P is for Probably...the Best Toy in the World, Ever

[To be voiced by Orson Wells's gravelly tones!]. Or; Probably the Worst Lager in the World! ((c) 1989 Hugh Walter - I hope to sell it to an advertising agency one day and make my fortune!).
This has been on my brother's shelf for a few years, and was a sort of late Christmas present to me, although I've said I'll clean it and put it with the Detail stuff we looked at a while ago. Made by Britains, it predates the Detail range and the figures aren't compatible, neither did they go that well with the Herald figures, but are - at least - made of the same dark olive vinyl.

I genuinely think this has to be up there with the other contenders of best toy ever, if such an award could ever ignore the broad sweep of something like 'Lego' or 'kits' and look at each toy issued on it's merits.

It was a tad dusty when it arrived two days after Christmas, and needed to be stripped down and cleaned. Due to all the stickers that come with it and the fact that it seemed to be surface dust only, it was better to do a dry clean with a paint brush. Illustrated - bottom right - are three brushes typical of the type I'd use for a job like this, from the left; a chef's pastry brush (soft bristles that can get up a nice lather if 'wet cleaning'), a 1/2 inch decorators brush which is a bit stiffer and was the one used this time, and a stiff craft brush of the type kids in playgroup/kindergarten use for poster paint and glue, which is the best for getting years of grime out of detailed mouldings with doing the damage something like a nail brush or scrubbing brush can do.

The model carries a UK civilian license plate, with the 'F-Reg' dating it to an issue date (in the real world) between 1 August 1967 and 31 July 1968, and (without being an expert on Lanny's) seems to represent a late Series II/IIA?

So why is it the best toy ever - in my humble opinion!?...Independent suspension on all four wheels, front wheels steer from the spare, turning the steering wheel at the same time, two fully articulated crew-figures (with separate helmets), two-position co-driver/sentry's machine-gun, opening doors, opening bonnet (with a good stab at a Solihul engine-block), dash sticker and cab-details, pivoting twin pom-pom type weapon with removable, revolving mounting, locking towing-hook cover, radio set...

There are downsides; it's British Racing Green, not the army green of the wagons I knew (although Her Madge' always used to get a Review-vehicle in this colour when inspecting large units or parades), the main armament is totally fictitious and the bonnet tools tended to be broken by people thinking they should be removable (because everything else was!), but it was a toy, and as a toy it had shed-loads of play-value and preempted the modern irregulars 'Technicals' by a decade or two..Rock-on!

All cleaned-up and put back together, I gave the crew slightly more jaunty angles to their helmets at the same time! They're singing "There Was a Gloster Soldier" as they swing wildly between termite-hills and wart-hog holes looking for Mau-mau!!

Various aspects of this moulding (or the wheels!) produced a quite wide range of long and short-wheelbase farm and military versions right up to the early 2000's, with and without soft or hard-tops, drivers, crew or loads.

Go-on then...tell me what's better than this? Must be a single set or box not a generic like 'Action Man', what's your all-time best toy - not favourite; 'best', all-round and viewed with judge-like neutrality!

1970's catalogue illustration.

News Views Etc...Another year dealing with a human-designed world!

Yah, Boo, Humbug!...I hate the New Year as passionately as I love Christmas...

I won't tell you how many figures I have or have not painted in the last 12 months, nor what that equates to as an average, or how it compares to the year before, I'm not going to tell you my plans for 2012, nor how 2011 failed to live up to any previous plan, I wouldn't list my scenic accomplishments - if I'd done any! And can assure you my only 'New Years Resolution' is to not make any New Year's resolutions...However, I will make a prediction or two;

There is a 60% chance white 'Western' civilization will collapse completely.
There is a 40% chance America will drag us into a war with Iran in the next 12 months.
There is a 30% chance we will have a 'conflict' with Argentina before Christmas.
There is a 20% chance we will have a 'conflict' with Argentina before the Olympics.
There is a 10% chance of a multi-faceted, who's-on-what-side, global war that could go Nuclear between Israel and Iran and/or North and South Korea and/or on the Indo-Pakistan boarder in the next 12 months.

To cheer you up after all that, here are a couple of links to arty-farty pages that are both - at the same time - beautiful, odd, weird and uplifting yet slightly disturbing. They also both leave you thinking "I wish I'd thought of that first".

The second one is definitely not safe for work (NSFW), so if you don't have the intellectual compass to deal with the March Hare taking his bunny-girl from behind; don't click on it!

Sebstiano Mauri

Cathie Pilkington

If you like the works; pass the links on - Art enriches human beings, war diminishes them.

B is for Buried, Better, Burger King, BMC, Brent, Bandai and Benbros

As this is the season for getting as many things on your plate as possible (without letting the gravy flow over the edge!) I thought it was the ideal moment to cover a few minor makes or smaller samples from my collection, so here are some minor 'B's'.

On the left (and marked "MADE IN ENGLAND") is a pawn from the Buried Treasure ice cream (?) chess set. These were also sold in the states both as Buried Treasure (?) and Sherbet Surprise. The question marks are down to my not knowing if Buried Treasure was ice cream or some other edible product, and not knowing if they were available in the states as BT or just Sherbet watsit!

On the right and dateing from 1949 is a joke/stag-novelty of a naked woman from Better Novelties Inc. of the US of A, who will only stay in her bath for the person who knows the secret - a sliding magnet. I have similar toys of naked women in [on] a bed and the kissing dolls I think I've covered somewhere in the 450 posts now gone below?

This is apparently a very early Burger King toy from the 1950's or 1960's and consists of the King (himself!!? Who knew or remembered he originally existed?) riding an air-powered go-cart/cartie. Coming as a kit of 4 parts in a nylonish plastic, maybe a polypropylene? His only mark is the R in a circle so favored of Giant - this must have been an American thing, we had the Copyright 'C' and the Patent 'Pat.' but the Registered sign was never of legal worth in Europe and didn't appear on our products.

Above are two bits of hollow-cast I've ended-up with; a Benbros calf and a 30mm BMC penny-toy of a mounted Life Guard, with below; the only other 'volume' producer of composition figures in Britain (we looked at Zang the other day) was a company called Brent, who produced these generic WWII British types with picture-frame nails as weapon barrels/muzzles.

There were about 3 sets of small scale Pokemon, these are by Bandai, I think I've also got smaller unmarked ones and same sized ones by Tomy probably from their gumball machines.

As these are yesterdays 'fad' now, and space needs to be made for Ben10 stuff, there might be good pickings for this sort of stuff at car-boot sales this year.

C is for Christ's Mass

Just finished listening to the midnight mass on Radio 4 (Oh...; I'm an old softee really, curmudgeonly and intolerant but a softee!) as I got the tree dressed, this is the old 'Family' tree at mums and some of the decorations are over 70 years old, been to India and back in the 1940's!

And it got me thinking...dangerous - I know - but stick with it...I've been doing this blogging lark on and off through a difficult period in my own life, and a strange period in the life of the wider society for the last 3 years, and while every year a few people do some sort of 'Happy Christmas' post before they go off for the holidays, in past years it has been only A FEW, this year not only have most people done some kind of 'seasonal' post, several people have done a few, often quite nostalgic ones.

Now I'm sure this is due to the credit crunch (a dreadful expression for the beginning of the end of white western capitalism), in that it seems to me that it has concentrated minds a bit more than normal.

I have a little book in which - since I was a pretentious teenager - I have copied sayings and quotes which grab me, sometimes well known, sometimes not, and I don't always know (or note) the source and one of these is;

"The best time of your life is that to which you always return [to - in your mind] when the present proves too unbearable"

Now; I'm not suggesting that we are all finding right now 'unbearable', but just that you don't remember past birthdays on your birthday the same way you remember past Christmases at Christmas...you don't remember the dead on your birthday the same way you do at this time of year...you don't cast your mind back to childhood birthdays, school birthdays, birthdays with lovers, drunken birthdays in Berlin, other peoples birthdays ON your birthday in the same way you remember these things AT Christmas EVERY Christmas.

We mark the passing of time...by Christmases! Yes; it's close to New Year, but how many drunken New Year's meld into each other in our memories? But Christmas...from the first one we can remember at 3 0r 4 or 5 years old to last years, all the 'big' presents for most years, the disappointments, the snowy Christmas in Bishop's Stortford, tobogganing down residential streets and being hauled back up by your godmothers dog! The first Christmas you could buy your parents things with your own money, Your first Christmas away from home and family because of a new job or new partner, drowning your sorrows in alcohol with your mates stuck in Berlin on Christmas Duties, phone calls home on Christmas Day, jobs that gave you two weeks off, jobs that gave you a day off, early or late 'Christmas Day' with a lover - in secret, unhappy or happy, we mark the passing of time in Christmases.

The point I'm getting to is that this year more people seem to be giving more thought than usual to Christmas Past, and I think it's a valuable lesson as it shows that no matter how commercial the bean-counters try to make it, despite the MacWendyKing's Cranberry Wrap two-for-one offer, it comes down to family, to lost loves, lost innocence, absent friends, family traditions, daft rituals, stupid jokes in cheap crackers, memories - some painful, some to make you smile, some that leave a roomful of people laughing at the re-telling, others that produce a groan...every year, but would we have it any other way...?

I'm a cynical atheist, but once a year I think I'm allowed to waver!

To all the followers of this blog, to any casual visitors, to the several contributors and all commenters, thanks for dropping by and taking a bit of my wittering away with you, and wherever you are, whoever you're with - have the best Christmas you can and may 2012 be an improvement on 2011 for all of us.

A is for Action Man

I imported the listing for these from the dead page the other day, so thought I'd better post the figures while they were still fresh on my mind.

Imported into the UK by 3D Licensing, these were a Hasbro product, and I have an idea a company with 'Strawberry' in the title may have been involved somewhere, but not the old Strawberry Fayre. 35mm factory painted poured resin figurines with a pre-inked stamp in the base producing 20mm images, you could regard as flats!

As far as I know there were only the 6 poses, I get a few of these 'Stampers' from time to time (Kinder often does rolling ones with a continuous/endless track) and always take an image for/on the record card that goes in the bag with the figures.

Sold as pocket money toys, the resin (Oh! Sorry - 'Polystone'...yeah, right, got real stone in it has it?!) is brittle and the ink wouldn't last a day in the hands of a kid, this is the shite-end of the toy market, and you'd expect a company like Hasbro to stay out of it...

The Bears Say;

Happy Christmas to all visitors to the blog; eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow our civilization might collapse like a pack of damp, moth-eaten cards in a hurricane - who are we trying to fool...ourselves?!!!

B is for Boys Toys

This is in my mothers attic, I don't know or remember when it was given to us or how long it was in the games drawer, as both my brother and I were not 'football' kids. I have a vague memory of playing it once or twice but as to who gave it to us and when I haven't a clue...

...but if you were a Football Kid, this would be the best under the tree on Christmas morning, a big box printed in two colours with the magic word "soccer" writ-large!

From the late 1960's judgeing by the hybrid tin-plate/plastic construction, although I think it soldiered-on for most of the 1970's pretty much as an unchanged design, however, the box got more colourful with each generation.

Close-up of the players, the ball - if I remember correctly - was a Subbuteo-sized thing but of lesser quality in a browny-orange? Chad Valley was resurrected a few years ago by Woolworth's, I don't know what happened to the trademark after Woollies demise?

H is for Have a Happy Christmas

Everyone has a favourite tree decoration...

Mine are Pine Cones, old; to the left and glass - modern; bottom right and blow moulded polyethylene.

Painted cones would have been among the first true decorations, along with sweets, nuts & fruits and the odd small carved wooden trinket or straw dolls/craft pieces

Have a lovely Christmas and best wishes for a better year in 2012 whatever your 2011 has been like!

Happy Christmas

Self-explanatory if you happen to be a reader from Japan...

To everyone else; Happy Lucky Cat Christmas!

C is for Christmas Nostalgia

The other day over on the Moonbase Central blog, they showed an old chocolate-bar multi-pack of the type that were one of the seasonal treats at this time of year in days gone...I can't remember if this was from one of those gift boxes or a set of Christmas crackers, but as the one posted the other day had cut-out figures that caught my eye, it reminded me that this was still in the family games-drawer...

Cadbury's, Rountree Macintosh or Tom Smith? It has cut out counters and a spinner, which would both be things you'd find in budget crackers, and the graphics are so 'glam-rock' post-psychedelia but still trying to be hip-60's...with a set of pantone magic-markers!

Just as cheap crackers would be likely to have a small bag of tiddlywinks to use as counters and a plastic spinner to use instead of the card one, they might also have a mounted Cowboy or Indian to chase each other round the board! Or - if you were really lucky - Roman Gladiators, ex-Quaker Foods.

B is for British - British Made, British Infantry

I haven't included Lone*Star in this round-up of modern or modernish British Infantry as my sample, while being of a fair size is to say the least a real mess, with a lot of repaints from the big purchase of last autumn, or hardly any paint's from evilBay or charity shop/car-boot buys.

So these are the other British made figures of the 19500's and 1960's, half of which will be re-blogged over on the Airfix page when I get round to spending some time on that page!

Upper image shows the Taffy Toys (probably part of the Thomas/Poplar Plastics group) figures from the big play set we looked at some time ago, they are 65/70 mil, and about as big as they get in British plastics after the Marx 6" figures. As far as I know this is all the poses, but there may have been others in other sets, or even sold loose? The EM-2 is again in evidence; see my note in the Crescent post below this one.

Lower shot shows the Cherilea 60mm paratroops, not all eight poses, and in various styles, this set ran for a while and comes in various single and mottled plastic colours and with various paint treatments, this picture gives only a hint of what's out there to be collected in this set.

Airfix chucked out two modern sets toward or right at the end of their true reign. 7 poses per set the British infantry are the earlier of the two and are a nice set, I looked quite like these guys during my final training exercise at Depot Lichfield, but; firstly, I remember the Karl Gustave 84mm being larger (and heavier!) and we all used the rifle sling all the time, a serious omission. The only exception being in Northern Ireland where troops tied the butt-end of the sling round the wrist to prevent the loss of the weapon in a riot situation.

The SAS were only issued in the smaller 14 figure boxes right at the very end, and while all sorts of otherwise intelligent people will tell you all sorts of urban myths in their desperation to convince themselves they MIGHT have existed in the HO/OO range, for at least one day...there is no evidence to suggest they were anything more than a dream in the marketing departments eye, transferred to paper in one catalogue as the company missed its arrester-hook and disappeared headfirst over its own flight deck to reappear as a marketable trademark/brand for the half dozen or so companies since associated with the Airfix name!

H is for Half-moon!

Crescent to be precise, and as there is a detailed history of the company currently being serialised in Plastic Warrior magazine (you are subscribing...aren't you!) I won't touch on the company much here, except to say that unlike their rivals they never produced Germans, not even to fight their own 8th Army figures, whether this was because Arthur A. Schneider - one of the founders - was a refugee from Nazism or because the Luftwaffe bombed the toolroom is unknown? So we'll just look at the 4 figure sets in 'Modern' garb, that's 1950's/60's so; half a century ago 'modern'!

The beretted 1950's infantry in 60mm, I'm not sure if they actually produced them in SAS berets, of if the guy in pale green plastic with the Stirling SMG is a home paint, having handled many of these when I worked with a dealer, I don't remember seeing them with this colour beret, but then I didn't remember seeing them in that colour plastic either, so it may be a factory attempt to tie-in with the actions in Malaya or on the Indonesian border regions?

The two insets show both base types and both the smooth and the 'sand-blasted' sculpts. The finish that looks like sand-casting, is true for all poses and extends to the Guards, Cowboys and others from Crescent.

The 54mm helmeted troops, the blue ones are really unusual (even 'rare'; a word I try not to use about mass-produced plastics), being the closest they (Crescent) ever got to Germans, as they are 'enemy' from a game or boxed set (possibly an artillery set?).

The standing firing guy has the experimental bull-pup design known as the EM-2 which was trialed at Warminster by the Demonstration Battalion of what would become UKLF (in my time) alongside the FN Fal and Armalite AR-15 (later adopted as the M16), as a result there is a whole family of Toy Soldiers equipped with it, despite it's never being taken into service - ignoring what various combat-wombats have written on the wikipedia page devoted to it; I knew someone who worked with the troops at Warminster in the 50's, and well remember reading the Soldier Magazine article on the 'end game' and decision following the trials; which were won by the 7.62-chambered FN (licensed as the SLR) and got the story from the horses mouth as it were.

As toy soldiers go these are really quite common, so I apologise for the poor quality of my sample, but as you know I'm relatively new to collecting the larger scales and will 'upgrade' over time! Much copied in smaller scales by the industrious of Hong Kong, they will be covered here one day...promise!

60mm with helmets, the radio operator from this set has been pirated as often as the 54mm set (and the 8th Army) but the other five haven't been. Again the insets below show both base types, colour variations and the moulding variance of the kneeling firing figure, who appears to have an M1 carbine/Ruger Mini 14! The other two rifle-equipped troops have FN/SLR's while the 'Tommy-gunner' seems to have a grease-gun?

The 60mm range with beret could also come with a US style MI helmet, which looks OK on the flamethrower, but doesn't go very well with the '58 Pattern webbing of the other figures! The plug-in heads bring to mind a small range of similar figures from Cofalux, who could be Para's, FFL or regular infantry with a head swap, one wonders which set came first? I only have these three, I think there are 8 poses? One is on evilBay at the moment but it's not matched - colour-wise - head to body.

The Blue figures are meant to be RAF Regiment (who secure and guard airfields) and were going to be more prominent as the Hawker Harrier came into service...they could - of course - be used as enemy, and lose - badly...bloody 'Crab Air'; not real soldiers! Having worn this garb daily in the late 1980's I can assure you the kidney pouches of the kneeling guy are too far apart, but the webbing is otherwise very accurate, for 'skeleton order' - lacking all the extra pouches we tended to add, water bottles etc...

L is for Let's hear it for Lidl

Not quite as cool as jelly Daleks, but getting there, and they compensate by being tastier than any Dalek!! From the current Lidl's Advent calender, and to celebrate the news that Lidl and Aldi have moved ahead of M&S in food sales!

Santa Clause, Clown and Snowman, edible 'flats'...nuff said. More free advertising, I don't know whats wrong with me...must be something in the food!

News Views Etc...New book...sort of?

Well, you have two choices, and under capitalism 'choice is good' (like four legs, or is it two?), you can go to WHSmith and pay £19.99 or thereabouts - maybe you have a something% off voucher from you last visit, they seem to be giving them away like sweeties at a kids party, in fact they'll give you a voucher even if you only buy sweeties!

Or you can go to The Works and pay £6.99? As the previous title in this series of almost identical tomes was also remaindered to The Works, I held on and er...didn't go to 'Smiths' whom I'd happily see bankrupt tomorrow!

At seven smackeroonies it's worth it for the new photographs, there's not much else new in it! However also at The Works are some tins covered in Airfix and Hornby Logos, I think they contain cards or something, one had Spitfire artwork and the other the Evening Star (I think), some licensing thing that didn't grab me at all, but some Heller/Humbrol/Hornby addicts somewhere might want one of each for the downstairs loo.

What with clip-together puzzle tanks, lead figures and a constant stream of HK/China dinosaurs, construction workers, farm, zoo and emergency personnel The Works has had better pickings this year than either the pound shop or poundstreacher!!

I have not been paid for this blatant advert!!! And yes; I've photographed it on wet, gravelly, concrete, and no; I'd not be found using a similar 'studio' setting for the rest of my library!

Z is for Zang - Zang for Timpo

That's the last of the Lines/Triang/Minimodels and Household Cavalry for now, I actually found the Corgi-Mettoy box today pottering about in the storage unit, but Spot-On have their own box and it's buried somewhere, so Tommy-spot will have to wait - probably a year or two, in the meantime here are the Zang composition as promised the other day, and I'll start on large scale modern British troops in the next few days.

The Civilians - as far as I know I'm missing two; the third mechanic from the set that included the pair to the left in the photograph above and a Chauffeur, who can be seen on the Timpo solids site to which there is a link on the right of this page or go here for the pic; http://www.timpo-solids.com/solids4sammelgbiete.htm I had the chance of one of them years ago at one of the old PTS auctions, which I failed to bid-on (it went unsold!).

There is also a question mark over the New York cop, as he seems to be of a higher sculpting quality, although it's the same pumice mix, and Adrien over at Mercator Trading thinks there may have been an American police car in the old Timpo slush-cast car range, which is where these figures originate?

All 35/40mm to go with 1:43'ish cars, although the kneeling mechanic will be 8 foot tall if he stands up!

The military figures known to exist with the exception of...again the Timpo link above gives a helmeted version of the WWII Infantryman I have yet to locate. As with the civil figures these were all made by Zang for Timpo in the late 1940's/early 1950's - probably before they (Zang) were working with Britains. Makes you wonder what input Zang had to early Timpo polyethylene production...perhaps that whole family of Britains Household Cavalry and clones can be traced back to the Timpo hollow-cast with his orange jacket!?

The small pilot is 20mm and came with the lead Flying Fortress, the Highlander 35mm and suspected to be a whiskey mascot/givaway, while the rest are around 54mm. Thanks to Paul Morhead for the Highlander, John Begg for the grey (German?) pilot and Adrien Little for the other 54mm pilot.