B is for Baubles!

Well, I know it's ONLY November, but time marches on and waits for no man, and the bauble season is a funny one, the retail sector like these cleared well in time to set-up for the Boxing Day sales, so the season is really now, and has been busy for three or four weeks.

Also one of the nicer thing to come out of the combination of the soviet-hegemonic 'wall' falling and the move away from plastics (odd combination but bear with me), has been a real resurgence in the blown-glass ornament, the art of which excels in those parts of Europe which were behind the Iron Curtain!

See, method in the madness; Poland, Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech and Slovak republics) are the real home of fancy glass baubles, and their migrant decedents - once 'illegal's' (ask the Natives) - have taken the skill to North America.

One of the stores leading that move back in recent years has been good old TKMaxx. This set was a bit brash for me, I like the soldier, he's a little smaller than the shelfie I took in TKMaxx's household subsidiary last year, and better decorated, but the other three would look a  bit daft on a tree I feel, still - probably aimed more at tourists?

But I bought both these without a second thought! Also in TKMaxx and - like all their stuff - limited. The soldier is smaller still, and when I get around to setting the tree I'll get him out and compare him to the others, while the tiger was simply irresistible, with his enigmatic yet slightly threatening smile and golden shine!

My mother has a small fairing-like, porcelain, pill box with an equally wonderful tiger, so I introduced them and fired-off a few shots. I took these shots on the 27th of October and I'm still finding bits of glitter in the counterpane!

The Devil's tree wears Coco Channel! This is hideous! Overblown, fabric and faux-jewel draped, tasselled piece of jet-black nastiness, it was in an 'advertorial' in last year's papers (possibly the Metro) and I scanned it because I scan anything figural.

The best thing you can do with this is take it out the back and put it out of its misery with a sledge-hammer! If you put it on a Christmas tree kids would have nightmares, it's evil - look at its eyes!

I won't tell you what it cost because I've forgotten, but if you recognise the logo, you'll be able to have a good guess how many £3.99 tigers you can have instead - I think it's more than ten, many more!

News, Views Etc . . . Sad News

Ed Berg has posted some sad news today, one of the first websites I found, and such enthusiasm, even for knock-off 'Army Men'; a phrase he populerised . . .

https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2018/11/in-memorium-thor-sheil.html

D is for Dewar's

This was in the same box as the Condor stuff; 'Minor Makes C/D/E', although I suspect the 'make' is Britains Hong Kong facility! Until I dig the 'Highlanders' box out again (it was in my hands the other day, but went up to the attic), probably over Christmas, I can't check the finer points, it may be the late Britains moulding, it may be a copy.

The 'Dewar's' plinth advertising the product is polystyrene, the figure in a PVC vinyl-rubber and the painting is definitely not Britains, so I suspect a good copy!

It's the holes in the feet which make for the Britains link, the separate arm also being a feature of the Britains figures - I'm 50/50 decided/undecided on the moulding - obviously it's the Britains pose; I'll do a direct comparison next time . . . for all I know it's in the Great Book of Britains, but that's buried in the garage at the moment!

To that end, I have removed it from the C/D/E box and will add it to the Highlander box, increasingly I seem to be going that way, the small scale are still sorted first by make, then by wider types, while the boxed/bagged/carded stuff is a bit mixed in all scales, but the loose, large-scale is best sorted thematically, even if the make is known.

The Zombies got their own box the other day and it already has five types in, although I cheated slightly by deciding October 31st's Mummies from Brian B were 'living dead', not 'skeletons' and therefore 'zombies' of a sort!

If you're wondering why the short-posts and box-tickers this week, it's that time of year when you are all finishing jobs, getting work in, completing contracts, moving house (believe it - busiest time of year for estate agents), visiting friends and relatives, doing the annual shopping expeditions and such-like, so there's a drop-off in your attention spans and over-all visits, so I'm getting easy stuff out, ticking boxes, clearing some stuff out of Picasa and - hopefully - keeping it varied and/or finding something to interest you along the way, while topping-up the tag-list!

K is for Killing Three Birds with One Stone!

Still cruel and unnecessary!

These turn-up in odd lots and rummage-trays at toy fairs and toy soldier shows, they aren't that rare; none of this mass-produced, polymer, infant-toy stuff is, but they are fun and they are in a box of their own, so let's tick it!

Condor Games licensed from Seven Towns (who are still around I seem to recall), and reading the blurb on the box-lid, you just wouldn't get this to the shelves now, the Daily Wail would blow a gasket, the Guardian would mutter darkly about 'long term mental health damage' and the bairn's would want to know why there were no knifes or semi-clad, busty-assassins included!

Goldrush - 45mm'ish (47mm in total with base) and polyethylene, that's it really, four miners with trolleys, they predate the Atlantic version by a few years I think.

Seven Towns did turn-up the other day licensing something modern, or modern'ish* I think, yet they were licensing things in the early 1970's, and often involved with board games, but not always, so some kind of intermediate 'rights' agent, between artists on the one hand and manufacturers/ publishers on the other I suspect; handling the intellectual property issues between the relevant parties, but primarily on behalf of the originating author/toy-inventor, whom they may be in the business of nurturing?

There's some interesting stuff on Seven Towns over at Soupie's Minifig's Blog which points to that sort of senario;

P.E.T Aliens/ComicAliens

* It was the 2002/3 Impact from Drummond Park games, seen here at Small Scale World a year or so ago. They (Seven Towns) have also worked with Berwick Games (Mission Impossible) and the mighty [but no more!] Parker (Vendetta).

Two similar sets for which I only have the figures (the box and the four-colour figure image of the Goldrush are from the archive and were shot courtesy of John Begg ten years ago) are The Blues and the Greys  and Sheriffs and Outlaws, which were both shooting games in the same vein as the Lone Star set seen here recently, but with an added 'around the board' (actually a vac-formed piece) movement mechanism.

Both set's figures are around the 50mm-mark, but the kneeling pose of the ACW guys means they are actually, easily 54mm compatible. All are pretty crude figures and seem to share a - jobbing - sculptor? And I think both sets have five-each of both colours?

Listing;

Condor

Range of games some using pistols to shoot at the pieces.

Board Games
- Ambush - Sheriffs and Outlaws (one pose, 5-each, black and brown, gun-slinger, 50mm)

- Ambush - The Blues and the Greys (5-each, two poses, blue and grey, kneeling ACW figures, 50mm)

- Goldrush (man and trolley 45mm, 4 colours, 45mm, licensed from Severn Towns)

- Supersell (16 figures, flats, 4 each of 4 colours, plus card flat and flat vehicles)

C is for Creative Crafts

Actually 'Unknown Hong Kong' via Star Plastics Inc., of New York, but Creative Crafts made a better title! And it wouldn't be here without the act of Schell's Flowers from Pennsylvania ordering the thing into stock all those years ago and flogging it to whoever then decided never to use it!

It's funny, I never ask for contributions or donations, they get forwarded by those who are kind enough to do so (for which I'm always very grateful), but I did - in a roundabout way - ask for the large Award Toys set of Spirit of '76 figures we saw here, while actually trying to find the cake decoration ones.

I then found the 40mm set (with bases) and Mr Nevin then sent us shots of another set of these (which were in storage!), as a follow-up,. They looked a bit larger because they are, these are 50mm, and as I suggested last time are vinyl, quite a soft PVC, which now leaves me looking for the set Chris Goddard originally sent to Plastic Warrior magazine, who are baseless (like these) but 45mm-up and hard plastic (like the 2nd set to appear here), when I do; we'll look at all four sets together!

The main difference between this set and the other three (known sets?) is that while the others all make the boy drummer smaller than the other two, in this set he is the same size. At the moment, that's three down - one to go!

Further to the previous posts, the US cake decorating market DID get blue-coat versions of the redcoats, whether this means my fanciful scenario holds any water or not is for the birds, but I did nearly get a set a while ago, and keep my eye out for a cheap lot.

They also have at least two versions of Betsy Ross (the flag-lady), neither of which seems to have made it to these shores, the inference being we got redcoats, not as a connection with the AWI, but because the HK maker wanted to shift as much product as possible and small boys - in those days - liked toy soldiers on their cake!

News, Views etc . . . Herald Toys & Models

News of nice Speedwell's from Barney Brown at Herald;

"Dear Collector, this week we have for sale a superb collection of 54mm scale plastic Robin Hood figures by Cherilea and Speedwell, including two Speedwell mounted sheriffs and some interesting colour variants. Happy collecting as always! Barney."

The eMail's a day old, so they may be in short supply, but always worth a look!

M is for More Monopoly 'Movers' - Miniature Metal Marvel Mocherettes

Yeah! Formulaic take on the story of Achilles; Spider-Men, as die-cast statuettes around 28mm for yet another version of Monopoly, I didn't even shoot the box!

That's it, three Spidey's, three enemy (?), the inventor died the other day you know, if you missed the 1000's of column-inches in the press, the hours of TV and Radio coverage, the hundreds of blog posts and the sudden plethora of faceplant memes!

Remember, Judge Dredd didn't fall-in-, get caught in the ray of-, eat, drink, sniff, suffer a spill of-, get shot, bitten- or injected by anything radio-active, diseased, secret or alien - just about everyone in the Marvel and DC universes did!

And they all have an Achillies' heel, kryptonite, "You won't like me when I'm angry" and err, Spider-Man's got fifteen! Dredd just knows he's right!

P is for Poundland's Poured-Polyurethane Polymer Pals

How cool are these? Too cool for 'machine-learning' school, that's for sure! These are also a pound-each (see previous post) and I grabbed all three different ones when I saw them because . . . Paperchase have had proper blown-glass ones (set of three 'boxy' robots) for the last few years and I kept picking them up, checking the price and putting them down again! This year - determined to bite the bullet and purchase them - they don't have them!

But these are very similar and have clearly been based on them, picking up on a trend as cheapie/knock-off rack-toys always have. But as poured PE-resin they are really too heavy for real trees and will even slowly bend the branches of an artificial tree, especially if you have it in the warm or near a fire for the duration of Christmas. But as leery robots they are the biz!

Poundland; via 'MC' right now . . . for a pound! I'm not so keen on the 'crimbo ornamentation', especially on the green one, but at a pound I can't really complain, and it's three new robots into the collection! Often with something like this I would remove the hanger-eye, but as they are robots I think it looks like the old revolving radar thing on 50's 'Pulp' robots, so it can stay.

Berserker's not had much luck with large lumps of resin in the second-half of the year, and this outing is no exception to his continually picking-on more than he can chew - with my help!

F is for Festive Fun

And excellent stocking-fillers if you have little-ones! These are currently in Paperchase, I think they were a quid-each . . . I buy this stuff so you don't have to, but they are fun!

Iwako Christmas puzzle erasers, except they aren't puzzles like 'jig-toys' are puzzles (so they don't get to go on that page), they are really plugging/stacking toys more akin to swoppets but without the ability to swop, except between same-pose items.

Santa' in two colours, we've seen Iwako several times now so there's not much to add, but they are out there at the moment if you are tempted; they would also go very well in make-your-own Christmas crackers, if you do that in your household.

J is for Junior!

Running late today - just a quick box-ticker for a set I picked-up from a Charity shop back in August.

All the main board-games (Cludo and Monopoly particularly so) are getting the arse ripped out of them these days as popular culture 'goes critical' and starts eating itself in line with Mr Warhol's prediction, he probably didn't realise the media and Western politics society would do likewise!

Among all the country, city, sports team and movie character, TV-series or celebrity versions are the 'junior' versions, and while they tend to have larger figural pieces, they can be only card flats. We have looked at several Cludo sets in the last 12 month's; here's a Monopoly set ticking the Disney and Frozen boxes and the figures are polymer!

Photographed against different backgrounds as they are semi-transparent, and as such showed a willingness to look different against different backings! Figures (glitter-PVC type plastic, 50-54mm compatible) added to the collection, rule-book scanned onto the dongles and everything else off to recycling!

C is for Comansi Confederate Cavalry

Bit of an odd one, bit of a box-ticker, and Spanish, so here goes nothing! I'm a bit perplexed by these, on one level they are marked; Comansi and obviously; Confederate cavalry, but closer inspection reveals they may not be what they seem on the latter front.

So most of the group, they were four quid from a non-figure toy dealer at Sandown Park, and being marked Comansi looked a bargain with a unit-price at less than 50p each. But they were current around the mid-1990's and probably only retailed at around 50p then, so not a really big bargain, however; they do tick a box.

The other thing about them is the paint, which may not be 'factory', some of it's flaky, some sticky and the five on the left seem to be US/Union figures (blue plastic) painted-up as Confederates, while the two on the right are Confederates (grey plastic) with the trousers painted to match the 'Union' figures?

Also some of them have black boots, some of them have brown boots, the bugler has black paint over brown, while the two with very dark brown boots have their belt-buckles carefully left unpainted? They are a bit of a curate's egg, and while I wouldn't be surprised to learn they are home-painted/re-painted . . .

. . . I suspect they are factory painted, with the additional work done to make them match after different out-painters and/or different plastic-colour batches left them looking less uniform. The painting could be down to a mix-up of batch, or end-of-batch to match for a 'job' completion scenario, and possibly they're still out there somewhere; Comansi are still going, and still have a Wild West line, but these aren't up to the quality of the current issues.

Here we see a black boot Union and a brown boot Confederate (who's sticky paint has picked-up half a carpet!). If all the paint is home./re-, then why the two colours on the boots? Yet, if the grey shirts were added to the blue figures, all the white - on all the figures - must have been added later as it's over the grey paint on the blue figures. The same 'vis-à-vis' quandary is true of the glossy blue paint on the two grey figures with regards to the brown belts.

I should add they are a softish PVC substitute; in fact, they resemble some bendy Cowboys & Indians I have somewhere, but without the wire armature. And at 80-odd millimetres, sized to compete or go with the whole modern ouvre of Bully, ELC, Papo, Plastoy and Schleich et al.

Only some of the figures have numbers on the other sole, and with all three flags missing (I didn't photograph all of them), one of the best clues as to their original purpose is absent! Anyway, they are Confederate rebels now, and will remain so until further notice!

Still; they ARE also Spanish, so I'm sure TJF and his cock-wacking monkey lizard will have plenty to say on them after they've consulted their bookie-wook! Fancy not recognising Airfix commando poses or the Stalwart amphibious ammunition-carrier; he's a 'knowledge-base' legend you know . . . in his own lunch-time!

A is for Astrobauble!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's Astrobauble! How cool is this . . . to cool for space-school, more right than the right stuff, glitterier than Ru Paul's stage make-up at Mardi Gras, bluer than a video of your parents - naked! It's a blow-moulded astronaut Christmas tree bauble, in the shape of an astronaut and it's yours for £1.50 if you get down to Primark!

I'm not normally a fan of plastic baubles pretending to be blown-glass, and he won't be going on the tree, but he was never going on the tree, plastic figures go in the plastic figure collection! Although he is very well done for a polymer lookie-likie! I'll take the hook-eye, crown-finial and stuff off and block the hole with one of those black-plastic particle-board hole-sealers, and Bingo! A stand alone, plastic astronaut, about 120mm in a rather leery space-suit!

We will have a few Christmas posts a bit earlier this year so that if the items tickle your fancy you can seek them out. I bought this about two weeks ago in Primark, but checked when I was over there on Wednesday and they still had plenty of them, Astrobaubles for a quid--fifty . . . bargain!

M is for Minor Mob of Metal Motorcycles

So soon after the last Motorcycle post, here's another one! It's the flats/semi-flats in the 'storage' box, which won't go with the other flats because they don't have the kinds of bases suited to the foam-boards I use for the 'proper' metal flats, whether German Kulmbach/Nuremberg types or otherwise.

Two small all-over, one-colour factory-painted, die-cast alloy bikes and two much larger un-decorated machines, one a copy of the other and you can see that the two small ones have tiny little side spikes to help them stand up, but nothing to keep them firmly in the slots I cut in the foam boards, while the two larger motorcycles have large chunky stub-bases (or 'stands') which would force huge holes/dents in the slots rendering the sheet unusable further-on, as they do get moved around as other things come in.

Close-ups of the small ones, there's a chance they are different generations of the same board game's pieces, but I suspect they are from two different board-games, I'm not sure if we've seen these two before, I know I have shown the other one, which goes with other vehicles, and I'll try to drag them out and do a comparison between all three HO/OO gauge-compatible pieces.

These are informative, as the shiny one is the better of the two, with the oxidised one clearly a poorer copy, but the dim one is old, the shiny one much newer and possibly still available as a home-casting mould somewhere. The fact that it's so shiny though is down to the low or non-existent lead content in modern moulding alloys, as opposed to the high lead content of the older one, which has grayed with oxidising-age.

DY is for Dah Yang

Not often we have bone fide Taiwanese stuff on the Blog, I'm sure some slips by under the 'generic' label as Hong Kong/China, but Taiwan (whatever Beijing thinks) is quite a different place, and these are a lot of fun!

Equally - not often we have ray guns on the Blog, but it has happened before, although I won't know until I publish whether I tagged them as such? Also - do you think the gun is based on the artwork (nicked from a comic, annual or pulp paperback), rather than the artwork reflecting the toy? It's all a bit Dan Dare or Buck Rogers!

Dah Yang; new to me. The gun has a double mechanism of cap-firing and dart-firing and looks to be more modern that the card-art would suggest? This is a 'proper' ray-gun, with the dish-thing that makes it really lethal, the stacked-disc ones are all show and no firepower, I read it in Ray-guns & Ammo Monthly!

They make handguns too! Not only does this one have stacked-discs, but it's got the in-line tube/ring things too; Ray-guns & Ammo Monthly has very little good to say about them! But it's a repeater, and in enclosed spaces?

Just imagine; if only we could get every teacher, shopkeeper and bus driver to have their own - legally held - ray-gun, how safe the world would be?

C is for Carded Collection of Canned Cavalry

Slowly adding to the PRB ouvre, this being the third visit to them since the swivel-head contribution from John Roquas and the follow-up courtesy of Theo van der Weerden's memories; tying the combat infantry figures into bubble-gum.

We now have a clear logo - a sort of antenna-sporting alien with his (or her) own electron halo and a checkered-banner or pennant on what appears to be a lance?! The figures - on identical cards - being approximately 50/54 and 35/40mm (the riders are slightly bent and hard to measure with certainty), the horse being a single sculpt, the lot taken from German Manurba sculpts.

Quick note here; One Erwin Sell; he who makes it up as he goes along, has stated they are licensed from Manurba, where he got this nugget of corporate information from is anyone's guess, but as he makes it up as he goes along . . . the Manurba set are better, but heavier sculpts and the horses (four poses) have bases.

Licensed production - if new tools are generated - usually follows the design parameters of the licensor's product (Tim Mee for instance), and indeed - as far as toys go - usually only extend to re-branding of supplied or like-for-like product (all those Answer Robot/Magician games). These are quite different - still I look forward to his publishing the copies of the licence he must have to make such pronouncements - as fact.

Indeed, I would say the overall state of these is 'poorer', something you couldn't say of the swivel-heads seen here at SSW in 2017, against the blobbier, single piece Heinerle versions. It would appear that both the Italians and the Germans are the copyists here; PRB of the Manurba knights, Heinerle of the PRB swivel-heads?

Andreas Dittmann in his guide to Manurba published by Plastic Warrior magazine states that one of the companies which received Manurba product to sell-on was PRB, but these - in today's post - are not Manurba product!

The cards are the same size, but the artwork is miss-registered in the case of the 35mm set, or the guillotine-operator had his settings wrong!

As well as only using the one (base-less) horse pose in both scales, they seem to have only adopted three or four human poses and I've only seen three in 50mm and three in 35mm, the 50-mil's getting a copy of the jousting/lancing knight with separate lance not apparently re-produced in the 35mm line.

We did see these before on SSW, ten years ago (turns out I'd shown the little pirates before, so ITLAPD was their second showing on the Internet!) in an 'unknown' post, it's nice to be able to go back and add some pink-text ID'ing them, and even nicer if no one else has ID'd them in the meantime as I get to keep the credit and Breizhtt gets to call me an egotist; win-win for everyone!

The loose ones have more colours as far as horses go, and I must thank Adrian Little of Mercator Trading for finding me the carded set, between them they - both samples - are only offering the one horse pose and the three mounted-poses.

All of mine together -  I was trying to show the horse colours, but flash/reflection and a yellowish light-effect means I'm not happy with the shot and there's a couple more below. Suffice to say it's nice to have a name to put to the three old ones at long last!

This is a better illustration of the dark-chocolate brown against the black and three clearly different shades of white, being - from the left; very light-grey, cream and snow!

This chap has been languishing in Picasa since a photo-shoot I did of all the - then - extant medieval's in larger scales, around 2012 and if I don't show him now I may never! The horse is Hong Kong and only there because he fits it! Indeed - you can just see the HK-mark down it's inside front-leg.

But the figure is not so clear; he's midway between the two sets above, and was once a darker bronze-colour (I suspect), but an additive colourant seems to have leached-out, leaving him 'antiqued' with a pinkish, powdery bloom, yet slightly translucent at his thinner points.

He's much-of-a-muchness as far as rack-toy/bazaar/pocket-money shite is concerned, and not obviously one of the Manurba sculpts (although he could be a 'cut-&-shut'?), I suspect he is Hong Kong, but he could be late'ish production French, Spanish or Italian . . . anyone recognise him?

 

The rider is probably Rumanian, see comments (thanks Gabriel), I have since seen harder-plastic, painted PZG versions from Poland too.