U is for Useless Post Title!

It's one of those things, sometimes you think of something amusing (even if only to you), and then forget it and can't get it back. When I was preparing these posts (there were originally four), and I settled on the silent k-for-n gag with the first post, I hadn't given any thought to the other three post's titles, but after realising I could abuse another k (as a c) in the second post, I came up with two more k-related funnies for the other two posts.

 

I then had a couple of pretty mardy days, last week, took a couple of days to recover, and realised I'd forgotten both titles! And despite a few lazy days, during which I hoped at least one of them would come to me, neither has, and so, well, the above!

 

I've also combined the last two posts into one, deleted a couple of dozen shite images, and so this is the odds & ends, on the LB Wild West Children; that's LB for Lik Be, of course!

 

From the 1986 Lik Be catalogue image, we find these three figures painted to a higher standard than the '70's toys, and a music box, similarly decorated, with the mounted Indian, I would imagine that all are actually polystyrene, rather than the polyethylene of the earlier toys, with the separate figures being marketed as cake decorations, maybe?

 

In the US, Gordy International carried them, individually, in blister packs, and larger sets (below), whether this means Pikit carried them over here or not, is questionable, I suspect not, the dates don't seem to add-up, and just because two importers/jobbers carry the same thing once, doesn't mean they always do! Note the mounted Indian offered as a baseless foot figure, and another shot of the errant (from my set) Mexican.

 

The larger sets (of which I have only found these) include paired cowboys with one of the building fronts, you don't get the rest of the building, just the frontage, which Peter Evans pointed-out were closer to Britain's Lone Star than anything else, and a quick Google revealed the double front 'City Office - Land Claims / City Jail' to be a direct copy of the Lone Star design, so I'm hazarding a guess all three are?

 

Close-up of the Mexican, and a few duplicates, from evilBay, next to a Bergan-Beton 60mm, I've listed them in the Tags as 1:No Scale, given their novelty nature, and no clue as to the ages of the kids depicted, are they six, or ten?

 

Three more from feebleBay, the Britain's heritage of the damaged middle one being obvious. Given the number of plastic colours each turns-up in, they must have run the moulds for some time, and they should be commoner than they are, especially with Gordy's involvement, Cake Decoration and boxed sets in the mix?

 

Prior to obtaining the boxed set, a follow-up to previous appearances here at Small Scale World had been in the long queue (most of this post), for some years, and these are two of the girls I already had, as I said before, the four girls do seem to be more commonly found, but that could just be my own experience, and evidence of no real phenomena at all? No, I don't know what the unicorn is doing there! Summoned by a Reign Dance? I'll get me coat . . . 

 

Various base marking treatments, some mine, some feeBay, quite an eclectic mix, with clear similarities to both the Spacemen (shallow disc) and the smaller Astronaut pair, or War of Independence cake decoration stuff (deeper recess with chamfered sides) and 'funimals' (A-codes).

 

Almost the entire range was clearly marked, with the buildings having the awful 'Is it IDL, or is it LP? No, it's LB for Lik Be' logographic at the top of the shopfront/gable-ends, and while people can persevere with the LP attribution (some on evilBay are still using IDL!) out of stubbornness, they will look sillier and sillier as the years progress, and that stubbornness will eventually be rewritten as simple stupidity!

A couple of shots from 'Le Baye' I held on to, a few years ago, ID'ing a Totem Pole I thought - at the time - I might never acquire, just so I knew what it looked like! Although looking paler, I suspect it's the same colour as mine, and was, possibly like the Cacti, exclusive to the boxed sets?

 

When originally posting these I gave the impression I didn't know much about them, but I suspect it was just blurb-creation, as they had been something to be found in mixed lots and rumage trays for years prior to my obtaining a couple, and I'd seen plenty, while serving as a dealer's bitch, around the turn of the Century, but we didn't know back then, they were Lik Be/LB!

U is for Untitled!

These came in a mixed lot from Peter Evans, back in 2023, and I've left them in the eggs, because they're way outside my remit, being sort of 3-inch action figures, and they may prove useful for little people's presents, or future swaps against something the collection/blog need more?

Issued/carried/released/commissioned by Simba, they will be the price-bracket above a Kinder egg, I'd imagine, and the figures will be based on some better-known Western figures. They look to be somewhere between Action Jackson and Playmobile.

Each comes with a useful number of accessories, but then Action Figures were only ever that mid-ground between swoppets and Action Man! And I'll tag them ABS and Propylene, as they are likely one or the other! Simba's larger capsule toys, box ticked, many thanks to Peter.

U is for Umteenth Crimbo Post

. . . and there's more to come, but here's a few bauble loose-ends to put away. Some going on the tree, some viewed in passing as it were!

 

I actually bought this back in March, it was . . . is, technically, an Easter bauble, presumably to be hung on some silver-sprayed twigs, or another 100% consumerist, modern, non-traditional, 'interior-decor' shite! But I thought, well, it's a blown-glass bauble, it can go on the Christmas tree! It'll probably lose the bow, though! Very much in the style of the set of four (with the dodgy elephant) I found late last year.

 

I always try to add at least one cone, they are all over the tree in every size, and this Decoris one was big, but the first I saw, a while back now, and a nice colour, so it's gone in the box awaiting a tree!

 

Not baubles, but rather nice, I thought, slightly stylised Magi, as candleholders, sent to the Blog by Brian Berke, you can see other colourways behind the facing trio, so you can have quite a caravan, if you so wish!

 

And I love their headdresses, which have the look of non-Disney Aladdin/1001 Nights stuff from illustrated fairy-story 'comics' of the 1960's, like Pixi Tales, or Once Upon a Time. Turkish or Gourd turbans, now - of course - there's a specie of gourd called a Turk's Turban!

 

Brian also spotted this figural pair, I think the one on the left is Ms Vogue, the po-faced Meryl Streep character from the movie, you know, wasername, just retired, Crewella something-or-other? I'm not sure on the other one, is it supposed to be Ellen DeGeneres? She's not known for colour, or glasses? Fun, but too much appliqué stuff for my tree!

 

Adrian had this vintage one on his stall, last month, and I was tempted, but the flat-paint face and white beard & fur put me off, I like my vintage ornaments to be spirit painted, so the mirrored interior surface shines through the colour.

As mentioned above, I'm no fan of 'stuff' glued-on, there are a few in the family collection, but only a few, and Mum found them all! Now, Mum would have loved this, but, because it's pink, and she didn't have pink on her tree, she would have given it to me, for the 'gay tree', and because it would have been a present, I would have accepted it with the love intended, therefore, I bought it, if that makes sense?

 

I bought these three, unbranded, from the new/old (they moved to bigger premises and changed their name) hardware store in Fleet the other day, pretty sure I recognised them, but I primarily grabbed them because they are quite small, and the smaller ones bring a bit of interest to the higher portion of the tree.

 

And damn me if they (inner pair) aren't the better quality originals of the ones I got from TKMaxx (outer pair) back in November! It's not just in Toy Soldiers' that the Chinese copy each-other!

U is for Unknown Salesman's Samples

A bit of a find here, and not mine, Adrian found them, and thinking I'd like them, saved them for the blog, and posterity! There's no clue as to their origins, and the message on the slips of paper pasted into the inner edge of the boxes (suggesting they were placed rather as the shots below, upright in a cabinet of some kind), which reads "Specimen contents as used if boxed to retail at 5/6d" [five shillings and six pence].

 

The mix of metal and plastic novelty 'prizes' places this very much in the 1950's, as do, strangely, the hats, rather squidged into one of the boxes, which are about three times the size of the hats I've known all my life, but which I remember from old TV shows (think 'Love thy neighbour,' Hancock, the soaps), where people often had the taller ones? Hard to unfold now, but they all have crude 'jewels' made from silver-foil, diamond (parallelogram) offcuts glued to them, which I also remember.

 

Both boxes have similar contents, indeed, very similar to the Old World Series we looked at years ago, with wooden whistles, steel wire-puzzles, paper logic puzzles and the novelties, which include stand-alone flats, broach-badges, the inevitable thimble (Christmas was almost a disappointment, if somebody didn't get an impractical, plastic thimble!), and rings. Many thanks to Adrian for grabbing these.

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!

U is for Update - Scarabs

This is not me throwing-up a spurious post to get closer to the target total, I've four days to get up 7 posts, which is quite doable, and I've been promising myself bed for the last two hours!

 

But rather, I added an image to the Scammell post later yesterday, then about an hour or so ago, I found the old Merit box scans, so added them, and I've just added another Peco image, so if you are a fan of that particular mechanical horse, it's about four posts down the page, with double the images originally published.

Or here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/s-is-for-scammells-scarabs-scammell.html

U is for Updates - Various

I've added, or started a wants/swaps page above, as and when I will add things I'm after, and things I have to swap in the hope of mutually filling gaps in collections, it's not got much on it, but it will grow, and the pictures of the swaps will disappear once a deal is done!

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/wants-swaps.html

 

 

I added a Type 3 copy Astronaut set from Grandmother Stover's to the Giant Blog, a week ago, here;

https://butisitgiant.blogspot.com/2023/11/grandmother-stovers-c3-spacemen.html

 

 

And a whole bunch of HO-OO additions went in on the Airfix Blog a few weeks ago, can't remember what they all were now, but about 12 pages got new text, images or scans.

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

I've also dealt with a couple of recent comments over there and will check the other Blogs later, at the moment I'm not getting the notifications, and tend to only cheak this 'Home Blog' daily, it's because of the Hotmail problem, so it's still maverickatlarge[at]gmail[dot]com for the time being!

 

 

And here's a gratuitous picture of something . . . I'm just going to find in Picasa!

 

Hamley's 1972

U is for Undead, Previously Unaccounted For

We covered most of the commoner rack-toy skeletons a few years ago, over a year or two, with updates on each-year's packing of the most recent sets, but two sets escaped, the WHC/Success issue (which we saw the catalogue image for at the beginning of Rack Toy Month in August just passed) and the Toy Major originals, although we have seen some of them and their later unpainted issues/copies, so let's look at them now!

Obviously they (Toy Major) had to try the new beast, it will definitely look better with two or three of the smaller Game Workshop figures, perhaps a larger band in a howdah, or a padded bench-seat like that Histrorex wagon we looked at back at the start of the year?

 

I had already shot them a while ago with a two-headed dragon, not sure who made it, it might be Imperial, but a lot of this stuff is, very much, still to come!

 

The full set was five figures and a rider, the reissues gave him a base, so there were six 'infantry', basic decoration with a wash of dirty-weathered bones, wood and silver highlights.

 

A couple of the reissues; base marking is the same distinctive TM contract coding, but for a different client/batch, the bases are also noticeably shallower, which can be explained by a seperate tool-insert having less depth.

 

Last year's set from Brian Berke, when they added the witches, still in the card, with the Cornelius set in silver to compare, two Toy Major and the Walgreen on the end of the row for a comparison.

 

The full set of the WH Cornelius/Success/WHC figures, what differentiates them from the more recent Old East Main Co., carded set above, is that the WHC are manufactured in a very soft rubbery polymer.

U is for "Up Yer Ladder, Pal!"

This is an odd one, I've seen foreign-language versions, usually by equally esoteric makes as this one, Action GT being a TV-marketing enterprise who had some success in the late 1970's-1980's with mostly Hong Kong imports branded to them here, and other firms (Pressman, Remco (Big Trak?), Schmidt Spiele, Tyco &etc.) elsewhere, relying on a business model which seemed to consist of big-box, statement toys to 'make your year's money over/with the Christmas season'!

 

The game itself is a pretty random luck-oriented one, but obviously the 'hook' is the large apparatus which can be set up on the floor for the family to gather round and marvel at while smiling inanely at each other, and laughing a lot, in the - then - prevailing fashion of 'nuclear' families in televisual advertising!

 

The 'ladder' frame is manufactured in a rather flimsy polystyrene, unlike the figures and sacks which are all made of a hard-wearing material which could be a dense polyethylene, or a nylon of some type?

Having mentioned them; as toy/figure collectors our interest can be twofold, firstly, the obvious piracies of the Britains farmer have an appeal to completists, 'cameo' collectors or hard-core Britains' fans, while the supply of up to 16 sacks in up to four colours (you rarely see it complete, but you will often see it, incomplete, at the larger car-boot sales) might be useful for modellers or dioramists?

As you can see, the copies are around 40mm, and taken directly from the late version, PVC/vinyl farm-hand, who would have been easily obtainable in the former colony by whoever was pirating it for the Western buyers!

 

The hair-trigger hinges (they are weighted on the near-side, by being wider that the back portion), means you can drop your own figure, by himself, if you are too ham-fisted, but even if all players are being careful, three will usually send them all tumbling to the bottom, often carrying a few others with them. I'd imagine that with a shaky granny or fidgety juvenile involved, it became almost impossible for anyone to finish, and therefore a frustrating game which didn't come-out of the cupboard in subsequent years?

Original TV Ad.

U is for Updates - Jig Toy Page

I've been adding stuff to the Jig Toy page for a few days now, and I think I added some stuff a while ago and didn't announce it, but there's still a few bits to add, by which time it will be about three times the size it was, but any order it had has been diluted by a more chaotic scrapbook approach.

Among the items still to be added are some larger puzzles from Character Molding of the US, which seems to be where my Fairylite 'Exploding Battleship' came from, no surprise as I pointed out at the time, they were all things to all toy men, including importers! I guess this was the 'Exploding Tank'?

The first word on these puzzles is still Rob's page, and he has added a tremendous amount since I last looked at it here;

http://www.robspuzzlepage.com/keychain.htm#pmid

Q is for Question Time - U is for Uglynauts

These were flagged-up by Fred Barratt in an old Plastic Warrior magazine . . . Around the 150's I think, he'd found them on holiday in Australia, I seem to recall, but didn't have a brand name/mark for them.

 

I have a horrible feeling I've even lined them up the same as the PW article, which, if I have, is pure coincidence, but it's how they lend themselves, with the firers to the right and wavey-hands-man over the lowered arm of the next guy!

They are not very good and look like a group of over-acting firefighters! About 50mm and fun, they are - at least - more spacemen! But hard to place in the oeuvre, they're more 'pulp' than anything else? Cardboard helmets, mechanics overalls and wellington boots!

 

Looking at them enlarged, you could claim they are Star Wars knock-offs, one of those dodgy Italian ones with original space-battle clips over pop-numbers and ninjas! There are two 'AT-AT' pilots and four 'stormtroopers'!

Being spacemen, they do have an enemy! Or, the denizens of several planets to conquer/destroy! These are not much better, but marginally more believable, and I have a red example of the chap holding the cattle-prod (2nd from the left) somewhere in storage, so they must have been issued in other colours?

 

Base mark is like some Toy Major stuff, and some of the similar pirates we've seen from Redbox, or even the buff/tan Halloween sets we've featured in the last few years, can anyone add anything other than "They were in Australia around 2010"?

 

Now known to be [earlyish] Toy Major.

U is for Usborne Publishing

Who took to threatening fellow-Bloggers back at the beginning of this Blog, some 15-odd years ago, god knows what they will make of a completed work, but at least two people received take-down/cease-and-desist eMails, way back when, just for publicising their (Usborne's) products!?

Scan of an old photograph of an old made-up, card model I did around 2003/4, and which was taken by a friend's kid to his junior school to be put on a bookshelf or something until it had accrued a thick-enough cover of dust to justify a trip in a skip during the summer holidays!

I hid the join in the two base-boards with coloured pencil on the moat and some scatter material in the courtyard, and I built it as per the instructions, down to the cocktail-stick flag-poles. I still have the knights in a little tub somewhere, in fact we may have seen them here at some point? The wall above the portcullis gateway had no fixing flaps or tabs, so had a tendency to lean forwards!

And it struck me, while building it, that it would be very easy to make a much bigger castle, from several, identical, Make This Castle / Make This Model Castle sets, building a much longer perimeter wall with all sorts of towers, and leaving the keep in the middle rather than in one corner!

U is for Update - Airfix Indians

 

I've added some stuff to the Airfix HO-OO Indians page, a few box scans, some OBE's a rack-toy card and conversions, which can all be seen here!

U is for Up The Pole!

I had an interesting 2020-2021 with one eBay seller, he had a shit lot (not a shitload, different meaning altogether!) of clearly brittle Cherilea Wild West with some Hong Kong copies of Jean thrown-in for good measure with a couple of other bits and he wanted something extreme like 48-quid BIN. I offered him £25 I think and he turned it down, about six months later I offerd him £20 and didn't get a response, then, at some point Chris Smith spotted it and I told him the tale, I don't know if he made an offer or not, I don't think he does Wild West, but then, about eighteen months after I'd first seen it, I tried again at £20.

 

He turned it down the same day and offered me something like £32 again, so I made another offer of £15, and that generated an eMail! "But you offered . . . " etc. So I explained it was mostly shite, but I was happy to pay 15-squids for the Totem pole and in the end I think we settled on £18+£2p&p? or the original offer from the best part of two years earlier!

 

Some of the amounts may not be wholly accurate it was a while-ago now, but you get the picture, hard work from someone who really hasn't a clue, but has been 'taught' by scripted day-time telly-shit that everything in his attic is worth a bloody fortune.

 

There was a bit more than in the image, and a pile of broken bits below the crop, but you can see it's only the Totem Pole which is interesting, and it's very interesting!

How it arrived! One of the reasons I wasn't willing to shovel money at the guy, everything else went in the bin as even though I tried to save some of the heads, belts etc . . . they crumbled like biscuits! Well, the HK went to charity, I think!

 

However, I managed to get it all glued-back together and it's still in one piece, although I do treat it with extra reverence, and it has its own little plastic box to live in. Not to be found in the PW Special Publication on Cherilea, I can't see who else it could be, and I don't think I've ever seen another, until Bill 'Wotan' emailed a while back . . .

. . . with the news, he'd found one too! And his is a base-varient with an integrally moulded base? And, arguably nicer colours! On his Blog, the sepia wash he uses has made it even nicer! Cherilea Toy Totem Pole with a subdued orange/grey thing going on.

 

There are signs of it being glued to a baseboard; the original window-box maybe? The three upper sections are exactly the same as mine, but the lower section is obviously quite different. Cheer to Bill for the images, have you got one of these, what base has it got? If the plug-in came second, some might have the later, heavier base with flat/right-angled sides/edges?