W is for Window Dressing!

Not least than because it sat around the half-centennial of a certain 'small step'; the theme for this year's Fleet Carnival's retail window-display competition was 'Space', and if you want a reason for the demise of the High Street - among all the others - this post will illustrate one: complacent disinterest in saving themselves; a problem currently affecting the wider populace - worldwide!

Serendipity is one of the multi-room/corridor display-cabinet, shared-space managed antique and collectables 'arcades', and one of the exhibitors - having distinctly non-antique modern toys - provided the bulk of the display, consequently it's full of interesting stuff for toy collectors to see, but seemed to be a bit 'easy'!

A close-up of the two characters closest to this Blog's heart - not! But nice to see it in this condition with Jabba's squeezey-cocktail tube & tap, the little squeaker and such like!

The party and balloon shop; Party Boutique, not a chain but an independent business, went with space-related stock, which is fair and expectable, but again, for me not a winning strategy as - again - it's too easy?

Captured Moment is one of the local photo-shops, and again an independent (the chain, up the road about 25-doors didn't enter!), went with what I suspect are kid-made Luna-rovers and a few blow-ups of planets and things.

The rocket is a blow-up, but has been constructed into a 3-D object in the corner there. The craft element gives this one an edge.

Yeah! 'Fire-up the photocopier and see what happens!'. Seriously guy's & girls; next year either make an effort or don't bother at all!

Two of the charity shops had a go, Blue Cross got theirs up first and have - if nothing else - ended up with an eclectic collection of whatever they had as space-related stock, presumably 'at the moment', but possibly they had had a few weeks or months notice of the theme and had squirreled-away a few bits? As far as this post goes; it's the best for what can you find?

Like the balloon-shop, the haberdashers Sew Busy (geddit!) went with their own subject-relative stock, but stock which had to have more work done to it than just being blown-up or taped to the window, as a consequence there is a lot of effort involved in this window, and some fun stuff to spot.

Things have been sewn, glued or brought together with a design-bent, although it has a bunch of balloons as well! I'm not sure how a Clangers astronomy set got into the window, or the shop, but you can't really beat a Clanger 'thing', except maybe with a Womble thing!

The other charity shop to enter (from a total of seven!) left it 'till the night before, and followed the lead of Blue Cross, to the same effect - I love the silver slipeprs, for some reason it makes me think of Junior School productions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat!

Now, again a bit of a rant-opportunity here! Hopefully the idiots' have got bored and gawn-orff, so it's only those of you who've read this far hoping to see if there's an ulterior motive to this mediocre nonsense, and there is!

Now, I hope the sewing shop won? If it was a staggered prize format, I would further hope the photographer's came second and Blue Cross third. Purely on level of effort involved, with Blue Cross having the best of the others and getting it up several days before the Cancer charity. But each judge to his own, and some may have scored the balloon shop higher?

But the real point to get from this is that it ably shows just why the High Street is in the state it's in. There must be 300+ retail enterprises in Fleet with a display frontage, and seven of them made an effort to enter a competition aimed at engendering interest in the 'retail space'! It's a shocking indictment of the complacency of these people, no wonder they keep going bust, they're not willing to save themselves!

If a hundred of them had had a stab, there would have been a real hype about the thing; you may have got the local telly-news down for the day? Certainly local radio is always looking for decent output which isn't depressing crime and local authority failure. You may have got more kids from the surrounding villages badgering their parent to '...go to Fleet and look at the space windows?' instead, the whole thing was over in less than seven days and for five of those only had six entrants!

Jabba the Hutt and lazy retailer's - in the one Blog post - fancy that!

D is for Dino-viroment!

So, we're having a big 'ole local day for local people here at Small Scale World today, and if you don't like it; you might end up in a pie! There have been various events locally over the summer with some connection to toys, of which this is the most tenuous of linkages, but dinosaurs are a case apart!

First you need to deliver your dinosaur - and you thought they came in eggs!

A relatively life-size Triceratops is probably the star of the show, outside the parade of shops at the far-end of the High Street (where the equally huge hippopotamus was last year) and looking like he was fresh out of the paint-shop. He also looks like a harmless vegetarian despite the horns.

Sainsbury's get a Parasaurolophus (sounds like a 1970's Greek shipping magnate, or a charater from Tin Tin!) in whom you can see the ancestral features of modern birds far more clearly than you can in a triceratops, which just looks like a spiky cow! I mean; whatever this might evolve into, it'aint gonna' be a crocodile or a tortoise, is it?!

Nasty little raptor hanging round outside the bike shop during the day, Deinonychus patrols the furniture store at night - small enough to wander-off with, and let's face it, a lot of suburban gardens would be improved with the addition of a nasty little raptor!

A much smaller Stegosaurus in the window of the dance-apparel shop at the back of the high street is a late tick on the card the kids can pick-up to help them follow the dinosaur trail and entre the competition.

Another nasty little raptor, a Dilong Paradoxus, is hanging-out in the main shopping precinct, which in Fleet's case is more of an arcade, but without the beauty of a Victorian glass-roof or the lovely turned, planned, wood mouldings you used to see in such structures.

The Tyrannosaurus was very disappointing and not very Rex, being both the smallest model employed in the trail and having had its moth stuffed with brochures; you would walk past it if you weren't looking for it.

However - in complete contrast; I'm not normally a particular fan of the flying dinosaurs, but as far as models go, and as far as the other animals in this summer 'event' goes, this is a stunning model, and seeing a realistic one changes one's approach to them; it's like an intercontinental ballistic bird! And the parallels with the flying machines in the recent Batman movies aren't coincidence - there's nothing new under the sun and Pteranodon was under there first!

They - apparently - ARE delivered by egg! In the Bath!

There's another raptor; a proper Velociraptor, it's worrying how many of them are raptors really, suppose the come alive at night, I've seen that museum movie!

A kerthunkasaur! This one calls itself Ankylosaurus, why it feels the need to do that when I've given it such a thoughtful moniker is anyone's guess, but there's no accounting for taste! The huntin' shootin' fishin' brigade immediately put a silly hat on it!

Someone from the organisers must have had a word, as the hat was gone by day-3, but I think it's fair to say kerthunkie' hasn't recovered from the experience yet, it's looking quite traumatised . . . is there a dino-therapist in the house?

As this isn't a toy soldier post per-se and my critics have hopefully already gorn-orff in a huff, I may as well have a small rant while I'm at it . . .

. . . these are fun, and I like them, I'm sure they will bring a few (what? 0.02%?) extra customers (at the expense of a neighbouring town's High Street?), and the kids will love them, but, just because something is fun and exciting, is not a good enough reason to indulge in it for 'its' sake.

For instance, sex is (or can be) both fun and exciting, but, were one to indulge in sexual activity in the High Street, by oneself or with a partner, with or without the partner's acquiescence, one would - quite rightly - be arrested. The length of the list of charges following-after the inevitable 'Common Indecency' being dictated by the number (and level of acquiescence) of the/any partner/s!

There must be warehouses full of these and last year's wild animals and the nutcrackers and other such things (which leads one to the horrible thought that giant effing-Disney characters are probably somewhere down the line!), manufactured out of glass-matt-reinforced, two-part epoxy-resin plastic; an almost totally un-recyclable material, with a large carbon-footprint and which doesn't retain its full material-integrity for long under the elements; fraying at the points and crumbling to glass powder and micro-polymer to be washed into the environment by rain - a fate which befalls quantities of the sanding/fettlings from the manufacturing phase!

Anyone who has paid any serious attention to what the weather has been doing over the last 18-moths, five years, fifteen years, is probably now minded to believe the 99% of climate scientists who are - themselves - of grim-mind?

If we go on, just blindly sating our appetites for easier transport, for novelty, for entertainment, for frivolous-consumables, for turning mad ideas (a warehouse full of fibre-glass dinosaurs would have been a mad idea not that long ago) into reality, we will fail to save the planet from  . . . err . . . us?

Deaths from Asthma and other lung/breathing condition in London, in LA, in Kolkata would suggest it's already too-late for tens of thousands of our fellow pink-monkeys.

How about, we get the kids in local schools to make (or help make - with adult crafters) the dinosaurs, or last year's (mostly threatened species) wild animals - FOR the High Street - out of recycled products such as [as in my childhood] chicken-wire over wood formers, loo-rolls, card packing, carpet tubes, cereal boxes &etc., using eco-friendly paints and adhesives? Just a thought!

APC is for A Plastic Crate!

This came in from Peter Evans the other day, in fact I think he gave me the other ('Japanese') one as well!

Rack Toy accessory or my name's Keith! The running gear is a standard moulding you may know from cheapo 4th or 5th generation piracies of Centurion or M60, with the one-piece superstructure clipping over the upper track-ends.

The body is vaguely M113, but, like both Airfix APC's equally not quite any APC, which is not to say it may not be based on a modern Asian machine, but is of a scale where it's going to be a bit make-believe whoever you use it with.

Compared with the Japanese-stickered one (see here back in January) above, and with a tatty example of the Airfix first-version beast below. It is the biggest 'readymade' APC (we looked at a bunch many years ago) and consequently while it would prove useful in any 'old school' war gaming army, could also provide a cheap source of battle-taxi for 28mm space marine types.

Andy Warhol may be dead, but he lives-on in Picasa!

H is for Horses

I feel between all of you someone must know all about these, what I know - or think I know - about them is this, they aren't rare, probably don't have riders (but might!), were [probably] tourist keepsakes of some kind and might have a Spanish connection despite being definitely made in Hong Kong?

There are two poses, this one seems to be twice as common as the other but that's likely to be the bias of a smallish sample. It's the one with the bigger clue though - the stirrups are covered with a sort of bag or ear-flaps, with a consistent rendition of a kind of plaid or check painted on? There are also two straps hanging done from the saddle on the right side and one on the left, which I suspect are for tying the legs of cattle, calves or prey?

Of course there is also a lasso or lariat hung off the saddle, so we know we are dealing with Cowboys, Gauchos, Comanchero's or Roustabouts of some kind? Is that a typical 'Western' saddle or a more general one?

The other pose seems to have a more normal riding saddle, with no lasso, but the stirrups look to be deliberately heavy (brass?) sculpts and there are two of the lines or cords hanging down, one each side this time.

As I say, I've seen plenty of these over the years, often broken; they are polystyrene and tend to lose legs while being shoved about rummage trays! The question is; or questions are - who what, went where, when, and why?

Are they rodeo trinkets which just happen to have come back to Blighty in numbers over the years, or are they Spanish tourist items, or even from the French Camargue?

Were they sold singly or in sets of some set, did they have riders and if they did (they weren’t glued on) why don't they turn-up, either with the horses or apart, or are they soft polyethylene, mistaken for something else?

Why the two sizes (54mm and 45mm-compatible approximately); were they sold as pairs in a budget and 'full price' version? Is there a maker or brand associated with them?

A big mystery, but someone must know, they are always in rummage trays at shows, always!

I feel the full saddlery and horse-furniture rules out toy horse-box/animal transporter animals from vehicle sets, but they may be as simple as that? Toy farm accessories, even?

One of mine has been given (or had?) a rider, held on with some cheap substitute/generic 'Blu Tak' which has gone sticky. I tried removing it with an ear-bud/Q-tip but just spread it about a bit! Finding a decent solvent will prove problematical due to the polystyrene and paint, and being out of lighter-fluid at the moment it will have to be deodorant, which is a smelly business, also; it evaporates very quickly off the cloth, so it takes a few smears, but I will win!

LB is for Sorry, But It Really Is!

I was corresponding with someone the other day about the LP-LB thing, and he was very keen to keep it as LP; he's as diligent in his research as me and the same stickler for the facts as I am! So I told him I'd found a better image of the 'B', which I would send him . . . then I thought I'd better shove it up here, in case other people were not happy with the other day's revelation!

It's a 'B' I'm afraid, I know it's a pain, I know it would be easier to stick with LP, and I blame the Hong Kong artist for such a dumb logo in the first place, but it probably looked quite good as a ten-inch square piece of sharp, mapping-pen & inked, black & white promo-art, probably on a neutral-grey mounting-card, in the Lik Be board-room, all those decades ago!

Has anyone come-up with a possible ID for the monster yet? Those glowing piggy-eyes should be a clue to fans of Japanese (or Chinese?) rubber-suit, sci-fi monsters!

DUK is for "APION" Amfibies Jeep!

This is an odd one; sometimes I just don't understand how the hobby works. What we have here is a never seen before, may never see again, South African toy of a military vehicle in 'around' a 54/60mm compatible scale, yet having shot it at length back in the early spring, [not] watched them not-sell on evilBay, watched them not sell at the Plastic Warrior show and bought an orphan - at the end of the show, I wonder how that happened?

Most 'large-scale' collectors, or at least the more generic or ephemeral collectors, the completist or competitive collectors or the curious (which is all bar the subject-specific collectors, i.e. most of them) would happily have a bright red Tudor Rose Land-Rover or bright yellow Pyro or Banner 'dimestore' Jeep in their collections, yet no one wanted these?

Yet, I also half-understand, as despite sliding the first image between the two introductory paragraphs, and sticking another above this continuation of my opening point, I am going to struggle to find enough blurb for the post, as there's hardly anything to say about them, but having taken a load of images when I first saw them and some more of my example (red one) I now have five collages to write up! Now obviously, the next paragraph can be all about the Box . . .

Which comes in at least two colour-ways, both are three-colour processes, but different colours, litho'd, not dot-matrix, so green/orange are reproduced by overlaying. Each box also has two panels and one end with the the written details in Afrikans and the other three faces in English . . . like the contemporaneous stamps!

This leaves maker and the vehicle to describe; but you've already seen it as I spread the images through the text! It's an amphibious Jeep in leery colours, reasonably accurate for an infant toy, and in a phenolic resin which is starting to distort - in the case of the yellow; particularly so. Opposite colours are placed as 'small parts'; red on the yellow vehicle and vise-versa.

Final image leaves us with the maker . . . African Plastic Industries (Pty) Limited trading as Apion and the price . . . three shillings and ninep'nce, for something this large, which has probably been sent half-way round the world on a tramp steamer, places them in the nineteen-fifties I suspect, while there's nothing on Google!

Phew! Got there, can't understand why no one wanted them, can half-understand why they generated so little interest, but . . . humans are weird! Still they join the Haarlem and SA marked SAE in the collection, what next from that part of the world?

A is for Again!

It's funny; on the Blog, some - stand-alone - things have come and gone, some things get a re-hash every few years (WHW), other's grow and fade (insects) but will return, while a few become scheduled features (ITLAPD and Rack Toy Month!), but these? These came quite late (year seven?) and now just keep coming! Dinoraser Chinasaurs!

Picked this up in Smiggle the other day and I'll need to keep an eye on them as I haven't been paying close-enough attention - I thought all that pink and mauve meant they were more like Clair's or Accessorize, so I just used to walk past!

Speaking of which, there are now several of these stationary/novelty chains; Neon Sheep, Paperchase, Smiggle, [Flying] Tiger and Typo, to name a few, and they are competing with the Poundland's and Wilkinson's/Wilcos of this world, to shift vast quantities of what is mostly utter shite! It cannot continue indefinitely, given the damage being done to the planet, but while it does; I will keep a look out for the figurals!

We've seen the sculpts before; twice - I think? But these have some new colours and have been impregnated with fruity scents, which don't mean they smell like a Californian hairdresser who likes frilly, purple shirts, but rather that they smell of oranges or bananas &etc.

Although, as they have been Sqiudgged-together in a plastic egg for a while, it's hard to tell which is supposed to be what fruit, as they all smell like the old Bundeswher ration-pack, boil-in-the-bag, mixed-fruit desert!

A few days later and these turned up in Paperchase, seen before in Wilko and - courtesy of Brian B - badged to Imperial in the US, they clearly had new poses and colours, so I grabbed a couple (quid each? cheap as TV antique-dealers chips!), but suspect I'll have to go back and study them more closely, with a view to further purchases, as when I got them home and had a proper look . . . .

. . . I found an Archyop... an Archieo... err . . . a featherd dino-bird I hadn't seen in the store, and realised there are two new pose/colour animals in each egg? So I will need to check there aren't more? New sculpts are a pterodactyl, an over-scaled velociraptor, an under-scaled T-Rex and the furry one! Note: one was short-packed with only seven items in total.

So there you go, both out there now, sixth or seventh post on the subject in the last 36 months or so, and if it's 'your thing'; all the better - Chinasaur Dinorasers!

J is for Juvenilia!

Although the box says 'children over two' so; "Phew! That's me off the hook!" I'm definitely over two! But seriously; there's only one rule on Small Scale World, it must be figural, and even that's not always adhered to! It must be figural, or military, or associated vehicles, equipment, accessories, or small, or in-scale . . . Doh!

This has been bugging me for years, as a few of the figures and animals have turned-up from time to time (indeed, I think there were a few in last autumn's donations from Jim or Chris?), and those figures will remain in the collection - properly labelled, as a sample, long after the set[s] looked at here has gone back to charity.

I say 'set[s]' as the research conducted (cursory - because it was easy!) suggests that the above shot is two complete sets, the maths doesn't quite add-up with the box-lid message, but I suspect that's the copy-writer getting confused as to whether the two boards and two connection lugs were part of the total or in addition to it!. See below!

Trees, and hedges, animals and people, sadly no farm equipment or wagons, and while they are 'flats' in the style of the old wooden ones, they also carry the property of having a thickness that gives them three-dimensionality.

There are four figure sculpts, basically; mum, dad, boy and girl, the classic sixties 'nuclear family'. They have four animal types to look-after, sheep, pigs, cows (6-each) and horses (three). While you get two pine/fir trees, three rather (or equally) amorphic deciduous plants and eight-pieces each of two hedge-lengths, along with six-each of the two yellow road/path pieces, which can be used in blocks as a crop.

One of the design flaws with this set is how hard the road-plates are to un-pin, being stuck-fast and near-flush with the surface. The other is the connector-plates (small green pieces) which are better used on the underside as they don’t have a cut-out for the boundary-ridge between the two plates.

You also get several buildings which would be excellent for a very 'old school' war gaming table, perhaps with wooden blocks in red and blue for the opposing forces! Consisting of a farmhouse (door; no windows), a Dutch-barn type-thing (filled-in ends) and two pig-sty shaped structures; these can obviously be arranged in a verity of ways.

The scenics also would go quite well with the similar set we looked at here which may well turn out to be one of the biggish-names like Hasbro or Mattel, or one of the Lines group's brands or companies?

The undersides of the grid-pierced, sheet-form, base-plates are marked with a clear Made in England, and that is the only marking on anything, which is why they were 'unknown' for years, however once I'd found these in a charity shop the other day, it encouraged me to dig deeper (there's tons of this stuff in the unknown boxes) and they proved easy to find.

Down on the Farm by Pippin Toys (part of the Rafael Lipkin group). You can see the two three connectors shown in the artwork, as being visible, but - as I mentioned above - I found they fitted better if placed underneath. There should be 134 pieces in two sets (65 pieces + two base-plates x2) but I only have 132, hence the note above., but it might be that there should be four horses per set, or three connectors?

A while later - Duurrr! It's there in the artwork (in the middle by the corner of the hedge), I'm missing two connectors; smallest parts, easiest lost!

Which gives us a full set count of;

·         x1 Farmhouse

·         x1 Dutch Barn

·         x1 Farmer

·         x1 Farmer's Wife

·         x1 Boy

·         x1 Girl

·         x2 Base Plates

·         x2 Pig Sheds

·         x2 Fir Trees

·         x3 Deciduous Trees

·         x3 Connector Plates

·         x3 Horses

·         x6 Pigs

·         x6 Sheep

·         x6 Cows

·         x6 Short Path Sections

·         x6 Long Path Sections

·         x8 Short Hedge Sections

·         x8 Long Hodge Sections

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·         67 Pieces (65 + 2 Base plates)

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It's juvenilia, but it's figural, it's been identified, shot from both sides and presented here for posterity, properly tagged . . . box ticked!