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!

N is for "Nart a'Nurtherrr Whone?!"

As if this set hadn't given us more than most already, another Wilton set has turned-up, only this one has just five figures (the austerity set!), for a two-a-side game with referee, giving us new all-red and all-white strips into the bargain!

 

 

Still sealed, in a charity shop a few weeks ago, I don't know if it's an import, or if someone bought it in the 'States and brought it over here/back here? We have after all looked at it a half-dozen times now, with variations on each issue, what more could be added to the story?

 

From the number of sets we've seen here now, we can begin to conclude the pale green bases, equate to Referees with whistle, so must be the earlier production run/s, while dark green bases should be later sets, with the Ref' turned into another player for single teams of seven.

 

The guy on the ground, and the Number 2 shirt are the ones dropped from this fixture!

 

If you want to see the others - roughly in the order in which they appeared, i.e., the reverse of how they're found if you follow the tags;

 

Wilton - three-a-side 

Anniversary House seven-a-side - red shirts

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/01/f-is-for-football-2-w-is-for-wilton-and.html 

 

JPW seven-a-side - two teams

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/f-is-for-football.html

(courtesy of Brian Berke, and I only realised, just now, scrolling through all the football posts, they are the same sculpts! Don't know if they are the larger ones or the smaller ones)

 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - all white faces

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/t-is-for-they-keep-coming.html

 

Anniversary House seven-a-side - blue shirts + comparison shot (mixed post)

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/02/f-is-for-follow-ups-various-recent-posts.html 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - Four white, three black players

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/k-is-for-kicking-and-screaming.html 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - Four black, three white players + comparison with the small ones

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/f-is-for-follow-up-footballer-cake.html 

 

Wilton two-a-side

This post! 

 

 

Kaskey Kids - Similar poses, but not the same

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/02/f-is-for-follow-up-kaskey-kids-soccer.html 

 

So the Anniversary House sets are the dark-green based later issues, still in retail outlets, although the PME and Wilton can also be found, while the JPW were probably a one- or two-season rack-toy presentation. What next? We still need a full set and branding for the smaller figures, clearly from the same source, as they are the same colours/materials.

 

Fourteen teams, nine examples, seven posts, four brands, three team configurations, two versions of the referee sculpt, all one set! 

B is for Bowling

Mentioned this-morning in passing, or this-afternoon? I forget! I also forgot I had the Wilton ones in the queue! So here they are as a late box-ticker!

60mm, polystyrene, cakes, for the decoration of! Everything else is in the tags, and they might be the origin, or more likely an extension, of those novelty sets with a marble, from Christmas crackers?

W is for Wilton's Wandering Willbury's from Warner

I've always had a preference for Hanna Barbera (Scooby, Wacky Races), MGM (Tom & Jerry, which was originally Hanna and Barbera) or Warner or over Disney, it's not that I hate Disney, some of its output is excellent, some now considered classic, but I have never liked the Micky/Daisy 'Disnyland' Disney, and think Fantasia was ruined by the sudden appearance of the dratted mouse for the Sorcerers Apprentice sequence!

 

But Warner Brothers had quite a cast of characters for their Loony Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, and five of the best are featured here in this band of a band, of cake decorations from Wilton. Large scale and Polystyrene, like most of Wilton's output, but not all of it - Circus wagons, for instance.

Bugs Bunny conducts - from the left; Sylvester (oboe), Porky Pig (cymbals), Daffy Duck (saxophone) and Tweety (aka; Tweety Pie or Tweety Bird, bass-drum). And I hope that's a band-master's baton, because if Bugs is about to sing, I could quickly lump him in with that squeaky mouse!

 

The extra joke being that Tweety, the smallest of them all, gets to struggle with the largest instrument! They are glued to matching green disc-bases, fully marked-up with Warner and Wilton property messeging.

M is for Maysun, May Moon, Marty AND M-Toy!

A bit of a reveal tonight, one I've been sitting on since, well, about four or fives years ago, when Bill B gave us his catalogue, so credit to him first, but it meant a few puzzles were cleared up, not least that LP was LB for Lik Be, but that took another year or so to sink in, this was an easier fit as three of the brands were in the one ad! But that will be the next post, this is all about a trip to the circus!

 

 

If you recall my purchase of a circus card at 2022's Plastic Warrior show in Twickenham, there was already a move toward this post then, and had been for a while, I have cleaned it from the dusty thing we saw then, and added the feebleBay image on the right, which I suspect is a 1980's (?) Target set.

Check out the giraffe though! It's the Britains baby-giraffe, commonly copied by Hong Kong makers, but rearing up!

Two more from evilBay; another branded to M-Toy as mine is, the other - 'Crest' from Pioneer Products Inc - more of a curates egg, with the Maysun ringmaster, and some non-circus, wild or 'Zoo' animals, which may be from the M's, or may be bought-in from someone else?

 

While here, back in 1966, we have Wilton carrying two sets, a bog-standard range of the Crescent-for-Kellogg's piracies (black & white image), and a lion-tamer vignette with some more non-circus animals. I suspect these might be from the M's, particularly as they are of similar design/material to the other output, the larger animals in the Pioneer set are chalky and carry very different decoration.

 

I have yet to see the original clown with hoop in any of the M-Toy, Maysun or generic sets, so he seems to have missed the pirate boat at some point?

My newest lot came with this tent, there is nothing empirical to tie it to the figures and it may be from another set-line-range-maker altogether, but it has the feel of Hong Kong in the crudeness of the parts and the fit of the cloth-cover reminds one of all the Strawberry Shortcake stuff, or trolls, all a bit 1970's!

 I don't know when they started adding their own (?) designs, but it's obvious now these are all from the same stable, as various ones turn-up in other sets, with the Kellogg's copies. Being strict, there is still a question mark over a few, but plastic colours, marks (there are several different marks) and paint, tie-them together.

The ostrich rider is a conversion of the standard Kellogg's clown, just doing the splits to ride the ex-Timpo (?) bird! While the seal is very different to the more common, larger, grey one. There is no real sign of the wheel/tyre having ever been on my poodle (ex-Corgi sculpt?), but it could have been there, there's certainly one in the other M-Toys set above?

Figures; we saw the lion tamer and another male in this post - Three Ring Circus - along with a loose version of the carded lady (ex-Marx?), and becasue both performaing animals and new people keep turning-up, we may not have found them all yet, I certainly still need that rearing giraffe!

 

One of the harder to find items is this chap, he's not rare, I've several broken ones including two here from recent purchases/donations, but I managed to get a good one on feeBay a few months ago, and that was a comedy of errors.

 

I'd asked the seller to pack him carefully, which he did, but the useless, overpriced 'International Shipping Program' managed to lose him, 'deliver him' (to their own hub, not me or the sender), deliver him again, to the sender (but he still hadn't received him back either) then they flagged it up as 'at the hub, but missing electronic tracking data'? After two or three weeks of looking at that, unchanging message, daily, I requested a refund and apologised to the sender for costing him, he cheerfully replied that because the 'programme' had lost it, he'd had a full refund too! Four weeks later it was dropped-off without a signature being requested! Our civilisation is literally grinding to a halt!

So, anyway I have one now, and took a knife to one of the others, so he'd just look irate - "It's my turn!"

The Crescent-for-Kellogg's bits, the Elephant has always been sub-scale, and must be assumed to be a performing baby - very cruel, and it's a measure of our slow progression to humanity, as we have always preached but rarely practised, that we have all but finished with real, live animals in circuses and fairs now, not so in other parts of the world though, where bears in particular, and other animals are still chastised for laughs.

 

In the boxed set at the other end of the link, we saw the horse-acrobat with her little seperate base (as she is in one of the sets above), but here she's doing the ridey-thing! And I wouldn't want you thinking all this stuff is from the M's, I have, in the 'master collection', identified several generations of the seal, elephant and lion, while the elephant-riding monkey (also in the linked set) looks like it was bought-in from Blue Box.

As Blue Box, Holly and New Maries all had a level of cross-pollination on farm, zoo and Noah's Ark sets, with similar connections between some of them over Chinasaur-dinosaurs and 'Gygax' monsters, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them also knocked-out a few of these, especially the commoner ex-Crescent scuplts?

A few of the Crescent/Kellogg's figures I had here, not the best sample, but you can see the chap on the far right, bottom, is the one who seems to have escaped copying and therefore remains uniquely British! Probably as simple as that the pirates didn't trust themselves to pantograph and reproduce the fine moulding of a decent hoop?

 

The quite similar horse-rider from Charbens, I don't know which came first, but this was probably the original as it may have come from the earlier hollow-cast?

 

While Blue Box themselves had a stab at the 'Big Top' with these sets of Circus Chimps, although firstly there are more other apes/monkeys than actual chimpanzees, and only two are new for the sets - the piano-playing gorilla and the elephant-rider - the rest are from the standard zoo ranges, suitably enhanced with Wild West cacti and furniture from their dolls house line!

Image added a few weeks later, for the hell of it!

C is for a Constellation of Capsules

No, not gum-Ball machine capsules, but at ten cents definitely prizes! If you can handle the rest of your childhood being plagued by junk mail and further demands to subscribe to other shite! I have these in the archive; offers involving Revell kits, hoping to get kids signed-up to Science Programe, whatever that was; something American! And the collective noun for capsules SHOULD be 'constellation'!

 

The 'white heat' of technology . . . all those years ago . . . what hopes man had then (whispers - in conflict with the Soviet Union!).

This is both sides of two direct-marketing, mail-order, insert cards from a magazine or periodical of some kind I think, and from the dates of the Gemini programme, actually flying missions, must date them to between 1964 and 1966, so around the time I was born!

This is a fascinating and quick little read, I'm glad he made it to the moon after his near death!

Anyway, finding the above caused me to dig-out that Wilton Gemini-craft we looked at the other day, and compare it to Marx's Mercury looking thing!

It's actually fascinating to see the evolution of the capsules over time, I must find a decent 1:72nd, 1:48th or larger Apollo capsule to show how it got broader still to fit a three-man crew, yet visually looks the shortest/squattest of the three. But here the Marx is definitely modelling the Mercury, with three flat windows rather than the Wilton Gemini's two 'bus-drivers' windows!

 

As you can see, the Marx return capsule is made from eye-blinding red, or flowing-lava orange, and is almost impossible to photograph! I used to think it was a reissue thing, but David Schafer showed one on a vintage card and it really is that colour!

 

Also, I'm now wondering if the Wilton cake-craft is a direct copy of the old Revell kit, as practically given-away by the Science Programme, although I should probably write 'program' so's to avoid charges of racism from you-know-who! Anyone seen the Revell kit?

I is for In Space No One Can Hear You Blow Out Your Candles!

Cake decorations, not rack-toys, but the price-points and ephemeral nature of the products are pretty similar, and as I say most years, a few days in, RTM isn't just for RT's! Wilton today, and their quite eclectic output of Space Toys over the years, and probably not all of them but the ones I've been made aware of.

 

These are all generics, in that the rocket also comes as a stand-alone cap-bomb, and while I think I have one now (might be on the Blog?), it wasn't here when this post started to take shape.

 

Likewise the MPC copies are pretty common, these seem to be not the best copies, but not the worst, and from the colours (which I like) may be the same ones issued in rack-toy bags by . . . errr . . . Payton? Someone like that!

While the Ajax-Archer copies seem to be the soft-plastic with paint, Hong Kong figures also issued as both rack toys and bagged parachute-toys, in which guise the later, unpainted mouldings, are quite common. But the helmets would seem to be unique to the Wilton issue copies?

I can't find these in the catalogues I have, so they must have been a short-lived item, if they were Wilton, I was told they were but can't find anything definitive, I believe there's a second pose, I only have the one at the moment, but note, on his back; the same KT in an oval cartouche, as the firm which issued all those statuettes and pencil sharpeners, stationary stands etc . . . we've been looking at here at Small Scale World in the last few years !

 

He (previous shots) may even (with his mate) have been the production versions of the two in this catalogue image, with the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) or lander, as I don't think I've seen these either? Revell scale-ups? Behind them is the Gemini craft with two larger scale astronauts.

 

Here's the three of them, what do you think, could he be contemporary with the other two, having replaced the 'mock-up' press figures, or am I still looking for three other astronauts? And the bigger guys served to ID others in the 'unknown seated pilots' zone! the KT is about 45mm (50 with the domed stand), the other two 60+mm

We have also looked at the loose candle-holder figures here, not that long ago, but there was a second set with a UFO and one each of the two figures, so Junior could have space-cakes until he was eight, on two purchases! Then, if he makes it, the nursing-home staff could get them out for his eightieth!

 

The collection, as it stands, minus my loose UFO figures. The catalogue image above seems to show a transparent red-nose, mine is a totally opaque, flat red. And I'm not sure if the figures are even in the bag? I think they're stuffed into the ship, but I can't check as it's gone to storage.

 

 

I think I nicked this off evilBay to remind us of the figures without opening (or having to find) my bagged set!