N is for Nude Naturists, Natural Nudies and Naughty Naked Nymphs!

Well, like the best plot or part-work, one should keep the promised excitement until the end! Don't deny it, I can guarantee that a year from now this will have had way more hits than any other post this year . . .that's human nature!

Although I notice a post from a couple of weeks ago is garnering a lot of traffic, can't think why; too much text, not enough pictures was my opinion, but Blue Box always proves popular!

AND they're not all naked, AND there's at least one more Preiser post in the pipeline, but there's interesting stuff among the titillation of 18mm high pink plastic people with little or no clothing . . . painted on!

My five sets, across the board with two Merten, two Preiser and one - actually - Faller (which has been on the blog before . . . last time we did nakedness I think!), supplied by Preiser.

Below them are - on the left, a comparison between painted and unpainted sculpts of Preiser's older nudes and on the right some odd Merten's waterskiing; although my Merten's are all clothed they did do nudes as well . . .

. . . and as we can see, the Merten nudes have been to a Brazilian clinic if you know what I mean - next to Preiser's, they are err . . . very well endowed young ladies!

I rather like the skiffle group - dates the set somewhat! And to their left, what my odds look like as a full set.

The real reason for this post and one of the reasons for the whole season, this runner (left) has all the figures (but not the props) for at least three of the old catalogued 'six-figure' sets from Preiser, although it's never that simple.

The sets are 106 - Artists, Sculptor, Models and Accessories (of which the part-set top right was supplied to Faller - as seen, with painted figures and unpainted accessories), set 107 - female bathers and accessories (seen above and below as 10107) and 108 - Doctor, Patient, Revue Girls and Accessories (not currently listed, although the doctor and his patient are in the new 'single figure' series).

The budget version of 106 used to have five figure, but I can't remember which one gets dropped, I think one of them also appears in a vignette 'at the window', so it'll be that one!

Over the years the lump of stone the sculptor is working on has taken on more form, it used to be more of a shapeless block, with the beginnings of the side of a head chipped out of one corner.

All three creative's live-on in the new premium range, but only two of the models; now the sculptor has nearly finished sketching-in, but the seated artist has gone off to paint landscapes and his model is now on the beach as 26073!

The other 2607x sculpts are newer designs while the Doctor and his patient are sold together, giving a lie to 'single figure' series, the working girls having been dropped from the catalogue for now.

More nudity, now in the bathroom and the older sculpt makes yet another appearance as a bright-orange shop-fitting dummy/mannequin at a car-boot sale!

Because Europeans generally have a healthier relationship to nudity than us Anglo-Saxons - either side of the pond (speak for yourself Hugh!) - with less of the giggling, smirking or hypocrisy; it was often a feature of the coin-operated layouts you used to get in main stations and termini (do they still have them?) to have a nude (usually from one of these sets or the Merten one's (above) hidden in the window of an attic garret, or bedroom, for the grown-ups to find while the kids watched their train go round and round and disappear into and reappear out of the tunnels.

The two Merten sets I have with a third family group to their right on the top row, and various others sets from Preiser including a newer 'FKK-Strand' (nudist beach) set, again with a family element, it's really not about the titillation or 'stag' element (unlike the larger figures from Marx!), but rather allowing for the modelling of what are - to more enlightened societies - everyday things like tractors or station-trolleys, mechanics or moo-cows.

Remember that while Brexiteer Britains (or American Trumptons?) will get quite hysterical about child-safety at a large public baths (these days read 'high class, tourism related, end-destination, leisure facility, water-park') and see any unaccompanied male over 40 as a potential 'Facking Paedo out to brutally abuse YOUR kid and ruin house prices in YOUR area!', it is considered bad-form to wear clothing into the communal sauna at a German water park, and was back in the 1980's, whatever your age or gender, as the sauna contained people of all ages and both sexes.

Hard to date this one, as the early sets tend to be better painted with Merten, and attached to their runner, while later sets: poorer paint on paper-thin bases. Also Merten kept the same codes and packaging for, like, ev'ER, but these wouldn't suit bases, needing the runner, and with the poor paint - a late'ish set I think.

Below are the contents of the modern 107, the large number of signs are useful, if I had the time, money and space for railway modelling I'd use every sign I could get; try counting the number of free-standing signs in the high street next time you're there, the let-down of any large urban diorama is the lack of signage!

Originally 70 and 71, these were the first beach-sets from Preiser, and were used in the funny little range of 3xx coded sets we looked at briefly the other day, with their instructions on how to make cave-men! Unlike most Preiser beach-sets where the costumes are just pained-on; here they are modelled onto the sculpting.

The 308 contains two-each of most of both sets with one-each of the other four poses, I'm guessing a different four poses in each of several sets to make clear the contents of the 'spare' part-runners?

A couple more from Merten's catalogue, the canvass deck chairs in the lower set are a childhood memory, while comedians have obtained much mileage from the older wooden type, vis-à-vis people falling-off or through them or having them fold-up upon the victim: my memory of those steel-tube framed, canvas-covered one is that that was exactly what they did . . .

. . . if you sat in them too hard, or sat up too quickly, or turned-over to cook the other side too abruptly they would fold over you like some great, damp, sandy, clam, or catapult you onto the beach, earning you a mouthful of grit, much to the merriment of those around you - until it was your turn to laugh at the mechanism-failure of their own idiot chair!

ome more images; it's not just the wagons I photographed the hell out of! Half-hearted attempt at a pose comparison on top, close-up of the other Merten set in the middle and a few loose figures with the lilo's at the bottom, the lilo's were meant to be bendable into shape for leaning against - see some of the catalogue illustrations.

More sets from both makers, the Merten 'Nightlife' is a lot more explicit than the Preiser 'Revue Girls', coming complete with poles for the pole dancers it leaves little to the imagination, whereas the Presier girls can be (and in some sets are-) used as 'just' undressing - for the beach or bed.

Speaking of beds (and other pieces of furniture), Noch have a range of 'adult' sets that make this Merten one look tame, I do have a couple in storage, but they are for another day. The ethylene readymade figure makers of Eastern Europe have gone much further, while Preiser run with humor, having a little kid run off with big-sisters bikini-top!

If you get all the sets in this post you can build a busy beach scene, but what would it have to do with a model railway? Note how the wooden grid that comes with the beach-chair can be used to close the chair, as a platform/footway or as a wind-break or screen, even as a clothes-horse for drying towels!

Someone was listing the Preiser 'Adam and Eve' sets the other day, somewhere else (the bough of amphibiousness!), but forgot to mention the HO set; those big-scale purists huh?!!

Catalogue Picture of 1:22.5 / G-Gauge set

Very useful sets aimed at the real scratch-builder, like a naked 'multipose' set (err . . . because it's a naked multipose set!), you can create the pose you want from a kit of parts and then build-up clothing from a modelling compound and the spare-parts box.

Another one from the new single-figure prestige range is this 'streaker' from the old concert set, originally flashing some 1D-Beliber type fuckwit, she's apparently now undressing!

I saw one in the modeling shop in Basingrad the other day in the same colours as the original (red shorts, black top), so with all Preiser paint now to roughly the same high standard, I guess these are more about selling single figures for too much money, than about real exclusivity?

The rest! The set with the three African skin-types (providing the other 2607x poses above) was first issued about 15/20 years ago (?) in the larger scales (1:22.5 / G-gauge?) and is now in HO as well; I'm not sure where the photographers swimming-suit came from, but he's very-much a 'HE' anatomically, if you know what I mean, and shouldn't want to be seen dead in something so little removed from Borat's 'man-kini'!

That's enough bare-flesh to excite the lonely, the virginal and the puritanical, foaming-mouthed bible-belters (it's only the third group that worry me!) - back to wagons next time!

P is for Pneumatic

Getting toward the end of the wagon posts, and indeed, there are no wagons in this post, but there is useful stuff nevertheless, particularly for post WWII war gaming. While I went with 'pneumatic' there are also a few towed implements in this post as they didn't go in any of the others and apart from my carded disc-harrow, it's all catalogue imagery.

The box-art for my 912, Hanomag tractor and two agricultural trailers, while it's a post-war tractor, I suspect the engine, wheel arrangement and general layout is the same as the WWII airfield tender/tug and the older body could be scratch-built by someone with more skill than me? No real-life model number is given for the tractor but the current slightly different model in the catalogue is given as an R55, so this may be a first attempt at the same vehicle, or a slightly earlier/smaller engined model?

I've had the kit for a long time, it was an impulse purchase at a toy show (because it was cheap!) back in the early 1990's and I've never got round to making it, but in order to produce better images, I got the glue out!

But, I'm getting ahead of the image order! The parts in my set contain a colour-reverse on the box-art for the trailers, with oxide brown frame body-structure. Codes on the runners suggest the tractor was also available separately as 600, which would put it just ahead of the circus wagon/trailers, a job also now occupied by the R55 in the catalogue.

You'll also notice that I'm short two axles! I'll eMail Preiser and find out if their customer service is as good as Hornby-Airfix's current 'spares service'. It means I didn't make the tractor, and it can wait until we next look at tractors.

Full instructions; note that the runners are here translated as 'shots' (not sprues!). There is nothing to stop you/the modeller from converting these for pulling by draft-animals, a centre-pole attched to the front of the ridged A-frame, where the towing A-frame joins it, with a small wire pin to allow hitching/a bit of movement in the pole?

Made-up, and ready to roll; clearly the pneumatic tyres date these somewhat, and while the towing/draw-bar system is not common in the UK, it is the system used by 'Wagon & Drag' set-ups, operated by some UK hauliers - we had them at United Carriers back in the 1990's and you sometimes see Parcel Farce or Royal Fail dragging them round the M25 in the middle of the night - they are still quite common on the continent.

In Berlin somebody did have these, RE or RCT I think, pulled behind short-nosed, 3-axle Mercedes L-series (?) trucks; all locally purchased, probably paid-for by the Berlin Senate (?) and mostly used for bulk-rubbish runs, getting bulk stores from the BIS and hauling Ammo up from Gatow during Rocking-Horse or Trial-Canter alerts, whether BAOR had them or not I don't know, but I never saw them in use up there.

Current offers show the low-sided trailer with the R55, and the high-sided one in a new set of potato harvesting, I've done this king of potato harvesting and it's back-breaking work, the lifter just throws the spuds all over the place and you have to go along picking them up and raking the soil and stones and crap with your fingers, to find the smaller ones which have been covered up by the dirt or dust!

The shot also shows various other towed equipments in the current catalogue including a horse-box and a rather useful grass/meadow roller which would add that little 'extra' to a large Subbuteo set-up, especially the cricket range?

More trailers from the catalogue, both clean shots and dirtied 'in situ', the ridged draw-bars with resting/manoeuvring wheels shown here are exactly like the stuff you find in the UK and on most modern military trailers and that barrel tanker would look good behind a Roco Magirus or older Jupiter 6x6!

The roller is no longer in the catalogue, but will probably return from time to time, while other animal-drawn equipment (still in the catalogue) includes a single-furrow plough and a small reaper. Note the painting of the cattle back in the 1970's was poor, especially compared with the modern efforts.

Another useful set in the unpainted range, it also contains various things not in the catalogues at the monument, such as the Alpine belled-cows who's attendants match the wagon-teamsters/Alpine-horn chaps we looked at the other day. The plough is also included along with various gardener/gardening 'six-figure' sets and the wonderful peacock.

Loose ends; in the modern agricultural range, include a tractor mounted reaper and some towed cultivation tools, it may be that the reason for the disappearance of the cattle-drawn harrow is due to a move away from 1930-60's steam-era layouts to more modern outline, where tractors are meant to be in the background?

There's certainly a nice harrow here along with what Preiser calls a 'dung-spreader' which looks to me more like a small-farm's fertiliser spreader, but that might be a 'lost in translation' moment? We had a very similar one ('Varispeader'?) with a square-topped hopper; I hate to think what would have happened if you filled it with 'dung', but I suspect it might have involved a custodial sentence!

M is also for Monstrous 'Monstruos'

Last post for Halloween, and the earlier unpainted issue of Yolanda's Monster set, again Gog has also blogged these images, with additional poses, so there'll be a link at the end.

A rather nice Wolfman and a figure which troubles me; Jack the 'Ripper', although popularised in the media (and look what populism does for people - Trumpton and the Brexiteers!), he was actually a real character, who got his 'nickname' for doing unspeakable things to young women, there's no place for a character like that in a toy-line, is there? Is it just me or has a line been crossed there?

We're on safer ground with a white bed-sheet and another Fly; you can never have too many flies, except at a picnic, more that no flies is too many at a picnic!

The Dracula definitely needs painting, without paint he looks a bit daft, while the ape from the Planet of Them looks just as good unpainted as the painted one did, but begs a professional paint-job!

We've seen these recently, one (zombie) a couple of hours ago, the other (pirate) just over a month ago and that's it for Halloween this year - unless I was lucky on Satyrday at the Toysaurus!

Link to Gog's article;

http://toysfromthepast.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/258-yolanda-super-monstruos-standard.html

I think I've said before I'm no fan of Halloween, but if you're celebrating it, have fun in what's left of it (the Devil needs those vibes!), and thanks to Juan Angel and Brian Berke for the contents of today's posts.

M is for the Monster Mash!

So, I've cobbled together four posts for Halloween, all due to donations/contributions from other people, but this and the next post - last today - raise a point for comment . . .

. . . Juan Angel (known to most of you as 'Gog', the vintage Spanish toy Blogger) sent me these in conversation ages ago 2009/2010 (?), and I just stuck them in the A-Z archive and rather forgot about them. Found them a while ago and thought: "Ahh! I could use that Pirate on TLAPD", permissions were sought and the figure was Blogged with a plan for these two posts.

So far so good, but, as we saw with the Preiser Band, I have quite a bit of this type of contribution in the archive, I've always sort of assumed if someone sends me something in a private eMail, it's private!

Now, some people send stuff specifically stating it's to blog, and it get's Blogged, but a lot of it hasn't been, so . . . if you have sent me something (since 2008) by way of an image or images over the years and you expected it to appear on the Blog and it hasn't, LET ME KNOW!

Remember; I'm a scatty-git at the best of times and with the Asperger's have two excuses! But, if it was more that about 18-months ago you may need to resend it, trying to find the originals I've found Hotmail stops storing them after a while? And all contributions are gratefully received - weather they are intended for Blogging or not, whether they get Blogged or not; it's only through wider dissemination that the whole picture gets clearer.

Anyway - onwards and upwards . . .

Gog has now blogged these and I'll put a link back at the end of each post, so just for fun with minimum blurb: the Yolanda Monsters; in this case painted, I'll schedule the unpainted set for a couple of hours time.

These are actually a really nice set of figures, and I agree with Gog, almost better painted. It's an eclectic set of mostly TV/Movie-related monsters of popular characters from fiction or the big-screen, here we have The Hunchback of Notre Dame (that's darhm not daym, guys!) and Death, good old death, comes for all of us so learn to love him!

The Fly, a very movie-based figure, and expertly sculpted I think? The other lady - called 'Vampiresa' on the original sheet - could be a generic vampire, or a more specific Elvira, Vamparella or Countess Bathory type?

The Phantom of the Opera is another from popular culture, but my favorite has to be the ape from the Planet of Them! It's really good and he looks fine next to the old MPC (and Larami?) stuff, some of which was Blogged the other day over on Plaid Stallions  if he wasn't a tad bigger, these figures are around 110mm or just over 4"

The Devil and a witch; the Devil is probably the weakest sculpt in this line-up, he looks a bit comedic, and she's hamming-it up a bit, but neither are common figures in these scales

Painted versus unpainted - "He lives!" - There's more after the link-jump and further links are there to other articles - bookmark it!

http://toysfromthepast.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/123-yolanda-super-monstruos-serie.html

D is for Dem Bones! Dem Bones! Dem Dry-bones...

Also from Brian Berke, and again, we've nothing similar here, or at least not down the poncy, soft, south we haven't! I do wonder if discount stores in the cities, or further north might carry more figural stuff, but the closest to these I've found are very crude, larger (6"-plus), ethylene, semi-flat, skeletons which even I wouldn't give house-room to, and let's face it, I'm not that fussy; some of the crud I've accumulated!

I would add that I haven't managed to get to the Toysaurus for a while; they might have something more useful?

Brian set these a while ago, and I've sat on them patiently until today, they are a sort of silicon rubber, but - like a lots of materials these days - has a foamy consistency (which is part of a drive to make materials go further for less I think?), so very lightweight and rather squiggly!

In some photographs Brian sent for/during Rack Toy Month, there was one with the same Spooky Village branded CVS Pharmacy's bats in the background, so I cropped it out! I could also see a 12-count bag of snakes in another shot.

The other set was sent by Brian only a few days ago with some photo's I've ummed-&-ahrred about, but won't blog, they're a little 'off the wall' for the blog (bloody body parts! Very bloddy!).

However these are brilliant! Paratroopers! Skeletons! What's not to like here? Brian suggested that because they were Amscan, they should be this side of the pond as well and they should, but I can't find them, has anyone seen them here? maybe Amscan (UK) will carry them next year? I have seen sets of six warriors which look very similar, like the footballing aliens?

I will try to get over to the Toysaurus on Satyrday (that's as close to Halloween as I go, not a typo!), which will be two days ago when this publishes, and if I find anything it'll either get Blogged later today, or in a year's time!

F is for Fingerbobs

Except these aren't Fingerbobs, they're more accurately 'Finger Frights'! Courtesy of Brian Berke who lives in the land of Halloween.

Although it is increasingly 'popular' over here, pushed by retailers who want to sell as much plastic crap as possible to as many people as possible, inventing a whole new level of mediocre utilitarian 'Bread & Circus' joy; the racks of costumes hanging in Wilkinson's at the moment like an abstract installation artwork claiming to represent 'Fast and Furious 15'; that's as far as we've got, buckets, big bags of sugary sweets, the odd bit of netting with spiders stapled to it and lots of costumes - which will mostly be in landfill this time next week, which leaves the Chinese manufacturers' laughing all the way to the bank!

But in the land of Halloween, they've honed the experience for far longer, and have issued various things to interest figure collectors: cake decorations, pencil-tops, carded figural 'treats' and other stuff, although it mostly seems to be 'vintage' these days, however Brian did find a few new items across the pond, well worth blogging, and these are among them.

For those struggling with my hand signals, I should point out that the one on the left is called the Trumpton and the one on the right is the Farage-rymes-with-Garage! Taken together it's also four in Roman numerals, as there's clearly only three of them, we have a clue as to the failure of that empire; stupid system of writing maths!

I like these, they’re fun! Imported into the US and Canada by the Greenbrier/DTSC partnership we've seen before, a clue to Jaru being in the background, somewhere, maybe.

If it wasn't for the date and the nature of the subject matter, they would be a Christmas novelty-post thing! Which raises the question as to why supposedly Christian countries have such a thing as Halloween? Don't all those Lear jet-owning TV evangelists have something to say about it - doing Satan's work for him &etc.?

V is for Very Small

But not as small as the Noch N-gauge cats and dogs, or some of Preiser's own birds! A lovely little set this; I can't remember where I got it but it appears mint, and it has the new numbering. You can't possibly collect everything by a company like this so I used to just hoover it up when it was cheap, or I had more 'disposable wealth'! Usually at shows or auctions, often as bulk lots.

Obviously meant - like most of the animal sets - for the circus dioramists/collectors, these could be caged in one of the trailers as part of the day-time visitors 'mini zoo' outside the big top, or they could be arranged to clown with the err . . . clowns, or do a tea-party thing - which would involve throwing cups of water and banana sandwiches around, not a right-wing push (putsch?) against democracy in the 1770's . . . or 20-teens!

"I claim this piece of Jungle for the Great White Queen Bonobo"! Said Victorian Chimp after the musket smoke had cleared . . . as he stabbed a still groaning local with the flag-pole he had brought along specifically for the claiming of stuff.

I can take the piss out of my lot too, all humans are pretty vile, incapable of improving much beyond the point we're at now, and why should we? We're only dumb, curious monkeys!

I clearly need an extra hours sleep - looks at calendar . . . WTF! Missed it!