F is for Follow-up - WH Cornelius / Success

This was supposed to be a follow-up to an August (Rack Toy Month) post . . . at the end of August! But things slide here at Small Scale World, and now's as good as any time! I found the catalogue the previous post's images were taken from, and there was a bunch more stuff of interest to Loyal Readers, if their interests are as eclectic as mine!

 

Lots of Gum Ball/Cracker fayre to be seen in these random contents, along with larger novelties, and we've seen most of the smaller stuff in one version or another here, at least once!

Trolls; somewhere there was a mountain of these, and all sorts of people issued them in all sorts of formats and sizes, usually credited in the first instance to Russ Berrie (and no, It wasn't a pun, he was Mr. Russell Berrie), the iconic Trolls, recently trashed by a movie which changed them all into multicolour-skinned, multi-shaped parodies of our little tanned/pink childhood friends.

Another source/set of the small PVC-vinyl animals, and some bendy-smilies, similar to those we've seen here from Henbrandt and messrs' Generic!

Oww! More to find than we have so far found!

Bigger animals, novelty animals and counter-box stuff.

More of the same!

Jon sent us a tailess version of the scorpion only the other day! 

This was actually shot on 35mm I think, by me at one of the first toy-fairs I ever went to, I think I met Paul Morhead there, who I already knew (he'd got me the 'press' ticket), Peter Evens for the first time, and someone else, whose name/face escapes me now?

 

The other three were obviously looking out for 54/60mm stuff or useful scenics for Plastic Warrior Magazine, I had been tasked with the first small-scale Toy Fair report for One Inch Warrior, and managed these, some Blue Box fort sets (the animated cartoon mini's - Cavalry, Knights and Pirates . . . were there Romans?) and a few other bits, I think I mentioned the Balsa boat-kits from Hobbies Annual and possibly the Great Gizmo's dime-store revival stuff, but some of them might have been another year, it was all over 20-years ago, where does it go to, all that time?

U is for Undead, Previously Unaccounted For

We covered most of the commoner rack-toy skeletons a few years ago, over a year or two, with updates on each-year's packing of the most recent sets, but two sets escaped, the WHC/Success issue (which we saw the catalogue image for at the beginning of Rack Toy Month in August just passed) and the Toy Major originals, although we have seen some of them and their later unpainted issues/copies, so let's look at them now!

Obviously they (Toy Major) had to try the new beast, it will definitely look better with two or three of the smaller Game Workshop figures, perhaps a larger band in a howdah, or a padded bench-seat like that Histrorex wagon we looked at back at the start of the year?

 

I had already shot them a while ago with a two-headed dragon, not sure who made it, it might be Imperial, but a lot of this stuff is, very much, still to come!

 

The full set was five figures and a rider, the reissues gave him a base, so there were six 'infantry', basic decoration with a wash of dirty-weathered bones, wood and silver highlights.

 

A couple of the reissues; base marking is the same distinctive TM contract coding, but for a different client/batch, the bases are also noticeably shallower, which can be explained by a seperate tool-insert having less depth.

 

Last year's set from Brian Berke, when they added the witches, still in the card, with the Cornelius set in silver to compare, two Toy Major and the Walgreen on the end of the row for a comparison.

 

The full set of the WH Cornelius/Success/WHC figures, what differentiates them from the more recent Old East Main Co., carded set above, is that the WHC are manufactured in a very soft rubbery polymer.

WHC is for Well Heaving Catalogue

I can't remember the date of this catalogue, but I think it was 2006 or 2007, and while it was a heavy ring-bound tome with about 50 pages, the items likely to appeal to followers of this blog were on only six double-spread pages, and not all of them, so I've isolated the ones which may interest some of you;

Common Airfix clones!

All Hallow's Eve!

I've probably got all of these separately, but need to ID them in the stash and bring them together, common stuff in Charity Shop lots!

Looking at the scorpion, I think this is the set currently being handled by Henbrandt or the US outfit D&D Distributors, so the tool's still out there!

I've got similar, and possibly an unpainted version of this chap, but not this actual one, so he's on the 'wants' list!

Interesting as it looks like a comic-book cover-givaway, but I suspect some wires got crossed, and instead of five different animals (ONE per pack), these sets turned-up at Beano's distributors, which would have made a huge hole in their profits if they'd been given away, so they were cleared through Cornelius to claw back the investment?

I'd like to find one of these too!

Some of the many 'anonymous' civilians!

These are the soft rubberised, sub-scale (45/50mm) versions of the ones originally issued by Toy Major, and now in the Halloween sets from Dollar General, but back in a tan/fawn harder polyethylene. Suggesting that a year or two earlier or later WHC were behind the similar copies of Supreme's knights? An hour later - no, the TM ones are different sculpts!

I have some, but not all, these cowboys & Indians, in fact we may have seen them here in passing when I shot a few boxes in the garage a few years ago, but I don't have all these poses, and I have one or two, not illustrated here, so there may have been up to six of each, or five?

 

I also think I bought some around 1997 or '98, down in Sussex for the Editor of Plastic Warrior, in a fantastic, old-school, newsagent-sweet shop in Uckfield I think, or the next town down? I used to do a lot of milage! Yeah . . . might have been Hailsham, neither look-right on Google Earth, but Hailsham still has the circular road round the town centre, so I suspect . . . ?

I've got these too, one of the first large-scale samples to join the collection after the Blog started back in 2008/9, charity-shop lot, but they were so brittle I never blogged them, some kind of nylon or rayon where the fine detail snaps-off easily! They are large, around 80/90mm (?) and reminded me of the Auburn Rubber Vietnam era figures.

Chinasaurs! Quite nice, 'modern', weathered sculpts.

Another civilian you can now ID!

More Airfix clones and pretty common shite!

But distinctive bases on the Wild West.

Old cereal-premium clones!

This will be a larger model than the one in the Beano sets!

WHC is for Success!

We've probably had that one before! Hay-ho, a couple of items from WH Cornelius, now Playwrite, founded in 1911 and still going strong having seen their friendly rival H Grossman get swallowed-up in the last few years.

A very simple one, being a single copy of an MPC 'ring-hand' figure with a small runner of accessories, but just the thing to shut Junior up when out shopping . . . Until he starts losing the small pieces under the stroller (which was still called a pram in those days!), and probably from the era when it would have been sixpence, switching to Five New P in 1970!

 

This however, despite having quite dated graphics, can't be older than 1993, as that was when the CE mark was introduced? But, it may have been old stock getting a second outing with the addition of a sticker?

 

I intend - one day - to open this, just to construct and photograph the aircraft hangar! I've always dismissed the tank as shit, and back when I was a small-scale only collector, I sent several to recycling or charity! 

But here (with the turret reversed over the rear deck) it actually looks a bit like a British Scorpion, it isn't, it's still just a made-up thingy, but for Garden war-gamers (who don't seem fussy) it would make a usable CVRT! All the contents are common generics (except the card building), with Airfix clones and may well be from more than one source.

PW is for Plastic Warrior Show - 1 of 5 (I think!)

Because Adrian and myself had a bit of a debrief after the show, and a reckoning of what I was buying from him, everything got a bit muddled-up on the bench in the 'Meccano' summer room, so I think the easiest thing to do is deliver them - in lots of ten-images - as I shot them later that night and yesterday. I'll try to credit everyone for any freebies as I go.

And we're starting with a freebie from Graham Apperley, who gave me a tub of bits before the show started,  which was half these and half the next shot. Some of these are marked CHINA, so probably not of great age, and may still be findable in garden centers or gift shops, but they are charming, and continue a tradition from that part of the world which is over a 150 years old. The man in green (who I initially thought was a duck!) is less than 3mm thick and about 5-high!

I have Japanese and Chinese variations in composition, this 'bisque' ceramic, blow-moulded celluloid, harder plastics and lead. The older lead ones often come with long wire-spikes embedded for more permanent placing in plant-pots (Bonsai &etc), those without spikes were for more temporary displays in sand-trays or maybe as cake decorations?

To be honest, I think all the larger people could be from other, older sets (the CHINA set is the very pale, clean material), and some could have some age, even considerable age, the sitting lady in blue for instance? I have the frog in several sizes (in fact didn't Britains or someone do a lead set for their garden range?), while the birds are all new to me and quite exquisite. The larger pieces, including most of the rickshaw are slab-cut and slip-glued.

Also in Graham's tub was a nice Matchbox farmer with his dog still attached, two PVC figurines (which I assume are from the same set of Dark Horse's franchise Hellboy?), a metal horse which I think was Crescent, but might be Charbens or Timpo (for OO railways anyway), we looked at them back at the start of the Blog, along with a buckshee Esci horse and a cake-decoration coach in a lovely toffee & caramel marbling!

These were actually a late-in-the-day purchasing decision, they were on Adrian's stall, and no one had shown much interest in them, and I was chatting with Chris Smith (friend of the Blog!) about something else, and we came round to Eastern European figure-matters and I pointed these out to him suggesting I was tempted, only to promptly talk myself into putting them on the 'settle-up' pile!

The thing is, you should recognise them as it's not long ago we looked at them here, and they are obviously copies of the JSP/Injectapalstic/Culpitt, separate base version, Wild West figures, in a bazaar or rack-toy style. Which could make them French bazaar clones, however they have also the look of some - particularly Hungarian - Eastern European stuff?

They could - of course - also be Injectaplastic late production (or batch, their production was done in Macau), they did move to polyethylene, and there's a nice article (well, I hope it's nice) on that in the queue! So a bit of a mystery, but I've never seen them before?

The archer being absent from my samples of the painted figures, could be the missing 8^th figure, rather than the tee-pee, which [attribution] only raised a question-mark over the fort and other accessories in the carded sets!

These weren't specifically on my 'shopping list', which consisted of things I'd thought of in the last few weeks, but I am always on the lookout for the early version Cherilea swoppets, and Adrian had these on top of a rummage tray which I snaffled as we were setting-up!

I will probably take the webbing from the right-hand figure, and with one of the heads and the rifle, make-up the left-hand figure to 'complete', but there are other bits in their tub, so I may get two whole figures, out of the collected shrapnel?

Theo sent us a nice sample of these a few years ago.

Meanwhile, a day or two before the show, I'd been chatting with Matt Their - who wrote the definitive series of articles on these for Plastic Warrior magazine - and mentioned that if he still had his and was moving them on, I'd be interested, but sadly he'd already sold them.

However, he sold them to Adrian, who found them in his stock later in the day! So they came home with me anyway/after-all! And again I have a few somewhere, the chap with the bayonet and the prone pose complete I think, with some bits, so a session of part-swapping and I should have a decent sample of these, these are the type 1, the type 2 are the previous trio/Theo's and the type 3 were looked at here.

You see, there's a story attached to this card too! Mostly told here at Small Scale World previously . . . I had the choice of this card, or the cows, many years ago, many, more than a decade for sure, and I chose - for reasons I've never really understood - the cows. I had a better stab at an explanation when we looked at them.

Since when I have found a loose silver one of these kneeling-firers, three charging soldiers which I think are (now; must be) Plástico Osul, and now this card, which Adrian thinks he bought from the same dealer . . . probably/almost certainly one of the two I passed-on, on that day, nearly twenty years ago!

A mixed bunch of military hardware, with an Argentinian polystyrene jeep that has a tin-plate screen, on the left, the grey gun at the back is the Star Toys 'German' 25lbr in 'Aussie' jungle configuration, I may have one somewhere, but couldn't remember, so in the pile it went, the full-shield 25lbr in front is another HK rack-toy piece but in a mix of 'ethylene and 'styrene.

Then there's the full Tudor Rose A/T gun train, with the limber lacking a towing hook, but I'm pretty sure I have a good one in the spares box, and enough windscreen parts to fix this otherwise good jeep, while the little jeep in front is lacking wheels, and goes with those diminutive Humber 1-ton's I think?

Adrian Little practically threw this at me, and I could have saved it for a rack-toy month (RTM) post, but seeing as I photographed everything I might as well post it all now! Branded to WH Cornelius's mark Success, they are still going, now under Play Write.

The car is a soft blow-mould with more solid tyres, however the pump looks to be another blow-mould but doesn't give easily, so may be polystyrene,  the age-fogging on the bag (millions of micro-flexings and scratches) make it hard to tell without squeezing it 'till something breaks, which I'm not doing!

Another one Adrian drew to my attention, easily ignored as 'just another Hong Kong copy' of the Britains Herald tee-pee/tipi, I recognised the [French] coats of arms as placing it with the JEM-Norev reissues of RF-René Fisher medievals (which included the Lone Star Richard I copy), there are Flanders and single lion versions of the water-slide transfers too, probably others.

And this is deliberately half-obscured as it will be in a future post and go on the parachute toys page, but is a nice, boxed example of a now-familiar fat chap in a Rocketeer helmet! Comando [sic] is the given Spanish branding, the figure is not offered-up as a military toy specifically either in its sculpting/equipment or colours, but it is - to an extent - on the box-art, with civilian aircraft types dropping khaki troops!

Many thanks to Graham for the tub of goodies and . . . part 2 along shortly!

H is for How They Come In - Adrian

Obviously in the normal course of events, Adrian and I run into each other through the year on the show circuit, and he often has a little bag or tub of goodies for me and/or the blog, and from time to time I even pay for the odd thing!

Those normal events are no more! And may not be again for some time . . . (let that sink in, I wonder if the Governor of Georgia is reading this, the meatheaded fucktard) . . . so I was very grateful to receive what would have been May's 'stuff' in the post yesterday, along with the five red, soft polyethylene 'Captain Video's we looked at a while ago, after I'd shot them on his stall at a Sandown Park Toy Show passim.

Only the one shot, it's a treat before bedtime! The gorilla is rather nice, he's hard polystyrene plastic which is unusual, it might make him french, or something from a tourist trinket the rest of which is long gone; anyone recognise him? Seated figures are Slater's I think, copies of the Merit versions of the Wardie/Mastermodels die-casts.

The Corgi cyclist is relatively common and I have a few somewhere, but the bike is much harder to find and is a tiny delight with die-cast wheels and a body/frame made of a flexible nylon/rayon type; early polypropylene? Accompanied by one of the cracker-toy 1:72nd scale copies of Britains standing cylist and machine.

The little boy with the 'UGH!' protest sign looks like Bart Simson, but probably predates him by a decade or two? I think he may be from a board game, and - from the base - possibly MB, but I'm not tagging it, just a hunch at the moment and he could be an early Simpsons tie-in, they went viral (as the saying is now) almost immediately?. The rear of the sign also has a sticker, reading 'NO WAY'.

Various other railway bits including another of the [penciled-in] Tiny Trojan's, the spacemen/aliens and an Indian who looks to be from the same source, while also looking like a European ('an' surely?) premium, which might be a useful clue? The three circus figures have some of the properties of Supreme, some of the properties of Pioneer and some of the properties of New Ray figures, so some work to be done there, but circus sets aren't thick on the ground so I'll get to the truth!

Favorite dinosaurs, or, at least; very similar to my favorite childhood dino's, but a little fuller-bodied. Finally a Spot On doctor and the seated lady (bottom right) might be Spot On too, but Dinky had similar figures and I think both lots of drivers/passengers were from the hand of Charles Stadden - the dongles should hold the answer?

R is for Royal Guard Set

That's the 1st Royal Regiment of bog-brush wearers to you sir, how very dare you! What is going on in this artwork? Knitted tea-cosies? Manx-cat skin? The 94th Loyal Circus Volunteers - Foot & Mouth?

We've looked at these before, but two more have come in since, both overprinted to Corneilius' WHC-Success label and with three different coloured legs, so worth a punt in Rack Toy Month!

Comparison with various other Hong Kong produced Guards (and one Household Cavalryman and an Infantryman in No.1 Uniform: 'Blues') and Airfix - far left - with a tatty Britains Eyes-Right figure to the far right.

The breakdown of the three common small-scale HK swoppet figure types. That's it; short and sweet!

B is for But is it Giant?

So, are they Giant or aren't they? We'll look at all those Wild West sets in my collection with some element of Giant in them and try to make head-or-tail of them...

The upper set has properly marked Type II figures (you can see straight away the poor quality of them) and reasonably good Smoothies with a Giant-marked wagon, yet is clearly not Giant, nothing about Giant on the packaging (bought in the UK - along way from New York), not typical Giant packaging or layout, this is 19660's salesman's sample-case sell-through and nothing more.

Below we have a similar pack without foot figures but including Giant quality Mexican Smalls (post-Giant versions of this horse can get very poor indeed, these are good though), but again NOT Giant in my opinion, not least because one has been overprinted with W.H. Cornelius's (WHC) 'Success' label! [They were still taking a stand at the January-dated British Toy Show about 6 years ago, so should still be around somewhere, still shipping-in HK rack toys 48 years after they took delivery of the pictured card.]

These are all Giant-marked horses, with Giant type riders and the set to the top left has Type III foot figures,all in typical Giant colours, I would say they are contemporary with Giant, but again not Giant product, just production from the same plant/s supplying Giant Toy Corp Co Inc Ltd of New York, New York NY, NY! But it's just not the same thing...

Note the set bottom-left; yellow Indians on black Smoothies, green Cowboys on brown Mexicans (both large and small).

Here we have Giant product in Giant style packaging with Giant style graphics, but no Giant logo. I believe these are Giant, shipped over to Europe by Giant either from NY, or by pre-arrangement with the HK suppliers - direct from the colony? These are probably worth a premium to a dealer, but not the silly money people were giving for Viking sets a few years ago!

On the left we have a genuine Giant set with the logo and address and the whole nine-yards, but instead of the oh-so-collectable little 'one inch warriors' we have a poxy piracy of a Thomas/Tudor*Rose paddler! Notable for the brittle state of the figures - boats are OK but the figures are shot.

Which brings us to the last one, more brittleness, more Giant in a non-Giant set. It doesn't ever get more Hong Kong than this, two Cowboys and and an Indian on Giant Smoothies supported by a Giant wagon fighting six Giant-marked mediaevals who are - apparently - Crusaders!

Points to note with this mish-mash of a set; the card was never used, the chads for the towing horses are still in place as are all the other cut-outs; the entire contents of the bag were in a heap at the bottom with the shrivelled and crumbled remains of a couple of elastic bands, but nothing had been placed.A Friday afternoon job if ever I recognised one!

Secondly is the brittle wagon; the Coyboys's horse - same colour - is also brittle, while the wheels (different shade of brown) are fine (as is everything else in the set) and can still be bent double, which backs-up my theory re. batches and production problems with over/under or re-cooking leading to the flaws that heat, damp or - mostly - ultra violet then exploit to release the free-radicals that lead to the polymer breaking-down.