group shot is taken with a Britains limber (#1726) for scale. The sample would appear to a complete air-defence unit.

 

Heavy trucks, a command/control 'office body' vehicle and GS troop-carrier/ammo-truck, both variants of the Mercedes G3A I think, but that's off a quick Google, not personal depth of knowledge! The nearer one may be a Krupp L3H?

 

Opel 'Blitz' and a command car/utility vehicle.

 

Staff car and two of the guns, which I think are the WWI forerunner of the famous eighty-eight, the 8.8 cm Flak 16, also known as an "Acht-acht" by the Germans, which became anglicised as "Ack Ack".

 

Two Krupp Protze medium trucks in the passenger configuration, one towing the searchlight and the other a generator needed for the power to the searchlight, and the equipment in the command vehicles, lights in the tentage/shelters &etc. Not the best shots, but they are very, very small, and shots at shows are always hurried!

 

By 1936, these were being made in plastic (probably the same grey plastic as the WHW's we've seen here several times, I've suggested Siku as a source for them, maybe it was Wiking?), so these metal ones are quite early, and quite rare. Ironically, they would fit-in perfectly with the Skytrex range of my childhood!

F is for Follow-up, as Mentioned Earlier!

So, my thoughts, not canon, not necessarily true, but just my thoughts on, specifically, the origins of the Vitacup premium dear/fawn, and more on its ubiquity, which has appeared here before, in various forms, painted and unpainted.

 

Vitacup deer? The one in the middle, is the most likely, if Vitacup only had one (and they had no multiples of their other animals, except the 'Three Wise Monkeys' who were a single moulding), as it's the one most often found with the other Vitacup animals. But the male with small antlers has also come in with them.

 

Then this one came-in a while ago, a larger scale, and painted like others we have seen, a vague attempt at fallow deer spots, and will look at below, slightly more baby-fawn like with big ears and shorter proportioned body.

 

It's marked as a raised relief DEP, which can be short for Depose, a French term meaning 'Registered Design', but equally, can be short for Deponiert,  German, and also 'Registered Design', I suspect the latter, but the former can't ruled-out.

 

Shown next to a tourist figure of a miner (?) I remember a gift-kiosk full of this stuff back in 1969, somewhere on the Rhine, possibly the Niederwald Monument, but it could have been somewhere near Koblenz, or one of several castles in the ENESCO world heritage Middle Rhine section, I was six, and it was very foggy, I can only remember a large car-park/viewing area, and a long stone balustrade. We ended up with two gold-chrome plated plastic dwarf miners, with deer which were - possibly - even smaller versions of some of the deer seen here?

 

We saw a paler one, in a previous post, with similar but unrelated sculpts.

 

While this broken one also came in and was seen previously.

Note the Indigo-inked, rubber stamp 'Foreign', on the tail.

Here we have much larger ones, but with what appear to be painted versions of the Vitacup ones being used as actual babies, to the two juvenile-looking 'adults' who are about half-a magnitude larger, the slight absurdity being they are plastic figures pretending to be wood, on a pretend wood base, on an actual wooden plinth!

 

And I think Chris Smith took this image in a Charity Shop for the Blog, some time ago, knowing these were being collected in one place! So thanks to him for taking the opportunity presented, to add to the subject.

 

Here's another, from the scale of the figures, the same larger size, but now suggesting the 'babies' in the previous image, may themselves be larger than the Vitacup 'Ivorene' models.

 

Of interest here, is than despite now having over a dozen of the barometer figurines, loose, I don't have either of the two in the background here, so I need to look out for them both, and there must have been dozens over the years coming from the workshops of Switzerland, Austria and Germany, since plastic came into use, with many more wooden ones before them!

 

Here’s what looks like the painted version of the Vitacup, from the previous post, with the stamp again, but here on the belly. The Foreign mark was more common on German (and Japanese) stuff between the wars, and Japanese stuff after WWII, but that's a whole 'nother post, in porcelain it applies to a period between 1893 and 1923, while it is found on US workman's tools for the period 1890-93, and that's the tip of an iceberg connected to . . . Tariffs, taxes, recent enemies, new friends, and the hiding of origin, while flagging origin!

 

A painted version of the feeding pose, and a fourth pose/fifth variant, laying on the ground, these also look to be a larger size, and have a surface texture which suggests they may be a different maker, to most of the others, either as copies, or a renovated tooling?

 

While this is just a homage, in glazed china!

Much smoother lines. 

It seems, someone, probably German, who may or may not have been Siku, had a catalogue of these, sculpted as if made of carved wood, in the Erzgebirge style, in two or three sizes, at least four poses, with a head variant on the commonest pose, of which Vitacup took between one or three, in the plain Ivorene, while anyone else who needed them could arrange a supply to suit their tourist trinket, or, kitch tchotchke, in a variety of paint styles (they may have added themselves) with or without the white dots hinting at fallow deer, while other people copied the sculpts!

 

The Vitacup sets, however, are drawn from various parts of the supplier's wider catalogue, and the work of different sculptors, with several other animals having the carved-wood look, but more being realistically sculpted and one or two slightly cartoonish, but still with more realistic fur/hides.

 

Now, I never got round to updating the post which tried to list them all;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/f-is-for-follow-up-vitacup.html 

 . . . following the comments of Jungle Kim, and both (that post and the listing) need to be sorted properly, but suffice to say, all the ones with the pale blueish-white background are soft polyethylene (elastische plastik) and known to be Siku (tools which don't seem to have gone to DS Plastics, of the Netherlands), which suggests that while I might like the Vitacup et al to be Siku, for neatness, they may be by someone else?

 

However, Siku are known for providing may of the margarine/tobacco/coffee/soap-powder premiums of the 1950's, in hard styrene, so it's still an open question?

C is for Cool Car-Booty!

A week or so before the trip that provided the Invicta dinosaurs, but f-all else, I'd had a little more luck wandering about the same Car Boot Sale one Bank-Holiday Monday, and that's what we're looking over, in this post

 

This was a quid! It's the kind of stuff you find a whole shelf of at The Range or TKMaxx, in three colours, and I'd ignored it, until I'd realised how little there is at these sales nowadays - pretty well picked-clean over the years, or ravaged by the 5/6-am 'early birds', so I went back for it at the end, but photographed it first as it was on top of everything else in the plunder bag! It's a hollow ceramic slush-cast, modern, and about 7/8-inches!

 

These were a revelation, Toyway WWI Aeroplanes, new to me, Google's AI Overview came up with another corker;

 

"Toyway WWI aeroplanes" likely refers to model or toy aircraft of World War I vintage, rather than a specific brand called "Toyway"

 

Technically, 'World War I vintage' means manufactured between 1914 and 1919! Dumb, and the highlighting is a mystery, it wasn't a hot-link? AI is dumb, it might be good for specific tasks like finding new drugs, but that's more about programming a good algorithm, rather than free-thought, or compooda learnin'!

 

From the card graphics I'd say an earlier product of theirs, from the 1980's, and probably by someone like Universal (but not their inherited Matchbox stuff, Matchbox never did 'planes like this), but made in China anyway, and a nice pair, adding to the WWI air-wing!

 

I drew a snake a bit like this, many years ago, and thought I'd scanned the image with some other stuff a while ago, but I can't find it, so I can't show it to you! But due to its similarity with my little sketch, I couldn't resist it. Like the ceramic astronaut, it's quite big and may be a companion piece/accessory from a larger action-figure/doll type thing?

 

These are fascinating, from the same seller, who had a lot of 'genuine' domestic/house-clearance stuff, so these probably went together, we have a marked and painted version of the believed to be (or more accurately; 'probably') Siku moulding of a fawn, which ended-up as one of the Vitacup premiums, along with two actual, carved wood Erzgebirge horses, in the same style of scalloped whittling. 

 

This is why I collect, to join the dots, to look for, and hopefully find the bigger picture, and put it up here so other people understand the connections, a fascinating trio, to me at least! And there'll be a follow-up on the 'Vitacup' deer later.

 

Probably home-made, possibly an apprentice piece, or turned for a Lancaster Bomber model-kit, I believe this is a reasonable rendition of an RAF Tall Boy, or more likely Grand Slam free-fall bomb of the WWII era, and in silver-plate brass, a rather unique thing? Except there may be hundreds of them? Who knows! It is (if either of the mentioned bombs) missing its pointy-tail, but it looks like that may have been cut-off for some reason?

 

The seller of the biplanes, had obviously had some good stuff earlier in the day (early hours of the morning!), and was selling her late father's collection, piecemeal, there were a bunch of Micromodel card kits, i was tempted by, but I left them, however at 50p I took these three, which are a - probably - Hong Kong racing driver from a carpet toy, and two home-cast replacements of an old die-cast or lead toy driver.

 

I think these were 10p each, so I wasn't too bothered by them, the space-car seems to be missing half its whole? The Thunderbird 2 pod-vehicle is supposed to be a bulldozer or ladder truck I think, but as it's a modern Carlton effort, I thought it might make a conversion project! And three probably duplicate Bruder, but there's always colourways to find, with them!

P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Civilians

OK, we're out of the gates and away, civilian stuff now, and again there are all sorts of interesting things here, not least a corporate-looking St. Mary of the Little Baby Jesus, Elon Musk (not!) and some magnetic policemen!

As with the previous lot, these loaded in an order other than I intended,so I just ran with it, I don't know what Blogger's playing at these days, but it randomly reverses the order sometimes or - occasionally - just re-assorts them!

The two on the left here are the pair I shot in a car park years ago, like 12/15 years ago, they came with a very cheap 'Disney' castle facade and have hollow-backs, but it's nice to have them in the collection, as I seem to recall the car-park photo-exercise was because of instant discarding!

 

The skipper is Tim Mee, and adds to a slowly growing sample of them, I think we've seen the boy with dog in butterscotch plastic, and I think a few others are in the sample now. The chap on the right looks like a family of such figures in several sizes carried by several big-names, both sides of the Channel about 20+ years ago, They will get their own page, but Tesco, Woolworths/Chad Valley, Welly and others carried them with 'in-house' die-cast vehicle sets

The 'casualty' is probably a plug-in mechanic/fuel-attendant, from a play-set's petrol pumps? But new to me - new to the Blog!

 

I thought, at first glance that this was Our Lady, Hail Mary, Mother of God (you'd think I were't Catholic huh?!!), but she has an automobile in relife, on her cloak, so I'm guessing she may be a corporate (probably American) mascot, once seen as a hood ornament, possibly, and may well be an annual-conference, or sales giveaway of some kind?

 

A couple of figures after Commonwealth, but possibly neither actually by them, the figure on the left is the paint-your-own from an outfit called Doll Bodies Inc., and their 32 Dolls of Far Away Lands painting set, but the detail is more sharply cut (in a cruder or harsher fashion) and the figure is a bit flashy, around the join-line, so although it looks like unpainted Commonwealth, it may be licensed, or duplicate tools?

 

While the other is a clear copy, the smoother ones are a little smaller and must have come from Hong Kong or Mexico, from whence they found their way to the antipodes, where Sanitarium probably had no relationship with Commonwealth at all?

A trio of cake decoration dolls/brides, I have a fair few of these somewhere, all a bit tatty because of the delicate polystyrene nature of them, and I have them in different sizes and with or without plastic bows or fabric-ribbon bows, but I didn't have any with different headdresses until these showed-up! We have bare-head (most of mine I think?) a brides veil and a sort of inverted flower-hat?

 

Big babies, and little ones! Mostly Thomas I think, some looking more like Marx land-fill figures from the colours! But the green one on the end is a Hong Kong copy of the Britains Hospital merternity-set one by the looks of it, and along with the fat kid next to him, is new to me, Blog and stash!

 

Oh, it's Elon Musk! No . . . no-no-no, he did it, not me, and he did it twice in case anyone missed it the first time! Buy a Te-SS-ler Swastikar and be a true Nazi! Really, he's reaching for his - probably red and white flamenco-dressed - paramour/dance partner, still to be found And she will be found, sooner or later, as you can't have missed how these terracotta figurines keep coming-in!

 

Along with the Policeman, he is missing a hat, but all the examples I've seen have black cartridge-paper hats, and I have lots of black cartridge-paper somewhere, so a mend will be done on both, and you won't know they've been repaired!

Bits of a Marx Miniature Masterpiece farm set I may also be able to restore somewhat at some point in the future, but you will know to look at it, as you can't really hide the ripped paper scenic-base, only try to go over it with fine coloured pencils, to hide the worst!

 

A pair of firemen/firefighters from HTI (Teamsters) I think and a policeman from 'unknown', all grist to the mill, and one day there will be A-Z pages on these specific, recurring subjects to ID as many as possible in one place!

 

These are an odd lot, as they have all got magnets attached, and while most of them were added by the owner to what seem to be the unpainted Wiking civilians, which came on strips as we saw right back at the beginning of this Blog, while I think the two painted summer-uniform ones were also Wiking, and have the same added magnets, the other two are unknown to me (Dutch, Danish or French?) and may have come with their magnets as part of a magnetic play set.

 

There seem to have been a few of them in 1950/60's Europe, I have images somewhere of a large Swiss or Austrian set with magnetic street-signs, trees, micro-vehicles, animals and people, along with buildings and roadway sections etc . . .And obviously the way to expand such a set is to add more magnets! Remember all those 45/55mm magnetic civilians which I picked up at a PW show a few years ago, some commercial, some home magnetised? A mystery anyway, and help needed ID'ing the uniformed officers!

 

Theo Van de Weerden recognised them - " . . . those policemen in summer dress are Wiking. The other two are from Siku from the sixties. I think the reason they have magnets is that they belonged to a board game to teach children in school about traffic rules. We had this in my primary school." 

More of the ever-enlarging sample of small semi-flat race-horses, they can't be from board games, as there are too many subtle pose variations, and plastic colours now, but they are still a mystery too. Park the thought, as I'll be mentioning them again when we get to the Wild West post.

Another, with plugs, so if not a board-game piece, maybe from a spinning-top or something? The painted huntsman may be a food/margarine premium, but has also had a magnet added, so will have come with the others, above, And three die-cast or other accessory figures, the Corgi milkman, an ice cream seller (Dinky or Spot On?) and a Gondolier!

Some real 'odds' here, with a homemade woollen doll, after or in the style of those Peruvian worry-dolls, a larger scale rider I've seen somewhere but can't place (she's about 60/65-mil) and a standard doll's house doll, of the knock-off Hong Kong variety.

 

A fair few interesting HO-OO model railway figures, which you aught to be able to ID from last year's posts, but I never finished that 'season' and meant to do so over the Christmas just gone, but didn't, and we never got round to the Merit Driving School post, so I'm going to draw a veil over these for now, and try to get the railway civilians finished in/by March? The lady on the green square is a clippie (conductor) from a London Bus, Corgi, I think!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Wild West

Nearing the end of the surprise box from Chris, and we find a Sobre, but more on that at the end of the post! Wild West, large scale, small scale, plastic, metal, cowboys, Native American Indians, horses, premiums and cartoony stuff . . . let's see what was in the box;

 

All interesting; the one on the left seems to be a soft plastic version of an earlier hard polystyrene premium, it's not the first time we seen them, Betterware used some (Mayer-Lippenhausen and Commonwealth) for their little salesman's envelope gifts, the Australian (and others) Nabisco Dinosaurs are another. This chap is from the Siku sculpts/set, supplied in two sizes, painted and unpainted, and various plastic colours to various European premium issuers, so, here, is probably via . . .

 

. . .  the Dutch DS Plastics, they show them in their catalogue - code 455, as some of the moulds they inherited from Siku.

The many Hong Kong copies of Timpo/Britains/Crescent swoppets are common as muck, two-a-penny and usually pretty poorly executed, although there are better ones, and whole ones attributable to their packaging are useful, these two in the middle are unusual for being among the better, and all-polyethylene, where usually some of the parts are PVC, the locating studs/holes have larger diameters too, while the chap on the end is from a US maker; Ideal, and is meant to be a Canadian trapper I think? I bet the trappers of both nations looked pretty similar and paid little heed to a line on the map!

Home-cast casting of an Indian on the left, probably a Schneider mould, what is likely a Lone Star Metallion in the middle (Pat Masterton), but other makers covered them and the paint throws you off, while the chap on the right is similar to others I have, but I don't think I've ever seen an attribution for them either as Western originals (Spain, France?) or as Hong Kong copies.

I know the one in the middle is from the Crazy Clown Circus of Frazer & Glass (F&G) now, but he got shot with his extended family, which included on the left a horse which was marked, but I can't remember if it was LIDO (I think so) or AJAX?, while the metallised 'standard' horse of the family, is new on me?

 

Obviously we have seen metallised foot figures from the 'set', in different sizes, so I guess he went with them, but I haven't found metallised riders yet? I'm guessing it should be Tudor Rose or at a stretch Kleeware, and one of the earlier iterations of them?

To which, we can add four of the polystyrene foot figures! The painted Crescent/Lido chap may be from one of the West germen pencil shapeners, as he has  alayer of glue on his base underside?

 

The chap in the middle is my first, of a set I've been after for years, and have already missed-out on a boxed set of, coincidentally, the only reason I know what he is, which is an Exin Wild West figure. They are cartoon-styled, very-much like the Lucky Luke premiums, and I'm sure that was no accident, as Comansi handled the latter and both are Spanish companies, seeped in Spaghetti Western culture at the time?

Five more of the Lone Star shooting game figures, I think we may have all poses in both colours now, and a lot of them have come from Chris over the last few years, so when I get them all together we will have another, closer look.

A small sample of small scale Blue Box, it's all grist to the mill, with two of the foot figures and a horse from Britians Swoppet sculpts, along with a stockade-fort section, copied from the Marx Miniature Masterpiece fort.

Sub-Giant piracies from Hong Kong - always useful!

A small group of damaged Minimodels 25mm's, they will go in the tub with the rest of the damaged ones against the possibility of me having a conversion session one day, as being polystyrene (the reason so many are found damaged) they are easy to cut, glue, sand and fill!

The figures Brian Berke remembered were in Lucky Bags back in the day, and lucky he did, as no one else had! The colour scheme remains pretty constant, with the Indians in the warm/hot colours and the Cowboys in the cold colours. And I think this sample balances out the bigger sample somewhat, which was getting a bit Indian-heavy!

There are new cowboy poses here, and the pose-count keeps growing, I think we may well end-up with about fifty, five-each mounted and up to 20 foot figure sculpts, per. 'side'? Some of the Euro-premium sets ran to similar numbers.

While this was a lovely surprise, a bagged Sobre, from Sobreplast, a name new to the Blog and the archive, if not the Hobby, an old kiosk toy, of more substance than the Montaplex type envelopes we usually look at here.

 

The figures/horses look to be Comansi copies, but they may be actual Comansi, until I can compare with the real-deal's, I won't know, but the wagon is not the Comansi one, so I suspect copies. A really nice 'sopresa', cheers Chris!