B is for Bunk House

I mentioned in the first part of the Wild West plunder from last month's Plastic Warrior show plunder posts, that I'd got a post in Picasa's 'long queue' on the subject of the orange log-cabins. In fact, it was down in 1971 with the rest of the RTM stuff, and as a fortuitous post elsewhere has just covered them in passing, we might as well have them now - it's nice when a plan comes together!

 

 

Three of the boxes I found in the garage, when I was sorting everything back in 2021-'23, and combining (or part combining!) garage and attic with bedroom stuff, and the large number of purchases I was making at the time (a story for another day).

 

With the heavy box being all the Skybirds and similar, while the middle one is just loose Greeks in sets and part sets, conforming to known runner ('sprue') layouts, but the other one is the 'small scale' log-cabin, in orange polyethylene, with about 12 complete and a dozen or so spares to which, two ends are obviously about to be added, in the above image!

 

I've used small-scale in inverted commas as it's only turned-up in sets with larger figures, but is ideal as a bunk house for 20-25mm US cavalry or ACW scenarios, although it can equally be used for a gold-rush trading post, or mine accommodation, even a Midwest, claim-stake shack. Josey Wales, turf roof, porch made out of barrels?

 

And it comes in various shades of orange, from a quite dark mandarin or Chinese Orange (my favourite shade of Windsor & Newton gouache!), through to a bright, almost international 'emergency' orange, with wishy-washy versions.

 

Now, Ed just added a set to his collection with one of the log cabins in it, ascribed to a Basic Line;

 

https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2026/08/basic-line-corp-f002-cowboys-and.html

 

While we saw a similar set contents from Pikit here;

 

https://smallscaleworld-n-o-p.blogspot.com/2023/08/moneyitem-limited-pikit-toys-limited-pt.html

 

Both with the very-poor 'final generation' of the Jean copy figures, also associated with Hong Kong Toy Exporters . . . 

 

1986 catalogue image courtesy of Bill B.

 

. . . where the contents are pretty-much the same; however, accessories differ between them slightly, so each jobber, whole-seller or importer had their own ideas about what constituted a 'Cowboy & Indian' set, or value for money - while remaining profitable, or just having sufficient playability?

 

 

These have been harvested from feebleBay over the years (both in 2021 as it happens!), and now we have the windmill (post on that, in this Blog's future!), and one of the Blue Box water-well clones, along with a copy of the Britains Hong Kong trapper canoe, in the upper set, which is otherwise a generic, there's an unreadable importers sticker (top right) and what appears to be an obliterated branding, from the original (?) artwork - top left.

 

But a fundamental difference is the figures which look to be second-generation Airfix 54mm copies? The first generation tend to the same cream/white as the Airfix origianals and can confuse newbies. And another set, has a common-enough wagon, also found in other sets of the era, the 1980's

 

You can also see (as I didn't expand on the photoshoot of the boxes, with anything as sensible as all the pieces, or an assembly!), that it has six parts, a rear, with two firing slots, a front with two windows and a door, two identical gable-ended short sides, also with two windows, and two identical roof pieces.

 

The four sides interlock, leaving the ragged corner of a log-cabin, while the roof sits on four blobby studs, which can rip off on more played-with examples. There are also similarities with a Wing Wah set we saw a while back, but hatchets have been buried there, so I won't link back, and no log-cabin, anyhoos.

 

 

The smaller, soft plastic version, seems to be based on the 1970's Star Toys 'blockhouse', which forms the corner of the hard polystyrene fort, with two deer-skulls over the gate, itself a copy of an earlier European fort, with four corner towers, possibly also sourced in HK, but I'm not going there, we're doing log cabins today, not forts, or windmills!

 

This, of course explains the firing loopholes in the rear wall, it's the outside of the fort's corner; however, it also highlights a flaw in the Star Toys fort - the Indians can force the two windows on the outer end! It also has a chimney, not reproduced in the smaller clone.

 

There is a third version, which, size wise, is between the Star and the generic, and while is otherwise the same as the smaller one (orange 'ethylene, four stud roof, no slots, interlocking corners), has painted highlights, the windows and door frame being painted blue, or red, I can't remember, but I do have a couple, so we can look them when we have a better look at the components, next time!

 

And returning to my boxful above, I tend to colour-match them, as I make up complete examples, but I've seen them with different shades together, so clearly there was a huge stock of them, possibly with one of the smaller family concerns in the Kowloon slums, with their single tool and a hand-pressed injector, and they were supplied to the end-users, bulk, in mixed shades? 

W is for Wild West Warriors - 1 of 2

I split the Wild West relatively randomly into two plunder posts, these are the ones shot with the same background, it was a pretty basic dividing system! But lots of useful bits here, and some new horses which are intriguing me!

 

The two bags of Hong Kong 'hollow horses' and a few of their associated foot figures, one from Trevor, the other from the vendor of the TNT submarine. Neither of them are 'clean' samples, so they will need future sorting, and for now, will be joining a pile of such bags, some mixed, some clean, some semi-sorted already, and then, every few years, I have a big sorting session, matching horses, riders and marks to sets, foot figures or accessories.

 

Papo Totem Pole which seems to have - thus far - escaped me, no longer, and a nice thing it is too, but with ten colours, I wonder at the four shades of blue, Mesoamericans and the Mesopotamian/Egyptians, managed blue from crushed lapis lazuli, and valued it as rare, as did, millennia later, the artists of the renaissance, but I'm not so sure the forest Indians of Canada, Alaska and the arctic circle would have had access to quantities of such a colour?

 

A huge horse fitted for wagon bars, is it Tudor Rose or one of the others, the accompanying mounted figures were discussed a few years ago! A Budgie wagon in good nick, but missing its barrels, which always get die-cast disease and break-off!

 

And a wagon team which could be a minor British make, or Japanese, they made a fair bit of that kind of stuff, along with some of the unknown coronation coaches, which turn up in a similar size.

 

American Civil War didn't feature heavily this year, with an MPC and diminutive post-Giant (unmarked) copy tag-teaming a couple of wounded Confederate officers from the Blue Box regiment!

 

In my attempt to find all these, I seem to have ended up with 8-10 figures in the last three or four years, hopefully, these are the ones I need to produce a set of 6 in decent to near-mint condition, with a few duplicates, one or two of which are a bit scruffy - Crescent's 60mm Mohicans.

 

Marx, each from a different set, and are, from the left;

• 45mm Indian
• 60mm Camp Indian
• 60mm Pioneer
• 54mm Alamo/Fort Apache Pioneer (missing sword but still usable as a US cavalry figure), and not the first one I've encountered in this paint scheme, did someone (Swansea?) do a painted set?

Small scale/novelty figures with two from the Lucky Bags, same pose but nicely marbled, the Betterwear cannoneer completes my sample in yellow plastic, a cracker mini (blue), the soft plastic semi-flat (red) I think may have replaced the 'styrene figures in Lucky Bags, and a teeny-tiny tee-pee!

 

Initial thought was "Four French", but I think the red geezer is probably a Reisler, from Denmark, he seems to be complete, but threatening/calling someone out, and isn't it funny how it's always the smallest guy in the bar who starts the fight? Still to ID the other three.

 

Small-scale bits include parts for a log-cabin, we've seen it once or twice now, but there's a post in the long-queue, a few Airfix bits and a some Atlantic pioneer types, all real grist to the mill!

 

A few bits, Kinder, front centre, and Hong Kong, but of real interest to me is the pair of horses in the middle, what I've dubbed 'Mexican', now known to have been the Texas horse, but the one on the right is a pose-variant, and while they could be French, Italian, Spanish or even Portuguese, they might be HK? I have a fair few of the standard pose, from various sources, but these a real mystery, and I like mysteries, as it means there's more to find!

 

Does the white mounted figure belong on one of the 'new' horses? He may be a sobre/sorpresa - see part 2. Pocahontas is probably Phidal Publishing, a broken Britains, Lido 45mm, HK copy and an unpainted version of the chromed-plastic copies of Metallions. The figure lacking a base is interesting, as, while you find many copies of them in similar paint, not usually with a separate base - another of those canoe crew!

 

Finally, a pair of Safari Westerners, and it's funny, but I got the two 54mm Indians a year or two ago, the tee-pee and wagon were given to me by Paul Morehead as 'small scale' a couple of decades ago, Peter Evans gave me the mounted chap a few years ago, and the buffalo came in at some point, possibly from Jon or Chris, so I only need the Indian woman & child vignette, and a Texas long-horn cow, to complete the set, the best way, by collecting it! The woman here is described as Annie Oakley.

 

Go-on then, here's the Internet image!

 

Thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, along with the others, above named, for help at the show, and over the years.

H is for Hetman, Hussars and Historiques!

It's the subsection I call Historical; from the post-Medieval through to pre-kharki, sometimes including ceremonial, but there were enough in the plunder to split them into two posts, so we're covering about 4/500-years here, except with the Figurines Historiques, where over a millennium is covered!

 

We had a decent shot of them in the sorting post, but I wanted to do better by them with a few more shots. A winged hussar from Poland, historically and actually, and a standard-bearer who might be contemporary (historically - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), or even from the same set, but both beautiful figures. 

 

I have to assume PZG is in here somewhere, but the standard-bearer has an unconventional base which is more touristy, than the usual thick-but-flat bases associated with PZG, while the winged hussar has a base more like the semi-flats associated with another Polish firm?

 

I got several things from Peter at Replicants, the wagon was new a couple of years ago, but I've ended-up with another one, so I can get one out of the bag at some point, and a pack-mule with generic handler, both the humans cover several centuries with their peasant's smocks and trousers.

 

While these could have gone in the civilian post, or the combat post, but again with minor tweaks or paint, they, or various among them, cover any insurgency from Garibaldi or some of the Southern America's Wars of Independence, onwards, although, obviously, the chap with a sten-gun is less flexible time/theatre wise, and the detonator guy doesn't cover the range of the others.

 

Including last year's radio-operator, and the - previously seen as broaches - climbers, now given rifles, we have a set of resistance-fighters, or revolutionaries, partizans or Maquis, turncoats, left-behinds, rebels or 5th Columnists; irregulars, in a word! Already well blogged here;

 

Paul via Peter E - https://www.stadsstuff.com/?p=26381

Brain Carrick - https://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.com/2026/07/new-replicants-french-resistance.html

 

Longer-served loyal readers may remember six years ago, a Hetman from PZG in one of Chris Smith's donations, for which, Grzegorz Maciak kindly supplied a horse? Well, I've since picked-up two more of them, each on a different horse, slightly frustrating, as there are other poses in the set, but they will make a lovely group charging across a shelf at some point!

  

There were 42 of these, or 47, I can't recall, but useful, as I have gaps in the collection of loose figures, and or need unpainted examples of those posibly painted by William J. Carman, so a quick sort at some point, and I should end up with most of the range in unpainted white. The orange one is a sunburnt example, not a plastic colour variation.

 

A bit bashed, but some garden war-gamer might do something with them, they just need pin-swords! Cherilea English Civil War figures.

 

French Cuirassiers

 

British Lifeguards

 

French Hussars

 

French Carabiniere

 

I mentioned in conversation with Paul, that I hadn't found the one thing I'd had on my 'sort of' wants list, this year, the Mounted Napoleonics from Britains Deetail, and he spent the next 20-odd minutes calling me over or directing me to various stashes he found, and I managed to pick-up 7, which leaves five to find - British hussars and dragoons and the other French carabiniere! A couple will benefit from a bit of a clean!

With thanks again this year to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin.

V is for Various Venerable Vehicles

Not as many vehicles as some shows, but then Sandown has always been the show for vehicular stuff, while PW really is about figures, although there were enough in the end to split them into two posts, land stuff this time!!

 

I'd like to think this might be Tri-Ang Minic, but I can't find it described as such anywhere, among all the other Minic-branded tanks in at least three size groups, so it may well be a knock-off, or rival, trying to look like Minic?

 

The 'Centurion' turret in particular has a lot in common with several Minic efforts, but the whole machine is a soft polyethylene, against the early phenolic, or less stable 'styrene, which gives us the mostly - these days - warped, Minic originals?

 

Around 1:48th and almost impossible to decide which end is the front, I went with the end having more rivets as possibly being the back, with inspection hatches, and the motor under it! And the wheels reveal it got some serious play, probably over some time and was somebody's much-loved toy.

 

Seen before here at Small Scale World, many years ago, as I have a loose one, and put it on a transporter for a photo-shoot, this one is pristine, and generic-boxed, although the box has seen better days and will get a damp ironing at some point to restore its shape a tad!

 

Based reasonably accurately on a French Panhard EBR of the early Cold War, probably taken-off the Dinky die-cast, the barrel is a plug-in to allow for a smaller box, a common trope with these Hong Kong tanks, as we saw with the Blue Box one, the other day.

 

Hong Kong smallies and the remnants of a die-cast artillery piece, all grist to the mill, with the Humber truck being the version I called Type 1B, the Hong Kong marked second-generation copies of the Kleeware originals, with the solid windows and steel axles.

 

Navy or Air Force? There were civilian sets of these, and with signs of reinforcing of the tool, on the bed-underside, I'm suspecting, without checking, second generation copy of the Kamley (

Simon & Rivollet) 

thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for everything they did at the show.

L is for Loose Lots from Last Local Show!

41 years ago, I did Street Lining for the President of Mexico, one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences which mould who you are, or who you become. The weather during the practices for the hideously complicated (until you've learnt it, then it becomes a piece of piss, I could probably still do today!) Half-Guard drills was average to cool, quite breezy some days (hard to hear the commands), while the actual day was overcast, drizzly, and foggy. Foggy in June, people . . . 41 years ago it was cold and foggy, in London, in 'Flaming' June.

 

Nobody said extinction would be painless or stress-free, and those people rushing out to buy fans, order air-conditioning, or book a visit from a pool-designer, are only adding to the problem, and making the end sooner, and more painful. Nothing like plugging some more shit in, or taking more water out of the cycle (and treating it with endless chemicals) to help end climate change, not!

 

There endeth today's lesson, but I'm getting mighty sick of the pink-monkeys and their idiocy. At least some of us have toy soldier collections, to take our minds off the gathering storm, and it's current, record-breaking, sticky evidence, and it's the tail-end of the latest Sandown Park plunder tonight/this morning, that might take our minds off the oppressive humidity - it's not the heat that kills babies, or elderly parents!

 

I couldn't resist this, it's a bit battered and hard to date, and I probably paid too much for it, but it has some age, and while you can get stuff like this today, I saw a new one on evilBay the other day, you can't fake the patina of age easily, modern ones have the lattice made from machine cut timbers, while this lattice is hand-cut from hand-peeled veneers, or carefully hand-split pine or box-wood. Upper image is the colour-true one.

 

Toyway-Timpo reissues, box-ticking exercise, box ticked!

 

I need a few reins, but they are the sort of thing I might pick up, in a little bag of ten or so, from the Plastic Warrior show, now only a week away! There was a lot of this stuff kicking around a few years ago, and spares are not hard to find.

 

More antique wood, almost certainly German, and again, some age to these, and a lovely example of something contemporaneous with the transition from horse to horse-power!

 

I know, we've pretty-much done them to death now, "How could you possibly need more, Hugh?", well, they were cheap, they were a largish sample, and there are new 'things', new colours, new combinations, and one day we'll return to them for one more long post, looking at each listed element (from the back of the box), and try to work out what other combinations/elements there were (in Woolworth's pick trays?), as well as trying to give a timeline to the variations between figures, balls, polymer material &etc.

 

I knew this soft-plastic version existed, as I had the broken off horse (still looking for a  red one!), when we looked at them a few years ago now;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/03/c-is-for-cake-coaches-cat-carnage.html

 

And there's something very satisfying about adding another item to a side-bar 'cameo', which has continued to grow over forty-odd years, with barely a duplicate - the mould-tool was hammered at some point, more than half a lifetime ago!

 

These came from more than one seller I think, certainly the dogs were from the 'terrace scrum' before the show, and everything in the shot is bisque, although the stork (heron?) has a more traditional porcelain glaze. The dogs are exquisite, and I assume German, who else did stuff that fine? I thought they were carved-bone or ivory, until they rattled in my hand! A few legs are missing, but very much a case of 'a sample is better than no sample' and the sheepdog is complete!

 

Adrian had less frontage than usual, so there wasn't much in the way of lead-rummage, and while I waited until the end so 'proper' customers got the best choice (well, nearly, P arrived just as they were about to go out to the car!), I still managed to pick out a few interesting figures to add to a growing, but barely sorted collection of such stuff.

 

The charging Britains piracy will be AHI or Minikins from Japan, the pair are like-Timpo on the left, throwing grenade, but CharbensI think? Copying the Timpo Brit', as a Yank! And Crescent (?) on the right, kneeling, radioing, the rest should be British, if not Britains!

 

Brabo idiot parachute toy. With help from Chris Smith there are a few of these now, and with help from feebleBay, their section on the parachute page is probably doable, it's more a question of me getting down to it! Known as Parafools, this is the 'Hippy', and I think they pre-dated the Imperial Poopatroopers!

 

I . . . just . . . can't say "No", there are so many variations, I seem to just grab them all, against a final shot of all of them! Lone Star, not Richard Coeur de'Lion, but rather, king of somewhere Welsh (that's a dragon!)! In blue, with sword, another example, for another 'cameo' grouping!

 

Likewise, this is something I might have already, but it was quite clean, and cheap, so as the die-cast replacement for the composition Zang version, there's quite a comparative sample of these mini-scaled P38 Lightnings (the first use of . . . are we up to four now, or three Lightnings?), as indeed, there is a similar sample of De Havilland Mosquitos!

 

More gash-lead, the cactus is possibly White Tower, or someone similar, I'll have to ask Matt? The Indian infantryman of the WWI'ish era is probably a modern kit, unmarked and has apparently been given a cap-gun carved from a broom-handle!

 

I don't know if the flag belongs to the Guards standard-barer, but it looks OK, although the red ensign should be in the possession of a merchant sailor . . . so I DO know, they don't belong together, doh! Possibly a foreign made flag, with or without the figure, Japan again? That diagonal cross is atrocious!

 

A wooden naval-gun which has lost it's wheels, but it's turned brass and could fire a black-powder (or Swan Vesta!) charge, with ball-bearing, and the motorcycle from the Merit magnetic board-game Remote Control Driving Test.

 

The show's mistake purchase! I thought "Oh, he's got his tyre, I don't think I've got one with the tyre?", but of course, he doesn't have a tyre, he's operating the storm-drain 'Hoover' tube, for the late Dinky Toy road sweeper, and in that capacity I already have him! Hay-ho - by our errors, shall we be known!