I think the date is 1971 (MCMLXXI?) which makes it quite a late set and interestingly states that it is made in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Among others I have the resistance fighters with both markings, but had always assumed the mould had moved mid-production, this set would seem to be suggesting that there were several sets of moulds?
A close-up of the figures and the box with it's lid on, also the box from the late unpainted issues; you can just about see the fireman on the deck of the landing vessel in the background!
With this set the artwork is everything and the reason it's my favourite, I have quite a decent (not large) side-collection of 'Adult' comics and graphic novels with the work of Mobius, Milo Manara and Drillet to the fore, but as a youngster I was drawn to the cartoons of people like, Degano, Mordillo, and Serrano and this artwork is very reminiscent of some of their stuff.
One of the figures missing from my loose sample is the hose-head guy (left), also; a close up of the diving team, comparison of the two rope-carriers (early version on the left) and a better/different angle on the ladder-climber.
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.
Top left looking East, the bits of Lego and Airfix Betta Builder I found a few years ago (2006) were in the highlighted corner of the strawberry frame, the stuff I dug yesterday came out of the bare corner, and - I believe - the real mother-load is within the overprinted black border, beyond the frame where there is a distinctive mound.
Another graphic pinpointing where I believe the main load to be, which also shows the bed finished (you can see where this is leading can't you - I'll be shifting the gardening Blog over here too!) and today's haul...the other wing! It had better transfers as well, but went in the bin without a clean this time...sorry Spitfire.
A couple of shots of the set with the lid still on, the contents don't really add up to a circus in my opinion, but there is play potential there for a younger owner, not least the big cats eating the other members of the cast...well; if it hasn't got tanks in, you're going to have to make your own ultra-violence aren't you?!!
Lid off; this is a delicate operation, that involves carefully opening each staple for re-use if you can't match them exactly with modern staples, a lot of old staples have a round cross-section which is impossible to match with modern domestically available ones, these were easier and a match was found - I have three staplers and about 5 different kinds of staple for exactly this purpose.
Various studies of the contents and a couple of colour variations, the dark bear with the farm/civilian pig and the paler lion with the two clowns (another old scan previously published in black and white). This is hardly a circus, with two keepers, two clowns and a compare that leaves a lion-tamer as the only 'performer'?
For added play/educational value there was a data-card (small poster) and a sticker (on the right) included in all these sets and we'll look at a couple more over the coming days.
Mahratta Chief and Horseman - Gwalior in the distance
Lion and Elephant
Tiger attack on the Elephant
Starting for a Tiger Hunt
Elephants crossing at Nullah
Lion Gate (Sing Durwasu - at the Black Pagoda)
So these were the harbingers of the mother-load to come...I was digging Mum's veg-patch, bearing in mind that she has lived here for over 30 years and both my brother and I have dug bits of the garden from time to time, dug-out old roots and weeded here and there, and I have found the odd bit of Lego or Betta-Builder over the years but thought nothing of it, there are billions of bits of both in the UK and you often find them in the strangest places...but this; this is different!
The stuff was eventually coming out of the ground with every forkful, and I dutifully put it to one side along with an old Marmite bottle and a Camp chicory bottle, both pre-dating this stuff by several decades and both in good nick.
Top left is a few of the other usable items, and the broken car, which I show here as I have a horrible feeling its a Mebetoys car, a few years ago I worked with a chap called Andrew Adamedies, who is a bit of an acknowledged expert on Mebetoys and remember him telling me how you could tell them by the self-tapping screws rather than rivets on the underside...this one has a self-tapper!
The Kellogg's super-hero Snap, Crackle and Pop are actually more recent, being mid-80's of thereabouts (I don't have my 'Cluck' at the moment), and I'm missing one pose of Crackle, they only came in the four colours shown and seem to be Ashford Mouldings products, there were other sets in the same style - but not Pencil Tops - involving both these guys and other characters from the Kellogg's universe (Coco monkey, Tony tiger etc...).
Odds and sods. the Wonder Woman is - again - a more recent product, I think it came from Tesco's about ten years ago, and is technically a 'Dangler' not a 'Top'. The big silver monster (Minator?) is the only one with a mark; CH.
The Munch Bunch...or are they Fruit Salads...or Mr Fruity? They are all three (and probably more beside?) I don't know how many of these there were altogether, I remember as a kid having a purple blackberry, red strawberry and tomato and a rather sickly creamy-white onion, while among others not shown here there was a black something (version of the green pepper above?) and another corn - with the leaves as a jacket? Green apples, oranges and orange pears, a yellow gourd...
Trees and shrubs. As I pointed out the other day; I'm not 100% sure on the origin of the stand of fir trees in the centre of this shot, under the paint it's a semi-translucent orangey-yellow polymer, possibly an earlier cellulose-acetate, and is quite unlike the other plants which are A) flat colours under the paint, and B) stand-alone items.
The rock formations
These are based on the Japanese character Ultraman I think (lower row), as are the little inset heads, done like the Munch-Bunch 'foodstuff' toppers. I'm don't know if the robots are Manzinger, Transformer or actually from Ultraman...and I don't care...although I'd be interested purely for identification purposes!
These turn-up quite often and I think I'm right in thinking that the one with the lightning-strike on his chest is 'The Flash'? [No - he's Captain Marvel, see; comments] If there are two Batman poses, there may be other poses of the other characters still to find? The brown Flash is in a softer PVC, the others in a harder, less flexible type.
BA Baracus (Bad Attitude); Whadyameen Foool! I 'aint gowin-in no-'plane...[Later] Whadyameen we're in'Hondurass...Foool - I'm gona'kilim!...From the TV series The 'A' Team, there are - I believe - 4 poses in the set and the other characters were never done as pencil tops?
Standard 25mm and a Solido commissioned 35mm figure with the basic flesh paint-job, one day I intend to have a serious go at producing the correct camouflage for the zeltbahn, after which he will probably replace my Airfix German Para' officer as 'last man standing'!
The 'standing around' poses, several of the figures came with separate arms and in the factory they chose one at random, there must have been a whole bucket of spares chucked back into the hopper from time to time, but what happened to the last few dozens of arms at the end of the run...
Some of the more combative figures, they have a bit of the look of the Comet/Authenticast metal figures by Eriksson about them pose-wise and were quite a late set so do still turn-up from time to time although the 54mm ones seem more common.
Close-up of the box which has been seen here before, if you find the version with the German sprue in it (I haven't yet), you get the extra arms to fix yourself. If I had one criticism of them it's that like the Airfix 2nd version, they are a bit sanitised or clean and parade-groundy, as if they are re-doing the invasion of Poland for Leni Riefenstahl's cameras, somewhere on the Lüneburg Heath!
E for Empire by Lucky, these are clearly meant for the bath as the bigger vessels have weighted hulls and they all have deep hulls, but it makes them hard to stand without taking a hacksaw to them!
Another view of the same three vessels and a couple of close-ups of the missile cruiser [this is how little I know - should you use capitals? 'Cruiser'?], I think this may be a copy of an old kit by Pyro or Aurora, I'm sure they produced something with a ridiculous great missile on the deck! But it may just be 'based on'? Also while the rest of the range are vaguely in-scale, the missile vessel is huge.
The smaller warships - the five destroyers - are all different and again may be based on or copied from Western or Japanese model kits. The medium-sized thing (corvette?) turns-up unmarked in all-silver but it's the only one I've encountered so far, I have a red-hulled version of one of the little ones, which is also unmarked, but somehow it didn't get photographed.
Sizes;
Missile Cruiser - 18cm (weighted hull)
Carrier - 15cm (weighted hull)
Missile Destroyer/Corvette? - 14cm
Tramp Steamer (?) - 12cm (flatter bottom)
Small vessels - all approximately 10cm
These have flatter bottoms and can be used strait-to-floor! But they are all civil subjects...with a simple 'MADE IN HONG KONG' they may or may not be Empire/Lucky, I suspect a rival, but you don't know with HK stuff until you get marked packaging.
Sizes on these and the lose ones below are between 12o (green and red one above) and 155mm (the two black & white ones below). The small black and white one is 130mm
The upper shot shows three more with - is that? - the QEII at the back, a large steamer with cargo and passenger areas and a smaller liner which also comes in grey (inset left, 105mm). The shot bottom-right shows the grey one with a smaller compatriot (who may also appear in the coloured series, 80mm), both these have been put together very poorly with funnels all askew and glue all over the place. They have also been militarised with the addition of gun-turrets!
The little ship sneaking away at the back is by the Italian from of Ingap and is 10cm long. everything in this post is polystyrene except the masts of the civil set.
I've put the sizes in so that if you are a gamer you can work out if they are 'your' size, and any corrections or identifications will be most welcome, some of them must be based on real vessels, but apart from the cereal premiums in Part 7 below, none have their names on them. Also I've guessed scale for one or two but any help there would be appreciated too.
Invasion Fleet - because everybody's LCT's are the same size as their carriers, aren't they!, these are probably meant to be bath toys despite the inclusion of the figure blister, there are no sharp edges or small pieces to brake or get lost.
A close-up of the carded set, when you scroll to the Submarines (two posts below) you'll see a note next to the Missile-armed one suggesting it belongs to a set like this, and you can see from the sub. included in this set what I mean.
A loose carrier of 10cm in length, I love the rakish flight-line in bright vermilion strokes and the hull-sculpting, I'm sure you're meant to float it!
This Woolbro set has appeared here before, these are similar to the Lucky Toys vessels in Part 1 (above), but much smaller at 70mm. If you remove the hull though you get a good warship around 1:1200?...ish! Both these sets have polystyrene ships, with other accessories in soft plastic.
Limited to five vessels which will be copies of something better issued previously in the West (Tri-ang Minic?) the range included two liners; one large and converted into a hospital-ship with a crude cross carved into the mould, the other small; a carrier with various aircraft and two warships; one battleship/cruiser type thing and a smaller vessel.
Two more carded sets, these all have copies of the old Monogram/Revell GI's, and a couple have the mini-truck copies of Dinky's Humber 1-t0n. Sizes are;
Some close-ups of the various vessels abroad, the green is usually reserved for the carrier, but as you can see a green Frigate/destroyer has turned up. Also the silver varies from a pale grey through to a gun-metal colour.
