O is for On the Subject Of . . .

. . . evilBay providing answers to questions we didn't know we needed to be asking, I picked this up for a lot less than it should have, or could have gone for, and it would seem to be new to Blog and Hobby, but not the Internet, obviously, as it's been on feeBay!

 

I present to you, the Tom Smith 'Surprise Space Rocket'!

 

The 'surprise' being; it doesn't look much like a space rocket! The artwork however, does show a common design from the 1960's, looking like a Thunderbird Missile (real, not Gerry Anderson!) sans the four booster rockets, similar to the Bloodhound we know from our Airfix or Frog kits, but lacking the two side engines, the Thunderbird was the Army air-defence version of an RAF Bloodhound, having approximately half the range. It also has the lines of a Bomarc (Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center [sic]) CIM-10 (IM-99) Missile. All of which dates this cardboard tube, nicely to the mid-to-late 1950's

 

Quite a circus 'Big Top' look to the back of the tube, and this is clearly not aimed at either Christmas, Guy Fawkes Night (5th November), or Halloween (which was a nothing-event, here in the UK in the 1950's), but rather, like the giant 'party-popper' it appears to be, aimed at any-old reason to celebrate, any-old time!

  

And therefore, might have been available for some time, in this configuration, or other graphics, do you remember anything like this? I think you'd have to be over 70? 65 maybe?

Clockwise from top left; instructions; silver-paper covered card disc, and two shots of the 'pin' which launches the 'rocket'. I have had chats with Adrian Little and Paul Morehead about this, and rather than get their words/points wrong, I'll précis my thoughts on it, as they have evolved in conversion with both, and on studying the object/rocket!

 

When I first saw it, I assumed it would have a bang, from a black-powder charge, like the snaps in Christmas crackers; remember, Tom Smith also produced indoor fireworks; and that the force of the explosion, would propel the contents of the tube, through the silver paper, like a dog (or a clown) jumping through a paper-sealed hoop at the circus!

 

Also, the green 'gaffer tape' (always known as 'army tape' in our household, during my childhood), or carpet-tape, is something often associated with military pyrotechnics, such as thunderflashes, 'Schermuly' parachute flares* and trip-wire pot-flares, as companies like Pains Wessex tend to use the tape in the construction of such devices, often to cover the final triggering assembly from accidental use!

 

But, there's no pyrotechnic warning, as you will find on some Christmas cracker boxes, even those by Tom Smith, on all indoor fireworks, and would expect to find, on something more powerful, such as this 'bomb'. While the "Hold Away From Face" message could just be about flying stuff, rather than explosive stuff?

 

Also, the cuts in the paper-foil cover, which are to help it sit over the heavy particle-board/card base, would also allow it to fly-off? While the silver disc actually seems to have hard-card underneath, not likely to allow things to fly through?

 

So my suspicion, now, is that actually, the outer tube, telescopes off an inner tube, sprung-loaded, rather than pyrotechnic, and that the hats and novelties fall away from the 'rocket' as 'exhaust gases', landing near the launcher where they can all be found, rather than flying up into the air, over an explosion, to be scattered to the four winds, or at least behind all the furniture?

 

It remains to be seen, and, if it is only a spring, it might have been used and re-set, meaning the contents could be unoriginal crud?** The hope, obviously, is that it's all original and unused, and it WILL be tried, at the annual Christmas Breakfast, and hopefully videoed? However, last year's Christmas Breakfast was in the first week of March, so don't get too excited, it's only October now, so it may be up to six-months before the mystery is fully solved!

 

However, when you shake it (I have!), it's clear the items are more substantial that the average Christmas cracker prize/novelties, like rings or charms, so the hope is we may have something figural, even the astronauts or spacemen linked to crackers, but that's probably wishful thinking, with a selection of nail-clippers, whistles, jig-toys and novelty-shaped combs to look forward to? Again - only time will tell!

 

 

* Not 'shamoolie' as the Tabloids prefer, it's named after the inventor, ffs!!

 

** I have studied it with the jeweller's loupe, and it seems to be a substantial bed-spring type thing of about 2.5mm diameter steel-wire, and about three-and-a-half turns, attached to a thick piece of particle board above, closer to chip-board than the PCB-type card of the base, so I think a) it's not been reset and b) it will blow the whole silver disc out and spray stuff everywhere, only time will tell, and it will be told here!

F is for Flat Figures, Finger-Fancies, Fables, Fripperies, Flibbertigibbets and Fine Family Favourites!

If not actually an annual, at least an occasionally perennial, here at small scale world, is the look at Christmas Crackers and their little novelty playthings, gifts and joke items, this year it's two sets of mini or tree crackers, which tend to contain the smallest of gifts, and a few similar items which have come in.

This set, which I think must have been a bog-standard Tom Smith set, was held over from last year, as I ran out of time! In fact, most of the stuff held-over from last year is still waiting, and won't be looked at agin for at least 10 months! We also had these as kids, they replaced the earlier set (with the micro ships), when they finally began to fall apart.

 

The little decorative paper stickers of trees and candles were to be found on the larger 'family' sized crackers, and ran for many years I think, no hat at this size, but you do get a joke and a little polystyrene novelty charm.

 

I found them in a Charity shop, two packs of ten, and promptly worked my way through them, and the results were pretty meagre, but make a good sample of one brand's product at this budget level. They are harking back to the earlier metal ones which we recently saw here as cake-inclusions, and themes are common, locks and keys, guns/weapons, boots and strangely, skulls!

This lot was found at the first Sandown park of the year, which was September's due to clashes with the May one, and we've seen all these before I think, so for now just a group shot, but as I've said before, we will look at them all again properly in a year or so. Mostly polyethylene, the thimble is in a frangible polystyrene, while the jig-puzzle ball maybe a polypropylene?

 

Another set of mini tree-crackers, another Charity Shop purchase, and these were made for Safeway stores (bought by Morrisons in 2004) and are oozing that kitsch 1980's feel, people had (some poor miserable souls still have) whole bathroom tile suites of this silver/gold, sometimes with red stripes or patches of grey or black, the 80's were the start of The Decline!

 

 

But the toys are a little more interesting, being the same as you might find in the cheaper, full family-sized crackers, they would have been next to on the shelf. And more tropes with the mini-ship, ring, joke nail and hair-clip. While three of the figural toys (Troll, Angel musician and cat charm), which got me on to cracker toys, as a collection extension, in the first place! And all soft 'ethylene, unlike the harder 'styrene ones above.

 

This came in recently, I can't remember if it was something from Adrian, Peter or the late Michael Hyde, or even a large charity lot I got a while back, but it's clearly the same kind of cheapo-cracker fayre, and consists of a dollar loot-bag! It's soft polyethylene, which has probably saved its loop!

 

 

An evilBay (which has just locked me out again!) lot of similar items, this time showing musical instruments, animals and the sort of 'good luck' symbols which are also found rendered as traditional tattoos! The hedgehog seems to have more age than the others, being a much finer-etched sculpt. they look to be hard polystyrene, but it's hard to be sure.

I is for International Rescue

Shot these on Mercator Trading's stall at Sandown the other day, purely as eye-candy. we looked at them years ago, but they were sitting there, so why not? The character figures from Thunderbirds, who were added to the existing Ovni ('UFO') line from Comansi at some point.

 

Bones and the Boss are obvious, but as far as the brothers go, it's a case of what colour you paint the sash, I think! There may be some clues for the more dedicated aficionados, but I'm only a casual, childhood-nostalgia type fan!

Seen with a couple of the smaller cereal premiums from Kellogg's, which also got issued by Tom Smith in a set of Thunderbirds Christmas crackers. You can find them in a more stable polyethylene, but these are more of the soft PVC ones, which were kicking about in large numbers a few years ago, and tend to get squished in the pack.

Home painted, we have Bones and Lady Penelope, although different sizes, both sets get across the woodenness of puppets quite well I think? That's it, just box-ticking some eye-candy!

T is for Tail Ends

Well, more card Buses! You may notice that these are from P-Z, and think that's it, but you'd be wrong, I forgot to check N and O, I think, so there may be one or two lurking there, while a slew of them are in the queue from across the pond, although some have travelled there from here! And I've only been showing you those which fit A4 storage slip-cases, so there's still a box of bigger stuff to come at some point in the future!

Another giveaway from a Bus company, this time Strathclyde's Buses, and printed by Gordon Petrie of Stonehaven, a simple design, but with nice floor-pan reinforcing, and a complicated fold under the front windscreen!

 

I also have a full-sized (well, original?) sticker for the driver-operator's window, so I could start a fake Strathclyde Buses service . . .all I need to do is buy a bus, paint it to match the defunct company's buses, make sure it has a 'slot' and drive around collecting fares until I've got enough to drive-off into the sunset - flawless plan!

 

 

The other card of this two card model is behind, and there's no clue as to who supplied these to Richard Kohnstam (RiKo), who were importers/wholesalers to the hobby for many years, but it will be some small garage operation. It's complicated/detailed enough to be a Micromodels reprint?

Another chocolate freebie, from Suchard / Milka in Switzerland, this time, where it seems to have contained a stack of milk-chocolate 'tiles'? Simple construction, like most of the 'container' buses we've seen.

The windows are unfortunately filled with postcard images of the Swiss alps, which rather detracts from the usefullness of the otherwise well renderd and colourful card bus model!

A couple more corporate freebies, these for Tayside, and no other details visible, so might be in-house or printed by a third party, nice colour-scheme, for a regional bus/coach firm, I thought, all ruined by the Tories of course!

 

Thornton's toffee box! Nice inserts if you can be faffed with the folding, which I couldn't for the photo-shoot, and yes, I've since cut my nails! the wheels stick down, which must have made stacking them a bit of a nightmare? But they may have folded/packed them, per-order, behind the counter?

A very complicated one from Tramalan, with a decorate-it-yourself motif going-on there! Hardly surprising it's a tram, given the publisher's name, and a Blackpool one with two pantograph gantries and something else delicate looking - I'm not a tram expert!

 

 

As mentioned above, some of the card buses are too-big, or too-built to be in the folders, so I suspect the bus for this little diorama is in the big box. But we have small scale card-flat figures, which is the best yet! And coming at us from West Midlands Travel.

Tom Smith, cracker toy, Whimsey from Wade and Thunderbird figure purveyors to the masses for many years, also did indoor fireworks, which came in a box, that looks like a bus, bargain!

I love indoor fireworks, apart from the fact they leave the house stinking like a war-zone and your saliva tasting like rendered-down sugar-candy, and the best one is the volcano, which churns-out a grey rubber-worm, feet-long, if it works right!

Welcome Break! When we were kids, the few and far between Motorway Service stations were an excitement akin to the Starship Enterprise, now they are mostly run-down and/or hideously expensive places to stop at, for a snooze or to empty your bladder. And only the overly paid, or overly stupid actually purchase anything there!

 

It is probably the second-biggest single lie in Britain after the efficacy of TV detector vans, that somehow these sites, which were suually built on compulsorily-purchased green-belt/agricultural land and get their deliveries straight off the road-network should somehow be the most expensive petrol and retail outlets in the land? Yet, no one with any power or influence has ever questioned this obvious anomaly, of capitalist greed, writ large!

 

Go phuq yourselves Welcome Break, go phuq yourselves with your phuqing over-priced, ersatz happy-meal, from your ersatz phuqing 'pantry'; Julie? Schmoolie! In a green bus - which I have to admit - does have a nicely printed underside, da' phuq anyway, greedy bastards!

M is for More to Come . . .

. . . but we've sort of sorted some of it out, for now!

This wasn't in the queue a few days ago! I bought a nice (well; tatty!) set of Shackman novelty pencil sharpeners from New York a few weeks a ago, which were going on the back burner, but Chris Smith posted some nice thematic shots on the Friend's of Plastic Warrior Facebook group earlier this week, which lead to a flurry of activity there and here at SSW Towers, leading to this post!

First a quick look at that Shackman set; it's been mucked about with - I suspect end-of-line/ex-shop stock, put back in a box and sold as a set when it's meant to be broken down in a small stores? There's an extra Beefeater and the Indian is a suspect inclusion, but a nice sculpt in a civilian role as hunter rather than war-path warrior.

Quick confirmation of the empirical evidence for the doubting Thomas's and make-it-up-as-you-go-along-brigade, Shackman were a jobber specialising in the novelty/tourist trinket end of the market (a bit like HCF here in the UK), I'm also collecting their novelty-matchbox pencil sharpeners with 'Mocherette' in them (I know, I know, I'll get round to it, but probably next year now - most of the photo's are done!), although, further back (1950's), they also imported some of the Erikson/Authenticast copy sets from Japan as more mainstream playthings.

If the boxes were sold as sets, I suspect the chap here would have been one (?) of the missing figures, the pair in the two central shots are Chris's, the sharpener on the left is mine now and the other pair on the end are an Internet couple! Tyrolean dancers who could be German or North Italian . . . Austrian or Eastern/Alpine Swiss!

Back to the set, and they all (including the Indian) have plug-feet and separate bases, which are glued to a standard pencil sharpener which I remember being included in cheap Christmas crackers, and have seen on gum-ball vending machine cards. The Indian however plugs straight into a flimsier pencil-honeing device.

Chris's however are integrally moulded with base and figure as single moulding, not two pieces. Now I already knew - and you may remember - we had seen the Beefeater before here, when by coincidence Chris and Adrian both gave me examples a few days apart, neither of them are marked, but a policeman we will look at in a minute has a small KT on his base in an oval cartouche reminiscent of the aforementioned HCF's little gold stickers?

My dancer has a fuller set of marking (as do the 'Internet pair' in the second image) and a stock/cavity number/code; 315, while Chris's lady (who's base has been home-painted/re-painted white over the original balck) is coded 673, her partner 674 and lacking her ® mark? The sharpeners, meanwhile, can be found with or without a pretty bog-standard HONG KONG.

The earlier Beefeaters, along with the stationary policeman from the boxed set have a disc-shaped blemish which people (including me) would more normally, and erroneously describe or assume (never assume huh?!!! Heeheehee!) as/to be mould-release pin-marks, but which are clearly blanking plates or pins to hide the smaller mark of the policeman.

In the conversation at FoPW, Chris had managed to find another figure on-line, which reminded me that Brain Wagstaff had sent two to this Blog ages ago, as they were clearly influenced by the Commonwealth/Van Brode/Codec 'dancing doll' sets. The 'Brain pair' having no mark on either side of the integral base, while the Internet one - also having an integral base - on a pencil sharpener; neatly tying all the above (bar the Indian?) to the same series.

Meanwhile, or actually closer to the Beefeaters and the start of this little odyssey, Chris had spotted a policeman on feebleBay ages ago, back near the start of Lockdown One, and I thanked him for the heads up and watched it half-heartedly for several months (it was really too pricey), now . . . I can't remember if the price came down or the seller listed something else to combine . . . but in the end I did get it in the autumn/recently.

Here we see pencil-sharpener and non-pencil sharpener versions of both Beefeater and policeman together, along with another Internet shot of a new sharpener colour - new to this article mind; many colours dropped out of Christmas crackers!

By this time ( a couple of days ago)n it had dawned on me that the Highlander was also rather familiar, as we saw him here at Small Scale World not that long ago - green sharpener! Now, a point of note; it would appear one is attempting Black Watch (left, 'new' one) and the other the Gordon's (right, 'old' one). It may be the out-painter was just running out of yellow on the brush, but it seems to be a deliberately different shade of green and has not been applied to the haggis-bag or the lower reaches of the pipe's webbing?

Which leaves us with the Indian from the boxed set and a conclusion to formulate!

The Indian, is lovely, I don't know if he's based on a donor, most of these seem pretty unique - only one of Brian's is a direct copy - as sculpts, and the hunting with raptor is quite a German/East German pose (if you know what I mean), however, he is plugged into a thin-walled base which has a different sharpener, glued in, and it - the sharpener - has a different blade design.

The differences outweigh the similarities; plug-in feet, gloss-paint in a stab-and-hope style, so for now he must remain a question-mark, there are other sources of figural, novelty, pencil-sharpener as we saw not that long ago here.

But I suspect he is from the same source, but the thin-walled case for the sharpener was easily damaged, and the extra glue-step of a separate sharpener was more expensive, so he's likely an earlier variant.

The conclusion is that with the possible exception of the Indian, these are all from one, evolving series, from the same source, and differing either for reasons of increasing the ease of production, over time, or to comply with caveats from different clients, such as Shackman, from contract to contract.

They can be plug-in, or moulded with a base, which may or may not subsequently end-up glued to a pencil sharpener which is also available separately elsewhere. A variety of marks or no-marking can be found on the separate bases, the integral bases and/or the sharpener-units.

There must be more 'world dancers', possibly another Indian or two, and matching quantities of cowboy, still to be found, maybe a Welsh lady and etcetera. I would also put a fiver, at least a fiver, on HCF being found to have shipped some of them into UK, and dare to say Tom Smith was in-there as well?

The only likely "KT" I can come up with is Kitoys Traders Co., who were making/marketing mini-deform, pull-back-and-go, 'hot hatch' novelty cars in the late 1980's from Connaught Road, West, Hong Kong and may have been responsible for something like these figures a decade or two earlier, if they were around then?

Despite the question-mark I will put them in the tags, as I have one of the little cars to Blog - one day! And many thanks to Chris Smith for several involvements in this 'Discovery', plus the photos, Bill B for the Kitoys reference and to Brian Wagstaff for the other images.

Small Scale World - weaving magic, with lots of help . . . and more to come!

R is for Rainbow Warriors

The Quaker Oats 'Sugar Puffs' breakfast cereal premiums and Tom Smith Christmas cracker novelty Gladiators!

We've done them here before (link), there are comparisons on the Airfix Romans' page (link) and I helped Dave over at PSR with images years ago (link), but I really like them, keep collecting them and will return to them from time to time because they ARE eye-candy!

One of each; just to remind you of the set's contents. You get/got five foot figures and three mounted for an eight-count, probably in one tool with a three or six-cavity second-tool for the horses?Sorry; only realized just now it's the old image - new one next time!

Several of the foot figures make useful auxiliaries/allies (the three at the back) while the chap with a round shield looks more Persian or Asiatic. The other guy makes a half-useful slave-driver on-board ship, but is otherwise the duffer in the foot-figures!

With the mounted, only the one in the center is worth collecting for 'army-building' (and steppes/Franks/Goths rather than Rome?) the others having obvious gladiator armour (left) or a ridiculous shield for a rider - on the right, not that they can't all be thrown together with a mix of Airfix, Atalantic, Revell (Elastolin sculpts) and Giant (Marx/Britains) with newer stuff, to make Spartacus's mob!

I took this shot ages ago, and have forgotten why I numbered some of them! But I'll have a stab at most of the notes.

1 - Definitely a Tom Smith colour as that's how ours came in when we were kids, it's a sort of fawn-grey.

2 - This is a metallic green of the sort more usually associated with hard-plastic space-stuff from a decade or so earlier.

3 - Pfffh . . . I obviously had something world-changing to say about 3, once!

4 - This is the same colour as the late Airfix cream figures, and it is cream, not yellow! This is not to say Airfix was involved in their production, but that if two companies were involved, they were probably getting their granules from the same wholesaler.

5 - As per 3, can't remember what I was going to say, semi-translucent . . . which it is? The only pink one? Can't remember!

Ah yes - The Ford Mustang, available in every colour except black! Just the one sculpt for the horses! The whole point of the rainbow-shots is to allow you to consider the origins for yourself; my own feeling is that the only firm that produced the same wide range of colours was Hilco, or at a push Cherilea, both ending-up connected anyway?

But if the Quaker issue were the commoner, primary-colours, and if Tom Smith got access to the tool and farmed it out to a contract manufacture (Tatra or similar?) years later, even the colour range might not be much of a clue?

The obvious gladiator pose is the Retiarius, and the pile behind are the miss-moulded short-shots, the four in front are those with passable tridents, although - as you can see - the first on the left is not fully-formed. I don't often use the term, but finding a decent trident is 'rare' in the true use of the term!

And kids would not necessarily have known he has been posed as having just thrown his net? On a plus side, given both the size of the figures and when they were made, is that he's a very good likeness for a sub-Saharan African with cropped 'afro' hair, a heavy brow and full-lips.

The bases are very Airfix!

P is for Princess Polymer's Perfect Pumpkin Pimped for Prince Plastic's Posh Prom!

"And be back before midnight young lady!"

Proving the old adage (we'll it's an old adage here as I keep saying it, it's one of the reasons I have so many 'eemies' (as they call theirs) in the 'old guard'!) that none of this stuff is rare!

I grabbed this the other day, the seller had two left at time of writing, grab-one before they're gone!

And before we go any further it's worth reminding you of these posts;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/10/l-is-for-little-red-riding-hood-visits.html

Then click 'newer post' or;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/10/g-is-for-golden-gamete-laying-goose.html

and then click 'older post'

How they arrived, in a little poly-bag like this they could have been aimed at cake decorators, Christmas crackers (so I'll stick Culpitt and Tom Smith in the tags), arcade crane-machines or travelling showground hoopla stalls? The point is, this is the third iteration of the two 'sets' of these, which ten years ago were 'rare' and only visible as a couple of thumbnails on TSHQ, but which are now becoming 'old hat'!

It's so cool! The mice needed some straightening with hot water (and I mean 'hot', this is polyethylene, not PVC, so a boiling kettle poured down the reins/traces for a good 15 or twenty seconds, then pulled taught and pressed against a piece of cold marble (cutting board) or steel (draining board), needed two goes, but right as ninep'nce now!

♫♫♪ "We will pull it, we will drag it, to the party, how, how, how . . .

we will pull it, we will drag it; lets get going, now, now, now" ♫♪♪♪

Obviously with this kind of ex-shop stock, it tends to look like it was made yesterday, and while it probably is later than the stuff we looked at last time, it's clearly marked 'No307 Made in Hong Kong' down both sets of the hard polystyrene suspension, so it must be at least 30 years old?

The three figures; these are unmarked and like the mice, a standard or 'Airfix'-soldier polyethylene, so probably the same ones previously (or subsequently?) supplied to Transogram?

F is for Follow-up - Fish!

I know I said it'd probably be a while before we returned to fish, clearly I lied - one should never assume! Nor 'do' policicticicic . . . Apparently! However; it's nice when you're proved wrong if it means an earlier return to something!

And with the Wade / Not-Quite-But-Probably-Irish-Factory-Wade Leprechauns fresh in the mind when I saw these in a charity shop for 50p-a-piece, it would have been rude not to!

These are definitely Wade (Whimsies) and - guessing again! - Brown Trout (Oncorhynchus) and Common Carp (Cyprinus Carpio)?