C is for Contributed Chinatroops

I haven't got a big post or set of posts on Army Men this year for RTM but there are a few, and both these have come from other sources; with shelfies of a set from across the pond via Brian 'Terranova' Berke and a set from closer to home donated to the Blog by Peter 'PW's Roving Reporter' Evans, so thanks to both.

Brian sent me these shots to see if I could ID them, I wasn't 100% at the time but I'm sure now that they are 2nd generation sub-piracies of the 1990's New Ray figures, we looked at some 1st generation copies last year in the big RTM four-parter (which over-ran into September!), and you can see these have suffered a further drop in detail/quality, but . . . they will still paint-up.

Indeed seeing what the Man of Tin - Men of Tin has been/is doing with those 30mm's from Poundland/99p Stores (et al), it's fair to say the less detail, the more can be done with paint! Branded to WowToyz Inc., and available in TJMaxx, I haven't seen them in TK' . . . yet!

Meanwhile OTL are importing these Red Deer branded 'army men', and again we saw these last year, but in a series of screen-grabs of various issues from various phantom-brands and Ali-Baba page-holders, so hard to tell which was which and which these are closest too.

As they are 3rd or 4th generation copies-of-copies-of-&etc., with a skeletal semi-flat countenance it matters not, but with 20-odd each of four colours they might keep two small boys quiet in a wet caravan . . . not much danger of that this year though!

Peter and Brian - cheers guys, even especially 'chinatroops'-  all grist to the mill!

Monday 6th - Follow-up in the pipeline! I got home from posting this article to find a big parcel from Peter Evans, with more on these, digging in the dongles added yet more still!

W is for Well! We've Seen These Before Recently!

But they were hidden in a non-VT header-carded, bagged, coach, and sans riders as they were being employed as draft-horses. But that these are they - I am quite sure (I have a few in storage somewhere) and having visited the wheeled transport twice in the last few months, let's look at some of the riders - courtesy of Adrian Little!

As they came in, but after a good wash, so . . . not 'as' they came in at all - fake news!

The two golden- or dried-cream coloured ones were almost certainly another, browner or yellower colour once, but have faded through the action of sunlight or just the leeching of an unstable/unfixed additive?

The cowboys (Mexicans!) are the same as the wagon/coach drivers and while I think these are the sub-piracies, I'm guessing VT have slightly better ones (possibly the ones in storage), and they may be limited to the one pose?

The Indians are far more interesting - firstly they don't have the plug-on hats, secondly I love the colour palate and thirdly; at least six poses . . . including the one on the far right who has a hunting horn like the kazoo/blow-horn we looked at here last year some-time . . . year before?

Now, there are some clues to origin here, as I have been given similar but much better figures by Italian collectors with the proviso that they were Italian pocket-money things. This suggests that the French versions may be copies of Italian production, with the HK copied from either.

My reasoning being, that while the French stuff is much better than the HK stuff, it's horses are thin parodies and - as far as I know - they don't have mounted figures like these, but the Italians do, along with the wagons?

There are three poses of horse -and as far as I know, these are a HK-only thing, the Italian (and French) originals having either their own designs or animals following the Bergan-Beton pattern. Although I expect a western design of this horse to turn-up one day, it's such a common design with HK stuff, one feels it must have been copied from somewhere?

You can see from studying the photograph, that the two left-hand and the three middle horses (the other two poses) have some very odd-looking leg positions and/or sculpting and have clearly been created by traumatic surgery on examples of the common pose! The white one, bottom-right, it a premature mould-release shrinkage example and otherwise a guide to nothing!

Also the right-hand pose is the one I call 'Mexican' with regard to the small scale production of the former colony, where it comes in two slightly different sizes from Giant (and many others) as well as an intermediate 30mm version - probably a Christmas Cracker/Gum-ball capsule thing as I only have one or two.

Markings are confined to rather crude Hong Kong's on horses legs, one leg per horse, but not every horse, so a multiple-cavity tool looks likely.

The 'scenic posed shot'! For what these are; 2nd or third rate copies of copies I rather like them! They are quirky and there's nothing wrong with that, conformity never did anything for anyone!

With a tray of mixed stuff there's always a question mark or two, and while I quickly rejected the Totem Pole (seen in the 'How they come in' post the other day) as having nothing to do with them, I'm not so sure about the pink Tee-Pee.

The red one (also un-ascribed to a set or maker) is for comparison, and more common (I have two or three now), but the pink one is the same pink as the cowboy in the sample, so while I've bagged it separately for now (with a post-it-note note), there's a chance they do belong together, a second 'as clean' sample will confirm . . . one day . . . maybe, or a bagged set on fleaBay.

Also a comparison shot between the 25mm figures (this is a non-Giant one on a poor quality horse I happen to have to hand) and the 45mm, the 30mm (which I couldn't find with a cursory look) comes dead-between them both! Actually - I think mine (30mm sample) has an over-scale Roman on it? - I was looking in the wrong box!

News, Views Etc . . . Forthcoming Events

We seem to be well into the quiet period of the summer holidays, with very little action on either the Toy Fair or Auction front in the next week, but there are still a few things to visit if you fancy a trip out or have some spare shekels, burning a hole in your pocket!

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Toy Fairs

Sunday 5th August 2018

Barry Island - Chris Dyer Fairs

Barry Island Railway Station, Station Approach, Barry Island, South Wales, CF62 5TH

Web. - www.chrisdyerfairs.co.uk

Tel. - 01643 702 757

Mob. - 07966 694 579

Admission £2

10:30-15:00hrs

Burton-on-Trent - Chris Eaton (Toy & Train Collector's Fair)

National Brewery Centre, Horninglow St, Burton-on-Trent, DE14 1NG

Web. - www.nationalbrewerycentre.co.uk

Tel. - 01283 532 880 (Nat. Brewery Cntr.)

Tel. - 07877 346 371 (Chris Eaton)

Admission £4, children £1 - includes entry to Nat. Brewery Cntr.

10:30-15:00hrs

Falkirk - McLaren Models

Tel. - 01324 624 102

(All other details here)

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Auctions

Tuesday 7th August 2018

Heaton Mersey - Capes Dunn

40 Station Road, Heaton Mersey, Cheshire, SK4 3QT

Web. - www.capesdunn.com

eMail - capesdunn.caroline@gmail.com

Tel. - 01614 321 911

Collectables & Toys

Newbury - Special Auction Services (SAS)

81 Greenham Business Park, Newbury, West Berkshire, RG19 6HW

Web: www.specialauctionservices.com

eMail: mail@specialauctionservices.com

Tel: 01635 580595

Fax: 0871 714 6905

(Not the 1st of August as advertised elsewhere)

Thursday 9th August 2018

Sheffield - Sheffield Auction Gallery

Windsor Road, Heeley, Sheffield, S88UB

Web. - www.sheffieldauctiongallery.com

eMail - jmorgan@sheffieldauctiongallery.com

Tel. - 01142 816 161

Viewing Wednesday 8th August 2018 09:00-16:45hrs and 9th from 8:30am, sale starts 10:00am.

Die Cast, Railways on O and OO and Tin-plate, plus a circus collection

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Other Events

Sunday 5th August 2018

 

Cancelled due to ill-health

A local event is all I've got for you this week, I'm sure there's stuff like this happening all over the place every weekend at this time of year, but PR (beyond a banner on a shop near a [local] road or two is never the strong point of 'local' things . . ."It's a LOCAL show for LOCAL people; isn't it Tubb's?"!

 

Surry-Hants Boarder - White Dove Collectors Transport Show

Kingsley Sports Ground, Bordon, Hampshire, GU35 9PD

Web. - www.whitedoveevents.org.uk

eMail - whitedoveevents@hotmail.co.uk

I know what you're thinking, but you'll be surprised what turns up at vehicle-shows, from experience we're talking large Tudor Rose old-fashioned cars, other old plastic dime-store/beach toy stuff in general and highly sought-after old Pyro/Airfix motor car/automobile model-kits, for starters, plus all the usual die-cast crud, but all of it likely to be cheaper than toy-fair fare, as it's usually being sold by dealers more interested in the real things, and most of it pretty new-to-market!

Cancelled due to ill-health

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If you are an event promoter/show curator/auctioneer and you want your toy, model, collectable or popular-/youth-culture type sale/exhibition/event listed here - FOR FREE - or linked to; please eMail me -

maveickatlarge[at]hotmail[dot]com, 

- stating the date/s of the event, address of event, contact details, opening/viewing times, admission pricing and any other relevant facts/details or features - parking, travel notes, disability access, availability of refreshments, event subject matter &etc.

And please mention any flyer-art or poster-/leaflet-scans but send by separate eMail, in case they go to the 'junk' folder, from where they can be recovered and marked safe, but only if I know they're there!

ITP is for Chinasaur Play Set

Although one of the last pieces to be Blogged from the now defunct PoundworldPlus, I actually bought them a while ago, I had been ignoring them for a while as they are real old-school crappy 'chinasaurs', but in the end I thought "Well, they are cheap, and a shelfie is awkward in this instance, so bugger it!" and grabbed a set, which was lucky as they then disappeared and didn't reappear during the fire-sale / stock clearance, and there was a little piece of luck hidden in the tub, we'll get on to in a minute.

The tub - as bought; A couple of the standard modern trees with soft vinyl pop-on foliage, there wasn't enough foliage for both boughs, so I chucked one, fully-leaved the other and sorted-it out from the dinosaurs before the photo-shoot, so we will have to look at it another day with other, similar trees! Yeah . . . that sounds like a thrilling post!

Meet the guys 'cos the gang's all here! They aren't that bad, but they are low-quality, low for today's output that is, they are better than half the dino-production of 1970's HK 'chinasaurs'! You may recognise the 'ceratopsian (front right) as having been the [reversed image] dino' staring in a recent 'Toys in the Media' advert!

They are that soft, foamy plastic I'm mentioned before and started tagging as foamed-vinyl, with the two-part construction and glued join-line you see quite a bit now with larger toy animals and dinosaurs.

There were two stegosauruses in every tub, indeed, the contents of every tub were the same, why there were two of one moulding is anyone's guess, my guess is that even with the two crappy trees the stipulated (by the client) container (for retail shelf-frontage) was looking empty, but still under target-cost, so they quickly ran a mould-tool again, gave the product a different paint finish to the existing ones - having fallen-out with whoever normally supplies them with those large blow-moulded rocks that usually join the 'filler' trees?

While is a fun musing, the one on the right is one-colour over tan, the one on the left is three, as all the others are two or three, I'd say that for whatever reason the yellow-orange one was a late addition as the budget stretched?

The others, I've already said more about them than the set deserves and I've still the next - important - bit to write, so that'll do for these - and I always hate the pterodactyls in dinosaur sets; they inevitably look stupid!

But, the little bit of luck; this was in the set - the sauropod wasn't glued properly, and revealed that what I've though is-, and tried to describe as- some 'fancy' new foamed polymer is actually just two 'hollow-cast' halves glued together with solvent.

It achieves the goals of allowing for more complicated poses (no 'undercuts') while reducing both material-cost and shipping-cost/weight, but I will have to remove the 'Plymr - Foamed PVC' tag from the tag-lists and replace it with 'Plymr - 2-Pt. Hollow' or something.

I'm guessing lots of kids have discovered this already through violence or chewing (!) but no-one seems to have clocked-it within the hobby and no one's corrected me, prior to my correcting myself - here! And I did use question-marks when I first started Blogging the material, so - Phew, that was close!

News, Views Etc . . . Lego

Whatever your opinion of Lego (and mine is pretty poor!) it is a fact that in any given period of time be it two weeks, seven-and-a-half months or three years; whatever parameter you set, press stories about Lego will out-number those of Hasbro, Mattel, Tomy-Takara and Hornby Hobbies . . . put together!

Whether this is down to a superb publicity machine, or just lazy journalism is a moot point, and my own suspicion is that it's a combination of the two, in that Lego like to trade on their cuddly-wuddly image of playful loveliness (when I [and the world's IP courts] think they are ruthless pirates), while for lazy journalists the rule-of-laziness is 'Everybody loves Lego - run the story'!

But it does mean that from time to time we will have one of these posts . . .

All since last October bar the big two-page spread which was from an early issue of the European back in November 2016. I have been collecting 'Toys in the media' stories on-and-off since the mid-1990's, of which Lego always makes-up a fair whack and I now have 3 lever-arch box-files full of Lego stuff!

I won't bore you with all the details, but with a few images to clear from Picasa, we will skim-over some of the recent stories. And starting with the European piece, it was a really sycophantic filler-piece designed to get the curious (or non-remainers) to buy the new pro-Europe monthly broadsheet - although, in its defence, it did mention Hilery Page, not all the court stuff, but he did get a mention!

Toys in the media - pastel bricks in

an advert for CDO's (my thought exactly!)

 

Housing

Lego announced last November the opening of a house to host Air-bnb guests; unlike James May's idiot house which discovered the limitations of the laws of physics on large Lego constructions (and started cracking before it was finished), this house is a normal brick/concrete/timber and tile construction, filled with lots of Lego stuff - furniture, a cat &etc...

Branding

In March Lego was found to be the UK's most recognised brands, beating such luminaries are Gillette and Apple!

Model Events

In July a Lego model of a cinema was included in a UK Film pop-up event, reportedly built from 25,000 bricks, I assume it's a copy (simplified?) of one of the Legoland attraction models?

The same month Raymond Wirick (almost a Star Wars name!) produced a large sand-sculpture for the actual Legoland theme park at Windsor. Back in March Windsor announced the completion of a new model for the summer, a quite accurate-looking Sydney Opera House.

Back in April the shopping precinct at Basingrad (Festival Place) was decorated with 20 large-scale (life-size?) animals made of Lego, there is more and more of this type of thing, and the companies behind them - needing to re-coop their investment (in tens of thousands of Lego bricks) will no doubt hawk them round all sorts of likely venues, so they - or something like them - will be near you at some point! The local paper showed an alligator and the most heavenly snow-leopard cub with fat, fluffy tail, standing on a snow-covered rock-ledge

Further-back; in October 2017, I missed a Farnham and District Model Railway Club exhibition in Aldershot, at which a Lego railway (grey-rail type) took center-stage in the press-release.

In Space No One Can Hear You Brick-Click!

All the national papers seem to have found room for a news story on the Space Suttle model with female mini-figures of Mae Jemison and Sally Ride (astronauts), Margaret Hamilton (NASA scientist) and Nancy Grace Roman (Astronomer). The set, available on-line back in November was part of a programme of crowd-sourced suggestions for sets, and was put-forward by Maia Weinstock (a science writer), who garnered 10,000 votes for her idea.

Wizardry

While I also seem to have missed another story last October! Merlin (who own/manage the theme-parks announced the opening of a new park in New York State (not city, it'll be 60-clicks outside the city), throwing $350m (£264-million quid) at the project in Goshen, Orange County.

Fake News

Having in the past pointed-out the inordinate number of Lego, Lego-related or Lego-themed stories in the 'i' newspaper, I've noticed recently that the Metro is very good at putting new Lego sets in their lust lists, wants lists, tech-gadget  lists, what's new this weekend lists &etc . . . ad infinitum. They have recently covered a Star Wars A-Wing (£169.99p - on-line!), and a US-style Downtown Diner for £129.99p.

Superman came to stay in June

(Charity shop mixed-bag)

Losses

The best news (if you hate Lego) came in March with a profits fall which Lego told the BBC, was due to their having made too-many bricks? Revenues were down 8%, while operating profit dropped 17%. Personally I celebrate every rival set I see, and there are more and more of them.

As an aside - not a recent news story - I believe that the recent developments with Lego, especially their finally following Mega Bloks to more colours has diluted the Lego brand far more than losing court-cases to their rivals, and the QC on some of the new colours is not as stringent as it used to be on the core-five, further muddying the brands identity and making it easier for Lego fans (and parents) to accept the [always cheaper] substitutes.

Lego Crimbo

Last December saw a festive story in the Metro (and other papers - I'm sure) in which they cheekily (and self-reverentially?) managed to include the phrase 'click bait'! Catherine Weightman and Mike Addis had built a large 'Victorian' dolls house out of Lego; they do a Lego display every Christmas; and this was their biggest to date. It was claimed to have 15-rooms, but no matter how I counted them, I could get no less than 18?

Low Blow

Harking back to both the other days Toys Я Us post (location) and a previous story of stolen gnomes; someone stole the head of a large 3-foot Lego figurine which was outside the Crocodile Toy Shop in Cirencester, Gloucestershire and beat him about a bit!

However after a campaign on local social-media sites and Faceplant, the head was returned with a "Sorry was very drunk xx" message attached. The Lego mechanic (whispers . . . "I think he's Duplo"!) was repaired and his hands replaced!

He's been converted [back] from a key-ring

Finally

The most recent Lego story seen by me was in the 'i' last Thursday; a two-page spread on the Lego digital-robotics designers Eric Hansen and Gaute Munch. It was a genuinely-interesting look at the educational benefits of the Mindstorms range - programmable, interactive, USB-supported, electronic construction-sets and add-ons.

It covered other products too like Raspberry Pi, Minecraft and summer activities for kids such as the International Hour of Code, local coding clubs (www.codeclub.org.uk) and Fire Tech summer-camps (firetechcamp.com).

L is for Lido . . . Not . . . Load of Limp Lookalikes!

These are quite fun, even though they are no more than blatant piracies, again from the March show at Sandown Park I think? Also the copies are soft polyethylene against the hard polystyrene of the originals - if it's not obvious from the pictures.

There are other aeroplanes in the  Lido military range as seen on Kent Sprecher's site (about half-way down the page).

From the fact that both Jeeps and both Tanks ARE here, the conclusion is that someone simply bought the Lido set and posted it to their mates in Hong Kong, who pantographed it, hawked it round the Westerner's agents and probably had it back in the shops competing with the originals within months!

Although - Lido (as can be seen in the link) carried a lot of HK tat toward the end, and this could very well be a complete (less card) No.56 Army Mobile Unit from Lido? It's rack-toy tat anyway!

When I first saw them I wondered if the whole Lido tool might have ended-up in HK, but following the link above will show you that Lido's have a better finish, and while I can't compare with mine for a week or two more (sold my shares yesterday to pay for the removal van!), I know the undersides are neater on the originals, so these are definitely copies, even down to the 'tail-docking' rubber-grommet tyres (tires), but could still be Lido-sanctioned copies?

I'm not sure if I have these two as hard-plastic originals in the 'Dime-Store' tubs; I should have, but I've always been rather puzzled by the World War II STuG (Sturmgeschütz {German} 'Storm Gun') a self-propelled assault-gun (SPG) built on a Panzer III chassis, being included in a line-up of otherwise American toys? Although when I say Stug, I mean 'vaguely Stug-like' . . . really it's another space-tank!

Added on the 14th November 2018 - Here are the main elements compared with the original 'Dime Store' Lido production (most of which I did have!), you can see the finish is better on the originals, detailing is sharper (and different at points) and they are overall slightly-larger models. I don't think I have the Lido 'planes (they may be with all the other micro-planes?), so left the HK ones out of the comparison.

News, Views Etc . . . Hornby Hobbies

Hornby continue to occupy column inches in the business sections of the newspapers, and it's a while since I last covered them, so here's a round-up since January when they saw a drop in share value after a disappointing performance over Christmas.

The 9.3% fall in value followed a profits warning after the seasonal sales fell "...below management expectations", coming in the midst of the 'turnaround' plans, it was considered unfortunate, but not de-railing (geddit!), however by the beginning of April they were again talking to investors seeking more money! This on the back of half-yearly results showing a 22% drop in revenue (down from £21.9m to £17m-quid).

The beginning of June saw the announcement of a £18-million package to 'Rebuild the brands' (that is Airfix, Corgi, Scalextric and Hornby Railways). Management said they were "...unlikely to need all the pot" - only time will tell if 2019's catalogues are any better than the disappointing 2018 efforts seen here at Small Scale World in Toy Fair Reports passim.

The money coming in two lumps - £6m from PNC Business Credit and £12m from Phoenix - HH's largest shareholder; and follows the pull-out of Barclays Bank.

None of which prevented a further drop in share price in June following publishing of the previous full-year's results which were £9.5-million down in the previous 12-month period, leading to pre-tax losses of £10.1-million.

Management are blaming 'previous management' for the woes, but it's far more complicated than that, with manufacturing and supply-chain problems going back over a decade, a lack of vision (ask any war-gamer or modeller about WWI commemorative stuff - four years wasted!), the whole restructuring thing, the boardroom battle last year, the death of the Toysaurus, the Christmas sales-fall &etc.

They are in a hole and only time will tell if they climb out of it, or disappear down it!

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Two other train stories which may as well go here!

RIP = Rest In Plastic

Peter Hurst's sons Paul and Simon were reported in March to have placed their late-father's ashes in a 'Private Owner' coal wagon (Blaenavon) so they can occasionally run him round his own model-railway, when not in use the wagon's home-depot is Ashurst Station . . . Hurst's ashes; see!

Riverside Museum - Glasgow

In May the Mature Times (I am, so I do! . . . Nah; it's free from the library and has a crossword!) carried news of the re-vamping of the collection at the Riverside Museum of Travel and Transport in Glasgow, already famous for its collection of model ships, it has laid-on a collection of model railways and locomotives to commemorate 50-years since steam stopped running across Scotland.

Full sized [real] stuff is on display as well as many static and 'real-steam' or garden-scale models.

Web. - www.glasgowlife.org/museums/venues/riverside-museum

Tel. - 01412 872 720

The Museum is free entry and open from 10am-5pm daily except Fridays and Sundays when it opens at 11am.

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Which reminds me - I haven't kept the cutting as it didn't involve toys, models, games or collectables per se, but - I also read recently (last week or two) that the Science Museum in London is going to surrender Stevenson's Rocket to York's Railway Museum (I thought I'd seen it there about 40-years ago; they must have a similar-aged loco' or a replica?), however, before it arrives in York it will be doing a 'tour' of stints in other venues around the North of England - worth checking the dates/venues.

RTM is for Rack Toy Month - S is for Soldier Shoot

So first post for Rack Toy Month and what I consider to be the quintessential rack-toy - carded knock-off toy soldiers and a dart-firing gun! There's also a bit of synergy involved as it's only a few days since we looked at the Lone Star equivalents, only this time it's not ganging-up on Native Americans but rather blowing-away generic khaki infantrymen!

And instead of 'Careful; You'll have somebody's eye out' corks, we've got 'Careful; You'll have somebody's eye out' sucker-darts.

The bag with its rather leery header-card, I think both the font and the colour-choice places this firmly in the mid/late-half of the 1970's, it's that vague attempt to re-create the zeitgeist of the psychedelic-sixties, with a dodgy sheet of Letraset lettering!

Figures are copies of the Crescent 60-millimetre khaki infantry figures - in fact the reason I bought this (at March's Sandown Park show) was because I think I have the figures loose and it's always nice to tie loose HK into a set, even if there's no maker . . . it's a start!

Simple 'Hong Kong' mark in a spaced DIN-type font, set into a tablet-shaped recess under the heavy base. The pistol looks like the sort of toy which managed about 20-shots before the slackly-applied glue failed and the whole thing fell into two halves - we had toys like this when we were kids!