C is for Corgi Countryside (Farm Animals and Farmers)

OK, into the home straight with these Corgi posts now, and the other animals et cetera. When we were kids we didn't have much of this stuff as we were army-brats and had military toys and a railway (along with all the usual chemistry sets, Lego, Meccano and such like), but our cousins were farmers oop'North and had a huge wooden farm in one of the old chicken sheds which was their playroom, and it had all sorts of farm stuff by Dinky, Corgi and Britains including the remains of Dad's and my Uncle's old toys.

So although we didn't have them ourselves we did get to play with them a few times a year and they hold a nostalgia.

The miniature versions of the bigger calves, these fold-up off their base-plate to fit neatly in the trailer, unfortunately they fit equally as neatly in a Matchbox stake-sided lorry and you often see them being sold as Matchbox on EvilBay!

The race horse is an interesting one, coming in two sizes, the smaller ones with painted blankets in various colours, and with or without a granular surface (much like the two versions of many Crescent figures, which may be a clue to there origins?). In the larger size the blanket was a paper sticker which rarely survive outside a mint-boxed example, I have seen a green with yellow lines checked one, a blue one with - I think - a yellow boarder, and a red/purple one

You can find a shiny high-density polyethylene one from Hong Kong without the horse blanket, but they did copy the knee-pads!

The middle shot shows two PVC animals to the left from the later sets and to the right another Juniors / Husky one, this one looks quite similar to a cellulose acetate / styrene one from Starlux which I thought I'd blogged, but haven't - so a civilian Starlux post mentally bookmarked into the queue!

The later farmer and the two versions of tractor driver, also used for other cabbed vehicles of a more construction nature, both these have been heavily copied by Hong Kong over the years (in hard styrene and soft PVCs and Ethylenes), and the unknown supplying maker also let Corgi grade originals go to HK rack-toy producers.

The larger version of the calves from the Corgi 'proper' range, we looked at the Hong Kong versions from Blue Box here, where we also find blue hard (polystyrene)plastic versions of the tractor driver doing his thing with a tractor and a combined-harvester. These calves always looked American to me, for no reason I can put my finger on, they just seem to belong in Texas, not the home-counties!

G is for Guards - Saxaphone and Trombone

Saxophonists - Very uncommon Cavendish starts this line-up, with a Charbens providing the party-wall for four Crescent and Crescent for Kellogg's.

Trombonists - Two more Charbens and three more Crescent and Crescent for Kellogg's. The shortage of these more complicated instruments is surly down to production complexity, and with me having few Cavendish (two!) and less Britains Eyes-Right (one figure!) it will be a while before there are more on the blog!

C is for Corgi Civilians

Civilians? How boring! What? I'm forever putting 'civi' stuff up here...they have their place in the oeuvre...and while Corgi were pretty hopeless at military figures compared to Matchbox, when it came to figures in general they are about ten blog-posts in a clear lead! Just about everything other than bog-standard family saloons came with something to add play value.

The larger image shows the Husky / Corgi Juniors rally car winner's with driver and navigator leaning on the bonnet, and are in the same style as the little sets we looked at here, while the larger figure has the distinctive helmet of a real driver; Graham Hill (did he have a whingeing whining blame everyone else before yourself, kind of a son?), from the larger 1:43 range.

Bar-B-Q'ing tonight top left, with one of the earlier figures on the right; changing street-light bulbs from what we now call a cherry-picker, in those days they were called reach-platforms or something. This figure is interesting as it is polyethylene and seem to come from the same stable as the contemporary Spot On range of figures, we've also looked at before.

Below them there is a milkman and cabin-cruiser 'captain' from the 1960's range and two colour variations of the street-sweeper operator from the '70's, he is a tad larger and in a harder polypropylene.

The standard racing driver - like the standard pilots from Airfix and Matchbox - he was reused in more than one model, being fitted to a lot of the racing car and sports tourer models in the early years, and would reappear from time to time. There are subtle differences between both these two. Likewise to the right are the Bermuda tourist Mini-Moke / Taxi driver...I'm not sure if these are two versions of the same vehicle's driver, or if one if (like the Batman & Robin scale downs) a Corgi Juniors figure?

Below them is a female bus conductor in a close 25mm size, I know she is Corgi, but see the next panel (below) for all the 'maybe's'!

The last group are more problematical...I have notes to the effect this set is Corgi AND Dinky. Now, they are definitely in the style of the few other Stadden-designed Dinky figures, also I'm pretty sure I found them in a Corgi capacity when I was preparing these articles over a years ago. That site is now no more, and I can only ask if any one knows for certain...it's likely that they were a Dinky set inherited by Corgi.

Various bus drivers and conductors which may or may not be Corgi (or Dinky, Matchbox, a minor make or a HK something!), can any die-cast collector give definite ID's for any of them.

The accessories were as important as the figures and the two everyone seems to be looking for are the BBQ already show further above and the golf bag shown here with golfer and small-boy caddy. Also pictured here are the ice-cream seller and his customer.

The upper shot is an attempt at a scenic vignette photograph, while below it is one of the most awful toys ever sold in a retail form...

..the backing card is pre-printed with Mr Sheen graphics (a popular UK furniture polish in the 1970's), the packaging contains two clues to brand (Smiley and Roundabout) while almost certainty being neither and the contents cover 20-odd years of Corgi figure 'production' in about four scales and at least three polymers!

I have seen another! Different graphics, different contents.

I would guess that - far worse than being some Hong Kong thing - these were cobbled together from tail-end stock and sold through sea-side kiosks as sand-castle enhancers? Not only that, the boat isn't the Corgi boat, it's the late Cullpitt's from HK copy of the Corgi boat!

One thing is sure, despite these Corgi accessories often fetching a tidy sum on FeeBay, you often see dealers at shows with large quantities of ex-out workers stock, usually of one or two poses, the Detective Ironsides in wheelchair is a common one - seemingly being made in the millions, the tractor drivers are others while the various James Bond figures are common, although the ejector-seat set was sold with spare figures?

What all this hints at or suggests - among other things to be pondered endlessly - is that a single UK importer / jobber (possibly Roundabout Distributors?) was handling the figures of probably several Hong Kong producers both for Corgi and Cullpitt, maybe others and may even have been getting the painting done here?

All-in-all a hideous but interesting addition to the collection, I only wish I'd picked-up the other one when I saw it!

G is for Guards - Side Drums

Four treatments of Crescent / Crescent for Kellogg's, some home-paint, some factory.

Three from Charbens with a white polystyrene early figure on the left.

Two Lone*Star and one Sacul

C is for Corgi Creatures (Wild Animals, Jungle and Safari stuff)

The Corgi animals were in the main quite good sculpts with a bit of character, there were also a few dogs but they've been and gone as have some of the circus animals, so these are most of the rest...

Daktari, a popular TV series with - I think - one or two movie length spin-offs, produced several animals draped over Land Rover bonnets and the like, along with a cross-eyed lion who I think was called Clarence? The giraffe is one of many, they are all in the unknown HK animals box, as they are very hard to tell apart, and they mostly came in Chipperfield's sets, but some were in the larger Daktari set.

The legless yellow chap is a propylene copy of the safari guide, probably from a cheap plastic copy vehicle of some kind? The piece to find is the stethoscope.

Common animals from stand-alone vehicles were the Bull which came with a Lamborghini 'Fighting Bull', the Rhino came with a VW Beatle 1200CC East African Rally car with steering while the Jumping rabbit was the accessory for the Hillman Hunter also a rally car - London to Sydney.

Close-ups of the 'Kanga', a quick spray in the factory lead to quite a variation from pale ones to dark, and they have a little Joey hiding under there.

Tarzan, recently staring in a small scale 'deffinative' list is actually 54mm, with the sliding one - from the play set - closer to 60mm, colour variations in the PVC are quite marked.

Poor research (or cutting and pasting from that there interweb thing) leads to myth and legend, while a lack of question marks in poorly researched text leads to myth and legend being taken as fact. Never mind, he will take it from here now, he's taken enough already!

 

2025 - Now some internet images here;

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-tarzan-corgi-gift-set.html

 

A hunter from another Safari/Jungle set got copied in Hong Kong for a cheapo cuckoo-clock as one of the two barometric figures who swing in and out with changes in the weather, his hands now testing for rain. The inset was previously published in Plastic Warrior and looks at other cuckoo-clock figures, with early composition on the left with a wooden one, hard styrene plastics in the middle and the copy on the right.

The figure is missing his rifle and I think he came with the Lions of Longleat set?

No Comment!

The Lions of Longleat set also contained this nice lion-house, very useful as a temporary HQ or for hiding a Flak or Pak AT-gun in a war game!

The lions are circling the hunter in the previous picture and are both different poses from the Clarence character piece, but come in the same colour material so go well together.

They were also much pirated in those Noah's Arks sets of the 1970's available as mail-order from Tabloid magazines or TV listers and from Bible book-shops.

G is for Guards - At Ease...Stand Easy!

These are all Britains from the Herald range, with two older UK polyethylene production on the left and two of the later Hong Kong production in PVC to the right, the first with a plug-on base the second with a integrally moulded base.

Left to right; Britains Detail in a dense PVC, unknown swoppet (Speedwell?), unknown swoppet (Charbens?), early Timpo and late Timpo - all ethylene, then a Timpo-Toyway in vinyl an interim/late Timpo or Timpo-Toyway, probably in polypropylene.

Crescent for Kellogg's in scarlet polyethylene, a painted Crescent in the darker plastic, Timpo Kentoys (thanks Dave - see comments), Charbens and the unknown - possibly European premium - we looked at the other day.

C is for Corgi Characters

This is the least complete of all these Corgi posts and yet it was the largest area covered by Corgi who really bought into the licensing 'thing', producing a lot of adult and children's TV, comic and movie characters, or vehicles based on them.

My problem being that while often know what's what, it can take years to correct the 'unknown' boxes, especially as in recent years my stuff has been in storage twice, in three venues with 6  moves! So...most of the Sci-fi,  Marvel and DC stuff is elsewhere and a lot of the anthropomorphic cartoon stuff likewise, while the Superheroes are deliberately in another box...but here are a few to give a flavour of the oeuvre...

The yellow submarine, who (of a certain age) didn't have one of these, not because we knew what it or they were/was, but because our still slightly uptight late-Edwardian parents could attach themselves to the younger 'Hippies' vicariously, by buying us a psychedelic cartoon submarine barley large-enough for the four-man popular beat-combo occupying it!

Hey maaaan...anybody got a carrot...I know I've done that one before...I'll do it again...he was a stoner! And that F***ing snail...I hated the bloody whining whingeing moaning mollusk!

Tom and Jerry - unbeatable, when Tom gets sliced into a dozen pieces by a toaster or something falls to the ground in a heap of pieces, shake himself together and continues the pursuit! Why didn't he go and live somewhere else, dumb-ass! There was a Tom, and this toy came out 30-odd years before Small Soldiers and their roller-skate.

Pink Panther...two cool for school - period. There was another PP vehicle (the pictured one is off some kind of motorbike thing), a car with a huge fly-wheel and with a pull-strip motor, not sure it was Corgi thought, or whether it had a separate figure?

All the above are favourites with a whole new generation of infants, though the Magic Roundabout has had scene and dialogue changes/makeovers.

Buck Rogers and dribble or whatever the pet-robot was called - Yes; I could look it up but then someone might think I give an ess-aich-one-tea!

The Hardy Boys, there are a couple of three figures missing from the bands line-up here, not a big seller so the figures aren't as numerous.

The figure with a cloth-cap is from Postman Pat or Thomas the Tank Engine or Bob the Builder or....it's from the Corgi flood years...

Wonder Woman (looking like a native-American dwarve), Spider-man and the Green Lantern? Hornet (thanks M7 - see comments) There are loads missing here, other Spidy's, three sculpts of seated Batman & Robin's in two sizes, a Hulk or two, a large Batman, Superman...

G is for Guards - Lone*Star Parade and Ranges (with Hong Kong copies)

Title says it...

Lone*Star parade and 'ranges', and again - with the Royal Salute pose - we see smooth and textured with the same base, while the standing firing provides different bases.

With Hong Kong copies, there are two types of these; HONG KONG and EMPIRE MADE, both come in either scarlet or maroon.

C is for Corgi Civil-Response

When you ring 999 in the UK the nice lady or gent on the other end of the line always says "Do you want the Police, Fire or Ambulance service caller?", so we will look at them in that order...

We've looked at the police several times in recent months - well; going back a year or more (where the hell does it go?!), and the mounted one was in the first Corgi post the other day, The other two - badly sculpted - propylene pairs came with a late Corgi Juniors play set toward the end of Corgi 'proper', there was a third pair in day-glo orange (fire personnel?).

The day-glo traffic cop at the rear came with several vehicles as my brother kept getting him and his set of traffic-cones and folding road signs in a plastic crate - Range Rover, Ford Transit van...and others? He is also designed to match the ambulance crew from the same era (late 1970's-early '80's) shown below.

The firemen came with the superb Corgi No.1143 American La France Aerial Rescue Truck, one of their best sellers despite also being one of the pricier "...wait 'till Christmas..." items in the catalogue!

The US cop is perhaps a Noo Yoiker with that hat, or LAPD? and in the flanking shots both he and a medic type are on the mystery card we will look at again...

A round-up of the stretcher cases and bearers from Corgi over the years. I could spend a while trying to make sense of them but won't for several reasons. Firstly the websites I visited in researching the figures don't always seem to get it right themselves being more interested in the vehicles as stand-alone playthings or mint-boxed investments. Secondly some of these seem to be interchangeable with late Dinky (who were bought by Mettoy) toys, thirdly; I will post a vague list at the end of these Corgi posts; some of the contents were subject to change and finally; some of the items came with more than one vehicle or in more than one set.

The carded example is giving a clue if you know UK domestic brand trade-marks! Note also the scale-down top-right.

The late sets all went with this day-glow set-up, all part of the craze for motorway emergency vehicles as the M3 and M4 started to open up the nation to visiting other bits of itself with a little more ease!

Some being moulded in orange-red vinyl, sometimes painted, the green one is a softer synthetic rubber and is probably another Hong Kong copy. Again there was a smaller-scaled version.

G is for Guards - Standard Bearers

From the left; a Hong Kong, PVC (with ethylene base and head) copy of Britains Herald, a Timpo 'solid' with moving arm, a Reisler polystyrene Danish Guard and a massif lump of lead which I assume is a home-casting...or very minor make!

C is for Corgi Circus

We briefly dipped into the circus figures the other day looking at those BTS resin things from Hastings or wherever it was! The Corgi Circus has been one of their longest running successes, from the Chipperfield's branded sets of the early 1960's through to the Jean Richard circus set of 1978. Quite a few were also re-issued in the recent Corgi flood years, although I think figures were either thin on the ground or poured-metal 'Corgi Classics'?

The later figures top left are a styrene human cannon-ball'ess flanked by two 54mm vinyl characters, the clown replacing the earlier model, then; a diver from a set we'll be looking at again in a day or so.

The smaller unpainted polypropylene girl with the ring is from a 'Dolphinarium' (on a lorry!), the horses are common as they came six (or 8?) to a set with a circus horse-box, while the elephant (a lump of PVC) was also issued as a hollow-finished styrene kit, along with a packing case in the accessory range.

The clown and chimpanzee from the advertising Land Rover, I have one missing the mic, the other missing the hat, so lined them up to get a 'composite' shot! Again; faces get very different treatments, one being 'whited-up' with the shirt's pale blue.

G is for Guards - Lone*Star Musicians

Er...that's it...Lone*Star musicians...9 of them, three similar pairs, some Toyway reissues, some originals some intermediate...musicians...from Lone*Star.

C is for Corgi Cowboys (No Indians!)

I think I promised this one to somebody over a year ago, can't remember if it was Sam or Gog, but it was one of them! Anyway, Sam has since published a better review of these but as I'm doing all (most...) of the Corgi over Christmas, they've got their five minutes...

There were only five or six items in total, these two (stagecoach and generic wagon), a simplified locomotive and carriage, and two larger play-sets, wagons and train, both with the three buildings. The only thing to note is that the red buck-board/prairie-wagon only seems to have come in the set, so you should always grab it if you see it - not for scalping a profit, but to fill the gap in your collection!

G is for Guards - Cymbalists

Lets put'em together and make some noise people!

Charbens x3; late, late mould-shrink and early with a Sacul on the end.

Another Sacul on the left and two Lone*Star, one website says smooth-bearskin'ed LS guards should have oval bases, but things are never that simple, the textured bearskins are later.

Various treatments of the Crescent/Kellogg's figure.

C is for Corgi 'Crocks' - Edwardian Style

A small number of the Corgi range are of what we would call 'old fashioned people' as children, now - of course - I know they are Edwardian - and still not that 'old fashioned' when I was a nipper! As far as I can tell, several of them were also supplied to Dinky...

...of whom the couple in the main picture to the left above are some along with the seated pair to the right in the upper inset. The first couple are very much typical Corgi in a hard'ish PVC, but the other - pinkish - trio, are a very soft, almost silicone-like synthetic rubber. This may be a clue as to which is Corgi and which Dinky?

The other chap is starting a car with a starting handle...who remembers doing that, when I was a kid I well remember starting cars with a starting handle when the starters failed on cold mornings, and as a teenager trying to start a tractor without breaking my arm!!

The other couple; bottom right, are the inimitable Jeeves and his daft charge Bertie Wooster.

The other figures from the range in Edwardian dress ore the characters from the film Chitty-chitty Bang-bang, which was produced in two sizes, the Husky/Corgi Juniors box-size, which in this case is a good OO gauge-compatible 20-odd mm's. The larger Corgi model is around 1:48 (I think Corgi stated 1:43 for their models?) and the children are separate mouldings, rather than a single piece.

The reason they are in the same pose in both sizes is probably down to the licence agreement tying Corgi into the use of a single  recognisable pre-movie press-release image?

And yes...that's a banana...I didn't have a piece of flower-arrangers oasis and couldn't find my pumice-block!!