P is for Poopertrooping, Parachuteing Para-Jacks and Paratroopers!

One of my oldest and favourite 'side-bars' or side-collections, and I've mentioned several times that I would do a post on them - when I got the rest out of storage! However, I've picked-up enough in the last few of years to not have to wait, and while this sample is a bit light on the older, vintage ones which are present in the main (in store) collection in greater numbers, that just leaves the excuse of our returning to them again one day!

Picked this up this year somewhere, but I can't remember where, which is a bit daft as I've bought very little this year so it must have been either a Plastic Warrior show acquisition or in a box of mixed stuff I got back in the summer at Sandown?

There's nothing in any of the main 'turn-to' sources on Fairchild, but a quick look in my already well thumbed FIM Vol. 2 by Adrian and co. reveals a nice model tractor and the DNA of Robert Newson's researching of the 'phone-books of the world all over it. Further help then came from Google, and at the risk of accusations of plagiarism, a thumbnail sketch follows...

The company appears to have been formed in 1963, incorporated with company No. 769862 and was dissolved (as Fairchild) in 1978 (FIM 2 states that Selcol closed in '68, so presumably the decade '68-'78 were the Selcol Fairchild years?). They seem to have been polyethylene based manufacturers while Selcol were into the brittle-setting polymers: the polystyrenes of their toy instruments and the set resins they used for their records (mostly 6" children's works); shellac/Bakelite (if they were still being used for records when Selcol formed) and poly-acetate.

The bringing together of the two therefore would have created a rounder whole (geddit!) with both halves complementing each other and the new group doubling its range of options within a still pretty nascent industry.

FIM 2 gives the Selcol/Selmer side of the story and I'll list both the Selcol and Selcol Fairchild stuff I've found in the A-Z pages, along with Fairchild and Gala Goldentone entries and a Selmer cross-reference.

The only other toy items I've found are a rather nice motorcycle 'Speed Cop' (Selcol) and a Tudor*Rose'esque fire engine/ladder-truck ('Mercedes International Giant Fire Engine') from Selcol Fairchild based on a Mercedes Benz LA 328/4 (? hey - I'm using Google here; don't shoot the messenger!) or LF 3500 with short cab - the front bench is enclosed, the rear-facing seats are open.

There's also an interesting story (I'll flesh-out in the A-Z with links) of a piece of blatant plagiarism that Fairchild delivered on Louis Marx, pertaining to toy dogs (possibly the food premiums which people struggle to ascribe to various sources?), which Fairchild won ['escaped'] by dint of dates/times of registration, not because they weren't Marx's designs, they were!

The case is now used by litigation students as a classic study in that angle (timing) of corporate law and the importance of registering your designs before you give a handful to a passing Brit!

Here he is on the top left, showing how he has been copied and reduced over the intervening 50/60-odd years. The blue one being bought in Asda a couple of years ago, Asda being a subsidiary of Walmart, the US jobber Jaru has got it's product into the UK high-street....or out-of-town shopping plaza!

In storage I'm sure I have several of the Fairchild sized ones in early, unmarked, British-looking plastic, so it seems they were plagiarised themselves or - given the Marx case - copied theirs from someone else?

The similar (holding spare 'chute) pose in orange and blue, came in pairs from - I think - 99p Stores (over a year ago) and represent value for money, although they look like the android cops from THX1138!

Apart from the ubiquity of the above pose down the years, there have been several other sculpts that went the distance, the Lone Star pose was copied by one of the other early British makers and several other manufacturers but they are in storage so will have to wait, but here: the two upper pictures show other common designs, the GI jumping with rifle ready - No messing with him! - and the S-shape, possibly the commonest pose, with a myriad examples carded, boxed, bagged and stuffed into gum-balls, lucky-bags and Christmas crackers, in various sizes, the smallest I have in the main collection is only about 25mm; these are around 35-mil for the blue one.

Below we have in the left hand picture the Trojan blow-mould we looked at here with a Hong Kong copy of an Ajax spaceman fitted with a loop for shroud-lines, and an original 'Pooper-Trooper' in synthetic rubber from Imperial.

To the right we see a standard HK figure of a seated GI (from a US original?), again with a loop added, aimed at the pocket-money purchaser of the late 1960's.

Here we see two of those commoner designs, in various sizes, on carded examples from the 1960's. As kids we had the catapult-plane, but as a separate loose item from the glass-partitioned, waist-level bins in Fleet Toys, and given that it's made of polystyrene, it took a lot of punishment, in the end it lost a flap, and would just bury itself in the ground two feet in front of you at full speed! The artwork on the left-hand card is shared with several smaller HK rack-toy's cards.

Back to modern production, the movie Toy Story 3 has produced various parachute sets (this one by Giochi Preziosi for the Italian market), not only tying-in with the film, but also promoting the 'Ride' of similar ilk which has been put into all the Disneyland theme parks.

Below them we have a mix of ex-Airfix and more original poses, in two sizes sold as 'Party Favours', singly as the smaller ones from Playwrite and x6-carded, larger, from Unique Industries of Philadelphia and Ontario.

The card to the top right was from Tobar via Hawkin's Bazaar and appears to be polystyrene, hollow and in two parts, glued together like some of the current kids magazine freebies we've seen (Octonauts and Night Garden)

Old and new, the Timpo chap is far more common than his prices on evilBay and at shows would suggest, he was obviously a premium-priced (compared to single figures from a stock box) member of the WWII 'toy soldier' ranges, available as Brits, Jerries (storage!) or - this - Yank (stuffed in a bag). But, he was also a member of a popular 'general toy' group...the parachuting figures of this post.

As such it was produced and shipped in vast quantities, I've seen boxful's of these with dealers over the years, boxful's - there are a couple of boxful's on evilBay tonight.

Worth a side-collection of their own, due to figure variation (nationality/plastic colour, early/late heads, headdress, mould differences) and the number of different parachute designs that they were issued with*.

You do still find them for sale occasionally, in smaller rural general stores out in the 'Shires', away from the cities, where they haven't been snapped-up by holidaying dealers, that is, to be shoved on feeBay for ten times what they were asking in the backwater store!

While the final entry in tonight's round-up - BJ Toys Skydivers -are a modern take of the old Imperial Pooper-Troopers, being silicon-rubber caricatures. Currently available somewhere but I can't remember where - The Works maybe, they haven't been mentioned yet

This post has only scratched the surface of this subject, remember Action Man (GI Joe/Gyperman) came with a working parachute! Well worth a bash at collecting these if you're looking for a small-space collection that will cover different scales and materials, ephemerals and the odd big name!

* Off the top of my head...

- Black/white radiating stripes
- Black numbering on white (with lettering?)
- Black on clear radiating stripes
- Black on clear rings
- Black on clear ringed-chequerboard
- Blue/white radiating stripes
- Blue on clear radiating stripes
- Blue on clear rings
- All blue?
- Red on clear rings?
- Yellow/white radiating stripes
- Yellow numbering on white (with lettering?)
- All yellow?
- Khaki on clear radiating stripes
- Khaki on clear rings?
- Khaki on clear camouflage (large blobs)
- Khaki on clear camouflage (liner/string blobs)

That's up to a 'maybe' 17, can anyone confirm/add to the list?

C is for Combat Set

As an addendum to the Blue Box French Resistance fighters post, I managed to pick-up a spare of the HK copies in their bag the other day, mine being all in storage which is a pain as some fool's wandering round the Internet saying the pale blue hard plastic original ones aren't Blue Box, but all things come to those who wait, and those that can't wait should be able to find both Blue Box and Linda examples on Google!

Real generic artwork on this one, issued by Rado/Ri-Toys, but here destined for the cheapie rack which invariably was either at the back of the store in some dark corner beyond the Airfix display, or right by the counter as a pester-purchase device!

Reminder of the figures, they are looked at in more detail in the original post. There were/are 6 poses and they're slightly smaller than the Blue Box originals.

Bit of a box-ticking post but I've also added a capsule-toy example to the Humber Mini-truck Type 6's tonight and some current geometric puzzles to the Jig Toy Page.

News, Views etc...Plastic Warrior 2016

So PW 161 dropped through the letter box this morning (yesterday morning, it's that late an hour now!), and with it - for those who don't subscribe yet (?) - was the flyer for the forthcoming 31st show!

Those links in HTML:

Blog: Plastic Warrior
Email: pw.editor@ntlworld.com

Reminders nearer the time!

===============================================================

I also found a bunch of old links in a completely different bookmarks file on CAD stuff!

Ye Old Site of Curiosities - This is a nice blog I've been meaning to follow for ages, Jan posts an eclectic range of things on various topics and scales including the less popular sizes, and lots of Pirate goodies, which as I totally forgot talk-like-a-pirate-day this year is a very good thing!

Toy Memories - I think I did publish a link to them in a Blog-post once, they had a useful document pertaining to some waffle of mine, I tried to get hold of them on Facebook but 'no banana' as they say. The site is a bit old and bitty, with odd chunks of missing/corrupt coding leading to overlaps and dead links etc... But there's still some useful stuff there if you dig about.

1:32 Museum - 'Peter's' small private collection; not updated for a while, but some lovely images of mostly newer plastics.

Micro Machine Museum - One of two very useful resources on this range of diminutive models and their figures I've found, but I don't know what I did with the other link!

Ingap Italy - You'll have to make of this what you will, I don't even know how to describe it really, clearly Italian, clearly a collection of mostly tin-plate and die-cast, mostly Ingap, Gama and the like, but there is some really useful stuff there if you dig about, however navigation isn't easy and the earlier images are better annotated than latter ones. Worth a couple of hours surfing...or more!

This is just some crazy beard shit with toy soldiers.



Blogger's been playing-up tonight, there seem to have been changes to image up-loads, so I don't know if it's them or my Internet connection/broadband....lots of 'error occurred' messages and frozen upload type stuff?

[In the event the post never published - so another Vodafone fuck-up]

B is for Be the Bot

I don't really go on the Forums, I did when I first got on the Internet, but I find endless, repetitive sameness brings out the troll in me, and I then bring out other people's worst opinion of me, not something I'm too bothered about, if you want to make your mark on the world you have to accept some people won't like you!

But there are some forums you can only join - if you want to read/follow the content - as they are locked-down, silly I know, as what have they got to hide? The self-perceived shame of having a 'nerdy' hobby I suspect? Anyway, for those Forums that insist on a login to view content there is a very useful tool...Be the Bot

http://www.avivadirectory.com/bethebot/

You place the URL you can't access in the box and the bot takes you to the page!

It's not foolproof, for instance today I tried to follow a back link to a thread (which seems to mention my blog) on 'The Guild'...tag-line: "If it didn't exist...we'd have to invent it!" and their login over-rode BTB, well...OK, I can't discover the context in which my blog has been referenced, no great shakes, but if BTB can't read the forum, Yahoo, Google and Bing can't either, which may be why I've never heard of The Guild, nor encountered them in Google searches.

This means that whatever nuggets of pure gold pontification the members may have arrived at on that blog, they are lost to humanity, and someone still needs to 'invent' the thing that was invented because it hadn't been, by being anti-search-bot-friendly it's lost in the 40-billion pages of that there inter-web thingy, and therefore has still to be invented, by someone other that those who claim to have invented it!

And what's really weird, is it seems to be a forum based on several commercial companies (Elhiem, Lancer, C-P miniatures etc...), with each having their own section, you'd think they'd want maximum availability, not a mole-hole on the edges of the web!

But for those that aren't so securely locked down, BTB's there, and worth a try...but even when or if you do 'get in' be prepared for disappointment! After patriotism, the next refuge of scoundrels seems to be Forums! Lots of 'What if...', a plethora of FYI and AFAIK's, endless "What's you favourite...", "What do you want 'x' to make next?", "Your top ten...?" and such like, along with self justification for using the wrong figures, rivet counting, the use of unexplained jargon to keep the 'newbie' out...it's all a bit tedious!

U is for Uni-King! And other Unknown Unknowns....

Right back at the start of the blog I did a few 'U is for Unknown...' posts, one of which was on Space Figures/Robots (overdue for another one actually!),  some have since been ID'd and the other day another of the mysteries was solved by this Little Weirdos blog post as being cheapie-toy generics from Uni-King. I'm missing a figure and a space-ship...and two other sets!

Annoyingly I've ID'd a couple of the 'still unknowns', including the 12 small-scale figures in the bottom left corner of the first image, but lost the info. in the files somewhere, it was a play-set of some kind? Can anyone help with these figures as Wouter Wayland over at Benno's Forum is equally keen to get an ID on them? A full set seems to have all 12 figures in both colour schemes and they are a reasonable 1:72nd scale.

They seem to be Star Wars knock-offs, with a clear 'Darth' and several recognisable elements of Imperial and Rebel pilot's uniforms and a bit id storm-trooper thrown in for good measure!

[Now ID'd as Tombola (although Plastic Warrior 82 showed large-scale versions by Party Pig?)]

The three 30mm white/orange/yellow astronauts in the same image also were ID'd, err...but aren't! They were on evilBay about two years ago, a big set with a space-station; gantries, control towers, connecting tube-corridors, cranes and the like, again a generic? Argos or Target or something...maybe Mattel? Can anyone help with that? I know I've got it somewhere but that's no use if I can't find it! Note the visor sticker on one figure.

[Now ID's as MB (Milton Bradley) Star Bird figures]

From the same original image - these are now well documented, possibly manufactured by Jean [Höefler] or Manurba (Manfred Urban), but just as likely - an Italian or Austrian maker, they were issued by Jumbo in a Thunderbirds themed board game but not before they'd been issued in Linde coffee, apparently - a decade or so earlier. I believe they have also appeared in the German equivalent of Lucky Bags?

But basically they were issued all over the place! Based on Plasticraft originals, once you start searching for them you find them in every colour and type of plastic, all over the world, like a lot of those early 1950's mouldings.

Jumbo set now known to have been manufactured by DS Plastics also of Holland.

B is for Boxed-set of Bullfighters

Lindsay sent me this as a thank-you for the help he/she got in identifying them from my old bullfighters post, as it's not that clear, I'm not sure how much 'help' they actually got!

I think it's a Comansi set, and for those interested in these: I believe it will be appearing on FeeBay soon; if it's not already there?

A is for Addiction...

Michael Feeds His Secret Addiction

K is for Kultbyttovarov, Odessa

To wit: the Recreational (or 'cultural'?) Goods Factory, Odessa, or at least it may be! My understanding of the language being poor, and there apparently being some confusion among the Russian/Former Soviet State's collectors as to how many factories this mark might refer to or be linked to or - indeed - what their official title was under the collective system. Probably pronounced kuult-beer-tov-arov.

The mark is clear at least...sort of...

...I think it's meant to be a big cat of some kind, but again there is wriggle-room when you ask around...a bear maybe? The mouth and eyes being formed from what appears to be open scissors, but they could be tin-snips as one of the other possible ID's for this company is the Odessa Metallurgical Works.

My total sample! I may have  a few more in storage, but I don't think so, the 'amphijeep' is gameable and around HO/OO, albeit with an in-line seating arrangement! The Frog (FROG 2?) is likewise, maybe a bit smaller; 1:90'ish?

While the two ships and the missile-armed Black Sea/River Navy patrol craft are not accurate enough/too crude to warrant awarding set size ratios!

Thanks to Nazar Marchenko for pointing me in the right direction on this one.

101 is for Dalmatians! or; C is for Coat, Fur Coat...

I'd only just taken the photo's for these when someone posted them elsewhere so I've held them back for a year, but having uploaded them in August it's time to hit 'Publish' and get them out there and ticked off!

Difficult one to research as there is no real consensus as to the number of puppies modelled/issued, with one website I found having two different totals...on the same page!

As well as larger sets there were the little boxes of the 'Tinykin' type, each of which had this flyer - it doesn't help with the total and confuses by suggesting there might be more inanimate accessories than there actually are! [it's a hi-res image, scanned as a .jpg file for download/printing...right-click 'open link in new tab' then left click the plus sign and right-click 'save as']

The Baddies...Gurrrrr! Crewella de'Vil with her comedic side-kicks skinny Jasper and Fat Horace (were the roles written with Laurel & Hardy in mind?!! No, I don't think so!), these are unusual for Tinykins in being large 60/70mm figures, so as to be in-scale with the puppies.

The Goodies...yeay! Roger and Anita (who own the two adult dogs and get together as a result of them, was he actually Roger Goode?), the Preacher and the house-maid.

Of the 35/36/37+ puppies, I've got about 18 so far, complete or near complete, they turn up in little groups with a few OK and a few damaged and it'll be a while before I'm confident I've found them all! It's the tails, it's always the tails...

...top left are Mum & Dad: Perdita and Pongo.

Colonel and Sgt, Tibbs (the cat), with a couple of the accessories and my broken examples of puppies not seen in the previous shots with my favourite, (yo-yo?) who always looks like he's broken until you study him and realise he's scratching himself!

A few examples of paint/marking variations from the duplicates, there doesn't seem to have been much of a standardisation, except where a patch or blob is a recognisable character trait. They are apparently commoner in Europe and the UK so possibly a Marx Swansea thing/connection, as a result I've tagged the maker as both British and US!

Here's a link to a useful site for more on these, including the various sets:
Disneykins

M is for...err...have you guessed yet? Mali!

Mali....yeeeesss....did I say Mali on Wednesday? I think I said Mali.

Looking forward to the outpouring of grief, the proliferation of semi-transparent Mali flags as Facebook icons, a veritable plethora of Malian vexillology over the next 48 hours? No? Why not? Are we back to 'brown people' again?

There are calls in France for an end to public discussion of 'conspiracy theories'; all of them, however they might be defined, while the Chief Constable of Surrey has just been on the Radio apparently demanding machine guns! While our execrable excuse for a leader, the inadequate cockwomble Cameron, is desperate to be allowed to play brumm-brumm's with the grown-ups in Syria.

Not because there is any tactical or strategic need for a half-dozen of our remaining aircraft to join the vast armadas of Russian and US 'planes (already backed-up by the French and others with their half-flights), but because targeted strikes in Iraq isn't carrying enough 'prestige' for him...

I hate to say I'm right, but if you think all this is anything other than the chickens of money-based, oil-fuelled, Western-centric, capitalism coming home to roost, you're wrong!

Now - Let's see those Mali flags, please...

This has just gone round the free-thinking internet so fast I don't know who to credit, but they are a credit to humanity, and they know who they are!

L is for Li-Lo

Five years ago I posted this Unknown Figures post, Peter Evans kindly identified the Li-Lo within days - if not hours - and I finally got a bead on the lower set on evilBay the other day, and I was right about it being a shooting game, Hong Kong, generic. The three poses seem to be 'it' but I can't now find it in the Unknown HK folder which means it was 'brand' named, but I can't remember where I filed it...it wasn't Gordy, Larami, Laurie, LP or Lucky - I just looked!

Anyway, back to Li-Lo...this turned-up a while ago. From the warping it's either a very unstable polystyrene or some earlier cellulose or phenolic resin? Actually marked Lilo. It's missing a draw-bar/handle thing.

In the UK Li-Lo were best know in my childhood for being the manufacturers of a vast range of polyvinyl (PVC) inflatable beds or mattresses, 'floatation devices', balls, rings and other beach/camping toys, to the point that they became synonymous with them, we had 'lilos' not inflatables! I don't know if/what they may have made/sold elsewhere....did you have Li-Lo where you are?

I'm willing to bet that the 'oversized' figure in the original post was sold with this as a beach toy, either a few together in a larger polythene bag, probably with a card header, or in a mesh-net attached to this. Pure conjecture, so don't add it to any wants lists, but that is exactly the sort of combination you'd see hanging in bunches at seaside kiosks, or further inland at the back of cycle or sporting-goods shops. There may have been a set of paper flags glued onto cocktail sticks or little wooden spills as well.

Ten minutes after publishing...there was an Australian arm, the UK parent-company had another name and Lilo is still a generic term for inflatable beds! I've also tracked down a few catalogues/adverts so will do their - now three - entries for the A-Z in a day or two...maybe!

C is for Combat Soldiers

I can't remember if this has been on the Blog or not? I took the shot back in '07 or '08, so if it hasn't it's high time it did! Rather crappy photograph I'm afraid, I was still getting to grips with flash and the macro settings, but rather crappy figures, so: ...

...the earlier 60-mils from Marx, two gunner/loaders but no gun and two guys doing PT with a grenade, but I always quite liked the squatting/sitting firer, a very decent bit of sculpting - the chap with a rifle that is; the bazooka-man's going over backwards any second now!

M is for More toys tomorrow...

...Libya, Nigeria, Mali, Tunisia, Egypt...Crimea, Ukraine, Georgia, Transdniestria, Moldova... Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Burma . . . Peru, Mexico, Columbia...

Religious zealots, drug cartels, Marxist/Leninist ideologues, 'genuine' revolutionaries...we're all one species and we better find a way of getting along together soon, or there'll be no planet left worth living on.

With thanks to the artist Lee Marej for letting me use his image:

Deviant Art
Facebook

S is for Sickened

Funny how 129 French deaths get the entire Internet going red, white and blue, but 224 Russian deaths went unmourned by the same keyboard warriors a couple of weeks ago!

But then...Slavs? Not much better than brown people, huh?

The false wailing and gnashing of teeth, the metaphorical wearing of sackcloth and ashes, the mawkish sentimentality, the idea that millions of people were taken by surprise...again! Fuck Off! Middle-class, middle-aged, pro-establishment (the real problem), uneducated, fakery.

Grow up and educate yourselves, before it's too late. Read 1984 and watch the rush to push through Draconian law-enforcement legislation with open eyes, read Catch 22 and listen to the politico's speeches through open ears . . . I'll be standing over here in despair!

N is for Not Suprised

Who are we at war with? Eastasia or Eurasia?

Image - Wkipedia

It's the white bit we need to worry about as it's entirely a construct of Western intervention, colonialism, slavery, empire building and corporate land- and resource-grabs.

The only thing that surprises me about the last 16 hours is that people are still surprised! Orwell and Huxley warned us this was our future, how can we be surprised? Kafka and Heller patiently explained the madness we operate in and tolerate, how can we be surprised?

The answer - of course - is that the average citizen is a selfish, stupid, frightened creature with an abysmal knowledge of world affairs, his own country's political situation or the effects of capital on himself, those around him and the ecology of the entire planet.

It is a fact that in the next few days the sales of private body-armour (never to be worn) will go up, in countries that allow them (America) the sale of guns will peak this afternoon, and yet, tomorrow, the world will only have become slightly less safe!

If you are feeling surprised today; worried, confused, maybe a little frightened...my advice is go out and purchase another movie channel, subscribe to the new Games Workshop mechanism, buy a new iPhone, get a scarf. You can never have too many scarves in the scarf drawer. Order a pizza with ALL the extras. It's what the rulers want you to do, carry on as normal, ignoring the fact that normal is the root of the problem. The root of all the problems.

Oh, and you could get CCTV throughout the house, as you'll be doing a future government a favour if you prepare in advance of legislation!

To quote (misquote?) Private Baldrick -

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupiddidy stupid.