N is for Not as Rare as Unicorn Shit

Another one from 99p stores...heay, if you're on a tight budget and you've got a Blog to feed...My Little Mystical Ponies!

Turns out that while the shit's hard to find the animals can be picked-up by the bagful! Now the merger deal between 99p Stores and Poundstretcher (or Poundland? I did go into it a while ago!) has been given the green light some of these in-house brands may disappear, whether PMS goes with the Unicorns or stays perhaps re-'branded' to Funtastic is anyone's guess.

Now to get 16 new posts out quick to push this off the bottom of the page, before someone who knows me sees this shit! They're out there if you want them...

O is for Ospedale

Slowly clearing Picasa, these get their 15 minutes in the limelight, carded and definitely paying 'homage' to Marx...Dulcop's figures - in this case - being around 50mm.

I've seen a set of these on evilBay recently with all combat figures, but this set is 'enhanced' (in the loosest sense of the word) with some dolls-house type accessories and a dressing-up/joke syringe!

If you find these lose, you're going to think they are Hong Kong piracies, but they are Italian product as far as I know, just poor quality 'infant' toys.

I is for Ittsy-bittsy, Teeny-weeny, Khaki Over All Tankeenis!

Owh! I shouldn't be allowed! But they are very small...and khaki....

Compared to a 1:76th'ish figure (Quaker Gladiator...not Kellogg's!) who was to hand, the main subject here is a Cracker-toy/Gum-ball novelty, closest to a Churchill and around N-gauge scale if it's any specific size!

While the one in the bag is a scale-down to about 1:144th, probably of/based on the UPC copies of the Roco-Minitanks M44/53/55 family of SPG's but with elements of a Stüg to the front glacis and having a revolving turret! I'm pretty sure I have a made-up one in storage with an equally small British-looking armoured car, so they were probably sold as both kits and complete [capsule] toys, but don't quote me until I've shown them here!

C is for Cartoon Card Craft

Two years ago I found this rather neat download, I think I flagged it up at the time in a 'News, Views...', anyway I had a stab at it, took some photographs and it's been languishing in Picasa ever since! Watching Ed Berg re-design his fire house reminded me this was sitting there...

I think it was three sheets of cut-outs, with lots of white between the pieces - for littler fingers? Or for those impossibly blunt, plastic-handled 'craft' scissors they always issue in primary/junior school!

Disney's Babes in Toyland marching toy soldier, about 6-inches high! How cool is that? here...make your own. Quite a festive thing too and I'm no fan of Disney, but it's out there, it's a Toy Soldier and the kids love this stuff at Christmas!

If I were to have another stab at it, I'd print it off and sit it on a radiator, or in the sun and give it five to ten thin coats of hairspray first; I found that the bits which required the most work (arms and legs which needed rolling round a pencil) started to wear-off, I think because I used the studio printer which was a big machine using powder cartridges or something?

Another download here (Century 21 JR21) brought to my attention by the boys at Moonbase proved less successful however...

...the TV21 Snow Train: Started OK, but I glued the back on the cab thinking I was being clever and getting the shape to hold while I wrestled with the windscreen, but of course I needed to flatten the tabs down with tweezers or a long sticky thing (like...a stick?) from the end I'd just sealed-up...Doh!

All the remaining cut-out bits and the cab are now in a Douwe Egbert's coffee jar waiting for a new plan...it'll be a long wait - I fear. There was a really nice one on Moonbase, made properly by someone proper, but I can't find it, can anyone from there give us a link?

R is for Roswell!

I saw a UFO once. I'm not a great fan of UFOlogy and don't often tell the tale, there were about 60 of us, on our final 25-miler in basic training, we'd not been long dropped-off from the transport so about 2/2.30 AM, when we noticed a light which seemed to be in the cloud base, which was very low.

The light would move out to the horizon and back, then go off to the horizon again in another direction. It never seemed to change speed, even when turning 90º ('on a sixpence'), it never lost focus (never getting larger toward the horizon or smaller toward the apex - ruling-out a searchlight of some kind), it never seemed to brake the clouds it was enveloped in (never appearing brighter or dimmer) and it never disappeared (ruling-out a headlight climbing into and out-of the Welsh valleys).

After about 40 minutes or so of muttering and passing of the news up the line the Platoon Commander sent the NCO's back to tell us, "Yes, it's a UFO, no one will believe us, keep it to yourselves" and within the hour we'd all grown bored of watching it and tucked-in for the march, so never noticed if is disappeared of its own volition, or with the coming of the dawn?

Needless to say, I was telling the tale a few years later in Tea Break at a warehouse I was working in, when Reg James said "I believe you", I said "Thanks Reg" in a slightly patronising tone, as you would if you thought someone was patronising you! "No!" he said; "I really do believe you, I've heard the exact same story from one of your NCO's in the mess at Lichfield years ago!" We already knew we'd been in the same Division.

Turned out that after telling us all to keep schtüm, the NCO's had gone straight to their mess, had a couple of beers and blabbed the whole thing! Don'cha just hate middle-managers!

I don't think it was aliens, indeed the fact that it occurred over a busy MOD training area - Sennybridge (SENTA) - makes me sure that while it WAS an 'unidentified' object (in the sky), it contained no little green men, or 'Greys and Browns' as the UFOlogists call the types below.

Equally, as far as I know nothing has entered military service since (this occurred in November 1984) that might reproduce the effect, so it is either 'still in development' or something we are - to date - not permitted to know about...oooh! Conspiracy!...no, just realism and attempted explanation of the unexplainable.

I have a feeling the upper row (vinyl) of cartoony ones were a cereal give-away at some point in the mid-1990's early 2000's? The two to the bottom left (polyethylene) were larger capsule (gum-ball) novelties while the six greenies are current 'party favours' and while these are a complete set of all board-sports (from left to right, top to bottom: Roller Skates, Ice Skates, Snowboard? Surf Board, Skateboard and Skis), I have seen other sets of  six footballers, other ball-gamers and 'occupations', and in other colours - all in a soft polyvinyl 'jelly'.

OK guys, message passed, come and get me, I'm fed up with this stinky ball and its god-forsaken prime species anyway!

D is for Dunby...Dunby-Combex-Marx

When I began collecting seriously (1980/81'ish) the first thing I realised was that information (accurate information) was key, hard to find and often misleading! At the time I was a specifically small-scale collector, and turned to Garratt's encyclopedia (available in public Libraries back in the day) which I read from cover to cover, taking notes on every mention of small scale and learning some of the 'trade shorthand' to find small scale that wasn't specifically mentioned as such by the author.

As a work, it leave a lot to be desired now, but then it was the only work of it's kind (in breadth it still is!), and while the historical/ metal entries were reasonably accurate, his own dislike of plastic and failure to keep on top of new production (something I'm guilty of...) meant the major errors were all in the new/plastic entries!

One of the entries was: Dunby Combex Marx Group. See Marx Miniatures. Turning to that cross-referenced entry brought you to one of his biggest mistakes, the MPC link one! It also suggested that the Swansea factory was the DCM connection and latterly (when he was writing) it was, but there had been a bumpy ride to get there. No matter, the point was I had added a page to my 'master list' along the lines of Dunby Combex Marx...may have made small scale figures, or copies of Miniature Masterpieces?

I then spent 35 years looking out for anything with Dunby Combex Marx on it! Earlier this year that wait was ended, but Dunby and Marx had nothing to do with it...the find was Combex only!

The box was pretty destroyed, so I've cropped out the usable bits, but basically it was a shop counter display box with a push-back lid with cut-out to make a half-oval backing display behind the open box's lose contents, and the contents were vinyl Disney figurines, probably shipped in from Heimo or one of the other European Marx concerns - despite stating the 'Manufactured in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong'.

The grubbier ones above have been added by me to show colour variation of the figures over time, and because now I have the box, all the similar figures can go in the one place!

So far so predictable, but the box also contained hard plastic (polystyrene) figures which were mercifully saved from the usual vinyl-to-styrene melting by dint of most items having full paint coverage. But it is an odd mix, with the duplicates I've not photographed there was about 50% Minnie, Daisy and nephews (all vinyl), 25% King John's (styrene) and 25% all other movie and short-film characters (mix of vinyl and styrene), with no Mickey figure as you might be expecting (sold first?).

As always with Marx, it further muddies the water rather than leaving it clearer. Were all the contents from HK, or maybe only the styrene polymer ones, were Marx (UK) shipping vinyl from HK while Heimo produced it over the channel?

The King John is a HK piece, he has 'Hong Kong  No 510' for a mark, but the Pecos Bill is a Charmore/Heimo piece - or known to be? Maybe the HK refers only to the box, rather than it's contents, or were the contents topped-up in-store by bags of similar figures - which were from Heimo? All the vinyl figures have the pin-release holes but no marks (Daisy, Minnie and Nephews) or only the 'Disney Productions'?

Anyway, they're all in one place now with 'some' packaging and I'm not looking for a DCM piece any more! Below are a couple of comparisons we've seen before here, but re-shot, to make the post more worthwhile!

Pecos Bill, old chalky Swansea-produced, UK ethylene on the left, HK styrene Disneykin in the middle and a vinyl (Heimo?) on the right.

Again the UK version is on the top, the two Disneykins showing how some had stickers with the Marx mark, some didn't and the new polystyrene large size, previous versions of this in my collection are vinyl.

News, Views, Etc...Pages

So, after yesterdays suggestion I have put all the Jig Toy / Puzzle Key Ring posts together on one page (see above for all pages), and will add to it from time to time. I've edited it to make it flow smoother and excised both a few duplications of my monosyllabic blurb and some errors/contradictions. I won't edit the originals which remain as a product of the time they were published. I also moved a few things around a bit and included the CIJ tractor and the - possibly - Fairylite battleship.

A few weeks ago I did the same thing with the Hong Kong Small Scale Khaki Infantry posts I rather lost interest in, and while some of you have found it, most haven't because I didn't announce it...creatures of habit - Humans! Again it's been edited, I've added the next section (it's still only about a 1/4 or a 1/3 complete) and I've added some bagged/carded sets and additions to the previously published sections.

S is for Something...

...Old...

How lovely are these? Red Indians on a horn? Although; one of them's a Green Indian and all of them are First Nation Native Americans! They seem to be - in part - based on an old Elastolin composition prone pose, with the rock (he's resting against in the originals) and base removed and the rifle truncated for packing and shipping as carded items. 40-mil give or take, Hong Kong, polyethylene.

...Something New...

Nasty, a kind of pre-formed synthetic/silicon-rubber case or shell [skin!], filled with beads in a gel, so that rather than flopping about like a bean-bag toy, they are stretchy, yet firm. If you have ever gutted and dressed well-fed game-birds, handling this is like handling a pheasants full crop...nasty!

God knows who thought this up, but to be fair, the actual sculpt is very good, a Northern White rhino, I think, and it came from either The Works or Tiger - I can't remember, but is was 50p or a pound? And there were other animals. About 1:24/25th scale? And it does hold its shape, or - at least - return to it.

...Something Borrowed...

Apropos an eMail conversation on the small scale Roman's page, Tim Peterson sent me this scan of the Marx Romans from the old 60mm polystyrene Warriors of the World series, but a later re-issue (Marksmen?) version unpainted in black ethylene plastic. Good job he did too, I only have three of these (standard, waving sword and whip-man) and they are in storage (and two of them are leary-coloured re-issues), so it would have been a few years before this box was ticked!

...Something Blue...

Believed to be Argentinian, this large, polyethylene, 6 to 7-inch (I forgot to measure it) figure of the Lone Ranger has articulation at the waist and shoulders.

And if you're wondering what a rhyme about wedding dresses has to do with a toy blog...I won the ring in the Barmbrack on Saturday night, so I've got 11 months and 27 days to get married! Applications on a postcard; must love tolerate piles of old toys, my PA will be doing the initial interog...er...interviews!

F is for Follow-up...to R is for Return...to Jig Toys!

While putting away the new bits I blogged earlier, I though "Didn't I get a little bagged one the other day? What did I do with that?"...well..., I'd put it in with the HK carded stuff, not with the other Jig Toys! And, I'd failed to blog the damaged yellow one a while ago with the others, so...there's enough for another post!

I think we did look at this way back when, but that one is quite pink - if memory serves - and in storage, I've since obtained a redder one and the dun-yellow beast behind it (missing a rear axle), only to pick up a bagged one the other day in a lot of mixed sets.

I once saw a monotone carded one at the big toy fair in the NEC, Birmingham, but the dealer wanted silly money for it so I passed. These are hideously over-hyped, over-valued and over-priced, there are literally millions of them out there, and if you wait, they turn-up in mixed lots for no money at all, or you can $26+post for a BIN on feeBay?

Reverse of the pocket-money carded one with instructions. They also come in gum-ball machines, fairground grab-machines, Christmas crackers and any other source of small, inexpensive, plastic tat!

Just as in the UK the 'originals' are credited to Bell/Merit (J then J&L Randall), so in the States Lionel seem to get the credit for the better quality samples. I think that while these are all HK, the yellow one may be based on a Lionel original, while the red ones are lesser quality copies of copies.

The ladder is the wrong way round on the dusty yellow one giving it even greater visual difference from the red one, but it is taller with a bigger cab, better details and has cleaner lines.

R is for Return....to Montaplex

I've been after this for ages, and finally got one off Steve Vickers table at one of the last two Sandown's, but I can't remember which one; September's - I think, the photo's are meta-tagged September anyway!

Montaplex's Churchhill Tank. They made a small range of tanks around 1:87/1:72, some fair, some poor, this is among the better efforts, and I've seen them on the Montaplex forum, but never managed to track one down.

Single runner with 16 pieces for what looks like a Mk. IV. The model has carpet wheels hidden in the running gear and a movable-elevation gun in a revolving turret.

It also has two teeny-tiny little men who couldn't possibly handle the 16-inch naval gun shells stowed behind them! Clearly it's a Q-tank secretly being used as an ammo-carrier for the USS New Jersey...or maybe it's just a toy! Plush seats or what?

Fully made-up it holds its own against the 1960's Airfix Kit or Matchbox die-cast of the 1990's, apart from the windows (why it needed two itty-bitty little men!) and is every bit the equal of the Tudor Rose version. Really pleased to finally have one, I'm looking for a couple more now - in different colours!

R is for Return...to H. Grossman's 'Deadstone Valley'

You know that shite I said I wouldn't be buying more of, only to buy more when it got reduced to silly money? Well, they (The Works again!) got another set in and reduced it to two quid! That's JUST two 'squids people!

A pirate and a colonial explorer type...Hrrummmphh! How could you say no, and I had to buy a set for someone else, so buying two was easy, same queue, same till, same card, same bag, same journey home!

These had a different grave, which although less durable that the vac-forms we looked at last time, are nevertheless a more successful attempt, being a printed, pre-formed card box with a press-out panel for the sarcophagus and memorial stone to sit in.

There were a bunch of flyers in the containing carton.

The display carton and a look at the various ways these figures are attached to the end wall. Some have a stud-and-hole system, others have a dove-tailed, double groove while the explorer has a tip-and-slide (into a rectangular space with a chamfered undercut) base, although he has the holes for non-existent studs, so there must have been a change of plan with him!

On one level they really are rubbish, but as I keep finding them they are growing on me - as a side collection!

R is for Return...to Jig Toys

Although they are easier to search for on evilBay as Puzzle Keychains (or Key Chains, sellers have learnt to use both in the title-bar alongside one another), we in the UK also know them as Jig Toys from the Kellogg's issues and that's how I have listed/tagged them over the years.

These have turned-up since I last blogged them (I'll probably gather all the posts together in one page as I did with the HK 'khaki infantry' the other day, so it's all in one place), the ball in one of several geometric shape puzzles you can find out there while the other two are not really puzzles, being more 'clip-together' stacks of parts with a single key-part.

The ferry boat comes in two sizes, I think we've looked at the smaller version before, this is the larger one, same number of parts and same method of construction.

The actual trigger for this post...how fun is this? It's small, looks nothing like a monster, or a dinosaur, and has no puzzle. The capsule is clearly aimed at the Christmas Stocking market, as it's disguised as a tangerine! They also come in Christmas crackers at the budget end of the market.

I took it off the runner and made it up, sacrilege - I know - but having discussed 'Canon' elsewhere today and pointed out that I'm not an atheist because there's no words for people who don't believe in Pixies, Faeries, Zombies or the Flying Spaghetti Monster I feel a bit of sacrilege is a good thing; helping keep religious fantasists in their place...and it's a mass-produced, ephemeral piece of plastic shite, of which I'm sure another will turn-up!

I think all the above are Hong Kong in origin, but the train might be a British original? The 'monster' and the locomotive are soft ethylene, while the other two are hard styrene.

R is for Return...to Corgi

Quick follow-up post with a few bits that have either come in, been added to or been identified since I did my Corgi round-up a year or two ago. The chap who posted the negativity about those posts elsewhere on the Wibbly Wobbly Way ( (c) JGW, 1990-something!) was offered the chance to prove his point/contribute but has not taken up the offer, hey-ho, plenty of gobshites in the hobby; I'm probably considered one myself!

This nondescript Hong Kong looking thing has been in the 'Unknown' box for the longest time and is a Corgi issue, from the Chevrolet 'Impala' Kennel Wagon (No, 486), and came with a copy of the Poodle from the circus, a duplicate of the policeman's Alsatian and the little seated grey and white thing we looked at last time.

I mentioned when we looked at the Circus animals that the vinyl elephant was also issued as a styrene kit, and here (on the left/above in all shots) is the factory assembled version, issued with those vehicles that had previously contained the vinyl one.

You can see from the bird's eye view that he is thinner but otherwise pretty much the same, it would seem that in order to prepare a new tool for the polystyrene moulding, they simply cut the old vinyl one down the centre-line, leaving him with a dieted girth and the requirement of new/re-cut trunk and tail! The hollow one also has a loss of detail to skin-folds etc...another sign of copying.

Speaking of kits: George Nixon kindly identified these for us in Plastic Warrior magazine's Issue 159. They come from Set 610; Police and GPO Telephone Boxes (yes - another 'Tardis' to find!), and have been bugging me for years - I thought they were from car kits, but apart from Airfix's 1:32 scale kits, I couldn't think who might have included a British Bobby!

L is for Livonians Laid-out on the Lake

Just as the Americans obsess about the Alamo, Custer's last stand, Pearl Harbour and Iwo Jima, the French;  Jena, Camarón, Bir Hakeim and Diên Biên Phu, the British; Agincourt, Crecy, Trafalgar, Waterloo, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Rourke's Drift, Gallipoli, Dunkirk, Dieppe, D-Day, Arnhem, the Falklands (we obsess a lot don't we!) et al. The Russians have their favourite bits of history for making toys of...

We looked at the Revolution and Chapi's chaps the other day, here is another recurring theme in toy soldiers of the Soviet Era: The Battle of Lake Peipus, and the hero of the hour Alexander Nevsky.

Hero if you are an Eastern-orthodox Russian that is; I look to the Crusader types (silver/green below) as the 'good guys' but to a patriotic Russian, the figures in the pointed ('turkic') helmets (gold/red below) are the good guys!

Before anyone bursts a blood-vessel: they're toys, I'm generalising, and I don't care who celebrates what, or why! Except...Custer got his, well and truly!

10-piece mould tools - one for each side, both with three mounted 'knights' and seven foot soldiery - with the figures joined together by short sections of runner or frame ('sprue'), the actual sprue entering from one end. These came in  polythene bags that were missing their header cards and in such a state they went the way of all flesh a long time ago.

However; I believe it represents a later issue, as there's a certain laziness involved in leaving the separating to the customer, and modern commercialism (in all its forms) seems to be about a gradual reduction in quality/service over time!

Close-ups of both sides of each row of both sets...that's it really, nothing I can add here...if you've followed the link you know as much about the battle as I do, if you're a student of uniforms you know more about Teuton/Livonian and Turkic/Slavic armour than I do, so, just pictures of the frames!

I also have a few loose ones, the green are a part set of the Northern Crusaders, the red being a set of Nevsky's Novgorod forces. The box seems to be correct, it has a standard Soviet-era checkers/QA-label stuck on the back, but it came with incomplete forces from both sides, so I've made-up a full set with a loose figure (the archer is a pinkish batch) assuming the greens had been stuffed in there (the lid sat high) when their own box ceased to be? I'm assuming this is the earlier issue?

News, Views etc...Plastic Warrior 160

So, a couple of weeks later than I intended, but a month or two earlier (better timed!) than usual!

Plastic Warrior's last issue:
Issue 160;

* Alwyn Brice continues the 'saga' of Elastolin's 40mm range.
* 'Minor Makers' returns to VP and Speedwell with interesting boxed sets.
* What the !&*$? finds David Pye seeking information on two interesting civilian figures and a Napoleonic (Italian or Spanish officer?) while Mike 'he finds all the best stuff' Harding has the most peculiar-based Flintstone figures to identify.
* Daniel Morgan's 'Herald Notes and Queries' moves to the Guards Brigade with four pages of scarlet.
* The new Hebrew/Israelite set from Engineer Basevitch is studied by Tom Stark.
* Les White gives a 'show-and-tell' of the first series Hobbit blind bag figures from Vivid Imaginations.
* A timely - and thorough - return to the Kellogg's Spacemen (made by Crescent) is penned by Gerald Edwards.
* A fascinating set of Ideal figures (I've never seen before) is studied by Colin Penn, being Justice League figures from the American 'Super hero' comics.
* Editorial content this month is 'More on Minor Makes', with input/feedback from Tomasz Karpowicz on more Khaki Infantry copies of Britains, Timpo and Speedwell poses.
* 'What's New' looks at new figures from...
- Classic Toy Soldiers (CTS) - Korean War
- Replicants - Smugglers ans Alan A'Dale
- Engineer Basevich - Cuban Revolution, WWII Soviets and Crimean Russians

*  Readers letters this month include
- PW's show feedback from Eric Keggans, Brenton and Debbie Hoffman and Debbie Stevens. Brian Shorthouse plugs a book.
- Eric Critchley waxes lyrical on the new (colour) update of the PW Johillco Special (available for all the usual sources, see links below).
- Juan Carlos Martin waxes lyrical on PW 159 and feedback's on that issue's What the !&*$?, Eric Keggans also praises the issue.
- More feedback from Patrick Broquet and an interesting Cherilea 'Khaki Infantry' set from Gerald Edwards are added to Paul 'Stads' Stadinger's musings on Deluxe Reading; Stads also shows new figures (Ancients) from Lodi Enterprises. [Lodi or Lod...?]
- Finally: Stephan Dance feeds-back on the Reddish Maid/Blue Box Wild West sets from the previous issue and adds Co-Operative Stores (Co-Op) to the mix!

[It's a fact that the new quarterly format, allows for this 'last issue' feedback, which in the past often appeared over the next two or three issues in no particular order, now the feedback tends to gather in the following issue, making it much easier to refer back to the previous volume]

* Plus all the usual small-ads.
* Front cover sees one of the Minor Makes (Speedwell) sets courtesy of Barney Brown.
* Back cover illustrates the new Replicants Smugglers in Daniel Morgan's mini diorama/vignette.
* 'News and Views and other stuff' covers Constant Scale, a Hornby kick-starter, requests for input on childhood memories and news on Publius's status, with a PW blog reminder (see link below).

Out for a while now, but plenty of time to get a subscription if you haven't yet...

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