T is for Teixido Return!

Yes, a rather too-cheerful title given my views of bullfighting, but they have to be posted, and while I hate the 'sport' and the idea of it still being a thing in the 21st Century, I take heart in the fact that another Matador was gored to death the other day (at least he got to feel how the bulls felt), and two others have quit, publically, in the ring! One breaking down and sobbing, at the enormity of what he'd been doing, all his adult life, to innocent, proud, confused animals.

 

We'll start at the end . . . of the bull. It's all about the killing of bulls, and, the longer the fight, the weaker the bull gets, so the final flourish, and the applause of the bloodthirsty crowd is utterly pointless, as the bull's so weak by that point it's almost a mercy killing, for what the fighters have been doing for the previous . . . twenty minutes; hour; two hours? I don't care how long the fights take, they are barbarous.

 

These are the Teixido figures (I think? They may go with the Jecsan below?) we last saw on someone else's table with me pointing out I didn't have any, I now have a decent sample, and we're going to look at them now, along with a few others, that have come-in over the last couple of years!

 

Two more mounted figures which I think go with the Teixido set, but I'm not sure, some of them are more rubbery, others are 'ethylene, and while some have separate arms, others don't! And all the horses were polyethylene, but not all the riders went on all the horses!

 

Theses are all Teixido, and there was some judicial swapping of arms, between shots, to get everyone looking correct, and a few bodies didn't get photographed as their arms clearly weren't here! The last one is correct, I think, but the camera-angle makes him look like his plug-in arm is growing out of his back!

 

The guy on the right in the first shot, can be posed to be dragging his red-rag behind him, as we saw last time we looked at these. 

 

I think these are all Jecsan, although one has a more Reamsa style base, so I stand to be better informed on all these, but the whole 'bullfighting zone' sample is quite big now, and when it's all brought together we'll have a proper look at all of them, and compare with the various catalogue images in the archive, to get them all grouped correctly! In fact, I think the standing bull is the Teixido.

 

Jecsan horse, I think, not sure on the rider, who seems to be some kind of referee or officiator? He has a separate cloak, so may also be Teixido.

 

Comparison between a Comansi (?), unknown, unpainted one (which keeps turning up and may be a touristy thing?) and the Teixido horse, his padded-armour/blanketing is of finer etching/sculpting.

 

Jecsan with a Reamsa'ish base, a tourist keepsake, we saw another one (white, plug-on base), years ago, and one of the Teixido's. The tourist one is a polystyrene, hard-plastic solid, with metal pin inserted.

 

Further comparison, with the Torres wine premium on the left and one of the unknown small-scales from 2024's Plastic Warrior show plunder on the right, for some reason I swapped out the Teixido but not the Jecasn?

 

Hong Kong
Seen before, but cropped-tight and lacking the now-dead link to the auction!

 

I had the Jecsan stuff here, but the Comansi and Reamsa stuff is in storage, or on a dongle I can't be bothered to look for, right now! The reamsa'ish base one is it the ring, facing the other way, so he is Jecsan, but no sign of the towing vignette, the Referee, or a dead bull, so that probably is all Teixido after all!

 

While the two we saw yesterday aren't in these scans, so probably are Reamsa, as the Comansi's have bigger bases - it's not made any easier by them all four using the same gloss orange on the bases! I guess, after a thousand years, all that bull's blood has darkened the sand?

 

Please donate.

Imagine if these colourful, dynamic, civilian figures could still be collected, but as 'historical' subjects, rather than examples of man's ongoing cruelty, and inhumanity to everything around him?

H is for Hairy Horrors!

When I was a kid, Trolls were a simple thing to get your head round, they were slightly larger, toad-skinned goblins who lived under bridges and ate slow, or dim witted goats.

 

Then Tolkien arrived in teenage'hood, with trolls the size of land-tanks who breathed fire, while the Nottingham Mafia and Garry Gygax's D&D monster handbooks, along with dozens of whitemetal manufacturers split Trolls twenty ways, and suddenly they could be large, small, relatively harmless, existentially dangerous to the planet, green, brown, orange or yellow, or anything between!

 

These trolls, the 'Scandi trolls', fill the slightly larger, relatively harmless, goblin niche, I think, but clearly this lot are strangers to the barber's chair!

 

The final tranche of Brian Berke's Icelandic shelfies and he thought the chap with the shield reminded him of Eccles from The Telegoons, while I thought those (red background) reminded me of Michel Bentine's Potty Time, characters which was a sort of second spin-off from The Goons!

 

Many thanks to Brian for all these, they've been a lot of fun!

T is for Tröll sem eru í Treyjasum!

Apologies to any Icelandic Loyal Readers who may have just chocked on their elevenses, for my miserable attempt at a line of Icelandic grammar, and even I know (now) Treyja are really cardigans not jumpers, but sometimes my desire to be a clever-dick outweighs any need to be more sensible!

 

More Trolls from Brian's visit to Iceland, and these are your every-day, regular tröll, not seasonal guys, and it seems even the locals need jumpers to meet the weather in those northern climes! The jumpers themselves are part of the resin moulding, but I think the little woolly hats are actually real, knitted apparel, while, obviously, hatless tröll have too much hair for hats! More on the hair in the final part of Islensku tröll.

L is for Leifur Eiríksson

Another instalment of Brian Berke's shots from Iceland (he had terrible flu, and I think we're lucky to have these shots), and we're looking at Leifur Eiríksson, known to us as Lief Erikson, or Lief the Lucky, son of Erik the Red and as a famous Viking explorer, who hailed from the shores of Iceland, and is accepted to have discovered North America (for Europeans, probably where modern Canada is), some centuries before the European genocides and colonisation!

 

Struck by the strange, angled, sub-base, and identical pose, I assumed they must be depicting a specific statute, and a bit of a search, left me fully gen'ed-up on the statue created by American artist Alexander Stirling Calder, in Reykjavík, in the 1930's!

 

Obviously, available in a gilded or plain-metal finish, and probably a base-metal or tin-alloy of some kind, and issued in two sizes, it's definitely the sort of thing you might pick up in a charity shop at some point?

N is for November's Sandown Park - Military

More of the odds and sods from the last BP show, at Sandown Park, and it's the military stuff, which wasn't numerous, but had a few interesting items to look at, including one which might surprise you, by my excitement of it!

 

There's a fair bit of brittleness, in the contents of this set, figures and weapons, so at some point, I'll probably de-card it, and save the PVC stuff for spares and scan the card, it's not like the figures are particularly rare, while a full scan of the generic card would be a useful addition to the archive.

 

Two 'Began-Beton's', probably from Plastic Toys Inc.? And one of the small Monogram/Revell copies, along with my first Lido original, I have lots of the Hong Kong copies, but the quality of this original shines through, so very pleased to have found him, rummaging through Gareth's tray.

 

Tourist keepsake for sure, poured-resin, and not the world's best sculpt, but it is a Horse Guard, whom I prefer to the Lifeguards, around 80/90mm, and one assumes not that old, but not current, as I've recently been checking-out the shops round the theatre district for something else, and haven't seen anything close to this chap.

 

Two hollow-cast nurses, and I thought the one on the right might be Crescent, but someone said they are both Britains, early on the left and later on the right, sort of Crimean War and WWI eras?

 

Crescent.

 

Skybirds.

 

Fantasyland? Or the better originals (check tag)?

 

Odds & Sods.

 

John Begg gave me a tray of small-scale. lead shrapnel, which has a few useful bits in, and which, in time, will get sorted into the rest, the Skybirds pilot is particularly nice, as they gave them several paint schemes, both military and civilian, While Crescent used many colours/shades, over the years.

 

In the last shot, the larger-scale, colonial artilleryman, and mid-19th century red-coat, standing firing, are both complete and will join the cards I display this odd, flat stuff on, while the others will probably go in the 'Don't know what to do with them, but can't chuck them' tub!

N is for Northfield Products

Do you remember this image, from one of the earlier donations from Chris Smith;

 

A resinated slate (or coal?) lady on the left, what turned out to be Tringa Toys, via Toyway in the middle, and a Britains Highland Piper, trapped in a bottle. At the time I said of the right-hand item: "The final piece is very interesting, clearly a Scott's tourist thing, he is a HK-production Britains Herald piper, held on a cork plinth with a piece of textured green Plasticine . . . and a blob of glue? The tartan band, other than hammering-home the Scottish nature of the item, is probably hiding a clever join at the base of the bottle, or a not-so-clever join bodged with glue?"
 

And, a few months later, I found marked items on feebleBay, of a similar nature, employing the same tartan ribbon, which have been in Picasa for a few years, waiting for the right moment to show, which following a purchase at Sandown four weeks ago, is now!

 

Revealing themselves to have been entrapped by a Northfield Products of Edinburg, I fear they are a little disingenuous as to their London design or Hong Kong manufacture! The contents have actually broken loose, and slide up and down, but you can see how the figures are landscaped onto a piece of hardboard, with green Plasticine, and shunted in from the wide end, before the join is hidden with the tartan tape!

 

My hand looks strangely stunted in that third shot, I can assure you, I currently have perfectly normal hands, and will blame foreshortening, or AI? . . . buzzztt . . . pling! "Northfield Products refers to several different businesses, most prominently Northfield Farm, known for high-welfare free-range pork, beef, and lamb sold online and at markets like Borough Market; Northfield Furniture, offering handcrafted wooden items like toilet seats and trays; and Northfield Freezing Systems, an industrial brand by JBT Corporation for large-scale food processing. Other mentions include school uniforms and even a shoe model." 

 

This is a wind-up music box, with the mechanism hidden in a tartan gift-box, and the same bottle as the loose one, Chris sent to the Blog. It also has the Frea Scotland (from Scotland) sticker, which is missing on the new, larger band-bottle from Sandown's show.

 

And the shipping box the larger bottle came in, this also has the sticker. Now the next question, because there's always a next question, is: were there earlier ones which used the better quality, UK-made, Herald figures? Anyway, for now, that's another one put to bed - Northfield Products, purveyors of quality tat, to the passing tourist trade!

 

And I bet there are other Northfield items, you could probably build a nice little niche display or cameo collection of them?

 

As we're doing an 'Answer Time', here's confirmation, via a couple of dodgy colour scans of B&W copies, of the earlier (pre-RHA figure) Tringa line-up of 90mm figures, sold through Toyway, and also aimed squarely at the tourist trade.