Chris Smith has sent another fantastic
bundle of goodies to the Blog but when I say 'another' it belies the quality of
the contents which are arguably the best yet, the box was packed with stuff and
none of it was unwelcomed, truly; a Christmas present . . . which I'd better
quickly share with the rest of you!
Initial sorting into piles that seem to
make sense as it's happening, numbered for this blurb, I'll start at one and
work through; All vehicles, buildings, scenics or parts thereof are in 1, 2 is
ancient medieval and prehistoric, although they joined the dino's at 7 after
the photograph was taken!
3 is ceremonials, ethnic and national dress
and touristy things, 4 are the parachute-toy paratroopers and 5 is the Wild
West. Back over to the left and 6 is animals (wild and domestic), 7 is the
aforementioned dinosaurs (two nice rubber ones and another we'll be looking at
again shortly), 8 are also to be Blogged, 9 were the novelty/cartoony stuff, 10
- cracker toys - are getting a second mention in these posts and a post to
themselves and 11 are divers.
12 was footballers, but some ice-hockey
players and cyclists were added to the pile later, making it 'sportsmen', 13
are fridge-magnets we'll look at closer 14 is all the space, sci-fi, fantasy
and TV/movie-related character pieces while 15 is the last hundred years
military (proper 'army men') although as I write I've spotted a cyclist in that
pile - who did get sorted-on! Finally 16 is all the other civilian stuff
So working through some of the piles in
numerical order for a few highlights (a hard choice as it was all so good) we're back to pile 1, where we have an
interesting Hong Kong army van, which one might expect to be from the old Matchbox range, but I don't recognise
it, there was a municipal rubbish lorry with a similar cab but it had a arcing
bin-store body with sliding doors, this looks more French . . . an early Majorette copy maybe?
To the right are two HK copies of -
originally - US-made mini vehicles, which will join a larger sample sent to the
blog by Brain Berke several years ago, and since joined by some storage ones,
all of which have been photographed - with other stuff - for a series of articles
which are still in the queue; novelties tend to get pushed back by everything
else (all those Shopkins, Moshlings, Zomlings and 'Bones are a
couple of years overdue now!), but it will all happen, eventually!
Another HK car might be Blue Box, but early with the windows
blocked-in (?), or any one of a number of similar pirates, while the Jaguar in
front is very interesting . . . I have one somewhere, either the same green or
a pinky-colour, but mine is so crushed (I always hang-on to damaged stuff of
it's the first/only sample) I never knew for certain if it was a Jaguar or a
Citroen! I now know it's a Jag', but also it seems to be a very good copy of
the Lone Star Treble-o Trains vehicle.
but with a much thinner skin that the die-cast donor and in a polystyrene. Did Lone Star replace their metal ones with
plastic at the end? Anyone know anything about this? Deck ornamentation for a
ferry model-vessel kit?
The rocket is fun, the trees have been
nailed in a forthcoming post and a Merit
gas-lamp has been posed with three really useful Victorian street lights which
would be ideal for 1:76/72 war-gaming or diorama-building. I suspect they are either
accessories from something like those Silvercorn/LP
suitcase sets, or a Mighty Max/Polly
Pocket type thing?
Another bunch of parachute novelty
paratroopers including a proper, marked, Imperial
'Poopatrooper' in snow-white, a
'space paratrooper' and the camouflaged one from carded sets we've seen here at
Small
Scale World before.
I needed a loose one to re-do the size
comparisons of the three types of these Small
Soldiers-like sculpts I've found now, some with help from Brian and Peter,
so he's really useful despite being the newest in the line-up!
But with the previous - similar sized -
bunch of these also from Chris, and another lot from Peter Evans (I think), I
will have to re-do all (or most) of the images in the nascent paratrooper
article/page? Not a hardship!
The Wild West lot are all interesting, or
useful, or both! Royal fail and/or Parcel Farce managed to brake the black,
two-part epoxy totem-pole, but as you can see it mended OK, and joins two
similar tourist type poles in the collection, while the other (Jean copy) totem might be a variation of
the one we looked at a while ago, necessitating a follow-up to the - at the
time - follow-up!
Two more of the Lone Star shooting-game Indians, one a colour variant, I still have
to locate the sixth figure a bison-head, but I know he is due to appear in PW
at some point (with the sixth base points-value), so 'least said' and all that!
Among the HK efforts is a really nice Union
cavalrymen copied from the Britains
Swoppets who are getting so brittle now, they will soon be but a memory,
their horses out-living them for a few more decades! But there's obviously some
HK copies to replace them with! The two eagle-dancers are from separate sources
(Royal Fail/Parcel Farce worked their magic on the red one . . . actually I
think it was Hermes?), some Marx and Airfix piracies (one Italian) or
re-issues are joined by two of the six-gunner's we've looked at in depth before
and I'm not sure if the two painted ones (middle-right) are home-painted or
comercial, but they are rather nice versions in a sub-scale.
There's a lovely little Pocahontas (bottom
right), who was glued to a larger base or plinth-display of some kind
(McDonald's premium?) at some point, but is now perfect for all those camp-fire
scenes.
While over to the left is a trio of figures
we've looked at recently here (Waddington's,
Britains Miniset and the lucky-bag
flats), so they will go away for a while until a time when a return to the
subject or an A-Z entry gets them out again! Finally the painted Indian next to
them is Safari, but bigger that the
'small-scale' (actually mixed-scale) figures I remember from the 'Toob' covered
by Plastic Warrior magazine a few
years ago.
The Space-Sci-fi-TV-Movie pile is a right-old
heap of pure eclecticism with a wotsit-cat, several doobries, a thingamabob and
one or two of those what-a-names! There's even a Star Wars action-figure
baddie, but 'es 'armless!
Highlights include three board-game Magic Roundabout Dougal-dogs, I have
pictures of the game (off evilBay) somewhere as a 'wants list' item, so they
were a real treat to find, I think it's a six-player game, so still three to
find, but that's the fun of collecting.
Does anyone recognise the elfin chap in red
shift and boots - middle-right?
I guess the large purple lady and the gent
on steroids are from the same source, but I don't recognise either character? I
also like the babe in blue . . . a sort of power-ranger, but helmetless? Another
highlight is the 'evil santa' (top right) with what looks like a Russian
Orthodox priest's hat, could he be a Technolog
(or similar) Russian novelty?
The military section had lots of stuff, a
lot of gap-filers, or one-offs and various things we've seen one way or
another, so I haven't shot them all today, but there were enough PVC figures to
produce this size comparison of most of the figures mentioned in that series of
posts a month or so ago, which may be of use to some of you - so I shot them as
they were. The Remco chap has an M16
so large he looks like a kid in a muscle suit - Don'pushmeeeee!
If you pop-back up the page and study pile
15, you'll see all sorts of other interesting stuff in this lot, among which
were the (capsule?) figures sometimes found with a separate belt and for whom
I'm still looking for the weapons, Chris's lot contained three or four of them
with new colours and a new pose I think. There was also stuff for the khaki
infantry page and the next round-up/follow-up to the Tim Mee GI's, including new (to collection) Toy Story variants.
From the civilian lot is a similar sizer,
including new firefighters from Remco
and Soma, but there are more below,
and Brian Berke let me know over Christmas he's getting his firefighters shot
for the forthcoming page, so that will be a priority target for the spring I
think, and there are more . . .
. . . in the main body of the civilian
stuff.
Highlights include . . . well . . .
pretty-much all of them! There's so much of this stuff, most of it rather
anonymous accessories for die-cast or plastic vehicles or sets of one kind or
another, from probably half of all toy makers, over seventy-plus years, that
the fact that people like Chris, Peter Evans, Glenn, Jim, Adrian, Michal
Melnyk, Trevor Rudkin and Co., save it for me and/or send it to the Blog is
really humbling to me, and good news for you, loyal reader, as it's slowly
getting to 'all going to be in one place' . . . one day!
A particularly interesting item is the
green, child-like farmer (top right-hand corner) with spade, who from style
(semi-flat), paint (basic) and material (dense ethylene or propylene polymer)
is probably from the same source as those rather atrocious Chinese Warriors I
picked-up at PW last May?
Also of note are the two kit figures, who
look like they came form an early 1950's model kit of a US car, but are in a
marbled plastic of maroon and blue, which might point to them having been
either factory-painted at some point, or chromium-plated? The white girl above
them to the right is a more standard kit figure in a single, neutral, white
colour; all three are polystyrene. She looks like she's standing on the end of
the caber-tosser's pole . . . ooh, missus! He's a metal 'mocherette'.
The motorcycle in HO is probably from the Merit Driving School game, he's better
detailed that the normal cracker/capsule fare, while the chap falling to the
ground (top-middle) is - I think - from the old Accoutrements/Archie McFee set of movie victims from about 20 years
ago? I also like the two tampo-printed red-plastic F1 racing-crew figures that
are new to me and the two sub-scale vinyl farmers with yolk and scythe.
The three bottom-center are all the same
make, solid, polystyrene, but unmarked and the Russian dancer is a flat, soft
polyethylene and possibly an addition one of the many sets referencing the old
US comic-flat '100 Doll' set.
Thanks very-much to Chris - next we'll look
at some of the novelties and juvenilia within the above.
