R is for Recent Stuff - Follow-ups 1

A few shots I've been taking as I try to sort this years plunder into the ever diminishing space at the end of my storage unit!

 

These are the 60mm Crescent Mohicans (oooh, spellchecker really doesn't like that!) I bought a while ago, four of six and I need the standing firer replaced with a better one, so fast forward to the pair I bought at the Plastic Warrior show in June, and . . .

 

. . . and I'm still short one! The archer with bow, but funnily enough I think I may have one or two of them in with the standard Crescent 60mm Indian sample, as I'm pretty sure one or two have come in with cheapo' lots, and I just put them in the tub 'with the others'! Time will tell, but we're getting there!

 

The Cherilea swoppets who have come in over the last 36-odd months, these are not the master collection, but in terms of the 1st and interim versions, probably excede the 'deep-storage' sample, but in the case of the final version, only a part figure, against a much better sample, seen here, a fair few years ago!

 

I think we've seen all these now, so time for a comparison line-up, I thought the chap on the left might be Husky/Corgi Junior but he's not, so possibly Galoob or New Ray drive-though ice-cream kiosk operative? Then the Corgi standard ice cream seller, then the giant, might-be-Lucky piracy we saw the other day. Then the Corgi streetlamp repair man, then another 'styrene scale up, from Hong Kong! PVC-PVC-PS-PE-PS

 

Interim line -up of French Marine's Fear! Missing a couple of key-rings I think, from the always-been-in-some-sort-of-storage zone, and the composition one we saw here years ago, but not bad, and mostly from Chris Smith, I bet! Still, the absentees will allow for a more definitive Welsh Ladies shot, another day!

 

The sublime (Tudor Rose) and the ridiculous, a hideous pile of Hong Kong tat, which I ended-up with because someone gave it to me, I think? Hong Kong did churn out some fuggugly stuff! I think it's marked JC on the base, but I don't really care, it's naff, kitsch shite, but . . . figures!

 

Finally I said I though the Airfix 1:35th Quickbuild 'Lego' Sherman was closer to 1:32nd, and here I've shot it next to the CTS/BMC one I got at last years PW show, and you can see it's a lot smaller. The difference being OK for a garden war game, but is seriously going to piss-off a purist!

Q is for Question Time - Western Horse

Can anybody ID this chap or chapess?

 

It's loosely based on 'that' horse, albeit somewhat nicer than most, and with a clearly Western or Spanish Gaucho saddlery.. It's gloss painted and hard plastic, and may take a figure in the 60mm bracket?
 

E is for Elastolin Ephemera

Another one from the library, and, if you're an Elastolin fan, probably the one to get for the plastics, although there is a bit, on the end of the composition era, in there, if I recall correctly. Due to it's size, it doesn't go with the other catalogues in the box-files, but rather on the bookshelf, with the other landscape format stuff.

 

The shop proprietors' trade catalogue, and the beauty of this one, was that it came with about eight of the annual update packs, sent out by Hausser to all the properly registered stockists, which I carefully opened and inserted into the folder. With the few duplicates that careful insertion resulted in, I think there are about 300 pages in total.

 

Because I'm a collector, not a retailer, where a line or range was deleted (a sheet of instructions came with each pack, telling you which pages to remove, which to replace and which to add, where), or part of a range dropped, I left those pages in, as I did those pages where the new pages where substantially different, or had new artwork.

 

I also kept all the instruction sheets, and put them at the front of the leaver-arched tome, with/after the original 'how to use this catalogue' guide, in the order they were issued. And I kept the pages that were removed, but they are semi-lost, and occasionally I find them in an A4 Really Useful Box, while looking for something else, and I mean to place them at the back of this folder. 

 

Wild West 'swoppet' (steckfiguren - peg figures or plug-in figures) shop stock boxes.

 

Nativity set in faux carved-wood effect, and factory paint.

Notice how they've reversed the trio in each shot!

Except the Little Baby Jesus! 

 

Giraffes and big cats.

 

Mentioned in the previous post, the Hausser take on two of the Rojas e Malaret board games. They used the Elastolin 40mm figures, I believe with 'simple' paint, rather than the retail decoration? there's a whole section on Hausser's toys.

 

Wooden Wild West buildings and whole streets.

There are also wooden farms and zoos. 

 

Old Shatterhand or the 'Karl May' set, from a popular German TV series, after the books by May, Old Shatterand is best known as the blood brother of the Apache chief Winnetou in the series of Western  novels.

The pages are colour-coded to help the shop staff look things up quickly, and the format is pretty unique, being not an 'A' size, and having the rings a non-standard distance apart, but back then such things were more common, with industrial works, mechanical textbooks & operators guides, and various military publications and vehicle manuals being so published.

S is for Sandown Park - Wild West

Picked up a few Wild West bits at the last Sandown Park shenanigans, nothing rare or valuable, but always things of interest, grist to the mill, gap fillers and collection enhancers/improvers - so let's have a look at the plunder!

 

While the Reamsa stuff in Sobres seems to be copies, I think these are original Comansi supplied product, the 60mm backwoodsman/pioneer/trapper being the same softish silicon-rubber as the late Thunderbirds/OVNI stuff, while the 50mm Lucky Luke is one of their sculpts too? Their relevance to the Battle of Manila being a moot point, but typical of these cheap, pocket-money, Montaplex novelty envelopes!

 

Rather damaged, but new colours for these 'styrene large-scale versions of the SIKU manufactured Euro-premiums - carried here, in the UK, by Betterwear, as a smaller range, in soft ''ethylene . The yellow being the same shade as the British issues, and both will join the dun, fawn and bronze, painted and unpainted sample, slowly gathering in a bag somewhere!

 

 

So clean I suspect another of the East German production, like the military chap we looked at a while ago, but I'm not clued-up enough on Elastolin composition to be sure, a nice clean figure though, along with a huge (100mm+) Hong Kong copy of something Spanish, I feel? [Lafredo - see comments]

A pair of HK copies of Britains (one Herald, one Swoppet), a speedwell/Trojan type and what I suspect is a Hilco 'from hollowcast', it's similar to a couple of the Johillco metal sculpts, and turns up quite often?

 

Mixed cowboy lot, I don't remember where these all came from (with previous and next two image contents), there must have been a mixed bag of them, possibly from Isaak, or Martin? Two Lone Star, a Crescent, a Supreme and three to be ID'd, along with a wagon driver Charbens saloon figure (holding cards).

 

Mid-quality swoppet knock-offs!

 

One of the Crescent  (horse) Timpo 'solid' (rider) ACW copies from Hong Kong, carried by Ideal in the US, more generic over here, this one has been repainted by the owner, from the look of it!

Q is for Question Time - Reamsa Copy?

A simple one today; can anybody ID the maroon plastic figure?

 

The figure on the left is clearly marked REAMSA 68, from Spain, and, unusually for Reamsa, it is in a rigid polystyrene polymer, rather than the vinyl of early production, or the polyethylene of later mouldings

 

The one on the right, also 'styrene, seems to have dropped the scalping knife, and may be French in origin. Note how they have both not only scalped, but cut the whole face off, and are both looking pretty pleased about it!

PZG is for Polish Zone of Goodness!

Because I've not been posting any of the stuff from Putlerland, I've rather neglected the Polish stuff too, because all the Eastern European folders are in the same bit of Picasa (1982!), so, by way of redressing that imbalance slightly, here's a load of Wild West stuff from Poland, which has come into the collection in the last three or four years.

 

Some of it has been seen elsewhere, some of it has probably been seen here, in show reports, some of it I can't remember where it came from, or why I didn't blog it sooner, and some of it may be from Adrian, Chris or Peter, so thanks to them for all their help and support. And some of it got multiple photographs, mostly back in 2022.

 

And while most of it IS PZG, some of it probably isn't, and I can't remember what's what, and am no longer on the Faceplant group where I can check, so just an 'eye-candy' overview, to get some more Polish stuff tagged-up!

 

These are probably the oldest, and I kept re-shooting them as they came in! I think they're all the same maker, but possibly not PZG, I seem to recall the two pin-marks being associated with another brand, by the Polish collectors on the Freinds of PW Faceplant page?

 

I think these are earlier PZG, they are bigger and based on old composition figures, again they came in as the ones and twos of the collage, and then I shot them as the upper image later! All a bit damaged or incomplete (except shiny-minter tomahawk guy!), they are, nevertheless, 1st samples

 

Possibly PZG, from the larger-scale 'plinth' range (60/70mm), which also included figures from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (which included a non-Russian Ukraine . . . just sayin' - history is not what the Kremlin claims it is!), along with some lovely medieval knights, we've seen one or two of, here, in the past.

 

These are all the common, late PZG, which seem to have had an export to the UK, probably in the late 1980's, under the loosening of Glasnost, as they turn up quite often. Very colourful; but a tad smaller, maybe between 48-54mm, but with nice accessories - I'm pretty sure we've seen the semi-flat Teepees/Tipis before now? And note the Britains Deetail scenic copy.

 

I think the campfire set, lower collage, actually came in first (and may be mixed makes or lines), then the big lot, and finally a year or so ago, the five and the pair from the middle collage, with the three in the base-shot, taken from the big lot, these go surprisingly-well with the Herald Hong Kong vinyls, as the size and colours tie-in! But, I need a horse, for hop-a-long!

C is for Colección de Indios y Cow Boys Humorísticos

This is a weird one? Firstly, it was intended to be the fourth post in the sequence when we looked at the Lik Be / Gordy sets of Wild West kids and knock-off cake decorations, back in June (although I don't think these have any connection with LB, beyond the humerous and Wild West subject matter), and secondly, because I don't seem to have shown my trio on the blog, when they only came in recently, and were intended for this post, whenever I got round to posting it?

 

I've checked the recent show report posts, I've checked the donation stuff from Chris and Peter, and can't find them, so I suspect they may have been a private purchase, which got sorted into the collection, in the normal rhythm of things, and while I would have intended to shoot them, I must have sorted them into the 4x5½ bags I use, and sent them off to storage without shooting them?

 

Anyway, I found them last night, looking for something else, over at the storage site, and brought them back here, thinking maybe I'd posted it all, but 'just in case', and sure enough, no sign of them on the Blog, and the specific post, still in Picasa! So shots taken and we'll look at them and the Jecsan catalogue first, then a bunch of Internet scrapings found over the years.

 

Jecsan catalogue scan, the full set of figures goes to six foot and three mounted each for the two lots of protagonists, with one horse pose each; bareback for the Indians, and saddled for the Westerners. The card for the separate Tipi seems to be designed to make a lithographed 'paper flat' totem pole?

 

The toymen of Hong Kong took two of the foot Indians and one of the mounted cowboys for some revenue generation, probably at the request of a Western buyer, that's how it worked there, but gave the mounted cowboy the Indian horse - presumably because that's what the sample they were given, to pirate, contained?

 

A decent rear-shot

The hat of my cowboy is lacking the mark seen further down the page, he being marked on his back, instead, suggesting at least two lots/tranches of these, with either changes to the tool, or separate tools, a quandary not made easier by them all sticking to the same paint-scheme . . . multiple cavities maybe?

 

Paint, and markings have some similarities with Blue Box production of the era, think either set of Knights or the Jean-cloned Wild West, so these (or 'some' of these) may have come from one of the Tai Sang factories, but we'll probably never know?

 

Looking at these 'Comic Coyboy' cale decorations, from Carrousel, but not owning them, I can only suspect that A) they may be hard polystyrene, against the soft Polyethylene of all the others seen here, and B) might be smaller sub-piracies - a second/third lot/set.

 

The painting is simpler, and indeed, it appears one mounted cowboy/horse combo' is undecorated, but big may/mights here? They also look similar in general execution, to the HK copies of Ajax base-ballers, American footballers and other cake decorations in the same vein?

 

 

There seems to have been one of the many copies of the Britains Herald totem pole also associated with them, but paint differences and plastic colour might point to them just being 'chucked in' to online auction images?

 

A pair of Indians, presumably a similar card has the cowboy and horse in a different blister? The "Cowboy [singular] and Indians [plural] in that heliotrope/carmine-red 'ink stamp' effect font, is found on other Wild West rack toys, and may be another clue to producer, or more likely wholesale agent? But again we're unlikely to ever know!

 

Another pair.

 

The different mark of the possible second lot, I mentioned above. A separate tool or later change to the existing tool? Sadly the pictures in this auction lot (final five images), didn't include a decent rear-shot - as they hardly ever do!

 

The only paint variation with the commoner set, is this cowboy with a red shirt, suggesting a larger set, although a horse is absent, but it makes for a more balanced 2:2 fight in the icing around a chocolate-finger 'log' fort!

 

They aren't really compatible with the Lik Be sets, being more obviously caricature adults, than the cubby-cheeked kids of the LB set, but are cartoony enough to compliment a display of them, should someone want a display of infant-oriented cake decorations! And there's the Lucky Luke figures from Comansi and similar figures from Exin (which may have been sourced from Comansi too), to consider in this genre.