C is for Cake Candle Carriages

This has been sat in Picasa since we last looked at mini-trains (about a year ago?), Brian sent me the last image (below) as a follow-up, and I nearly ran it a few days later but wasn't happy with the Festival photo's, so dug the 'here' lot out and combined them with the storage lot, and then sort of lost interest . . . as you do sometimes? Anyway, mojo back now and time for this lot to leave the laptop and go and live on the archive-dongles, via the Blog!

Ancient and modern; the newer one behind and an older 1970's one in front, probably from the same source although I've got evilBay images of several different packaging/brands . . . and yes; the pale-orange wagon in the middle should be pink - a perfect example of the opposite-origin to a 'smoke free house'!!

The older one is manufactured from polystyrene with nylon or polypropylene wheels, and you can see the engine has undergone some discoloration as well, but the others seem to have fared better. The coupling is a hook-under-slot design.

Close-up with a pretty bog-standard 'Made in Hong Kong' mark.

The newer train (still available if you search-about I think?) is all polypropylene and the roof sections can be lifted-off the four circus-wagon coaches, not a practical solution to anything cake or birthday-related, but a method of allowing for two colours and a fancier design!

Each roof is attached to a pair of circus animals which, from the left are; tiger, lion, polar bear and blob!

The blob started life (in my head) as a bearded-lady, or - after further study - a mermaid, but is in fact, I suspect, meant to be a monkey?

The locomotives with their cow-catchers already put the trains firmly over the pond as far as operation goes, but in addition the clerestory-papoose wagons bringing-up the rear are also very North-American, and follow the role of our 'guards/brake' wagon. Indeed the external steps down to low platforms are an American design feature too.

You can see how the wheels follow the earlier design but are not identical and the coupling as changed to a hook an eye, but I still think they are from the same source as they follow both number of items and colour of items rules.

Moving away from the larger train brings us to the old George Musgrave design, also a candle carrier, but a much smaller scale; paint it khaki and you could use it as a troop train with micro-armour . . . at a touch!

We have looked at this one before, but more (Hong Kong copies) have come in so a quick recap. The Festival packaging in the background and an extended train in the middle-ground - mostly from my brother and my childhood's cakes! The cellophane bag has a Hong Kong piracy as is the little pink tank-loco to the front-centre.

A point to note here is that the Festival train will only take the very thin 'austerity' candles of post-war Britain while the HK trains take the current 'fat-boys'! The two trains making-up the bulk of the post - however - take both sizes and the larger Christmas candles for those heat-powered mobile tinkley-brass things (look again at the papoose wagons).

The passenger wagons from the colony are a tad smaller (and more colourful) but otherwise the same, pointing to some pantography, but the 'Wild West' locomotive is a re-design with a slimmer but taller chimney-stack and forward-set lantern, the whole being elongated slightly with larger gaps between the wheels.

I don't know if the tank-engine is a copy of a Festival model or something more original thought-up by the chaps in Hong Kong (it could be a scale-down of the Lone Star Tripple-O train tank-loco?), but I don't remember - as a kid - seeing anything other than the large 'Wild West' one, of which we also had a blue one which has long-gone to the great turntable in the sky!

In a different league altogether, and carrying no candles! From the shininess of the tracks I assume a modern casting, but probably from old Nuremberg-flat moulds, and I'm not sure if it's 'Der Adler' (the Eagle - Germany's 'Rocket') or just a generic early dampflok (one of those brilliant German words like krankenhause or krankenwagen which tells you exactly what it means!), and sent to the Blog by Mr. Berke as a follow-up to the previous micro-train post.

It's just charming! Although I'm not sure I'd want the job of human bridge-gauge!

W is for What Am I Like!

On or around the 9th August, i.e. at the beginning of Rack Toy Month, I said;

"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."

By the end of the month I had indeed published the long-in-the-queue sea-creatures round-up, and was the Aspro set included? Was it heck! Better sort that out this instant - Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Fair Sea Life set from Aspro!

We looked at the packaging last time, so getting stuck into the contents, we have a reasonable selection of sea-life including mammals and invertebrates, but only two fish, and both cartilaginous ones at that!

Along with the umpteenth generation-copy of the prehistoric-Wild West-jungle-Day Day sea-weed /tree/shrub/plant-thing so favoured of HK - and now - China manufacturers!

These are in that family of small (averaging 40/60mm main body) generic animals of which there are lots of sets going round at the moment, with the land animals and dinosaurs I am trying to make sense of them, but when you have three sets of two-colour, flesh-plastic figurines with similar china marks it 'aint easy!

These are they too, CHINA, no other mark, pale grey/white PVC and one or two colours over-sprayed, but at least we get to call the Aspro until they turn up under other brands - which they probably will!

There's little scale, but as all these have large and small stages or versions, it's up you what scale you use them as!

Mammals, and one each from the three main sub-categories, from the left; seal, walrus and sea-lion, again there's no constant scale, with the walrus around HO-OO and the seal a good 1:32nd-compatable, the sea-lion rather between them both, assuming they are all fully-grown!

Is it trying to be a killer whale (it's not a country Mr President) or one of the many Dolphin/Porpoise species left out of all the kids' books on the subject? The shark is equally generic and hard to place in the taxonomy . . . grey? Blue? Jaws!

Nice little set, all the same!

News, Views Etc . . . Monday Blues

I was going to post a couple more articles for today, but I've run out of time to even get tomorrows done, so I'll divvy them up over the week, in the meantime I've just been sent this link to an outrageously rare set!!!!!

Chris Smith thinks he may have ID'd the figures;

"So rare no one has ever heard of them……. Clever conversions yes, rare no!

Crescent astronaut, Crescent 60mm infantry grenade thrower and is that an Airfix German para?"

. . . what do you think, and . . .

Seller . . . you're a shocker!

PS - I do dinosaur shelfies and he does dinosaur shelfies, later the same day . . . it's sort of funny but it's also getting boring isn't it? I love than Galoob went into kebabs, too funny!

F is for Further Follow-up - Rack Toy Astronauts

I knew I had some more somewhere! Because I knew I had some coloured ones, although now they've turned-up I'm disappointed to find no red ones as there were definitely some in my minds-eye, Hey-ho! We've looked at them recently here;

Hing Fat & Generic Astronaut Sets

and here

Follow-up to Hing Fat Astronauts

So there are two 'lots', but they are in one PVC bottle-bag with no header-card and no note, so they were probably either an un-attributable loose purchase, or in one of the dregs bags of the 'big purchase' back in the autumn of oh-ten?

There's not much between them but if I had to commit; I'd say the Hing Fat greys are the slightly poorer finished sculpts? But a situation reversed with the seated figures, where the yellows are very flashy - problem with a/the copied tool?

The pale gray ones share the previously-seen Hing Fat base mark, while the white one and the coloured ones are all unmarked and with no signs of a Hong Kong or China removal, so separate issue with new base-plate or re-ground base-plate? On the subject of quality/finish; look at the spanners.

I'm still looking for the Hong Kong-marked originals, and will look out for more of the minor-sample types when we can return to them again, but not for a few years I think . . . three posts in a couple of months is rather tearing the arse out of it and they are hardly the most exciting of figures; a giant pair of pliers and a fire-extinguisher hose seems to be about as good as it gets!

S is for Shelfies - Fortnite

Drawing the curtains to a close on Shelfie weekend we have a couple of long-shots I took in Smyths in Farnborough the other-day, after the clearance Fortnite in The Works a while back (at not-clearance prices - why I shelfied them too!), it seems there are several other lines/ranges of Fortnite stuff out there at the moment, a lot of it aimed at younger users as the game appeals to younger gamers.

Epic Games have issued these, they are action figures, but in a smaller 60/70mm (?) compatible size like some of the Lord of the Rings sets or the smaller Zizzle pirates (although they weren't articulated - but you know what I mean!), each has a separate weapon and while definitely not 'my thing' they may be 'a bit of you' sufficiently to be worth a look?

These are also Epic and are semi-deforms, but they are 'solids' so may be of some use to fantasy/sci-fi fans? I'm sure I've seen (and not/forgot to shelfie) some Mattel branded Fortnite stuff, and due to its being the current 'big thing' in gaming, I would expect more toys to appear.

S is for Shelfies - USA

As well as the Ja-Ru shots Brian sent which we looked at yesterday, he's send lots of other Shelfies, some of which are in other articles in the queue, some of which are still in the 'long queue' probably destined for a straight to A-Z entry (when I get on top of them), but here are three which can go on the blog forthwith!

As a follow-up to another Bible Toys set he sent which we saw a while ago (Noah I think or was it JC himself), we have David and Goliath with other sets illustrated on the blister's backing card.

They all look a little Euro-Caucasian for Arabs, an excuse you could justify explain in the past when the whole of Western civilization was a war-loving, patriarchal, colonising, Pope-driven, racist, Christian cult, but these days they really should know better!

We've seen these before, both sides of the pond, under about five different brandings. Peter Evans sent one to the blog which was more of a candy-premium? Here under Hunson's moniker and four figures to a card, they are second-generation copies of the old Supreme sculpts - which also got several brand-outings!

The bowman (who also came with the candy set) is arguably the poorest pose in an otherwise reasonable group.

Graphics are odd - even by rack-toy standards, with the figures suspended over a lava-lake held-in by a glowing-red 'Berlin' wall??? Wild Willy's Gun Shop is clearly some portal to Hades, or the ammo-store just took-off with a bang!

These look very familiar, are they the sets we saw in Plastic Warrior magazine a few years ago (issue 159 - back issues avaiable) as US Toy from Les White? I think they are, you also see them from time to time on evilBay in sets of 12.

Now, they are six-pose sets, but there are only five in the bag, so you would have to buy at least two sets (four in this case as the firefighters come in red or tan), but as JPW they are likely to be so much cheaper than as US Toy or feebleBay's £$€6-something+postage, that it looks a good deal! The other set which comes in two colours (not in the PW article) are the soldiers who come in tan or green.

Many thanks to Mr. Berke - all useful stuff, especially if you are over the pond.

S is for Shelfies - TJ / TK Maxx

So; I take the odd shelfie or two every time I go to TKMaxx in Basingrad and while a lot of them are of not much interest, they are all figural, so have at least some relevance, and this is a round-up of the last few month's-worth.

Remember that weird Superman with foam wings, who came-in in a mixed lot, got photographed and went back to charity? Well, the mystery seem to be solved; modern-to-current, made by an i-Star Entertainment and being fired by means of an older type pull-cord mechanism and a more techie' trigger which seems to momentarily store the kinetic energy. And - apart from missing the trigger and pull cord, mine was probably/vaguely complete?

Chad Valley are very much a trading brand now, having been resurrected and gone bust, bough by Woolworth's and gone bust, bought by Argos, bought by or sheared with Sainsbury's . . . and cleared through TKMaxx, while both organs are themselves still trading!

The figures (54/60mm) look familiar and I feel I've seen them before somewhere, but then they would be bought-in, as a trading brand Chad Valley does no original manufacturing itself anymore. Indeed; I think the building has the same sticker as the Ja-Ru (?) set Brian shelfied a year or two ago? But the figures are from somewhere else, the helicopter a common rack-toy trope, the traffic-cone from elsewhere?

Sub-scale shuttle and intermediate scale figures (around the 30/35mm mark IIRC) from Johntoy of the Netherlands, but I was drawn to the satellites which would go well with my Airfix HO-OO astronauts, but it wasn't particularly cheap so I left it one the shelf!

Diving out of TKMaxx for a moment I shot these dolls house accessories in Flying Tiger a while ago, notable for the fact that as polymers continue to be implicated in mass pollution, environmental damage, infertility, biological-androgyny and extinction, wood and metal will regain their lost roles in the toy industry . . . as they will in the kitchen, garden and garage/shed!

Back to the Max' and every boy's Christmas fantasy was a big box with everything in it, and this isn't far off! You even get a small forest of poplar trees! Shit image means I can't read the full logo but it's looks like Play Fund, Play Land or Play Pound (as in 'Dog Pound')? This is likely a phantom-branded packaging - several of the vehicles are recognisable from the multi-brand post a couple of Rack-Toy Month's ago.

The kneeling police sniper is an old (and as we've seen here at SSW in the past) much copied Ja-Ru sculpt, so I assume the others will be two, all-six drawn from a larger 'menu' of figures, produced by a contract manufacturer somewhere.

Just because it's figural . . . and may turn-up in a mixed lot! It says 'Brick' so may be Duplo-sized/compatible?

Seen at the London Toy fair in January '18, seen them in TKMaxx before, Interplay's Fairy Garden the fairy is another one likely to turn-up in mixed lots and may be of use to fantasy collectors, if only to have the game-master declare her 'captured by Orcs' and demand her rescue as a game-wining aim!

Phidal - smaller toy/book confection, and aimed at much younger readers than the full-size My Busy Books, can use non-licensed stuff without hitting sales, not that they aren't loosely based on My Little Pony, but them isn't MLP only a further commercialisation of the pink, yellow and blue animals transfer-printed on our cots and play-pens by Pedigree Triang Mettoy fifty years ago?

We saw a couple here in a mixed lot a while back, both went back to charity the next day, Peterkin are behind this juvenilia.

Two brand-marks here, Country Life and My Lovely Horse, both from Johnjoy out of Holland (a place called Waddinxveen), not my thing, but for farm collectors, horse collectors or animal collectors, they may have appeal, clearly going after the Breyer market, which both Schleich and Papo are also chasing these days.

If Tomy are to do anything useful with that Britains Farm property of theirs, they might do well to dump the Britains tools, double (or halve?) the scale and go after a slice of this bandwagon's pie!

That's yer'bunch of mixed shelfies; with one exception, all recently or currently from TKMaxx.

D is for Dinoshelfies!

Shot these in The Works the other day and they are therefore current, and it's a sort of a visit to old friends as some of these have been painted to look like the several-issue set of six we looked at a while back from Out of the Blue, Poundworld-Plus, Poundland-Funtastic, Lollipop-LP, Henbrandt and TKMaxx.

"Collect them all" it says, but doesn't tell 'little Jimmy' how many there are! Shop stock box of dino-scale dinosaurs toward the larger size, so nice for 54mm figures - did anyone, ever, issue a fully in-scale set? British Museum had a stab, but the bronto-diplo (?) was small and the dog-face big.

These seem to have two decorations for each model and you don't need to look for other branding, they are all in the same box! Although I can't say it's a fast rule as there were only one each of the last two (bottom right).

A third iteration comes with the individually boxed ones who have a cheaper paint-scheme and come with a giant egg ('realistic'?) and small palm to eat . . . if they are vegetarian. You can see the further-back stegosaurus is the one mirroring that other line of similarly sized Chinasaurs.

Three were available for shelfying, but I assume all six are out there, perhaps you would need to try several Works to find one which had got the carton 'with the other three' as an 'assortment'? The Works - Chinasaur Dinotoys, out now!

J is for Ja-Ru . . . Shelfies

We often hear from Mr Berke when we visit shelfies, and this time is no exception, with some assorted ones tomorrow, and this quartet of Ja-Ru's finest, here, now; these were taken in August so all still very current.

These are lovely, jelly-clear, coloured, novelty, mini-dinosaurs, what's not to like! I suspect they will prove to be from a larger set of common sculpts, given a gel-treatment, but what the heck, nice thing to find in your Christmas stocking if you're six, or going-on six!

More mini's; I think I've picked some of these up in charity-shop lots, so there's a strong chance we will return to them in close-up at some point, and the mini's are something I've been meaning to sort for some time, so maybe over the winter? A simple over-pray ina  contrasting colour, but it's the blue and green bodies which are the signature, several sets have tan/fawn bodied sculpts.

Seen before I think, but the card may be new, or the figure colour different, but I won't know 'till I put these away on the dongle, and when I come to do the A-Z pages entry, all the variations will be re-collaged to give fully pictures, you know - all grist to the mill!

Same graphics reduced to a header/hanger for a bottle-bag; and again we've seen the figures before, but not in this size of/or bi-coloured assortment, I think. These look to be the polyethylene versions of earlier PVC figures.

Cheers Brian, salute to shelfies!

S is for Shelfies - Catering Novelties

It's shelfie weekend everyone! Don't worry, it won't be a regular thing, but they have been building-up for about 18/20-months now and I thought I'd clear a few here while I've got them all together, although I know there are one or two others somewhere!

Staring with catering novelties which were mostly shot in TKMaxx, but with the last lot a more conventional toy thing photographed in Sainsbury's.

I'm loving these 'Mexican Wrestler' bottle-openers! Marketed by Kikkerland and presumably the result of some competition or sponsored thing (as our own Design Museum puts on or supports from time to time), and while I could only find two designs, there may be more and/or other colours?

I really ummned and arrrhhed on these, not so much the submarines as the divers, but the deciding factor on leaving them on the shelf was that they were full of liquid and might leak one day, quietly on the shelf, or in the attic or garage, messing something else up? I suppose you could get a plastic-surgeon (geddit!) to syringe the water out and replace it with clear silicon!

Close-up of the little divers, who could just as easily be spacemen or astronauts? Eight for three-quid is about 33p each, and Kikkerland again.

It was frog plant-ties which kicked-off our occasional visits to bendy-toys here at Small Scale World a few years ago, well now you can get chameleons in pairs, in at least six colours, although they don't change colour so more; 'big-eyed geckos'! These were in Flying Tiger (formerly Tiger) a while ago.

Found in Sainsbury's at the beginning of April; within a month Peter Evans had sent me the one on the right with the same green/yellow colourway! The sad thing is that Sainsbury's were selling these internally branded in 12's, three-each of four colours, while a few years ago they were in eights (2x4's), thus we see 'shrinkflation' come to Toytown!

One the left are the Henbrandt aliens (six to a set) in fours . . . Doh!