J is for Jean Höfler . . . Hoefler . . . Hhffluur . . . Hhoouffluer . . . Just 'Jean', J is for Jean!

Me being 'racist' again? It's humour isn't it, especially if you've watched Steve Martin's 'The Man With Two Brains' but being reminded of TJF (the man with half a brain), did you see how he followed my rocket launcher posts with a troop carrier? That crazy guy, he just loves sitting in my shadow, plotting my downfall! Seriously though, he actually had several vehicles and could have done a half-decent post, but then he doesn't do 'plastic smalls' he was just advertising his feebleBay sales, 'cos he's a dealer not a collector!

So I'll start with the troop carrier too! But compare it ('J' above) with the Noreda one ('N' above) from France. Some sources think Noreda copied Jean, but I think they just share the 'dime-store' styling, and a coincidental rendering in soft polyethylene plastic. Although both have polystyrene wheels in a more rigid polymer, and altogether have all the tropes of Airfix 'readymade' Attack Force vehicles.

Another reason for believing in parallel evolution, rather than influence either way is because - frankly - (ehh? Franks . . . oh, nevermind!) the French models (flash excepted; look at the driver's window!) are undeniably better made; if anyone 'copied' - it was the German firm!

Early Jean's have white wheels for some reason, but a lot of the cheapies did back then, and were decorated with 'Allied' stars, these being the same cheap, self-adhesive, paper ones you can still get from stationers, applied in a slap-dash fashion with no attempt to level them!

A standard cab-unit has the slots, brackets, holes and hooks for all the other variations/loads to be attached, and one large sample I acquired had most of them fitted with the missile-retaining T-bar, even if it was fouling the other attachments?

There is a canvas-tilted 'GS/Cargo' variant, but it has a strange hinge which leaves the tilt upside-down on the ground but still attached to the truck! While a carded set on eBay right now (download the image before it disappears!) has the cab-unit and chassis only, possibly as a tower for the long-barreled gun (see below), the other half of the barrel has slipped under the truck.

Fully traversing and elevating; the twin AA-gun was a real leftover of the earlier dime-store types, where pretty-much every set had one; Lone Star, Pyro/Kleeware, Beeju, Tudor Rose et al!

From little guns to big guns, again harking back, this time to the heavy siege and 'battlefield tactical' weapons of the 'world wars', and providing a nice basis for a war gaming conversion to rail-gun - old school; not realistic!

I think it's always meant to have the plug-in extension, giving it a 155/175mm look, but I've now found two without, which are still usable as 203/240mm howitzers, so a pair of both sit side-by-side in the tub.

The towing-bogie is the same as the guns, but the trailer=body is different, both seen recently here, but better angles on them I think, and the plug-in 'bolts' are obvious, and as I said last time; I'm not sure the 'plane was actually issued in this configuration, but the mechanism is the same . . . the aircraft probably came with a coloured launcher as a novelty?

The launcher being hard polystyrene, it's probably an earlier stand-alone novelty toy . . . there's no evidence of other loads for the trailer so the one was designed to take the other and with the plane it makes a great drone-launcher!

Space Tanks! Seen here years ago, and I think I have Bill (or Paul?) at Moonbase to thank for the trackless ones? They weren't sold trackless of course, and while I've tried fitting the turreted one with old truck wheels to make a wheeled APC, the length of the axles between the hubs is greater, so they just float about!

Noreda used a similar system on their bulldozer (upper shot; probably taken from the/a civilian range), without a middle wheel-set and with narrower, finer moulded tracks, another pointer to the originality of Noreda over Jean. Both went with polyethylene for the tracks, which makes them bow-out unrealistically, in a way stretched-rubber wouldn't have.

While the lower shot compares the Jean GS truck with a contemporary Manurba wagon (sold as Tallon in the UK), the Manurba is a reasonable approximation of a Magirus-Deutz 'Jupiter' truck (with a bit of US 'Duce-and-a-half' DNA), rather than the purely fictional Hoefler effort (with vague Mercedes L-series/911 lines?). It's because we saw the Manurba stuff here, years ago, that I thought I'd also covered the Jean!

Tractor! Artillery tractor!! Jean stole a few from their civilian range as well as Noreda, with the same simple expedient of running them in 'army' khaki polymer! Here the farm tractor gets to pull other loads, a civi' one is seen at the back; bottom left.

The civilian fuel-tanker also gets a military call-up.

Below that are two armoured cars, one recognisable as the WWII vintage M8 M20 (Greyhound in British service), the other a more generic thing with features of early cold-war stuff from France, Austria, Switzerland or Germany.

This pair is the exception that proves the rule; in having soft polyethylene wheels to the hard polystyrene of the other vehicles. Also I haven't seen them with white wheels in either plastic, so they may have been later additions to the line?

 

Both are now known to be Injectaplastic, not Jean, hence them feeling less comfortable here!

Typical packaging (as per the link above, but from the collection), the three blisters are large enough for anything except the articulated tanker-truck, which may have come on its own card, in a larger set, or as a counter-display/stock-box purchase? Or even cab and trailer separated in two of the blisters and a second vehicle as the third item?

Mine has a rocket-carrier, tracked APC and gun-truck. You can see a cement-mixer version of the 'standard' lorry in the photo-artwork, whether they also did a khaki version I don't know,  nor have I seen military iterations of the road-roller, front-loader or dumper-truck, but they may be out there; there is - apparently - an army-green dustbin lorry/refuse truck . . . not!

Look at the wheels man! Really; a crazy guy!

N is for Not Jean! Noreda

I had one or two items in the Jean H' tub, which were not happy being there, a truck body and chassis which wouldn't take any of the plug-ins known to be Jean, and a transporter trailer/low-loader which wouldn't attach to any of the Jean stuff . . . and they both had 'new' wheels. About 18 months ago I found them on feeBay, did a bit of a dig, satisfied myself as to their being what they were and started watching two BIN-lots! I finally purchased them the other day.

Starting with a reverse of the Jean article (which will appear above this in one minute's time! If I get the scheduling right!), but here the Noreda (for that is what they are!) are the left-hand of each photo-pair, and looking at the troop carrier. It doesn't matter how you cut it, the Noreda are better finished (flash excepted) than their German counterparts. Although; with those blanket rolls, the troops themselves are a bit . . . err . . . Soviet!

Like the Höfler trucks there is a generic cab/chassis to which various add-on's can be attached, and also like Jean, the canvas-tilted GS (General Service) variant is a separate moulding, but here the tilt is a simple plug-in, rather than Jean's clumsy, hinged effort.

A nice touch is the matching trailer . . . when we used to go off on major field training exercises, nearly every vehicle would have a trailer, something missed by most kit manufacturers and/or war-gamers, it's the shear amount of 'stuff' on the move which actually blocks the roads after a strafing!

You can shift a few burning trucks in minutes by pushing them out of the way with a same-size or larger vehicle, but if they are all twisted together with their own or other vehicles' towed-crap, it all takes much longer. A battalion carries tows about 12 field kitchens, several wreaker-bogies and about 1-in-four water carriers to GS trailers (as here) on most of the other vehicles, the HQ company packets (small convoys) would have a number of generator trailers and office-bodied comm's trailers distributed among everything else.

The radar truck is another throw-back to the earlier polystyrene and die-cast sets of the 1950;s & 1960's 'dime store' era. The truck itself seems to be a generic although I've seen it described as a Berliet, I can't find a matching real-life example?

The Tank Transporter however is truer to type being a Berliet T-6 / TBU15 as also modelled by Dinky Toys (France), although the trailer is more reminiscent of that attached to the equally die-cast T-12 (also a Berliet) as modelled by Solido of Belgium. It's really a 'low-loader' suitable for APC's or (as here) plant, rather than a tank-transporter trailer.

Another comparison between the Jean APC (left) and Noreda bulldozer tracks; you can see the Noreda tracks are all-over neater, being narrower, better sculpted & finished with more strongly defined links/pads.

As a GBU, the T6 cab-unit was used with various body-types including artillery tractor and GS truck in real life, and Noreda followed that in their toy line, although this model is a bit odd - obviously meant to be a telescopic-boom crane, there is no hook, cord or anything else likely to provide instant lift, so presumably the buyer was expected to cobble something together themselves; several sets are exactly the same?

The same cab was given to an articulated petrol-tanker trailer which is similar to the Jean beast, but again cleaner and less prone to warping.

They do a Jeep, this will be the French-build post war licensed version, although I don't know what the signature differences are, I do know that AFV-geeks will walk round vintage fairs saying "That's not WWII, it's French" to anyone who'll listen to them! Same size as the Airfix Jeep (top left) takes it out of scale with the rest of the line?

The two Noreda items I've been watching for months while waiting for the moment when I'd have the funds to spare - a lack of shows has improved the evilBaying budget! Also in the lower shot a comparison with the smaller Jean card, that some copying was going on seems hinted at by the choice of both makers to go with an orange field? However given the ubiquity of Jean and the superior quality/finish of the Noreda's I don't think you can really call for either being pirate, or victim?

The guys still have a few for sale, and I can heartily recommend them, there were problems with the order - a combination of factors some of which seem to have been down to the limitations of eBay's own systems for handling currencies - anyway, they sent two [big] parcels for one postage charge and gave me top feedback the same day, not knowing what I'd give them after 24-hours of confusion!

The stuff was superbly packed as well - which left me fighting for the right to unpack! You-know-who has learnt to recognise the postman's knock from the bottom of next-door's garden! She slept in it all afternoon!

And I got to catch up on the local München news courtesy of some paper twists holding all the bubble-wrap in place. It's one of the secret pleasures of buying stuff from around the world, or around the country, papers local to the sender; Florida car-dealership deals are so much more interesting than the local garage's!

The fight for the oldest chip-shop in some forgotten corner of Norfolk seems far more important than the corrupt parking regime here in town, some property tax debate in New South Wales takes on a certain fascination lacking from the possibility of 24-months disruption if they widen the motorway within earshot . . . do you enjoy other peoples' papers in your plunder-parcels?

News, Views Etc . . . Vectis July Dates

I'm afraid I didn't manage to tell you about yesterday (Tuesday)'s Doll & Bear auction as I ran out of Internet on Monday night and had to go to the bank in the morning to sort funds out! An expedition which now involves weaving and bobbing through the herds of idiot pink-monkeys who think face-masks are only for operating rooms? Hopefully the doll and bear people A) knew about it and B) don't rely on coming here to be reminded!

However there are five more dates in the July Calendar, and the next is on Thursday of this week, with a figure sale on the 31st.

In total the dates are;

• Tuesday 14th - Doll & Teddy Bear Sale
• Thursday 16th - General Toy Sale
• Friday 17th - Specialist Sale
• Friday 24th - Model Train Sale
• Thursday 30th - Specialist Diecast & Toy Sale
• Friday 31st -  Military, Civilian Figures, Equipment & Accessories Sale

Thursday 16th July 2020 - General Toy Auction

Lot 1219

"The General Toy sale to be held on the 16th of July features large groups of boxed and unboxed diecast models including Corgi, Dinky, Matchbox, Franklin Mint, Vanguards, EFE, Hot Wheels and many more. Lots include Corgi Classics, Original Omnibus, Heavy Haulage and Eddie Stobart, plus Matchbox Models of Yesteryear, and Superfast. Trains and railways sets including Thomas and Friends, Lego, DVDs Videos, books, magazines, soft/plush toys, music related items, vintage games and film equipment, display cases, Scalextric, tinplate and black and white prints."

Catalogue here

Friday 17th July 2020 - Specialist Die Cast Toy Auction

Lot 2486

"The Specialist Sale to be held on the 17th of July features six private owner collections plus many other items. Private Owner Collection #1 includes boxed and unboxed Dinky cars, trucks and construction vehicles, plus trade packs, motorcycles, military and aircraft. The Argentinian Collection features 200 lots of boxed and unboxed Corgi including TV and Film, Dinky Cars and commercials, plus ships and French Dinky.  The Warwickshire Collection includes Corgi, Dinky, French Dinky and others, and The Birmingham Collection includes European and Continental lots from Majorette, Siku, Tomica, Tekno, Solido, Corgi, Dinky and French Dinky. The Swiss Piccolo Collection features mixed groups, multipacks, Gift Sets and Limited-edition models from Schuco Piccolo; and The Surrey Collection includes 32 lots of Corgi Gift Sets and cars, Dinky and French Dinky. Further items in the sale include Solido, Dublo Dinky, OO Gauge passenger groups, Model Pet (ATC), Lansdowne, Brooklin, Marx (Tinplate), Triang Spot on and many more."

Catalogue here

Friday 24th July 2020 - Specialist Toy & Model Railway Sale

Lot 3606

Press blurb hasn't been issued for the railway sale yet, but the catalogue is up online here

News, Views Etc . . . Lose Ends

Latest release from Barney over at Herald Toys and Models (I've just been over there and they are selling fast!);

"We are very pleased to announce the arrival from Derbyshire of a new, very substantial, one-owner collection of plastics from the late 1950's and early 60's, both 54mm and 60mm scale. Whether you collect by maker (most British makers are represented) or thematically (from Arabs to Zulus), there are many interesting and unusual figures to whet your collecting appetite!"

Proving I'm not just a pretty face, and with thanks to Adrian Little for the heads-up, this image from the recent Vectis auctions (and I downloaded all the catalogues when telling you about them, but missed it!) confirms both the scrambler type and board-game origins of the motorcycles I hinted at when we looked at them a couple of  posts ago! The Glevum Series 'Dirt Track Racing for Motor Cycles' seems to be the source of a six-set, paint wise.

F is for Follow-up - Toy Truck-Mounted Rocket Launchers

So, managed to find both the rocket launchers mentioned in the previous article (making this a follow-up to a follow-up!), so without further ado - 'cos we don't want much of an ado about nothing! - let's have a closer look . . .

Both the vehicles I'd previously said I had 'somewhere', I knew where the paint-stripped one was, but Brian's shots were of two painted versions, so there was no point digging it out, the plastic one I knew I'd got, and recently, so it should have been findable, but a cursory look - the first time - failed to locate it, it (the Hong Kong copy - lower image) then appeared - as if by magic, a few days later! Hence digging-out the Crescent one (upper image) for a full follow-up!

The Hong Kong one is a copy, with simplifications like the 'torsion-bar' wheel attachments instead of the through-axles clipped in, as on the Crescent original, but there may have been some pantographing to get the basic moulding as one or two quirky details have been retained, albeit at about a 10% reduction in overall scale/size - I've cropped them to reflect their relative sizes.

More comparisons, the Hong Kong rocket is basically a Thunderbird (Army) or Bloodhound (RAF) missile, probably copied from Corgi, sans booster rockets, with colour-bleed from an unstable red polymer-colourant in the nose gravitating toward the 'rear' through the white plastic of the body it's plugged into.

The 'trap-door' of the Crescent cap-bomb 'missile', you can see how many caps could be stacked in the 're-entry capsule', and the substantial free-moving hammer would detonate them all against an equally substantial anvil-nose.

The trouble was you then got (in a Norwegian accent) a helllll-of-a-bang, which tended (in a cockney accent) to blow the bloody door off . . . which then got lost in the garden!

My rubber-band has perished in storage, but has retained its shape. It will need replacing with a dental-brace band - coincidently - the same item required by the little N-gauge vehicles in the Lone Star 'Treble-O Trains' rage!

Completely stripped of paint, there is a slight remnant of gloss red inside the elevation-lock wheel, suggesting this was the 'civilian version, and I'm quite sure someone was planning on repainting it as one of the two military versions, weather for home use or a fraudulent sale is anyone's guess! If I ever find the time I'll repaint it in an urban camouflage of blue-mauve-grey-purple, so there's no doubt as to its origins!

It actually looks quite sleek in its bare, weathered (or oxidised) Mazac/Zamak-alloy finish and is here posed at maximum elevation for lobbing onto enemy trenches a few yards away, or getting the best 're-entry angle' for a big-bang!

As with the other photographs above, where possible I've cropped to reflect the size difference as shooting them together proved awkward due to their length; taking the camera back to get the nearer machine in, tended to blur-out the one behind.

Not for completisms' sake, as there are plenty-more rocket launchers, but because it happened to present itself during the search, this is the smaller example from Kwong Shing-KS-Kamley-Kositoys, with the later design of truck and no card insert with printed 'flat' crew. It's the standard cab-unit with a twin-axle trailer utilising the body-mounting plug to create an articulated 'train'.

4th is for 'Of July'

In the same way the 6th is for 'June the' or the 25th is for Little Baby Jesus day! From time to time I have mentioned in passing such luminary events as the Dunkirk evacuation or Trafalgar day, and it's about time we mentioned a certain monumental waste of tea . . . I wonder if the harbour tasted of tea for the next few days?

Brain B sent this to the Blog within the last couple of hours . . .

I won't wish you a happy 4th July as it can't have escaped your notice the whole world is going to hell in a handcart at the moment, but have the best 4th July you can - given the circumstance and may you never have a worse one!

No, I don't know how he got them all to stand up, tiny pieces of Blue-Tac or a very steady hand!

M is for Military Mystery Men

I really, really, REALLY thought I'd posted these, in fact I thought I'd posted them more than once, but I can't find them anywhere on the blog (except a relatively recent distance shot, in a 'Forthcoming' post) under the correct tags (Comet, Eriksson, Spencer Smith and/or Timpo, nor 'Motorcycles'!), so without further ado; let's get'em up'ere!

I think I must have thought about posting them once or twice and written the blurb-bits in my head, leaving me with a false memory (or false memories!) of having posted them, when I hadn't?

Anyway, here they are and they are brittle, polystyrene 'kit' plastic, in a much darker colour than the flash has rendered them here! Most of the other images are truer to the eye, but not the last one (bottom) which was taken in the same circumstances as this one.

They are relatively unusual and an odd mix as we have a semi-flat running G.I., a fully-round kneeling firing Tommy Atkins and a very generic motorcyclist who's more civilian racing scrambler!

The sources are therefore as eclectic as the finished group and we'll go from the left in the previous image, which means the kneeling firer here first; he's taken from Timpo's WWII figure, and may well have been taken from the original hollow-cast rather than either of the later plastic issues we looked at here, they having copied they own hollow-cast moulding!

The running chap is taken from a common (and much used) pose/sculpt (or should that be sculpt-pose?) from the famous figure-sculptor Holgar Eriksson. Seen here compared with the diminutive Spencer Smith's, but also used by Comet-Authenticast, Comet-Gaeltec, SAE, Tradition and probably others, it can be - and is - many nations with head/webbing swaps, or the addition of a frock-coat and bi-corn hat, and the match illustrated isn't completely identical.

The third member of the 'set' which I had remembered as four (they've been in storage for a while) and may be more, it this motorcycle, again it seems to have been a common design back in the 1950's (or even late 1940's), predominantly for board-game pieces? Luckily I have found all three 'junk' lead and unknown Hollow-cast boxes in the garage!

You'll see the best match for the front-forks among the smaller trio, is the green one, but the head of the pink one is closer - they are very play-worn, very soft lead. A lack of fettling has led the larger red one to look like one of those Bisque imp-devils for cake-decorating, but closer study reveals several similar key-signatures . . . actually closer study suggests he is meant to be an Imp? Pointy ears?

Further I have a note to the effect that the trio are 'similar; to an Agasee home-casting mould (166? I've already put it away!), which is important for the rest of the narrative, and as I haven't found the Agasee catalogue yet and the red one has come in since, we may find it (Imp), or the plastic one, are actually closer to - or from - the Agasee mould?

Now known to be from Glevum Games 'Dirt Track Racing' game.

These were sent to the Blog by Chris Smith the other day (prompting the fruitless search for the originals on the Blog!), I think they are all polyethylene and we find, as the fall-out from the BR Moulds revelations in Plastic Warrior magazine gathers momentum, that there are lots of these figures out there, who have come, not only from that set of moulds, but from other, poured-metal or hollow-casting (?) sources.

Off the top of my head we have here an ex-Agasee bren-gunner based on the Hill/Johilco pose (inset - from Joplin's 'Big Book of Hollow Cast') of the same hollow-cast pose; another of the Eriksson runners, but this one with an apparently different base; landscaped and wearing the Authenticast 'ears' and a sling - but mine may be a short-shot version of the same tool, I don't think so though; more likely Chris's was the donor for my simplified cop-of-a-copy? While the MG gunner is ex-Britains too, I think, with that ammo-box sticking-out the side?

The point being made here is that a lot of the figures previously credited by some in the Old Guard to Hilco, Charbens or 'Early Cherilea' . . . err . . . aren't! They are in fact taken from either the newly discovered BR moulds, or home-casting moulds, or pirated from Hollow-cast figures/production, either by smaller commercial outfits, or industrious individuals/hobbyists.

The three (prone MG, rifleman and Kneeling GI) I put on the Khaki Infantry page (and sent to PW (issue 156) are now looking more likely to be Trojan than when I first suggested it, while the ex-Airfix para' almost certainly is, as Trojan probably helped themselves to a set of BR's moulds! To them it would have been investing petty-cash to write-off against tax . . . ?

The mould for Chris's Bren-gunner, it's a home-casting mold, but if jigged to fit a single-shot hand injection-moulder (as still used by Peter Cole at Replicants) it could produce a number of figures without distorting as the pressures built-up by such an appliance are no greater than the weight of a body on a bottle-jack, the trick is probably more to keep heaving until the extremities have formed, to prevent short-shot 'blob-ends', than to be releasing the pressure early to prevent damage to a solid-metal mould!

I believe some of these moulds were Zamak/Mazac alloy, so pretty tough, and while a modern six-second-cycle, fully automated injection-moulding machine would probably blow-them apart in less than a minute; that's not how they were done back in the day. Some however were softer whitemetal, and wouldn't last long before deformation? So, yes, it's in the Hill catalogue, but that doesn't make it Johillco.

I don't know if it's specifically an Agasee mould, and seem to remember being corrected last time I mentioned them as they were mostly importing someone else's moulds, but there were other mould-makers supplying home hobbyists (Gilbert and Schwarz spring to mind), often with variations of the same sculpts - the modern home-casters use the output to melt-down for new lead and few of them are in Joplin's big book - the 'BMSS & OTS guys' just don't rate them.

The bases of mine, there are no marks on mine, nor on Chris's, nor the commoner prone/kneeling figures, nor the guards and highlanders now attributed to BR, nor my funny little Highlander or that larger prone highlander and lifeguard we looked at a couple of years ago, nor the 'Trojan' paratrooper.

And don't think I'm attacking the Old Guard, they've always used the caveats of 'believed', 'thought', 'might' or 'could' be . . . assumed, presumed or 'seem to be', so arses were always covered, but it's clear there was much shenanigans going-on back in the 1950's-early '60's to produce all these more esoteric toy soldiers!

Thanks to Chris again for his images and for the second time this month - the more we know, the more we know we need to find out! That's five or six figures - new to the blog, new to the Internet (except evilBay!) and new (ish) to the hobby . . . oh, and thanks to John Begg and Steve Vickers for my three, which came to me from a fruit-box on a tailgate in a car-park back in 2009, some of my first large-scale purchases!