B is for Box of Britains Babies!

We looked at the Britains Lilliput 'Tr'oo'scale' figures, reductions of the larger Khaki Infantry, way back at the start of the blog, and today we're looking at the one form of packaging not seen then, the shop stock, pocket money dispenser tray.

The box is near-mint, with a couple of dinks and a small pin-hole on the underside, and you can see that it's quite small, smaller than a paperback, for instance, and one supposes it was kept very close to the shop's till/cash register or certainly within reach of the shop-staff/proprietor! Most toy shops I remember, of the period, had at least one glass cabinet near the till, and it would have been displayed in there.

 

I suspect the paper insert is a reprint, but a quite good one, with the Lilliput range on the reverse (you can just see the prices missing from the third column), and a full colour promotional image on the obverse, while the clear dust-cover sheet, with thumb cut-out, is almost certainly an original.

 

There are eight little compartments to display one-each of the eight figure sculpts, with larger compartments for the stock, which I think it's believed should contain nine figures (for a total of 80), but I've seen people suggest eight (for 72 figures) or ten per compartment (88). I don't think it's known for sure, but with things in those days often sold wholesale in dozens or grosses, it may be that each larger compartment should have 11 figures - a 96 count? There's certainly room for them.

 

We've seen them before, but it's always worth a second look as they are lovely little figures of the crossover from WWII to Cold War era, standard infantry, most in Fighting Order, but two in full Movement Order webbing, and with the Enfield EM2 semi-automatic assault-rifle, much discussed elsewhere, and 58-pattern webbing, and are probably based on the Warminster garrison demonstration battalion's troops.

 

This set came from Belgium, where the collector had two (I know!), and it's obvious he or the previous owner/s have built-up the contents of the tray, from occasionally encountered loose figures, completely separately from me/my sample, and from different sources, at different times, yet the sample has ended up with all the variants I've previously highlighted, gaining suggestions from some, that many of mine are home-painted.

But the gloss-green webbing batch would appear to 'be a thing', as would the very pale flesh batches, while others have the very reddish-pink flesh of the 'lozenge' (or Toblerone!) window-carton issue. Of particular interest here (given most examples have a version of the mid-green) is the kneeling firer on the left, who is the first I've seen with the same (correct for late WWII/early post-war) charcoal grey as seen on a few of the full-sized 54mm issues.

There's no obvious reason for the variations in painting, beyond home-painting of the unpainted 'envelope' set, but when you look at variation in the larger figures, which is not so marked, but is there, even to semi-gloss greens on some, I suspect something like the following;

It may be that Britains decided to give these diminutive figures to only a few of their better out-painters, one of whom was bad at stirring their green! While they were all trusted to mix their own flesh from red and white, with or without a touch of yellow? If the range was not terribly successful (it didn't last long), there would have been small batches with periods of inactivity between them, leading to an even grater range of paint-variants than the 54mm set? It's all pure conjecture though!

 

Final thought: someone at the show where I bought this immediately asked "Who would buy the 'being shot' figures?", and it's a fair point, but collectors, even one figure a week with their sixpence collectors', whould want one of each, wouldn't they?!

Three days later - Courtesy of Paul Morehead, editor of Plastic Warrior magazine, we see the Britains catalogue states only six of each figure, so five per large compartment plus the eight display samples, for a total contents count of only 48! Many thanks to Paul for this nugget.

I is for Initial Introduction

Below these three shots - If I get them all loaded today; are 7 other articles, which this picture will help with, as far as identifying the various figures goes and judging the sizes against each other.

Soldiers, pilots and civilians/rail passengers, the relevant rail staff are dealt with in a couple of the posts below somewhere and the entire range of Hornby Dublo/Hornby/Hornby-Triang and Hornby Railways sets and issues will be covered in another post another time, as will a more in-depth look at the relationships - as I understand them - in the Modelmaster/Merit/Wills/
Slater’s/Peco/Guagemaster family of semi-flats from old die-cast moulds.

For some reason this is not enlarging when you click on it, probably too much coding on the image, I'll re-load all three seperately in a day or two, sorry for that, it's the one image in all 8 posts you want to open - peer hard!!!...Done!

Three years later (05th April 2014)...we'll try this;

That seems to have done the trick...click on it to enlarge them all to tha same relative size!

T is for Tiny...Tiny Trojan's

The reason I ended up with 7 articles was that I wanted to cover the ‘Tiny Trojan’ figures, but to do that I needed to compare them to their Crescent originals, which lent toward further comparisons with Skybirds and Dinky and so on…
The Trojans are bigger than both Airfix and Britains ‘Trooscale’ who were aiming at a market which was quite dominated by the smaller European HO railway equipment, and the associated buildings, trees and so on that the war gaming fraternity were interested in campaigning their Airfix figures through!

They are however the same size as the small ranges of pre- and post-war figures by Skybirds, Crescent (1:72) and Dinky (nominally; 1:60), and it’s this early inability of the toy industry to standardize a size or range of sizes that leaves us collecting figures that climb in quarter-millimeter increments from less than 15mm to 70mm+

As can be seen in the picture at the bottom right, there were two distinct issues of these figures (Khaki below and a greyish brown – the more common – above), with further ‘collectable’ variants as well, such as the black or unpainted helmets of the former issue.

The Crescent figure with an asterisk seems not to have been issued by Trojan in plastic. The lack of a discernable size difference between the Crescent originals and the Tiny Trojans would suggest that Trojan inherited the moulds for the Crescent range, why they dropped one pose and created 3 new ones may never been known, a guess would be the level of damage to the moulds when Trojan got hold of them and/or a desire to fill gaps in the ‘Infantry section’ with an anti-tank weapon and a machine gun.

All the Trojans in this collage are from the set known to the hobby as set ‘B’ or set ‘2’ or ‘The second set’, as neither set is identified anywhere other than the catalogue list, there is no guarantee that this is the correct way round, apart for the fact that these poses seem currently less common than the other 4 poses and it seems reasonable to assume they were in production for a shorter time.

The additional poses (over the Crescent range) in this set are the Bazooka-man; here seemingly based on a pose common to a lot of Eriksson’s kneeling figures (posted the other day in an ACW article), which by the late 1950’s were everywhere in all sizes; and the flailing around/stabbing pose which was common to a lot of larger scale figure sets of the time such as Marx, MPC and so on, indeed it bears a striking resemblance to the stabbing 8th Army pose from Charbens.
Set 1/A/The first set; The extra pose here is the prone machine-gunner, clearly sculpted by an amateur, probably from someone else’s casualty (?), and I’ve shot three together to show that he is meant to look like that! His weapon seems to have been sculpted from the weapon on the deck of a common pocket-money/bath toy MTB of the time from Hong Kong, and is a scaled-down twin-Oerlikon (with shield) from the front deck of the said boat.

The other three poses are from the previous metal Crescent range. The fact that the gloss paint on the browner/khaki figures probably pre-dates the matt colours of the other batch, and the fact that the other 4 poses appear in both styles, would point to neither being more or less common that the other, and that larger numbers of ‘Set B’ are just ‘still to be found’; three shop-stock boxes of ‘Set A’ having turned up in the last 12 years - on both sides of the ‘Pond’.
Added 29/02/12 I've been waiting a while for this, now it's here - the 'shop stock' box; this is the second one to turn up in the States, and like the previous one contained only the four 'set A' poses, originally about 36 sets of them.

Purely by a process of elimination (which is by no means accurate), I have tentatively identified these (‘T?’) as being from the other two sets in the Trojan Catalogue; Passengers and Rail Staff. Both are taken from the Britains/W.Horton/Trix (‘B’) range of ‘Trooscale’/Lilliput figures.

Again, evidence - lack of size difference - points to Trojan (if it is them) getting hold of the moulds originally used for the metal ranges. The better detail on the plastic figures can be explained by the use of a different material in the mould, while the head/hat differences of the mother and daughter (Britains; No.LB/517 Nurse and Child) is easily explained as being due to flash rather than remoulding.

L is for Lilliput

Having now cleared those companies linked to the original Trojan post, we might as well clear-up the other loose-ends that have been raised one way or the other. As the Britains/Horton 'Lilliput' range were touched upon, let’s do them first…

Loose figures and other items from the farm range, all badged to W. Horton. The tractor has been looked at before here, and these animals are - for the most part - a bit tatty, but that’s life on the farm for you! Since taking these pictures I have removed the larger pig from the Britains box, there’s no evidence for him being there and I don’t know why he was…probably a piglet from a 54mm range? These are - basically - scaled down from the 54mm range, with the exception of the tractor-driver.

There is no cataloguing differential for black or brown splotched cattle, nor for the pink or black finish on the pigs.

Also Britains Lilliput (originally) are the hunt scene, and in metal; very rare, due to their thin legs and small parts (fox and dogs), as a result I only have one and he’s a very headless rider!

The mystery is where the (really quite common) plastic mouldings come from, they could be unlisted (in the only catalogue found) Trojan figures, for the mould-destination reasons brought-up in the above posts, but for the same or similar reasons they could be Trix, an independent Horton thing, a late Britains thing to accompany the plastic Herald downscales (but why has no packaging turned-up?), or even someone not yet mentioned…Culpitts (for cake decorations), Hilco or Cherilea (who both liked other peoples moulds/sculpts…Hell - the saddles are all Skybirds (and Crescent) khaki infantry colours! Meanwhile the horses in the upper image (earlier set?) are manufactured in colours common to both Britains/Herald AND Timpo plastic?

What we do know is that they come in two distinct issues, the earlier, better mouldings in flat realistic-coloured plastic and the later sets with a more glossy, translucent (is that the right word?) plastic in brighter colours. Sitting here pouring over an enlarged image of both sets together, my vote veers toward Culpitts. Mercator Trading had lots of these at the PW show last month, in little bags, and Culpitts used to use un-carded little bags in the big stand-alone revolving 6-foot and counter top 2-foot Perspex display units they used to use, it would also explain the difference between the first issue (made for Culpitts by Britains/Horton…or Gem?) and the later ones which look like the later HK produced versions of other Culpitts/Gemodels stuff?

The other thing we know is that no one has ever seen the fox in this range, but there was a metal one? Well - you wouldn’t want a fox about to die on a cake, but a little might want to celebrate horses or horse-riding on her birthday or Mum might make a cake to celebrate the beginning or the end of the hunt season? This set is different from the 54mm Hollow-cast range, where most of the horses are standing, and there are three dog poses, not the single one found in this set (there are only 2 poses in the Lilliput metal set), while only three of the four (Lilliput metal) rider poses are reproduced in the plastic sets. Finally note how the woman rider (all black) is side-saddle.

The two box sizes the Farm came in, Horton also produced a lot of the Papier-mâché buildings and scenics that Britains used with this and the larger-scale ranges, a job which had previously been undertaken by Hugar. Also a look at some larger-scale farm from Taylor and/or Barratt versus small scale Lilliput figures from Britains/Horton.

As we also looked at the Crescent military figures above, here is their small scale farm, larger than Britains offering they are quite crudely painted and were probably sold on small cards as penny (or from the likely dates thre’penny or sixpence!) toys. As with the military figures; there are crude home casts/piracies around - not shown here.

B is for Beachead - Hong Kong Style, Part 1 - Beach Head Assault

As promised yesterday evening - a closer look at the Beach Head Assault sets from Hong Kong makers and some linked bits and pieces (second post - below)

This is the set I looked at the other night, figures are close to H0/00 and quite well detailed, bunker is basically the Giant copy of the Marx pillbox.

The same set, this time however it has had Byra Products overprinted and one lot of troops (the 'Enemy') have been replaced by the Airfix copies usually found in lucky-bags and cheap Christmas Crackers.

We then have 'Set Number 273' again in two slightly different versions, and this shows well how the HK manufacturers would plagiarise each other as happily as they would copy western producers. Although these look the same, they are in fact smaller, have new artwork (with one differing greatly from the other; planes...) and have slightly different contents, both from each other and the preceding sets.

These are later sets with poorer quality figures, to the Britains copies have now been added copies of the Crescent Desert Infantry. The left hand set is probably the earlier (closer to the original artwork, better detail to the armoured cars and planes), while the one on the right is the copy of a copy of copies!

The Haglon/Hagemeyer set is closer to the first two in style, contents and card size, but has the poor quality figures of the two above sets so I've placed it here in the 'hierarchy' of card types. Note also it's numbered 272 a digit below the above two sets, so there will be a connection lost in the mists of time, and it may be this set slightly predates them?

As so much HK stuff has 3 or 4-digit numbers, I suspect the numbers pertain to contracts rather than stock numbers, or; some do at least!!?!

Thanks must go to James Opie for this and all Hong Kong articles as his generousity in the past pretty-much doubled my HK collection at a stroke.

H is for Hong Kong Copies of the Britains Lilliput Trooscale Figures

I have dozens of these old HK carded sets, but thought I'd put up a couple of 'typical' examples, just to finish this sequence on Britains Lilliput Khaki Infantry.

Early sets tend to have smaller figures with more 'extras' - in this case Marx/Blue Box bunkers, a micro-scale clip together wharf, bridge ("One at a time please!") and tank traps. The micro-scale armoured cars go so well with the 54mm barbed wire?

Later, larger figures probably taken from the Britains 54mm originals, these figures often come with similar copies of the Crescent 8th Army/Desert Infantry.

Close-up showing the glossy appearance of these figures, and poor detail, some miss whole limbs or body parts, these date from the mid-late 1970's, the beach-assault from the '60's.

A is for A Call to Arms Reissue of Britains Lilliput Trooscale

As pointed out below, A Call To Arms (ACTA) obtained the moulds for the Britains Lilliput Trooscale figures and reissued them in the early 'Noughties'.

The eight poses as reissued in a dark green plastic, to the left is an early 'Empire Made' piracy from Hong Kong of the 54mm originals. He has no face!

E is for EKO copies of Britains Trooscale Lilliput

Further to the article below and the comments resulting; long before A Call To Arms (ACTA) got their hands on the mould, EKO in Spain had indulged in a bit of 'homage'!

Seen here is a complete set of the EKO figures with both the common types of packaging/'Header Card' associated with them. Very true to the originals, detail on this later set is markedly less clear than the figures accompanying the earlier red and white card.

B is for Britains Trooscale Lilliput (Truescale)

Well, as it's Christmas I thought I'd cover an oldie but a goodie! Issued in 1958, these were supposed to be the first of a range of plastic figures to be added to the metal range of Trooscale 'Lilliput' model railway figures by William Horton (for William Britains).

They were first issued in this slightly 'Toblerone' shaped triangular prism packaging, and a counter pack of 48 figures (6x8 poses), fully painted in the same scheme as their 54mm brethren (upon which they were based, if not just pantographed down from!).

They were also sold as an unpainted set in this small 'envelope' sized pack with eight separate windows, the range/series/set (?) was pretty much dead at birth as Airfix had already started producing 40/50 figures/items per set for about the same money as these!

The eight poses. As can be seen they are not only the same size as their larger donors, but bare a remarkable resemblance to the Airfix Combat Group issued a few years later. They are - like most 1950's toy 'khaki' infantry - modelled on the School of Infantry 'Demonstration Battalion' down at Warminster, being equipped with the experimental/trials EM 2 Bullpup design Assault Rifle, the - then - brand new '58 pattern webbing with large pack, 'bum-roll' & kidney pouches and the late WWII helmet, which would soldier-on (excuse the pun!) until at least 1987 (when I surrendered mine for the itchy-piss-pot that was/is the Kevlar replacement!).

Rear view of three different colour treatments, some collectors think the gloss ones were not issued by Britains as the 54mm never got such a painting, but as they keep turning up in different shades - as above - I think they did, probably toward the end of their period of availability, to try to make them stand out on the shop rack and sell?