HCF is for Hairy Chewbac'grilla Fella! . . . Filthy Ape!

I spent last week getting Rack Toy Month posts scheduled on the desktop 'till the 23rd, in the hope that whatever happened with the move and stuff, I'd be able to feed things into the blog irrespective . . .

. . . , a system you now know broke down two days ago! In the meantime while I have resisted the urge to start blanket-blogging everything sitting in the garage, I did spot this classic rack toy in the 'Minor Makes F-J' box this evening (Tuesday), and had to post it! And yes . . . I've cleaned my desktop since previous capcha's!

There are - among the grandees of the hobby (whose coat-tails I hope I'm increasingly treading-on!) - those who have suggested one or two companies did all the flocking, but in fact there were many flocking flockers both in the UK and elsewhere, while others bought the - relatively small - machines and did a bit of flocking themselves.

However, after the evidence of their sourcing Wombles, Paddington and the recent heavy/cart-horse, it's clear that as far as the colonies go, HCF (of Essex) were the 'go-to' for flocking-flocker's to flog flocked flockings to!

The process is actually quite simple, although there will be variations between machine-tool makers, with a glue-sloughed product (stencilled, all-over sprayed or cut-in by hand) introduced to a sealed-cabinet full of fine-fibres and given a shake, or blow, or a spin while a static charge is applied to the atmosphere in the space. War-gamers can attest to the simplicity of the tech' (if not its execution!), having affordable hand-held equipment for flocking flat areas, or even small bases?*

Too cool for film school! Excellent rendition of an M16 (which looks as if they were intending it to be threaded with a sling at one point?) and if the Planet of the Apes' movies weren't a few years earlier, you'd swear they'd used an old Chewbacca head!

Blow-moulded polyethylene with a solid plug-in head and the techniques are the same as for the cart-horse with stencilled, airbrushed highlights to jacket and boots, and paper stickers for the leather armband/gauntlet cuffs.

*Thinking out loud . . . has anyone flocked a Leopard tank kit to represent the carpeting someone in the 1980's (Belgium, Holland  . . . or Denmark maybe?) placed on them as a camouflage? You'd have to use very fine flock with a larger-scale model as the carpeting was that thin-pile, carpet-tile, type stuff, I seem to recall?

D is for Ditto!

Still where I was yeasterday (which is the day before as these are all 24hr pre-loads - Doh!), so here's some more shots of 'the stash' which I can chuck-up here inconsequentially without proper tagging and stuff, as we'll see it all again! What can you spot . . .

Armymen! Brackets; 'mostly big'! That's next year's RTM taken care of! I'm not sure about the marked bag of New Ray; I think they are actually copies, there are a couple on the top left tub (with a lovely motorcycle - all hidden by the reflection I'm afraid) and they are better than the sand ones so I suspect copies?

Romans Sah! Dozens ov'em! Marx and US, Toyway, Atlantic, Spanish and Italian, Crescent and copies, Cherilea and Timpo - mostly hidden - in the top left tub.

 It's the daft raft race, although the guys with the pump-truck are gonna' get wet!

Wagon overspill, these are all part-complete or dodgy in some way, except the one bottom-right which is about three-lb's of solid brass, 1950's, mantle-ornament! The Comansi only needs a horse, I'm not sure about the boxes, but they came with it and they fit, but so big? That's a lot of guns, or a lot of snake-oil!

 Everybody loves a sailor!

EvilBay-fodder . . . seriously . . . what the fuck am I carrying this stuff around for, I've got them all loose, I don't need this shite! Get 'em all photographed and gone is my new motto, use the money to fill the space with new figures!!

Likewise! A whole box of Merit and copy poplar tress, just poplar trees, war-gamers need these - not me! I need one of each for the archive, scan all five printed sides of the best box and it can all go.

And they've all had to be painstakingly colour-matched, as odds and sods come-in in mixed lots, then when you get four the same they need matching brown trunks to make a 'set'! It's madness!

Atlantic AFV's

Still got to be combined with the attic stuff!

All coming to SCW soon!

News, Views Etc . . . No Post!

Busy getting everything out of storage this weekend, now running around like a kid in a sweet shop, wanting to blog everything at once!

But didn't text-up the post for tomorrow, so . . . soz! Will be tons coming though, just tons of it!

 What can you spot? Catalogues, packaging and the library now in reach!

Blue Box farm and zoo, Lego minifigs (very popular at the moment!) Italieri (probably leave them to PSR!), something else (?) and the Bum-Slot (teeheehee) 'master-box'! All coming soon . . . 'ish!

Tanks, gun, cars, buses, rockets . . . Westair . . . all on the way!

With the nine years experience now in larger scales I may be able to make some

headway sorting this lot . . . winter job!

Yes - I know which are the Timpo!

I is for Interim Invertebrate Index

It must be the best part of a year or more (last Rack Toy Month?) that we saw [toy] insects here at Small Scale World, but there haven't been any or many, still enough have come in for a yearly round-up, and these are they.

I kept not buying this at 3-quid, but when it was re-anointed with a £1.50p sticker it seemed like a better idea, and it's a shed-load of bugs! From regular visitors to these pages Tobar (Hawkins Bazaar) these were actually purchased in an independent general/hardware store.

The maggots are that clammy, soft, stretchy, silicone rubber, the spider is a bit small, the fly a bit big, but the ants are fun, the glow in the dark ones cover for termites, then you have black-ants, red-ants and errr . . . . 'Red' ants! Heliotrope-crimson-scarlet-red-ants; 'slot that Commie mo'fo and put a cap in his Soviet red'ass'-ants! Too funny! Did the factory have some lipstick pigment left-over from another job?

Also, it's often interesting with these multi-lingual packagings to see what familiar things are in other languages, but usually it's only curiosity sated, however with these they are all Excellent Dude!

Creepy Crawlies is a fine phrase, it says it how it is, not like 'door', what's a door, could be anything, but creepy crawly, you know you need to look out, tread carefully, probably shudder . . . you know what I mean, yet . . . Kribbel-Krabbler? Fantastic! And the French; Horribles Bestioles . . . even better!

I don't know if it's correct but I pronounce it Hor-reeb-ler best-ee-oles, and I can think of a couple of people I'll be calling bestioles before the year's out! That Boris Johnson - he's a Horrible Bestiole!

Giants - these have come in with mixed charity-shop lots over the last eight-months or so, the stag went straight in the recycling as it was missing three feet, while the other two are even bigger and they have gone in the big-ugly-stuff tub!

Actually I think we saw the spider at Halloween last year and I re-shot it for a size comparison?

Again from a Charity-shop lot; I thought these were old Gum-ball or Christmas cracker type novelties and they may [currently] be both, but I saw them the other day (a week or so ago) on a kids comic/magazine, so they are contemporary novelties, not old ones.

Shelfie from TKMaxx about two months ago, Melissa & Doug do vinyl-rubber; a bit big, a bit bright and a bit cartoony, but a bit of paint would improve them, not enough for me to take them off the tack though!

See what I mean about the translations - interesting; but they're no Kribbel-Krabbler!

Ohhhhhh! I should have done K is for Kribbel-Krabbler shouldn't I? hey-ho! Ich bin ein braindead bestiole.

J is for Jellyman!

This post is entirely due to the regular donations and contributions of Peter Evans, and in this case have been slowly accruing over many years, the boat having been given to me so long ago I can't remember when! Then the helicopter came with the green A/Car and this year a sand recce-vehicle and the cyclist joined the tub, which will remain as a tub, due to their all being that oddest of sub-genres; the candy-container!

So, Jellyman - an armoured car filled with candy, they were those chalky ones a lot of these novelties come with and were secreted in full-view in the clear-plastic superstructure, the turret providing the lid. It has a pull-back-and-go spring-motor and - most importantly - a figure . . . or at least an upper torso, head and left-arm . . . saluting!

They also operate in the desert, literally with Arabic/Halal consumer-info/status and figuratively with the 'paint-job'!

Jellyman's take on the Hind D (or Apache?) helicopter-gunship looks like it's eaten all the candies, being a bit short and fat! The pull-back motor also drives the main-rotor, and can be operated either by pulling-back on the wheels or with a draw-cord.

I tried to wreak the mechanism in seeing how it could work (i.e. how can the wheels wind the motor if the cord is flush with the model, or how can the cord wind the motor if the wheels are jammed in the carpet?), but failed on both counts (wreaking and understanding), so can only assume a clever slipping-clutch mechanism on a dirt-cheapie toy?

I don't know if this is Jellyman or a similar outfit, the two holes behind the crew are not for more crew (although they could be used as such) but rather for a clear candy-tank, now missing.

As pointed-out in the intro-paragraph, Peter gave me this years ago and it just sort of got 'filed' as a novelty to be Blogged at some point in the future, I guess this is that point!

It has a pull-back motor (like Jellyman) and you can see the remains of a desert version (like Jellyman) underneath, so if it isn't Jellyman it must be a direct predecessor?

While this definitely isn't Jellyman, as it's marked-up to Fantasy Toys & Candies (or 'F') and is now my largest bicyclist! His candy-capsule is disguised as a large day-sack or odd-shaped rucksack and his 'Urgent' stickers suggest he's a courier who should have been delivering to me, but the container was empty!

Cheers Peter - The closest we get to this stuff out in the sticks are those Kinder knock-off capsule-eggs with a naff finger-ring, spinning-top or strip of stickers!

F is for Follow-up - Fighting Fellows

So, I posted a bunch of posts, whenever it was Last Friday I think, up the Library as I was rushing about, and one of them was the two bagged sets of 'Army Men', got home to find a big parcel of stuff from Peter Evans (lovely gashapon set  . . . probably save them for Xmas), among which were these five chaps and their header-card . . .

. . . which I instantly realised were the figures from the bagged Wow Toyz set Brain B had sent the shelfies of, and which I'd posted an hour or two earlier, with no further plans to go online 'till the following Monday (just gone)! Not all the poses and I don't think they are all ex-New Rey, but some are, with a couple of odd ones - th eleft-hand yellow one would paint-up as a WWII US paratrooper BAR-gunner and the lefthand green one could almost be an early arrival in theatre for Rommel's DAK!

The middle-yellow is communicating with the brigade-net on a conch; prevents enemy-interception don't you know!

Set JL 668-4 Military Action from PMS who were the phantom brand for 99p Stores before their demise, whether they are still supplying other people or not, now Poundland (the one which hasn't gone bust yet) own them is anyone's guess. The artwork seems to be borrowing a tank from Games Workshop!

So the previous are a UK-available version of the set Brian sent from the 'States, Peter also sent me these (above) a while ago (three or four years ago?), they were loose with a bunch of other stuff and no header-cards, so I shot them together before they were sorted-away, but they then missed last year's four-part'er, as there were no figures easily identifiable as going with them.

One of the elements is clearly visible in this commercial ad' from a generic 'location China' seller on feebleBay a while ago; the watchtower. The figures seem to be drawm for a couple of other common 'line-ups' with some being even poorer copies of New Ray, the others . . . worse!

But look at the tanks, a rather nice - if over sized for the others - M3/Grant medium-tank, it appears to be missing its main sponson-mounted main-armament, so a CDL conversion perhaps in the offing?

To which you can add an Airfix 'readymade'-sized Leopard I/II and an MI Abrams/Challenger type, along with what looks to be an inter-war Russian 'land-ship'? We've seen similar vehicles here (a LVTP7 and Indiana Jones WWI'ish) with the same paint, so clearly one of the generic contract-manufacturers has quite an eclectic catalogue of these things?

Not forgetting the pedestal-mounted 155mm gun with what appears to be two crew riding the barrel - rack toys; doncha just love'em!

For completion, a rather fuzzy screen-capcha of the old Marshall's catalogue, with the same figures as those at the top of the page or in Brian's Wow Toyz set.

K is for FuntastiK

Another Fantastic . . . sorry Funtastik; Smashy and Nicey have a lot to answer-for! When we looked at those rather poor zoo/wild animals from Lewis Sales & Marketing the other day and I said a worse set was on the way . . . these are they!

The Funtastik is only a brand-mark for a Tradeway Ltd., we may have looked at previously - checks  - no; Trademark Promotions and Tradewind Toys and neither on the Blog  . . . yet!

Indeed - the pack is actually a Bely blister-pack, being seen here before as a shelfie from Mr. Berke, while this set was put to one side for the Blog by Peter Evans and handed across at Plastic Warrior's show in May.

And . . . I know it says Dinosaur Set; there was NO sticker on the Anker/Home Collection dinosaur set in the same bundle! It is also an identical backing-card to the aforementioned Bely dinosaur blister-pack Brian B sent the blog a while ago, which probably has something to do the anomaly? Wheels within wheels!

The animals are marginally better that those the other day, or at least in level of sculpting they are, in pose they are poorer and in number, no more than a handful, and with five yak-a-likes out of 16 animals, not much of a selection! Packing-out with the de rigueur palm trees.

The Yak thing will be almost perfect for Hunish or Mongol war-gaming, the elephant and Rhino are pretty poor, the camel is not one to write home about, the lion's OK, but I think the 'rock-ape' baboon is quite a decent rendition, and a smallish 54mm- compatible - having lost a stone-throwing contest with a troop of them once, I regard them with the greatest respect.

News, Views Etc . . . Forthcoming Events

Seem to be settling into a format . . . Toy Fairs first;

Errr . . . There aren't any! School Holidays, Silly Season (yeah, thanks Boris but I think us brighter ones had already worked-out the level of your silliness as being off-the-scale and stitched to 'fascist'!), Rack Toy Month, actual sun (lots of it!) so . . . there are no shows listed 'till the 18th which will be next week's News, Views...

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Auctions

Friday 10th August 2018

Poole - Cottees Auctions Ltd.

Mannings Heath Road, Poole, Dorset, BH12 4NQ

Web. - www.cottee.co.uk

Bid Online - www.the-saleroom.com

eMail - info@cottees.co.uk

Tel. - 01202 723 177

Viewing on Thusday 9th August 10:00-17:00hrs (today) and on the morning of the sale from 09:00hrs, sale starts 10:00hrs

General toys and memorabilia

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Tuesday-Friday 14th-17th August 2018

Stockton-on-Tees - Vectis (4-day sale)

Fleck Way, Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees, TS17 9JZ

Web. - www.vectis.co.uk

eMail - admin@vectis.co.uk

01642 750 616

Tuesday 14th - Specialist Sale (appears to be boxed & loose British die-cast?)

Wednesday 15th - Specialist Sale (appears to be modern 'coffee table' & Ltd Ed., die-cast?)

Thursday 16th - General Toy Sale

Friday 17th - Trains/Model Railways

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F is for Football

I'll let you have 'soccer' if you're American, Australian or Irish, but there's no excuse for the rest of you! Brian B sent these the other day, he's previously sent us the Baseball players from the same range and possible another set - American footballers or basketballers but A) I can't find them on the dongles, B) I may be getting confused with the big tubs he also sent and C) the other sports are illustrated on the card, so it may be a false memory!

No matter; these are rather nice-looking and would appear to be ideal for jointing current set of cake decoration footballers we've seen here a few times now; size-wise. Five aside - four players and a goalie, but you'd have to remove a few of the balls _ think three of them have a ball, it's like a warm-up!

From the JPW/Hunson pairing, and like some of their other stuff claimed by OKK Trading of China, although Hunson are absent from the sticker this time, they were carrying the previously seen baseball set.

N is for No Indian and Three Cowboys!

Picked these-up right at the end of the Plastic Warrior show; from Barney B as he was clearing up, cost a pittance and this is the post they were destined for! I think we have looked at one - loose - in a post rounding-up various examples of these HK knock-offs, but here they are on the card.

Presumable you either got three cowboys or three Indians? There are quite a few of these swivel-waist types, and they come on various horses, so without a sealed, card like this they are just 'mush' really!

Not sure who provides the original of the horse, or the rider, but I know it's not Rel who used (fifteen/twenty years ago) to get the credit for any HK horse which wasn't obviously Britains, Elastolin or Marx! If anything it's all a bit Lido-like with shades of Tim-Mee, Lido did similar swivel-waist figures as well, but not - I think - a two-gun pose?

Bit of a box-ticker, so rather dragging the arse out of it with this shot, but it's typical of how Hong Kong got the horses to stay-put, by shoving their legs through little-slots in the backing card, you see the same thing (we've seen it here at Small Scale World) with the small-scale Giant and Giant-like production too.

In this case the separate header-card is stapled tight to the figures/bag stopping them sliding out of the slots and moving about.

News, Views Etc . . . Mattel (and Arcotoys)

Last year's rumour of a merger/buyout/takeover between Mattel and Hasbro seems to have been a will'o-the-wisp, with nothing else heard since, but there have been a few Mattel stories over the last few months and in the meantime I came across another of the Arcotoys sets, which being almost a 'Rack Toy' (except in original pricing) can illustrate the boring bits!

Charity Shop - Arcotoys Inc - A Mattel Company

No date

Back to October last, and a clue as to why the merger talks fittered-out (yes; I could Google it all - but that would spoil the fun of saving cuttings and spinning a post out of them!) with Mattel announcing a freeze in quarterly shares dividends (no money!) after a 13% decline in sales. Shares 'plunged' 16% after the announced a $603.3m (£459m) loss . . .and of course the point-three is most important!

I have two or three toys of Phoebus now -

it must have been a popular movie at the time (1996)?

November saw Mattell's Barbie arm announce a new addition to the Shero line; it's first hijab-wearing Muslim doll, issued in honor of the US Olympic fencing competitor Ibtihaj Muhammad (bronze, 2016/Rio games), it was due to be released this summer. The Shero's (She-Heros, see!) also includes Misty Copland a US Ballet Dancer and first African-American principle at the American Ballet Theatre.

Another proposed Shero had been Malaala Yousafzai (the now UK based Pakistani schoolgirl who survived a Talib' assassination attempt . . . for being a schoolgirl!) and female scientists were being mooted (obviously saw what Lego was doing!), by March of this year there's also an Amelia Earhert -aviatrix, Sara Gama - Italian footballer, Nicola Adams - UK boxer, and Patty Jenkins - movie director.

Baddies on the left?

Goodies on the right?

However, in late march there was a bit of controversy surrounding the line when the family of Frida Kahlo - Mexican Artist; objected to the design of a doll depicting their famous relative, issued as part of the series, now renamed (for the UK market?) Inspiring Women.

Reading between the lines (well - reading conflicting press-releases), it seems some of the family had OK'd the design (which IS unarguably 'glammed-up') and others hadn't, so what was dressed-up as an attack on Mattel was actually internecine squabbling between the various descendents?

Crap - little pigeon

Crap on the gargoyles

Kill - little Pigeon

Kill the Berserker!

Later in March there was a story about the female leads of movie 'Wrinkle in Time' having their own Barbie dolls (Mattel press is always either Barbie, Hotwheels or share price!) but it wasn't clear if they were one-off's or part of a Barbie line? In the course of the movie-release 'puff-piece', Reese Witherspoon let slip that she is working on a project about Ruth Handler, founder of Mattel and Barbie!

At the end April (six months after the first of today's post's stories) their shares rose 4.4%, despite more poor results, as a new CEO took-post and the losses were blamed on the death of the Toysaurus and . . . you guessed-it . . . previous management!

♥ is for Home Collection ★ is for Six Dinosaurs

This was going to be a quick box-ticker, a small set, still in blister, but they looked familiar and a quick search revealed that we have seen them before, under another brand.

Packing on the left, one of many in the bags from Peter Evans at PW back in May, on the right the contents, in the upper two rows, below them a comparison with some similar dinosaurs, the purple one we saw here a while ago, but three more turned-up and they are similar (unpainted, finely wrought, polyethylene), but seem to be another maker/brand.

The six - although brand-marked Home Collection - are marked Anker Group on the reverse of the card.

While I will often keep a header-carded bag intact, I usually carefully remove blisters as they take up too much room, the cards can then be filed - flat - separately. I seem to have reused the lower image for no good reason!

On the right in the upper shot is the larger sample we saw, under 'Perfect Moments' branding from Poundland with Henbrant's 'Oker' packaging, a year-and-a-half ago; they are also the right-hand of each pair below, with the lefties the 'new' Home Collection's from Anker - they are slightly less translucent or 'flatter' matter-finished than the newies, but the same palette and the same six colours.

L is for Look on the Bright Side - There's a Black Panther!

Definitely one from the I buy them so you don't have to department, but in their defence, we will be looking at a very similar set in a day or two, which make these look top-banana!

The tub, or is it a 'jar'? It's a cookie-jar isn't it! It was either £2.50 or three-quid I can't remember, PoundworldPlus, and like the Dino' set the other day, I ignored it for a while, but weakened as I knew RTM was coming-up and would be happy to show it - RTM sets its own rules, I just roll with it!

It says, well; Lewis Sales & Marketing of Swindon says "101 pieces" . . . count them; they're all there and I make it 97, including two stands of 'army man' barbed-wire! Also packing is so random, you get none of one colour, tons of another and a similar rule applies to poses/species! With only two camels and 11 animal types, you wonder if at least one may be absent.

One of each in close-up, they are all old sculpts, from all-over the place (Britains, Hong Kong, German Wundertüten premiums) and going back to the 1960's, but re-jigged into a set of similar, or 'uniform'  quality, pity that quality leaves a bit lot to be desired!

As well as a short-count there are some gash figures - upper of each animal in the photograph - to sort-out before you let the kids at them, both short-shot miss-moulds and shrinkage damage from early mould-release are present, but not in large numbers.

But - look on the bright side - there's a black panther. If you're lucky with both your animal and plastic-colour selections that is!