A is for 'Alfa'!

Civilian/domestic cars rather leave me cold, and even though I pay attention to these plastic vehicles in order to build the bigger picture of the 15 or 20 brands and brand-marks involved, I can't get excited about them, especially this one which has no branding to speak of.

Box with car - there is no branding on the box other than an 'Empire Made'

Car with box, the only marking on the base plate is a 'No. R445 Made in Hong Kong' which is not related to Lucky's numbering system, so it'll be one of the others, which as they aren't linked with figures or military 'stuff'; can go hang!

Did I say it was an Alfa?

There may be more at Planet Die-cast, links for which were in the older posts, but my coldness toward cars means I can't even be bothered to go and look for likely targets to link to now! Also this is the forth post I've written in the last few hours and . . . blearh . . . whatever . . . you know the score; bruum-bruum-car; boxed; plastic; Hong Kong!

Better stuff tomorrow...

R is for Racing Car Transporter

This is a little peach, but only because it comes with two smaller racing cars, and I have a sub-collection (or branch of the main collection) of small scale racing cars, so envied these; also shot on Adrian's Stand a while back and branded to Fairylite who imported a lot of Hong Kong's larger plastic vehicles.

Otherwise 'mint' . . .  someone has removed the two larger stickers; as it's been done very neatly on both sides, despite the other stickers being still firmly established I suspect there was a reason for it but what that reason was I/we/one can only guess at, but feel the lorry may have escaped a re-paint by the skin of its teeth!

Box . . . is a box is a box!

Racing cars! I didn't photograph the under-plate, just forgot . . . I think? If Adrian still has it I'll try to remember to look for it at the show yesterday, (but in three days time as I publish this) and add the image here with any note. I have a feeling it may have been blank though as I did photograph tomorrow's post's base-plate at the same time?

G is for Guiterman

This toy was issued by Lucky as the Beford Fire Engine, but as with yesterday's - both the base-plate and the box, fail to match that antecedence! Around 1:48th scale it was also copied in smaller scale for the Fire Station (12 pieces) set we looked at back in April/May.

Hinged, extending ladder and chrome-plated parts, siren and 'fast friction motor' are the main selling points, but really; it's a bright-red, fire engine and cheaper than Dinky; that's what mattered on a damp, grey Saturday in September, back in the day!

The two little mounting holes at the back of the base-plate are a bit of a mystery, but may well be for another motor housing, they tended to be manufactured by third parties and do differ from batch-to-batch or brand-to-brand (or: branding-to-branding is more accurate!), even companies like Japan's Marusan apparently moving away from branded toys to the supply of sub-assemblies.

Box branded to Guiterman, another of the old-school importers ('well-old' in this case!) like Fairylite, like Clifford, while the base-plate is branded to NFIC, who are better known for smaller-scale copies of Dinky including the London Taxi, Daimler Ambulance, Quad tractor and a range of different bodied Humber 1-ton trucks.

You may have noticed (I forgot to mention!) the difference between Brian's Canadian and the earlier - posted - Telsalda buses motor-housings; the axles, wheels and tyres were the same, but the housings were quite different with the Ottawa one having rounded ends, the Telsalda more box-like, although both fitting the same tab-slots.

Previously seen, for the hell of it and with a couple of comparisons; these are the 'war games' size from NFIC and I cropped the Marx gun out as it would be its third outing here and I try to keep duplication to a minimum.

Don't forget - it's Potter's Sandown Park Toy Fair today!

D is for Dennis

Although this has no moniker, it has the look of the Dennis Fire Appliance's I remember from my later childhood? Also I'm not that sure of scale (about 1:24th?) as there's none given and there never is with these Hong Kong vehicles; even when issued in 'sets', they were meant as stand-alone toys and scale wasn't an issue - it's one of the things that makes following them so hard, with three sizes of Jaguar (for instance) you're not always sure what you're looking at on-line!

Clifford carried a fair bit of Lucky's stuff, but they carried other stuff as well, so nothing definitive, but it all adds to the whole. The artwork shows the back door opening along with one of the side-shutters, and that's what you get, the other doors are all integral to the moulding except the crew door, which is absent on both the models below, although there are signs of it having been there.

The real reason for photographing it! Two figure sculpts, driver and sit-arounder! They are the best gauge of scale, being 70/80 mil, which gives a size between 1:22 and 1:25th scales. Made out of the same colour plastic as some of the smaller Lucky firemen, it's another clue both to this being lucky and to Clifford's relationship with Lucky being a further clue to the LP link.

Branded to neither Lucky nor Clifford though, it carries a base-plate for WS Toys! I'd like to think it's a made-up brand, but as I said above: nothing's definitive with these plastic vehicles, and has we've seen with both the figures and the London Bus, and base mark can change or dissapear!

O is for Ottowa?

Did they have red 'London' buses? Do They?

We're going to have a quick season of plastic vehicle articles, two of which are left over from the last 'follow-ups to the Lucky post's season, two of which I shot the images for at the next Sandown Park show (so thanks' to Adrian Little for all four post's images, and don't forget it's Sandown this coming Saturday), and this posts which was sent in by Brian Berke about a month or two ago.

This is basically the Telsalda bus again and everything I said last time - of an opinionated perspective - applies equally to this one, however there are detail differences which need to be pointed out, but which serve only to underline everything I was getting at in those previous musings.

The first is that the box while being the same at a glance; has no Telsalda logo on the end of the building, while the BOAC logo (British Overseas Airways Company) on the side of the bus in the image has been replaced with the informative - but unnecessary? - Double Decker Bus!

In the box (unlike last time) the stickers bear no relation to the box-art, with Ottawa, Canada and huge Union flag graphics down both sides, I can't begin to guess whether this was an attempt by Hong Kong to find 'any' market for the toy, or something with UK Tourist Board money behind it, or if Ottawa actually had red buses to sell toys of?

The other major difference is a deliberate removal of the code-number by drilling a bloody great hole in the tool-block where the number was placed and allowing it to fill with plastic. Also the silver plating on the wheel-hubs hasn't happened, so they are a neutral-granule looking; creamy-white.

Brian photographed it with the likely donor a Dinky die-cast model, however my comments last time about the number of donors holds true with the 'not'-Telsalda having a more rounded frontage to the roof and a more pronounced curve to the body-panel which comes down off the floor of the upper deck to the pillar at the back of the engine compartment

The box of the Telsalda version we looked at last time, along with three others to show the size variation of these plastic vehicle models;  the tipper truck from that previous tranche and two fire appliances we will be looking at in the next few days.

Then we must have a News Views or two - a PW168 review is due - it arrived yesterday; full of lovely things!

While posting I double-checked Brian's email and . . . "I bought this in Ottawa back in the late 70's. They had old London RT's running sightseeing tours, most memorable for all the wood worm eaten floors on the upper deck!", so my bad, and a quick Google reveals open-topped ex-London RT's - which pre-dated Routemasters - so a ready market for a Hong Kong plastic toy.

B is for Baden Powell's Boy Scout with Battery Torch

And U is for Unknown . . . again!

Just the one picture today, but I think you'll agree: interesting, nevertheless? I actually thought I'd already posted him, but I can't find him on the blog, so apologies if I've already asked about him.

I haven't the faintest idea who made him, when or where . . . well, actually, being the big head the Vichy claim I am, I do have a slight inkling; ironically enough, I think he may be French! But; more likely Danish.

He's a slightly 'soapy' polystyrene or celluloid/phenolic plastic without the heavy smell of the urea-formaldehyde or early celluloid compositions, so I think late 1950's or more likely the 1960's as he's in an advanced, stable polymer. The French were good at that sort of stuff, once they'd got through their crumbling, melting, splitting phases! [a quick coat of plumber's sealant - it seems to have worked for that Belgian figure and it seems to have worked on my sticky Starlux!]

Speaking of Belgium - could he be from there? He also has a lot (more?) in common with Kai Reisler's output in Denmark; they have a similarly posed GI, and cowboy and they're the only one going in the tag-list!? If he is British, I would favour Subbuteo; as the closest figures to him I know of - domestically - are the Subbuteo Beatles? Which might make him a board-game playing piece?

Obviously a Boy Scout or Cub Scout, is he part of a bigger set, or was he a token (jamboree attendance) or fund-raiser of some kind? He has no mark of any kind, and his 'swivel arms' have got a bit loose, being strait plug-ins with no ball or swelling to hold them in. He's approximately 54mm, but that would scale him to 60-odd as he's meant to be a juvenile?

Can anyone shed a little more light on the subject than his torch is able to?

Later the next day . . . Doh! Lucky I only put them in the tag list!

K is for Kioskowce I

If by the end of the article I've managed to sound like I know what I'm talking about here, it's only due to the debt of gratitude I owe to Konrad Lesiek who translated both sides of the boxes and the little insert slip, explaining the social/historical background as he went!

Kioskowce were the Polish equivalent of French Bazar, German Wundertuten, Spanish Sobres our own Lucky Bags or the very smallest size of header-carded, bagged, rack toy.

These 'Miniatures' were issued by Andrzej Kawecki, based in Lódź, in the 1980/90's as the Communist government first relaxed rules on private enterprise and then disappeared into the pages of history following the events of the Autumn of 1989.

You get a little box with a pull-off lid, which is big enough for a small army to hide in! From the colour differences it would seem that there were three small tools to make this set, suggesting a very-small, possibly hand-operated injection machine, one tool for the combat figures, another mould for the prone poses and boat crew, and the last for the boats.

The figures are obviously Airfix piracies and I'll post some comparison shots on the relevant Airfix Blog posts at the same time as this article. Here the 1st version US Marines have been cloned, and to be honest; compared to the equivalent Hong Kong output as carried by Baravelli at one point, these are quite good copies.

The combat poses are leeching the same kind of greasy powder/film that you often see deposited on Matchbox figures.

My other set is also of Airfix piracies; the 2nd version British Infantry, a set which prior to getting these I would have said was one of the few sets NOT to have been copied!

I can't actually remember where I got these, it could have been one of Andy Harfield's shows back around the turn of the century, or even a Plastic Warrior from the Q. Charlotte Hall days, but I suspect it was from PB Toys at Peter's show in Herne about ten years ago? Anyway, Konrad reports that they do come-up on Allegro (a Polish-language feeBay/Craig's List type platform) occasionally, if you want to find a sample yourself.

The packaging states they were made from locally resourced/ recycled materials (the translation including the term 'Ivory' [or bone], which may be a reference to the small 'ivories' made from scraps and off-cuts, such as the little bear we looked at here, a while back?), and in the case of both my examples that recycled-material is a very soft PVC rubber - quite the very best thing to make a rubber-boat out of!

Again, with 50% in 'plain chocolate' brown and 50% in 'milk', the suggestion is that two tools were required for each set. I would also say that the cardboard made in communist Poland was a darn-sight better than the cardboard made in East Germany; which - in my experience - fell apart if you looked at it harshly!

Konrad also explained how under the state collectivism of the post-war, pre-glastnost Poland, the kiosks were all called Ruch, now they have been re-distributed to the private sector and are called many names and he has sent a couple of local examples, I'm sure they will be recognisable to viewers as that pretty-universal convenience-store known variously as corner-shops, drug-stores, newsagents' or tobacconists - kiosko, tabaque . . . 'Spar'!

He added that Kioskowce also included larger figures of local design; probably Centrum flats, PZG and others, without packaging. The insert slip - in one of the otherwise identical boxes - lists other sets being available as follows:

1 - US Infantry

2 - US Marines (above - and now here)

3 - British Infantry (above - and now here)

4 - Japanese Infantry

5 - Medieval Knights

6 - Cowboys & Indians

7 - Napoleonic Period Soldiers

8 - WWI soldiers and

9 - Ancient Romans

While I assume Airfix to be the donor for most; it would be interesting to know what the Napoleonics, WWI and Wild West look like, or if there were other sets?

Finally - Thanks again to Konrad for his help in the preparation of this article. I'll badger him about Spojnia next (their Napoleonics are Esci/Ertl copies) and then we'll look at their output!

T is for Ten-pins and Terrasaurs!

For which spell-check is desperate for me to use Pterosaur! Clever spell-check, but no humorous intellectual, not that I would claim to be eye'ther . . . eei'ther but you know what I mean; these AI algorithms improve with every generation (which according to Moor's Law is not long), but they'll never quite grasp the finer nuances of human idiocy.

Anyway, we're back to rubbers, and as I've had had various 'follow-up's' and 'again's' for erasers in the past I needed another title and its explanation has provided the lead-in paragraphs!

From four-quid to two-quid to a pound, and it's probably been halfway round the planet, maybe twice! Novelty shite . . . in one image, you have all the evidence you need for the potential end of human civilisation, it's now a race between whether we will poison the planet before the weather does for us! House of Holland clearance via TK Maxx.

The reason for my purchasing them - given my above opinion - is that A) they were there already, nothing I could do about that and B) you may remember I showed a bunch of mostly Christmas cracker bowling pins a year or two ago, and while the bulk of them were the same size, there were a couple of others, and in various materials - with more than two being a collection; these have increased the scope of that 'sub-' collection!

In the meantime a far easier to justify set of erasers winged its way to Small Scale World Towers via Brian Berke; Imperial Toys being the ultimate culprit for the supply of this particularly pure stash of addictive substance!

They appeared upon initial inspection to be a better version of the Wilko ones we looked at a while ago, but after studying them I decided they are probably all of the same origin.

They proved impossible to photograph so here are two shots, neither is that colour-true, to be honest, but they are (with the exception of the - always hard to shoot - orange) quite muted pastels anyway.

Wilkinson above and Imperial below, the colour reproduction is a little better but the orange has burnt-out. The differences are numerous, in that the dino's are different colours, the egg is slightly different in its base 'dent' and both the mix of dinosaurs and their dino-poses is different.

However the orange carnivore is both the same shade and the same moulding,the ceratopsians are also identical, the two-each of four colours 'rule' applies and so I think the differences are down to batch/contract, rather than any indication of another maker's copying.

The question is whether Wilko are getting theirs from Imperial, or if that they are independently both going to the same factory gate or shipping agent - these days as likely to be an Alibaba wholesaler's page as any of the old firms?

I might suggest that there's probably an eighth pose to find (maybe more?), and I've posed them with Airfix's Boy the 'dinoheard' from the Tarzan set to give you some idea of how very small they are.

Thanks as always to Brian Berke for adding another piece of the puzzle to the whole, which reminds me; he also sent a couple of Jig Toys which I added to that page last Thursday, nothing new, but interesting colour-way on the helicopter.

B is for Bristol Bloody Missile Crew!

It's not often I get that excited about a figure or bunch of figure's rarity, all this stuff was mass produced, and even these do tent to turn-up from time to time, not just loose; but in unmade or part-made kits, so even they . . . aren't that rare, but still it's nice to find three together, which happen to be the 'missing three'!

I thought we looked at their officer - as an ersatz boat/landing-craft commander - way back at the start of the Blog (but can't find the post/image), these are the other three, issued with a large, box scale (approximately 60mm/1:30?) polystyrene model kit of the RAF's air[field]-defence Bristol (BAC) Bloodhound missile by Frog-Penguin (Triang-Lines subsidiary) and apparently manufactured for them by Poplar Playthings.

I don't know if there is any empirical evidence for the link, but PW have interviewed some of those concerned and they certainly have some of the same 'hallmarks', the flat, baseless feet being an obvious link with the Thomas/Poplar Spacemen, Cowboys & Indians and Romans, the large size and clumsily-casual, or laid-back posing being another link with the latter charioteers, although these guys are chunkier.

Described as being "Accurately detailed from official prints" - referring, presumably, to the missile - the crew figures actually look more like members of Dan Dare's space police than any RAF 'erks I've met.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bristol_Bloodhound_missile.jpg

I remember coming into RAF Wildenrath half a lifetime ago and seeing dozens of Bloodhounds out of the window in batteries of maybe 6, arranged all around the end of the runway and out through the fields to the tree-line, not white, or silver or any of the colour-schemes you see them wearing in both old books and modern museums, but matt green and black, like squat little Dalek combat-stations!

R is for Rey's Speeder

Just a quickie, bought this in one of the discount stores for a pound the other day, another remaindered Mattel Hot Wheels die-cast Star Wars toy from the force awakens.

In the box

Out of the box

Playing with backgrounds to try and make it fly!

That's it, haven't seen the movie, won't until the DVD hits charity shops, ain't gonn'a dig the smaller Hasbro one out (if there was one?) to compare (or not until I've more to make that post) so that's it!

Nice toy though, useful addition to the Micro Machine/Action Fleet . . . err . . . fleet!

S is for Solid Six-Shooters and Sheriffs

Continuing to clear that folder I found with odd Timpo shots in it, we have a few Wild West to clear-out, to which I've added some recent additions.

The top row is another of the shots I took back in 2007 when my 1st digital camera was brand new, so macro and flash were still strangers to me! It's just a look at the different colours Timpo's second version solids came in, with the powder-blue ones being from the later Action Pack boxed sets, the brown possibly Toyway issues (they look too new?) and the red and yellow a bit earlier, but post the painted-period.

The two lower shots were a couple of pairs of Action Pack figures I chucked on feebleBay early in 2009, at 99p each  - I think they sold!

Older figures, newer shots; the solid bandit to the right has lost his bank-box of plunder, I suspect deliberately, but it may have broken-off, they are getting brittle now. He came in the mixed, less than 'junk' lot last year with the Cherilea saloon and Roman stuff, along with the three first versions - from-hollow-cast figures.

Interesting that they follow their metal forbears in having gloss paint, while the 2nd version chap has a matt finish, aping the Britains Herald figures he will have been designed/introduced expressly to combat.