S is for Sandown Park

I've never really done a follow-up from Sandown, which I attend pretty regularly, but here's one!

O-my-god- it's-early-o'clock. The 'car-boot' on the steps before the show, there's a strange milling around period at some shows and at Sandown that's been used by a few dealers to set-up boxes of stuff on the terraces and get a few deals under their belt before the doors open!

While others try to save five minutes (on an seven+ hour day?) by blocking the entrances with their stock!

'Big Ticket' items; I don't often mention money, it's filthy stuff at the best of times, but I think this lot came to thirty-three quid, which is pretty reasonable. We looked at the blow-moulds yesterday, the Airfix knight should be on the Airfix Blog by the time I post this, the three Mertens will join the stack, but we'll look at two of them soon.

The three Hong Kong vehicles will be held for a while as they are all destined to be compared to things - or Blogged with things - currently in storage; The friction-motor army-lorry (possibly TAT, but unmarked) is half Pyro/Kleeware and half Dinky/Blue Box so needs to be compared with them and they were all Blogged early in the Blogs history.

The rocket-launcher is lovely, an all ethylene copy of the Crescent die-cast vehicle, with copies of the Lone Star launcher and a Corgi rocket! I do have the die-cast, so we'll put them side-by-side one day, while the motorbike will be saved for a large-scale bike post.

A big-bag from Gareth (1) which he didn't charge me for (thanks Gareth!) and two tubs (5) likewise from Adrian (thanks Adrian!), with a sad tale attached - see below. (2), (3) and (4) were things purchased around the show and (6) was the floor-sweepings at the end of the show!

Initial sort of Gareth's bag, a few useful bits hidden in there, an Elastolin roman copy needing paint-stripper, some interesting bits hidden in the animal pile, a teeny Tiger-tank from a board game - I guess? Some more ME109 bits for the bag of comic-giveaway aircraft we looked at a while ago, trees (you can never have too many trees!), a 1970's monster'saur, Kinder bits, Poky Man type things, Noah figures - all good!

A bag of animals I bought; highlights include the bendy gorilla! Isn't it typical, we've only just done bendy things on the Blog (thrice with follow-ups!) - so he'll go in the long-term wait queue, but it's a decent enough shot for now?

The comic animals were on Moonbase a while ago and have since turned-out to have been Imperial tub-sold, although I know I have two (different) magazine add's for them, both from the 'States, both from the late 1950's/early 1960's, also as you start to study them, you realise there are four (?) types/sets!

Two cereal premiums and a green Merit camel add value, while the HK pile includes Blue Box, Arco and some sub-piracy crud!

A 50p bag I got for the guardsman and the piano eraser, although the Dinky copies will be useful, I've already got them in the Picasa queue, and I'm not going to re-do the photographs for two new figures! [Quickly checks Picasa; I've got a yellow digger, but photographed a green driller, need to paint-strip the red one anyway!]

Another; more of those unpainted pink versions of the Tri-Ang HO-gauge railway accessory figures we looked at ages ago now. There's evidence of marbling in some of these.

Adrian's tub and a bunch of HK copies of MPC 40mm knights which appear to have been factory painted, the rest of it is grist-to-the-mill HK small scale and a bit of Blue Box.

But it appears these came as shrapnel in farm/zoo auction lots the other day, and I have the sorry task of reporting the passing of Dave Scrivener.

I didn't know him well enough to do a full obituary, but he had been a regular eMailer and provided photographs of several nice items for the blog, a few of which languish in the Composition page, unpublished.

I don't know if his passing is known to the STS Forum people, but if not perhaps someone could let them know, as I can't log-in there at the moment and he was a regular contributor to the forum.

It appears he died round about Christmas/the New Year, maybe more recently? But the sobering lesson to all collectors it that his collection, which I believe was of importance, has been broken-up, auctioned (poorly lott'ed, poorly described, poorly estimated) or otherwise disposed of, and lost as far as a group of knowledge is concerned.

Indeed knowing how old farm and zoo buildings look to the uninitiated (especially all the inter-war stuff with nailed wood and straw roofs, chicken-wire and sawdust), I suspect a lot of it has been trashed. I know he had done important work on early farm and zoo buildings, civilian hollow-cast and latterly; early British plastic including military and it's a crying shame that that knowledge and the collection of buildings has just gone.

Glad I got to chat with you Dave and sorry you're gone. I know you wouldn't have bothered painting HK knights that badly, and I know you would have kept one of each pose/colour 'for the archive', so will keep them likewise - with your name on them; nice find Dude!

Found on the floor after the show - it's all useful!

The lesson being: you MUST have easily-found, clear, concise instructions for your collection and any archive; on what to do with it, re. disposal, should you cease to have a living interest in it.

I know this is a regular thread-topic on the War Gaming Forums, but those conversations tend to be concerned more with the value of the vast armies, or the faff presented to those left to deal with the bulky stuff, but with a vintage collection it's about how to keep it together, or indentify the - sometimes financially-valueless - rarities.

It's about ensuring filed 'paperwork' is reunited with the relevant objects, or objects with their boxes, before sale or onward disposal, or that a part-set on display, or on the 'lab desk' goes back with its other parts; it's about describing the stuff properly, if it is to go to auction, or making sure beneficiaries are named.

Dave was about my age and happily chatting-away a year ago, I don't know what happened (I have an idea, but that's private), and the belief that it won't happen to you is no excuse for not leaving a few notes about the collection for your executers, relatives or landlord.

B is for Big Blow-Molded Boys

Biggest purchase at Sandown Park was these three, found on Steve Vickers table, I had to have them; A) because they are so different from the run-of-the-mill 54/60mm stuff, and B) because I need enemy for the commoner Soviet Era Russian toy soldiers in a similar style.

Made in Hong Kong, and presumably sold as beach-toys, probably with a large jeep or truck type thing, one of them is quite clearly General George C Scott . . . err . . . S Patton!

All around 135mm (just over 5") and blow-moulded to a reasonably substantial thickness, they nevertheless have a few thin areas at the boot-tips having been blown from the helmet end . . . Ooh-err missus!

 

Compared with 5 and 6½-inch Russians of the same era, the Russians are more solid mouldings, although also hollow, I suspect these are produced by what is known as rotary moulding, like large pieces of play-equipment, agricultural sprayer tanks or traffic barriers and such-like (road-side salt or sand boxes) the walls being much thicker and having no thin-spots. They also hold greater detail than yer'average blow-mould.

From behind; the Russian figures are from a much bigger range, with historical and naval subjects, and they come in gorgeous colours, rich reds, purples and greens, Chinese orange, and I have a sailor in storage in a nice shade of malachite green in the storage unit. There is a set of Russian ones in the same type of blow-moulding as these GI's, but they have funny little disc-bases on.

Three against three will do for now, and I have a large fireman in a similar style somewhere!

The one in the middle looks a bit like a young (Deer Hunter) Christopher Walken? Aren't they brilliant! Steve's got a couple left.

C is for Chariot

Except some bloddy Brexiteer has obviously pulled the wheels off this one, and - apparently - has no plan for getting them back-on again!

Brian Berke sent me these, and I shot into the attic to look for the riders I knew I had, as I have some very different paint treatments of the divers, however, it was only after I'd failed to find them in either the 'Divers' box or the 'New additions - 20th C' box that I realised they must be in storage with my mini-sub, which doesn't have a box, so we will probably return to these guys one day; in the meantime just enjoy Brian's pic's of a superb set:

Lone Star's 2-man Midget Submarine S15, possible contender for best toy ever, definitely best bath-toy ever!

Y is for Your Author!

I thought it was about time you caught a glimpse of me! Just call me big'ed!

My brother looks to be about 6/12-months old, so this was taken roughly 50 years ago! Like the Brexiteers recently; I found it incredibly easy to rip the wheels off the bus . . . I think it's a Corgi? As is the tractor?

And - as the Brexiteers are now discovering; getting the wheels back on the bus is not so easy, especially when you have no plan, no plan and . . . NO PLAN! Fuckwits! And every single one of them has a different idea about what they think they were voting for, 17 million different ideas for a backward-looking paradise, most of which - it has to be said - involve a bit of casual racism, intolerance or plain stupidity!

No, this isn't the forthcoming rant either; it's just me trying to get me'wheel back on again!

Although, I notice the person the Rant'll be directed against has just been removed from the thread where he managed to slag-off or insult Engineer Basevitch, Plastic Warrior magazine  and Weston Toy Soldiers - in one paragraph!

N is for New Arrivals III - Star Wars

After yesterday's waffle, I can keep this short, especially as I'm somewhere else! While I was back at the Toysaurus, I picked up the last of the reduced for clearance Micro machines from Hasbro . . . these are they!

These are the only other sets with figures as far as I know - I did get a look at a transforming head play set in Basingrad last Friday and they do have 'unique' figures but I'm not paying what they're asking for them, even on clearance!

This is all the figures, or figural I know of in the recent line, less the 3/4 in the play sets.

I bought one of the blind-bags; just for archive.

But . . . I also weakened and got the die-cast 'First Order Snowpeeder' in Action Fleet scale, it was a quid less than I thought, and isn't it nice, they don't have hand-held, wirless, mobile technology far, far, away, but they do have flying machine-gun nests - gotta' love the Military Idustrial Complex sometimes!

Comparison between the two.

 

N is for New Arrivals Part II - Animals

Having had a dinosaur post a while ago, then another in Rack Toy Month, I can't believe we're having a third so soon, but that's how the stuff comes in!

Monochromatic erasers from WH Smith, 2-quid isn't going to break the bank and they are bigger than the Paperchase ones although the 'kerthunkersaurus' is a poor sculpt.

These are also Smith's, at 3 for 2 and seven or eight sculpts, I chose three contrasting ones including a much better kerthunkersaurus - I must get the proper name of the poor thing! Here credited to Keycraft, these have been in boxed-sets of several animals in The Works for a year or so now under HGL (Grossman)'s moniker I think? But in such presentation - well outside my budget.

[Note - loading this just know (last Wednesday morning) I'm also downloading Target set images from Brian Berke which look like they might contain the same sculpts, will check at home!]

The Toysuarus was offering these at 79p each, well it would have been rude not to, so I got one of each! The Beetles are the ones we've already seen in two packagings at the beginning of Rack Toy Month (or even a few days before?), the Dinosaurs are yet another set of smallies, and I'm going to get them all back-out and compare soon, just for the hell of it, so they stayed in the bag for now, which left the frogs.

I was going to Blog them with the MTC set the other day, but they are in fact different sculpts, being three poses in various colours while the MTC's are all the same [four-ridged back] design.

The reason I went to the Toysaurus was to get these (also 79p), as I'd said they were the ones above when we looked at them last time, but they weren't! A nice lesson in false memory - hours after the event, because I'd forgotten the other set and conflated the two when posting the others, and mentioning I'd seen them in glow-in-the-Dark plastic in Toys R Us!

In fact, the Toysaurus had the normal ones in the party bags, and these from Grossman are actually new sculpts. This is why one should try to use maybe, probably or possibly if the stuff isn't actually on the table in front of you...I think?!

The ladybird is very similar, and while I'm sure standard painted versions exist somewhere, the spots on this one are textured within the sculpt, rather than reliant on paint.

Look! Charity Shop! 50p! Invicta Plastics megasaurus for the British Museum. Herein lies a funny story, well; it might only be ironic?

When I was a small-scale only collector (and a limo-driver), I used to have early-morning runs out to Gatwick or Heathrow on a Sunday; exec's going off to the 'States or wherever for Monday meetings, and I would do the car Boot sales on the way back*, sometimes hitting them as the traders were setting-up - still had to pick up the crumbs left by earlier early-birds like Collectakit's Pat Lewarne though!

Anyway, if there was large-scale stuff, cheap enough, I'd drop it round a mates house and he was always giving me small-scale lots so fair was fair (and he's given me far more over the years - JB for those who know), one day I got the Invicta set in full, in a BM box (lovely set, lovely sculpts, lovely colours), about 15? Maybe 16 in the set, there might have been one missing, but I remember making it up from spares on JB's lawn in the sun.

Fast forward 20 years, finds I'm buying them one at a time...and I had the whole lot in my hands! Still; it's more fun this way and I have got a couple of the smaller ones already in storage!

*It was a Mercedes V-Class, not a stretch - try parking one of those at a car-boot sale! Although I did drive Stretched-limos for a while too, horrible things, horrible customers - except the couple on a Wedding Anniversary who got me stage-side at Robby Williams and gave me £20 for a fish-supper and coke!

These were also a charity shop buy, 50p the lot, they're very small and each has its name on the belly, a definite irony as there is a kerthunkersurus here, but I didn't take note of it and they're in the attic now . . . what am I like!

It was a toss-up between ' I - Figures' or 'II - Animals' for this one, but 'figures' already had 8 images so Peter goes here! Paul Lamond Games, Charity Shop, 99p and it's been a while since we had some paper/card flats on the Blog, I must remedy that properly - he says cryptically!

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Apropos the date: Don't forget its Sandown Park toy fair tomorrow - if you're at a loose-end? 400-odd tables of other people's old playthings . . . I'm on the lookout for a motor for an HO-gauge Tri-Ang LT tube train!

N is for New Arrivals I - Figures

All these came in during Rack Toy Month, or the last week - it is a fact that you will never have 'one of everything' unless you chose a narrow field or genre. If you do choose the latter path, you will soon get bored!

This was in the Toysaurus clearance bin, for 49p! I'm not sure it's worth 49p, but I have a Blog to feed so I bite the bullet . . .

. . . as it has a Hummer, and you may remember; it's one of many 'side collections'. The other three vehicles are a '40's Willy's, and '50's 'Wrangler' type (M38? Or something?) my favorite jeep as a kid - Entebee, Aurora's Rat Patrol, Congo, Brazzaville, Yom Kippur! And a 1990's pick-up/'Technical' type.

It also had more Matchbox clones, although the cloner seems to have dropped a lot of the DNA on the lab-floor! Four poses from three different Matchbox sets; about 45mm.

50p from a charity shop last week, he's a softish PVC around 70mm and well detailed, marked 4M, you may remember they produced a nice pirate set with mould-your-own bricks, around Christmas, about four years ago?

Under the eye-glass traces of gypsum-plaster were revealed so he's probably from one of those dig-out sets. Pity the Pucator pirates weren't made in a similar material! He also has the same hexagonal mounting-hole as Galoob/Kenner/Hasbro's Micro-Machines, which both suggests the same vinyl-factory and/or a missing base!

The Hasbro/Takara Battle-Beast has actually been around for a while, but he got left-out in a recent sort, so he's ended-up in this shot. Don't know if the two foam-ball figures (another 50p) are craft or factory, nor whether they are Japanese or Chinese, I began by thinking the latter (Eastern-Chinese muslim Uyghur or Hui and an Imperial court lady), but now suspect the former, Imperial court lady and Ninja?

The final one (10p) is marked Tomy, so might be a poky-man or some TV/Movie tie-in?

 

In the course of the exercise I noticed the Battle Beast was bloody filthy, so had him go into the robot workshops for a service and full valet!

My only evilBay purchase in months was a dodgy-photographed lot of apparent 'chuck-out crud' I was worried might have been shot deliberately to entice, but when it arrived not only was the barman (the only decent figure in the photographs) in one piece, but half the set (Cherilea Bar Brawl) was there!

Although 'Blue Boy' is posed to hide the fact that he lost a hand in a tragic 'sheep-rescue gone wrong' incident! No chairs though . . . but there was also a bunch of Cherilea Romans we will look at as a box-ticker in a day or two and three Britains Musketeers (with two swords, doh!).

F is for Follow-up - Ackerman & Tactik

Just a couple of quick follow-ups to stuff posted about a month or so ago.

 

Ackerman - Battle Squad Army Playset

When I'd finished posting all the recent Chinatroops (which got spread over three or four posts), I was left with a scan of a card; I've collaged it with its set contents as if it were on the rack! And I think it means the two little jeeps weren't from the same set, I just photographed them in the same sequence.

 

Tactik - TMNT Foot Soldier

Picked this up to make four out of five, just got to find a Raphael to make the set - only a matter of time! And someone has sent more TMNT's to the blog - for another time!

S is for Shit Dalek

There's no other way of describing this model Dalek, it's shit. It's a shitting shitter of a shit-thing! The company calling themselves TCS Europe should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for letting this roll out of the factory gates and BBC World should have had the sense to refuse it a licence, not put it on their own magazine's cover.

To be fair to all concerned, you can tell it's shit by looking at it, they did nothing to hide its shitness, leaving the punter to reject the shitty thing and leave it on the shelf! It's so shit it's shittier than a shitty thing that's gone to shit university and been elected professor of shit. It's so shit even shit's afraid of catching something shitty from it.

What does it look like? A decorated traffic-cone? An upside-down ice-cream cornet, with a reportable food-mould? Flash Gordon's loudhailer? A 1950's retro-chic 'designer' reverse-kitch cocktail shaker? A bottle of fancy nail-polish? It doesn't look much like a Dalek, that's for sure!

There's no excuse for this level of poorness shitness in design (of anything) at this point in the 21st Century. CAD-CAM means even a cheap toy can at least be designed with accuracy; in minutes. This is beyond lazy, it's almost a deliberate attempt to rip-off, where there was, and is, no need. And the stalk-tools? Shittier than the shit thing they plug into - they're shit!

How doth one compare thee to a shitty thing, let me count the ways: Too tall, too thin, all round symmetry, bone-dome to high, too round, body domes/bobbles too small, too spaced, stalk-boxes are shit, stalks are shit, shoulders stretched, flat face, step'less base . . . oh ugly thing of shit, thy faults are legion!

Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and some of the stalk-tools will improve the old Cherilea Daleks; a tad mind, only a tad.

There you go, a shit Dalek, all the way from Shitsville, Shittington, Shitonia, and no, this isn't the forthcoming rant, it's just a really shit Dalek.

M is for Military Case

As far as the figures go it's a bit of a box ticker for Silvercorn really, other people have Blogged/posted them so the best thing to do is go and look at PSR's post, but a couple of points arise, so to get them on the Blog . . .

. . . several sources, including the above link mention tan figures? I have two sets in storage and the above set (imported into the 'States by Lollipop/L.P.) donated to the Blog by Brian Berke, and not a tan figure seen by me yet. Nor have any of the sources mentioning them shown any.

I believe (until some come to light!) that there is a cross-pollination of visual memory going on here; these sets came out around the same time as the Hornby Railways 'Battle Zone' model railway set, which contained similar (but ethylene) figures in both colours, those figures were also issued by Dollar Tree in the 'States and Toy Masters over here.

Additionally Smart Toys were issuing small PVC figures, again very similar (but painted), which (the Smart Toys) harked back to the Galoob Micro-Machines figures which also had green and tan issues (among other colours). I suspect the common trope of two colours have led people to 'imagine' a tan issue for these . . . but stand to be corrected!

To argue against myself, I have some clip-together 'micro-vehicles' around the 1:285 or 1:300 mark, which may well be from the Land Vehicles, Terrestrial War Games set. They do come in tan and green, but firstly, the bodies are one colour, the tiny wheels another, and secondly they are styrene like the vessels (below). I also have some darker green figures from this set, but no tan . . . yet?

There's also the small matter of the two brownish-grey road-signs, which seem incongruous as there are better sculpted ones on the accessory frames, but they were in my UK bought sets as well as Brian's US purchase, so must have been added for 'value'.

The real reason for this post: Uncle Brian (different Brian) a few weeks ago, mentioned that the 'unknown' vessels in a few past posts were also Silvercorn, and as it happened Brian (Berke) had sent the confirming images a few days earlier, so as I was in the midst of Rack Toy Month, I said I'd post them in September - it's now September!

There are four different frame-runners, each with parts for three vessels (strictly speaking, one has 'parts' for only two vessels as the civil cargo looking-vessel is a single piece), and I suspect - from the duplicates in Brain's sample, that maybe six frames were in the box?

Scale is not constant, with the 'Flat-Top' being much reduced, while I think the cargo type and the submarines are a larger scale, with the warships between the two. The 'carrier looks to be a US nuclear type, and the three different subs follow recognisable shapes for Nuclear Attack (flat deck aft of tower, on the sheet), Patrol (right, above?) and Hunter Killer (left, above), but I'm guessing the other surface vessels may be of Chinese outline?

A few close-ups.

Returning to the 'unknown micro-AFV's' (which are in storage), they are of similar material and construction, hull and belly-pan clipping-together, trapping the wheel/axle mouldings in channels for free-rolling movement. I only have a small bag of them, but they consist of a 6x6 truck, various LAV/Piranha types (6x6 and 8x8 - I think?) with separate turrets and something like an Sd.Kfz.222 if I'm recalling them correctly, I don't remember having any tracked vehicles?

If they are what I think they are, then the fourth set (Air Machines, Aerial War Games) will probably prove to be an assortment of around a dozen modern combat types, probably in this neutral grey plastic, possibly as two halves or with plug-in wings?

I'll keep a look-out for them, and we can return to Silvercorn in a few years! Thanks to the Brian's U for dropping the ID into the blog and B for sending images and samples!

P is for Pendelton's

Brian Berke keeps turning up little gems and then sending me them to share with you! This is lovely as it seems to solve the question mark over why I ended up with a Made In England stick on a Buried Treasure figure, although Brian stresses his aren't so marked - original post with comments and links.

In the age of the Solero or Magnum, it's easy to forget that once upon a time, iced-lollies came on sticks, while iced-cream came - soft - in a cornet or harder between two sheets of semi-edible card-foam-biscuit (risibly called wafers!) or coated in a layer of chocolate to prevent drippage, but never the twain [confectionary formats] should meet!

To put ice cream on a stick was innovative enough, to make the stick out of that new-fangled plastic, and put decorative figures on the end, hidden in the confectionary was visionary! Why did these not pass the test of time, we've been back to wooden sticks only since the mid-1970's? And they phased the two-part (one hidden) joke out, on wooden-sticks, so long ago I can't remember when I last had one?

Who remembers four-figure phone-numbers? Our first was 'Heckfield 234', and you always answered as that so the caller would know they'd got the right number, due to the high number of crossed-lines and the fact that there were hundreds of 234's up and down the country!

Now there's not much on the Internet, but I know whole books have been written about the Ice Cream Wars of the 1950's, '60's and '70's, gangs would chase each other off sites, ice cream vans were burned, tipped-over with the operator inside, scoop-tubs spoiled with dog-mess or spirits, entire depots were torched, people were beaten-up and threatened, it all got quite nasty, as local crime syndicates engaged in 'turf wars' - chasing a profit motive, or using the vans to ahem . . .sell other consumables! It culminated in the 1980's with real death in Glasgow.

Even today; there was a piece on Radio 4 about a week ago about a monosyllabic, semi-racist (it seemed to me), avowed Brexiteer (no permit) muscling in on a Polish chap with a council permit to trade.

While all that was going on, the big-boys; Walls and Lyons Maid, were just buying-up all the little operators - like Pendelton's - and the van-franchise that went with each purchase. That explains the disappearance of Pendleton's, but not of the idea, or the moulds? Someone might still have them, the US blog has tracked down two American ones!

I'm sure, that despite the odd subjects of the prizes, especially by today's standards of Pokemon, Star Wars and Ben-10, these would still prove popular. Even supposedly sophisticated 'modern' kids still like their bucket-and-spade on the beach, still enjoy their Christmas cracker and its idiot novelty, still make camps in the woods . . .  while gum-ball machines are commoner now, in their serried-banks 'down the precinct' than they were in my day, when getting one in the village was viewed akin to becoming a small town over-night!

Brian says he bought these in London in 1973 - Bring back Pendleton's Ice Cream on a Stick!, that's what I say!