H is for Heritage Toys and Games

Or; is it Russimco? Can't remember if this has appeared here or over on Moonbase, but it's stuck in Piacsa waiting to be processed, so process it I will! Heritage Shops were (or still are? The town centre units seem to have disappeared during the recession but the airport outlets may still be going?) a chain of very expensive shops selling touristy tat, sometimes of some quality, but always for ridiculous money, hung on various 'hooks' of historical period, art movement or famous events/places.

This being a case in point; an all paper/card version of Battleships, with artwork that can't decide if it's 'pulp' or Jules Verne in style and which cost around £15.99 or something - a fair few years ago. Just wait until it turns up in a charity shop for 99p, I did! To be fair, it's the artwork I bought it for, mixed or not, the ships are Pulp!

There is a similar chain of shops who's name escapes me, who where selling a remake/re-issue of the old Answer Robot game last Christmas, again it was £12.99 or nearabouts and for a single modern copy of the old Johillco plastic robot, it's not worth the investment when it'll turn-up at a car-boot sale soon...

G is for Golden - Stamp Books

Some shots from the archive. Who had one of these...who remembers these? We had a Wild West one I think, and possibly a dinosaur one? But as a Toy Soldier collector; this is the one to get! Of course; they're not stamps in any meaningful use of the word, having no monetary value, being only pre-glued, perforated labels on sheets you have to separate yourself.

These have been pasted-in with some care and lined-up nicely etc..some you see have been glued by an unsupervised 5-year old and can be in a right state, although the real trick is to find one with the [licky-sticky] sticker sheets still in the front of the book, undamaged.

F is for Fairylite

I picked this up at Sandown Park a few weeks ago, it's a lot bigger than the Bell/Merit jig-toys supplied to Kellogg's, and the seller stated it was Fairylite, but there's nothing to indicate whether it is or not actually, so the attribution is to be considered provisional until I see a boxed or carded one somewhere?

'Battle Damage' Battleship!

It also differs from the other British-made ones by being polystyrene, while the earlier ones started life in Cellulose acetate and then moved to a softer ethylene with US puzzles and HK copies of all in styrene.

Fairylite were importers from HK (and Japan) but also combined, sourced toys closer to home and seem to have made some themselves, so 'you pays your money' with them sometimes in trying to attribute origin!

The interesting thing about this is unlike the others mentioned, which usually have a guessable system of construction with a central 'key' that actually does all the work, this has a serious element of puzzle to it, which seems to be based on the common mechanism of the wooden cubes, balls, barrels and pyramids of my childhood. Indeed you can still get them and they make excellent presents for kids at that difficult age, where kid is not yet teenager!

E is for Elephants

Probably had that heading before? Never mind, that's another thing that'll start to be duplicated occasionally! Four completely different elephants, but all rather charming....

Top left is a two-halves, celluloid baby elephant made in Japan in the 1950's, from the lack of decoration and the two holes I suspect it's from one of those strung 'fascination' you get across a pram to keep an infant amused? Trumpeting to his right is a Starlux elephant in styrene, moving clockwise; below him is a blow-moulded ethylene elephant who may have been flocked once? Finally an olin-composition baby elephant from Hausser/Elastolin.

The upper two are 30mm'ish the bottom two 50 and 60mil, except that being elephants age-vs-size means they will fit with most scales at some point - if you know what I mean!

D is for Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future...Past

Shot this a few years ago now; no toy soldier or model figure connection whatsoever...but that hasn't stopped me posting other esoteric things in the past and who can resist Dan Dare?

Various shots of the box, which ends-up giving a better idea of the puzzle as well, due to the vendor covering the actual puzzle in...

...clingfilm! Which just will not be photographed from any angle with flash, but which - due to the light conditions in the hall couldn't be photographed without flash either!

Added; 26th October 2014

Andy B has come to our rescue with a superb scan of the box-top, which gives full credit to the artwork, first as he sent it, and then collaged to show each quarter the 'right way up'!

Thanks Andy, that's improved the post by about 100%!

C is for Cherilea

At the other end of the spectrum (from the proceeding two posts of modern shite) comes this rare and collectable shite!

I've literally just found these two images in the Cherilea file, where they shouldn't be...if they haven't yet been used on the blog..so they may both have so starred already...apologies if that's the case, but now we're over the 1k of posts this will happen occasionally!

These were photographed in a show-and-tell round a mates house a year or so ago, and I know the rest are still in Picasa on the laptop, so; ? Anyway, previously-shown or not...they're the first version [semi-]swoppet knights. Rare as rocking horse do-do and rather crudely executed, but oozing 'toy-charm'. Note - little dagger on the middle figure and what looks like Joan D'Arc's breast-plate (geddit!) on the left-hand figure.

These are always broken (I think I've written that before, so he probably IS on the blog somewhere?), 50mm and there's a similar Arab to make the pair, getting one complete is becoming harder and harder.

B is for Boley

Boley are (or were, I think they recently folded?) another Jobber, this time the right side of the pond to carry the moniker. Importing various China-sourced bits of plastic tat, these are at the bottom end, their HO railway related range of big-rigs and AFV's being quite good...for knock-offs!

Aaahh! The ubiquitous Airfix British Paratroops (with M1 helmets!) make another appearance...aided by the equally commonly pirated Matchbox bazooka-man, German MG-gunner and a couple of Tim-Mee/MPC types to give us a sniper and mortar! Freindlies in green, orange-force in grey...that's how it works in Toyland!

Airfix-wannabe Indians and a mix of Britains and Crescent + Cowboys...the Indians get some nice colours, while the cowboys are a very pallid snot-grey! I think I got these a couple of years ago, they're a bit small at 50mm and probably getting harder to find, but then,; if you weren't feeding a blog...would you want them! B for Boley!

A is for Ackerman

Already in the tag list so must have covered something else by them, Ackerman are a UK importer (what the Americans call a 'Jobber') who get the products (from the Far East) marked-up with their own logo or identity...although sometimes only as a sticker.

I picked these up in a local discount store the other day for one of your English pounds, so about 2 of anything else! I would imaging they are easy to find in party stores, either on the high street or on-line.

Despite being made in China and so cheap, they are well moulded, and while I initially thought they might be the old click-together moulds from 1970's Italy, they are in fact slightly simpler models, but I have a soft spot for motorcycles, so had to have a set!

Close-ups of the not-so-girly vehicles, the three cards the vendor had were all the same, although colours of parts varied, but the mix re. duplications remained the same, yet the blisters are designed to take any of the models, so there may be different combinations out there.

I'm going to try and do the alphabet in a month; that's A out of the way, I'm off to click Ackerman in the tag list and see what else I've covered, as I know the bulk of their stuff hasn't been blogged yet!

H is for Humbrol

Added a new tin of Humbrol to the collection today, well, I say 'new', it's second hand, but seems to be unopened, and, more interestingly, would appear to be a really useful, previously uncatalogued colour best described as 'Track & Chassis Rust'...bargain!

More mud-hopping finds from that strange toy strata in the vegetable garden again!

H is for Homemade Home-casts

Following on from the less than common Krolyn aluminium comes these, common enough to traveller as they are sold primarily as tourist keepsake items, they are sand-cast in back alleys from melted down drinks cans!

A typical 'rural' pair of females collecting maize and bringing back...firewood? Sugar cane? A minimalist paint job in a pallet of muted, almost autumnal colours over a worn undercoat of black which is probably either ink or boot-polish based.

Also from Africa comes this necklace of tiger's eye lumps with clay, stone and other beads, featuring four home-cast animals. In this case they seem to be brass or bronze, presumably recycled from electrical or engine parts? The patina probably gained with a urine bath (yes, pee!), lemon juice or vinegar?

They may - of course - be hideously commercial and just made to look vernacular?

Studies of the animals, the two big cats (a cheetah and a male lion) are a nice 1:76'ish, while the buffalo and rhino are smaller.

K is for Krolyn from København

Garratt (data subject to change and availability!) describes this firm as producing 75mm aluminium Robin Hood figures, among other things, which is lucky as we're looking at some Robin Hood figures here, around 75mm's high and made of aluminium...which are marked Krolyn!

Beautifully animated poses, but the larger size allows for a greater degree of flexibility with sculpting than the 50+mm's of Wend-Al and Quiralu? The bow - obviously - is a wire placed in a drill-hole, but the other weapons are integral to the moulding of each figure.

T is for Two - Boxed Hollow-cast Figure Sets

Not even a box-ticking tonight, just a 'showcase' of a couple of nice boxed sets I photographed on Adrian's table at Sandown the other weekend, what strikes me as a younger, plastics collector, is A) How little you got in some of these sets and B) how unrealistic/inaccurate a lot of it is.

Generic box for modern'ish 'Combat Infantry' from Crescent, is it just me or do they look a bit Scandinavian? The mortar is a nice looking piece I haven't seen before, while the two-tone finish of the tin-plate sentry box is less common than the plain red or green you usually find it in.

The Ranch Set from Timpo, again...not much in the box, two guys surrendering (?) and four fence pieces which together will make a compound large enough for er...a cow (not included!). Still, they were simple times and one hopes little Junior would have enjoyed the sight on Christmas morning...the glossy colours would have been a bit brighter 60-odd years ago, especially against all the dung-brown and pea-green walls of post-war Britain's houses!

But comparing them to the pre-war sets by Britains - for instance - still leaves you wondering...it may be that this was the smallest of a range of sets all titled Ranch Set, that was the case with the garage sets the composition mechanics come in, there were four sizes of set, with the largest having one of everything, the smallest; just enough for a scenario or two, in the days when imagination was everything.

Close-ups of some of the components, the shrub must have been a common piece as it turns up lose, quite often, while the tree is lovely, if needing fettling before it will stand up - I do like a good tree!

T is for Two - Space Tanks!

We like a good space tank here, we even like a pretty poor space tank...and when two join the fleet together...well!

Marked LP LB for Lik Be, this is the tank utilising the - probably Roco Minitanks - Panzer IV chassis. Often found also in Mikephil packaging and having various body-types, this in the 'Engineering' variant! Nicely scaled for gaming in HO or OO-gauge sizes.

While this little chap is closer to 30mm for figure gaming purposes, and while made in China (frowned at by the tin plate collectors as cheap shit), it's quite an early one (1960's - early-70's?) with a few plastic components and three rear-firing missile tubes...missing the missiles.

This appears to have been copied by Marx, in small-scale plastic for some of their play-sets, so must be an early China tank...or 'chinatank'

Since corrected to Lik Be / LB.

M is for More Daleks

A very simple thing aimed at infants or young children having only about 24 large pieces, the box is not original I think? But the cover has survived as a 'how it looks' card, anyone know who's responsible for this?

From the plywood; I'm guessing Victory, as we had a couple of their puzzles when we were kids, a bit more complicated than this, but I remember an Indian Village with shaped pieces, including a canoe with three Indians which could be stood up at the back of my Airfix Indians!

T is for Talk Like a Retard

I can't believe how fuckwitted I am sometimes...actually - after being diagnosed; it's not a question of believing, just accepting! I posted on facebook weeks ago that 'Talk Like a Pirate' day was due...then I go and forget the day itself! Well, I'm not going to wait until next year (19th September...bloody 19TH!) to post these - which I got especially for TLAP day, soooo....

Those of you who know me, or who have followed the blog long enough will know I don't rate poured resin, for several reasons; it's a cheap technology - that's usually expensive at retail; yes, its a polymer, but it's not really 'plastic' being more brittle than the 'olin compositions it's replaced; it's obvious at 20 paces unless modelling a smooth solid; paint's often a questionable...I just don't like it very much!

But...these work quite well, yes they look like resin at 20 paces, yes the painting is questionable...but the pallet works and they've photographed well (note to self, more all black backgrounds, less pale or colours), and they are quite evocative as a group. Clearly influenced by the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, they are also a bit effete-looking, but it works.

They are by an unknown maker and I don't know how many other poses might be in  a full set, they all seem to have used the same model (check the faces!) and while I got them in a cake decorators, they were probably aimed at the tourist/museum trade? The two chaps with small buckler shields might look good in a Highland war band (where they'd be 'targes') and the animated pose I've photographed from both sides is particularly nice I think?

Still don't rate resin though...

Feb. 2018 - According to Peter Evans - who knows about these things - they were imported from China by a company called Elgate "...a few years ago...", so I'll add that to the tag list!