D is for Dive! Dive! Dive!

We looked at the Lone Star mini-sub/2-man torpedo with box a while ago, courtesy of Brian Berke, and at the time I mentioned the divers I had which were unfindable, well, I found them! And they weren't where I thought they might be, but that's collecting, as I'm sure some of you know only too well!

Mine is sans box (as is most of the large scale collection; too busy filling gaps to worry about packaging), but is otherwise all there, the only difference with Brian's in that his propeller was silver (polished steel!), while mine is gold (steam era bronze!). As you can see I need to find another rider - in either paint scheme - as mine don't match, one has an all-over silver suit, the other is mostly black with green straps on the helmet (matching Brains), but it doesn't end there . . .

. . . as I have a third, who doesn’t match either of them! He's not in the soft PVC-like material of some of the other Toyway re-issues, being polyethylene. Equally I don't think any of the marques who've been involved with the British re-issues have done the 'sub, so I guess a test shot of the mould-tool?

My propeller is a bit loose and keeps falling out so I keep it in its own little self-seal bag (with the equally loose counter-weight), but the hook is still there, so I could power it up if I wanted to. To be honest; I'm not sure the grommet hasn't been replaced with the end of a cheap, BIC-like biro?

Timpo's was a simpler affair with no motive power and an underside too narrow for one of those Hong Kong made, battery-operated - usually red/white - motor units you could by separately for such things, but which were also supplied with a lot of model vessels.

Mine is missing it's 'coat hanger' counter-weight, a thin [-shaped wire, similar to the Indian canoes, but a different length, which was designed to keep it upright while you pushed it about the bath! The propeller does turn, but you need a pencil or toothpick to make it so or make it go!

Timpo get a support-boat however, and there are other colours of scuba-tank (are there green ones?), the boat being used by other figures, and there is a four-man version but only with Brit's I think?

I see these on evilBay frequently, and recently missed-out on a  pearler which was bid to a reasonable sum! The divers are Britains copies I think, but the 'sub itself is relatively unique in design, but may be a copy of a toy I'm unaware of (Italian or Spanish maybe?).

From the nature of the graphics on the ad's I cropped these two out of, and the logotypes, I suspect Koon Yip were the manufacturer, while Mayfair some kind of middle-men - wholesalers or shippers? I also wonder if there is a motor nestled underneath, and whether it's B/O or wind-up?

All still on feebleBay yesterday, one (top left) a colour variation on a generic card, another (bottom right) described by the seller as Heinerle (which I doubt), the other two in Koon Yip-branded packaging and available - between the four - from the US, Canada and Germany!

The Britains one is the obvious absentee in this post, but first, I thought we'd seen it here already (but can't find the images) and second while I also thought I had one, I now can't find it . . . if I have, so 'another day' for that one!

News, Views Etc . . . Catching-up!

Tags

Tagging edits continue apace, I've got to G, with a diversion at P (for 'Police') where I extended the use of 'Caribinieri' and 'Guarda Civil'. I had G.G. and G∙G for that large resin Guardsman Peter Evens sent to the Blog, but with ascii code I've done them both as G•G, which will do them forever as I'm unlikely to tag them a third time and if I do, that's in the tag-index now.

The previous (and politically incorrect) 49 'Firemen' tags have been corrected to 'Firefighter' and/or 'Fire Chief', 'Fire Engine', 'Fire Wagon' (and one 'Fireman Sam'!), while the only 'Florescent Toy' has reverted to the 'Glow-in-the-dark Toy' tag, which although longer is more likely to be searched on.

'Fram' has gone and the 'Farm' tag has an additional post, without me having to publish anything! While the 5 'Frogmen' have gone, but 'Divers' have been divided into 'Divers - Deep' and 'Divers - Frogmen' with an additional 'Mini-Sub's' tag, again, to make it easier for loyal readers (or casual visitors . . . even my "emies"!) to find stuff.

'Fun-Tastic' has been lost to increase the 'Funtastic' tag, as it's clear from cursory research they are two arms of the same import/jobber outfit, both sides of the pond. But 'Funtastik' stays as someone else's brand-mark.

Received With Thanks

Brian B sent stuff for ITLAPD and RTM a few weeks ago, which was useful as I've given little thought to either!

Then Pontiac Jason sent some lovely imagery and info from the 'States on Florida's Highlander, so more to add there!

Chris Smith sent a mass of stuff last week, follow-ups and general interest, and then both he and Brain sent more this week; Brian a mass of Lucky-lorry follow-up and Chris more 'items of interest'!

And just as the shutdown struck we had PW17-something drop through the door, for which I must do the review and there were the two parcels from Brian and Peter Evans which have been covered.

Many thanks to all for all, it's piling-up a bit, but I'm not complaining, and it will all get used, witness this afternoon's post with contribution from two readers.

WTFBay - Got 10,000-Quid Going Spare?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MASSIVE-TIMPO-COLLECTION-All-periods-and-types-plus-spares-1000s-of-figures/254575891003?hash=item3b45e7d23b:g:LNgAAOSw1tVeVqV6

Evil Empire - Worth a Read

There's little point in toy-industry news while the global economy is turning to a fluid of shit-soup, but the author of this piece thinks the Nottingham Mafia are a safe bet and he's probably right!

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4341024-games-workshop-back-to-reality-and-grim-dark

J is for Jean Höffler - 3: Wild West Bits & Pieces

Also written Jean Hoeffler for those who can't handle umlauts (like Google search-bots!), this is the bits which wouldn't easily fit into the other two parts of what was going to be one post!

As mentioned there are a lot of poor sub-piracies I will subject you too some other time, most between 40 and 50mm and you may know them, ugly little things with hollowed out bases from the bottom-end of the rack-toy market, but having suggested the main HK production may be from the Jean tools, these  - above trio - are proper copies.

The rifleman a third, fourth or fifth-generation copy (via Kwong Wah) of the old Lone Star 'Metallions', the Red Cloud still readable, but lacking the chromium coating and having the same mark as the two archers he came with; a very small HONG KONG.

Brian Berke sent me this from New York, and I can assure you both pictures are full-colour! It just happens that he's a grey-plastic figure on a white horse with white background and he looks to be a poorer-quality copy in a smaller size . . .

. . . as we can see; comparison shots with a Toyway-Timpo anti-insurgency cavalryman and the Crescent standing rifleman.

This was also sent in by a loyal reader who I won't name (I've thanked him privately as I hadn't seen it before) as I think it may be someone else's and probably active somewhere online? If it's yours - please email me for full credit and I'll happily remove it and replace it with a link to the original editorial site/page. (It's a current feeBay lot if you want one; but the link won't last forever!)

The interesting thing about this Peruvian Trioplast blister-card is that although it claims to be made in Peru, it seems to have the same figures I got at Sandown last year and which we saw in part two . . . well-travelled tools? It's hard to tell from the image, but the bases appear blank and the split-lines are a little more flashy?

 

08/10/2020 - They were also issued by the US 'Jobber' Imperial Toy Corp., from counter displey/stock boxes as Heroe of the Golden West (not sure what was 'golden' about anarchic mayhem and native genocide but . . . !).

Finally; this chap is an ex-Elastolin sculpt (6808-6808/4), but has several of the attributes of the Hong Kong 'versions' of the Jean figures even to the base marking, but the raised rim of the base is slightly wider and a bit wobbly compared to the Jean sculpts, as he was mixed in with a bunch of other stuff I can't say ouwt-about'im other than that he sort of looks similar to the others, but is definitely a poorer copy of the German original!

He is supposed to be holding his spear, at waist-height, under his cloak, but the poorly rendered tuft of feathers at the lance-head has left him looking like he has two left-arms, the other stretched-up gripping the top of the pole!

J is for Jean Höffler - 2: Wild West Hong Kong

The second part of this trio of articles is the Hong Kong production and while I don't have many of these either, I have picked-up enough for a ramble through them!

The commonest form of these are the brown Indian and creamy-white Cowboy versions, which are usually unpainted and while there might be a commercial aspect to these Indians, I'm pretty sure the cowboys have been home-painted by a colour-blind hippy on 'speed'!

These are the same figures but the cowboys came in blue, and they are the bare, undecorated version you normally find the others in too. Horses are similarly marked and are found in B&W with the cream/brown batches as well.

We saw the full sample of these when I found them, or soon after, they were a Sandown Park show-find back in the autumn. Lots of new colours but the same base marking, the cowboys having a smaller pallet of tans to the Indians' explosion in Laura Ashley's studio!

Having got used to the cream/brown set in passing (before I collected large scale), it's been fun finding the other colours as I collect, and these have come in as ones, so can't be placed (well; I could put the second one from the left with the crazy-painted ones . . . after a clean!) but are still more colours. Note that some (two or three?) of the cowboys have small recessed holes in them which might be release-pin marks, but could have another purpose?

The marking is the same for all three 'batch' finds and the singles, being a full capital MADE IN HONG KONG and a larger numeral, which - so far - have been limited to single-numbers; nothing over 9?

The pose count on these HK issues is less than the Jean originals, and I suspect two tools with cavity-numbers 1-8 and a horse mould . . . 1-4 or 1-6? If you followed the link to TSHQ in part one, you'll have found the horses are hard to tell apart but there are six in the original set, I'm not sure how many there are in the Hong Kong output.

Going back to the painted Indians in the first shot, this chap also seems to have been commercially decorated . . . and modelled on a young Michael Palin?!!

Hong Kong-Jean / Jean-Hong Kong

You may have noticed that so far I carefully haven't used the words 'copy' or 'piracy' with regard to the figures in this post, preferring to use instead 'output', 'issue' or 'production', this is because I can't really say these are copies, they seem to be from the old German tools?

There are some slight differences (the grass on the spearman's base above is short-/miss-moulded for instance) which could be excused by the age of the tools, slack-production/QA, or just different cavities, but the main details, fine etched (feathers etc...) sculpting and over-all size seems to be the same and I wonder if the moulds found their way to the Colony at some point?

It's true that a skilled pantograph operator can do same size copies, it's true that a high-tech operation could make masters from high-quality moulds taken from original figures (the hollow-cast guys do/did it all the time with Plasticine in Lego or balsa dams), but it's equally true that people like Marx moved their moulds to HK all the time.

If it did happen, and I'm not 'calling it'; it's only as clear as mud, it would seem to have involved only part of the tool-set, the common (or earlier?) [based] figures and one (or more?) of the horse moulds, as far as I know the Hong Kong sets never come with HK-marked versions of the wagons, guns, limbers, Tipis or the rather juvenile canoe etc...?

Changing the base plate to read MADE IN HONG KONG from W. GERMANY is the easy bit! I don't know, but I do know it's too close to call.

===================================

Epilogue - I was looking at a Nigrin premium horse and an unpainted Jean knight figure with a blanked-off base, a week or so later and it struck me that it might be the 'premium' tool which ended up in Hong Kong (if one did), to wit; Jean themselves may have arranged a duplicate mould for producing the variously, differently-marked premiums, having a set of single base-sections with each mark (De Gruyter, Eri, Reindorf etc... Peter Konrad's books list over a dozen and we've seen Korona here passim) which were easily changed, that kind of thing? And that that was what ended up in HK or even/ultimately Peru? The Premiums are only credited with three of the six horse poses - I believe?

J is for Jean Höffler - 1: Wild West Jean Originals

I don't have a very good sample of Jean originals, a few odds and sods which have come-in with mixed lots and a bunch of mounted which I think came as a single lot? As a result I shot all the copies and things, but then ended-up with too many images for a post, so broke it into three, leaving the rathey-crappy sample of Jean originals as an intro'!

The samples we will be looking at - with a few additions - there are smaller copies, lots of them, but they are of little merit and poor quality so can wait for another day! The trouble with the originals (as far as my acquiring them goes) is that there are loads of them and the best place for a check-list/images is Kent's page.

My cowboys; the two prone ones seem to be additional poses, less easy to find and mine look to have never been painted, I also think they were on another tool, while scale wise they are a little larger too, but probably the same sculptor? The white horse has no signs of paint either.

Foot Indians; hardly worth showing and no prone figure, but I have the female with papoose which is another less common sculpt so you win some, you lose some!

However I can chase down Mr. Custer and give him a good spanking, as I have  a decent load of mounted Natives, albeit rather tatty on the paint front, but rather like Crescent or late Cherilea (&etc!) the later, shiny polyethylene meant the paint stayed on long enough to get them to the shops, and little else! It's fair to say these are play worn, and some of the horses have silver manes!

I shot this on John Begg's stand at Plastic Warrior a couple of years ago, and the horses are of note as we'll see some similar ones soon with a question-mark over them. Similar to the Cofalux one, but with a really naff slot-base system for the horse-team.

Variations on a theme; A Hong Kong version in pink (next post) stands with the Manurba-Big swivel-waist and a 30mm figure (another 'left-hooker'), both also used (like the set we're looking at here) as various premiums and in the Wundertüten 'sweetie' bags.

So that's a bit of a box-ticker, but it gets them out there and we'll look at the Hong Kong marked ones next.

E is for Eye Candy!

Funnily enough the rhino's I posted in a hurry one evening a while back generated a mass of traffic which suggested if I want fame I should drop the soldiers, the spacemen and the everything else and concentrate on unknown animals! And there wasn't a bot-spike, it was small hit-numbers over several days?

Tigers! Not because I'm moving to animals, or want fame, but because I took it the other day and these shots are always fun for seeing what you can find!

The one at the top was flocked, but the flocked flocker has lost most of his flocking, while I can't decide whether the green one was once flocked or is a knock-off of the He-Man battle-cat? Or a Thundercat . . . one of them was green I think?

There's nothing exciting here . . . just tigers, mostly Britains copies!

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

From Euro-Quality to Hong Kong Shite!

Oh What Fearful Symmetry

Has Worn-off Your Poly-Physiognomies!

News, Views Etc . . . Houskeeping - Tags

The magic BTWifi-with-FON I found the other day dissipated yesterday, just vanished, only reappearing at 8-30'ish last night by which time I'd lost my mojo for posting stuff, so I started cleaning-up the tag list, which is like painting the Forth Bridge!

I've checked and tweaked the numerals, A and B, and broken the previously-86 'Ancient' tags into more manageable chunks, by nation-covered, the hard one being the Herald sculpts which are double tagged Ancient Greece and Troy as 54mm or copies, but tagged Ancient Rome as Giant or sub-piracies, due to their packaging making it clear they are meant to be Romans . . . or Auther'ians!

Enjoying the torture, I will stick at it for the rest of the day, you won't really notice anything at all, but over time it will get easier to find things, and I'll - hopefully - excise the odd typo or duplication which has crept in?

I might post a little-something later if I get bored, and will post tonight for tomorrow, if the signal doesn't drop out again?

L is for Lucky Lorry

I shot this at Sandown Park on Adrian Little tables, but little did I know at the time how apposite it might prove to be only a few weeks later, as the measures to control Corvid-19 bring the haulage industry to its knees and their own 'professional body'; the Road Haulage Association, mutters darkly about  a possible need for nationalisation.

Because - if I'm remembering it correctly - BRS (as they were called when I was little) were the national, tax-payer owned transport organisation? I think they were being privatised while I was still little, as I don't remember any great 'sell-off' under Thatcher, so it was probably sold piecemeal to regional independents and gradually scaled-down to nothing?

Presumably some leftover from WWII, I think their wagons were blue but a little (a lot?) darker than the shade chosen by The Lucky Toys for this model, although I equally remember tarp's of exactly this colour among all the greasy, charcoal, navy and turd-brown ones!

Under the corona virus pandemic we have seen how both private railways and bus operators cannot survive, giving full-light to the lies of 41 years of outsourced, downsized, privatisation and sell-off. Lies which were identified as such at the time, but sadly, the Tories have had the newspaper editors on their side!

Quite apart from the selling-off of all our war-store depots and all our laboratories and the obvious failure of rail and bus networks, all the other obvious failings of our nation in this crisis can be laid at the feet of the Tories, and while 'New Blair' is hardly an innocent party, it is the people in charge - right now - who are responsible for that fact that while we (a developed, '1st World' country) have no face-masks to speak of, Turkey (regarded as a 2nd World developing nation) has a compulsory face-mask policy and enough face-marks to adhere to such a dictate?

A national haulier or the mechanism to create one at short notice is something we should have had, or had ready. That we had no such organisation, no national lab's, no face-masks, is all you need to know about the Thatcherite-Reganomic desire to protect the citizens they want to vote for them and their Trumpundbrwreakshit.

We were offered a part in a pan-European respirator procurement program last  the other week, and turned down the opportunity, now we're taking 200 off the Yanks . . . who need them just as badly? Capitalism has been failing us since before the crash of 2008, now democracy itself is failing.

Enough politics for now, although there will be more . . . it's my Blog!

Look! The treasure-chest from the Dinky Spectrum Maximum Security Car, cleverly copied to make a lorry load! And many thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Th above obviously written while I was off line, it's all here;

https://www.brs.co.uk/page/103/history

And I wouldn't recognize one of it went past the window as I type! They were ours and if they'd been retained, we'd have had them when we need them! Sweden (who own BRS!) haven't gone into lockdown, because they are a high-tax/high-welfare society with spare capacity in their health services, New Zealand have a low death rate because they moved sharpish and hard (instead of watching and waiting like Boris!), we aren't 'great' anymore, we're just breaking Britain, struggling with the dichotomy between true democracy and big business' interests.

News, Views Etc . . . Airfixfigsblog Update

I've added a couple more comparisons to that page;

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2020/02/1977-cold-war-modern-british-infantry.html

Nothing exciting, but is indicates how big the 'Super Deetail' were, even when compared with the later spinner-arm swivelidiots!

M is for Military Force from 'Mini Wheels'

The moniker used by a variety of sets from the small generics we looked at here, through this intermediate sized 'play set' to the big-box huge-box sets Wilkinson's (Wilco) carried each Christmas for several seasons around the turn of the century. Twenty years . . . this shite's been in the collection for twenty years; where does the time go!

In its entirety; there are 29 items, small and large, 32 if you count the tractor/trailers and rocket separately, and at half-price I must have paid £2.49p or - more likely - £2.50p! Which is no more than 8p per item . . . bargain!

Shipped-in by Ackerman, this is SP Toys/Supreme's sojourn into small scale, with decently scaled 1:72 scale AFV's (for the most part), but with oversized figures and undersized aircraft.

The whole caboodle came in sand (as here) or green plastics/paint-finishes and the jerry-cans are a triple-moulding (only useful for vehicle-loads or enhancing SAS jeeps!), but the oil drums are separate, both are more suitable to 1:35th scale modelling, while the figures are the poorest thing Supreme have churned-out to date and were only ever going to be box-tickers' in collector's lists!

Because we've looked at the AFV's (a long time ago, but fully; Tracked AFV's, Wheeled 'Softskins', Articulated Trucks and Engineering/Plant) and the figures (link at the start), and because I junked all the aircraft from the sets I broke-up (leaving the one above!) the only things left to look at are the street furniture (another day, there's a tub-full somewhere) and the low-relief building fronts.

The small sets got one of the little US-style 1930's urban 'station houses' with attached garage-door, with red and blue versions for fire and police sets, the medium sets all got the equally American-looking 'small-town municipal' town hall/public library type, while the huge trays Wilkinson carried had two or all three, which sometimes included the European barrack-style vehicle/MT shed or Fire Station with three garage units.

The flag is more often absent than present, I suspect that due to its propensity to break-off, it was discontinued? And note you get both unit command buildings and places where Henry VIII could store the cerebral body-parts of his victims!

An alternative inclusion in the larger sets was a ruined central-European farmhouse which came (as here) in dun and cream, or a more traditional black timber on white, with red roof. There were other buildings for the civilian sets, some of which we've seen, but there was also a larger service-station/garage type thing.