M is for Montaplex - Part I - Quadruple-bags

As you collect the Spanish 'Sobres' or 'Surprises' you realise that the companies (of whom Montaplex was only one - but the most prolific one) were very good at regurgitating the same few products in various ways or including them in various sets.

These four-vehicle bags being a case in point as they all contain things that had either been available singly, or that had already appeared in the figure sets, where a sprue was often thrown-in to give the set a bit more playability!

The car is quite nice, described as a Ford, it looks quite like a Rolls or other prestige mark to me, the two space items (UFO and NASA return-module) have been seen on Moonbase Central before now, the tanks are a bit lame but the 'planes are OK really, a bit crude and around 1:100, but not that bad.

The bag at the back contains the ship which is so brittle it's powdering in front of itself! It's also a very poor model and not worth putting together - even for a photograph. The scooter is closer to 54mm in scale/size.

Close-up of the astronaut in his capsule, he also mans a Wild West era fire-wagon! And the car on the sprue and with an Airfix 'Officer Type' to give an idea of the size - quick bit of paint, some dry-brushing and you've got yourself a staff-car!

M is for Montaplex - Part II - Single Bags

Before the larger envelopes that are so familier to collectors of Montaplex, they produced single-model Sobres in two-colour printed paper envelopes (black and one true 'colour' on white), I only have a few, on the backs they list lots of others, but the same few vehicles actually keep turning-up, so I suspect a lot of the models never got copied/made/issued?

The Russian infantry (from Airfix) were the only figures I've found in one of these sets, there is another design of helicopter but mine is incomplete so I'll save it until a good one turns-up! The tanks are simplified and too small for most 'uses' - cirtainly with war-gaming - but the Unimog is a very neat little model and as can be seen from the figures is relatively in scale - presumably taken from either Roskopf (1:100) or Roco-Minitanks (HO).

A selection of bags, the car is the same as the one looked at in Part I (above) the, the helicopter is the bag for the one illustrated, but looks more like the 'other' one mentioned!

It's worth noting that within these four bags you have;

Montaplex, Monta Plex and Monta-Plex!

M is for Montaplex - Part III - Other Vehicles

M0st of my Montaplex sets will appear on the Airfix blog as comparisons when I get that page properly loaded-up, so here are just a few vehicles from sets not in the two previous parts of this overview.

The sprue with two little vehicles came in a few sets, being what appear to be an Airfield traffic-control vehicle and a fire engine/appliance.

The other four came with a road-works set that included Airfix civilian copies. There is no attempt at scale with the tractor in a bigger size than the lorries and the car somewhere between the two.

Top - some sets gave you two helicopters instead of one!

Middle - some of the other vehicles you can find in Sobres, the road-roller and fire-wagon seem to be copies of Matchbox, but Lido did produce a similar model, whether theirs was first or another copy I don't know, what I do know is that they weren't crewed by astronauts! The gun is a Manurba copy and the jeep come in a lot of sets although I've only found two plug-ins so far, searchlight and radar.

Bottom - The Montaplex copy of the Blue Box copy of the Dulcop copy of the Dinky Daimler Armoured-Car!...I think!!

A nice lorry with a US marine from Airfix for scale, the set actually contains copies of the Quiralux French soldiers/GI's identified Here, I not sure if BuMSlot re-issued them, I think they did, but not with the truck!

G is for Gunslingers

A few hours later and I'm a dot-co-dot-uk! Why? If it 'aint broke - don't fix it! I was going to do this post so you didn't have to look at my earlier rant for too long, but honestly, Blogger/Google seem hell bent on getting rid of their site owners and destroying Internet security at the same time - I link to 106 other Blogs and 5 of them have disabled their verification words this month, and that's just the ones who've announced it?

Does Google not understand that Bebo has all but surrendered to Myspace/Facebook. that the market leaders when they (Google) came to prominence in 2005 have all but disappeared and been forgotten, that things happen so quickly on the Internet that if someone comes along doing it better, everyone goes there. There is talk - on Blogger's own forums - of people moving to Wordpress, well I'm going to look into it, and if the image limit is the same and the layout can be similar I'll go there and start again...anyone who's bookmarked me but doesn't follow me through Blogger or Google now has a dead link to smallscaleworld.com because I'm .co.uk, despite still editing this in www.blogger.com?!! Feck!!

And they still can't get four pictures to load in the right order! Why don't you fix something that IS broken?

Anyway...here's a pretty picture of some toys! It's not the whole early set, it's not the whole late set, it's not all the paint variations, it's not all the plastic colour variations, but it's a guide to both UK and HK 'Herald' series cowboys from Britains and as I've said before with these small posts - box ticked!

News Views Etc...Fugging Blogger!

Well, not only have I lost the quick edit (Followers are back) but a quick visit to Google (search) shows this is a problem Blogger and Google (Corp.) has known about for months, and while it's going on they have decided to convert the Blogger forums into Google Groups! Soooooooooooooo....the threads about the problem are divided between the old Forum which went read-only a few days ago, the replacement Forum which will be superseded by Groups and the fledgling Groups which are not fully active yet.

A problem thirded is easier to ignore eh...Blogger?

On the funny side...Paul over at Plastic Warriors is now sending me traffic from three Blogs;

http://plasticwarriors.blogspot.co.uk/
http://plasticwarriors.blogspot.com/
http://plasticwarriors.blogspot.nz/

How the hell they've put him in the UK is anybodies guess!!!

I swear - The Internet is getting less interactive and harder to use every fugging day!

The problem/s stem from the introduction of .au URL's (and it would seem .co.uk and .nz...at the same time!), problems with the new version of Firefox (a month or two old now) and Google (who swore they would never do anything 'bad') wanting to rule the planet and buy everything on the Internet that isn't already on evilBay!

The question being; why would the internet leader (Google) want to break up Blogger into national 'islands'? The whole point of the Internet is to make us one people one planet, not reinforce the existing 18th-to-20th Century divisions?

Edited - after I calmed down...a bit!

M is for Merten's Menagerie

While I was taking the shot's of the exquisite little wooden animals yesterday I took these as well, they are not all the Merten animals I have, just those that fell out of a box during the move in November and nearly got left behind! Still they are a reasonable sample to give an impression of what Merten were capable of.

The loose set at the top is set 1001, but there is a question mark over the central horse running without a base, then there are two 1002's (one missing the two smaller animals) to show how the paint changed from batch to batch (or; out-painter to out-painter?), while Preiser went with lesser numbers of animals in a standard box depending on the size (with exceptions for the very large and very small), Merten produced custom boxes for each set, with the N-gauge being left on the sprue.

Set 1003 has the larger native wild animals, common to central Europe with three different types of deer and a couple of wild boar for Obelix to track down!

Below are some more wild and domestic animals, probably the contents of more than one set, with pigs, sheep, goats and some smaller Red deer (fawns?).


Some more horses, with a comparison Airfix piece and one of the aforementioned sprues with N-gauge versions attached.

S is for Stationery

This is the last of the pencil top stuff for a while - promise (you don't want to see the recent Weetabix football shirts and shite like that, do you!?), and as we were looking at the TV related stuff last time, some more of them first;

From left, top row; Skelator and She-ra (I think - Teela see; Comments) from the Masters of the Universe franchise, I was busy playing big soldiers in Germany (providing real-time OpFor for a couple of Soviet Shock Armies!) at the time MotU was popular so know little about it, I think it involved a grey skull or something! Then a soft vinyl Flintstone figure and a Hello Kitty cat differing from Miffi only in the shape and size of the ears...and the marketing budget! Strange how not only is Hello Kitty so like Miffi and the boys of South Park resemble the earlier Mainzelmännchen?

The flying Snowman of Raymond Briggs, and figure I think is Lucy (or the other one!) from Peanuts and a knock-off stupid kid wizard like Harry Potter.

Two characters from Rupert the Bear but I think the old git is from Popeye? A non-stationery frog (in love with a pig...since when was that sort of thing to be encouraged on kids TV?) trying to work out how he too can get a pencil up his arse and two of the dreaded Trolls that were literally everywhere in the mid-1970's...and still come around on a regular basis, these days Russ Berrie exploit the franchise, the two here are - like most of these toppers - Hong Kong.

Not Toppers; 'Clingers' and 'Holders', all Kinder with K-numbers from 2000 and 2004, I had to use the lids to show-off the 'holder action' as anything more than about a third of a wooden pencil is too heavy!

Finally the old and the new, both figural; The pencil sharpener is marked 'GERMANY' and dates from the 1950's (if it's a day) while the Sports Relief chap is currently in Ryman's. The Cowboy is that much copied pose originally by Lido and the like, both the sharpener and the Harry Potter lookie-like'ee above are polystyrene.

W is for Wooden Wildlife

From time to time the odd piece come into the collection which either defies labelling or is so exquisite you feel it should be in a museum cabinet not one of my little plastic bags, here are on or two, the largest item is probably the snake, with the Airfix 'control' a near match, so all very small.

The two images top left show little animals of an Asian look, probably Indian or Burmese? I suspect some sort of votive or other little religious ornament, but they may have enough 'age' to be export items from the days of the Raj? Maybe from a little zoo set, Noah's ark or for use as dolls-house ornamentals? Although in support of the religious possibility - some are slightly fantastical looking or mythic.

The Bear is typical Black Forest craft work, but about as small as they come and of very fine work, as is the cow. Given that it is probably another craft piece, it shows an incredible knowledge of anatomy, even a 'love' of the animal form, it seems to have lost two - probably paper - ears and two horns, which will need to be replaced with steam-bent cocktail-stick tips.

News Views Etc...Blogger!

Right - I've now lost my entire 'Followers' list and gained a message telling me it's configured wrong! As I also seem to have lost the ability to edit from the blog screen as well, and have touched not the settings for a while - I'm going to assume this is the Blogspot.annoyance.elves and go to bed in the hope that it's back to whatever Blogger deems will be 'normal service' tomorrow!

D is for Disneykins

We looked at the Marx Disneykins not that long ago within the context of the European bubble-gum premiums taken from the Heimo moulds and one day I'll post more of the lose and individual boxed ones, but having been busy with other stuff today I thought I'd chuck this up as one of the old 'lazy posts'...

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?

Not the complete set of Disneykins, but the main - and therefore; most popular - characters in a hard styrene plastic.

P is for Pompier....' i!

Well I said we'd look at a couple more of the Italian sets, and this is my favourite of the three in my collection, we have looked at the Firemen before (Starlux Firemen), but I seemed to cover only a few of them so no harm if we have another look...

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.

If anyone can identify the unnamed illustrator I'd be very interested to know who he is, the firemen look a lot like some of the characters from the opening and closing scenes in Yellow Submarine, that seminal work of animation attached to some music by a Northern beat-combo who's name escapes me!

Sadly - Jean Giraud who's pen name was Moebius died last Saturday, at the youngish age of 73, but he's had a bloody-good innings and left a body of fine works as a memorial/testament to his passing through this world. I'd recommend him to anyone with an off-beat sense of imagination or an appreciation of the drafters art; his economy of line and the little hidden gems in the backgrounds make going back to his work a pleasure - time and again.

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.

A is for Aluminium (or Aluminum!) Animals

Having told Sam in the comments section to the Starlux Italian circus set post that I couldn't see myself publishing more circus for a while, I remembered that I took these at the Sandown Park fair the the other week...so a Small request-post for Sam and a bit more circus in an unlikely material...

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.

Because my knowledge of Wendal is no better than my knowledge of Quiralux (which is non-existent) I couldn't tell you if these were also made by the French firm and with collectors varying in opinion as to whether Wendal copied Quiralux or Quiralux copied Wendal or some mould-sharing went on, I'll leave it as a maybe Quiralux carried these in their own civil range!

M is for More Mud-hopping

Well - back out to the garden and sure enough I turned-up a few more pieces, though not the trunk of the Lego tree I was hoping to find, also as I suspected the number of items has lessened the further away from the corner I dug...

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.

I suspect (due to the antique bottles) that the owners before us knew there was an old Victorian dump there (most houses in the UK built before the 1920's had one somewhere at some point) and just carried on using it, the plastics having survived along with the old glass bottles, why it would only contain toys (and one shampoo bottle lid) and why more than 50% are not damaged is the real mystery...maybe some draconian punishment..."If you don't clear your playroom now, I'll..."

In fact the shampoo bottle lid (see green lump in last nights post) is instructive, as it's easy to forget we've had 'dayglo' shades of ethylene for several decades now!

Other photos are looking West with yesterdays 'hit site' in the black box and the first fork of the day turned-up a Timpo horses base! I think I must have missed it as it got dark last night!

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.

As well as the Timpo base I got a Stickle-Brick wheel centre, two nice pieces of 'Legoland'-era Lego (headlight grill and the Legoland block that came with all the lorries) and a bulkhead from something like a DC3 Dakota or Mosquito? Whatever it belonged to it will go in the spares box; being a tad more useful than damaged spitfire wings!

So - more free stuff out of the ground and I only put the seeds in this afternoon! Spinach (nearest viewpoint), Broad Beans (behind), early spuds (nearly out of shot far left) and Onions round the back corner of the Strawberry frame, but I've laid-down the rest of the toys to vintage for a few more years!

What I'm hoping will be in the future dig; Missing poses of Lone Star musketeers, loads more soldiers, lots of rare Lego pieces, the rest of the white Aircraft kit - complete.

What will actually be there; More of the same odd tat and a shattered Matchbox Spitfire fuselage...with transfers intact!

C is for il Circo; the Circus, le Cirque

Speaking of Italians as I was the other day, Italy provides us with a nice range of own-language Starlux sets, very similar to the window-fronted boxed sets in French - contents wise - these Italian market sets have a completely transparent lid which is stapled on to an under-tray.

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.

I love the artwork on these, it's sort of the cusp between 1960's psychedelia and 70's style pop-art, all Heals or Habitat, A Clockwork Orange, the Magic Roundabout or the early packaging for Britains Detail, dating this nicely to the early 1970's...around 1971/3?

H is for Howdahs

Continuing to look at Elephants with a view to scotching a few myths or just generating a better understanding of the practicabilities of using elephants in the field as war-machines.

All these images are taken from Mundy's Pen and Pencil Series - India (or; Journal of a Tour in India by General Godfrey Charles Mundy), published by John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1858 (from the 'Books for Railway Reading series - those were the days; black smuts and a good read...are we there yet Papa?), now available as a Google eBook, but these photographs are taken from a private copy.

Mahratta Chief and Horseman - Gwalior in the distance

How most elephants in most battles in most wars have been attired, heavy blanket protection and a bit of jingly-jangly and colour to add to the overall impression. No heavy wooden tower or throne-like structure, no castellated, crenelated fort with crew of four, no forward firing siege-engine, no overhead protection, just a huge beast with heavy hide running at the enemy with cavalry outriders to keep ham-stringers away.

Lion and Elephant

The purpose of this and the next three images is to show the sort of typical construction of a structure an elephant could be expected to carry for a day - or even a week's expedition - a well-fed elephant mind. It looks as if the front of the howdah, forward of the entrance has been torn away and is falling away over the left shoulder of the elephant.

Tiger attack on the Elephant

Here you can see the entrance and the forward screen intact on the elephant being attacked by the enraged - and probably wounded - Tiger, while others have a fully-enclosed howdah, the elephant in the right-hand background for instance, the Europeans are putting their weight on the walls so they must be fairly stable.

Starting for a Tiger Hunt

Here the construction can be clearly seen to be a light timber (or bamboo?) frame filled in with some sort of fabric, board or matting and with the provision of cartridge-pouches attached (riveted rawhide or sewn leather or canvas?) to the central area of the infill 'screens'.

A grab-rail and parasol are further equipage on both animals, note the means of egress on the left-hand elephant by means of a ladder, the howdahs with 'gates' would be easier to enter from a lower platform. The parasol of the right-hand animal is lying within a cargo compartment a bit like the trunks that would be a feature of early motor-cars.

Elephants crossing at Nullah

Here the fabric is quite obvious, note also the carrying of the ladder and the reinforcing cross-spar, which is why the figures in the shooting incident above are able to put their weight against such a light structure. Note also the fourth slimmer (younger?) figure on the lead animal apparently keeping the howdah steady by holding its sides and bracing the rope with his feet.

Also - in all the pictures where it's visible - the Aṅkuśa (Eng.; Ankus, or; Anlius) is a deal longer than most war-game elephant makers provide their mahouts with.

Lion Gate (Sing Durwasu - at the Black Pagoda)

Reading highfalutin language seems to have lead me to write in a more pompous fashion than normal (?!!), despite no actual quoting from the work...so apologies for the hectoring or tutorial tone tonight ("motorcar"!! "equipage"?...Ha-haha!), however as it's one of my life's crusades to see the back of heavy timber forts on toy or model war-elephants, I hope it makes people think...also I can't re-write it as my voice is 'set' now for this piece!