D is for Dinky Dan Dare Derringer!

Nothing to do with Dan Dare actually, beyond my looking for an alliterative title! I picked this little sweetie up at the Autumn Sandown Park show, more because of the maker than the subject, the last thing I need is to start collecting ray-guns, but this comes into the category of novelty, both by way of its diminutive size and the fact it's a water-pistol!

 

It's very small, and the sort of thing we might have got in a Christmas stocking back in the day, if not this actual one? Also, it's quite robust in construction, still works with no cracks or leaks, and may have been retailed by Poplar well into the late 1970's, although I don't believe Springwwell Mouldings had a stab, but they may have?

I is for Instant Gratification!

Probably the only time we will ever visit these, because the company has gone, the US parent also seems to have gone, the products are still out there in number, now China imports, and they are very definitely infant-fodder, indeed, the delay in getting them into Europe was the possibility of infants using them AS fodder and choking on a circus performer . . . Well, you would, wouldn't you, especially a whole one!

Originally the US company Instant Products line, at one time called Magic Grow, these were introduced to the UK and Europe at the London Toy Fair back in 2001, which I attended as One Inch Warrior magazine's 'roving reporter' (I think there were three of us, but I was specifically tasked with keeping my eye out for the small scale stuff), by a CCL, who seem to have been a phantom-brand for Europa Consultants UK?

 

Modern generic Chinese ones

The trick with them was they came in a gelatine capsule, like those bead-drugs, which was designed to melt in water, at which point the contents burst open with a florish and revealed very, very small, novelty bath sponges, about the right size for Action man to lather himself up!

 

My original five, as used in the subsequent show report, of little use to toy-soldier or model figure collectors, but nevertheless, if someone give you a freebie you owe them the courtesy of a mention, and thanks to Darnel Penrose (whom I hope went on to better things, with a better-lasting company!) for supplying the samples all those years ago!

 

An old evilBay image, you can see robots, a monster or two, a ghost and skeleton and teddy bear, among the more usual animals, dinosaurs and sea-life. I thought the over printed ones were interesting, I have memories of full sized novelty sponges over-printed with designs or slogans which would leave you with little bits of black or white print stuck to your skin after the bath, and which - as designs - only lasted a few bath times on the sponge!

 

And while the choking was a very real concern this side of the pond, resulting in packaging which was designed to be fully immersed without being opened, they were clearly slow to take off, and have now been totally replaced with this Chinese stuff, probably from the same factory/ies supplying the originals?

L is for Lone Star's Luna Shooters!

Trawling the archive for more rayguns and water pistols, it quickly became apparent that Lone Star would tick both boxes for us! Isn't that nice of them, now the gloves are off, and we need to get this stuff posted!

From the 1958 catalogue comes the Dan Dare Space Gun, which, like most Lone Star cap-firing guns, would take a whole real of 'amorces' (we need em' for our forces!), and get through it in proper quick-time!

 

Mum would go spare "I'm not buying you any more caps, that's the last two rolls, use them sparingly, when they're gone, they're gone, that's IT", and if Dad was around he'd mutter "Use aimed shots, conserve your ammo.", neither of which entreaties would have any effect on us, as once the caps had run out, we just started "Bang! Bang!" 'ing each other, or the Collidge gang from Mattingley!

 

By 1963 Dan Dare was out, and generic sci-fi was in, with a quick renaming of the toy to The Space Ranger Pistol, which, even from black & white artwork looks to have been a tad more colourful?

 

Also from the 1958 catalogue, was this Trick Jet Water Pistol, with very 'spacey' lines, and if it was die-cast (possibly with similar brass fittings to the HR one?), there should be a few survivors out there, not that I intend to start collecting such things I have neither the room nor the budget!

R is for Renolds' Radical Rayguns!

Famous last words - "Hey, if I live for another 40 years I may never have cause to mention HR again on the Blog so I might as well tare the arse out of the imagery this time!", because, here I am, a mere 7 years later, mentioning them again!

 

HR Production (no 's') again, the Atomatic - see what they did there! And little known beyond the fact that they are water-pistols, in a non-stable polystyrene, which has warped slightly over time, but with a quite robust system, let down by a weak trigger which has gone for a Burton's on both examples, as it has on another, HR design I've seen. 

 

But the plungers both work (they'd make your finger sore), and the brass nozzle will be good, it's whether the tube is still performing full-suction that stands between victory or defeat at the hand of some dreaded Mekon from the next street! And note, the foresight is a space-ship!

Funny, despite posting some rayguns before, I don't seem to have Rayguns, or Water Pistols in the tag list? I best get them tagged up huh? Start collecting those dozens, nay, millions of hits from Google, I mean, it must be millions, to be worth falling-out after 15-years?

F is for Follow-up - Deep Sea Divers

Mine wasn't Tresco, although looking through past posts on the Divers - Deep Tag, I do have one, however, by then I'd shot the ones I have here, and Brian had sent me a bunch of shots of his, so I raided the Divers & Submarines folder for a few carded sets off of that evilBay, and we have a quick post!

Two Tresco's from Brian Berke, old and new, with the Tobar one, still on the card, and which I know you could also find in Hawkin's Bazaar, as I saw it before I was collecting all scales, so at least 15-odd-years ago?

 

What seems to set them apart as two groups, whether copies or originals, Tresco versus Hong Kong, is that those from or after Tresco have a small 'pouch' like a binoculars case, on the chest, while the Hong Kong lifts have a longer, thinner case-like object you might find spare machine-gun-barrels in!

 

In the centre is what must be Tresco's last production, in bright yellow, while to either side are the ones with the tubelike piece of equipment marked-up to Imperial and Kingsway, a quick check-back to Brian's image, and you'll see all three are the same Tresco design, with the packet/parcel.

 

While all three of the ones I have here are the tube-design, which I'm calling Hong Kong, to which I added the giant 5" one we saw a while back, so you could see how giant he is! From the apparent age of the paler two, I suspect they may be earlier and the origin of the tube-design, changed from the parcel of the Tresco they were aping?

 

I should have shot that fish-tank one from Chris again too, but . . . next time! Divers are a bit of a favourite here, and we do return to them regularly! Brain also sent three individual shots, but as we've seen the subjects before, and they are in the above line-up, I put them in the folder to replace the three carded ones, against another of those re-visits!

 

There are some very interesting things in that folder, but I need to find more in context to Blog them with, and I have a feeling there's some on the old 'unknown' dongle? So we may return to divers sooner rather than later?

T is for Two - Novelty Vehicular Thingies!

Just a quickie, but as I was sorting stuff to put back into storage I was shooting all sorts of old friends and things I'd forgotten I had, and batch throwing them on Picasa against the possibility of being stuck somewhere in the near future, possibly for months, house-hunting, while everything is in the said storage; these are two of the things I'd totally forgotten being the owner of, and, while 'only' novelties, they are both quite cool from a toy soldier perspective!

We get used to seeing the Award, Grace or Star branded wagons - copied from European originals, typically Timpo or Britains - on feebleBay from time to time, but how about a money-box!

Imported by a D.A.S. of London in an otherwise un-branded/generic packaging. I think this is (or was) quite recent, from the CE mark; 1980's or 90's maybe, I also suspect it was a charity-shop purchase, but can't actually remember where it came from or when, one of those last Birmingham shows, 2011?

She looks a tad Britains in origin, he . . . Elastolin medieval? The whole wagon (with figures) is in hard polystyrene with 'propylene wheels and horses and an 'ethylene plug to release the savings, hopefully to buy another wagon!

It would benefit from a 'paint down' from the current scheme of psychedelic puke! Obviously, painted or not, it's wholly compatible with 50-60mm war gaming or figure collections which is why it's in mine!

While this is more geared toward H0 or 00-compatible war-gaming collections, for which a coat of grey or olive-green would be the minimum requirement! No branding at all beyond the CF stock code prefix, it's a fun thing with two forms of power/locomotion.

Verging on 'shelf' or 'big-box' toy rather than rack-toy, it would have been rack toy budgeted I suspect and it's possibly a bit earlier than the wagon above - late 1970's? It may - of course - have been an overpriced element of the Hoverspeed gift-shop/duty-free exercise? I well remember the piles of Airfix ferry models at the Purser's window of the Enterprise Spirit class ferries we used to get - now a much sought-after kit!

A pair of batteries in the body drive a vibrating mechanism ("Oh Matron!") which causes the brushes to move the hovercraft (Saunders-Roe SR-N4 Mountbatten Class) across smooth or flat surfaces, while a secondary single battery-motor of a pretty standard slot-on design (dozens of toys came with them when I was a kid) will drive it round the local pond, boating lake or bath!

That's it, a couple of boxed-items, box-ticked!

W is for Well . . . Follow-up to the Follow-up

Barney Brown of Herald Toys & Models sent these in case I didn't mention them in the follow-up to wells; which I hadn't, not only that but I had presumed the Taylor was from the hollow-cast mould and fingered Barratt as possible source of one of the two unknowns!

The truth is Barratt & Son inherited the T&B mould and FG Taylor's is the much copied version, although I think heavy cross-bar notwithstanding, the Speedwell is based on this - 'this' being the Barratt one!

This is the lead original, although the company is known as a hollow-cast producer, items like this are more traditionally made, poured-lead 'solid' castings, this is a cross-over piece with a plastic roof on a metal body, so is probably 'Barratt' rather than 'Taylor & Barratt'?

Production was eventually all-plastic and here is a later one with polymer body and roof, but still with a metal bucket and wire winding handle. You may have noticed - before reading this far! - another piece of plastic, on the bottom of the moulding? Well . . .

. . . I think this well is the first of the wells we've looked at, which is designed to hold actual water? The 'cap' is manufactured from neutral granules, is semi-transparent and can only be there to provide a seal so that water can be poured into the mould . . . how cool is that, it was the 1950's after all!

Many thanks to Barney for (what are very good-) images and the data, I'll update the other two posts to reflect the new information with links to here.

Previously;
Original Post
Follow-up Post (post below this one on the page)

O is for Ocean Explorers

Not scoring points on this one (although they could've run with theses to add something to my follow-up, if they really felt the need to follow-me at all . . . as they did!), but rather; seeing what Hing Fat have to 'Show & Tell' on the subject of my original early-May posts, and there's a few interesting points to be made.

To be found on their Faceplant page, this would seem to be the later figures, the shooters not visible, but the newer cameraman is. Of more interest is the mix of sea creatures and marine plants, some of which look to be PVC or a PVC-equivalent and the large rock formation/lump!

Another Facebook shot; here we see a variation of the mini-sub with a fatter, flat-bottomed (?) design, which may be to take a sucker motor-unit (rather than the older slot-on or plug-in ones I remember from the '70's) or just ease movement on floors and carpets! Also of note is the piracy of the old Matchbox tank-landing craft and a 'fat-boy' mini-sub.

A smaller set in a carry-case from both sides; Ocean Explorer is the current branding, or at least seems to be the commonest current brand-mark for these diver sets.

No idea to contents, but both the Facebook images could be candidates for the contents of this tub? It's a similar tub currently being shipped by [the not-biggest] importer Stevens International as the Action Figure bucket we saw a while back.

Header-carded 'bottle-bag'; so-called because the automated packing machines drop the stuff into the open top like filling a bottle. This has the smaller older landing craft, which, like most Hing Fat production is copied, from Rado-Ri Toys, who - in their turn - took the basic design from Louis Marx! And possibly an older shot, I can't see the newer poses.

What looks to be a mock-up of a blister-card, sans blister!

This shot reveals one of Hing Fat's older (but recent in toy geology timescales) customers; Billy V, although they were only a brand-mark of someone else (Imex) and have been taken-over by . . . BMC? Note the branding then was Ocean Adventures, which may have been Billy V specific/requested, as the Ocean Explorers branding goes back to at least 2006 in Hing Fat literature? Not that they only have the one branding - see below.

The older landing craft, still in rack-toys and cheapie-buckets the world over and dating back to Marx playsets of the 1950's, not a bad pedigree for such an inaccurate version of a WWII equipment! As well as the Rado versions and various generic sub-piracies, Blue Box put the turret on their DUKW, and there's a larger battery-operated version kicking-around somewhere - I bet there's one on Moonbase?

Also a better shot of the little fat mini-sub, which does look like it should have been dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, with the mad major from Dr. Strangelove riding-it in "Yeeehaaw"! Note also, how they separate the 2 'standing' and 5 swimming poses.

Printed catalogue page from January 2015 (Toy Fair season!) shows all the then available formats being offered to customers, all branded to Sea Divers. I've seen the 'shopping basket' with both Pirates and Wild West, when I worked for a dealer back in the 2010's and, as it looked old then,  it must have been an option back as far as the 1990's, at least? Hing Fat were founded in 1978, I think.

The larger sets have the same marine-life added, but colours are different, with none of the sky-blue divers you get today, and lots of the 'international orange' which older, more experienced collectors will know as being particularly prone to turning brittle.

T is for Those Hing Fat Divers Again!

This is the post I was trying (not very effectively) to get up yesterday; a follow-up from Brain B over the pond on Friday's diver posts, he had a newish tub of Hing Fat, who have lost their red/white Gemini-craft/rubber-boat, but gained a pose or two!

It's a big set, in a big tub! Imported by Stevens International but clearly also marked Hing Fat and obviously we're about to look at the divers, but you get equal quantities of (distinctly New York looking) police, Firefighter and Astronaut figures - all without the chunkier accessories they otherwise come with.

We saw the older versions of the swimming (prone) figures the other day, but I have neither of the standing poses, one of which is harking back to the Lone Star chiseler/mine-setter, but the other - holding a spear-gun across his chest - is all new. The underwater-camera-man is new too, and the chap with the motor thingy, has been issued with a newer, smaller model - reflecting real life?

Really, they are 'all new' as while they look like all three sizes of their predecessors (at least one of which was Hing Fat - I suspect the smaller ones), they are (unless I'm mistaken) larger figures, and newer-sculpts rather than pantographed copies? You can also see (as Brian mentioned) the scale between the four figure sets is not remotely constant!

Many thanks to Brian for a swift follow-up and I received a parcel from Peter Evans yesterday, which will be the subject of a future post, and which had a plastic diver in! But he's from the non-Lone Star origins ones with plug-ins, which I've held back for another day.

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Zimply Kids (Simba Group)

And so to the free sachet of 'stuff' I got at Toy Fair 2020, which I'm not going to experiment with; it looks like a prime way to piss-off the water utility!

This is Gelli Play from Zimply Kids, there is also Snoball Play (the above - colourless) and Slime Play (smooth consistency).Although, if you have kids or are looking to entertain the grandkid's on a sunny day, I recon a packet of wallpaper-paste (or bulk-gelatine for the slime) and some food dye is all you'll need, but god-help the goldfish!

But . . . the play-sets have figurines in them which may be of interest to some readers, although I think most of them are common'ish generics, but they may be unique sub-copies? For instance, here, the polar bears are an old sculpt from the 1960's and the penguin looks like either the Henbrandt one or the D&D Distributors one?

And - although I can only see one seal, it looks like you get two-each of four animals - these shots were taken at the end of the day and a lot of play had happened in my absence, the 'other' seal may have wandered off, or been wandered!

This is the slime gell, which as hinted at above, I suspect is a gelatine based product (which would therefore be unsuitable for vegetarians?) and again it looks like the items are paired although it's not so obvious from the pack's artwork, but artwork often differs from final contents and the pack is a Gelli pack not a slime pack!

Here we get an extra tree in the display, but not the artwork, so overall it would seem you get 2x4 items in each of some of the larger sets, and they are reasonable figures which even if you don' go looking for them, will soon start to turn-up in mixed lots on feebleBay or in charity/thrift shops?

Mucky stuff from Zimply Kids!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Aquagel

Just a bit of fun with this one, there's a bunch of 'H is for . . . 's' in this afternoon's post, but you never know; years from now this post may help you with a weird blob of multi-coloured silicone-gel in a mixed lot on an auction site somewhere!

I can't give you chapter and verse on the technique as we didn't hang around longer than it took to fire-off three images and while as first glance there seems to be the simplicity of putting coloured gel in a mould, dropping it in water and . . . heay-presto!

However, there is the matter of the bag of granules which might be 'soluble mix' or 'solution mix' it's not clear and therefore the suspicion is there are several steps to the process, which some attendees had been having some fun with as you can see from the mess! The granules look like models of flu-virus cells!

At the bottom of the tank were the results of the effort of the prior-visitors to the stand - lots of coloured blobs, and what I suspect were the efforts of the more practiced stand-holders, of which I have identified three taken from the supplied moulds.

Like I said  - a bit of fun, but nevertheless figural! And we'll be returning to gels before this year's Toy Fair 2020 season is over, whether I get it done next week or drag it out 'till Christmas!

T is for Two - Novelty Rack Toys

This is just clearing junk from Picasa, but . . . they are both figural, fun, quality junk!

From Accoutrements, possibly via Archie McPhee (I made-up an order from them back in the 1990's when they (and BuM) were carrying the Giant re-issues) comes this set of Hula dancers on swizzle-sticks.

One day I'll get them out and cut a couple off to base them as stand-alone figures, but for now they stay-put. About 25mm and a polypropylene type polymer.

These expandable toys fall into two categories; fun stocking fillers for kids at Christmas and Stag/Hen stuff, this is really from the latter, and after an explosion of them in the early-1990's they faded a bit, but the novelty and gift section of Waterstone's is still good for a selection of Nun's, Escorts and Body-builders!

Crap photograph not helped by the expanding foam figurine being in an orange-red, the worst of all colours to shoot! 40mm dry . . . 100+ wet . . . 'ish! Now defunct Marshall's of the West Country were the importer on this one.