T is for Two - Taffy & Thomas!

Except it's only the one gun, and it's a Poplar Plastic Product, but we're returning for a third/fourth (?) time to the Poplar-Taffy-Thomas 5.5" gun, and hopefully sorting out the difference between them, which I highlighted here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/05/t-is-for-two-taffy-toy-and-twin.html

. . . a while-ago now! And worth a quick revision, so you can see what's being said here!

 

I actually shot this at PW's show I think, and had the opportunity to look at it more closely at Sandown Park the other week, and while it's a nice set on any level, it's also an explanation of the two types we looked at back in 2017, where a piece or two were missing, compounding the mystery then!

The [now] obvious screw-thread on the end of the barrel of the Thomas (?)/Poplar gun actually takes a pretty substantial moulding; the 'Flash Eliminator', which needs to be substantial, as it houses a firing cap, and needs to hold and direct the mini-explosion into the back of a 'shell'.

 

  

As per the instructions!

We sorted the Thomas (et al) Jeep/Jeep-driver out with the help of Chris Smith, around the same time, and here's another, pulling the under-scale (for the Jeep) artillery piece, note the hole for the plug-in's, one of which we saw in that post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/p-is-for-problem-solved.html

Not terribly clear, but we have seen them in a plunder-post, I think, and I know I have some in the 'unknown ammo' zone, so we'll return to this subject again, just to cross the final t's and dot the i's! They look like micro' space-ships, little squat domes with four shallow fins toward the 'skirt' end, they obviously go over the heavy flash eliminator, and are propelled by the small charge of the cap.

Sometimes as kids, when you were firing-off a roll of 200 caps at your brother/mate, from behind cover with your little die-cast six-shooter near your face, you would get the odd bit hit you in the face, and - whether bits of powder or bits of paper - they stung, as they were/are coming off a mini explosion, and the power was/is there, if only in miniature!

Box end; and thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.

"Carefull, or you'll have somebodies eye out with that"

Is probably, now, the true reason for the second, simplified Taffy version!

T is for Thomas? Taffy? . . . Poplar! (PW8)

Hard to tell, harder to know, the last time we looked at a set of these they were Taffy Toys, but no one (in the 'old guard') seems to know whether Taffy were a Thomas subsidiary or a Poplar sub-brand, given similar generational differences between the PVC and Polyethylene space and pirate figures originally from Thomas, I would veer toward these being Poplar/Taffy, but can't rule out Thomas/Taffy! Or - with no maker on the box - someone else!

The box! Seen elsewhere on the Internet recently (in passing) the box artwork and contents/tray have a lot in common with the Taffy set already looked at here at Small Scale World, but as we also saw here; the similarities with Kleeware's SPG and Taffy's Tank, two gun versions and etc . . . mean there was such cross-pollination between these early plastic toy soldier makers (through copying, pirating and mould-share/licensing) it's impossible to fully call.

The gun and trailer ('troop carrier') are the same as the known-Taffy version, the Land Rover however (complete with plug-in wing-mirrors) has been previously seen (in civilian colours) as a 'believed to be' Tudor Rose beach-toy - or at least I think it has; I can't find it on the Blog, or on the dongles, but I know I shot it and it's not waiting in Picasa? I probably gave it a Kleeware/Lipkin and co., caveat anywhoos!

Now, I think the SPG (seen previously) appears in the US as Banner, Banner bought some of the rump of Bergan Toys (Beton) and some (or all?) Thomas (US)'s moulds, while over here Tudor Rose bought O M Kleeman, so the fact that all these similar AFV's have so many parents is explainable, if not clear, especially after the various mould-shares are taken into account!

The figures, in the set - as seen - the advertised 7th figure is a second officer, one wonders if it might have been meant to be the driver/stretcher bearer or the stretcher case? With neither fitting the Land-Rover in the same way they fit the - more common - Jeep; maybe they were subsequently excluded?

Note also with two light-sources; the plastic colour/shade variation.

More shots; the radio-operator is obviously damaged. I did put these on the Khaki Infantry page; after some umming and ahrring, but they don't really belong there, that page is for the direct piracies of the Britains and Timpo sets and their derivatives (mortar crews etc...), while these are cruder copies of Herald's finest, and I don't use 'crude' in the derisory meaning of the word, but to differentiate 'copy' from 'piracy'.

Cheers also to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this interesting set at PlasticWarrior's show in May just-gone.

P is for Problem Solved!

Chris Smith sent a follow-up to the recent Taffy 'box-ticker', with a practical suggestion/solution to the question of why no bearers have been seen for the Taffy (et al?) stretcher-case.

He (Chris) has found that the quite long (and bulb-ended) carrying-handles on the Taffy stretcher actually clip rather nicely to the . . . err . . . 'portly' waists of the jeep driver/mule or donkey & motorcycle rider from Thomas Toys and Poplar Plastics/Poplar Playthings.

Not only do I think he's on to something, I think in the absence of any other likely candidates; it's probably the answer! Indeed, if you turn the left-hand chap 180° they could do a half reasonable job of carrying (waddling!) the casualty somewhere.

Chris also supplied a shot of the Jeep the figure sometimes comes with, and checking the original post there was one in the Taffy boxed-set, but not the two necessary to make up a stretcher 'team', but he could be posed lifting the stretcher on or off the Jeep and the other thing Chris has found is that the heavy leg-stands on the underside of the stretcher clip into the back of the jeep, so my original 'where's the bearers?' question has been comprehensively put to bed twice!

1 - It clips into the back of the jeep, and if you remove the plug-in weapon/equipment you can get two-cases on each Jeep.

2 - It can be carried by the sitting/riding figure, and presumably it would work with the soft-capped, hippy-cop biker and the Mexican donkey-hand?

T is for Taffy's Troops

This is a real box-ticker, I've posted them before, Mr. Carrick sent the Blog a slightly different group which appeared here and on the Khaki Infantry page and so it's really just get them in the tag-list as I photographed them while the others were out of the box.

Not a complete set and slightly mysterious in that they may well be a mere brand-mark for one of the other 'likely suspects' in early British toy production, possibly from the Islyn Thomas stable (Thomas, Kleeware, Poplar, Tudor Rose and Pyro [for the accompanying AFV's] are all either connected or 'in the frame')* and clicking Taffy in the tags will bring-up more, not much more; but a bit more!

I think I posted this as well, when I got it, and mentioned the apparent remains of paint on the new one's face, so a real box-ticker, still: new images and do you think he's being prepared as the charge for a very large cannon-ball? He's also about 8-foot-six! I've never seen bearers for this item.

* Re. the rambling bracketed note above, the AFV's (M55 SPG and a Patton type, along with the jeep and trailer) were also late polyethylene Kleeware items, from US moulds, probably as mould-share, some then copied in the UK (the 5.5-inch Gun post), however the figures (and the gun?) are UK additions to the line, the figures having the anachronistic EM2 bullpup assault rifle common to the era's other toy soldiers (see posts passim), the gun also being British equipment.

F is for Follow-ups - Combat Soldiers

Technically I'm a 'toy soldier collector', but it's a long time since the collection was more than 50% military, if it ever was, and even if you include all the cowboys & Indians, armed spacemen, the sailors and airmen, it probably won't get far over the halfway point! But I try to deliver a decent number of green 'army men' here, and these are follow-ups to they!

I've known for some time that my Taffy Toys stretcher has damaged carrying-handles, so I was very pleased to pick this up at Sandown the other day. We've seen them before more than once and with Brian Carrick's also on the Khaki Infantry page, they've had a lot of column inches here for 8 or so poses of odd-scale, odd era figures, with non-service weapons!

Also of interest with the new acquisition - he has clear signs of paint? The fleck of green on the pillow came off the base of one of the Timpo Brit's he was bagged with for a few days - I suspect, but the flesh seems to be all his, what's left of it! Given the number of other companies [possibly] in the frame with Taffy, could one of them have had a painted issue? For instance those TN Thomas space figures have a painted PVC version; alongside unpainted PVC and polyethylene issues and it's not 'firm' that they all came from Thomas?

We've seen the Chap Mai Land-Rover quite recently, with the figure frame Blogger a while ago, but I picked-up a few spare figures so shot them with the 'rover, and then looking for something else found this . . .

  . . . which is the whole set, beautifully shown-off in a box-opening type video, but she can't resist playing with them, para-drop AFV's! And THAT's obviously what the funny thing under the Lanny is - that fouls the carpet - it's for attaching the para-drop frame and parachute! I've got to find the whole set haven't I? . . . God knows where I'll stash a two-foot-by-three-foot polypropylene Hercules!

I believe it was sold here as an unbranded generic through both Argos and Index (before the latter folded), but may have been branded to either of the stores or Chap Mai (but not in the catalogues) and will have had different packaging and/or branding in different markets.

Argo are now selling the Chinook version under their Chad Valley branding.

I had one of those anonymous eMails from an anonymous fuckwit with the misfortune to be born fuckwitted who suggested I had used the same few figures to pretend I had all three sets of the DFC-MTC  Mini Military Playpack's I posted on the Hong Kong small scale, Giant or Not Blog back in Rack Toy Month, he said "I guess you think your [sic] clever and you tricked folks", so - fuckwitted one - actually I think I'm clever 'cos I can guess which 'folksy' side of the pond you reside! 

Dude - if I've got all three boxes and all three playmats, I don't think it actually matters how many of the figures I might have in your addled brainbox. Wotafuckwit.

To add weight to his conspiracy theorising; there may well be a difference in the figure count of one set (or two sets) compared to the three published posts as I found a crawling figure on the floor a few weeks later and added it to the Battle for Berlin set, as A) it only had one prone figure, B) it only has one vehicle and might have an extra figure and C) I didn't want to upset the count of the other two, when B has some validity!

And I can't be arsed to check my own posts to further 'trick' folks! Sometimes you do have to wonder why you bother . . .

 . . . anyway; while I was at it - I did a better colour comparison!

Also now on the Gaint... Blog, but shown here in last year's RTM was the Wing Lung post , and here's the missing larger scale base mark, it's not quite as neat as my 'from memory' graphics, but it's not too far removed!

T is for Two - Taffy Toy and Twin

When I said on Thursday (Friday's post) that I'd post the gun I thought I'd posted, I wasn't considering there might be a reason for my having not posted it in the first place! Anyway, we'll look at them as I said I'd post them and it adds to the on-blog Taffy archive!

Taken on the 24th February 2007 (just over a decade ago!) in poor light with my nearly-new, first-ever, digital camera (the first shot is DSFC0220), I still hadn't worked out how to set Macro, didn't remember the flash and seem to have lost any pictures I took of the whole of the other gun!

This is cropped out of the original on the old Taffy post and turned to give a vague idea of what the Taffy 5.5 Inch Howitzer looks like, a staple of the late war and used through to the 1970's by the British Army before being replaced by the 105 of Falkland's fame.

But there is another one out there and I can't call it a copy or clone, pirate or usurper; as it may have come first, indeed the fact that the Taffy one is non-firing would suggest it's the interloper? The 'twin' is the field-grey'ish one in each shot.

The muzzle is obviously different, the wheels are a little smaller (only a mm or so, all-round) with a deeper tread pattern, there are changes to the breech between them and the loading-tray. Otherwise there is little to tell the two apart. Given the similarities between the two AFV's - Taffy's Patton/Pershing and Kleeware's M55 SPG - which I mentioned the other day (and which ended-up with Tudor Rose in primary colours), one wonders if there is a connection between the two manufacturers and whether the firing-gun is a Kleeware piece?

To be honest, the wheels (of both) bear more relationship to Poplar's oeuvre, but while that makes sense - location/name wise - it takes u away from the similar firing mechanisms the other day! There was a lot of cross-pollination back then, and some interbreeding?

T is for TN Thomas Toys

Brian Carrick sent me some images, which he suggested should go on the Khaki Infantry page above. Although I'd not put them there, I suggested I would do, as the officer is a clear take from the Britains pose.

But I've umm'd and ahh'd about it for a bit of a few days, and I'm not going to! I had already posted the figures (albeit rather fuzzy 'archive' images) as Taffy Toys a while ago...back at the beginning of the blog, and then posted my few examples also as 'Taffy', not so long ago, and so wasn't going to put them on the Khaki Infantry page for both that reason and: that they are not the direct copies which the page is aimed toward.

However I'm always grateful for contributions, especially from someone with their own excellent Blog and if I post them here they can be linked to the original Taffy posts through the tag list, which can't be done from the Khaki Infantry page. Although hot-links will tie them all together anyway!

Also, Brian has reminded me that they were originally issued by Thomas Toys (TNT; TN Thomas), the Taffy thing being an apparently un-PC (by today's sensitivities) marketing/branding exercise rather than a separate entity?

The figures have failed to get on to the Khaki Infantry page because while several of them are sculpted 'from' or after the Britains figures, they are at the same time new sculpts, rather than direct piracies, and they are 70mm giants Like the Lilo figures, I suspect they were aimed as much at sea-side holiday makers as more general 'high-street' toy sales.

There seem to have been six foot poses, all bearing some resemblance to the Britain's figures, the officer being the obvious one with his lean forwards, pointing left arm, and service Webley revolver held in the slacker right hand, but the standing firer and Radio operator are also close to the better, smaller figures from Herald.

The kneeling firer and grenade thrower are further-off, and while the running guy is clearly based on the Britains pose, equally he's quite different in attitude (and carrying quite a good take on a GPMG). The EM2's are very crude sculpts and look at the firing pose adopted by the kneeling chap: presumably blind in the right eye - he's crossed his head over the rifle and is about to blind the other one with the infantry sight! His standing mate is about to do similar damage to his cheek...even bullpups have some recoil, especially at 7.something mm's calibre. One has to wonder if that awful sculptor from Cherilea had some hand in these figure's development?

The seated Jeep driver pose is Thomas's original motorcyclist sculpt from the US arm, originally PVC and also used with a sombrero as a donkey-rider (and with cap, as a police patrolman?). A stretcher-case seems to make-up the count of 8; I've never seen bearers, and the handles are probably too short, however it has substantial feet or rests, which may help clip it to the jeep or trailer in some way?

B is for British - British Made, British Infantry

I haven't included Lone*Star in this round-up of modern or modernish British Infantry as my sample, while being of a fair size is to say the least a real mess, with a lot of repaints from the big purchase of last autumn, or hardly any paint's from evilBay or charity shop/car-boot buys.

So these are the other British made figures of the 19500's and 1960's, half of which will be re-blogged over on the Airfix page when I get round to spending some time on that page!

Upper image shows the Taffy Toys (probably part of the Thomas/Poplar Plastics group) figures from the big play set we looked at some time ago, they are 65/70 mil, and about as big as they get in British plastics after the Marx 6" figures. As far as I know this is all the poses, but there may have been others in other sets, or even sold loose? The EM-2 is again in evidence; see my note in the Crescent post below this one.

Lower shot shows the Cherilea 60mm paratroops, not all eight poses, and in various styles, this set ran for a while and comes in various single and mottled plastic colours and with various paint treatments, this picture gives only a hint of what's out there to be collected in this set.

Airfix chucked out two modern sets toward or right at the end of their true reign. 7 poses per set the British infantry are the earlier of the two and are a nice set, I looked quite like these guys during my final training exercise at Depot Lichfield, but; firstly, I remember the Karl Gustave 84mm being larger (and heavier!) and we all used the rifle sling all the time, a serious omission. The only exception being in Northern Ireland where troops tied the butt-end of the sling round the wrist to prevent the loss of the weapon in a riot situation.

The SAS were only issued in the smaller 14 figure boxes right at the very end, and while all sorts of otherwise intelligent people will tell you all sorts of urban myths in their desperation to convince themselves they MIGHT have existed in the HO/OO range, for at least one day...there is no evidence to suggest they were anything more than a dream in the marketing departments eye, transferred to paper in one catalogue as the company missed its arrester-hook and disappeared headfirst over its own flight deck to reappear as a marketable trademark/brand for the half dozen or so companies since associated with the Airfix name!

T is for Taffy Toys

I must apologise for the quality of the images in tonight's second post, however these were taken with my old camera in very poor light, but I thought a bit of large scale would go down well for a change!

Now believed to be part of the Thomas Toys group, 'Taffy' is considered quite derogatory in these PC days! Thomas were covered in one of Plastic Warrior's 'Specials', see the website (top right) and eMail Paul for details of availability.

These figures turn up all the time, the vehicles are a lot rarer, and I only know of two boxes in existence, this being one of them. The trailer - in particular - is a much copied/licenced/borrowed design.

The box has that classic 'Technicolour' stirring stuff of 1950's Boys Own annuals and the like.

The tank is a generic M46/47, and the ammo is strapped to the engine deck! Having nearly melted my boots hitching a ride on a CVRW fox once, I worry for the crew of this warhorse...?