D is for Donations - Peter - Animals

The sorting of the animals is going to be one of the bigger tasks, one day, the hobby is probably bigger than Toy Soldiers, certainly, it supports several vigorous forums, and there are as many makers, if not more, while mine are rather in an anonymised heap within the bigger stash, but they keep coming in, and here's some more!

 

A nice cat, which looks like it might be an accessory from a non-animal set of some kind, the lizard is from the little small-scale, rack-toy play sets from Toy Major/Ackerman, while the bear is both a bit crude and a bit unusual!

 

A whole sub-genre are this smallish scale, softish vinyl sets from toobs, tubs or bags, which are sort of 35/40mm compatible, but really 'bag-scale' or unit scale, and while some are marked, other's easy to ID, many sets are to be found on FeeBay-Amazon-Alibaba, as generics or under obviously phantom brands. These seem to go together, but a couple of them are questionable. Nice, different, cactus!

 

Two generic rack toys, over-stickered to Toys As Fun, which I could have saved for Rack Toy Month, but I think there's plenty for then, and this is the next size up, again, a bit unit-scale (elephant undersized, pig oversized), but mid-sized animals are coming out as 54mm-compatible, which is useful for dioramas and vignettes . . . big cat stalking a patrol, that kind of thing!

 

A couple of proper antiques, I love these! The pressed-wood farmer seems to match the common girl feeding chickens we've seen here before, in point of fact, she or her chickens, turn up so often she must have been from a popular set, for several years, but this chap I've not seen before. Although the blue paint has suffered badly, the other colours remain in sufficient quantity to give a good idea of what he looked like new!

 

While the horse in tin-plate might be a cigarette premium, while we, here in the UK, had cards and silks, as giveaways, some brands on the continent had tin-plate flats, prior to replacing them with the numerous plastic flats used as premiums with other products too. You fold the base out, after the item has been slid out of the packet of cigarettes.

 

From a more recent pick-up in London is another Toy Major lizard (used as a dragon/monster/dinosaur in both the cavemen and medieval sets), two tree frogs and a very daft-looking sauropod!

 

Some larger animals, I think a couple were Triple-A marked, and the green pony is from the Tupperware interactive building blocks, we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/11/g-is-for-great-grey-green-greasy.html

 

Where they were used as, removable, playable rattles, in opaque blocks, unlike the transparent ones from Airfix and others.

 

A large lump of dense vinyl, makes a rather nice Hippo', and these are starting to grow as a side collection, purely by accident, and we did look at a load in a lazy post a while ago!

 

This is from PMS, and I ummed-and-arrred over whether or not to open it, in the end I though I had to, or I wouldn't know what I was dealing with, and was quite suprised to find a gold mokey!

 

I don't know wheather it's a 'chase' figure, or if the whole range is finished in a similar fashion, nor do I know how many there are as there;s no flyer/leaflette . . . probably a £1-shop thing, and therefore stripped to the minimum on unit-price!

 

Another group of - probably - related small vinyls - wild!

 

And another - domestic!

 

Mentioned the other day I think, and seen with a few others a while back, oh yeah, it was the post on mixed shots, a week or so ago. Anyway, here's the farm one, courtesy of Peter, and these sets annoy me, nice animals in a vague scale, so why add huge dogs and ginormous poultry! They haven't even got the excuse of box-scale, because there's plenty of room occupied by the plastic end-filler!? I know, it's a cost thing!

 

Again, many thanks to Peter for all these, they're not just grist to the mill, but also 'bricks in the wall', gaps filled in the archive.

H is for How They Come In - Playing Catchup!

Some of these go back to January, when I wasn't shooting as detailed a set as other times, and all are the regular 'red cross' parcels from Peter Evans, who rarely tells me he's sending a parcel until it's arrived and more than one of these lifted my spirits on a mare-of-a-day, which I have mentioned elsewhere, when some of these got a quick show, but now, again, and in vaguely chronological order;

I think this actually arrived in time for Christmas, but that may be the next shot, this was photographed on the 20th Jan, but the next was shot on the 24th, and one had been hanging-around unrecorded for a while?

The carded sets from Toys As Fun (a phantom brand sticker!) include large wild animals, medium-sized dinosaurs and more normal-sized farm, all good box ticker stuff. The French bazaar bagged set will be looked at in better detail one day, and had Lido/Tim Mee clones I think . . . I just tried working it out from the photo, but the plastic is too foggy, and they almost look like MPC clones, which I'm pretty sure they weren't? Doh!

There was nice stuff in the two little bags, but they didn't get shot as I was busy trying to get this place finalised, yet here I am six months later with at least three days painting ahead of me and a lawn to mow for hopefully the last time?

The card/paper bridges (middle, right) are odd, I suspect some Japanese thing, but they could be from a board game, with the three road/trackway colours? AFV's and grist to the mill 'Army Men' make up the lot.

The other December/Jan' lot was a smaller jiffy, but full of nice things! Dr. Who, Kinder, novelty frogs, a nice tree, a pirate's moll, Lido Knight copies, and other HK Britains Swoppet clone in need of a sword! There were also a few 1:76th/72nd bits and some interesting farm animals. The half-hidden cowboy is Safari.

 

In February this lot turned-up with a bunch of New Ray clones in two colours, a Henbrandt aliens in bag, a mini dinosaur with a generic label which may tie-in with one of the many bags of such miniatures, some Halloween stuff, a lovely beefeater in resin, a 'funnimal' donkey, Kinder space, rack-toy farmer with lamb . . . all sorts!

 

April brought another parcel with some very useful stuff, and it was one shot but I cut it in two to get the thing more manageable! I'm not sure but I think I have the cab-unit for the US trailer, albeit with another trailer configuration, you know I love the one-horse wagons and there's a nice mix of Wild West in the centre.

The paint-your-own deform Halloween thing is fun, you can never have too many rubber guardsmen or parts of rubber guardsmen, and both scenics are useful! While a bag of Marx knights may be a bit chewed, but they are hard, glueable styrene, and I intend to tackle a whole tub of damaged Miniature Masterpieces one day with a view to enhancement/conversion!

The Mattel 'Heroes in Action' chap (top left, early 1970's?) is really an action figure, and I used to not rate them, but enough have come-in over the last few years for me to now have a tub-full, and therefore to be contemplating the sorting of a 'sample' at some pint in the near future!

 

There is a post in the long queue on Tamiya/Aoshima Samurai and others (bag, top left), but I haven't shot everything in the stash for the post, so it'll be a while yet, this bag's are nicely done, they just need a bit of renovation with liquid glue.

 

Various bags of animals, civilians, micro-vehicles and HK knock-offs with the highlight probably being the Swoppet Wild West, who seem to be a clean sample from one source and one of the better (earlier?) sources. Two nice Herald ACW clones and likewise a pair of comic flat Romans.

 

Now, I bought a bag off Peter at the PW show, the contents of which were in the 13 show-reports we saw recently, yet two weeks later these arrived! And I think he brought a bag to the London show, which I haven't shot yet!

Highlights here include the Corgi duo, who are in the less common pale brown, the two Africans are very useful, while with the Airfix copy Wild West; lots of people had a stab at them, mid-1980's saw Ri-Toys, Hing Fat, Kwong Wah, Wing Wah, Wing Luen and others, carry various qualities of clone, but these, as well as unusual colours are quite well-copied copies!

Many, many thanks to Peter for all these, each parcel has something new, something interesting, something unusual, and they all add to the whole picture.

I've still to photograph the lots from Jon and Brian, another lot from Peter and the London show stuff, which I'm hoping to do in the next week or two, once I move into the new flat I intend to spend three days shut-up there, sorting stuff (even if there are still a few bits to do here at the house), in order to try and convince the cat we've both been imprisoned by a third party! I've taken him over there a few times, and he's not keen . . .

News, Views Etc . . . 'But Is It Giant' Page

 I've placed another of the hollow-horse posts on the Giant or What Blog, quite an important one, albeit only an introduction to a series of posts to come on the commonest of all Hong Kong hollow, small-scale horses; the one I call Wavymane.

Contentious as I maintain that it was both the first and the donor for the Giant 'copy', so worth a read if you follow the small scales.

https://butisitgiant.blogspot.com/2021/11/wavymane-original-hong-kong-made-hollow.html

Meanwhile I also added an image and bit of blurb to the end of Peter E's 'H is for . . .' post the other day, as I found some older images of my version of the farm animal set, it was slightly different to Peter's donation, being a blister, not a bag, and had clues to a maker under the Toys As Fun sticker!

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/11/h-is-for-how-they-come-in-november-2020.html

H is for How They Come In - November 2020

Right, now I have 26 posts in the 'H is for How . . . ' sector, and there were 25 until I turned this into two, so there may be 30 or more by the time we've worked through them all!

Also it's a year since I had to call the ambulance that would ultimately end in the loss of my Mother last January, and while I carried on blogging while she was 'only' unwell, it did tail off, to a complete hiatus in the new year, and one of the first things to go was the How They Come In posts.

Now life's all just the long slog of dealing with the estate (a nightmare for another day), it's time to clear these off the laptop, so, in the vague order they came in, that's what I'll be doing in the run-up to Christmas, alternating with other posts to 'mix it up'! And we're starting with this little lot that Peter Evans sent the Blog last November - shots taken on the 5th of that month, they may have got here a day or two earlier

Four modern rack toys and a loose bunch of bits, including the Culpitt's dove-ring we saw in a small poultry/birds follow-up a year ago. The loose figures are the rubbery Shing Hing (SH) we've seen before, they were (still are?) big-bucket stuff in big-store Smyths and are dominating evilBay-lots of this type at the moment!

These aren't in the main picture, so may have come from elsewhere (Charity shop!), but the photo was in sequence with Peter's stuff (taken half-an-hour later though?) and he's certainly sent similar to the blog in the past, so for now - they came with this lot! One or two maker's; sea life, they'll get sorted with all the others for a sea life overview at some point.

PMS blister-carded set; a few leery orange figures of poor quality, a weird gun which is everywhere on Alibaba at the moment and a truck with huge stickers which looks as if it's supposed to be advertising a fantastic movie or a two-player 'shoot-em-up' video game!

The artillery piece reappears in this set, nominally credited to an obvious phantom-brand (sticker, as an afterthought); Toys as Fun, and imported by Habib (UK) Ltd., from an unknown factory in Shantou City, the figures (two balanced 'armies' of randomly picked poses) also share poses with the previous set, but are different mouldings.

From the same source comes this farm set with the larger type of animal, although when I say 'farm' I'm following the packaging and ignoring the inclusion of a bison/wisent buffalo, and the palm-tree! I had actually found one of these in my local, independent, everything-cheap store a few weeks earlier, which I had de-bagged (Ooh missus!), so they are the photo-shot on the right, Peter's will remain a mint-bagged example.

Comparing the contents of the three sets; you can see that the figures (1-3) are very different in both size and finish, with the PMC's (1) much larger and yet cruder than the Habib/Fun set, who are finished to a higher quality. Likewise the farm palm (6) is larger, yet cruder that the also Habib/Fun 'combat' pair (5). A whole jungle (4) from a few rack-toys . . . you wouldn't get that from Airfix, Britains or Timpo bargain!

But the guns - from both sets  -are identical, suggesting the contents of both are bought-in 'mix-and-match' from more than one (or two) sources. While, from the construction method, the 'fire-brigade' helicopter also came from the gun-maker, and is a copy of slightly better ones we've seen before. The tank is what it is!

This, though, apart from the weirdly poor/odd wheels/tyres, is a bit of a zinger! I had seen them on feeBay and Ali' in various sets/configurations including singles from one of those multiple listings where wholesaled set-contents are broken down as a shopping-list, and I thought I'd got one, but didn’t find it when I put Peter's away, so may only have the one still.

But, wheels aside, it's good for Hong Kong/China shite! The forks would make it more of a Zundapp than a BMW, but in the heavy 750cc class, and it is perfect for taking the old Britains Deetail figures who; being pretty indestructible PVC; seem to survive their die-cast mounts in some numbers.

The other item was a large, infant's floor-toy of an insurgent's 'technical' pick-up truck with twin-cannon in the rear cargo-bed. It seems to have a hole in the cab-roof for an emergency beacon/light, so there may be construction, police or fire versions out there? Imported by Goodiez Ltd., another new tag for the tag list!

I really can't hold on to this larger, poorer stuff, so after photographing it (I take a dozen or so against future posts) it went off to charity in time for someone to get it for Christmas, and I thank Peter for sharing it with us first, along with everything else in this post.

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Added 20th Nov. 2021 - My version of the farm set turned out to be a blister-carded set rather than the header-carded bottle-bag set of Peter's donated one, contents were the same but under the added stickers was a clue to either a manufacturer, or another phantom-branding . . . 

. . . namely Wei Ni Da, who real or phantom are currently offering this on Egyptian Amazon! So wheels within wheels and another brand-mark for the tag list . . . as I asked on Moonbase the other a while ago, "Does it never end?"!