D is for Donation - Peter - Historicals and Ceremonials

Always the sub-heading full of interesting things, the three lots here having the emphasis on ancient and medieval figures, the middle lot, of three tranches, have poor colour I'm afraid, I'm struggling with the setting on this strangely expensive (compared to the previous half dozen) camera!

 

An interesting bunch of contemporary medievals, in that Russo-Livonian style, of slightly oriental armour, and copies of other figures on the market, we're looking at them below, so just enjoy the rich colours of these pocket-money rack-toys!

 

Three very clean examples of the vintage 'Romanised' piracies of Crescent's knights in polystyrene, odd, as Crescent also did their own Romans, who were copied - in polyethylene - by another Hong Kong jobber! I've not given it much thought, but the anachronisms would help, if they were repainted as fantasy figures for 54mm role-play gaming!

 

Knackered flat, Hilco-Phoenix Conquistador, Worlds Apart Egyptian from their Horrible Histories experiment, and a home-coloured (felt tip marker-pen, I think!) Crescent Arab, all toy soldiers, all very different styles/treatments!

 

A couple of Pirate types, the one on the left clearly channelling The Pirates of the Caribbean, and specifically the anthropomorphic crew of Davy Jones ship, he's one of the 'other' pair available with a still extant pirate ship, we saw a pair a few years ago, when I got one of the ships, but some ships (presumably half of them!?) come with another pair, and he's one of them, hopefully the other will turn-up in one of these mixed lots one day - I'm not buying another ship! The other figure, in a nutcracker/toybox style, of semi-Napoleonic, will be from a similar ship, but aimed more at infants/younger kids.

 

Copies of Supreme/Strawberry Group/Tiger Hobbies medievals, we looked at them all in a mini-season on Supreme and associated knights a few years ago (2022's Rack Toy Month), and they are what they are, probably coming via Toy Major.

 

Nice group of the 40mm Landsknechts from Elastolin, not sure how 'original' they are, there are signs of home paint, and some of the same 'kit' parts, we saw with the ACW a couple of days ago, but equally some of it is factory-finish, so some home 'enhancement' going on, a bit of mix and match?

 

An eclectic trio here, with a Crescent for Kellogg's tromboneist, a Christmas tree hanger of a nutcracker, who is small enough to remain in the collection, it's funny I had avoided them, but after the giant ones were hidden in plain sight round Fleet, as part of a local business drive a fair few years ago, the Blogging of which resulted in a few posts on the subject and submissions from New York's Brian B, I started to take the odd small one home with me, and while they are in the pile, rather than the tree decorations, I should probably transfer them from the one to the other, but not before we've collected them all up and done a comparison post!

 

A 60mm Cherilea is the third figure, missing a weapon, his shield will make a useful spare, for my larger sample of these quirky figures, who are an odd favourite of mine, I think it's the charm of their toy-like execution.

 

Resin tourist keepsake, plays Harryhausen's Talos, to a bunch of post-Giant finds and a Quaker mounted gladiator! All very much grist-to-the-mill, and the damaged gold figure is interesting for being an apparent mould-purge between the gold and a dark green.

 

Also, probably Toy Major in origin/supply, and also contemporary (on eBay, Amazon and Alibaba), these are the better quality figures, pirated by those in the first shot, and while 'only' rack-toys, if you don't have good samples of them all in a tub somewhere, you've a missing brick in the wall!

 

Atlantic's nominally HO (closer to OO's 1:72nd scale) Romans, with the Infantry (and marines!) on the runners, and a loose sample of the cavalry, which the Romans rarely employed, and when they did, they didn't look anything like these! Very useful as I purchased a number of empty boxes from the estate of a late friend a while ago, and will be able to marry these up!

 

Thanks again to Peter for several useful loads, of our small plastic friends!

H is for Hippopotami

Strangely, the second most visited post ever, on the blog, with over 7000 direct hits, is the lazy-post on Rhinoceri I shot the same day I shot the first of these images, and while I suspect bots have more to do with that record traffic than humans, it is true that the Model Animal collecting fraternity is much healthier and more numerous than the Toy Soldier brotherhood, so the odd animal post doesn't hurt!

 

No order or specific narrative, just a bunch of Hippopotamuses, with a few notes, another lazy post! I was, at the time (2020) combining the attic stuff with the storage stuff, which I had dug-out of the garage, looking for something else! And it went something like this;

 

Probably the storage lot, but could be from the attic?

 

Probably the attic lot, but could be from storage!

 

Combined; I then remembered there were some Britians ones in a box of Britains farm and zoo somewhere . . .

 

Which also gave-up another Charbens and a late blue-polymer Timpo, requiring a slight reorganisation, with the China-vinyl types to the left, Britains copies (Blue Box, Redbox and Holly etc.), scaled down, next, with two Charbens, a small cracker type 'ivorene' and three more origianl Hong Kong's in front, down the middle, then the common Hong Kong, in four or five sizes (Arco, New Maries, RAE, etc.), with Britains and Timpo to the right.

 

At some point this little chap arrived, 'China'; I think, he has stuff on his belly, but I didn't note it at the time! Not Safari, K&M/WR, Schleich or Papo, as far as I can tell, but seemingly quite up-market? Yowies maybe . . . also in the queue, several posts!

 

A few were elsewhere, like the two brandings of big-blue eraser, Tiger Stores and Royle Kids, several more China/HK types to the right, the brownish-gray one seems to be a version of the Toy Major sculpt, while the other two are older HK 'ethylene's. The silver one, who's hollow, and a paired Hippo/Elephant to the left, complete that additions-shot!

 

That pair raise an interesting point, as they clearly go together; same plastic type and colour, same paint, but are marked differently, which is something you need to look out for with all sorting/attributing of Hong Kong stuff, the stamps used are two, one 'MADE IN' and the other 'HONG KONG', with the engineer stamping them above/below each other on the Hippo's belly, but in a vague line along the Elephant's spine.

 

These were also in storage, and while the Topps were in the 'minor makes' zone, they have since been added to with a few more, there are 24 in the set; Baby Animals, the other bag is from the unknown zone, and were kept together, as their marks are wholly inverted! The Foal and Camel being Tai Sang (Blue Box/Redbox) knock-offs.

 

The one in the bag, seeming to be the donor for the cruder, flat inside-legged hollowed-out copy in silver, from the unknowns, not that he/she/it's particularly 'known' either, it isn't!

 

Seen before in a plunder or donation post? I think this one's Marx, but probably from an animal transport or circus truck of some kind, and maybe from back in the tin-plate vehicle days, although the animal is actually two polystyrene halves, glued together.

 

These were taken from the old fridge before it went to storage, on the left poured-resin, on the right routed wood and both magnetic decorative items.

 

A dark grey Britians baby and a pair of Hong Kong jobbies, taken in 2022, they may have been in one of the big donations from Jon Attwood, so many thanks to him.

 

That's it for this casual stroll, there are lots of named ones in with their other animals, and all the mini tub/tube/toob and pocket-money stuff is elsewhere, the vinyl minis, and the small-scale, flats and novelties are all missing, while a few more have probably come in over the last 3½ years, but hopefully, there will be a Hippopotamus page one day, with all of them!

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Sci-Fi, Fantasy, TV & Movie

As a complete contrast to Pirates, this is the stuff of a whackier nature I picked up at last June's Plastic Warrior show, not as much in this category as some years, but a couple of really quirky things, a nice box-ticker, and a rarity or two!

 

A T-Rex, on a skateboard, waving an axe? It doesn't get much weirder than that, except it's just about to! And while it may be Kinder, it could be a lesser make of capsule-egg, or even a gum-ball type thing?

 

The Heudebert marked copy of a Captain Video figure was a lovely find, and while the original is one prone to damage, here they've shortened the firearm into more of a pistol, and despite the fine barrel, it has survived! While the actually Kinder gnome, is standing front of the Lone Star toadstool house!

 

And no, this is not where it gets weirder, this is pretty weird, but not the real weirdness! A money-box/bank, made by the same division that was responsible for the rubber pet-toys and squeakers, this is a stable (non-weeping) PVC, issued under the Eaglet branding.

 

This is the box ticker, a set of the Toys R Us bucket set True Legends - Mythical Warriors fantasy figures, one of each pose, so someone was offloading their master set? I've seen them credited to both Toy Major AND Chap Mai, it's likely to have been one or the other, and with other True Legend sets having the Toy Major sleleton warriors, for now, I'll go with them. Brian Berke did send us a handful of these, a while back, but no one ID'd them at the time!

 

Weirdness, but still not the weirdest, the Alien is about seven inches, and while made of rubber, seems to have a very solid interior, like it's metal underneath, you could certainly use it as a cosh! UFO lawn-skittles maybe?

 

The Wonder Woman is a cord-tie type thing, I've seen others, for school-bags or whatever, sometimes they are a keychain type thing . . . I don't know, I'm blagging it, off vague memories of things seen, out and about, it was in one of the donation bags!

 

From the right . . . no, the RIGHT, we have another of the larger Captain Video space/GI figures from Lido Archer, then an unknown figure which looks both character-driven and a bit Phidal-looking, but probably not actually by them, maybe a Ben 10 thing?

 

In the middle is the female scarecrow, pencil-top, who looks like a line-up completer, for the John Pertwee era, Worzel Gummidge set; I don't recognise the character? I have three now, I think, and I assume there's at least four, so, with this and two Gummidge's, I suspect I'm still looking for a rendition of Una Stubb's Aunt Sally?

 

The monkey is a tea-bag premium I think, while on the far-left, is the real weirdness, it's so weird, it's been left-off the left of left-field! 

 

This was in a bunch of smaller bits from Adrian, and I looked at it and said something about 'fun' and 'homemade', and he looked a little hurt at my dismissal of his offering, and sure enough, when I got it home (my eyesight is getting shit! But I have got reading glasses now), it became clear that while, yes that is bread-bag ties for arms and legs, the whole assembly seems to have commercial thought, and actual design behind it?

 

Originally a cartoon dog keyring and pencil-topper, the green tie has been carefully designed to have the arm-and-leg twists run over the top of it, and down channels in the sides, so as it's pushed into the pencil cavity it holds everything tight. The boots are gum-ball charm, football boots, while the cartoon hands should have convinced me straight away.

 

Everything is PVC except the bag-ties, which are in a non-standard (for bag-ties) colour, and everything is filled/sealed with what looks like the plumbers-sealant I use for PVC mends. That someone ever thought this up, let-alone thought it might have commercial potential is extraordinary, but someone else looking at it, remembered something like them, in gum-ball capsule machines!

 

It's a commercially manufactured, 'homemade' bendy toy, gum ball prize! Of a dog, in a tie, with Mickey Mouse gloves, and football boots, with googly eyes!

 

A couple of Matchbox whatsit-2000 figures, an Aristocat cereal premium, an unknown . . . trash-panda? Kinder maybe? A phone-ornament/hanger, of Buzz Lightyear, an Autobot's fireable fist (?) and a Star Wars looking, action-figure sidearm!

 

Kinder either side, Daffy Duck as a plug-together 'Steckfigure', along with one of the cartoon 'deform' spacemen, but between them, in slightly marbled yellow plastic, too large for a Kinder egg, is a Res Plastic solid, of Speedy Gonzalez! And obviously punched for a key-ring or cord.

 

As I can never remember which of these Tinykins I have, I'll always buy them, if I see them going cheap, and these were reasonable, so I grabbed them. I think I have most of them, but the cousin-ducks are all different, and I don't know if I have all of them, and wasn't sure if any Thumper I have has both ears!
 

As before; thanks are due to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Many thanks to all.

A is for Answered - Box Ticking Toy Major!

The pre-Christmas question time was answered, they're Toy Major, I should have worked it out from some of the pirates, but they don't have the more comprehensive (or complicated!) marking of 'modern' or current Toy Major, so, anyway, that's what they are, and to be fair, I did suggest they looked like Toy Major 'stuff'!

Yes, the fourth from the left/third from the right Alien, is 'Mirrorman'!

And, no, they haven't really improved since we last looked at them here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/10/q-is-for-question-time-u-is-for.html

It occurred to me there was a bit of the Party Pig set of Star Wars knock-off's about them, but I think it was fanciful thinking based on the over-use of Wellington-boots in both sets! It's actually more a case of four 'Hoth' snow-troopers and two AT-AT crew!

Comparison shot with a few other puke-green figures!

Yeah, it's not very 'spacy' writting, but I haven't

imported all the stuff from the old laptop yet!

F is for Follow-up, R is for Return - Glow-in-the-Dark Aliens

Oh, we love a glow-in-the-dark Alien here! This post was originally a shot of the Toy Major's which had been kicking around for some time, along with a comparison we may have seen here already, but then I snaffled a Soma set, and it was 'Aliens are Go'!

That hanging-around image - I DID have notes on them somewhere - see glowing alien posts passim! It's not very good, and I've reshot them below, so it's just to get us started, Toy Major, glow-in-the dark 'UFO *Glow Power* Aliens', six poses and large'ish at around 70mm, a rigid polyethylene or polypropylene, which glows in the dark!

 

We saw a set of three figures when I ID'd a previously unknown group, and I was well chuffed to find a six-figure version, which obviously had more poses as I knew I'd only shown four or five in total, previously!

 

So I grabbed it while it was available, but have had to use the sales image on the left, as the shot I took was out of focus, and as you can tell from the scan on the right, I committed the mortal sin of opening the set, so I can't re-shoot it!

When I first showed these, I said I loved them, and that hasn't changed, I guess they date from the late 1980's or 1990's, possibly even closer to now, but they have an indefinable quality to them which reeks of the 1970's despite them not resembling anything from that time? I think it's the colour palette used, they are all sort of dirty, off-pastel shades of fruit-jelly or something!

 

We've seen these poses before, but glove-guy and three-fingers are new colourways, and I think even the grey is a different shade to the previous, paler one?

 

Here, the twin-armed one is a new, sixth sculpt, which will probably prove to be the extent of the sculpting, while the reaching-guy is a new colour, I think the other glove-guy is a duplicate of my original loose sample.

 

And the reason I committed the mortal sin of de-carding them is simply that I have a nice mint threesome, and the card was a bit tatty, while I will probably obtain more of these in the future, as I like them so much, and there are so many variations, a larger sample, whether carded or loose won't hurt!

Two colourways of the same pose, one I had here loose, the other from the set, so I now have five of this sculpt, in four different colours, and re. my previous comments on that, it looks like they will all eventually turn-up in all . . . ten (?) shades - light-glow, dark glow, greenish-glow, blue, light pink, dark pink, orangey-pink, orange, light grey and dark grey . . . that's eleven? We'll see, there may be more!

 

The upper-shot, which we did see a while ago, I've found it, but I think this was another from the sequence, shows the Toy Major, the modern/current pencil-top (yeah, even I think he's had too much publicity!), then a Soma, Imperial, US Toy (Brenner) and an unknown Chian-type novelty, not that they aren't all 'novelties'!

 

The lower shot shows the two sizes of Imperial, the Toy Major and the Soma, with one (also Toy Major - ID post forthcoming) who looks like he should glow in the dark, but is just screaming green!

Re-shot! You still can't really make out the faces, that's just the polymer-material/lighting/flash combining to thwart my efforts! They have large almond eyes orientated at about 45º, giving them a more sinister look than Manga-babes, whose almond-eyes are deliberately puppyish! The aliens' facial features/heads are also quite insectoid, a bit praying-mantis like?

An earlier shot of the Soma figurines was not so successful, I think my camera is starting to die, it will be the third or forth, this Blog has killed, but nothing lasts forever, and there are two to fall back-on, however they are both in storage, so I hope this one will go awhile yet, but it is starting to lose its edge, and it's not the constant reusing of the SD card, as there's a new 32GB one, put in there recently!

 

I should add that the two Nikon Coolpix have performed immeasurably better than the earlier pair of Fuji Finepix, there may have been a fifth, between the two pairs? While the two in storage are a cheap generic, and a minor make (Sony or AGFA?), so we'll see how they do, but they are all the same generation ('ish) and may see the Blog out . . . Although I do keep promising myself a digital SLR type, which can go on a stand and do the heavy-lifting, once I have a dedicated photo-bay/station?

It's an invasion!

Triple set - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/02/f-is-for-follow-up-glow-in-dark-bug.html

Loose sample - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/10/b-is-for-bug-eyed-aliens.html

M is for Many Moulded Malleable Mammals!

Part three of Jon's big box brings us to the Mammals, although a bird snuck-in under the radar while I wasn't paying attention, and the rest are definitely from the Zoo/Jungle/Wild zone, farm and domestic will come later!

Big cats, 1 of 3, cheetahs and leopard'ish critters, I like the big cats but there is a tendency to use the same moulding for different cats, or just not pay much attention to the things at all, so while the Britains one is a 54mm leopard, also found in black as a 'panther' (melanistic leopard), the pair in the next size up look more doglike, as does the orange one to the right, he has quite a hyena'ish head/jaw!

There was a bit of a comedy involved in this image, as I shot what I thought was all five Cheetahs, then reshot 'all' six, before finding another one under the dinosaurs! The big, dark, stretching one (lovely pose) is Triple-A (the 'AAA' mark), the others, all generics, for now.

A pair of colour variations of the same toob' animals, and a larger one which is actually a lighter-weight than either of the smaller brethren, being manufactured of some slightly-foamed polyethylene?

 

Big Cats 2 of 2; hunting! They don't often bring down any but old, infirm, or very young, lost giraffe's, who otherwise enjoy a relatively blessed existence. The larger lion is a China-marked newie, the other, a similar sculpt, is an older Hong Kong toy.

The giraffes are three old HK's, probably from different tranches of the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus giraffe carrier, and two larger modern chaps, one clearly marked KS in a similar oval to Toy Major, the other a generic for now.

 

Three generics here, and the really big one is a Toy Major, probably from a pick-box/counter-display. And when I say 'Generic', the hope is a fair quantity of them will be attributed in the near-to-medium-future?

 

Smallies; seem to match each other with plastic type, sculpting, size, China-mark etc . . . and probably came together in a toob or small-tub, but sometimes the small ones are chucked into tub-sets with larger animals to make-weight, or add to the item count

 

Big Cats 3 of 3; The big orange beast at the back is a Toy Major animal, marked Cheetah! The cub to the right is another AAA, while the flocked guy to the left is just lovely, but of unknown origin, with no dinks or worn-patches, he really is sweet!

 

Three generic elephants, one of which was marked ELEPHANTCHINA and for a moment, just a moment, I wondered if I'd left it out of the prehistoric animals post! And, all three newish sculpts.

 

Thanks again to Mr Attwood for sending us these, they make a nice change from 'armymen', Wild West or space/fantasy, especially as we head into the Christmas season - Fleet had its night market tonight, nothing on the council or Fleet BID Faceplant pages . . . of course!