S is for Sandown Park - Combat Troops

We're clearing some stuff out this week aren't we? Mostly khaki chaps in this post, the actual 'army men' from the September Sandown Park visit, and we've seen some of them before here, but this is how they come in!

 

Three from Replicants, I think I have two already, but the executioner is new to the stash, if memory serves, two of them (sentry and sailor) are PW show exclusives, so it may be that all three were, although, after their show debut's, they usually go on to the Weston's site for wider distribution.

 

Seen before, and to be found on the WWI American page of the Airfix figure Blog, here's the Montaplex 'New Zealanders', with German Obergefreiter's rank badges! Utilising the Airfix Americans and the baby kangaroo from one of the zoo sets, although without the adult from the other set present, is it just a wallaby?

 

Three composition TAG's, including a new identification (Free French ally, 2nd figure from the left), and yet another Cossack painting (seven found, seven paint ways . . . and three poses?), and an African soldier, who I think might be . . .

 

. . . Solido Belge? I know they made some composition in that period just after the war, and while the mark is not actually readable, I think with a little wishful thinking, it could be Solido Belge!

 

Charbens 'Great White Hunter' reissues, not an urgency, and not really toy soldiers at all! But in a dense polymer and new colour (presumably from the Marlborough/Dorset era), so worth grabbing for both completion and a wider-ranging sample.

 

All seen before - 

Speedwell German, Cherilea UN 'dancing loon' and some Britains Swoppet parts!

 

From the subjects, I assume French production, at first glance I thought they were chalkwear, but they are a pretty standard 'olin' composition of wood flour and linseed oil with wire weapons, two have bases, but from the styling I think they are all the same maker, I just don't know who . . . or whom?!

 

I think these might be Acedo (Domage et Cie), but I'm not sure and need to check, the MG gunner needs a bit of a mend, but I'd do it obviously, nothing worse than faking it, and there's so much fake stuff around now.

S is for Sandown Park - Wild West

Picked up a few Wild West bits at the last Sandown Park shenanigans, nothing rare or valuable, but always things of interest, grist to the mill, gap fillers and collection enhancers/improvers - so let's have a look at the plunder!

 

While the Reamsa stuff in Sobres seems to be copies, I think these are original Comansi supplied product, the 60mm backwoodsman/pioneer/trapper being the same softish silicon-rubber as the late Thunderbirds/OVNI stuff, while the 50mm Lucky Luke is one of their sculpts too? Their relevance to the Battle of Manila being a moot point, but typical of these cheap, pocket-money, Montaplex novelty envelopes!

 

Rather damaged, but new colours for these 'styrene large-scale versions of the SIKU manufactured Euro-premiums - carried here, in the UK, by Betterwear, as a smaller range, in soft ''ethylene . The yellow being the same shade as the British issues, and both will join the dun, fawn and bronze, painted and unpainted sample, slowly gathering in a bag somewhere!

 

 

So clean I suspect another of the East German production, like the military chap we looked at a while ago, but I'm not clued-up enough on Elastolin composition to be sure, a nice clean figure though, along with a huge (100mm+) Hong Kong copy of something Spanish, I feel? [Lafredo - see comments]

A pair of HK copies of Britains (one Herald, one Swoppet), a speedwell/Trojan type and what I suspect is a Hilco 'from hollowcast', it's similar to a couple of the Johillco metal sculpts, and turns up quite often?

 

Mixed cowboy lot, I don't remember where these all came from (with previous and next two image contents), there must have been a mixed bag of them, possibly from Isaak, or Martin? Two Lone Star, a Crescent, a Supreme and three to be ID'd, along with a wagon driver Charbens saloon figure (holding cards).

 

Mid-quality swoppet knock-offs!

 

One of the Crescent  (horse) Timpo 'solid' (rider) ACW copies from Hong Kong, carried by Ideal in the US, more generic over here, this one has been repainted by the owner, from the look of it!

M is for Mundi Toys . . . Dunkin, Montaplex et al!

A proper return to one of my favourite sets of small scale, technically intermediate scale at 30-35mm, toy soldiers, the 'Dunkin' bubble-gum premiums, and while I will show you all of them, I think I may still have to find one?

We looked at my then, small collection, near the beginning of the Blog, 2010, and at the time it was popularly considered that Dunkin were the primary source, with the other sources being secondary.

 

But I now suspect that Mundi Toys might have been the first/major user, with the various gum-manufacturers dipping-in, in turn, among which we know Mundi were themselves one, Dunkin was another, Americana probably had a pop (although I have yet to find an envelope for them), GC (General de Cofiteria S.A.) 'Boomer' and Wikö among others, as and when there was available production-time from the supplier (who may or may not have been Mundi or Dunkin), or a gap in their own promotions schedules.

Above, we see the Mundi bubblegum 'Sobre' on the right (Soldados en Accion - 'Soldiers in Action'), containing one piece of Tyler's chicle and one figure. On the left is a blister-set with a pair of vehicles and the Dunkin pack (Hazañas y Combates - lit: "Feats and Combats") in the middle. The Mundi are different colours, my - mint - envelopes contained yellow Americans, while you can see the blister has a number of metallic-blue ones, the figures we are looking at below are probably all Dunkin.

I actually had some trouble, shooting these, so we have two sets of photographs for both the Americans and the Russians! Here they all are on the carpet, which they rather shrank into, and I had to play with the light and contrast to render them viewable! 20 poses/sculpts, common to all three nations, for a total of 60 unique figurines.

 

Above are the grunts, I thought I'd sorted them into riflemen and tommy-gunners, but I notice there's a tommy-gunner hiding in the top row, so it's four and eight, not five and seven! Below them is an obvious officer, the command/support trio and some heavy weapons with the third grenade thrower.

 

I've seen these - rather ridiculously - credited to Airfix as the influencer! However I think the author was just looking for an excuse to get them in his tome! In point of fact they are mostly after MPC (54mm and 60mm) and the Marx 54mm, if you need a second source, but it's MPC poses and 'after MPC' in the main. The grenade thrower without weapon, though, is ALL Britains, as is the being-shot character! It's true, the kneeling radio operator looks vaguely like the Airfix HO/OO paratrooper one, but he also looks like a reverse sculpt of an early (1950's) kit figure!

 

The Russians, there's only 19 of the 20 present here, with the sentry and guard dog absent, we've seen him before, in green, and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of red-ones in the storage sample, now. Last time I divided them into summer (tunics and helmets) and winter (greatcoats and fur-hats) uniforms, this time I grouped them thematically as the US troops.

 

With five standing about, five fighting for their lives, five moving-up/advancing, and five miscellaneous! Being red plastic, they were the worst to photograph, and I ended-up in the bathroom, shooting them against the mirror, where - of course - the point of focus shifted to 'imaginary space'!

 

Now, I've said before, when I first encountered these, it was with a couple of the diggers, and I thought they might be Afrika Korps, but I notice Dunkin have them as Chinese, with the Mundi sobre envelope showing a sketch which is more British-Commonwealth? I guess this lot are your flexible friend! I tend to think of them as Japanese, especially now I have the swordsmen - top row, 2 & 5.

 

Although without 20 Germans, and in an odd scale/size, this set has always been a bit problematical, and it's their charm rather than their usefulness which has me staying loyal to them. If they are Chinese, then we could assume we are looking at the three main powers in the Cold War, which makes more sense?

The rest of the 'stuff', clockwise from the top left. The missing Jap'/Chinese pose is a prone shooter, he looks familiar-enough for me to think I may have one somewhere, but, equally, he may be the still-elusive 60th pose for my samples?

 

Colour variations on the Russians in red, when we looked at them last time, there were a bunch of green ones which may well have been Mundi issues, or Montaplex, who did all these, in various colours, some quite whacky, but whether from the original tools or as lower-grade copies I don't know yet.

 

Then the missing guard-dog from the above line-ups, and another colour-variation shot. Below them are the typical base marks which may or may not be mould-release pin-marks, and are something in common with lots of the output of Olà (ice cream premiums), Raja and others (in addition to those already named above), some of which output is believed to have come from the Heimo works; I don't know why?

 

Bottom right has the recipient of some wargamers snack sticker, rather than a national army identity I suspect, but whether it was a clementine, mandarin, satsuma or tangerine is currently unknown; intensive research, however, remains ongoing! Finally, slight colour variants of the US Machine-gunner.

 

There is still a Mundi Toys (they exhibited at the New York toy fair in September), but they are SRL, not SA, and are somewhere in Bolivia nor do they seem to carry this kind of stuff.

 

And this is one of those posts where everyone has given me a few figures over the years in addition to my own finds, so thanks, alphabetically to; Graham Apperley, John Begg, Andreas Dittmann, Peter Evans, Tony Harrington, Mike Harding, Adrian Little, Gareth Morgan, Trevor Rudkin and Chris Smith.

A is for Addendum

Well, I don't think it's technically a 'Follow-up' and it's not really a 'More On' (far too much input from morons this week as it is!), so addendum will do! Just a couple of pieces from Picasa which add to things said in other posts this week.

We saw these in a show-report back in 2018, when I bought a few from the seller at the Plastic Warrior show in Wilton/Twickenham, SE London, now as it happens when I got them home, they'd been mucked about with, so I don't have all the correct contents of all the boxes, and while I said - at the time - they'd get their own post, they never did!

But I'd forgotten I'd shot the rest, on the seller's stall, in case the five boxes weren't 'all of them', so here's a perfect example of the Italian output of Food Premium style novelty mini-kits. If I recall correctly, they had no branding; packaging or product.

 

But they are not R&L, they are not Rubenstein, they are not Tatra, they are not DS Plastics, or Siku, or Manurba, they are Italian. I think a fair few of us are familiar with the CGGC motorcycles (and the lovely figures - some of which would end-up in Kinder-eggs a decade later), also from Italy, and I have seen lovely N-gauge train kits in smaller boxes (something like 'Eppi', but I forget the actual name), one of which is very similar to the R&L animal wagon.

 

The frames are relatively unique and assemble into a fancy base after you've made up the kit, and they are manufactured in a dense polymer which is a nylon/rayon type or possibly a hybrid propylene of some kind, sold two kits to a box.

While this is the rather poor rendition of what I suspect is meant to be a Douglas F4D Skyray, from Montaplex of Spain, it's in a different league, being soft polyethylene, chunky and simplified, it just reminds us of the breadth covered by these mini-kits as an oeuvre!

It was sold in larger multi-sets with three other kits, in little single envelopes (early iteration, I think) and as an accompaniment/accessory to some of the figure sets, pretty randomly in the latter case!

R is for Roman Bums

Look, we need to get this straight now . . . every time we look at the output of this strange half-resurrected Montaplex, half resin-pirate, we will make a joke out of their name, because they want us to! They didn't call their track-racing system Bumslot for nothing you know; I'm sure there's at least one British ex-pat' in there somewhere!

I think I intended these to go on the Airfix Romans page, where they are still an obvious absentee, but I seem to have shot them without any comparisons to the aforementioned UK-made figures, so we're having them here, now, and I'll re-shoot some comparisons for the other page another day!

Very crude copies, they get round-tipped (Republican?) shields with Imperial-era uniforms, so . . . Spanish mercenaries? And most of the Airfix figures were copied, but - mercifully - not the running-waving-pilum guy, who was quite idiotic enough first time round, although, the marching chap hasn't been cloned either and he was one of the more useful ones, along with the Persian archer type.

The chariot has had a complete redesign in Ed Roth's workshops and now looks more like a field conversion of a Celt's muck-cart! And it has been reduced from 4hp to one, often the way with those custom jobbies, lots of noise and a fancy paint-job, but as soon as you join 'Run to the Sun' they burst into flames . . . some summer weekends that A30 South looks like a technicolor, smoldering, retreat from Moscow!

There was a 'big box' set as well, but I think the vessel-kit was bought in, I haven't studied it but would imagine it's probably from Academy rather than the older Aurora or the Heller/Směr ones? The same single runner of figures won't provide much in the way of useful crew though and the transfer sheet (there's another in the first image) looks like the bastard-child of Revo and Games Workshop . . . on acid!

Bum Slot is for Montaplex!

We might have had that title before but I think it's worth having again! I was looking for something to make it a thematic day and thought about the smallies, but we've seen them once or twice over the years, except the Atlantic set (which was the other obvious absentee in this morning's post, but I should leave something for you-know-who to dust-sit with), when I found these whilst looking for something else in the garage!

BuM got hold of the old Montaplex sobres (surprise [bags]) moulds back in the 1990's, or - at least - they got hold of enough surplus product to start churning-out boxed sets, I'm not sure as to the full history; I think it's all been on Akala's Kiosko Blog, but my Spanish isn't good enough!

Anyway, this is two ex-Montaplex sets in one box; British Commandos (ex-Airfix) and an original-design (?) submarine.

The commandos are unremarkable, the two grappling-iron guys being notably poor short-shots, but the ladder is a whacky thing and possibly more dangerous to the user than climbing the enemy cliff-face naked except for a pair of mittens and some bedroom slippers!

It also ironic that Airfix-Heller were churning out the same old set (having apparently 'lost' not one but two new tools in the previous decade!), at the same time, in the same shit-brown polymer!

But this? Now . . . hold on a sec' . . . over here we had to wait for Birthday's or Christmas for pretty-much anything in the past, but the Spanish were getting these brought back by Mum or Dad, uncle or granny . . . with the morning paper!

It's a whole submarine! OK, it's a bit simplistic and there don't appear to be any holes for the two missile-things, but how much fun could you have over breakfast with this dropping out of a little envelope . . . it's a WHOLE SUBMARINE . . . for pennies!

L is for Lucky - A Lucky-bag from Lucky Dip not Mr. Lucky, Luckily that's Lucky!

Or; I is for I Knew I'd Seen Them Somewhere!

It's a Lucky Bag! An Olde Fashioned Lucky Bag 'Sweets and Toys for Boys' from Mr. Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe, contents put-together or supplied by Lucky Dip of Nottingham (parent - Crème d'Or).

I don't know if this is actually the one I thought I'd seen when I last mentioned it (err . . . a 'while ago'?), I thought that was a more colourful one, like the original Mr Lucky bags, but finding one's better than finding none, and it means they are still out there! Google revealed several including Mr. Lucky, now Mr. Sweets!

Quite a downbeat artwork compared to past lucky-bags, and particularly the aforementioned Mr. Lucky lucky-bags, but well in keeping with the corporate image of this mall and airport type 'upmarket' or 'precinct' sweet shop, and not cheap at four-quid, so I won't be buying another for a while, if only to give the supply-chain system time to change the contents' line-up!

The contents are disappointing, but only in so far as adult figure collectors go; no figures - no knock-off wrestlers, He-Man clones, Grandizer- or Transformer-erasers or dinosaurs, no Yolanda Ninja Turtles, ant-soldiers or Russ Berrie key-ring trolls . . . no poopa-troopers!

But, there are four 99p items - all from Henbrandt - and two 50p lollipops (which were bloody-nice!), along with the de rigueur 'activity book'! It's just nice to know that kids today can still enjoy a timeless little treat - the UK's version of a Spanish Sobre or the German Wundertüten.

And, let's be hopeful - Henbrandt do carry small dinosaurs, paratrooping-aliens, wild animals, frogs, and other figural toys, within their 99p lines (we've looked at some here), so they may turn-up in another tranche . . . I'll try again at Christmas; the chap in the shop said they shift loads then - kids buying them for each other, parents buying them for stocking-fillers, seniors buying them to 'have something in' when people go visiting and turn-up suddenly with three bored kids in tow!

By the way; 'lucky' is one of those words that by the time you've written it a dozen or so times, starts to look a bit weird; you think you must be misspelling it!

C is for Cavemen - 3: Questions and Queries

I know we've had one question-time today, but here's another! Cavemen are a periphery interest, I certainly don't go looking for them, but they come in one way or another, and these are toward the small-scales, so were grabbed from mixed rummage trays or came in with mixed lots over many years.

I'm guessing these are Spanish (so the dismal-duo might have something to say about them!) or Portuguese, and Sobres of some kind, but they could be bubble-gum, ice-cream or cereal premiums?

The bases are reminiscent of early Pech or Jecsan, with the irregular clipped-corner rock-look, which is not that surprising when you realise they are near-copies of the larger Jecsan set! These are around 35mm, I don't know how many are in the full set but I know I like them; particularly the colours!

I would put money (not a lot, but some!) on these being Paul Lamond, if only for their similarities to the Pirate Ron Chiasson ID'd years ago. I have looked for them but only a cursory look and how many potential search-terms are there from Jungle through to Conan via dinosaurs!

Definitely a board-game though, all the boxes are ticked; standard colours, 40-odd millimetres, disc-base and a dense ethylene or polypropylene, anyone got the game?

This is a real mystery, I have two or three now (one may be lost between the coming together collections) so it can't be that rare, each came singly, with nothing that looked like it might 'belong', so first guess is it's from some play-set which was otherwise a big plastic fold'y-out'y thing for die-casts?

He/she or it may be a monkey or ape, a caveman or cave-child, a baby Wookie or a yeti in a helmet and seems to have been designed to clip-into something and swing about? Anyone recognise the creature? The plastic is similar to some Corgi stuff - the later, non-PVC stuff.

Whether he/she or it's an ape, an ape-man or a pilot in furry overalls, he/she or it was around long-enough, or was popular-enough (as a toy) to be pirated by someone - the plastic is similar in style/colour to Rado copies of Airfix 8th Army or Russian Infantry?

The other is more obviously a soldier or parachutist, seems to be of a similar design or from a similar toy and is in a hard polystyrene, over plated with a chromium-finish. There are small dinks in either hand in-line with the 'bar', so he probably clipped into some kind of swing, or frame that allowed for a 'swinging-action'?

P is for Prehistoric Animals

And rather anachronistic, cave-dwelling, humanoid types! Each of which is marked HONG KONG on the handle/shaft of his axe, spear or club. Kent Sprecher credits some to Tim-Mee via either Sinclair gas stations in the 'States or Cracker Jack, but all mine were sourced 'over here'.

I picked this little lot (right-hand image) up over many years in one's and two's and a couple of larger lots that came with the plants, I'm pretty sure that at some point they were issued with the plants (copies of Marx Miniature Masterpiece accessories) but it may be a weird co-incidence? And with the paint and HK mark must be assumed to be Tim Mee copies - a safe assumption!

From the artwork I think we are looking at - clockwise from; Labradoodle Rex, Penguinman, Dimetropuma and Kuthunkacow! They certainly didn't come with plants when issued in the little header-carded (left-hand image), rack toy Prehistoric Animals poly-bags, of which I have . . .

. . . two examples, the contents of each are separately shown in the two images above. You get the three poses of caveman (around 32mm) and six dinosaurs/pterosaurs drawn from a known list of seven sculpts (Kent shows nine from Tim Mee), but with each set adding a new sculpt to my loose sample - there may be more?

They reappear as slightly smaller (30mm), gum-ball machine's capsule prizes (upper row) or Christmas cracker novelties, unmarked, unpainted and with sub-scale animals including something more mammalian (a unicorn-gazelle-goat!) for the cavemen to hunt!

While the lower row are smaller-copies still (28mm) and were all bought in Germany over a couple of years, so were probably wundertüten, or something similar from elsewhere in Europe; sobres/kiosko (Spain), bazaar (France)?

These were bough at the same times as the five smaller ones and from the same sellers, but may not/probably don’t go with them, the figures are a soft polyethylene (as the other two types were), while these animals are a harder polypropylene or ABS type material.

Finished to a better standard and with finer engraving, they are larger as well; the plesiosaur is around 60mm, but I suspect they are some kind of premium, or perhaps an early blind-bag collectable? The dimetrodon though is a distorted moulding, probably from too-early removal from the tool, causing shrinkage-fattening and a blister.

F is for Follow-up - Army Men

This is actually two follow-ups and a fuck-up! It could wait 'till Rack Toy Month, but some of it's been hanging around for a while now, and it's in the queue!

Firstly; courtesy of Peter Evans and one of the lots he sent in the Autumn, these are a follow-up to a post I can't find! Which was imaged on the hoof 9and clearly not tagged properly!), losing the little bag on the way so here really for completeness - and I know it's not everyone's 'cup of tea' (I'll be the first to call is shite!) but it all deserves full coverage if it's figural. The above is the outer of the 'lucky bag' style blind-bag from Poundland.

Colouring-book and crayons and the little inner-bag with a set of the figures, minty-mint . . . contents - as pointed out last time are not what's on the packaging artwork"

Sticker set, writing this up at home I can't remember what I posted last time so apologies if there's too much duplication with the above link, but that's how the cookie crumbles here sometimes!

This is a follow-up to the more recent HTI post. I was in the local toy shop the other day (I asked about the Phidal books - "No!") for some liquid-polystyrene glue and noticed they had several sizes of set with the figures from the set we looked at a while ago, but mostly larger contents and with accessories, or different header-card graphics, but they were pricey so I made a mental note (I almost certainly would have forgotten!) and then this lot turned up a couple of days later in Blue Cross for 99p!

Info' on the base points to 2014 for this batch and instead of green/grey, the mix is green/yellow, specifically that odd yellow of late-war German AFV's base-coat! I keep one of everything for the 'archive' and the rest goes back to charity. The grey flag (another identical one turned-up in the bottom of the bag) is almost certainly from some other toy.

Comparing to the previous post on these we can add poses to the previous base marking differentials, and I've since seen a set with the old 'My Toy/Time For Toys' packaging in the full Halsall logo, where the figures are in a washy 'Airfix' desert-sand and charcoal-grey.

Here there are four distinct batches, with the two greens having a different base-marking distribution, the yellows just pale and dark-shade runs. As with set 3349 (link above) there is only one figure with the full Quality Assurance/tracking information printed on the base, in the whole (possibly incomplete) sample.

This is the fuck-up! It should have been in the four-part overview which overran RTM in August, but it had been picked-up by accident and transferred to the Airfix 'pending' section (American Paratroops 1:32!), so missed it's slot, I now can't remember anything about it and as they have all been put away, it's just get-it-off-Picasa time!

I'm pretty sure they are either Poundland or the now-gone 99p Stores from the last four or five years, may be connected to some of the (Bely?) figures Mr Berke sent us and which were in those four posts, and indeed as one colour, may be in the posts anyway, but I can't be arsed (away from RTM, '28' in Part II?) to do the legwork!

I also think they may have come from several sources, Peter Evans and/or Brian Carrick, my own purchase and oddment bags-from charity shops? They are poorer versions of the 'lucky-bag' figures above (but missing the Matchbox officer and pulling in figure-poses from other sources), it's a pose/colour shot; end-of!