S is for So . . .

. . . the weekend's here; what are you thinking of doing tomorrow? Washing the car? Yeah, 'cos they need washing, all that rain-water needs to be removed with some proper water huh?

Mowing the lawn? Good idea, 'cos once it's done, it's done, isn't it? No fear that it'll need doing again in a fortnight or three weeks, nah, a good job done for the summer; mowing the lawn.

Taking the kids to where? Thorp dark? Never 'erd of it, sounds expensive, I'd get back to washing the lawn if I were you . . .

. . . the rest of us are going up (or down!) to Whitton near 'Twickers' where we are going to wallow in plastic toy figures for the day and pick up our freshly minted copy of the Plastic Warrior magazine Tintin in Plastic 'special' publication!

This one's penned by Colin err... Penn! And it's a lovely look at the figures of seventeen different sets by almost as many makers, ancient and modern, in all scales. I can't add much to that without giving the game away, but if you've bought previous 'single subject' or thematic specials from PW, you'll know what to expect and we're going to love reading it, while you're parking that lawn.

I can add that the boffins at PW Towers have come up with a second volume for those of us who aren't planning on washing the mower tomorrow; The Plastic Warrior magazine Off With Their Heads special! Being a complete update of the previous, similarly titled volume by the same publisher!

Now, this one I can wax more lyrical about without giving away too much; thereby encouraging you to drop the kids in the washer and head to South-west London's more salubrious outskirts as soon as the sun rises on the 'morrow.

Don't let the Black &White on the front cover fool you; the contents of this guide to modeling and converting plastic figures have been completely updated for the Elizabethan-era with colourful plates of technihued lithography throughout.

Sections on plastic types and British makers, scales, glues and gluing, paint types, tools and converting techniques lead-on to various examples of other people's work, with a very useful section on flag-making.

Erik Kemp's conversions of Culloden Highlanders (wonderful tartans) are worth the cover price by themselves, although I was quite taken by the simple head swapping of Lone Star and Timpo desert troops by Peter Evans, while Matt Thair's Napoleonic troops are lovely.

So leave the mower in the kid's parcour, quickly wash the cat and get the car to Twickenham (plenty of parking) with you in it, as soon as you can - 10.30am tomorrow at the latest - s'my advice - best show in the world!

Apologies to Colin for the wholly-predictable scribe-related pun.

News, Views etc . . . Last call for PW Show!

Let's get the boring bits out of the way first, recent toy news in the newspapers:

Kiddybricks-call-me-Lego

Recently opening a new Lego Store in central London; Lego have now announced 'up to' four new 'Discovery Centres' for Australian shopping precincts.

Iraq

The 'i' announced on the 24th April that following the removal of the so called ISIS (surely ISII? Easier to call them Deash) from East Mosul; toy shops are making a comeback, with Teddy Bears, Dolls and Action Figures available again! They don't say how anyone on starvation incomes will be paying for them?

Hornby

Despite good news in recent 'News, Views...' and better forecasts from the company, there is still 'trooble int'boardroom' down there in Kent (Brexitland HQ) with a major shareholder trying to get one of the directors replaced and himself installed! It's unlikely to get through an all-shareholder vote at the AGM but has negatively affected shares.

Meanwhile the company; which also owns the Airfix, Corgi and Scalextric brand marks, has announced the 1st phase of their planned-recovery complete.

Hasbro / Kenner

News from the press-room of the bleedin' obvious saw Kenner-Parker issue a profits warning about three weeks ago (21nd April) with the announcement of a drop in Barbie sales, then on the 24th April Hasbro announced a 'better-than-expected' quarterly profit result - well fancy that!

Other Bits

This was in one of the papers a while ago, given to the Queen by the Chinese it's one of last year's presents, the deck and bridge look to be of the finest quality, matching old silver neff centrepieces in workmanship, but then it looks as if they gave-up trying on the crow's nests and masts? However: it's about HO-OO gauge compatible, so on the list for me to pay the Pink Panther to perloin for me, once I win that all important triple-roll-over on the Euro-lottery, that I don't buy tickets for!

This is from ages ago, but is worth a quick show; a couple of Preiser (or the new-generation Noch?) figures illustrating a front-page banner [inset] for an in-depth article on earnings inequality in the 'i' back in September.

Also falling through the publishing-timetable hoops here at Smallscaleworld Towers was this Metro fluff-piece from last December with B-B-B-B-B-B-Bob Mortimer putting in a mention for childhood poopertrooper-parachuter Toy Soldiers and having it illustrated by some fresh out of Journo-school picture-editor's junior numpty with a modern 'Made in China' copy of the old Tim Mee GI's - look: no parachute; you dimwit - in three years time he/she'll be on Sky News calling wheeled-APC's "Tanks" - you know I know it!

The nature of Arco-Mattel Mobile Attack Cannons seems to have gone from badder to worstest! "Mr. Ford, Mr. Ford - Herald Tribune here; is it true we can buy any colour of Mobil Attack Cannon we like, as long as it's pink?"

I can't remember which paper this came from but it looks like a Metro column-filler, it's a very fanciful stock-image probably by some Victorian copper-plate artist and needs at least five banks of oars each side. While you'd need at least twelve Zvezda kits just to scratch-build the hull! However, it could be lazer-cut?

This is another one which has missed previous News & Views posts for a while now; the UK mobile telephone network '3' has had various adverts in various sizes with a general aura of nostalgia provided by toy imagery, here a knock-off (or real?) Muppet spews-forth knock-off (or real?) My Little Ponys! Blehhrrr! Weird marketing from those crazy guys at marketing-central! "I puke rainbow-ponies, buy me"

Plastic Warrior's 32nd Plastic Toiy Soldier Show - It's tomorrow peeps!

There is a toy soldier show, tomorrow, here, in England's green and pleasant land, it's the 32nd show - in a row!

There will be rare and valuable single figures for amounts of geld that make your eyes water, there will be bags of Hong Kong tat for pennies and everything loose, boxed, bagged or carded in between; they may be painted or unpainted, home painted or paint-stripped; they may be old, new or copies; military, paramilitary or civilian, spacemen, space-warriors or space aliens, historical, fantasy or TV related; Wild West or wild animals; there will be premiums, sets, bits, parts and handfuls; they will be from 15mm (or below) to 200mm or above; they may be hard polystyrene, soft polyethylene or floppy, bendy, stinky PVC and they will all be under one roof - you need to be under it too!

An updated aerial shot of the scene of the crime, it doesn't add much to previous posts, but it's new imagery!

The map version may be easier for some; that Hospital Bridge Road is the easiest way in I think; turning into Percy Road especially later in the morning as you don't have to worry about the one-way nature of the dual-carriageway, or the traffic!

There is plenty of parking, the local railway station is quite close and further details can still be found from the on-line PW portals:

PW on Facebook

Blogger - The PW Blog

[a bit late to-] eMail; pw.editor@ntlworld.com

"Your target for the morning gentlemen -

The parkungspaltzen at Polimerfürtt - try not to miss"

There may be a further post here at the Smallscaleworld around Greenwich-tea-time, I couldn't possibly say for sure . . .

S is for Stop the Bloody Presses!

They've only just gone and announced a Judge Dredd TV series!

http://deadline.com/2017/05/judge-dredd-mega-city-one-series-adaptation-im-global-tv-rebellion-1202088620/

Also I got a spammy eMail from someone I don't know, but if you are a fan of 'proper' Kulmbach-Nuremberg tin flats, you might want to check this out;

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Zinnsoldaten-Sammlung-5-071-Figuren-flach-pewter-figure-statuette-collection-/282458653644?hash=item41c3d903cc:g:ZDYAAOSw~y9ZCegG

It's an evilBay link so it won't last forever!

OK - Roll the presses again, news-flash over . . . but Judge Dredd . . . on the telly?

V is for Visit, Spring Visit . . .

. . . to The Works, which proved fruitful, if only to add more ephemeral polymer shite to the stash!

So this was 6-quids-worth of plunder, booty or barrel scrapings - depending upon your point of view! A Dorling Kindersley tome on Kiddybricks-call-me-Lego [do you know; I sometimes spell that ...bricks, sometimes ...briks and sometimes ...brix, yet I have all the notes on a dongle less than two meters away, the only thing preventing me from correcting myself is fucking laziness, and the fact that I know the Tag's right!], a pack of chinosaur dinorasers and a rather nice little Ankylosaurus.

They made a Fergie! I may not know much about anything, but I know that's an MF 135/165 body-shape or my name's Serwin 'Eell! Other than a picture of my old steed, the book is crap, being yet another DK-Lego  inspired marketing exercise in saying nothing with lots of pictures, and most of them are of pretty common fish, still at four-pounds it will add some colour to the bookshelf!

Branded to the same 'Fun Workz' as those risible, n'th-generation copy, propylene, hidiosities we looked at a week or two ago, these are a bit better - imported by TWSL (The Works Stores Limited?) - more erasers; it seems everyone has a set of dinosaur rubbers at the moment, it's the third or forth set we've looked at in less than 12 months! And they had both my favorite greens (apple and puke or is it grass and camel-dung?!!) in one bag - bargain!

The rear of the Ankylosaurus card shows six sculpts, well . . . I saw three of the others and while the Triceratops is worth a punt if they've still got some next time I'm passing and feeling pound-flush, the other two (top right and bottom centre) were disappointing lumps of wasted polymer in the flesh; so I doubt I'll be adding them to the pile - until they turn-up in a cheepie lot a few years hence!

However the Kandytoys model of an Ankylosaurus is a nice little sculpt, about in-scale with Airfix Tarzan figures should you be going down the 'Lost World/Centre of the Earth' path, and you can see how the design of the erasers is semi-flat, even though they are fully round, with the legs sort of welded into one!

J is Just for Fun!

How small is the Smallscaleworld?

Well, we can make it 10-pixels-by-ten-pixels and using an external hard drive could put up to what . . . twenty terabytes . . . fifty terabytes in the single folder? I've got about 45-50 gigabytes at the moment, but a lot of that is 9 years-worth of blog images!

We can of course reduce the title considerably, and throw the folder into space to make it look even smaller! But the Icon is now 18x18 pixels . . . it's grown - Doh!

Ooh, what's this tool here? . . . OK, 9 pixels by 9 pixels; that's better!

Let's reduce the folder title to the minimum and camouflage it!

In fact, why bother with a title? Let's just point at it; now it's hard to see! That's about as small as I could make the Smallscaleworld without Microsoft coming up with new icons!

Or . . .

. . . we can go the Fontanini route and decide the Smallscaleword's over 800mm! Yes, that's nearly a meter!

Of which -  two inches are the base-lump of Italian Carrara marble which caused the behemoth of a figure to come into being. I shot these at the PW show a couple of years ago, it's some show wot 'appens sometimes, don't know when the next one is - probably missed it!

Sold as mantle-pairs, there were 8 sculpts (and a pair of mounted figures with lovely relaxed horses) in the smaller sizes (Fontanini produced these in many sizes from 60mm upwards and many finishes), but I don't know if more than one pair were pantographed-up to this size. You can see some of the 8-inch figures bottom left in the shot.

The Carrara marble gift shops had/have tons of this stuff, and the bases utilised the 'flawed' marble off-cuts, the prime building-material and/or sculpting marble being prized for its pale grey hews; polishing to a lightly striated white, not the dark grey with white bacon-streaks (marbeling!) of most of the bases you find on the Fontanini-supplied figurines.

There is a single figure of the right-hand pose on Etsy at the moment for 103-quid (an odd number, but presumably dollars-into-pounds? I didn't study it too closely!) which is as much as you'd want to pay for a Capodimonte porcelain one, but to be honest, if you keep an eye on charity shops or local auction houses, you can pick these up for £15/20, or only a few quid for the smaller ones; I recently picked-up a couple of the Rococo 'gentry' for 6-quid the pair, and saw a set of six of the chinoisery figures for a pony*!

* That's £25 for the overseas readers . . . £20 is a score, a monkey is £500 and a donkey is a dog is a lemon is a shed is an old car!

S is for See; Told You So!

Also available in blue!

It would be a bit crap if I left it there wouldn't it, a simple display of my ability to predict what I saw in the shop! Tobar for Hawkins Bazaar and others, as I said the other day when we looked at the red one, they were also in blue, but there may be other colours elsewhere, I suspect not, but there may be! Anyway; I was passing, I had the prerequisite 99p on me and I heard him calling!

As we were looking at larger figures the other day and these have been in the folder for too long waiting for a superhero post, courtesy of Brian Berke (you knew that - his 'berserker' is showing the true size of these 6" behemoths!) are these two Marx 1:12th scale Marvel characters; Spiderman and Captain America, also in blue, so filling-out a neat post - if I say so myself! Only 29¢ - those were the days huh?

P is for Paramount

Another box-ticker from Picasa, but a nice clean sample; Paramount cowboys and Indians . . . or Indian!

I'm guessing the one on the left is a later one (unpainted), but he could just have escaped the out-painter? Based on or direct piracies of Britains-Herald the double-gunslinger is the least like the donor pose with his more upright stance, fringed shirt and ten-gallon hat!

15-05-2017 - Paul Morehead at PW reminded me at the show this weekend that Replicants obtained the Paramount moulds, so the left-hand one is probably from Peter Coal as a re-issue.

B is still for Baseball!

These were donated to the Blog by Brian Berke and they are fun! Imported into the US by JPW, they're probably a bit harder to find this side of the pond, but you might try the big craft superstores, where they may be sitting with Wilton's stuff in the cake decorating sector?

Two teams, red and blue, it's almost like war-gaming! Indeed - I'm sure an enterprising cove from that branch of grownups-and-toys (they all seem to call each other 'cove'!) could fix-up some dice-based rules? There used to be pocket cricket, after all, if you can game cricket with a rolling brass hex/drum and stub of pencil, you should be able to sort something out with these chaps!

Each figure is unique due to a number on their shirt-back, although the three fielders are basically the same pose. And I'm afraid the catcher is one of those surprisingly common - within the hobby - poses that begs the ear-worm . . .  ♫ Maaah Maaa-aham-meiiiiii♫

Thanks Brian!

B is for Baseball

It's a sort of glorified Rounders, that takes all afternoon but scores lower!

This is one of the odder things that came out of Galoob Towers in the later period of that company's Micro Machine range. As there was only ever the one set, we have to assume it was a toe-dipping exercise, which, upon poor sales was given the chop!

A shame really, as the concept is a good one, and were it to be extended to other sports or 'Track & Field' there would be literally an endless supply of names to collect. What's ironic though is that there is probably more collectability in the accompanying busts, which are very similar to the old cereal and coffee premium busts of people like Kellogg's (historical characters and Indian chiefs) and Quaker (military heroes of the sea, and land) or turntable centrepieces of Y'Bon and Banania (French pop stars).

It's like the recent failures of Hasbro's 54mm Star Wars Command range or World's Apart's short-lived Horrible Histories figures, the modern toy industry doesn't allow enough time for things to grow, an idea is had, a budget is agreed, a production schedule and marketing campaign are then squeezed into (or out of?!!) that budget, and if after a cut-off point, the profit margin hasn't reached a pre-agreed level - it curtains, folks!

So we have just the four 'microverse' figures and four busts, most still sold like this - MIP! - on evilBay and 'microplay' actually hit a dud!

D is for Dulcop Spacemen

Being EC's look at Italian-produced plastic space figures; Part 1, over to Ervino . . .

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DULCOP

The Dulcop company produced toy soldiers from the late '60's to early '80's, and it is still active today as a producer of soap bubbles. In the '70's it produced a range of all original design 1/32 scaled toy soldier figures sets and accessories (vehicles, etc.), rivalling for its diversity with the Airfix or Marx ones, with subjects spacing from Napoleonic to America Civil War, from Western to Robin Hood, from Medieval Warriors to Tarzan, from a nice licensed set from the '57 Walt Disney'Zorro' TV series to Spacemen.

The Dulcop figures were sold initially company-painted in diorama boxed sets, and later undecorated on bubbled cards. Many of the figures, especially those of the late unpainted production, are easy to find in good condition, with a few exceptions, e.g. some on the figures of the Spacemen set.

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The Spacemen set is composed of six figures in different poses (see images), two of which (the so called 'weight-lifter' and 'flag-bearer') are very difficult to find intact, considering how fragile are some of their parts. The figures are approximately 6 cm high from feet-to-head, made of soft white plastic, with the rectangular bases with cut-off corners (very Battlestar Galactica... :-) ) typical of many of the Dulcop figures. On the bases of the figures; in front of the feet of the figures, there is an elevated writing saying "DULCOP – MADE IN ITALY”.

Considering that one of the figures that I have has some painted parts, and that I saw in the years painted versions of some of the other figures too, it is possible that this spacemen set too was commercialized in some form of 'diorama-box', but personally I have never seen it.

The figures don't appear to have identifying numbers. The design of the spacemen's suit doesn't seem derived from a specific 'real' space suit (as it were, e.g., for the Marx Gemini or Apollo-suited spacemen figures), but some elements of its look (especially the helmet) IMO have a certain resemblance with the USSR Cosmonauts 'Sokol' space suit.

I is for Introduction and Italian - Space Figures

I am delighted to announce a series of guest posts sent in by Ervino (otherwise 'EC') from Italy on his country's output of plastic space toys including astronaut/cosmonaut types, proper spacemen (armed!) and various aliens and other beings.

My only input has been to stitch the various eMailed parts together and run a hardly needed spell-check,; all text and images, links and general layout is Ervino's and I thank him for these needed posts on a popular subject within the hobby. Over to EC . . .

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Size Comparison

Italian Space Figures – Legend:

1 - ALPIA

2 - CO-MA

3 - BARAVELLI

4 - DULCOP

5 - APS / POLITOYS

6 - TORGANO

7 - ATLANTIC

8 - UNKNOWN

Italian Space Toy figures from the '50 to the '80

Starting from the years after the WWII, the recovering Italian toys industry produced a really great variety of various scaled toy soldier figures, employing in their production a wide range of materials: from 'metal-reinforced' plaster to composite rubber mixtures, from early hard plastics (Bakelite and Vinyl-acetate) to more modern soft plastic Polyethylene and PVC's, so greatly expanding the somewhat limited range of products previously available between the two WWs.

Equally wide was the range of themes covered in the production, spacing from historical and 'modern' military to Wild West, from Pirates to Medieval Knights, from Vikings to Spacemen & Aliens. Moreover, almost all of the figures produced in those years were of original design and moulded and produced directly in Italy.

My personal collecting focus is limited to the 'Space' theme, and so, in this series of posts, I will try to give at least a general overview of the main companies active in the field during these 'Golden Age' years of the Italian Space Toy soldier figures, and of their production.

For this 'Post Zero', I will begin with a list of the main manufacturers of Italian toy soldiers and figures that produced space themed ones, with a brief note for each of them about their specific space-oriented production.

In following instalments of the series I will post more info and images from the pieces in my collection about the products of each company.

Beware that neither the companies nor the product lists have the pretension of being exhaustive, as, even for the most famous of them, every then and now it appears on the collector scene a new variation or an entirely unknown figure or set of figures, or even a never heard before manufacturer.

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Bibliography – FWIK, a specific book doesn't exist focused specifically on the Italian Space Toys & Figures production. There exist anyway at least two books dedicated to the general Italian Toy Figures production:

·         ITALIAN TOY SOLDIERS - Composition and Plastic Production from 1930 to 1970” - Orazio di Mauro/Franco Paoletti - Edizioni Lazzaro, 1994

·         ITALIAN TOYSOLDIERS & CRIBS FIGURES - Mauro and Orazio di Mauro - Self-produced

Both have many wonderful images and descriptions with text both in Italian and English.

Moreover, there are some web sites and books dedicated to one or more specific company, sites at which I will refer to in the posts dedicated to every/each specific company.

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NB: The years span in the brackets refers to the named companies toy soldiers main production. Some of the companies existed before and after they started/ended their 'adventure' in the TS field: e.g. the COMA company, that started its activity as a supplier of plastic pharmaceutical and stationery implements in the early '50's and closed in the late '80's as an early childhood toys producer/distributor.

ALPIA (mainly '50's) - Produced a set of eight Spacemen, a firing 'Bazooka-Man' (in 3 or 4 variations) and four 'B.E.M.' Aliens, plus at least one space vehicle.

APS-POLITOYS-TEXAS-ASTRAL BUBBLEGUM (from middle '50's) - Produced two series of semi-flat soft plastic figures, one of Spacemen and one of Aliens, plus some vehicles.

ATLANTIC (from '70's to early '80's) – In the huge production of toy soldiers and other items from this famous company, there were three lines of items dedicated to the Space theme: the Legionari Spaziali (1/32(ish) power-armoured troopers & their 'B.E.M.' foes, plus a couple of vehicles), the 'Anime' series (from the Harlock & Goldrake/Goldorak animes) and the Galaxy Series (really more 'action figure'-scaled items than toy soldiers, but IMO too peculiar to be left out! :-) )

BARAVELLI (mainly from '60's to '70's)  – Produced some (probably bootleg) 'Gemini-suited' Marx 1/32 astronauts copies, plus a series inspired by the 'Apollo-suited' Marx figures, and a series of six boxes of 1/72(ish) Airfix 'blue-box'-inspired Spacemen and vehicles boxes, with gorgeous original graphic (and cheap mainly Giant-type HK figures... :-/ )

CO-MA (mainly from early '50's to early '80's) – Produced various series of Spacemen and Aliens in 1/32 and 1/72 (ish) scale, with colour-coordinated water pistols and a couple of vehicles.

DULCOP (mainly from late '60's to '80's) – In the context of a wide range of 1/32 military figures, this company produced a single set of 6 poses figures with cosmonaut-style suits.

ISAS (mainly '50's) – Produced a set of 70 mm spacemen, in the late '50, made of a mixture of rubber, latex and plaster.

ROVELLO-PORRO (mainly '50's) – Produced a series of plaster 'Martian' figures inspired by George Pal's 'War of the Worlds' movie.

TORGANO (mainly '50's) – Produced 'Bakelite-like' figures of various kind (semi-flat and full-round) and scale.

VARIOUS - Companies that produced only a casual few of space-themed items.

UNKNOWN - Some of the figures/series of Spacemen that I collected or have seen in the years, and that, even if I'm sure that they come from Italy, I haven't been able to associate to a particular company.


Next;  Part 1 - Dulcop

EC