F is for Fake French Flats

Actually a couple of these are the original French food premiums (there's a full set in JC Piffret's Figurines Publicitaires) a book you must have on your shelves if you wish to study plastic shite! I haven't got it in front of me so I can't remember the make/issuer (if anyone's got theirs to hand?), but it matters not....

...as this sample contains vehicles from at least four sets; French originals (green sedan), Hong Kong and China (most of the rest) and an unknown lumpy gold one. They are also a mix of hard styrene, soft ethylene and a harder propylene, so here as a guide only, because they've come-in and because they're plastic shite!

B is for Ball Games

A box of Christmas crackers without a ball are rubbish! That's why posh ones with useful prizes are crap! You have to have a ball for one of the adults to tread-on while carrying the goose to the table, or the gravy!

Footballs and a rugby ball, very useful for when you lose you Subbuteo balls, the small white one is a hard but hollow polystyrene, in two halves, the red one at the top os a solid lump of styrene and would guarantee flying gravy, the others are blow-moulds.

Keepy-upee with the power of air and the scoring-bat can keep party-people (little party-people) happy for a while, but this one has a hollow insulating liner as it's stricg which is too stiff to work properly! These are larger bits of shite and come in Lucky Bags or as bulk packs of party favours.

Bouncy balls, given the number that have gone through my hands since 1964 this is a pretty poor image really, but these are earlier ones and the mini one is new to me.

The black one is made of a peculiar material called Zectron (similar in feel/look to a vulcanised rubber), it's a Mini Super-Ball by Wham-O, and if you squeeze it, you find it's full of cracks and creaks like an old ship, but seems to retain its integrity?

Mini roulette wheels, that's it that is; mini roulette wheels. The line's not long enough to make a paragraph...did I say they were roulette wheels, that are miniaturised AND some of them've got charm loops...that'll do!

B is for Bug Life

Flies in sugar-lumps, flies in fake icecubes, flies in gum-ball vending capsules, flies in er...packets of flies! The universal, timeless novelty item...

...first available in the late 1940's/early 1950's and still a firm favourite in independent toy shop's pocket-money lines today. Other bugs are made, including glow-in-the-dark ants and large rubber...er...what the heck is it? Hornetsquito?

F is for F.A.B. Breakfast Ma, Schoolkid is GO!

Not shite...or....Quality Shite! Issued with Kellogg's Sugar Smacks in 1966 (Thunderbirds) and 1968 (Captain Scarlet), there are 8 of these to find, I'm up to four...the easy four! I might have a red Patrol Car in storage?

A T'Bird 3 joined 1, 2 and 4 in the '66 issue, with a helicopter and Spectrum Command and Patrol Cars joining the Pursuit Vehicle in the Scarlet issue of '68.

Of note is my T4, which has apparently factory-painted silver highlights on the headlight, windscreen and propulsion nacelles, which wasn't on the food-stuff abutting originals, hinting at a post-premium issue, possibly in crackers (Tom Smith often hoovered this stuff up), or gum-balls?

P is for Pooch!

I've got tons of these somewhere, we looked at a few - rather fuzzily - here, but this lot has accumulated recently with mixed bags in May and the vending novelty purchase...

...Poodles and Scots/Highland Terriers always dominate these lots, with crude copies of old food premiums coming second. I think it's (Highland Terrier thing) down to the original (and much higher quality) gifts associated with whiskey brands, they were in glass, wood, ivory, Bakelite or 'ivorene' and we will look at them another day, along with the similar cats.

Lots of them are fitted with charm loops, some finding their way to the thin-end of a key-ring/key-chain. The two big blow-moulds will be infant or beach toys I suspect, rather that capsule toys or Cracker novelties, and speaking of 'crackers'; another source for these cheap plastic bubo's is the American food brand Cracker Jack, and the brown flat to the top right is from them I believe, and possibly the white one above him?

P is for Perplexed!

A great favourite of both Christmas crackers and gum-ball machines is the puzzle, coming in five basic forms; the  mini jig-saw (in card or thick paper), the 'Jig-Toy' dexterity puzzle (see top of page), and the following three themes...

Wire Lock Puzzles - Fun when you are younger, but as you get older you realise there are only two mechanisms, and they both involve bringing two junction/joints together into a four-way wire bundle and then either sliding or twisting! Still popular, they used to be issued in  bulk in both magic sets and more generally by toy companies like Merit, as boxed sets.

Chinese tangrams come in various formats, with the aim of making a square or oblong - with no gaps - from a series of triangles and parallelograms, they often came with a little sheet of other pictograms to be made from the shapes, the rule being you must use all the pieces.

The bulky ones in the centre have only one solution and are more modern/current, while the pyramid 9and related cannon-ball pile) are a simple puzzle, when very young it could take a while to get it without help. Indeed, trying to get the balls to make a pile for five minutes, only for a sibling to do it in 2-seconds flat was an invitation to murder becoming a viable lifestyle choice!

Mini ball-bearing dexterity puzzles are the fifth 'group' you often find in both Christmas crackers and gum-ball machines, some easy, some frustratingly hard, some impossible, usually due to the cheap nature of the materials and construction meaning something won't do what it's meant to!

I is for I'm calling this: "Five Girls Have a Picnic"

Clockwise from the large one: rubber hanger (elastic missing), Rubber, Rubber capsule toy, ethylene, rubber and an ethylene Cracker novelty chap in the centre...lunch!

C is for "Contain Hat, Novelty and Motto"

Q. What happened when the dog ate the Christmas decorations? A. He went down with tinselitis.

So, we've got a party, we're making the music, and now we need hats, don't we? Yeah! Let's have some hats...easy if we live in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and some other parts of the Commonwealth, if you're elsewhere you'll have to get the glue out, or pop down the costume hire shop and get some expensive felt and feather contraption bejewelled with lumps of coloured plastic!

Q.On which side do chickens have most feathers? A.On the outside.

Q. What do you call a fish with no eye? A. Fshhh.

We have a competition every year to be the last one wearing his or her crown, the stubbornness which is one of the plus values of Asperger's means I have an unfair advantage and often win, sometimes I fall asleep after the Christmas Feast and lose my crown to the back of the sofa!

Q.What has a bed but does not sleep, and a mouth but does not speak? A. A river.

Usually made of tissue paper, you do get tougher cartridge-paper ones and the metal-foil embossed crowns of 'posh' crackers...posh crackers are a bit shit, as they actually contain useful things, rather that the possibility of a micro-plane, mini-truck or cowboy wagon!

Q. What is E.T. short for? A. Because he has little legs.

The only 'vintage' ones in the above shot are the scrunched-up ones with a rubber band (centre of picture), which is how they were packed in the 1960's and '70's. Very useful as the band was just the right size for replacing the lost tie-downs on Lone*Star Treble-O trains car carriers. Now they are folded and curved round the inner card tube, with the motto.

Q. What do you call a little lobster who won’t share his Christmas presents? A. Shell-fish.

Q. What sits in the fridge, yellow and dangerous? A. Shark-infested custard (people who don't have Christmas crackers will probably miss the custard reference as well).

With the crown and 'novelty' comes a 'motto', originally (Victorian/Edwardian times) these were mostly little love poems or perhaps an aphorism of some provident or spiritual value, although no longer actually mottoes, they are still referred-to as such. By my childhood it was just a riddle or joke (Tom Smith original, top centre), a bad joke; usually a pun or other play on words, or even an idiotic cultural reference...

Q. What's Miley Cirrus having for Christmas? A. Twerky!

In the 1980's, you started to get either/and a piece of trivia, or a suggestion for after-dinner charades, we now have a situation where the class-system that has been so divisive in Britain, is writ-large in the world of buying Christmas crackers, with budget crackers sticking with a single - bad - joke, or maybe a joke and trivia factoid, while as you pay more for the crackers, you will see additional jokes, charades, puzzles or a mini crossword added, in the end you get a double-sided slip, screen-printed in silver gel. the irony being they never get used fully, we only want five minutes of this nonsense - before the food gets cold - however many people a round the table, so added 'functionality' is wasted! But paying more for slightly larger slips of paper makes some people feel superior apparently!

Q. What do you call a Snowman in Summer? A. A puddle.

One other change in my lifetime has been in the crackers themselves, for the longest time they were crushable crepe-paper, now they tend to be tougher materials, sometimes multiple layers or tissue laminated over card, or with the stiffening of metallic-foils.

More:
Wikipedia
Historic UK
Tom Smith

I is for Instruments

So, it's the 7th birthday of the blog today, not something I've celebrated before, but I happened to notice the fact last night, and as it's the party season and we're looking at plastic novelties for a while; let's make some noise!

Kazoos (one marked Hohner so probably not that cheap a toy!), Pan-pipes, Harmonicas, Horns and Trumpets, Swanee & Penny Whistles, Football Rattles....who didn't have one of these at least once in their childhood and drive some grown-ups to distraction with it? That's nostalgia, right there...plastic shite!

More - smaller - whistles and a tiny harmonica (top right: blue and yellow), one has a windmill attached for extra 'play' value, while another highlights one of the problems with classifying/categorising this stuff, is it a whistle first or a key-ring? As the charm loop fitted to several can be for a 'charm' or a key-ring, it's a moot point, but this crossover is a feature of a lot of these cheepie toys, not forgetting - does it go with the instruments, or the unknown Wild West? Or, if you collect enough of this shite...does it go with the horns or the Indians!

M is for More Motorcycles...

...also; Again! (I think?)

These are mostly non-Hong Kong in origin, but there are some: The steel-blue scooter is an HK copy of one from the old Matchbox 1-75 range (except it was 1-50 during the period when the scooter was part of the range I believe), in which guise (die-cast) it was equipped with a side-car. While the pile of three are also HK; I'm not happy about the rider, he came on the green one but wouldn't sit right, however he seems more comfortable on the blue one, so may well 'go' with them. The answer may lie in the stored collection?

The rest are - or seem to be - Kinder, with the definite exception of the scooter and side-car with passengers which is a Spanish kiosk Sobre, but I'm not sure it's a Montaplex one, so maybe one of the lesser brands?

The yellow one came in a Kinder capsule, but seems a bit crude for Kinder? It could be an early one. The blue one has spikes on the wheels (which helped in stand-up on the counterpane) so seems to be missing a stand or base of some kind? The red and black racer is hard plastic and missing a screen or bar or something on the side-car.

M is for Motorcycles...

...again? I think we've had that heading before! Lots of these in storage so we will return to them yet, but for now, mostly from the bargain bags...

...all Hong Kong and most being budget Christmas Cracker 'standards'. The two exceptions being the green one on the far right (solid wheel/body moulding and plug-on handle-bars) which seems to be a copy of the Monogram/Revell/SNAP/UPC (et al.) kit figure's dispatch machine, so probably belongs to a set of the Hong Kong copies of the same. The other with working wheels and plug-on handle-bars and seat is a nicer model all together, no idea of origin, and assuming home-paint?

The big ones at the top are suitable for 54mm figures, with 30mm and 20-mil being catered for by the other two sizes. There are three types of the medium size, the gold one - which is quite a well detailed 'British V-twin' (I think I can hear my brother reporting?) - with large (two to the left)  and small (three to the right) head-light versions of the later copies above it.

Likewise the small ones have three variations, the soft plastic blue one is crude and current in the small 'tree-crackers', while the brown one has been equipped with a 'charm loop' (we'll be seeing lots of them - in the next few weeks!) and the pale green one has a spot of paint on his helmet which seems bad enough to be 'factory'! The later two are styrene with different bar arrangements on the wheels.

A is for Another Pile of Shite!

See previous post for the title reference! It's all quality shite though...err...no it isn't...

For the rest of December we will be looking at real shite, so if you're a dyed-in-the-wool 58mm 'New Production' toy soldier fan, the best advise I can give you is go away; come back in February (January is usually a quite month for posts here I think?) and see where we're going here, but as far as the next few weeks go, we are looking at shite.

Let me explain...

This year - due entirely to the funds situation! - I have hardly bought anything; I think I've had 7 purchases on evilBay, Plastic Warrior's show, 3 Sandown's (the odd item and a mixed boxful) and that's it. I've probably spent more in the budget stores and The Works; a pound here, one-fifty there...over the year, than I have on 'planned purchases'?

As I'm sure a lot of collectors do, I regularly surf feeBay without intending to buy anything, finding and downloading images of rare or new figures or plastic toys, for the files I then can't use to identify a Space Station play-set I know I've downloaded...Doh!

A while ago I found this (upper picture), the main image and the next three, showed a so-so bunch of 'novelty' items, there were two or three useful figures, a couple of motorcycles visible and such like (a 'Home Farm' well, couple of racing cars...), but nothing that suggested it was worth a tenner.

However, there was one shot (lower picture), which suggested the asking price was not only worthwhile paying, but a bargain....nine bags, each apparently 5x5'ish, if they all had a few figures, a couple of motorcycles and the odd racing car, 'plane, train or other usefulness...and there were then two not terribly clear pictures of a couple of the other bags, and that looked to be the case, so a quick BIN was executed before one of the other three watchers remembered the first rule: Buy it when you see it or someone else will!

When it arrived (via some awful courier that has a tracking website which remains un-updated for days, and is then updated falsely with date/time changes...and states I've signed for something which was left on the doorstep in full view of the road! Hermes?) it was huge, and upon opening I realised I'd not looked closely enough at the scale of the known objects in the shots, and the bags were freezer-type 9x9's! To wit, I would give 2/3 quid a bag for this sort of stuff at a show, and the whole lot was indeed a bargain.

It is the contents of those bags we will be looking at in the run up to Christmas, along with the similar stuff they have been sorted into, or had added to them - some of this stuff is such shite I either had nothing to match, or the odd item, so all the non-figural, non-vehicular stuff has formed a new side-collection in the box they came in but sorted! I will probably sell it on one day in thematic 'packets'.

During the said sorting these were clearly from one maker/supplier, although when I - Aspergicly - tired to swap tops and tails to make better colour-ways, some were so loose they fell off, others were too tight to go together, so clearly from different batches over a few years, or probably: the better part of a decade or so.

Typical of what we will be looking at between now and the new year, we have three whistles on the left, a whistle-shaped whistle! A pair of shoes and a cows head! The mini-truck I've already added to the relevant post, a spinner that also has numbers for use with gaming (but being round-edged, open to argument if it stops between numbers!), a roulette ball-bearing game, false Appalachian Mountain Man teeth, a faux-glass animal in clear plastic, over-decorated with semi-transparent paint, a dolls handbag and a hair clip.

Novelties - Gum-ball machine toys (disvendia, vending or 'capsule' toys) from before the era of Tomy or Gashapon, Christmas Cracker gifts or 'prizes', dime-store consumables, party favours, cake-decorations, the odd premium, the contents of Lucky Bags and Sobres, the stuff from the trick/joke rack on toy shops, the little pocket-money bin-toys...that's what we're looking at here for a while.

No war or killing, few military items at all and not many figurals, just a healthy dose of fluffy nostalgia through seasonal, holiday stuff. Including the stuff we got in our stockings, crackers and those hollow gift-baubles you could get, but it's all shite stuff too! It is all pretty much 1970's, so no early tin or wooden stuff, and none of the current stuff, except when the current stuff is the same stuff recycled, or an early example of some cracker toys we will look at, at some point.

Countdown to Christmas on smallscaleworld...has started!

S is for Shit Pile

I shit you not!

Lui Wei's Shit Pile

This kind of art is so popular at the moment our glorious leader, the inadequate cockwomble David Cameron has just cobbled-together nearly 16 airworthy aircraft to go and make lots more of these all over the Middle East, not something we haven't been trying to perfect for some time, but then when you really want to make people want to kill you, you need to really make the effort!

B is for Bronze

Saw a nice model of a toy lizard the other day which was very good for the type of cheapie-rubber thing it was, in fact it was so good it reminded me of my mother's bronze, which was a great favourite with my brother and I when we were kids, to the point where I mused it might be a copy of the bronze and I commented to that effect...

...and went off to dig out the metal one and photograph it. It's not the same, the pose and detail are different but the treatment of the eyes is similar and they are about the same - true to life - size.

Probably German, I don't know whether it's cast solid bronze or a cold-cast bronzed-resin, it's heavy enough to be solid, and the quality hints at 'hot bronze' but the little holes in the underside [Between the front and back pairs of legs] may be for weighting with lead?

[Next day] Thanks to Paul's Bod's Paul I can now add that it's a Wiener bronze, and was also used by Alfred Dunhill for ash-trays, although this one would have been mounted on a block of pale marble (hence the two mounting holes with a darker marble sphere held in the crook of the tail (hence its odd angle). It is a solid 'hot bronze' not 'yer cheep'o resinous crap'!

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T is for The Bigger They Come: The Bigger They Are!

No blurb needed, now appearing outside (or inside) toy stores near you. Thanks to the random passing Lady who agreed to pose as a scaler for me! Fleet Toys.