B is for Big Box of Bounty - Vehicles, Bits & Bobs

Well, luckily I have a day off, today, as I have a ton of plastic shite . . . Sorry, 'polymer loveliness' to sort and photograph, from the BP Sandown Park toy fair, yesterday, where I had a excellent day, but before I get started on that, here's the latest instalment of the plunder-posts from Chris Smith's most recent donation to the blog, which is all the man-made stuff! 

 

This is rather nice! A probably French farm-cart, in that heavy, hard-toffee-like polystyrene material, which I suspected was probably French, but sent these images to the authors of FIM, just in case they hadn't seen it, however, they were familiar with it, and were also of the opinion it is French.

 

It has a lovely tipping-action, via a lever at the front, and may be missing a probably removable back-board or ladder-rave, wheels seem to be the same polymer, while the white tyres are a polyethylene, I think? Maker still needed though?

 

This is how it came out of the box, with a Pokémon (?) hitched-up!

 

A Blue Box Austin champ, which seems to have been deliberately cut-back, in preparation for some conversion, or super-detailing? It will go in the spares for now, while the little PVC Galoob knock-off is new to me, Blog and the collection.

 

The weird landing craft belongs with various generic rack-toy 'army men' and diver sets, and while having various holes in which it looks like something should be plugged-in, is found just like this, in sealed sets!

 

More rack-toys with a militarised executive jet and one of the MPC mini-plane piracies, all useful, and the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar (which Dad jumped out of, on many occasions), seems to be one of the slightly bronzed-silver versions which are harder to find.

 

The submarine is from a modern rack-toy, or rack-toys, and we've probably seen it here in sealed/shelfied set/s in recent years, and is a useful loose addition. The racing car is from one of those credit-card shaped (and material) novelty sets, I have dinosaurs in the collection somewhere, and there are several sets of jet fighters.

 

The sports-car with lenticular 'window' is an old 1d or 2p gum-ball capsule-machine prize, while the locomotive is a modern (possibly Kinder) take on the old erzgebirge toy, where several wagons, or coaches, would be hooked or tied-together as a full train.

 

Three cracker-toy type bikes/motorcycles in the front-left 'row', with the larger bike we've seen before in various greens or spray-camouflage, associated with the Supreme/Ackerman, 'Fritz-helmeted' PVC figures, while the chap on the right is a Hong Kong rider, I think, used for both motorcycles and the quad-bike type machines?

 

A couple of flags (Norway (R) and semi-fictional 'African', left ) and what I suspect is the top of an animal 'toob', being a spinning map of the world, possibly seen here as a shelfie, I can't recall, but it looks familiar? One feels it's just the accessory for a evil Doctor's lair in some superhero or Bond'esque scenario, as the conference table!

 

I'd love to know where the axe comes from or who it belongs to, the shovel will be from one of the eight or ten-inch Action Man/GI Joe rip-offs, the pistol looks like a Christmas cracker prize, and more specifically, the mini, tree-crackers? I think the lantern with clear-marble lens is a doll's house accessory, due to its diminutive size, similar tourist items tend to be larger and have a pencil-sharpener secreted about them!

 

Part of a rack-toy bridge, an oil-drum, which may be Airfix and a rather nice, probably Hong Kong made wheelbarrow, which could have conveniently been for that yellow figure (Chris reports Eric Critcley as confirming him being a French farmer and not a cowboy), but it's too big!

However, with so many farmworker and construction/road-worker figures in the 'unknown civilian' zones, I'm sure it'll fit someone, even if it doesn't actually belong to them! Soft polyethylene with a very small wheel, is it from something cartoony like Bob the Builder?

 

Bits of the 'Bucking Bronco' jig-toy puzzle, a Richard I label which may prove useful one day, clearly it belongs on the base/plinth of a statuette or figure of some kind, which may come in, or already be in the stash, without a label?

 

The other casualty of Royal Fail's comprehensive parcel-mashing programme, was the blob to the right, which deserves a restoration! It's got the Airfix Reconnaissance Set's German dispatch-rider at it's core, with the wheels of a US M3 half-track either side and something on the back, and would seem to have been a home-made sci-fi bike thing, with the rider, now headless, painted up like a Soviet general on May 1st!

 

Marx (?) on the left, modern rack-toy/play-set boulder on the right!

 

Manta Force from Bluebird/Tomy, both missing bits, but both usable, and while other Manta stuff is in the forthcoming Sci-fi post, one day we'll redo all the Bluebird overviews, which were back near the beginning of the Blog and well overdue for an updated treatment, and these will be useful for that!

D is for Discovering Shire Albums in the Shire Library

Continuing with the meander through my collecting library, both for the general interest and/or hell of it, and as an illustrated bibliography which may or may not be of interest to readers, new or loyal, as to suggesting titles they might want to track down.

 

Shire Publications began with UK-specific travel and local geographic guides, known as the Discovering series, which I don't think ever got a full numbering system, even as they expanded into wider hobby interests, beginning with cultural/rural/folk stuff. That led to the larger format Shire Albums, which were renamed Shire Library when Osprey bought the intellectual property a couple of decades ago, now Osprey itself has been bought by Bloomsbury, and the future is unknown. Shire Albums were numbered more formally, and there are a couple of useful lists of early volumes, here;

Discovering series -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/discovering-series-shire.html 

Shire Albums -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/shire-albums.html

The main storage collection, as it stood about five years ago, these are the smaller Discovering series, with a few similarly formatted softback/pamphlet type publications. I don't know the full argot or jargon of book sizes, and as anyone who has a library will know, they creep in either height or depth by increments of millimetres, with hardbacks complicating things by having internal pages smaller than the dimensions of the whole 'box'. But both formats from Shire Publications were 'standard' sizes used by many other publishers/printers.

 

Here we see a MAP (Model [and] Allied Publications) guide to early plastic kits, which I mentioned while looking at the Burns guides in previous posts on the far right, and on the left a Hamlyn 'All Colour' guide to war-gaming on the left.

 

The Discovering's cover war-gaming and modelling, uniforms and militaria, artillery, horse-drawn transport and horse furniture, and while they are all small, are still very useful for research, especially when you are looking for something specific, or on the tip of an increasingly forgetful tongue (old age bites!), each is like a better illustrated Wikipedia page, you only need to reach for, no Googling lots of useless crap!

 

The larger format Shire Albums include an early tome by James Opie, and are in an even commoner format (A5), so we see an Argus Publishing plans book, and several self-published efforts, including the late John Clarke's diorama's, Britains [horse-]racing colours, and both the Spot On guide and overview of a private collection of cartoon die-casts are self-published, I think.

 

The Airfix history was one of the last new titles added to the Shire stable, numbered at 598, while the W&H list should be with the catalogues, where I have several more, it was a yearly thing for some years, I believe.

 

Added the next day - I thought there were a bunch missing! The core of the toy-related volumes are in the larger format Shire Album size, and here's their shot! 

 

Cropped out of a larger image we'll see in a future post, I grabbed this in the last few years, firstly because 'once you're collecting these things . . . ', and secondly I thought it might help ID some farm/Santon type stuff, and lastly, there is a bit of a costume sub-library in any case!

 

These were all issued as 'free gifts' in Military Modelling magazine, and used to be stapled into the centre-fold, but (with the exception of the one on top, which was a different size for some reason), they were all A5.

 

Private publications, there is very little in these which is still relevant or useful now, but they remain in the library, as all books should, in part as part of the history of the library, and against the concept of 'you never know'; always worth a flick if you're looking for something specific, like a code-number. I have no idea how many titles were issued in this private, or club (?) series?

 

Covers are different, contents are the same, -Album versus -Library.

 

Another MAP, they tended to be compendiums of material previously published in their stable of hobby magazines, and interesting to see an early publication from Pat Hammond, who would go on to become better known for his work on Hornby, Tri-Ang and Binns Road.

 

The MAP is an ex-library copy, both a useful source of old titles, and a guarantee of cheap-price, as true 'collectors' (Bibliophiles) don't rate them, so neither do the second-hand book trade!

 

 Four more minor publisher/self-published types, including more trams (all useful for manufacturers data), and three peripheral tomes, but it all builds the whole, and appendices often have useful stuff in them, lists of manufactures, or after-market (now 'garage') producers.

 

 More of the same.

 

One of the first of the new Library titles, and a useful little overview. Really belongs with the Atlantic Wall/Channel Island subsection of the military library, but should be with its brother volumes, a perennial problem when a figure or book sits firmly in two camps. Does it belong in Cake Decorations, or Ceremonials? Is it Fantasy or Medieval? Bought new, a few years ago, from Waterstones in Basingrad.

 

A visit to the secondhand bookshop in Alton, 2021.

 

Three titles I inherited, as I was sorting my late Mother's estate out, over the last few years, I have a subsection, or subsections on tiles and mosaic, so a useful work, while Shire Archaeology is a third series, running - to date - to 91 titles, listed here;

 

Shire Archaeology - https://www.librarything.com/nseries/15546/Shire-Archaeology

 

Three more interesting tomes, particularly the schools one, not something I have much on, in the library as a whole, an old ex-Public Library book on school architecture in the arts section, maybe? But an interesting read.

 

I don't know if anyone caught the history of Boarding Schools by Nicky Campbell, the Radio1 DJ, on Radio4 recently, but as someone shoved through that flawed and damaging system, I found it both poignant and nostalgic in equal measure.

 

Also inherited, these share one code in the partial numbering of Discovering's

Mum's own fields included furniture, silverware, and latterly oriental art and ceramics.

 

 Another visit to Alton!

 

The most recent but one visit, and seen before, we've also seen Horse Drawn Commercial Vehicles and a second edition of Antique Maps, from a visit this year. While 487, Garden Gnomes, has so far escaped me, but it's only a matter of time! Discovering Book Collecting is a good full stop to this post!

C is for Concord, Cloned

We use 'clone' in the hobby as a shorthand for copied, pirated or knocked-off, but given as how a clone is supposed to as good as or hard to tell from the original, it's never better used than for this quite amazing model, which a mate kindly bought for me the other day when I spotted it going cheap, on that there evilBay.

The plain shipping box, and that's you, shipping it home in your car, revealing it's really being aimed at cake decorators, not aimed at retailed-toy customers! And one supposes a bigger stockist/store may have had six or eight in a larger carton? Wilton also ran a mail-order facility through their annual 'yearbook' catalogues.

Recognised it straight-away! And this is possibly Wilton's finest! A millimetre-by-millimetre copy of the Britains model of the Concord Overland Stagecoach model, with only two items seemingly not reproduced, and graphics/stickers switched-out (to use the US expression!) for Overland Stage Express Co., but in the same red & gold livery.

Three smaller bags contain all the little add-ons, a third, out of shot, took the seat seen here with the riders/crew, and even the luggage has been faithfully reproduced, or blatantly stolen, depending on your viewpoint, and a 1970's kid's viewpoint was very different from a Britains executive's!

Some of the colours have been changed, but otherwise, the whole thing is remarkably similar, upon first look you think it must have used the same tools (maybe after they'd been shipped to Hong Kong with everything else circa 1971), but there is a slight drop-off in quality, most noticeable on the horses.

An unusual detail of this copy over the more typical output of Wilton, or the Hong Kong pirates, is that different polymers have been used, as they were on the Britains original, so finer details are in flexible polyethylene, as are the horses.

Clearly marked Wilton on the underside of the base (which I neglected to photograph), one obvious difference is that they've only cloned one of the two horse poses, although the manes are different, so all four are roughly the same, where Britains gave you one each of two quite different horses, in opposite colours.

The other obvious difference/omission is that the passengers weren't cloned, but both crew are faithfully reproduced, even down to the long strip of PVC sheet/strip used for the driver's whip.

While the colours of the coach are matched quite closely, in fact the paler tan for the yellow on the bodywork is almost a better choice, and the crew, loosely followed, the luggage is a little more leery.

And the whole gives a lie to Donald Trump's "Chiiinah stole from us!" crap, actually, the Americans stole from Britains, running-off to Hong Kong and giving it "Here, make us a copy of this, and keep it cheap, we're going to sell it as a cake decoration"!

As a bit of a Brucey Bonus/'Question Time', the seller included these, for free, they weren't listed in the sales-spiel or images. And I'd love to know who made them, presumably a more craft-oriented US maker, possibly two, the wooden barrel and drinking 'spoon' being one, the printed cotton-sacks from another, can anyone help with a name/names? Doll's house accessories? 50lbs of 'Old Mill' sugar and Idaho potatoes!

T is for Two - Far West Frenchies!

The last Sandown Park show was quite good for Wild West stuff, and in addition to the sets in the opener, and some Dulcop in a future post, I managed to pick this French production up, with established sellers Steve Vickers and John Begg , both stalled-out in the main/first hall, extracting not-many of my shekels, for this pair.

 

Starlux boxed stage coach; the trouble with boxed items like these, is that they are only ever box-tickers, by which I mean they sit there looking pretty, but can't be played with either in a child-like fashion, or something more formal and war-gamey! They can't be handled like loose figures, or compared closely with others, or not without getting them out of their packaging which can often lead to damage to the inserts, mounting cards, trays etc.

 

I believe I read somewhere that the coach itself was bought in from someone else, Manurba (?), or someone like that, and given Starlux horses and outrider, but I, or the person who said it, may be making that up, because the slip-in trays for the horses, are similar to other makers systems, like my own Cofalu set?

 

I also picked up this bag of 'bazaar' figures from France, as close to a generic as you can get, with graphics only for some child-safety outfit, which may or may not be official, and the contents, cowboys only, so assume bags of Indians too somewhere, being copies of Elastolin 70mm stuff from Germany.

 

 Some close-ups.

Hugonnet, Feral, LSP, 'PIH'? . . . Someone else?

 

1980 catalogue page.

 

The guy running with loot bag, shooting behind him, seems to be not only a late addition to the Elastolin line-up, but to bear a remarkable resemblance to the pre-existing Britians swoppet and/or Herald Hong Kong bank-robbers, not that it matters when the French rack-toy guys were copying everyone, including the other French producers, by the mid-80's!

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Cowboys & Indians

I seem to have done particularly well on the Western front, out there in West London, last June, with a lot to look at and eventually sort into the main collection, and with bits from all over the world, and at least two lines here, now, it's best to get started looking at them!

 

Indians.

 

Cowboys.

 

In their boxes.

 

A fantastic start to the day, when Adrian Little showed me these, I was sure they were Torgano, but thought I'd check, so, this is what GoogleAI had to say on the subject . . . 

 

"The term "Torgano Cowboys" likely refers to Les Cowboys Fringants, a popular Québécois band, and the phrase is a play on their name, which translates to "The Frilly Cowboys". The band is known for their folk-rock music and socially conscious lyrics."

WTF? Obviously Google didn't add the accents to 'Québécois', and it didn't get a single detail right, either! It was simply making it up as it went along, to please it's human task-master - me! All these AI bots are filling the internet with falsehood, inaccuracies and complete bollocks! Bucket-loads of it. It could have defaulted with "Did you mean . . . ", but chose to lie through its teeth instead!

 

These are early (1950's?) Torgano, they did the space sets the same too, with an interim version (1960's?) in one-colour, undecorated hard plastic, and integrally moulded bases (the ones here are glued on), which may have been someone else? And finally the soft plastic, slightly rounded-out copies, of the 1970's blister-cards, in various coloured polyethylenes.

 

This was a nice find as well, as we've seen the Stage-coach version, or bits of it, under a couple of Hong Kong or phantom brands, on the Blog, in the past, copies of various European makes/premiums, from people like Alkastap, Texas/Isus or Clé (?), but it's nice to now have a complete wagon. Elsewhere in the last year or two (possibly not on the Blog) I've found the mounted figures that clearly go with these, so when they're all brought together it'll now be a decent, semi-definitive post!

 

Also Hong Kong, I think, copies of Jecsan, but they may be Jecsan, I didn't have samples of either to judge-from, and the Spanish makers do like a bit of sandy-yellow polymer? Perfectly scaled to go with the slightly less hideously-caricatured Lik Be/LB Westerners, and some of the larger Lucky Luke stuff, a market the Spainsh figures were probably aiming for!

 

Don't know! Probably Hong Kong, or even 'China', they are very clean, and copying other figures, both Swoppets and Jean Hoefleur solids, new to the collection though, and new to Blog!

 

These we have seen, under several brands now I think, and were the default rack-toy/paty favour Cowboys & Indians about 15-years ago, so keep turning up now in mixed lots, happy to receive them though, as with limited colours and poses, there’s a chance of getting a complete set of every pose in every colour without much effort!

 

A mix of bits here, with a lovely flourescent yellow-green copy of Britains sitting elder, two Supreme accessories (canoe and totem pole), which think I already have, but wether I bought them, because they were cheap, or they were in one of the donantions, they will need to be checked against the master-lode!

 

The little runner is the accessory 'sprue' for the Timpo chuck-wagon I think, while someone ID'd the camp fire a few years ago, I can't remember the verdict then, but it'll be labelled in the stash! And who can refuse a purple tee-pee, or Miniature Masterpiece totem-pole from Marx!

 

Useful odds-and-sods here, with Thomas/Poplar/Tudor Rose foot figures, two of the Hong Kong copies of the Britains/Paramount/et al six-shooters, a pair of early Hong Kong copies and the brown one to the right may be another Koho, in the smaller size, damaged, but a first sample of the pose?

 

I forgot to record whether this was a Brabo or Imperial branded chap, or just another Hong Kong generic, but still, more bendier bendy polymer for the bendies tub! And in near-mint condition.

 

Argentinian, and not in the best condition, but I now have five or six of these in a tub somewhere, so a growing sample of figures which tend to be hard to find this side of The Pond?

 

Slowly building a complete set of loose Supreme/SP Toys stuff, with this vaguely Alamo/Magnificent Seven chapel, being from the large sets and as background in the flatter 'window trays', I think I only need the raft, another building, and one of the wagons for completion now, the fun of collecting!

 

A box-ticker . . . in a box! It builds the complete story of the figures/sample.

 

This was gifted by Michael Mordant-Smith, and is another of the test shots from his new Toy Soldier company, which is finding, cleaning and getting back into production, a variety of moulds, and I love the purge-marbling of red/black on this figure.

 

Another useful Hong Kong item, is this Lido knock-off, as I have one or two in different packaging, all generics, but, again, building a bigger picture!

 

A mix of mostly Hong Kong, not sure about the big green guy, he has a base like Tim Mee, especially the German ones, while the Native on the left is Kinder, for the spare parts tub, although he only needs a correct weapon!

 

A mix of mostly British branded stuff, some in a bit of a state, 

along with a harder to find Jean and a horse from Safari.

 

Broken, metal, but an only sample!

 

More of the Lucky Bag figures form the 1950's, and a new Indian pose I think?

 

Very useful against one of the longer term projects, there is a tendency for some people to lazily state these all as either Star or M-Toys, but in fact there are about seven or more types out there (same with the Knights and ACW etc.), and with people Like Transogram and Blue Box also having their own lines, there's still a lot of work to be done on a definitive ID list of Hong Kong swoppet clones, and items like this will help. Note how the people (likely women) picking, tend to grab from one batch/stillage, leading to colour bias in each bag!

 

To which end (previous blurb) all these go in a large tub, sorted either by base, or sometimes material, with regular sortings to match-up all the odd torsos, legs etc . . . Until the picture is complete, and the loose samples can be matched to the sets obtained, or internet images accrued!

 

A similar project is the Hong Kong 'hollow horses' and their associated accessories/foot figures, here a mixed lot will go in a separate bag with a note, to be sorted . . .

 . . . while this clean sample of 'Wavymane' will be sorted straight into its correct zone, after checking weather they are type I, II or III (type IV is a variant!). But, they will get a separate bag, as this sample has the uncommon red horses, and again, note how the picker/packers have put green figures on all the red horses, because that’s the two heaps the line manager gave to them, to pair-up!

 

And again, this year thanks are due, alphabetically by surname, 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! Thank you all.