T is for Teutonic Troops Trounced at Trenton

Back at the beginning of February Terranova (Brian B) had cause to visit the Museum of the American Revolution (that's 'Terrorist Insurgency' in today's lingo!) in Philadelphia where he found and photographed this frankly rather gorgeous, superbly executed diorama of the action at Trenton in the American War of Independence (AWI).

Presumably; Thomas Temple Allan is the modeller? The figures are reported by Terranova to be 54mm and so may be from Airfix 'Multipose', but I would suspect Historex with a lot of work; however they could be metal and if anyone can recognise any of them other readers will be interested I'm sure - and there may be some 'enhanced' soft plastic toy soldiers?

An overview of the battle, the revolting colonists are nearest the camera, the money-grubbing surrender-monkeys (no, not French this time!) behind the picket fence at the far end of the street, I know it's only two houses, but this is a superb example of a dioramists art, with everything scaled down unobtrusively - i.e. a few figures to represent several thousand men, 3 building for a whole town, two scenes in one, &etc.

I'm loving the woman at the window . . . "Don't you men know it's Christmas? Bloody heathens, with all yer shootin' and hollerin'!" 

A close-up of the American line, the guns probably the ones captured at the fall of Fort Ticonderoga, also due to the vagaries of recruiting and terms of service in the American forces at the time (The first tranche of recruits finished their year's service around this time) Washington had recently seen a complete change of personnel and the uniforms on Boxing Day may not have been quite as 'uniform' as these smart fellows - the brown guys are New Yorker's I think?

Some of these look like commercial 'toy' figures, particularly the kneeling firers?

The Hessians behind their fence, these look to have been heavily modelled; what's under all the straps and webbing I don't know, could be Historex, Multipose or home-cast lead!

Behind the houses is a second whole scene from latter that night - after the battle - which Washington coming down to meet an impromptu victory parade (of a column of prisoners) through the town centre! It really is a lovely and very clever diorama, and the backdrop is a period map of the area blown-up . . . not by terrorist insurgents; by graphic designers!

Close-up of the meeting between the general and the captured troops, the guy in the greatcoat looks as if he's saying "Don't worry George; I've got this one!" and it looks like the Hessians are surrendering their colours, pretty serious stuff!

Thanks as always to Terranova for sending us the shots of this wonderful model.

T is for Ptobar's Pterosaurs n'Ptings

Just a quick follow-up from the I pay for this shite so you don't have to department; I mentioned when looking at 'paper' 'planes the other week that the discount store had several and that I might go back for a couple, well; I did!

I also said I couldn't remember what the third thing was . . . well, it was insects! Along with dinosaurs and the same 'planes as HGL and HTI, these are all badged to Tobar, and it turned out the Sikhs had got them in because I'd been asking for them a few days before . . . so I had to buy a few, although they were already going out like hot cakes with all three dispensers more than half empty, after only a few days.

Pterodactyl was purchased as the signature species! But three other designs are available and I would imagine they will be a lot of fun for people of a certain age? However . . . spot the deliberate mistake . . .

. . . you can't get the wings through the hole! To do so I had to carefully extend it without creating a cut-line that might spread, and one has to wonder how such a thing occurred or how it was allowed to leave the factory? And it's not a question of QA or QC, it's a technical problem 'at the coal face' . . . very odd!

The ant, I wanted a dragonfly, but they had all gone . . . verily - fussa-russa! But the ant's bearable, he has an odd tail-plane and stabilisers which I suspect are supposed to be a bit of foliage or something; there's no explanation, but the alternative (if you know about these things) is a brain altering, lethal fungus - hardly child-friendly?!!

The bee is just silly . . . and a near-duplicate of the ant (wings are different), while the two beetles are also cut from the same die, the mantis looks to be a cut-above and . . . I really would have preferred the dragonfly!

Back to the 'planes; I got the Hurricane Mk IIC . . . it might as well be a sausage. I think it's trying to be a Western desert theatre airframe, but suffers from the poor print resolution and reverse code bollocks I pointed-out last time we looked at them.

Now, along with the oddities alluded to above, this sort of think bloody annoys me . . . I know they are 'cheap and nasty' or pocket-money toys, but . . . the artwork was done once and costed-in, I suspect decades ago, and it's about time they were all upgraded/replaced. The overall cost would be peanuts in an ocean.

These are clearly selling well, and constantly as a 'traditional' toy, They are now in three outlets locally, in Basingrad I saw the HTI ones in the Entertainer, again with plenty of room in a once full stock-carton, so they are probably selling in their millions world-wide. They come in very basic paper envelopes (like Sobres), and consist of a few scraps of Styrofoam/expanded polystyrene (which will have to go back to balsa or card as the - overdue - polymer backlash gathers pace).

All-new artwork for the twelve/thirteen known aircraft could be CAD'ed-up in a weekend by a couple of commercial artists and the cost per unit, over time would be fractions of a penny. And there's a misrepresentation element here, under consumer legislation, the artwork on the outside of the envelopes is not depicting what falls out of them.

The problems are not to be seen on the dinosaurs, the insects or the foam-board/foam-core unicorns we saw last time, suggesting the war-planes are relying on print-plates which probably go back to the 1970's - come on guys, sort it out; you muppets! Get on to the Chinese supplier and tell them to sort-out the printing (and the insects wings) before some local authority's Trading Standards unit sues you!

TJF is for Tons of Jolly 'Finds'!

That arrogant heap of shit 'The Jabbering Fuck' suggested I should 'stick to showing my finds' the other day, I'll deal with the whole whine, in-the-round, later, in my usual inimitable way, but I would suggest in repost that as I seem to be out-editing him by at least two posts, three words and/or five images to one, every day, week or month, he would do better suggesting something else if he's to have a cat in hell's chance of catching-up, because 'keeping up'  . . . he ain't!

Although - he beats me hands-down on typos - as does his assistant. However, if it's 'finds' he wants, along the lines of his piss-poor output (rather than my usual thematic or subject-specific posts), it is 'finds' he shall have!

These all came in the other day with a no-other-bidders (or one-other bid? I can't remember) speculative-offer, couple-of-hours-to-go auction on evilBay, for a mixed job-lot of mostly farm and zoo animals. I actually took the punt for the Lido/Kellogg's animals in the lot; of which there was a large double-handful of both sculpt-types.

You could see the Britains horse clearly in the lot, all cut-about with a Stanley-knife, but the rider (Sheriff of Nottingham) was half buried in Hong Kong horse flesh, hens and hippo's. His paint is OK (I've seen - and got - better) and he's complete, but weirder still was that the Speedwell Sheriff's mount was among the said Hong Kong horse flesh, sans rider, but the tail's there!

Here they are together with the previously posted (here at Small Scale World) better paint figure and correct horse from the master collection, on the screen behind them!

They don't make a good combination, he looks to be riding while suffering piles . . . Ooh, me' tag-nuts . . . ouwh, me' daggle-berries, yeh, verily - me' arse is on fire!" and is sitting, apparently bracing himself against the stirrups with a gap between his bottom and the saddle. We looked at the correct Speedwell rider for the horse last time as well.

In the same lot was this Crescent grazing horse, normally I wouldn't show shite like this to you but . . . if it's a 'find'; a 'find' it is! Someone has made a horse blanket from a sticking plaster - and quite effective it is too!

They have also added a walking halter (??? I know f-all about horse tackle!) from button thread, of the sort we used to move our Aberdeen Angus' around - if they let us, if not they kindly dragged us where they wanted to go! The knots are even in the correct places.

I've already removed them; the plaster had been there so long both it and it's glue had all gone brittle, and it came off in hundreds of tiny little pieces, but some surgical spirit got the plastic back to 'original' in a jiffy!

Sticking with early British polymers, the same lot also contained two pieces of FG Taylor's later plastic farm (you may have noticed the metal version of the nesting hen came-in with the last lot of Sandown plunder), with the piggy-wig being a very poor moulding (in otherwise good condition - or it will be after a clean!) and a rather insipid shade of pinky-mauve, either the mould was too cold, or the injector head wasn't hot enough and what are known as 'jetting-' or 'blush-' marks are clearly visible all over the pig.

These are similar to the Rena birds, and while looking like some of the Macau-made PVC stuff are actually marked Hong Kong. I've seen them described as 'Dolls House' birds, but I think that was just feebleBay bottom-feeding through speculative-hopefulness rather than salient detail!

There are at least two more to 'find'; a crested macaw-looking thing and something purple with a nest, they would have been sold blister carded as a set, as rack-toy novelties or - possibly - cake decorations?

These were in the box too, another part set (of pairs) or parts of two sets? There was another duck, but he clearly went with a bunch of the horses and donkeys (by base mark and less subdued colouring) while these are all marked China and decorated - bar the hen - in a rather insipid scheme. I'll keep one of each for the master collection, and shuffle the rest off to a charity shop. . .

. . . from whence I got a nice card fort with figures today (Monday 17th), I also bought another mixed lot of farm and zoo on feeBay for four-quid, all piled in a basket and photographed through the holes! We'll see what's in it, maybe get another 'finds' post out of it, or five? These bits-&-bobs posts are easy (probably why TJF sticks wi'em!), and if you'd prefer them I can do three or four a day for err . . . like . . . err . . . forever!

Q is for Query - Probably Phidal?

There is a big re-organisation happening here at Small Scale World Towers; since the news from Spectrum about Phidal and my post Christmas successes in tracking them down, along with other stuff that has come in, the 'to be sorted' box of TV/Movie and Cartoon figures in the attic is overflowing.

Being a tad OCD (only a tad mind, I couldn't give a fig if the cutlery is crooked or the picture frames are at an angle!) I like my stuff properly sorted, so it's time to break the box into 3 or 4 new boxes, in the course of which I suspect I'll find a few Phidal's for the tub they were awarded a few weeks ago!

These were in a mixed lot from a charity shop a few weeks ago, the key rings are 'just' key rings and were common back around 2013 when I bought a couple for a friend of mine, however I suspect the smaller ones may be from a Phidal set, I need to check a source, so for now it's a maybe, but I'm pretty sure.

Size-wise the small ones are smaller than the Minions eraser set we looked at a few months ago, the key-rings are larger (the erasers are almost perfectly sized midway between these two samples) and both sets are in a stiff PVC-alike.

This chap - Fear - from Disney's Infinity - is almost certainly a Phidal as he has the same plain 'DISNEY' base mark, on a glossy black base, as have some of the other figures we've seen here under the Phidal label.

M is for Marvelous Marvels

An obvious title and I don't know why we haven't had it before now, although the fact you should all know by now that I prefer DC's oeuvre may have something to do with it!

More Phidal's have come in (with the other day's bendy-toy crustacean man!), this time they're licensed from Marvel and dated 2013 so older figures than the others we've been seeing, I don't know how many of these sets there have been, but until Spectrum ID'd them I didn't know them at all!

And there's a funny thing, after Spectrum's interjection I had some success tracking down the sets (old and new) we've seen since then, but in the last week or three, both sources seem to have dried-up - I have visited two branches of TKMaxx several times and they're all out of Phidal, while the charity shops who were getting them almost weekly, haven't had any for a while, although they had these five, so I could be talking bollocks!

I recognise the first one, he's the Goblin, Marvel's take on DC's Joker? The third looks like Lex Luther has flown-over to the enemy, but as he IS the enemy at DC, that makes sense! 19-04-18 - Full ID line-up in comments courtesy of Mr. Apperley.

The guy with a rocket belt seems only to be succeeding in blasting a hole for his legs to drop into, while number five appears to be the lizard-skinned half-brother of The Stig and just as emotionally ambiguous.

While the chap in yellow pajamas looked (in the bag) to have the world's wackiest hair-do, but turned out to have relatively normal hair, the rest would appear to be some kind of fur-ball bat-monster clinging to him like a limpet?

Quite a nice sculpt of an earlier - sensible looking era - Iron Man from Zuru, you may remember we looked at another a while back now, he came in a large capsule egg without an edible element, just a 'blind-bag' collectable figure around the 54-60mm (with ground-worked base) scale/size.

These three may be from the same source (as each other; not Phidal), they may not be, but none of them are marked so they are probably knock-offs, or at least unauthorised models from a minor make, possibly capsule toys of some kind?

The left-hand one is a slightly larger scale and semi-transparent near 54mm and carries the correct signatures for Captain America - star shield and an 'A' on his hood. The other two are slightly smaller and the one on the far right looks more like a Transformer or Autobot of some kind? Anyone know anything about them?

N is also for Nippon and Nunchuck!

So to a few other Ninja types; most sent to the blog by Mr Burke, many thanks to him and the first lot are the interesting set vis-à-vis this morning's post . . .

. . . as they are 'not quite' copies of the small gum-ball capsule ninjas we saw earlier, only in a larger scale and with adjusted or new poses and as they're being imported by Amscan - a similar company to A&A Global - might possibly be from the same source as the diminutive ones.

It's not terribly clear but they are definitely larger and not quite the same, although colours are similar, material looks to be the same (PVC or its modern equivalent) and the childlike, slightly 'deform' sculpting is in the same style as the small ones in the preceding post.

'Terranova' also sent these shots back in February, of resin Kung Fu practitioners, for sale in a gift shop and clearly based on the inimitable Brice Lee and in three sizes - the larger as 'paint-your owns' (like Bendy Toys; another new but recurring trope here on Small Scale World!); the smaller two sizes seeming to be 54- and around 60mm's?

The smallest - titled 'Kung Fu Man' - also appearing to have a wider range of poses and to be the better painted, although the painted version of the large figures (hiding behind the two unpainted ones) is a second pose in that scale, so there should be more?

Mr B also took a couple of close-ups of the nicer figures and you can't complain at three-dollars-fifty can you? These resin figures need to be purchased (or shelfied!) as soon as you see them as they are nearly always limited quantity production runs, due to the rapid degradation of the air-setting rubber, silicon or latex moulds, and with no obvious maker (WCP?) on the price label; they're off for a - probably - long stay on the 'Unknown' dongle!

Brian also sent these - carried by the 'usual suspects'; Greenbrier/DTSC - they would appear to be a continuation of the large Firefighters and GI's I bought a couple of years ago from - the now defunct - 99p Stores under - I think - PMS International's label? Brian's sent shelfies of those giant soldiers too - in new packaging - but they're for another day. These will be 4-inch, polyethylene figures, and one expects all four to turn-up in both colours.

We've seen firefighters, GI's and superhero types of these before too; mostly also from the Blog's New York agent and like those, these are that odd thing; Action Figure types which aren't really action figures due to the limited number of points of articulation, more like the old knock-off Action Men/GI Joes'.

These are also from Terranova, but have been sat in the older folder for a while now (over a year!) waiting for a suitable post; such as this one! But they ARE Ninjas! They will be in a dense polystyrene or polypropylene and come with rather over-decorated Ninja-type weapons/accessories.

Rounding-off the day with a dice-rattling lump of styrene; I've had two more lots of those Gogo Crazy Bones come in recently and so two posts are in the pipeline, but one of them is Ninja-like enough to close today's look at Ninjas! He may be more 'Kamikaze' than true 'Ninja' though?

And that's covered most of the main scales, several figure-types and all the major polymers in one post - Thanks Brain/Terra!

N is for Ninja and New Game

Brian B (Terranova) sent me a bunch of images the other day and I thought; "Ooh, I know what they are, I'll dig mine out and put them together in a post", however, when I dug mine out . . . they were different! Hey Ho! So we will see Terra's later today, after first looking at what would appear to be the donor-sculpts!

These are they. This commercial image is from an old Amazon sales site which I tried to take advantage of, only to find they didn't ship outside the 'States; which makes you wonder A) what's the point of an 'Internet' if it's not actually integrated? And B) what's the point of all these clever algorithms if they can't tell when not to show an ad' or search-result in a zone where it's invalid?

Anyway; as I remember it - it was a year or three ago now - they were basically selling a gum-ball restock bag of them (about 25/30 or maybe 50/60 I can't recall?) or shop-stock box (the packaging wasn't shown) as 'party favours', bulk, for less than the price of a coffee at Starbucks! Lesson - if it's too good to be true - it usually is!

They are more commonly found associated with importer's A&A Global International who import rack toys and supply vendors with gum-ball machine refills.

My 'current sample' (as at January 2016) is not the largest, I'm missing the guy with the short sword and have a limited colour-set - I hope I have a few more in storage (I think, or I should have - they may be too modern?) with some of the other colours &etc.

There are six poses in total and they come in a wide range of colours, in what seems to have been at least two major production tranches, the above two images are the most recent issue and may still be current in a party or joke shop near you . . . or your local gum-ball capsule machine!

Quick comparison shot - Redbox on the left and an unknown probably also a capsule/gum-ball 'thingy' in the middle (similar to but not Panosh; possibly carried - undecorated - by Toy Smith?), with one of the A&A Global's on the right.

These - heavily cropped images from feebleBay - are from gum-ball machine insert/window cards and are all marked A&A Global. In the middle you can see the earlier tranche was in more 'girly' or pastel colour-ways. However - recently, they have been copied in a size better suited to large scale collectors, and it is those Brian sent to the Blog and which I will post this afternoon, with other Ninja-related stuff.

....∙∙●=============●●◙●●=============●∙∙....

I have a new time-wasting game! Two of the above images were loaded on the blog two years ago (in the big January 'up-at-the-library' posting I mentioned at the time) and I never got round to editing the text, needing to find them on the dongles to sort this post out I searched for them and it turns out the camera recycles the four figures codes; well, it would have to with a four-digit limit, wouldn't it! But it's not something I'd ever needed to give any thought to! And it appears I have taken (or 'kept' - around 2/3rds of every photo-shoot get deleted) no less than four 7012's!

And - random as they are - they manage to cover almost everything plastic;

Large and small scale; ethylene, polystyrene and PVC; civilian and military; figures and vehicles; historical, modern, and sports; big toys, rack toys, capsule toys and cake decorations; friction-motorised; painted, unpainted and transfers; branded and unbranded, there's even a hint of accessory/scenery with the goal posts . . . but weirdly - they are all Hong Kong/China!

A Number picked at random - New Game!

Q is for Quickie

Rather poor images I'm afraid, but it's only a quick box-ticker to get something up here today, and the thing's already been put away so I couldn't be arsed to dig it out and re-shoot it, soz!

Picked this up for a quid-fifty the other day in a charity shop, nothing exciting, it's a CCG (collector's/collectable card game) from Steve Jackson games, but you may remember I got some figures tied into the same branding a while ago?

Well, there's no mention or mechanism for the figures in the rules or on the box, so they would just seem to be a gratuitous 'Let's do some figures' type thing - which I think I suggested at the time? But there are two spare compartments in the box, probably/primarily for expansion-set card packs, but my figures fit nicely, so they are all together, which is nice!

Just need to find time to play the game . . .

News, Veiws Etc . . . Now; It's Only a Month Away!

But 'still' a whole month . . . only four weeks until the one we're all waiting for . . .

. . . the 33rd Plastic Warrior magazine's show, to which all plastic toy and model figure collectors are both welcomed and encouraged to attend!

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You've got four weeks to clear the decks, get the family committed to an asylum, give the pets away in a raffle, buy a bigger car and concentrate on how many bags you need to take.