R is for Rome

The box-ticker I mentioned the other day - and it really is only a box-ticking exercise; I'm not keen to post too much Cherilea as it seems to be the only Plastic Warrior 'Special' not to get a colour update, so having sat on last May's exclusive, I don't think it requires much rocket science to guess what surprise might be waiting visitors to the show next year!

And while I don't know for sure (I haven't discussed it with Paul), whenever it's released it will be worth the wait as Cherilea had a prolific and eclectic range of production and a history complicated by the Hilco and Phoenix connections, more recent re-issues, bought-in HK stuff and etcetera!
So, the Romans who came in with the recent 'Junk Lot' that turned-out to be anything but junk . . .

Most of these Cherilea 60mm sets have eight poses I think, so I seem to be short two figure types, although I have one or two in storage, I don't remember them differing from these. The number of axe-armed legionaries is odd, perhaps they are 'building camp' rather than bashing heads!

Cherilea sets tend to have both plastic colour variations (if that's the right word . . . just 'different coloured plastic' batches!) and variations in painting, although there seems to be a gold/silver rule across the set?

Some sets have a smooth-based 'third variant', I only have the commoner two, and I suspect the hollowed-out one with the reinforcing stripes is a latter version designed to save a bit of plastic, over a couple of hundred mould-runs, you'd save enough plastic to do a couple of dozen more to make-up your clients 'grosses'?

B is for Bonus Buccaneers!

I need to crop these and spellcheck the post so i will edit it tomorrow, but shiver-me-timbers as I just checked my Hotmail before leaving the Libary and found these! So a late bonus (I'll shed-yule them for 16.00, it's now 15,33 and I know the 4th post has only just published!) courtasy of Brian Berke; they look to be the Ja-Ru figures painted-up, with scaleing 'Beserker' from crescent!

TLAPD is for Travel Like a Pirate Day

So, loosening the ties on the curtains that will draw across ITLAPD just after a nanosecond to midnight, and answering Jan's (Ye Old Site of Curiosities) call a while ago for better images of the Kinder vessels, here are those briny-battling behemoths of the carpenter's art.

These are those best suited to the era of the classical 'boys own book of . . . ' type pirates. I stress that Kinder (or its many suppliers - the upper four are from RP / RES Plastic SpA) have produced loads of wooden war-ships, cargo cutters and other tall ships over the years and these are only a few; we will return to them one day.

I'm no expert on these things, but the French-flagged one has a gun-deck, while the other from the same series (with a block-plinth) would seem to be more of a cutter?

Above are four vessels from a different series (each set of Kinder vessels typically has between 3 and 6 models), and the series consists of different front-halves and back-halves of the vessels with different sticker-sheets and different coloured plastics, to provide several vessel variants, which you have to look hard at to differentiate. The instruction sheet is the same for all the models!

Components and made-up model together from this 1993-issued ship; construction is relatively easy (see also final picture), with clip-together parts and there is nearly always a sticker-sheet of the paper type. The Ancient Egyptian/Phoenician vessel (below) is around 90mm, with the rest between 50 and 60-mil, from spar-tip to rudder-edge.

[Does that make them useful for your kind of gaming Jan?]

Slightly more medieval-looking vessels above and the ancient one already mentioned below. In the sample in storage I think I have the rest of this set and it included a Roman/Green type. There have also been larger-scales fishing vessels, leisure-craft and the like, with smaller-scaled vessels like the ferries we looked at the other day. Note how one vessel has paper sails.

It was only when I was wording the blurb for the second picture that I realised there was a shot missing from the folder? Turned-out it had been deleted by mistake and as I'd finished the collages for the other images, I took the opportunity to scan the little instruction sheet!

From Corplast via Ferrero comes a slightly more complicated one with a frame-check image like a Japanese or Esci AFV kit, so you can check all the small bits are there! This also has paper sails and is one of the larger scaled, smaller vessels.

TLADP is for Talk Like a Drunken Pirate

This was one of the first things Brian sent to the Blog, and I've had to sit on it since early May, but he was the first image in the folder with all today's images, so sort of 'senior sailor'!

If the small barrel is full of 'Vino', I hate to think what's in the large one, I hope it's beer, not whiskey! Brilliant, a roughly 54mm pirate with his own barrel of wine, and he's looking pretty determined to defend it against all-comers.

Below him is a size-comparison shot with the smaller figures we looked-at earlier this morning.

Brain later sent this (cropped-out of a larger image, for another post), it's the ship that came as part of the play-set with the above drunken pirate and his very important porterage!

Here he is compared to a couple of Yolanda 60mm pirates, which got me thinking - Gog of the Toys From the Past blog sent me a bunch of images of Yolanda stuff ages ago; I mean like right back. at the start of the blog.

I never used them as I thought he would use them on his blog, but he's more of a die-cast and card game . . . action figure [bit of everything!] blogger so - with his permission - I will put them together into a post or two soon, but anyway, I went looking for the images and . . .

. . . found a third pose! Thanks Gog! That's it for figures on this International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but there's still a post to come . . . Ah'Haarrr, That'ull be a secret, thaaaat'well - Wait'n'see yerrr scoundrullss; orse I'll keellhawwlll the lot'o'yerrrs...hic!

H is for Talk Like a Hunson Pirate!

Imported into the US by JPW International and branded to Hunson, Brian Berke sent these in to add to the publishing itinerary of ITLAPD, and I can't say much about them as I only know what you can see. Brian shot them on the rack, in a store in New York, about a month ago . . . enjoy: yurrr dirrrt-dwellin' scallawaggs!

They are approximately 90mm, and I would assume some kind of PVC-vinyl? The cactus that accompanies this guy has been included in Hing Fat and other brands' sets in the past, but it's been a common-enough design - in several sizes/finish-qualities - kicking around Rack Toys since the mid-1990's, so it's presence doesn't prove much, just hints! The boat looks useful, but check out the captains sword . . . not so much 'no prisoners' as: no survivors!

Thanks Brian.

ITLAPD is for Arvast Me'Aarrties and Splice da' Main Brace!

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Woo-hoo! And I remembered it this year - woo-hoo! And I had stuff to post - woo-hoo! And I've posted it - Arrrhaarrrr Jim-lad, no flies on this old cove! This be act'chew'ley the firrrst of fourrrr posts today, just furrrr fun, so if you don't be enjoyin'em I'll hav'yurrr guts furrr fiddle-strrrings, yerrr sorry bunch'o lilly-livered, warrrm milk-suppin', land-lubberrrrs!

Stad's tells us these were issued in Dollar General over the pond; I haven't the faintest who issued them here, but a pound to a pinch of shit it was Funtastic, PMS or The Works! Apart from the European-looking captain (who appears to have been sculpted separately), the rest look more fitted to pirating the South China seas (or the Indian Ocean) than the Med' or Atlantic.

These are smaller, and although they look similar with the red-black thing going on there, are actually PVC rubber and are both quite soft, and mostly distorted, might they be capsule toys? Sqiudgged into a little plastic vessel that holds no other treasure! One of them is so keen to have a hook for a hand, he's holding a hook in his hand . . . and look-out! He's got a ray-gun! Thanks to Peter Evans for some of these. Possibly at least one pose still missing?

The largest of the new recruits in this post; a Ja-Ru import, they're nicer figures from a Western perspective than the first set, but similar quality. They came with a set of skeletons to fight which we looked at a while ago, but I held these chaps over for the 19th of September!

These were all from Peter Evan a few years ago, and have missed at least two ITLAPD's despite languishing in Picasa for both of them! They look like the kind of figure you still occasionally find in a counter display box (but on a bottom shelf or in a wire 'pocket money' rack) for 25p-each or something like that; I don't know if that's how Peter encountered them? They're made from a very dense ethylene or a polypropylene?

Negotiation; Pirate style - The Ja-Ru guys divvy-up the spoils of their last voyage with all the decorum you'd expect of such fine and well-bred gentlemen of . . Lurrrnin'; Ah-Harrr!

T is for Two Toy Ambulances

Shot these two up at Sandown just over a week ago, I guess one's about 1:48th scale, the other about 1:55?

Mettoy Playcraft . . . sorry; Mettoy Playthings (!) produced this, which although not part of the large hospital play set, would nonetheless look good delivering casualties to the main entrance. A tin-plate floor holds the fly-wheel motor, which is set forward in the cab in the manner of Wells' and Brimtoy's little lorries.

If it was part of the big hospital range, it would have the same stretcher, but it doesn't, having instead a chunky thing which seems to be designed with robustness in play, rather than realism, as its starting-point.

The box cleverly allows for the selling of a police van as well, by the simple expedient of folding the ambulance flaps in first to lay the police ones over the top. As kids we were often threatened with the 'Black Maria' (pronounced Mer-Rye-Er) if proving a tad over-exuberant or disobedient, and I always wondered what it meant, a throwback to a different age - I think!

Marked HP, this is a pretty standard piece of generic push-&-go Hong Kong tat (and TAT may be the operative word!), being a VW camper-van, given ambulance stickers on white polymer, the yellow 'council' beacon-light suggests the likely nature of other versions in the range!

Cheers to Mercator Trading for letting me photograph them. Fancy new banner Adrain?!

P is for Polish People like Plasticom?

We looked at a couple of these a while ago I think, but I thought I'd bring them all together, although there is a problem getting the images from Konrad Lesiak in Poland to Hotmail via the Wibbly Wobbly Way, so I have had to blow them up on-screen and then screencapcha them to work on, but they get across what they need to.

I have one of these which we have looked at before (as an unknown - reproduced below), but here are a couple of far more useful ones than my cornucopia blower (or whatever he's called!); both copies of Elastolin poses.

They have different bases from the Plasticom Soldabar figures originating in Belgium, with their squared-off corners and a flat-edge.

Konrad has painted a couple-up in a 'toy soldier' style and they look all the better for it, his blower (cornier?) has the same hunched appearance as mine, which I put down to mould shrinkage last time, I'm glad to see it's how it should be - one less figure on the 'wants' list!

A similar base is seen on the pink GI, possibly a piracy of a Spanish figure (these lollypop figures are all copies of something!), but the Airfix Japanese clone has the squarer-cornered base of the Romans, with the collar of the Plasticoms, but on a longer base? It looks like progression of design or evolution, as much as different makes?

These look much more like the usual Plasticom figures, two new poses, one ex-Britains the other Starlux I think? But the bases are a little smaller than my main sample (and below), rounder than the ovals on mine.

Then we find two lightly different ones; with a radius-edge to the poodle's base, the other having a sealed-cone rather than the usual collar. He's also a copy of an Eastern European flat, as you might expect to find in Poland!

These are the Belgian figures issued by Plasticom, as Soldabar lollies, and we have looked at the two Frenchies recently, but I thought I'd get all the additions together in one shot. You can see from the sticky remains in the lower shots that the figure appears to have been presented as the handle, with a boiled-sweet type sugar-candy lump of some kind hanging below, probably anchored in the hole/collar. And note that they have longer bases than the polish figures.

There's an addition to the additions! And my 'Cornelius' chap - unpainted, again. Answering my own question from the Buried Treasure post the other day; I guess all these figural confectionary 'handles' were phased-out for the choking risk?

And thanks to Konrad Lesiak for the polish figures.

M is for Most Marvellous Model Marx Made!

I posted a 'Best Toy Ever' article quite soon after the Blog began (Triang Battle Game), then a few years later I tripped myself-up by posting 'Best Toy Ever' again! The Britains Land-Rover long-wheelbase 'technical' on that latter occasion, the other day I suggested something was 'Best Something Ever', and have already forgotten what, while ". . . too cool for school!" has become a common trope here; so it's obvious that 'Best' is subjective and depends on a number of variables, of which - how you're feeling that day is as important as any other reason!

Today's post limits the criteria to one maker, so you have to believe the claim of the author, and therefore, without further ado I give you a guest post; in his own words, Brian Berke's . . .
Most Brilliant Marx Toy Ever!

In 1971 I owned a real 1960 Austin FX4 taxi (YYX 790) it had a 2.2 diesel engine coupled to a Borg Warner 35 automatic transmission.

The vehicle was incredibly slow and loud. It was purchased as a transition vehicle between an Austin FX3 taxi and a hoped for Beardmore taxi that was still licensed and wouldn't be available for another year. Life didn't turn out that way.

I bought this toy taxi and it wasn't until I opened the box and tried it with a battery that I appreciated how brilliant it was.

As the leaflet explained, use one battery with the metal plate and the cab crawled along making as much noise as the real thing. No other toy was ever as realistic in operation as the real thing. Usually anything battery powered shoots off at a scale speed of 200 mph

The detail of the model from hood ornament to chrome hub caps was accurate; the colour plastic is all that let it down. It was about the same size as the Tri-ang version which was unpowered.

Brian also included the instruction sheet, which is useful as I have definitely seen that tin plate in dealers junk-trays in the past, now I know what it is.

And I would add that I'm sure at lest one company had metallic mauve taxis when we went to London as kids in the late-1960's/early-1970's, they were mostly black, but one company had white ones, there were the Evening Standard striped ones (orange, black and white chevrons, like the delivery vans), and the odd 'British Racing Green' one, but I'm sure there were some in this colour? As far as the toy goes, I saw a battered one in bright red at Sandown the other day.

It is pretty lovely isn't it? The Crescent berserker says 1:24th'ish? So - what's your favourite 'Best', and would you like to share it here, with a few pictures and a bit of blurb?

C est por Cavallo Del Cromoplasto Lucca

A box-ticker and no mistake! Fury - Horse of the West as he was known in the 'States; licensed to ATV in London and sub-licensed from them to Cromoplasto as a tie-in to the series on Prima TV; an Italian (Free) TV station.

It's a horse . . . 60mm . . . 'ish? Ethylene?

From Wikipedia: "Fury, known in Italy as Fury and later as Furia horse of the West, is an American television series broadcast ... from 1955 to 1960 The Italian title comes from the words of the acronym, in the USA the series was renamed "Brave Stallion" in subsequent editions."

Furia? He was absolutely Lividia!

What was it about the 1950's and early '60's we had at least three dogs, a kangaro, a dolphin, a lion with glasses, a monkey or two, Black Beauty and 'Furia' - "What's that, today's talking animal? Little Billy's trapped down the old mine shaft?" and if it wasn't talking animals it was those nausiating kids getting in the way- in Wild West gun-towns, helicopter doctors, Foreign Legion forts, fire-stations,
buggering about with railways . . . but then she went walkabout and got her kit-off . . . Result!

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.