L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown Park, November 2024

Not much in this one, but I think we've seen some on combined posts over Christmas and the new year, some has gone in the long queue, as it was manufactured in the country of Trump's puppet-master, and we don't Blog them at the moment . . .

 

. . . and some more of the items in this folder were 'shot at' the show, rather than purchases, so I'll do them as separate posts, but there are a few bits of interest, so let's see some of what we got back in November;

A lovely Codeg (Cownan-de Groot) earth-mover, or wheeled shovel, it's marked-up to them, but would have been bought in from someone like Tudor Rose, Kleeware, Rafael Lipkin or another of the early users of polystyrene. The design is similar to one I have by 'believed to be' Manurba, and I've just picked-up a military one from Noreda, so a future comparison of plastic heavy-plant beckons from the archives! It's quite small, a nice OO-gauge railway-compatible piece

Seen before, and mentioned twice, I said last time we looked at these (https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/very-much-follow-up-to-this-old-post.html) I thought it had joined the stash, but obviously that was the Cheerio one! This has now joined the stash, so it is - following the language in the previous post - the six-and-a-half'th, with the KUM being the half!

 

A lovely flocked Timpo bison, given the passage of time, and the lack of packaging, we won't know if it was flocked for Timpo or by Wend-Al or someone for zoo gift-shops, and we probably never will!

 

These were fun, and odd, they would seem to be knock-off's of Tom & Jerry, the 'Tom' being a pink blow-mould, the 'Jerry's being solids, one with a bum-spike, one without (there's a clearly undamaged join-line), all three polyethylene, and my guess is they came, out of Hong Kong (or Japan?), with some larger novelty, possibly a tinplate or 'styrene vehicle, where they had different positions, or functions/jobs?

 

A vintage die-cast Midgetoy half-track, it makes the same mistake of one or two toy half-tracks, in depicting the M16 GMC Quad .50-cal, with the drop-down sides and cut-outs for the gun traverse, but without the gun. It does - as a/the toy - tow a small semi-fictional gun, which I think I have somewhere, but in the darker green!

 

I will thank Adrian again, as I suspect some of the above came from him, and if it didn't, other stuff at the show did. In fact, the helicopter and shovel both came from him!

A is for Arboraceous Articles of Actual Aboriginal American Art

Mostly seen elsewhere a while ago, it's about time for a regular'ish re-visit to Totem Poles, with some recent incomers which may or may not have been seen here too in contribution or show-report posts? And I notice we've slid over the 377 'next' target, so it's officially the fourth-best year for posts here, but I won't reach 468 in a month, so that's as good as it gets this year!

Bullyland

A quite rigid PVC-replacement polymer, with slightly cartoony wings.

 

Elastolin

Composition, but really quite well made/finished, so I suspect a late production model, perhaps even manufactured after the plastic figures started coming in?

Landi - Chromoplasto

A quite bendy rubber, possibly silicon or a mastic?

Unknown

And I'm guessing from the remains of paper and glue on the underside of the base that it's probably French and from a boxed set/window-box type thing, but it's only a hunch, and it could be a tourist thing or Hong Kong? It's a rather nice one, quite realistic?

 

Stackable shot glasses!

Found on the wibbly-wobbly-way! 

Clear or coloured glass and aping the old cereal premiums!

Speedwell

I used to think this was Cherilea, don't know why, and then nearly wrote 'belived to be' Speedwell, but there's a really nice boxed one in Plastic Warrior's special publication 'The Book of Speedwell', so that's that cleared-up then! Ask about a copy;

 

Here: http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/ (Blogger)

 

Or here: https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior (Faceplant)

Canadian tourist piece, I shot this through the window of a camper-van in Fleet's Church Road car park, only for a slightly irate man (with several kid's in tow) to accost me as I headed for Sainsbury's; "Problem?" he demanded, "Oh, is that your van?" I said, "Yes!" say he, "I was just photographing the totem-pole", says I, showing him the close-in shot still visible in the viewscreen, "Oh, OK . . ." he said, almost in disappointment, and walked off without a care as to why, obviously the mere act of photographing a totem pole in public made me one of the good guys! It looks to be a fibre-reinforced nylon or 'styrene?

 

A line-up of stuff we have mostly, previously seen here in show-reports, contribution posts and/or charity-bag plunder coverage, and from the left;

• Marx Miniature Masterpiece
• Starlux - small size
• x2 Argentine copies of Atlantic (new to Blog?)
  
• Wend-Al (cast aluminium)
• Cherilea
• The Speedwell from above
• A stumpy resin/'polystone' tourist lump
• Hong Kong Britains Herald copy

This is the third of these 'I-know-but-I-don't-know's this year, and we did manage to remember one in the end, but I can't remember which one or why, and will probably forget it again next time!

 

I definitely know what these are (toob/tub set inclusion / sobre / cereal premium?) and who they're by, but can I remember? It's on the dongles somewhere, they were ID'd on the Internet years ago, possibly on a blog which may have disappeared?

I believe there are four different runners, each issued separately as a whatever, brackets above, and in various colours, of which these are the commoner. The green one seems more common than the others; I have seen/handled several over the years, but I have three totems loose somewhere, one possibly in blue or a darker brown? They might have been on the blog? Equally unknown/unremembered if they were!

I have a feeling they could be Spanish, but I might be making that up, and French bazaar would fit the bill, but I'm pretty sure they aren't Montaplex . . . so if anyone can remind us, it would be a weight off my mind!

C is for Canoes - 20 - Wend-Al (and Quiralux?)

Just a box ticker as the two folders (Brian's and mine) thin out to a finish! This was on feeBay about two years ago, and while I did have a couple of other images of colour variations, I noticed the other day they are still on sale! So I won't use them now, but, Dude, if you've relisted something for two years; your Buy-It-Now is set too high?

 

As I've said for years to anyone who'll listen (attracting a few more 'eemies' along the way), none of this stuff is 'rare', it was all mass-produced!

 

Playful, chunky and almost indestructible! for such a 'solid' material, the figure is a nice animated sculpt, but the boat is definitely toy-like, and too short. Wend-Al and maybe Quiralux, in different paint?

 

But retuning to the previous point for a second, I was perusing this Faceplant site earlier today;

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/270886240594726/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=1000722010944475

 

 . . . and there are guys on there with boxes of Astrid, or trays of Miniajouets or a shed-load of Gulliver, Pech, Comansi . . .  or whoever, literally; none of it is rare.

 

The rarities are the exceptions, where a set was never issued (Britains 'Superdeetail'), or the mould was lost on the first morning of production (Lone Star Musketeers) or something equally catastrophic, or the firm was very small, and it was a long time ago (some of the early 'from hollow-cast'), but for everything else, it's just a question of waiting!

H is for How They Come In - November Sandown Park - General Purchases

So, we're back to the 12th of November last, to look at my plunder pile from that final BP Fairs show of the season (round here, I think they had a later one at the NEC Birmingham), which was better than the previous couple I think? It's marginal, and some sellers always have better days than others, but the buzz seemed to be back to pre-Covid levels, if not pre-Brwreakshit levels!

A fun bag for pennies; these are probably all Dulcop Charlie Kit figures, but could equally be copied piracies from Hong Kong, the Soviet Union, Hungary or elsewhere as they all had a pop, and might be Kinder specific production, rather than the mini-boxed Charlie originals?

Clockwise from top-left; The workbench might go with one of the Charlies? I hadn't considered it before, I have one with half the vice in the odd accessories zone, it's been there for years but I never really gave it much thought but there were a few other bits in the Charlie bag and this might have been one of them? Next to it is a winding mechanism . . . from a  Kinder toy?

Three hollow-cast figures I nabbed from Mercator Trading's cheapie-tray, two sailors and a highlander, makers to-come when I've checked them against Joplin's book and re-Blog them in something more thematic!

A large Easter chick in two-part glued polystyrene, a Roche Fees premium lamb and a Ripley from Alien, who I thought might be 3D printed when I saw her in a rummage tray, but who seems to be more commercial? If she'd been resin and grey or white I might have hazarded the guess of Reaper Miniatures, but in this rotten-lettuce green polymer she remains a question-mark for now, but a really nice figure around that 28/30mm size.

Finally a bunch of animals including a Kellogg's Rhino, and a Merit bear, except I recently noticed Merit seem to have provided their circus/Noah animals to a Coco-Pops cereal premium line (also Kellogg's) toward the end of their existence, which may explain some of the colour variations?

From the left; Cofalu/x French Foreign Legion above ann Auburn Rubber farm maid, late mono-coloured Comansi G.I. and a open-bottomed crate from a large-box or rack-toy play set, I suspect.

Two late Hong Kong'y versions of Waddington's Little Bighorn cavalry officer, with below a selection of die-cast 'mocherette' figures (one Kinder), an AHI sourced Japanese copy of an SAE crusader, a war games grenadier and finally, the laying figure seems to be a civilian sailor, possibly a copy of a plastic kit figure, but just what you need for a Craftline balsa-kit!

To the right we have two of the Jean Napoleonics, I recently learnt were imported into the UK back in the day, in this unpainted state by Plastic Warrior magazine, both above a pair of the Starlux farm we looked at the other day! I have seven of the eight Jean's in the stash somewhere, but I can never remember which one I haven't got, so there are various odds kicking about now, in the hope that one of them is the missing one!

Two aluminium bears, being early- and late-version Wendal's; Wendal removed the bases from a lot of their production (where technical properties allowed) to reduce the amount of material and therefore the unit-cost. Along with a Commonwealth horn-blower ('Miss Switzerland') who once had full paint!

I also picked this up, it's a colour facsimile rather than an original, but it'll look good on the wall of the planed work-space in what should be my final stop in this world! Already mounted, once it's trimmed and framed it'll look better than this slightly curved state! Of note is that both sets of Deetail Germans are present, but the Japanese have been dropped.

N is for No Spanish Horses!

But more odds-&- sods of a ceremonial or 'on-parade' nature, indeed the first quartet started life a week or so ago in the same tub as two of the mounted reamsa's and the Argentine Lifeguard look-a-like, so may also be from the collection of Barry 'the legend' Blood, from that 2010 sell-off?

These being they! Two Danish guards from Reisler, in the everyday uniform, the red is the ceremonial, the black for day-in/day-out wear. To their left are two Mignalu plastic Monaco police (Carabineers de Monaco) in their summer dress uniform (they also have a dark version for winter), these are taken from a short experiment by Minot (CGB, not Barry) in Aluminium production back in the 1950's.

My three Athena's, I couldn't begin to explain anything else about them as there seem to be so many variations; red and blue, white and blue, kilts, bloused trousers, pom-poms - large, small and no, single or double 'deputy dog' ears, 'wing-boards' . . . and I must conclude that every regiment has its own uniform, or that several guards have summer and winter versions, there is an excellent book or two on them by Markos Plytos and they should make it clearer, in the meantime - my three are a good mix!

The first four were going to be with the Cavalry, before they expanded and I decided they must go seperately as a 'foot ceremonials' post, off to find the Evzones above, I checked Brian B's folders and found this 80'mil-odd chap, who's from Processed Plastic (thanks to Kent's site)'s US Air Force set.

Which in turn reminded me I had this chap (on the left) in with the unknown navy (or navy-like) figures, looking at him anew I suspect he's actually a chauffeur or doorman from a 1:35th scale car kit - Monogram, MPC/AMT-Ertl, Pyro or Revell? He's in hard polystyrene plastic anyway and someone's tried to glue him down by melting his base!

He - in turn - reminded me there was the other black plastic figure hanging around, seen on the right; he's soft polyethylene and I know nothing about him, I thought he must be Marx or MPC but doesn't seem to be either, has some features in common with the Remco Romans, but is lacking the fine detail seen on their shields, he's close to Marx's 60mm naval cadet marching, but of poorer quality and without the shoulder flap on the Marx figure's greatcoat, and, if it wasn't for the base, you might mistake him for an early experiment by Pater Cole's Replicants!

Anyone know, he seems to be a modern re-issue so I guess somewhere someone has a bucket-full of 'um? To be honest he looks like a neighbouring dictator's guard from the Trigan Empire and seems to be carrying an Elephant Brontosaurus-gun! The gun actually looks to be damaged at the tip, but inspection under a magnifying-glass suggests it's all there? Steam-punk Nazi!??!

ABC, Hong Kong rip-off's of Britains hollow-cast marching troops, they look better en-masse than they do individually!

A mix of French troops marching, seen recently here, but again looking better as a group, and also HK copies, this time cloned from Starlux.

A Salvation Army chap I shot on Adrian's stand years ago and which has been sat in Picasa ever since! I may actually have one myself, but either a different pose or a different flag, and I'm not sure where I put it? He's aluminium and Wend-Al.

A scaler on the left, while on the right - they are all ensconced in their new tub! the HK stuff (ABC/Starlux-copies) have their own tubs!

The cavalry grew to fill two tubs, Reamsa and 'others', and the foot got one of their own. The red plastic Reisler's (which we've seen; Blog passim) will stay with the British guards for now, but as this sample grows and fills a deeper tub, they may migrate across (with the correct paperwork - no illegal's here!), while you can see the lovely RHA chap Chris Smith sent the blog a while back has joined them.

Because PVC can melt polystyrene, the three Greeks and the artilleryman get PE bags, which prevents that kind of damage occurring and provides padding for all the figures in the tub.

B is for Bonus Beefeaters!

When I did a round-up of Beefeaters the other day, well; earlier this year (I don't know where the time goes!), I meant to add the last pair of shots from this post, but in my usual disorganised fashion managed to forget them! Anyway, they would have rotted in Picacsa for another year or two (I took them in 2016!) if I hadn't spotted the first item in today's post the other day, and literally the other day, it arrived the day before the May-eleventh PW show.

How cool is this desktop pen holder? Not-very I know . . . it's a Hong Kong cheapie and the three pen-holders aren't even glued in-line and facing the same way! But the figure is nice, although a larger-scaled novelty which will only interest the more eclectic collectors, but then; I am one, and I snapped it up as soon as I saw it.

Box is a bit water-damaged, and as well as carrying the HCF mark of novelty tat (becoming a regular here at SSW), it also carries the originator's mark (AH or HA) on the end flaps, although not sadly in the catalogue Bill B recently posted online, but then it looks to be a 1970's item.

You can see from a comparison with the smaller Chris/Adrian figure - from the previous post - that he's around the 90mm mark, and he has a separate, soft polyethylene plug-in hat and a similar staff finial which is not the correct design for a Yeoman Warder's 'Partisan', yet neither is it the white tower or an obvious axe, nor does it resemble the halberds of the Gentlemen At Arms or anything from the ceremonial elements of the HAC, Artists Rifles and /or Loyal Archers (or whatever they're all called), so a bit of artistic licence there, I feel?

The left-off-the-last-post shots; a bit of vintage metal, with two hollow-cast Britains yeomen on the right and a Wendal figure in aluminium to the left. The latter having a slip-in wire partisan, the weapon's head being also cast in aluminium, with alternate base styles in the second image, while I think the sandy-coloured base is the earlier of the Britains pair.

Due to the tourism nature of their market, I don't think either are particularly rare examples of their maker's figures.

 

December 2024 - The smaller plastic figures are now known to be from a larger range by KT of Hong Kong, so it must have been copied by the other brands/brand-marks mentioned above, it's unlikely to have been copied the other way - from the larger one - as subsequent research has given the KT ones more age I feel?

H is for How They Come In I - Farm & Zoo

A quick look at some of the stuff which came in over the autumn just gone, specifically a few farm and zoo lots I found in local charity shops, nothing terribly exciting, but some things 'interesting'!

I'd already started sorting the contents of the first bag when I remembered to shoot a shot, so the 2nd bag is sat in the middle of an about-to-be-organised chaos.

Initial sort (the organised chaos!) by type; horses, cattle, people &etc; in the middle is the 'interesting' pile, i.e. the things worth shelling out £1.75 for!

While up the top-middle is what I love about these bags, a random set of Swoppet legs in a farm/zoo lot! And this lot came after I'd blogged the other Cherilea chickens, so I've picked-up the best of a bag-full of them this year!

Playing with them before I put them away; literally just mucking about with sort of graph-tables made of figures! We've looked at the goats in close-up already and one day sheep and pigs will have a proper turn.

I'm interested in the two sheep to the far-left, if anyone recognises them, they are made of a hard styrene type material (they sound like dice when you rattle them in your hand) and may be from a die-cast or plastic vehicle (as load/passengers), board game or something more pin-down'able/recognisable?

The interesting pile, in the centre the standing dog from Britains which always seems to be slightly less common the the running and lying ones, but I may be imagining that? Clockwise from the farm-hand (who has crap paint, but a less common pale brown/dun-coloured pitch-fork) we have; Charbens monkey (?) with ball, Britians Mini-Set mare, Corgi 'Torro' bull, the Wend-Al calf we looked at the other day a nice rabbit family, paint's poor again but all the ears are there! The leopard is Hong Kong, but is the non-melanistic 'corrector' for one of the black panthers I have.

This turned-up in the same shop a few days later, and I feel it was probably supposed to be part of the other two, they cirtainly all got sorted at the same time.

Nothing terribly interesting here, the Poplar ancient give me a clean box-ticker on the PVC foot figures, the Britains Herald Friar Tuck has almost no paint, but both ends of his sword/scabbard, his crucifix & chian and his staff are all intactum, so he may be painted-up for fun, bit of flock on the base, really ruin him!

The superhero is from a capsule-toy line of some kind I think, that or blind bags? Is he Archer Man? The Bowman, Arrowman, The Quiver, Biker-shirt Man! . . . Those Marvel and DC's have had most of them at some point, the question ought to be is he a Good Guy Man or a Bad Guy Man! And; No, I don't care!

While we've already looked at the other items of interest as I Blogged one with the Wendal calf, and the other in the Lucky follow-up!

T is for Two - British Farm Items

This post should really be F is for Four... as they all came in different lots! These are a few items from recent charity shop buys, which happened to fit together!

The calf came first (with one of the goats below) with a mixed bag of mostly zoo animals and I was chuffed to get it as it's a flocked calf from Wend-Al, about a week later I picked-up the farmer in a bag of farm people . . . well I say "...farm people", there were a couple of mechanics and a superhero too!

He is Wend-Al too, so I now have a burgeoning Wend-Al farm collection of err....two! I rather like his painting, compared to some of the versions in the Philip Dean book, this one could pass for Richthofen or a young Goring walking out to their World War One 'string-bag'!

The calf from both sides, one (left) side is a bit threadbare (or should that be flockbare!), the other (right) is a bit grubby, but they are hard to find in any condition so I'm quite pleased with him. As far as I can tell from the aforementioned book the flocking was undertaken by Wend-Al themselves, some firms tended to use contractors?

One of these came with the calf in a bag of mostly zoo animals, the other came in a bag of mostly farm animals, with a few zoo animals, such is the logic of charity shops, they were bought at the same time from the same self!

The other came in an entirely different lot altogether, but both are Cherilea, the smaller from the old lead hollow-casting mould, the other - the first's replacement - designed for polymer injection-moulding and slightly larger.

However they share characteristics and were possibly from the same hand; the treatment of the fur (hair? I think goats have hair not fur!) is very similar, but the second sculpt has a better handle on animal-flesh and a slightly less static pose?

Since the chickens came-in earlier in the year and especially since the start of Barney Brown's series in Plastic Warrior magazine I am watching out for these, and it turned out there was another kicking around, this one with slightly better paint and the belly-mark; missing from the new one.

They both also have the red starey-eyes (or remains of) Barney mentioned in relation to the pigs in part one of his series - part two may be in the next PW which will be due in a couple of weeks, PlasticWarrior's Blog; if you need to subscribe! They are all a bit tatty for purists, but they will suffice as 'box-tickers' until something better turns up.

W is for Quiralu...no! Q is for Wend-Al...err...

The likelihood is that these can be regarded as Quiralu; possibly Wend-Al, but a couple of them are probably Wend-Al; might be Quiralu! I did consult Philip Dean's book before preparing the blurb for these pictures, but it wasn't much help, not a failing on the part of the author, just a lack of information generally on the company and its product lines. The vendor feels they are probably all French, but he can't be certain!

Quiralu were named after a Mr. Quirin who started making aluminium toys in 1933, hence 'Quir'(in) +'Alu'(minium) = Quiralu. When they switched to plastics they added an X, he being from Luxeuil in France . . . which also (by coincidence?) brought them into line with the other x's: Bonux, Cofalux and Starlux!

I think we've seen all three of these as plastics from Quiralux before, but these are the aluminium versions, two being Timpo'esque, the third having shades of the German make Domplast (shared sculptor?), although Wend-Al did list a paratrooper, so he may be from Blandford?

The baseless bazooka-operator may well also be Wend-Al as they removed bases toward the end of their existence to save money on what was becoming an uneconomical material, although the pose looks designed to stand-alone anyway, so toss a coin! The other two look a bit French to me?

The Tommie throwing a grenade looks like he ought to be Wend-Al, and they did catalogue a Machine-gunner, so there could be some Dorset in this shot, but all the figures have similar paint 'signatures' and the US troops were Quiralu/x poses in Aluminium and plastic so who knows.

Another angle on the two prone poses and a figure which I feel must be a naughty piracy from Wend-Al? I've added him to the Khaki Infantry page as well; Britains kneeling firer in aluminium.

Thanks to Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) for letting me photograph these at Sandown Park the other day, he might have a few copies of Philip's book left as well.

T is - of course - for Toy Soldiers!

Quick box-ticker tonight, photographed on Adrian's Mercator Trading table at Sandown Park this weekend, possibly my favourite figures by this brand.

The 'Toy Town' range of toy soldiers from the British company Wend-Al, manufactured in aluminium, a hard wearing material that didn't reproduce detail well. The French company Quiralu, (who would - later - as a plastics company add an 'x' to read; Quiralux) used these moulds as well, but reversed the paint with blue jackets and red trousers in the French-colonial style.

A is for Accompaniment

I was holding this intending to add another figure I got at one of the shows, but then I encountered the original show report post here somewhere looking for something else or answering a question and realised he was Salvation Army, so these can stand alone as a bit of a box-ticking exercise!

These are the Circus Bandsmen from Wendal with a shot of two different base stickers. I don't know if these were also issued by the French 'partner' firm of Quiralu, or - if they were - how they may have differed? Despite being made in aluminium they are really quite finely sculpted figures.

A is for Aluminium (or Aluminum!) Animals

Having told Sam in the comments section to the Starlux Italian circus set post that I couldn't see myself publishing more circus for a while, I remembered that I took these at the Sandown Park fair the the other week...so a Small request-post for Sam and a bit more circus in an unlikely material...

From Wend-Al (or Wendal), Britain's only volume producer of toy soldiers in aluminium, they are all from the circus range and consist...(I was about to list what is clear from the photographs!)...of what you can see! Like most of the bits I shoot at shows these were on Mercator Trading's table and may still be available from him, link; top-right somewhere.

Because my knowledge of Wendal is no better than my knowledge of Quiralux (which is non-existent) I couldn't tell you if these were also made by the French firm and with collectors varying in opinion as to whether Wendal copied Quiralux or Quiralux copied Wendal or some mould-sharing went on, I'll leave it as a maybe Quiralux carried these in their own civil range!