Y is for Your recomended reading today!

Gardian does Hornby

A is for Arnold

This was sitting with the far more common Tri-ang tinpalte jeep on Adrien's stall (mercatortrading) at Sandown the other week, and while I kept meaning to shoot the other one as a comparison, I never got round to it. Luckily I could see the quality of this one and shot it immediately, as it sold before the doors opened!

 I'm assuming most of you are pretty familiar with the Tri-ang one as it is to be spotted at most shows (sometimes it seems - most stalls!), it is a nice little tin-plate model, usually adored with an Allied star and...er...that's it!

This on the other hand is absolutely exquisite, and while I have seen one or two over the years; I've never seen one with all three composition crew, the spare and Jerry-can, the windscreen intact etc...Made by Arnold, who went on to make the Rapido range of N-gauge railway stuff when I was a kid.

It is in a different league to the Tri-ang one, and most similar models, I have the Penguin jeep in Vulcanised Rubber somewhere and it too - is crude next to this.

A couple of three-quarter views, I could wax lyrical for a while on this, but I'd bore you, just click on the images and add it to your 'Wants List'!!

Cleaner ones with different crew; Here and Here

O is for Original Orientals

Except these orientals are Germans!! Continuing the slow progress of looking at the Blue Box lose figures, we come to the 50mm German infantry. Six poses including two officers and these are pretty unique - in the larger (50mm) scale there is nothing really quite like them. In the smaller scale however they seem to match the Marx 'Miniature Masterpiece' figures in all but plastic colour and pose, being the same height and style and having the same paint scheme. I wrote on my theory about that at length in 1" Warrior, but that's the small ones and we're really looking at the bigger ones today!

The main point of note is that some versions come with the separate base of the Farm Hands/Zoo keepers, which I ascribed to the Australians a while ago, and which comes as a moulded-on feature with some of the GI's we looked at the other day.

Again - there are better, worse and unpainted runs, and the small scale ones were copied by/licenced to (?) Rado/Ri-Toys, while other HK guys had a go at the mouldings, we'll look at them in better detail when we cover the smaller ones, but I've included a comparison shot above to give an idea of various types, along with a darker grey figure in the 50mm range.

W is for Brimtoy - Wells-Brimtoy

Brimtoy were an early British tin-plate toy manufacturer, who used to work with  Bing, the famous German tin-plate Toy specialists. Founded in 1910, they were absorbed by another UK toy company - A Wells and Co. and became Wells-Brimtoy, whence came these half plastic half metal trucks, in the years immediately before they folded (1965)

There are several military vehicles in the range, a bit bigger than 1:72 they go best with the larger figures of someone like Spencer-Smith.

And the 'military' green chassis of both the push-and-go and free-running versions are used with other bodies, to give a wider range of transport that could be used in a war game in the 1960's, when vehicles for the purpose were thin on the ground. I have the canteen lorry with a green body and it looks very much the part of a YMCA or NAFFI-wagon.

The standard 'box body' came litho'd in a variety of types, these all being the push-and-go version. I got talking to a chap back in the Spring at the early-year Sandown Park toy fair who is publishing (or hoping to publish) a book on these little trucks and he did tell me how many variants there are (excluding body-colour variations) but I've forgotten how many he said...50-something I think.

These were mostly shot at Sandown a couple of weeks ago, with two recent additions (but older purchases) to my collection at the top, and one from the main collection (on the Jean transporter) which used to be on Imageshack and has lost some resolution. I also have the street-lamp mender/cherry-picker, and a cement lorry. There was also - I think I'm right in saying - an articulated version with a low-loader attached to an blank chassis/cab unit

The free-runner has a generic cab design and a smaller bed than the push-and-go design which is larger to accommodate the fly-wheel mechanism and gear-cog. It also resembles my favourite; the Bedford RL or 'Big Bedford'.

The smaller un-motored versions also seem to have the closed bodies, Ambulance, Horse-box, Cafeteria etc...While the motorised ones often have the open back (albeit with nicely turned-back edges to protect little fingers), this may point to the two ranges running contiguously rather than together/side-by-side? If so I wouldn't know which came first, but they were probably quite close together, time-wise.

I knew I'd find a use for 'Contiguous' one day, once I'd met it on my old fragmenting graphic!! We will come back to these one day, as I have quite a few somewhere, and I do like them.

A is for Autumn

The sun setting over the fields behind May's Wood to the West of Enham Alamein Last week

C is for Codeg, Cowan de Groot, Camberwick Green, Censorship and Criminal

An interesting little series tonight and one you won't find in your local definitive list of other people's eBay images reduced to black and white thumbnails! Generally agreed to have been supplied by Marx (Swansea works) and probably made in the ELM factory in Hong Kong, these figures and the accessories that went with them were sold under the Codeg label by Cowan, de Groot, who by the time these came out were a large multinational PLC with a finger in every pie.

Cowan, de Groot was founded by S.D. Cowan and A. de Groot in 1919, and while initially being an importer of all sorts of stuff from around the world (Empire?!), among which were early tin-plate toys from Germany and Japan, they would go on to become one of Britians biggest wholesalers of toys, diversifying into the supply of plastics machinery and non-toy retail such as The Russian Shop in London and - I believe - an International property portfolio.

By the time this range was issued they were known for their commissioning of toys from third-parties to service the TV licences they were establishing with the BBC (Dr.Who/Daleks) and independent production companies (in this case; 1966 BBCTV). More recently they were the importers of Jotastar plush toys and bears from China, apparently ceasing to trade in the early-to-mid 1990's.

The evidence for these being from the Marx stable include both; that some of the larger CdG Daleks and Trumptonshire toys were resplendent with the Marx moniker (despite the fact that Marx had their own ranges (they wouldn't turn down a opportunity to shift product!) both as Marx and under the Combex label, and that while the base mark here isn't particularly a Marx style, the shades of pink plastic are identical to the Marx Miniature masterpiece American Indians and other Marx product from Hong Kong (the 40mm road crew for instance).

The above image is a near complete set of figures (missing the Murphy's daughter) and one of the accessories and should remain here in glorious technicolour for the next thousand years (Google or visit-stats willing!), with a list of the characters by name and other known items in the series below;

Left to right in above photograph;

Roger Varley the chimney sweep [but not much like the original - hat's too short], (the brush is missing the top part)
Farmer Jonathan Bell
Windy Miller
Doctor Mopp
PC McGarry Number 452
Mrs Honeyman and Baby Honeyman
Mrs Dingle
Peter Hazel the Postman
Pillar-box/Postbox
Mickey Murphy the Baker
Mr. Carraway the Fishmonger
Paddy Murphy
Mrs. Murphy

Not shown but known to exist

Mary Murphy
Section of Wall
Tree (almost certainly the Britains apple tree - sans apples)
Street Lamp

Not Shown/Not known to be part of the series;

Mr Crockett the Garage Owner
Thomas Tripp the Milkman
Mr Dagenham the Salesman
Captain Snort
Sergeant Major Grout

Sets;

Set No 1 - Mr. Murphy's Bakery
Srt No 2 - Mr. Carraway's Fish Shop
Set No 3 - Post Office
Set No 4 - Dr Mopps House

- Camberwick Green Village Set [all four buildings, wall, lamp post, pillar-box and Britains tree]
- Camberwick Green Village Folk [all 13 figures and the pillar-box]

Close-ups for identification; The bases are quite distictive with their little hole, the two women with dresses and the piller-box being solid while the rest of the figures have a very light, thin base with little 'overhang' The figures are all between 25 and 30mm with the Piller-box being exactly 25mm and the Dr. Mop (with his tall hat) being an almost perfect 30mil.

For foreign readers it should be pointed out that Trumptonshire is the collective fan-title for a set of three children's TV series from the BBC's 'Watch with Mother' feature at lunchtimes in the 1960's, which consisted of 13 episodes each. Camberwick Green was the first series set in a small English village, this was followed by a series set in Trumpton - the local town, and finally 13 episodes set round the big house/estate of nearby Chigley. They are noted for being among the first colour TV productions here in the UK, and - it must be said - I have fond memories of them myself! "Pugh, Pugh, Barney Magrew...Cuthbert! Dibble! Grub!

And so to the 'Censorship' and 'Criminal' of the title bar!...

Two things came out of the research for this post, firstly; That despite being a major movement in Toys for 70 years and going under long after the coming of age of the Internet, there is almost nothing on CdG to be found other than the odd side-note to an eBay auction or other toy listing, this shows that despite the Internet becoming a more and more comprehensive (if often - still - inaccurate) source for the sum total of human knowledge, there is an undeniable undercurrent of censorship, and it's practised by the rich, powerful and corporate, who will ensure they delete the things they don't want you to know.

The other is the 'one born every minute' lesson; There are several of these figures on FeeBay at the moment, the seller is asking £29.99 for each of them...that's thirty quid folks...60-odd dollars! These things have an intrinsic value of less than 50p and shouldn't be worth more than a couple of quid each to collectors, I've never paid more than 50p-each for mine, yet this person who probably hoovered them up with something else at a local auction-house or car boot sale wants a third of a ton for them?

While someone else has some on his little antique toy site which - while well described - include things that have absolutely no connection to the series whatsoever; An HK Tree, an HK import of a European model railway building copy, a polyethylene windmill by Taylor & Barratt or similar (which has its own value in the correct guise anyway) and some HK dolls house copies of the Britains garden...now, the fact that the descriptions are so good means - to me - that the seller knows damn well he's ripping people off?

But the real tragedy is; the 'one born every minute' are the sharks, there are a hundred born every minute to pray-on; and rich know-nothings will pay those prices! I don't often mention money or value but it incenses me to see such profiteering of mass-produced plastics from the second half of the 20th century, the stuff isn't rare, I keep saying it because it's true; people used to think Giant was rare but a warehouse full of the stuff was sold-off a couple of years ago! Truffle-hunt round the car-boot sales and evening toy fairs and you'll get these for next to nothing, just be patient.

H is for Hampshire Wildlife - August 2012

One or two of you may have noticed I have now imported all the old posts from the gardening and moaning blogs, so from time to time you'll have to put up with the odd bit of wildlife or plant life on this blog from now on. I will try to finish re-tagging the 'Index' (preferably before the final imposition of the 'New Style' blog layout - as it's much easier in the old version) and bring over the last of the links in the next few weeks.

I also have about 30 articles in preparation, some of which I've already mentioned, but there's a lot going on in 'real life' at the moment so they are not going on-line as quickly as I'd like. For now here's some of the visitors to my flat in Enham (Nr. Andover - an old stomping ground from my Army days!) and my mothers garden in North Hampshire.

This little chap - or chap'ess - came calling just after midnight on Thursday and I would have given it some milk but the caterers here had given us yoghurt disguised as milk (for our self-catered breakfast) which I figured would not go down well with a house guest, so I just took some pictures for the visitors book and saw it on it's snail-hunting way.

Creepy-crawlies are always a favourite of mine and these are all from the last 30 days, the slug was even longer, but he started to shorten as I focused, a phenomena I have noticed before with slugs and snails and I suspect they somehow detect the beam from the camera, as you can always approach them (with care) but the moment you press first pressure on the shutter button they freeze up/shrink.

I don't know what the ants were finding so interesting, I inspected the stick after I took the shot and it was a stick...just a stick! The snail was so small yet so beautifully constructed it would drive a simpler mind to religion!

Flyers - after a couple of really good years for butterflies, we have now had two bad ones and this year they have been so thin on the ground (and the Buddleia!) that I try to shoot them whenever I see one. While I continue to fall for moths, who are so much-more pretty than a quick glance ever betrays, their buffs and grays, browns and fawns being actually patterns and designs as complex as any butterfly.

These three little voles came out of a bank on Saturday afternoon and sat around on the grass together, so tame we could stroke them, although they did tend to rush back into their hole after a couple of touches!

It is one of life's undeniable pleasures to encounter wildlife close-up, commune with it (on any level) and let it carry-on with it's day. I'm not sure if a 'Greenie' wouldn't cry "foul" at the stroking of voles, but they were gentle little one-finger passes (these things are about 45mm nose-to-tail-base, and the animals were back out in minutes - so obviously weren't that bothered, I guess you'd be nervous if a 600 foot giant came and patted you gently on the head!

B is for British Bearskins

The most iconic Toy Soldier type, by the most iconic Toy Soldier manufacturer; Britains. Famous for their hollow-cast ceremonials, they were bound to produce them when they started experimenting with plastic and indeed, some of the first figures they commissioned from Zang were the predecessors of these figures.

The moulds were re-cut upon the change from 'straight' Zang to the Herald brand, and would continue in production for decades with a slow decline in paint style and quality and a change to a softer vinyl/PVC material. Three shooting poses were added after production had moved to Hong Kong, and the officer was dropped from the range, there is a standard bearer missing from the above line-up and I have Michael Melnyk to thank for several of the above figures.

A mounted officer (similar to the Highland pose - no removable arm) also went the distance, and while I've tried to arrange all the above shots in chronological order with the oldest to the left, I'm not sure on the various saddle's originality, nor the age of the last horse which may be older than the PVC rider.

The out-painters had two ways of painting the SLR, with some silvering the bayonet only and others painting the barrel silver, right back to the gas-parts. These two versions are as common as each other and therefore make a collectable paint-variant.

The lower shot shows four of the main base types, again; oldest to the left, they are; Herald original, early Hong Kong figure with moulded-on base, later (1970's) glued into the box tray and finally the plug-on late style base, a hierarchy they share with the Combat Infantry and Wild West figures from 'Herald Hong Kong'.

When Britains introduced the Deetail range they added a set of six guards (the 'Royal Salute - Present Arms' pose is missing from the above image), which would run alongside the Herald pretty-much 'till the end. I don't know the significance of the base colours - except that the green is the commoner (perhaps the black are from some touristy thing commissioned by someone else from Britains?) and the black-based ones seem to have the matching (and correct) black trousers every time.

GI is for Galvanised Iron - apparently!

Taking the photographs for the Triang 'Battle Space' commandos the other day, allowed me to take some more general photographs of the rest of the contents of the 'Blue Box - Loose Figures' box, and as a result here are the G.I.'s from Blue Box's 50mm range.

The six poses on the left with rear views of - on the left of each pair - the earlier, better-painted versions and on the right; the simpler paint of later issues. Earlier ones have the same yellow webbing detail of the smaller sized figures, and more brown belts or black holsters etc...

A later issue was totally unpainted and while I thought I'd taken a shot of them I haven't, but the chap on the left of two of the above images is uncommon, also unpainted he has a moulded-on version of the square base I provisionally gave to one of the Australians (Aussies) the other day when we looked at them. In its loose form it is commonly issued with the farmhand (and possibly one version of the gorilla), and we will be coming back to it in the next few days.

The other shot is just a size comparison between the 25mm figures (here a late unpainted, soft plastic one) and their 50mm brethren.

A couple more size comparisons and a shot of the radio operator to show the range of plastic colours these chaps came in, the left hand one is an early full-paint, the right hand one is a late figure, the one in between has some extra paint on the pouches/holster as an interim version. As material costs rise the paint quality drops!

T is for Toy...Story

Currently available from Poundstore here in the UK, the lack of English on the packaging would seem to suggest that these have been bought-in as clearance from an European distributor. Clearly designed to support the Parachute-drop rides that have been going-in to the various Disneyland theme-parks over the last year or so, these are brilliant.

Somewhere between 54 and 6omm they will go equally well with either. I have a sub-collection of parachutists and 'poopa-troopers' so couldn't resist these when I saw them on Friday last. There are various sets of figures based on these movie-heroes - not least the Lego squad with Jeep, but - as a kid - you can't beat chucking something like these out of the bedroom window and running downstairs to see if you can beat them down (you can't!), so get some now while they have lots, they'll make excellent stocking fillers/tree-treats this coming Christmas whether y0u're expecting small visitors...or have rug-rats of your own!

D is for Duck! - It's all-right; they're stationary.

Giving my mate Shane a lift home this weekend, we dropped into a friend of his to check out something he's waiting on (his blog; Diary), he's on the same CAD course as me, and his friend Paula had more than two of something and as we all know - more than two of something is a collection!

The puffin and turkey are clearly interlopers, and most of them have some sentimental value or carry the associative memory of a visit somewhere while the small terracotta one was made by one of the daughters of the family - I well remember making a rabbit at Heckfield Village/Primary School before it was converted into yuppie-flats by Thatcher! I've kept them relativity the same size and clicking on the image will enlarge them.

The largest is no more than about 5cm, with the smallest one (inset - carved malachite) about 10mm. What intrigued me about them was that there is clearly a market for people all over the place to make small ducks, one sort of expects bears, pigs, hedgehogs, rabbits and the like and I know of several owl collectors and a couple of frog people, but it seems ducks have a fan base also! What do you collect on that spare shelf...send us a picture and I'll put it/them up here.

C is for Current

In the shops now is another take on the Dalek freebee, and from the usual source; Dr Who Adventures magazine. I'm not sure why it's called 'Dalek Attack Set' but it catches the eye! Are they putting Daleks on the cover again because sales are falling, or because there's a new series of Dr. Who coming with Dalek episodes? The cynic in me wants to know! Manufactured/imported by Xcel Concepts.

The paint brush and 'key-ring' are really lame, a couple of PVA paints though, are always useful while the bouncy-not-a-ball is actually a lot of fun. The murder-machine-man is approximately 54mm as can be seen from the figure comparison bottom-right "Take that - you over-blown dustbin!" as I seem to recall Bernard Cribbins shouting once in a similar situation....sans fireman's helmet!

Next week (on sale a week yesterday) they have another 'Army' of the 25/28mm figures including one each of the two uncommon ones. Have a nice Bank Holiday if you live in a country that's having one this weekend, winter starts any day now!

S is for Sacul (I think!)

After what I think is a pretty thorough Googling I have failed to find these either as plastics or metals, so while I am pretty sure these are the Sacul guardsmen made from their own hollow-cast moulds; I stand to be corrected.

Quite rare and found in various colours (under the paint), often the flecked or marbled effect of mixed granules. I'm further guessing this is not a full sample, surely a bass-drum is a must - for starters! That's it really - bit of a lazy post, a while since we've had one of those, but it gets them on Google...until someone tells me they're something else!!

D is for Drevopodnik

Wound-up in Czechoslovakia around 1998 - some ten years after 'The Wall' came down (actually it was the falling of a curtain!) as another bankrupt former state manufacturing concern and based in Brno (when the Bren-gun gets half its name from!), all I can find in relation to this company is that it was a general household goods manufacturer who also offered glass-grinding, glazing and drilling as well as apprenticeships in cabinet making!

At some point someone thought to manufacture at least two sets of figures in a rough composition (very similar to the old Rawlplug 'plastic wood'), the set shown here and another I've seen with more colourful Napoleonic or ceremonial type uniforms.

These came to us at a general antiques fair, where someone thought they'd be a 'bit of us', and my mate - who's stall it was - said "..go-on then", and bought them while I was out having a cigarette! By the time I got back to the table he was having serious second thoughts, having looked more closely at them and seen that there was a fair amount of damage.

I thought - wow, they're a bit different, I'll have them, I'm sure I can fix most of them! So silver crossed palms on them for the secound time in minutes and they were mine. I won't tell what my friend paid, or what I paid, but suffice to say it wasn't much either way, but probably more than I can afford given my current circumstances...I still owe him twenty-five quid, but that's for something else!!

A quick look at the three sets shows a cirtain amount of damage, particularly the figure top-right on each card. There were also four loose figures from the same set.

As they came out of the heat-shrinked packaging, it became obvious that the damage was a little worse than appeared, with bits falling off more than 75% of the figures, paint damage and other horrors. Also it was clear that Q/A and/or Q/C was not a priority in the Drevopodnik works and they seemed to have been finished - at least partially - by hand.

So each figure was placed in a separate bag, with all it's bits and the bags were stacked (open) in a shoe-box and placed in front of the ducting vent in my flat's wet-room, where hot-air (this was back in the spring) was blown over them for 48hrs, to remove any damp that might have been responcible for some of the finer crumbling.

Then they were taken one at a time to the surgical bench and stuck back together with super-glue (which was of course it's original use - in Vietnam). The really bad ones were left in the bags until the end, and some figures had to be composed from several, to get a 'full set'. Others were fine though and as they were given the once over they were lined-up on a bizarre parade!

When the whole process was complete, the pile bottom-right in the above collage was left over, and after humming and harring for an hour or so - I threw it away. It took two days to fix them all, and I am now looking for some paint to match them, especially the Paratrooper, as the best example lost all his helmet paint as he was peeled off the backing film. I also need to track-down a tube of the aforementioned Rawlplug plastic-wood (that hasn't gone hard), to fill a few gaps...do they still make it?

Top left; The NBC alert guards - three out of four 'aint bad as Mr. Loaf might say! These were particularly hard to mend as they had all suffered their brakes up the legs or around the hips (or both) rather than the more common - and easier to fix - ankle-damage of the others.

Below them is a shot of their bases, with what I presume to be the makers mark's, possibly the wood-working apprentices...using-up wood-filler to produce a Christmas 'cash-crop'??

Top right; are a conversion/head-swap using the staff-officer's head, that came from the bits that were left-over after I'd got one decent set together. The figures on either end of the line-up (medic and traffic cop), had to be built-up from several donors and still need a bit of filler and stuff.

So - if any Czech or Slovakian readers are following this blog, can you add anything? Did you work in the Drevopodnik M. Brna factory in Brno (Bruno), or know someone who did? Does anyone know the extent of the full range?

I think there may have been a card of Indians (native American) as well, but that might be a false memory, and the trouble with false memory in the age of the Internet is that it tends to reappear as someone else's fact!

Note; The figures reached some untouchable temperatures as I bled super-glue into them. I don't now the physics or the chemistry but it was a hell of a reaction...I was using pound-shop stuff, as you get three tubes for a quid and they tend not to produce the white deposit of the more the expensive glues.

M is for Model-Land and Minic Motorways

The same 'definitive' source that miss-identified the Husky figures as Triang Model-land had clearly never met these, these are the real deal as old orange-skin 'Lovejoy' would say! Still - if you're busy rushing around the internet nicking other peoples images, you're not going to have time to correct any errors are you, not even typo's on the images your lifting from!

Quite hard to find outside of the model railway collecting fraternity, they came in two packaging types, these Model-Land blister-cards and in blue and white header-carded bags with the Minic Motorways labelling.

As far as mint examples go; I only have the two carded sets, and one of them is in a bit of a state! The children set is as good as anything Prieser or Merten produced and - indeed - are easily mistaken for Merten with the little round bases, but the distinctive Stadden sculpting should be the give-away.

A few loose ones, some have been covered in a protective varnish-dip, popular with railway modellers in the 1970's as it made it easier to dust them with a paint brush. Also a seventh child-sculpt has been surgically removed from the woman in blue.

Listing;

RML.8 Accessories (Horse Trough, War Memorial, Country Stile, Inn Sign and Village Stocks)

RML.70 Pedestrian Figures Set (Man running, 3 male and 1 female standing Passengers and woman with child on single base)
RML.71 Workmen Figures Set (3 road-workers, bin-man, sweep and deliveryman)
RML.72 Child Figures Set (6 children - rope, kite, hoop, 2 playing leapfrog and one in school uniform)
RML.73 Urban Figures Set (2 policemen, burglar, school-crossing 'Lollipop' man, window cleaner and security guard - or pilot?)
RML.74 Industrial Workers Set (Postman, milkman, gardener, 2 decorators and a cleaner)
RML.75 Road Workmen Set (5 workers and a driver)

The set RML.8 is included over and above the other building and scenic accessory sets as it was to reappear as an issue from Dapol...which means it might have had a run under the Airfix banner? I'll have to check.

Set 73 is the one that causes the problems for definitive-listers, as it contains a policeman and school-crossing operator similar to the Husky sets, however the former are exquisitely sculpted by Charles Stadden, almost certainty from the Minimodels plant in Havent, while the later are lumpen blobs of poly-vinyl from Hong Kong.

(PS - do you get confused between Ian McShane's fictional Lovejoy and David Dickinson's er...David Dickinson? Fact versus fiction - wow! And the false one came first, what's that all about...give him a Volvo and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference!)

Bernard Taylor has emailed me with corrections to the listing and some more shots (you may recall he included some Triang figures in the 'quiz' shot and another contribution the other day), there is enough for a whole post rather than adding it here, so I'll sort that out in the next few days - exams allowing.

07/10/2012 - Full update and extra images now posted HERE