O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Civilian & Sports

We reach the penultimate plunder post from the PW show in June, but with several lots from Peter Evans to come, more car-booty/Charity Shop stuff and another Sandown (nice space surprises, for those who get excited about such things), there'll be mixed-lot posts through to Christmas, on-and-off!

 

This was one of the first things I bought 'in the room', and I just couldn't resist it, I already hate it for the space it takes-up, probably why the owner was passing it on, but it has a figure, who - despite literally thousands there - isn't in the unknown seated drivers, passengers & riders zone! Looking at the two brackets either side of the seat, it's missing a 'buggy' canopy, but is otherwise complete . . . with hat?

 

Very similar to the Tudor Rose 'Veteran Cars', in size and material (soft polyethylene), but more of a fictional marque (?) somewhere between TR's 1910 Ford "T" and their 1904 Darracq, with the spare wheel from the former, plonked onto the side of the latter, who's rear cargo space is now blank, but, I'm not enough of a car expert to know for sure, however, it's a lot of fun.

 

Divers and their vessels; I think we've probably seen it all before, and it's nearly always the same pieces missing, but there's always colour-variations to pick-up for the master sample, if nothing else, so whether bought or donated, it'll all have some use.

 

A huge Cake Decoration footballer, in hard polystyrene, a scale up of similar 45/50-mil figures from hong Kong, two of the more recent cereal premiums, and an earlier similar, chap Billy Bremner I think, I forgot to note them!

 

Other sports, including a Starlux bullfighter; a bullfighter got gored to death the other day (oh dear, never mind, it's all part of God's plan!). Four horse riders who are almost certainly from a board game, just finding out which, is the remaining problem! Soft plastic footballer, I have a feeling we've seen a few of this set now, a pair in pink and maybe a green one, so it'll be a premium of some kind, but late, it's 'ethylene, not 'styrene.

 

The rather damaged novelty boxers are polystyrene, and although battered, are a useful addition to a growing sample of the sliding-action toys, probably cracker things, or lucky-bags? And one of quite a few athletics/sports sets, most of which got an outing or two as cereal or washing-powder premiums one side of the channel or the other.

 

Babies, they're all babies, but enough of the Republican Party, here are some toy infants . . . boom-boom! A trio of the very early Torgano figures we've seen before here, but not painted, and the matching schemes, suggests factory/supplier, rather than end-owner?

 

The Hong Kong baby in cot was a common 6d (old pence)/5p pocket-money rack-toy, for dolls houses, or pockets! The big brown baby might be from a Mattel set, but I think it's an older set I do have a sizeable sample of somewhere, but I can never remember who issued them, Topps, was it?

 

Not sure on the jet-black figure, while the smaller brown one is probably Thomas/Poplar? 

 

The wooden flat must have been a big-seller at some Christmas in the 1940's or 50's, as she or her poultry keep coming-in, and often in this good-to-mint condition? In the middle is a Tara Toys teenage Tiny Teeny fashion figurine, a glaring absence on the Blog, and more so as I have a whole bunch of them somewhere, while I don't have a clue on the last one? Early leaning stuff? Modern anyway.

 

A trio of Spot-On, useful grist to the mill!

 

 

Coming on the back of several lots from Adrian and my own scrapings, here a bunch-more farm from Hong Kong, one day it's hoped most of these will have been ID'd to makers, or at least generic-set titles, and that will be by minor details, base type, base marking, even the paint variations. But, you can see here, how they are all different.

 

Speaking of the unknown riders, drivers and pilots! An Airfix motorcyclist, third from the left, and a Tudor Rose tractor-driver/plant operator on the far right, with two unknowns, one possibly a crude firefighter, the other from a large carpet racing-car.

 

Mixed civilians, including a Marx reissue, Britains, Corgi and a Blue Box knock-off.

 

And to finish, another loose lot of the Hong Kong semi-flat cartoony clones of old Märklin railway figures. I hope the orange chap with suitcases, or the red lady next to him is the one I needed to have two of each loose, so in the final, definitive post (we have looked at them more than once), whenever that is, we will have everyone from both sides, with the carded set in one shot!

U is for Up! And Down! The Squway'ah!

This is as close to any Coronation bollocks as I'm going to get, so if you're wetting your kecks at the thought of all those gushing 'Royal Correspondents' on the flickering cod's eye this weekend, this is as good as you're gonna' get here! And Lizzy said Cam'ie could be Queen Consort, not "Queen"! They don't have my allegiance, inheritance-tax evading, promiscuous popinjays . . . and I'm certainly not muttering an oath at the telly on Saturday, like some slavish serf!

 

What's the actual fucking matter with people, find your balls, you sycophantic soap-dolls! We could be a secular democracy with a written constitution holding the government to account and a figure-head president of the type Italy or Germany enjoy, instead people are having paroxysms of wetness, at the inheritance of accumulated wealth, stolen from us!

Aaaannnnd . . . rant over! Well . . . it's all so silly and medieval! I have picked up a few novelty and other ceremonials since Christmas, most in a single purchase from someone thinning his collection, and one or two others, there was a newie in Chris's lot (yes, I thanked him elsewhere the other day, Chris Smith has sent another fantastic parcel of oddments!) but he'll appear separately in future posts, as he's paired with a policeman.

Here we have a pair of resin guards and a clicking-biro with flocked bearskin, a 'white-button' jumping mounted guardsman with two more resins; one cartoony the other a teddy-bear, which is the third iteration of Bear Guardsman I think, so well have to gather them together in a post of their own, one day!

 

He's called a 'Cugglie Wugglie' which is almost as nauseating as your average Royal Correspondent, but some marketeer though it was a good idea, even cuddly-wuddly would be an improvement on that massacre of the language! Branded to EPL, good luck finding anything about them on Google, English Premier League takes all the spots! There's plenty about CW's and plenty about EPL CW's, but nothing about the company?

The big guy seems to be some sort of powered-novelty, with a red light in his chest, but I can't work out how he works, his moving-arms, err, don't, and his flap (which hides a red light) just falls open, so I'll have to unscrew him at some point and look for a battery compartment . . . and possibly a broken spring or catch of some sort?

Two 40mm Spot-On Tommy Spot figures, one fully decorated in matt paints, the other half-decorated in gloss? Not from the Pomeroy stuff, so a mystery as to the reson/origin of the second one? And two Japanese blow-moulded celluloid 'doll' types, I have quite a few of these now, all slightly different, and never pass up on a cheap one!

I think we've seen these before, but they were here and got included in the photo-sesh' round-up! A pooping guardsman dropping a Putin and another novelty Biro!

 

Disney (and Warner) goes to London? Guys? WTF? NO! Dress them as US Marines, by all means, but we don't want you colonising our pomp and circumstance . . . the 'pomp being pomposity, the 'circumstance' being that William the 1st stole all the land, and they've held on to most of it! Another Coronation? It there no-end to them? Perhaps we could book-end monarchy with a pair of Williams' . . . now there's an idea! Yah-Boo, Sucks!

H is for How They Come In - November Sandown Park - Dave Pomeroy

So, I didn't get the Dave Pomeroy stuff I'd meant to in the autumn/early-winter for a bunch of reasons, but I managed to pick it up just before Christmas, probably paid too much for it in the end, but heay! It WAS Christmas and the seller was a nice chap! But I had picked-up a few bits at the last Sandown Park show, which we are looking at now, and we'll look at some other stuff later, but probably much later?

A couple of bits of lead, obviously home-cast, the baby is taken from a set of rubber babies which came in pink or brown and were - I think - premiums of some kind, or early blind-bag stuff? It's all in the files and I can't be arsed to look it up just now! But I have a tub of them somewhere, so a future post can include a comparison with this one.

The Napoleonic head is probably taken from a Historex moulding, and may have been cast for Mr. Pomeroy's own modelling activities, although there is a fair bit of this stuff in the main purchase so he may have been working on a range for Lines (Frog?) or involved with the Airfix 54mm Connoisseur range or Multipose?

Mr. Periwinkle Pennybrix, who, not unsurprisingly was the character-mascot for Tri-Ang's Pennybrix building system, a simplified version of Hestair Kiddicraft's mini-bricks (as stolen by Billund's Lego), with sheet roofing like the contemporary Airfix Betta Builder.

Periwinkle had a couple of pals, Mortimer Mole and Freddie Fox, and above we see a Periwikle which has been part painted, and two Freddies one shot in the same colour as the bases, the other possibly a test shot? In the Pennybrix sets they were all fully painted.

A set of Spot-On's 'Tommy Spot' figures also cast in whitemetal, might be test shots, maybe for further conversion work, there are various cut and filed castings among Pomeroy's stuff, and it's hard to second-guess what was going on, while he was also a hobbyist in his own right, for the fun of it?

From the left we have Tommy's father, the burglar from a police vehicle set, Tommy himself and the Policeman drawing his truncheon and blowing his whistle, both mouldings were also used in a Sweeny* board game by Omnia.

*Cockney rhyming slang - Sweeney Todd  = [the] Flying Squad (of London's Metropolitan Police)

A selection of resin pieces Dave was working on, some we saw last time like the Budda, who might be using a hookah-pipe or a pestle & mortar? I suspect the London Taxi is from a board game, as is - probably - the buglar; was there a non-Sweeny 'Cops & Robbers' type game aimed at younger players?

The Pinocchio is polystyrene, factory-painted and seems to have been removed from a toy/vehicle and may be a rival's finished product . . . Marx Swansea? The policeman looks like those unpainted figures which I suggested were key rings and which subsequently turned-out to be so, but he may be intended to go with the burglar?

Thinking-back; the unpainted key-rings probably came from the same person who gave me the original samples from Dave Pomeroy, shortly before I met him, so that would all tie-in nicely, and suggest Tri-Ang and the Havant Minimodels plant did anonymous contract-manufacturing for third parties? Hardly a surprise - spare capacity, easy cash with no in-house marketing and tax-deductible tooling-costs!

Which leaves the bust? He/she isn't one I recognise from the various cereal-premium sets of the time, so it might be a dolls-house accessory (mantelpiece ornamentation, for the use of), or a counter from a board game - there seems to have been a lot of board-game stuff coming out of Havant?

Now these are a mystery . . . various parts of various characters from Disney's Jungle Book, each of two parts, but not enough parts to do all the characters in each available colour, and not enough parts to do one or two, completely, at all. Also; they're in the style of cereal premiums, but much bigger than you would normally find such things?

There are two Mowgli characters; standing (top left) and walking (bottom middle), with models of King Louis (centre, two colours), Shere Khan walking  (bottom left, three colours (including Bagheera black?) with a painted yellow one), Bagheera sitting (top right), Baloo (three colours, bottom right), Junior (or Hathi Jr., top centre, two colours) and some kind of grinning gopher (middle left, two colours) . . . who is probably meant to be a mongoose? I don't remember him from the movie!

I'm leaving them in the bags for now, as if they turn-out to have been a commercial thing, I'll try to get a few of the missing halves and blog them fully when the sample is better, if not they will still make an interesting post with more imagery another day.

But, on the subject of commercialism; Google just throws up loads of Bullyland/Applause type vinyl-rubber figures, with a Maccy-D's set of kids-meal premiums, as does feeBay, but over there I also tried obvious individuals like Kaa (below) without the 'vintage' to maximise the search results, with no better success, so there's a possibility these were either quite a short-lived thing, or a cancelled thing?

So to Kaa, the snake; where the link to Dave Pomeroy's input is stronger, with a pre-production example which may be handmade? The Malachite-green one is straighter, has finer-etched details and two flat-spots to help him (more recently voiced by a woman!) stand up, while the muddy-jade one seems to have been manipulated with heat; a blow torch or something, and is clearly a stage on the way to the green one.

Imagine a sort of stretched-sprue (runner!) effect, but with heat-proof gloves and a thicker rod of material which seems to have been rolled-together from various recycled polystyrene scraps, with a  thick head-end and thin 'tail', being formed with the application of heat and force! If the green one is the finished article (which it seems to be), it is a single solid molding unlike the two-part press-together 'kits' of the others above.

And, as I say; nothing on Google, nothing on feebleBay and nothing on Cereal Offers, does anyone remember these? Are they or were they common once or are they pretty unique? Were they giveaways/premiums or was there a big-box model kit with simple construction for little hands? They seem (with the exception of the pre-prototype Kaa) to be from [a] professional mould-tool [/s], and any further information would be gratefully received here.

B is for Bits & Bobs

A bitty Post, but it all needs to be got out of Picasa, and as I try to always take photographs as I go, against those occasions when I'm "Damn, no camera" or worse "Damn, forgot to use the camera!" and in the hope that more I rememebr to get it out the less I'll forget if you know what I mean!

The upper shot shows the 'storage lot' of Spot-On polyethylene 1:43rd scale figures we looked at years ago, with the recent acquisitions on the left in bags, the lower shot shows them all sorted together with the colours in a larger tub and all the whites in the old tub. When I get round to it we'll have a better look reflecting the information published elsewhere since they were posted here.

Couple of tubs I shot while sorting last Wednesday, armoured cars and German Wild West/ACW polyethylene, they are already re-buried in the garage, but I will dig out the tin-plate A/C and get it in before the weather gets too bad, the garage is dry and airy (now!) but tin-plate will tend to get surface-rust in damp, foggy or misty conditions. Label on the figures is a bit out, there's Manurba and/or Heinerle in there as well!

Found the box I was looking for! It's contents are the larger inset, with the stuff we've covered in the last couple of years to be seen down the bottom right. Interestingly; I have a set of Sainsbury's party favours from 2010/11 which I think are the same as the Amscan Para-animals Brian sent shelfies of, about a year ago.

The stuff building-up here was not well annotated as I didn't know what would be duplicate, or already have a bag, in the end there were only about six empty bags by the time I'd finished, however I need to go through all my old posts and/or the dongles to get everything labelled-up properly!

I think what I'll do with the parachute toys is start a page like the Khaki Infantry one and they can all go there in their 'family' groups, with the odds, novelty and space ones separated.

This tub (a 35-litre Really Useful Box) is a complete mystery, some of it is the sorted small scale from the 2011 show, as seen here (2nd, 3rd and 4th images) but some of it is totally un-memorable and not remembered, and when I got to the bottom of the tub I found five OO-gauge passenger coaches and a diesel locomotive I have absolutely no recollection of?

There's a wind-up mouse, Snoopy in a wind-up dog-house, a tub of street-furniture, another of broken Timpo horses, the remains of the runner from a set of Cherilea 50mm re-issues, two bags of HK/Blue-Box type farm, a small bag of Britain's Saracen sabres (and a lead torch?), a whole mass of stuff - well; 30-odd liters of it!

It must have been the detritus of a junk lot at SAS in October/Novemeber '11 and the unsorted from Birmingham at the same time the both added to the broken bits from the 'Big Purchase' the year earlier?

I will have fun 'processing' it over Christmas, and getting a spare 35lt tub out of the exercise!

Even as I'm sorting/re-acquainting, I'm also buying the odd bit, four mixed figures on Monday of this week (snow-boarding Polar-bears! Board game?) and this nice card model of a windmill on Tuesday - both purchases from Charity shops.

Credited to a local firm, down the road in Hurst, near Reading; English Village Designs, and looking to be about HO-OO compatible - confirmed as they have an active website here;

www.englishvillagedesigns.co.uk

With the above model made-up, on the landing page! Very much in the home-spun style of Fiddler's Green and with [these] two sheets for .50p; looking to make a nice model, you can't complain!

R is for Racing, to Sandown Park!

So, another weekend, another show, I was very reserved and managed to spend only £11.50p the whole day, but people's generosity contributed to the small but useful haul of plunder I carried away in two little paper, 5"x5", sweet bags!

The queue at twenty-past ten; the rain had been and gone a couple of hours earlier, the sun was shining and British Airways had used their extensive, state of the art computer systems to clear London's skies for to create a quite Saturday morning for the dweller's of the Home Counties - which was nice of them!

I'm not 'suggesting' the rest of the world is laughing at us, but we've lost two wars in the Middle East, fucked-up Libya, left the Egyptians to their own miseries, turned Syria and Iraq into charnel houses, sent the people of Greece to the food banks, watched 10,000 humans drown in the Mediterranean, voted Brexit and now can't get the national flag-carrier into the air, yet in two weeks time dumb-people are going to elect the Tories again, after 40 years of Tory and Tory-lite, 'New' Labour policies, we're so myopic we are incapable of reading the writing on the wall - No, I'm not suggesting the rest of the world is laughing at us - I'm telling you they are!

You don't want more pictures of greying, balding, pot-bellied, middle-aged, white men, most of them in too-casual wear (hey, I'm describing myself, it's no great criticism!), bending over tables of old toys so soon after the last lot, so straight into the plunder I think . . .

. . . with a fiver's worth from Abid's rummage trays; Blue Box knights, one with an original weapon, all with better paint than some of my existing samples, two Marty toys including a painted one, four Spot-On ethylene's, a copy of the Timpo foal, probably by one of the early Brits in that question-mark group of Kentoy-Speedwell-Trojan-Una or VP, a Festival carol-singer and Toyway Indian (sans base!).

An early hard plastic railway figure, possibly Hong Kong, or a margarine premium type thing (?) is the only HO-gauge piece. Kinder (?) Snoopy, 3 Deluxe/Topper ground-crew in the rarer - but more recent - orange, a Blue Box tiger moulding (but probably Red Box issued; as it's airbrushed), a bunch more Bravestarr Galaxy Rangers (I'm trying to build a set of one each of every pose in each colour, and one spare of each pose to paint-up!) and a plug-in/swivel-waist sumo wrestler. Lastly (top right) is a Takara for Hasbro figure which I suspect is a Halo video-game, tie-in figure?

Adrian Little gave me these! The two big Indians are more of the 'maybe Argentinian' ones looked at yesterday which I bought from Adrian at Plastic Warrior two weeks ago, but I left these as they were much larger and had holes in their bases, yet the paint and plastic looked like the others (which I think I posted yesterday - but that was published last week sometime, this is late Monday!), so I thought I'd better get them all together again, and Adrian said "Have them"! The blue remnant of something the green Indian plugged-onto is visible sticking out of in his base!

The barrel; I think it may be a wine barrel from an old tin-plate 'O' gauge wagon (it's wooden under the paint) and that the Castrol ends have been home-added, but as they have been carefully scaled to fit; they could be a more commercial thing? Anyway, now it's posted here it goes-on to my Mother's barrel collection (seen on the Blog passim) so its provenance ceases to worry me! 1:24th racing-car stickers?

Finally these were also a fiver, with several given to me by the seller! I did offer to pay for them but he insisted - I think he likes that I tell him what they all are as he seems to be a Farm Toy specialist? He had a lovely tray of painted Britains animals I had rudely referred to (jokingly) as his 'junk tray' earlier in the day - and he follows the Blog!

I'm never too sure of the athletes, Marx UK also for Kellogg's/Nabisco/Quaker or one of the smaller cereal makers was what I told him, I do sort of know, but you can't remember everything 'on the spot' without all your folders in front of you and some of this stuff was Pepsi or Coke, while the sculpts were common to Marx US I think and in the same cream plastic! It was Kellogg's - I think!

A Gem Indian was a nice find as were the Gemodels Life Guards, while the Gem-looking ice-skater is another Festival-marked piece. We had a chat about these on Black Dragon ages ago, and I'm only more convinced now sure that Gem (George Musgrave) was behind Festival, it's just the how and why, my own feeling was for/as an own or sub-brand of Culpitt? Specifically - the seasonal stuff (Christmas and Easter) and a range of mini-candle holders, and that seems to be the case.

I also spent £1.50 at another stall, but the results were so interesting I'm posting them separately tomorrow.

F is for Firemen

A quick round-up of a few small-scale chaps, but probably not small enough for war-gamers to get excited about I'm afraid. I haven't got them in front of me to measure (this post has been in edit since February!) but they are all in that 35/40mm bracket of figures designed for 1:48, 50 or 64th scale die-cast toy vehicles.

I think these are mostly different generations of Corgi, the figure went in the hydraulic-arm basket of a Simon Snorkel fire appliance with the older ones to the left of the line-up, the yellow-helmeted guy though may be from a piracy, or a redesign of the basket?

The last one (similar but different to the Jimson sculpt) has details (base and base mark) in common with production from both Blue Box and Rado Industries, but could be neither and is probably from a Hong Kong or Japanese (Yonezawa tin-plate snorkel?) copy of the Corgi model, but who by? Both the last figure and yellow-helmet are polyethylene, the rest PVC of different densities.

Dinky went with a hard polystyrene, and their basket guy gets a metal clip which is often missing and the breathing-gear on the second chap from the left really dates this set! These guys were copied in a larger scale by The Lucky Toys for several different fire trucks (AEC, Bedford, US type and Land Rover F/C) and also imported in Clifford Toys branding.

 

Spot-On had a hose guy, also in hard styrene, he normally comes with a heavy plinth base, a slighter oblong one, or - as in my case - neither! A hose could be plugged-on to the back-end of the sculpt, which helped the baseless ones stand-up and two were issued with a meddling kid (Tommy Spot) in each boxed set (Land Rover and fire trailer)

F is for Follow-up Fellows from Spot On

As with the Vitacup the other day, figures come in in dribs and drabs, occasionally allowing for a new article so further to the Original Post these are mostly new poses or new colours of Spot-On figures for die-cast toy vehicles...

The two green ones and the school teacher are straight duplicates, and the guitarist and two top right have appeared before in alternative colours, the rest are additions. These were looked at in some detail in a recent issue (155 spring/summer number) issue of Plastic Warrior, and I'll come back to them in detail when I've tracked down the last few!

H is for Havent

The Minimodels plant in Havent, near Portsmouth is responsible for lots of the figures that turn up in mixed lots of small scale and the hand of Stadden with his angular folds is everywhere in the sculpting. These are mostly more game playing pieces, but there is a Spot-On 'Tommy-spot' figure or two as well.

Some of these and some of the Wild West and - forthcoming - Spanish Gold figures were saved from the factory by either Brian Knight (artist on the Lettraset/Patterson Blick rub-down booklets) or David Pomeroy, all came into my possession before I met Brian, so I don't know who saved what, but thanks to both of them for having the foresight.

Triang's game Helmsman provides the little yacht with a plug-on base at the back, the divers are from the 'Underwater Battle from Thunderball' James Bond tie-in board game, with all air-tanks missing, the painted one is from an actual game, the other two are factory samples.

The 40mm Guardsman is from the Rolls Royce by Spot-On, one of six on the grey plinth-like bases the Tommy-spot figures had. The two cartoon characters obviously come from a board game aimed at younger players, I don't recognise the characters, not do I know from where in Lines/Mettoy/Corgi or Triang/Spot-on/Pedigreee empire the game will be found.

The other figure with the similar base I did find in a Corgi (or Spot-on?) catalogue and I had his name and everything, but it's lost in the depths of a shipping container!! Although he looks like a Diddy-man, he was in fact a mascot for whichever catalogue or product it was? His sloppy shoe-painting points to an outpainters guide/master rather than an issued piece [See comments for all three names].

The Sweeny was a popular TV series with a spin-off movie or two here in the UK, and these are from the Omnia game of the same name. Taken from the Tommy-spot range, but given sensible bases there are two each of the photographed figures in a full set.

Unpainted Subbuteo, possibly just undecorated samples, but might be from a board game, the player on a conventional base pointing to the latter, but there was a 'sub' warming up in one of the accessory sets I think?

It's almost certainly through Waddington's and their connection to Subbuteo and the factory at Tunbridge Wells that Stadden came to do all this sculpting for the Havent works. He was already known for his sports trophy figures as much as his military work.

Couple of scans of old film-camera shots I took years ago giving a different angle to the Triang/Almark figures I posted the other night.

Next I'll look at the Spaniards...

S is for Spot-On

It's been a while since these starred in 1" Warrior, and then they were in black & white, so I thought I'd chuck some up here in colour. Not much to say, they were issued to accompany the 1:42 scale die-cast cars from Triang under the Spot-On label. Sold typically as three figures (and the odd accessory) to a card, with a larger boxed (?) roadwork's set.

They are classic early British, sometimes chalky, basic factory paint-jobbed, 30mm softish polyethylene (ICI Alcathene?) figures, mostly of civilian subjects, and dressed to be contemporary - 1958/1969'ish. They were replaced by hard styrene-plastic Tommy Spot figures in the 70's which I'll look at another day when I cover Minimodels and the Havent factory's output.

Top; Soldiers and a Sailor, there was an Officer in Sam Brown to keep the two squadies in order as they perused the shelves of Woolworth's in their lunchtime, but sailor-boy seems to have been a one-off.

Bottom-left; Two paint versions of the 'Postie', as the blue is an less-common colour he may have come with the Sailor and the Traffic Policeman (below), but not necessarily.

Bottom-right; Three variations of 'Old man in jacket with soft hat and walking-stick' he was sometimes issued with two naughty boys to take for a walk/be annoyed by?! Sometimes there were two old men and one boy to the card.

Top; The professionals: University Professor, Priest and Doctor, all - only ever seen in black.

Bottom-left; The three naughty boys, one throwing a stone, one scarpering in a guilty fashion and the middle one is supposed to be sticking his tongue out! It was two of these that Granddad above had to keep amused in the absence of the parents!

Bottom-right; The two smaller children dancing to a street musicians ditty.

In common with all figure collecting, women are a bit thin on the ground, but in Spot-On's defense they had more than most as a percentage of the total, top we see three versions of...farmhand/milkmaid? With the nurse; below left and 'Girlfriend' and 'Woman with dog' to the right.

It should be noted that all these 'Titles' are my own invention, as far as I know they were never given titles or names with the exception of the road-menders (below) who appear as drawings on the back of a Spot-On catalogue with code numbers. Missing from the fairer sex are a lady shopping with handbag and a WPC, that I know of?

Top shows the building trades, left-to-right; 'Chippie', 'Brickie', site foreman's 'Boy' and the Decorator.

Below are three mixed figures; Bus conductor, 'Boyfriend' and Traffic Policeman.

Motor mechanics from two sets, there's a missing pose from the upper set, and these come in various colours but more commonly white.

The figures I collectively call the street traders...

Top; Fruit & Veg. Barrow-boy (actually a middle-aged man!), there should be some sort of leg arrangement or props, that fit into the dent under the apples, but as a small part it was always going to go missing! Anyone got an image or link to a complete one?

Bottom-left; The 'Street Band, and an advertising 'Sandwich-board' wearer, there should be an accordion player and beggar to go with the band, while the hording carrier probably goes with other figures, the paper seller and another?

Bottom-right; The Flower-seller, again missing little bits, which would seem to be 6 bunches of flowers/plant pots to plug into the holes in the display steps.

[I have a spare set of wheels for the barrow, if anyone has a spare prop]

Two sets of three Road Menders, with the codes for the larger 'Road Construction Set', missing is L221/2 a man hefting a moulded-on spade. The inset carded set (which has lost its spade and compressor-drill through the lose cover-film) shows how sometimes the sets are more than one colour, while my two samples were clearly both all-one-colour sets. With 8 poses and various accessories (plank, spade, drill, brazier) the contents of the three figure sets does vary.

The sitting guy is shown as reading a newspaper in the catalogue images; however I've never seen one and the others are different enough from the original artwork to suggest he is the numbered figure from the larger boxed set.

Also note that the packaging is almost the same as the Almark 20mm WWII sets, both plastic British and metal Germans. Indeed the Germans also came as tear-off cards, part of a larger hanger while the WD series just had the sticky vacuumed cover-film. I wouldn't say any of these were Stadden designs, but it's a further link between Almark and Lines

The other busy bodies...

Top-left; Baker's delivery boy, Coalman and Bin-man.

Top-right; Paper-seller from the street traders card.

Bottom-left; Laundry-man and Removals man.

Bottom-right; Short, fat Butcher who's clearly been spending some time divvying-up his produce with Batman & Robin (see Dalek article above!), Milk man with two paint treatments and a deliveryman who I like to think has a large box of chocolates, but as he won't ever take the lid off; I just live in hope!