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.
 

Y is for Yule Lads!

It's always fun finding out how other people do Christmas, because it's not all the modern iconography of Albert, Prince-consort, The Saxe-Coburg-Windsors or Coke Cola, endured by the English-speaking world, with or without crackers! And I well remember nearly having a fight with Krampus and his 'pals' in an Austrian pension one cold night in December!

 

In Iceland, they have the Yule Lads, a bunch of Icelandic Troll types (more to come on them), who fool about at this time of year, each having a day between the 12th and the 24th, in the lead-up to the big day, almost an half-advent of annoyance! Brian Berke, roving reporter, sent some shots he took in Iceland, and off down the rabbit-hole I went!

 

They actually leave little gifts in children's shoes, the equivalent of our stockings, but lesser, yet daily! However, if you've been bad, you might get a rotten potato, or a sour-onion!

 

This is Pottaskefill (Pot-Scraper, December 16th), he scrapes the food remains from the pots and pans!

 

While Skyrgámur (Skyr-Gobbler, December 19th) loves skyr (Icelandic traditional yogurt-type dairy-produce), and if you don't leave some out for him, he'll just steal it!

 

Ketkrókur (Meat-Hook, December 23th), he steals meat, gripping it with a hook! Another steals sausages!

 

Þvörusleikir (Spoon-Licker, December 15th), he steals spoons to lick them clean, but there isn’t much food left on spoons, so he is supposed to be scrawny, this one looks well-accommodated with bounteous spoons! Presumably, the spoons quietly reappear in the drawers when little people have forgotten them?

 

You'll have to Google the rest yourselves! And there are a couple of equally (supposedly) execrable parents and a dodgy cat! Many thanks to Brian for the introduction, to something completely different!

F is for Follow-up - Wild West Plunder

A couple of things in the archive pertaining to this morning's post;

 

On the subject of pencil sharpeners, I caught this on feeBay last year sometime, very 1950's, so quite a quick cloning! The die-cast mazac/zamak tourist trinket, a copy of Britains Herald's campfire chap in full war bonnet, probably came from Hong Kong, and the headdress looks sharp-enough to open a finger while you're honing your pencil - these days you'd get a recall notice from 'Health & Safety!

 

From 2023, is this colour-sample of the Torgano archer, not really clear if it's a boy or a girl, and all of them missing their bow, I don't know if they were always a short-shot, or if they just snapped off? Below them is a yellow chap, who looks to be a Tyrolean in lederhosen, along with four of the Lucky Bag pod-foot Indians and, bottom left, an unknown flat of similar ilk, but on a more standard base.

B is for Back to London, July, 2 of 2

The other half of the carbooty-bag I picked up from Peter in July, is the civilian and animal stuff, a couple of interesting dinosaurs, a handful of Kinder, with sports, a few sci-fi/space types, and a bag of bits & bobs!

 

We'll start with the Dinosaur pair, neither was marked, both are well-decorated according to current fashion-trends for the muted colourfulness of natural-camouflage, but of more interest is that they both have articulated legs, the whole suggesting they were in a better (and more expensive) set, than yer' normal rack-toy fayre?
 

Standard tourist keepsake, only the marker-pen to remind you where you visited to purchase the piece. He's very much in the same vein as the Xandria stuff from the Netherlands, being a stack of PVC components, but on a plaster base.

 

A sizeable sample of the Hing Fat 'Galaxy Cowboys', we saw a couple of, the other day, and I have a reasonable sample already, so it will be a case of bringing them all together, and sorting out a definitive sample of foot, mounted and horses, by pose and colours.

 

Unknown, or Pioneer/Realtoy buggy, K&M/Wild Republic and Pioneer.

 

Short-arsed LB clone, Marty, MPC piracy

 

Mixed domestic stuff, I love the kitten scratching its ear, the puppy too, is new to me, while the rest are grist to the mill, with tatty Cherilea and Britains farm stuff.

 

Similar wild animals, nice Timpo wolf, and the brown bear is new.

 

Hong Kong and 'China' farm people.

 

Circus - Charbens, Hong Kong (various) and Marty/M-Toy.

 

Road workers and mechanics, a Padgett/A-Z on the left I think, two China chaps, a Dinky and a dumper-truck driver from Hong Kong or China.

 

An interesting sort of 1970's (?) knock-off of Strawberry Shortcake stuff, or something of that age and aesthetic? Unknown mini action-figure and racing car driver, and a micro-tractor from Kinder.

 

Hong Kong copy of Gem footballer, unknown skateboarder (there's a lot of them around), Marx boxer, Remco firefighter, and Corgi US Policeman with megaphone.

 

Bits and bobs, including a sand-castle flag which seems bigger the usual, and may have a bit of age, and some useful rockets and missiles for something, still on their runners.

 

 

There was a tin of contemporary or near-current Kinder animals, some have had several issues, and there can be colour variations (camels), and while some are super realistic, some can be a bit cartoony, or - in the case of the ones with babies - cutesie, and it's another black-panther!

Thanks to Peter Evans for saving this lot for the Blog, there was an even bigger lot in August, which should be next, but I've got a Sandown Park report to squeeze in before the next one, and another supporter of the Blog is sending a parcel as I type!

U is for Up the Smoke!

Except it's been smokeless for most of my life, people under 40 have no idea what fog was like once, I remember going to pick our pet rabbit up, from the pet-rabbit people in Rotherwick, a journey which would normally have taken maybe 20-minutes, round trip, but which took over an hour, because Mum had to drive at ten miles an hour, in the hope that if she caught-up with someone going 9-mph, she wouldn't hit them! Fog-lights became visible at about 20-yards!

 

Anyway, I was up to London the other day, and as is customary, had a look, first with PW's roving reporter; Peter Evans, then, on my own, while returning to Waterloo, for items of use! And these were the things which came back to Ash Road Towers, or not!

 

This was the 'or not', £7.99 is too much for such a piece of rack toy shite, so it stayed on the peg (keeping it warm!), hopefully one of the Bocheng Jin tanks will turn-up in a mixed lot in a few years, and I can see if the red flash-eliminator is easily removable? Daft soldier may also reappear at some point!

 

Timeless pocket-money, rubber-jiggler, 'finger fright' shite! A set of six from House of Marbles, I think we've seen theirs before, but these seem to be new and better colours than those seen previously (Waterstones?), I particularly liked the metallic gold one!

 

Imported by Thomas Benacci, I thought these 40mm figures would prove to be poured PE-resin, but they are, in fact, PVC, so well within the scope of the core project! And I think we've seen the policeman already in a mixed lot or show report, so they don't take long to filter down!

 

And I'd bought these earlier than the others, but they got shot last, so yah-boo-sucks to them! Four quid's more like it, and I thought the painting of a couple (Spinosaur and Sauropod) were better than the common offering. Unbranded, but it's a rack toy!