S is for Soppy-git!

I love the thin pallid light of a winter's dawn filtered through a stand of pine trees, one of life's little luxuries is to play hide and seek with the sun and not damage your eyesight!

M is for Mop-topped

A quick box-ticking exercise this one; That too-famous (in my opinion) bunch of mop-topped beat musicians John, George, Ringo and the money-grabbing one were immortalised in plastic several times, both in Hong Kong and the UK, but also in Spain.

Whence this set issued-forth, it was apparently a mail away premium offered by a Spanish Comic which I'm assuming was called Emirober? But it may have been several comics and such-like in different European countries? The figures were probably made by someone else...Jecsan maybe? The comic obviously thought they would sell like hot cakes as they ordered what seems to have been hundreds of thousands of sets, with the result that a quick Google will reveal them to be as common as anything, with whole stock boxes regularly going through auction houses, while FeeBay and it's contemporaries always have a few sets kicking around.

The trouble being that despite it's availability, dealers seem to think that all things 'Beatle' must carry a premium, and tend to price it to reflect that. Fortunately there was an ethical dealer at the recent Birmingham Toy Soldier Show, who had a bunch at a couple of quid each ($3/4 or Euros), so I picked one up to 'tick the box' here.

Each card is different, having identical sides, which differ from the other three to be sought if you are that level of completest, The cards each having a different Liverpudlian balladeer as the central theme. I went with the one I think is meant to be John Lennon. Figures also come in orange, sky-blue and dark green plastic, giving the same completest 28 figures to find!

C is for Canucks

No time for pictures tonight and continuing with the theme of the last post, here are two remembrance day related posts (a day late!), both from Canada, a large number of who's soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice carrying out their feint, probing raid, reconnaissance in strength - call it what you will - at Dieppe in the Second World War, to help buy our freedoms - may the gods grant restfulness to their souls.

Paper

wraps

Stone

D is for Death...comes to smallscaleworld

Actually, death comes to all of us...

This is little Jasmine, she was eight years old the other day, not that old, even for a cat, but sadly she breathed her last today. I had hand-reared her when she was a kitten and wouldn't follow her siblings on to solids, she had been her Mothers first, and she (her mum) didn't get the hang of it until the second one and a bit of non-veterinary intervention from me...like I can teach a mother cat anything!!

Anyway - while I seemed to teach her mother how the deliver the subsequent three, the first was never quite the norm afterwards and would have starved if I hadn't fed her from a syringe. She lost her eye about two years ago, it just marbled over, so the vet took it out, but she was already getting white hairs in her otherwise perfect witches-familiar uniform black!

Then a couple of days after the above shot was (29th September) taken she got ill again and while the vet was sure it wasn't cancer (and sold us two courses of totally useless antibiotics), I knew different as my mate John lost his little cat Charlotte to the same thing...anyway we did the best we could until the inevitable, which came this afternoon with a quick injection.

She's now on the far right (no bullfighting! Although the odd mouse 'got it'), with 7 of her fellow felines to play with...I know - there are only six headstones - but life being stranger than fiction, one of the graves has two cats in it; neither of which belonged to us, they happened to be 'returned' to us by neighbours within hours of each other - both traffic related, and we never found the real owners so laid them together.

In time she will - of course - get a hardy Jasmine trained  up the fence-panel behind her, despite usually being called 'Blackitt'! But a silver-lining (if there are any) in pet cat deaths is the fact that unless you've called it something really silly like Moon-unit Dweezil the III, you can normally find a Shrub-rose to match, as we did with John's Charlotte the other year (a nice yellow standard). Not a trick that works quite so well with Rover or Fido, which is why gardeners should have cats, not dogs!!

We never seem to forget our pets, they fade, as all things do (except Alexander the Great, Caesar and Genghis Kahn!) but fond memories always remain, so just wanted to say she was much loved, is sorely missed and won't be forgotten.



Normally I wouldn't be quite so publicly sentimental, but I've had a mare of a day on another front and death has been an aspect in the background this last few weeks.



A chap most of you have probably never heard of; Clive Fairweather (Telegraph Tribute) passed away the other day, I only met him once or twice myself, but thought I'd add my only anecdote...

My brother and I were about 12 or 13, and had been holidaying in Europe with dad, when Clive who was at the time connected with the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), a territorial unit of some historical significance (not least - that they are older than the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company of the US Army...by a hundred years!! - it's a friendly rivalry) who had been exercising in Southern Germany with me and my brother tagging along like a couple of annoying little tykes (because we were!). Anyway: the unit travelled up to Wildenrath by coach at the end of the course from where they would fly back to UK. Our father was flying with them, but Clive and a future Lord Mayor of London, had decided to drive.

Well when we got to Wildenwrath to meet the 'plane, all the troops were given the list of stuff they couldn't take on the flight, and started dumping vast quantities of hexamine fuel blocks, lighter fluid, cigarette lighters, book matches and the like in the ash-trays (little did  I know a few years later I'd be stubbing my own camels out in the same ash-trays!). Now...my brother and I had developed a taste for all things 'compo', being soldier's brats, and ran around collecting all this stuff up, in the end we had a sandbag full of highly of combustible, flammable, explosive material which the lovely Clive then helped us smuggle through customs in his Mercedes...we'd never been in a Mercedes either. He also stopped at the services to buy breakfast when we said our parents never stopped at the services!

I met Clive again at my Father's 80'th, and he still remembered the incident and even managed to remind me that my brother and I had climbed into the luggage racks on the coach to sleep (and escape from soldiers boots!), something I'd forgotten and I have a good memory! He was in short - a nice man.



And then this week, Clive Dunn (Corporal Jones in Dad's Army) passed away and the obit's revealed a man who was far more interesting and complicated than you would ever have guessed from his role as the famous veteran of colonial brush-fire wars in some indeterminate period that seemed to preclude WWI!

Another good man.



Now - actor, cat or friend of parent? They all enriched the world in which they lived, and their passing diminishes the present a little, spare a thought for them, or someone/something you've lost recently.

Normal - cynical - service will resume shortly, although this close to Christmas it's only a matter of time before I get maudlin again!

Happier Times - although still a bit thin!

I suppose I should just mention that also this week sometime, bigoted, right-wing bible-belt Republicanism apparently died - almost by accident, so while diminished slightly in the short term; the world is a better place already. {June 20th 2021 - fatal last words - four years later the Republicans would give us Trump for four years of dark madness . . . }

T is for Toro, Toro (Taxi)

Skateaway - Dire Straits

So we are looking today at one of the less tasteful subjects in the world of toy figures (as if celebrating war and soldiery isn't itself already too far for some!!), Bullfighting, the slow and tortuous demise of otherwise healthy animals for the enjoyment of the braying masses of Rome and their hideous Emperors...er...except this is here, today, 'post modern', civilised, 21st century, now...

I spent some time on Google trying to identify these, and while once or twice I thought Reamsa was 'in the frame', I think these are actually all Jecsan, I'm not sure on the bull though, and the guy far top-right has a slightly different base?

The three to the left in this one all seem to be Comansi, while the forth figure - on the far right (you have to be pretty far right to torture animals for pleasure!) would seem to be more of a tourist piece, or that quintessential of Spanish toys a 'kiosk toy'. The guy with both arms raised may be missing two swords or 'estoque'.

For some reason which totally escapes me - given we have no bull rings - the Brits got in on the toy bullfighting act, not once but twice? In the upper shot we see two of the Charbens Bullfighting set with their characteristic semi-flatness, while the lower shot shows a couple of pieces from the even less common Cherilea offering...the bull standing in a life-draining puddle of its own blood seeming to sum-up the nature of the subject and my opinion of it.

Please Donate

C is for Clarification or Correction

In the Blue Box farm post the other day I stated that the blow-moulded rock formation was stolen from Starlux, but on Saturday at the Birmingham Toy Soldier Show, this turned-up, and it's not Starlux!

It is - in fact - Elastolin by Hausser, and a composition piece aimed at 70mm figures from the 1930's/50's. This doesn't mean there wasn't a similar Starlux piece, but I think this may be the piece I was thinking of, so here delivered for a full comparison!

Original Here

G is for Guardsman Guards Gametes!

All he's waiting on now are some toasted soldiers - brown bread...but not dead!

S is for Soldiers in Society

Let's get the sad news out of the way first;

Big Tex 'Bought-it'

Then we'd better get the 'Adult' stuff dealt with;

Chen-yang Wang (Artist)

Don't click on the image/link if you are easily shocked, a prude, or in some other way tied to religious mores or small-mindedness of some variety...it's art, apparently!

Meanwhile Scott B. Leach has got some of his cartoons on to Penn's Sunday School;

Atheist Toy Soldiers

We've seen a coloured 'Flag' - here's a Black & White version;

Valerie Leonard

This on the other hand seems a bit silly;

Chocolate from Stephen J Shanabrook

News, Views Etc...Shows and an Auction

Auction

Speaking of Vectis (as I was earlier today in the PW149 post) and of the hand-painted Marx Miniature Masterpice items kicking around the hobby a few years ago seems to have been quite timely, as the regular 'Please buy our Olympic shite' eMail from Airfix-call-me-Hornby arrived today with news of a Vectis auction, which is to include some early Airfix archive material.

To be honest, I could only find one item of any interest, a James Bond Autogyro, and they're not that rare. there is some nice original artwork for sale, but with a ready-made 25lbr being described as 'very rare' (loose, mind!) the cataloguing needs to be taken with a pinch of salt!

Auction Listings Here

of more interest is that in the section on 'Plastic Issues - Connoisseur Selection' there are two of the hand-painted Marx sets up for offer...far more interesting than bog-standard kits!!

Shows

Herne

Peter of PB Toys has dropped me a line and reminded me that his Autumn [Kunststoffiguren Börse] plastic soldier show in Herne, Germany is fast approching, full details will be on his site...

Details Here

...but the address for your diary's is 04/11/2012, or two weeks this Sunday.

Birmingham

Which means that a week this Sunday will be Dave McKenna's show in Birmingham, details will be the same as previous years, but the basics are;

When - Sunday 28th October 2012.
Where - Clarendon Suite, 2 Stirling Road, Edgbaston.

F is for Farm, Farmers, Farming

So to the last of the Blue Box articles for a while, these are - like most of BB's production - taken from a number of sources, including Corgi, Dinky, Britains and Starlux, and my sample is pretty small consisting of the contents of a much-mashed Blue Box 'Home Farm' in the larger scale. Missing most animals and probably some accessories, it therefore looks mainly at the figures and vehicles.

The combined-harvester and bucket-mounted tractor will be copied from die-casts in the larger size (Corgi or Dinky?) and come with two slightly different drivers, the tractor driver is a lift from Corgi, I don't know for sure where the combine operator is taken from.

The calf is also a Corgi item which we looked at the other day I think? If we didn't we soon will. I'm not sure where the lorry is stolen from, I think it may be a Blue Box cut-n-shut with the Corgi trailer and a different push-and-go cab-unit?

Although looking a bit Britains'y, the cart may be based on one of the smaller makes such as Barratt or Taylor? but the figures come straight from Britains oeuvre, and we again find both based versions and the plug-in base we've been encountering through all the recent Blue Box posts. I particularly like the card load!

These do seem to be unique to Blue Box?  Triang Spot-On - see comments. Blow-moulded farmhouse (upper two shots) and barn (lower pair) with front and back views of both, these were also included in the small-scale versions of the various Home Farm boxed sets.

More blow-moulding including the copies of the Starlux* rocky outcrops (bottom left), sacks (scaled-up from the Corgi elevator sets, two hay-ricks of indeterminate origin (due to my ignorance - Britains hollow-casts? Triang Spot-On again) and - in injection ethylene - the fence panels taken from Britains and copied by just about everyone in Hong Kong who ever issued a set of farm or zoo animals...and quite a few found themselves in bags of toy soldiers!

* 31/10/2012 - I'm sure I've seen these as Starlux mouldings in their usual dense plastic, however I tracked down the original at the Birmingham show, this weekend just gone, and it's Elastolin, so I may be wrong on the Starlux thing?

Update Here

C is for Chad Valley

One of the older names in British manufacturing they were formed in 1823, but would not get round to making toys until after the second World War, having purchased Burnett Ltd., (Ubilda) just as war was declared!

Chad Valley ceased to trade in 1978 with the name being purchased by Woolworth's in the 1990's (?), where amongst other products issued as that brand were some re-boxed Corgi play-sets! I don't know what happened to the name when Woolworth's folded in 2008/9, but presumably it has been acquired or is on some claimants negotiation-list with the receivers!

These are probably the item they are most known for among Toy Soldier enthusiasts, and I believe there was quite a range, mostly of ceremonial/parade type subjects. The two foot figures are almost certainly from another (Light Infantry/Rifles?) set of foot figures, and a mounted figures is missing, probably facing to the right as you look at the box, and maybe a Lancer, Horse-guard in blue or RHA...I'm just guessing now, with a little help from the box-lid!

News, Views etc...Plastic Warrior 149

The latest - larger size - issue of Plastic Warrior has come out and is full of all the usual interesting stuff, which this issue are;

* An article on the tie-in between Daz soap powder and Crescent by Gerald Edwards
* Swoppet ACW overview from Karl James (which very much adds to this Swoppets Article)
* Tom Stark reviews the output of Heritage Toy Figures.
* The introduction on a forthcoming set of articles about Linde Wild West figures and their 'relationship/s' with Elastolin/Huasser, Jean and Frank ('Muckefuck' - no...you'll have to read the article!), brought to us by Andreas Dittmann - who has helped me many times in the past and is a fount-of-all-knowledge when it comes to German (and wider European) production.
* A report by Michael Maughan on the new Toy Soldier museum at Silloth, Cumbria
* Vectis Aution Reports covering rareish boxed sets by Britians, Timpo and Cherilea
* Herald ethnic dancers by Daniel Morgan
* The Dewars and Johnny Walker figures from Marx with the 'missing' figure found by Mark Hegeman 
* Fred Barratt show Boxer Rebellion conversions form Mike Blake
* Men of '76 from Kent Sprecher of ToysoldierHQ fame.
* What the !&*$? has a poser on Huskies (dogs not toy cars!)
* Book reviews
* Coverage of other new products from
- HaT Industrie
- Victrix
* Plus all the usual small-ads, news, views and letters on figures from around the world (Eagalwall [Dan Dare], Goodman [Cherilea copies] and LJN), a follow up on rocket-launchers from the last issue and more Russian figures (Publius and Basevich),with  a Cherilea shot on the front cover.

And the next issue will be the 150th!

T is for Thompson

Following on from the Charbens/Skybirds post last night, here is an actual refueller, this is the Thompson Brothers Mk Vc Aircraft Refueller as used by the RAF in World War II, and these photographs were taken in 2008 at Beltring, shortly before the beast was sold to a museum; Yorkshire Air Museum

Four-view images for anybody who'd like to try drawing it up for scratch-building, the simple shape actually lends itself to resin, should anyone feel there'd be a market for such a model?

A couple of three-quarter views and some other shots, I must say I was rather taken with it, it's not what you'd expect to see down the local High Street, but why not!

C is for Charbens

You may remember a while ago when I was looking at Skybirds figures (S is for Skybirds) and accessories, I mentioned that they might have bought some of their bits in, as the searchlight they used was the same as a truck-mounted one on another maker's slush-cast lorry?

Well - this is the lorry I was talking about, I believe it is Charbens, and you can see that the searchlight is the same as the Skybirds one. Charbens would go on to use a Die-casting process with a mazak type alloy/compound, and the two lower shots are of later mini-scale vehicles from that range.

 

While mentioning Skybirds, here are a few more shots, courtesy of Mercator Trading who were carrying them at a recent show. We've seen a better tanker-refueller (also thanks to Adrian - I seem to recall!) but the 'under-wing' refueller is new to the blog and a harder model to get hold of.

The boxed set of figures is also really nice, I'm not sure how you are supposed to differentiate between the officers and NCO's though, there are only two poses in the box?

K is for Knights

So to the second to last post on larger scale Blue Box (for a year or two?!!), and a quick look at the mediaevals, these are all piracies of other peoples best efforts and it makes you wonder how they ended-up with such relatively unique stuff in the WWII range when everything else was so clearly plagiarised!! 

The foot figures; top left are taken from Jean in Germany and the set on the right are all a mix of Elastolin and Merten (? see comments!) poses; also Germany, these don't appear to have run together, and certainly I've never seen a boxed set of mixed examples, but they are all of an age and era where they all look as old as each other. I suspect the Merten copies came first and the Jean pirates followed?

I've not found Merten cavalry copies, but the Jean-lifted sets do contain the chaps illustrated above, mostly (like a couple of the foot figures) using the wrong end of a stumpy lance...to point the way? The horse is also ex-Jean and those of you who recall the Cowboy post (Blue Boxes) a while back will recognise from the painting and the plastic style (and the 'donor' maker!) that these are contemporary with the Wild West range.

They also had two generations of siege-engine, and for a complete change they are copied from two three other western manufacturers! The one at the top and the red one being a copy of the Lone*Star die-cast and seemingly issued with the Merten rip-offs, while the Jean clones got the lower brown machine which is a copy of the Marx catapult, and the red, Crescent knock-off. (2024 - Thanks to Colin Penn and Peter Evans for the Crescent clear-up)