News, Views Etc . . . Forthcoming Events Saturday 10th - Friday 16th

Lets congratulate Israel this week (otherwise it's Trump/guns/Right Wing racism or Boris/Brwreakshit/Ireland - great!) for invading the Moon with a colony of Moss Pigs! Not content with their trading of arms to and from South Africa during the height of the apartheid sanctions or helping Saddam's Iraq obtain long-range artillery and 'Supergun' technology/parts during the UN sanctions, Israel has managed to break the one rule, the only rule you are supposed to keep . . .

. . . let me explain, Ladies and Gentlemen; because it was considered a list would be too complicated; plastic - no, banana-skins - no, little bits of explosive bolt and Lander legs - yes &etc; all the nations of the world signed up to a simple clause . . .

. . . 'Don't contaminate the Moon'! But no, oh no . . . the Israelis - not perhaps your initial choice for space-faring superpower - managed to fill their very FIRST, very experimental Moon-shot with microscopic life, and then fuck-it-up, crashing the whole caboodle into the cheesy-fizog!

I've read the books, I know what happens now, in low gravity the indestructible tardigrades will evolve rapidly to fill all ecological niches, realise we are an existential threat to their future and start catapulting bulk-rubbish bins and mining-containers the size of lorries at us like interplanetary ballistic meteors!

Buy toys but look to the skies . . . Saturday's a wash-out (but with the current forecast it was going to be!) but there's a few on Sunday.

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Toy Fairs

Sunday 11th August 2019

Barry Island (not 'Barry' CF63) - 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

Ditton - SRP Toyfairs

Ditton Community Centre, Kiln Barn Road, Ditton, Kent, ME20 6AH

Web. - www.srptoyfairs1.co.uk

eMail: srptoys1@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 07739 998 012 (Paula or Gerry)

10:00 - 14:00hrs

Admission charge unknown

Exeter - Bulldog Fairs - 'Westpoint'

Westpoint Arena, Clyst St. Mary, Exeter, EX5 1DJ

Web. - www.bulldogfairs.com

eMail - bulldogfairs@aol.com

Tel. - 01373 452 857

Mob. - 07917 125 641

10:30 - 14:30hrs

Admission £4, each under-16 free with adult, 'Early Bird' £10 from 08:30hrs

Southampton - Ron Lines - Southampton Toy Fair

Blighmont Barracks, Millbrook Road West, Southampton, Hampshire, SO15 0AJ

eMail - r.lines@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 02380 772 681

10:00-14:30hrs (doors close to buyers 14:00hrs)

Admission £1, children under-12 free

(combine with Southsea's kite-flying event - see below?)

Stafford - Barry Potter / BP Fairs - 'Stafford Showground'

The Preston & Argyle Suites, Stafford County Showground, Weston Road, Stafford, ST18 0BD

Web. - www.bpfairs.com

Tel. - 01604 846 688

Mob. - 07966 527 177

10.30 - 15.00hrs

Admission £4.00 (early-bird £8), OAP's £3.50, Children £1,

Free parking

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Tuesday 13th August 2019

Hook - Steven Clements Fairs - Hook Evening Fair

Hook Community Centre, Hook, Hampshire, RG27 9NN

eMail: clementfairs@aol.com

Tel. - 01380 725 322

Mob. - 07958 101 891

18:30 - 21:30hrs

Admission £1

Free parking

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Auctions

Saturday 10th August 2019

[Runcorn] On-line Auction - British Toy Auctions

The Auction Centre, 9 Berkeley Court, Runcorn, Cheshire, WA7 1TQ

Web. - www.britishtoyauctions.co.uk

eMail - enquiries@britishtoyauctions.co.uk

Tel. - 01928 579 032

Spalding - M&M Auctions

Unit 4, Plover Court, Stephenson Avenue, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 3SW

Web. - www.mm-auctions.com

eMail - info@mm-auctions.com

On-line (www.the-saleroom.com)

Tel. - 01406 422 848

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Thursday 15th August 2019

Sheffield - Shefield Auction Gallery

Windsor Road, Heeley, Sheffield, S8 8UB

Web. - www.sheffieldauctiongallery.com

eMail - jmorgan@sheffieldauctiongallery.com

Tel. - 0114 281 6161

Viewing - Wednesday 14th 09:00 - 16:45, from 08:30 on sale day

10:00hrs - Finish

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Other Events (it's nearly all bloody Lego; the end of the world will be Lego themed!)

From Thursday 8th (yesterday) until Monday 2nd September 2019

Knowsley - Knowsley Safari Park - Ultimate Brick Safari

Knowsley Safari Park, Knowsley, Prescot, Merseyside

Web. - www.knowsleysafariexperiance..co.uk

Lego lifesize wild animals

From Thursday 8th (yesterday) until Sunday 3rd November 2019

Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Discovery Museum - Brilliant Bricks

Discovery Museum, Blanford Square, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Web. - www.discoverymuseum.org

Famous inventions from history recreated in Lego bricks

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Saturday 10th August 2019

Basingstoke - Dai Lawrence, RAF - The Battle of Britain

Basingstoke Discovery Centre/Public Library, Festival place Shopping Centre, Basingstoke, Hampshire

Web. - www.hants.gov.uk/library

Tel. - 01256 478 670

14:00-finnish

Admission £4

Presentation lecture/readings from a serving RAF SNCO on the Battle of Britain and what it still means to the RAF today.

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Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th August 2019

Southsea - Portsmouth International Kite festival

Southsea Common, Southsea, Hampshire

Web. - www.portsmouthkitefestival.org.uk

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Overseas Events

Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th August 2019

Dublin (Rep. of Ireland) - - Dublin Comic Con

All other details here (very confusing dynamic website I couldn't be arsed to wrestle with!);

Web. - https://www.dublincomiccon.com/

Edison (USA) - Trainshow - Greenberg’s Great Train & Toy Show

New Jersey Expo Center, 97 Sunfield Avenue, Edison, NJ 08837, New Jersey, USA

Web. - http://trainshow.com/edison/

10:00-16:00hrs

Admission $10 both days, $9 Sunday only, under-11's free

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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 -

maverickatlarge[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!

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Received with Thanks

A parcel of polymer loveliness for the Blog wung* its way from N5 on Monday, courtesy of Peter Evans, new colour of Chap Mai figures, a set of Wing Lung complete runners, two 'pop-trolls', Thelma from Scoobie-Doo and a rudie-nudie swizzle-stick were among the goodies which will feature here in the months and years ahead, thank you Peter.

Previously; a parcel from Chris Smith was received the other day, which has already been mentioned, and posts are in the queue (posting Sunday), but this 'Received with Thanks' is a new (occasional) feature of the Friday-dates  post, so a second thanks to Chris.

Imagery from Chris and Brian Berke has also popped into the in-tray in the last fortnight.

*Birds are winged, parcels are wung, I'm sure of it!

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Other News

Charity Shops

A small piece in the Evening Standard mentioned the fact that Charity Shops are currently doing well and seem to be contributing to a pick-up in high-street footfall, and overall sales.

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Theme Parks / Attractions

As mentioned briefly last week, but in all the papers over the weekend; even as Lego was buying them, Merlin were reporting poor performance of their attractions and a profit warning as visitor numbers failed to meet expectations and forecast profits fell by a fifth.

By the middle of this week Disney were reporting similar problems with their US operation; Likewise, Cineworld (the cinema chain) have also [today] posted disappointing results. Are we falling out of love with trash-culture? It's helped destroy the planet!

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H is for How They Come In

Better cover the ones I've flagged-up already, first . . .

. . . nothing terribly exciting; another Chap Mai Hummer and a K&M moon-buggy both of which I think we've had here before, I've also comparison'ed the K&M on the Airfix astronauts post (the accompanying K&M stand-alone figures are much bigger), but won't trouble you with a link for the one shot when you've just seen the thing here!

I also picked this up last Friday an hour before posting the dates for this week-gone, he's got no holes in him so not a Christmas-tree thing, probably from a set of building blocks or a 'my first castle' type thing? Or . . . he may be a piece from a shape-puzzle, or one of those shape-filler trays?

This toob was found on Sunday, I almost never go to town on Sunday's but this week I did and found an Aspro (Spanish jobber) branded toob of PVC-alike fishy fellows (actually more than half of them are mammals or crustaceans, not fish!), which will be looked at when the long-in-the-queue sea-creature round-up publishes.

Pound each for 12, it's pure, unmitigated tat-shite, but it will prove useful at some point! We have one of the independent or small/local chain pound-shops recently opened in an empty unit, you know the type of establishment; vinyl-banner shop sign, minimal shop fittings, tons of stuff you wouldn't give house room to, going for a quid straight out of the plain outer cartons, or wire baskets - they have very little of use, but these were worth a punt! Bootleg Snoopy, Miffy and that Japanese cat . . . Hello Kitty look-a-likes!

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Heads-Up - BP Fairs

I wouldn't normally issue a warning-order for a regular show in a week or two (as you know), but Sandown Park which is normally well into September is actually the middle of August this year? Whether this will be the normal 'new' time (it regularises the gaps between the four shows) or is just a one-off due to something 'horsey' happening on the usual weekend I don't know, but if you're thinking it's still a month or so away; think again - it's next Saturday; 17th August 2019

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Links

Good question? . . . . 

. . . . Gathering momentum!

One company's response to the above!

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Fighting over Toy Soldiers! They've both had so much 'work done' they're starting to look like each other!

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Other Stuff This Week

Shot this wasp, outside an office block near the train station! It's like a normal wasp, but with fewer, thicker-banded stripes, I don't know if it's a summer visitor (or climate change migrant!) over from France or the low countries, or one of our lesser parasitic wasps, but it's pretty and often turns up in late summer, they hover over the lawn but are hard to shoot - possibly looking for little 'lawn ants'?

I also found a very drunk 'normal' wasp in my Victoria plum, so I dispatched it with a knife (kind to the wasp) and fed it to the Venus Fly Trap - kind to the Venus Fly Trap!

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B is for Big Set!

Which is how it's been known in Picasa for nearly a year; RTM - Big Set. Peter Evans sent this as part of a parcel back last autumn, and I nearly posted it then, but thought it ought to wait for RTM, and so we'll look at it now.

Gotta' love the Spelling! Branded - if you can call a small, white, paper import-sticker 'branding' - to an S.B. Toys of Manchester, what I like about this set is that it’s packed with stuff! Almost 'Old School' rack-toy, except they tended to have less stuff, but I do have sets (we saw a Blue Box one the other day) where 'planes, ships, AFV's and figures in different scales were shoved together, sometimes with parachute toys (one set has parachutists in two sizes), and in that respect this is the same - although without a parachute toy or ship/boat!

The contents of the left-hand pocket contains the motorcycle which I did include in a post a while ago, but it's out now and nestling with the others in 'their' tub. Familiar figures we'll look at below and some scenic stuff of low grade/quality. I don't know if the flag is a vaguely accurate representation of one of the former Soviet Republics, or a strange Indo-Franco-Argentine hybrid!

The right-hand pocket is probably the more interesting with various figures in three sizes and some more odd's and sods including a more obvious Argentinian flag and some useful 1:32nd'ish POL drums with separate lids.

Below is the contents of the middle pocket, a shiny, semi-metallised play-mat (think: very thin crisp packet) and three larger vehicles/aircraft. Above is three piles, the left hand pile is 'keep', the middle pile is 'charity shop' (got to share the generosity and encourage the next generation of collectors - or I'll run out of readers before I've finished blathering!) while the right-hand pile is 'bin/recycling'!

The figures have been seen here before, associated with the odd brand-mark or two, but these are new, smaller and polyethylene rather than the PVC of the originals and there were only three poses in green, but all six in yellow.

The growing family, to which you can add sandy ones with red-oxide patches of camouflage which I think have been shelfied here in a boxed set with a large tank. The six to the right (which may have been the cause of the last look at these) are even smaller and like the originals are in a PVC or PVC substitute.

The new ones would appear to be second generation copies of a 'family' of figures already on to a third generation. The black one on the right would be even smaller if he didn't come with the thickest base!

This is rather neat, harking back to the 1970's with the Marx-copy stretcher and casualty, but the bearers are newer sculpts in a more generic 'Army Man' style. I failed to note the pillow and posed the casualty the wrong way round!

Three very poor copies of better US-firefighters make-up the rest of the useable figures as far as the collection goes, although the chap in a breathing mask would make a good alien in a sci-fi setting!

While Americans will instantly recognise the middle pose some other nationals may not; I think he's holding two of those slow-burning flares you sometimes see them using in night-time roadblocks in movies? They seem to stick them on the road, or spike them in (?) to direct or channel traffic into lanes.

A quick sizer tells us the stretcher team and firefighters are an almost perfect 54mm, while the modern GI's around 60mm.

The team! Some dodgy stamping-out of the flag-machine has left the new guy looking like an outlaw biker with an interesting 'colours' patch! He's also a slightly different moulding and probably the original donor for the three copies to his right.

Thanks Peter - you don't see sets as busy as this one very often, these days!

T is for Thomas? Taffy? . . . Poplar! (PW8)

Hard to tell, harder to know, the last time we looked at a set of these they were Taffy Toys, but no one (in the 'old guard') seems to know whether Taffy were a Thomas subsidiary or a Poplar sub-brand, given similar generational differences between the PVC and Polyethylene space and pirate figures originally from Thomas, I would veer toward these being Poplar/Taffy, but can't rule out Thomas/Taffy! Or - with no maker on the box - someone else!

The box! Seen elsewhere on the Internet recently (in passing) the box artwork and contents/tray have a lot in common with the Taffy set already looked at here at Small Scale World, but as we also saw here; the similarities with Kleeware's SPG and Taffy's Tank, two gun versions and etc . . . mean there was such cross-pollination between these early plastic toy soldier makers (through copying, pirating and mould-share/licensing) it's impossible to fully call.

The gun and trailer ('troop carrier') are the same as the known-Taffy version, the Land Rover however (complete with plug-in wing-mirrors) has been previously seen (in civilian colours) as a 'believed to be' Tudor Rose beach-toy - or at least I think it has; I can't find it on the Blog, or on the dongles, but I know I shot it and it's not waiting in Picasa? I probably gave it a Kleeware/Lipkin and co., caveat anywhoos!

Now, I think the SPG (seen previously) appears in the US as Banner, Banner bought some of the rump of Bergan Toys (Beton) and some (or all?) Thomas (US)'s moulds, while over here Tudor Rose bought O M Kleeman, so the fact that all these similar AFV's have so many parents is explainable, if not clear, especially after the various mould-shares are taken into account!

The figures, in the set - as seen - the advertised 7th figure is a second officer, one wonders if it might have been meant to be the driver/stretcher bearer or the stretcher case? With neither fitting the Land-Rover in the same way they fit the - more common - Jeep; maybe they were subsequently excluded?

Note also with two light-sources; the plastic colour/shade variation.

More shots; the radio-operator is obviously damaged. I did put these on the Khaki Infantry page; after some umming and ahrring, but they don't really belong there, that page is for the direct piracies of the Britains and Timpo sets and their derivatives (mortar crews etc...), while these are cruder copies of Herald's finest, and I don't use 'crude' in the derisory meaning of the word, but to differentiate 'copy' from 'piracy'.

Cheers also to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this interesting set at PlasticWarrior's show in May just-gone.