About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

L is for Lots of London Loot - Four is for More (Sandown, Last September)

It all got a bit mixed-up through the second half of last year, so while this is 'the' Sandown Park show pictures/report, I genuinely can't remember if they are only purchases, some freebies, or Adrian bits which may be free or very cheap, so they're just going up as they are, and some of it might have been filtered out to other posts already, like the ceremonial one a while back?
 
Anguplas Mini-Car DUKW, I don't know what it's made out of, it seems to be a 'styrene, but I suspect - from the ongoing deformation - that it's actually made of a polymer from within the celluloid-cellulose acetate family?
 
It was re-issued by EKO, who inherited the tool in 1967, in a stable polystyrene, so a better version can be found, they are described as 1:87th scale (Anguplas) and HO (EKO). We've seen an EKO one here in the past, and I needed this one for a full - future - comparison!
 
Not 100% on this one, obviously Hong Kong knock-off of the Crescent Saladin in plastic, it's probably the M-Toy (May Moon-Marty) version, but there are several? You can tell it's copied from the Crescent matchstick-firer, as they have retained the channel behind and above the gun-mantlet where Crescent's trigger-bar sat in the fired position, although they have filled-in the cocking 'T' channel!

A small group of mini-vehicles to add to all the others, with the exception of the 'Manurba' wagon, they are all the slightly better and/or larger ones with separate wheels, to the moulded-in wheeled ones we looked at a while ago in more detail, but three or four manufactures are here, and I didn't take notes on any marks, so for now, just a pretty picture!

Nice painted paratrooper, probably a BR Moulds one, rather than the Airfix version (no pin-mark at the front of the base, slightly smaller), and useful parts for a whole and two half Kinder horses, although the connector is interchangeable, the colours not so!
 
Then a lovely Arab on horseback, in pretty-much 1:76th (HO-OO compatible) scale, standing on a box-plinth which could be for snuff, but it's more likely aimed for something like pills, or dressmaker's pins; matches even? The whole in a celluloid I suspect, and likely from Japan, although unmarked?

Four oddments, a Blue Box cable-car passenger, a Donald Duck, which from plastic and paint type/quality, I suspect may be an Argentinian product or piracy, and two Tin Tin figurines, from the Europeans, but I'm not sure which set and don't have the PW special in front of me!
 
Marx sentry, I can't remember if he was still a 'want' or if I'd got one a while back? Well, he carried two names in one of the issues, so I suppose two is the minimum required! A small novelty racing-car, probably Hong Kong, and chrome-coated, with another Processed Plastics Cadillac soft-top . . . I'm building a fleet! New colour!
 
Die cast wrestlers! Actually removed from key-rings issued by Placo Toys back in 1998.
 
These are a mystery, I think the mortar, which came with them is the Ougen issue of the Elastolin 40mm model, something about the paint maybe? But it could be the German original (painted metalwork?), I just don't know. When I bought them (off Adrian, I think), I assumed they were a home-modelled conversion set.
 
But the figures, don't look familiar, seem to match, may be home-painted but don't appear to be conversions, and that small-square base on the nearer one is ringing no bells, despite being close to some Cherilea stuff, while the guy behind him, shouting and pointing looks more Marx or MPC in the base department, but again, I don't recognise the figure . . . so anyone with any clue, idea or opinion, remarks gratefully received in the comments!
 
As a side note, the three figures are styled after the kind of fashion seen in Victorian or earlier depictions of Romans in art? The third figure is similar to one of the Charbens Greco-Roman, but I've rather hidden him in this shot. The helmets are very distinctive, but if they are the 'conversion', are very well done . . . ? Are they just some modern production which I haven't paid attention to?
 
Three pipes from a Matchbox 1-75 Series lorry - useful spares!
 
Love these! Four tinplate demi-ronde European infantry of a generic (but probably specific - if you know what you are looking at) unit of late 19th/Early 20th century troops, possibly Mediterranean or maybe South American, they might even be the Russo-Japanese war? I only have a handful of this type of stuff in the stash, and have photographed one or two more over the years, so to get four, cheap was a real treat!
 
The footballer looks like he could be home-cast, but the diminutive size says he's probably from a board- or table-game of some kind. The Timpo US Officer will be for comparison shots with the plastics and the mortar looks like a squat version of the Lone Star plastic one, did they do it in metal first, is it Crescent, or did someone clone it?
 
Classic rack toy! Jumping spider with air-balloon and hose . . . Brilliant!
 
Spanish rack-toy! The other 'Tin-Tin'! Funny, as someone else posted this a month or two ago, at Christmas time? And I saw another dealer with a box full of these last Saturday at Sandown's 1st show of this year, so like the Emirober Beatle's a couple of decades ago, or the Comansi rubber Thunderbirds, someone has found a warehouse full of these recently, it would seem!
 



These all came in a job-lot, with no riders and a fair bit of badly damaged stuff, in the 'car-boot' scrummage on the stands before the show's doors open, immediately dismissed by people in the know as worthless 'second grade', sub-scale Elastolin budget range.
 
I rather like them, and they are nearly a century-old, so there! AND, there's a motorcycle, and a medical vignette which is just as good as the 70mm range, and wasn't reproduced in the 40mm as far as I know, and if they are 'unloved' by the BMSS brigade, they may not survive in the same numbers as the 'posh' ones, which would make them rarer?
 
Thanks to Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, as he probably gave me some of the above, and if he didn't, he definitely gave me some stuff at the show, we've either already looked at here, or will be looking at in future posts, shortly!

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

P is for Puckator - Birmingham NEC

Having been quite pleased with my five shots at the London Toy Fair, it came as a bit of a surprise to see their stand at the NEC, where I managed fifty-odd photographs which I've only managed to boil-down to forty-six!
 








As mentioned in a previous post, this was the second lot I shot, but I saw other similar displays, so clearly a coming trend, but the 60th anniversary of the movie will be next years, so that makes sense, there's bound to be plenty of terrestrial/BBC schedule filling crap on the subject.
 
Flamingos and Unicorns, two recent trends, only cacti missing!
 

Buger, fries and a drink . . . AND pizza? Greedy git! A current trend, hanging on the coat-tails of blind-bag novelties like Shopkins and others, we'll have more on a similar theme soon, here at Small Scale World.
 


A few fuzzy images have been deleted, or I realised at the time and took a second, better one (some of the knights below), but this is the only shot of the other members of the set, from which the Panda we looked at earlier today came from.
 
Private Atkins is going, under the heat of the display lights, but he's keeping his back nice and straight! I shot the resins again too, but it was one of the now deleted fuzzy images!
 


Two lots of cartoony Dinosaurs, both involving over-moulding (as many of these pencil tops do), with the zonal colour-layers on the semi-flats, and a more Timpo-style colour-over-colour on the fully-round figures.
 
Aa-Haarrrrr! Poirates!
 
I think these are jiggly-dancers, probably hit the black (heat?) pad, to get them wobbling, and as well as dancers we have a royal family (including a ghost!) touristy subjects a cat, and an aforementioned cactus!
 

Space, again trends we've already seen here, some more than once, includes red-white-&-blue pulp-rockets, and big-head astronauts! I blame Funko! I'll be looking out for the eraser rocket, to join the two we saw the other day, and the one we saw back at Christmas.
 
Chunky flats!
 
More over-moulds!
 

In the style of the Keycraft/Senmsory Place mouse we saw the other day (and probably from the same factory, in China?), another trend, and one casting its references back to 1970's novelties . . . what goes around, comes around.
 


These weren't the only glittery, fantasy items I shot on the day!
 








Stately-home or historic building gift-shop fayre! There's some nice pieces in the above, but mostly resin I fear, which is very hard to keep undamaged, particularly in the hands of little-ones. I didn't handle them though, so hope some of the smaller stuff, like the key-rings is manufactured in a more substantial polymer like a PVC-substitute?
 

Witches cats! Four poses.
 

We saw these as generics in The Works many years ago!
 


A bit of religious stuff to finish-off. More like wedding-cake decorations!

So quite a line-up from Puckator, seen in Birmingham, but it's finding it out there; that garden centre I found the other day only had a very small proportion of this stuff, so it'll be tourist attractions, 'end-destination' leisure-facility gift-shops, seaside & novelty boutiques and the like, for locating most of it?