Q is for Question Time - 'ello, 'ello, 'ello!

Another plea for help from Chris Smith with another interesting figure; going full civi' this time but remaining in uniform with an unknown Policeman;

In Chris's own words; "Another unknown, hard plastic 60mm scale well painted factory paint but sadly missing a hand  . . .  Metal square pin sticking out of the base, looks like it was plugged in to something which drove it round or was he the key to wind something?. Made a base stand out of an odd chess piece so it can stand."

And; "Pictured [here] with Timpo to the left, Kentoy/Cavendish to the right and a Hong Kong copy of Timpo (or is it?..)"

My own thoughts were that it might be a tourist keepsake type item, but not necessarily British, I was thinking somewhere like Gibraltar, Malta, even Cyprus? Or; one of the Caribbean islands? Anywhere that had the UK style uniform in the post war period?

The metal locating-spigot is a tad-too substantial and serious-looking for a toy figure, so it may have been on a bit of polished stone, or a wooden plinth similar to the one Chris knocked-up from a chess piece?

The sculpting style is similar to a polystyrene Tyrolean squeezebox-player I have somewhere (who is on a plastic plinth or pencil sharpener I think), so both may have come from the same manufacturer, supplying the museum/tourist trades? Equally; he could be from a board-game?

Anyone got any other ideas? Or on the far right figure in the second picture (BR Moulds?) Anyone got a complete one?

F is for Follow-up - Bits & Bobs . . .

. . . or a bloody eclectic trio right now! A few things which pertain to or reference previous posts here at Small Scale world and we have figures, animals and scenics!

I took a family 'group-shot' with the two Peter Evans sent me, before I sent him the other one which Chris Smith had sent me! I think they are more Leprechaun than 'true' gnome (or dwarf!) and while they are Hong Kong, seem to be 'after' the output of Fontanini, although whether it's homage or like-for-like pricey I'm not sure?

Both sides and different view-points.

So; we're up to four of six, which means we're up to eight of twelve! I picked up another of the Poundland PVC animal sets the other day, sadly I'm hardly going to Poundland now (over a month since the last visit) as they've stopped doing my vape juice, but I discovered it in ASDA, so I go there instead, the [Covidiot] risk is the same, so one venue is enough! But it means the last two may remain elusive?

Chris Smith sent these in as a follow-up to the sentry-box posts, and they are fascinating, marked as you see, I suspect they are from a wooden or tin-plate fort or box-accessories from a die-cast vehicle set rather than 'toy soldiers' per se, and give us another tag! See below!

I recognised them when I saw them, but had no notes on them, I suspect I saw them in JB's collection years ago, I'm pretty sure they were the same green (with a red painted roof, not clear in the above shots), and they were definitely in the same warped or twisted condition, which will be due to instability in what appears to be an early polystyrene, but could be thick celluloid?

Also - having suggested a lack of connection to Lone Star's later plastic toy soldiers, I have a half a thought Slikka may have been mentioned in Plastic Warrior magazine (years ago), but that might be a false memory conflating with the die-cast Togga novelties?

Added later after checking, but before publishing - pp.121 of Norman Joplin's 'Big Book of British Hollow Cast' shows a DCMT set with two lead/hollow-cast guards in these sentry boxes (not, or barely distorted) along with a mounted horse-life-guard hybrid! Presumably all from Harvey, so these were probably DCMT's first foray into plastics as they had previously carried a metal box in the style of Crescent's tin one but in lead.

Makes you wonder if Togga's Woggles weren’t also DCMT?

Q is for Question Time - Hilco or Not?

Chris Smith is hoping for a ID on this chap, or at least a more solid ID than the maybe Hilco it currently enjoys!

Sent nearly a year ago; it's a sign of the amount of stuff in the queue as much as it is a sign of my tardiness! The figure in question is on the left for those not necessarily familiar with the Hilco UN troops (figure on the right), and it was posting my UN troops elsewhere the other day that reminded me this chap was languishing!

You can see that while there are some subtle or minor differences in the sculpt, they don't really amount to full piracy or copying, but the base is quite different lacking the indentations left by mould release-pins on the Hilco figure, it also has a smaller outline/footprint and slightly different shape. It came with a bunch of the standard figures, but in a bigger mixed lot, so not too-much should be read from that?

I'm sure it’s from the Hilco-Phoenix-Cherilea-Sharna family, as does Chris, but where and/or when and under which of several brands? It's painted to match the UN figure as far as beret and base go, the rest once over-painted green, so it can clearly be taken as a sign of attempted 'self-coloured' military or camouflage (like the Super-Deetail paratroops from Britains), but an attempt which failed, hence the paint remnants?

Was it a production piece or simply a sample painted-up for comparison before showing to management/sales for decisions - a 'test shot' in other words? Another possibility might be a short-run for inclusion in a vehicle set? The problem is the various handlers of the various tools from the above 'group' used various base treatments of the same figures, so the base alone is not much of a clue!

Has anyone seen these flecked-version figures in their branded habitat to put Chris's curiosity at rest?

S is for Serious Score!

Look what I found! So pleased to get these, probably paid over the odds or certainly more than I am normally comfortable with (read tight as a gnat's chuff), but I'm not sure I even knew these existed and came across them looking of something else entirely! They may have been on Moonbase, but if they were loose, I would have just assumed colour variations of the sucker ones we've already seen here at Small Scale World?

But they are technically pencil rubbers! Or 'erasers' as they are usually called these days, but as I've pointed-out before; they were pencil rubbers when I wer't lad! The Lik Be / LB robots re-purposed by a sub-pirater (engraved quality is particularly poor) and maybe dating only as far back as the late 1980's or early 1990's? There's no CE mark so it predates 1993 I think?

I would add that the rubber, as far as I can tell through the thermal-shrink sheet is a silicon type and probably not suitable for actually removing pencil from paper!

I couldn't decide whether or not to de-card them so erred on the side of caution and left them be for now, but here are a few other angles, they are what they are, and I'm just glad to have found them.

H is for How They Come In

Another board game but again not from the recent photo-shoot but a recent Charity Shop purchase, and relatively recent so a quick over view of Mattel's Batman board game (one of two which came out around the same time I think . . . have we had the others? I may have the figures from the other game somewhere, I'll dig them out) anyway; Gotham City Mystery:

Cover has a window to catch figure-fans! And because I haven't bothered to learn all the iterations of the Bat'verse, I don't know which era these represent, but I think it's the main comic one between the original TV series and the modern movie era (where everything changes ever film . . . purely for marketing purposes!)?

Contents

You get four Characters who are - from the left; the man bat, the wonderful robin boy, Batgirl-woman-ladychick and knightfink batrider or someone, I wasn't paying much attention!

I think these are bad-guys but I've already forgotten, anyway there are five of them and all the figures are around the 40mm mark, but with thick bases.

There are ten bad-guys, but on paper only and the amount of thin, little-bits of paper shite in the box guaranteed its swift transfer to the recycling bin, sans the nine figures and two dice which went in the getting-ever-fatter dice-bag!

You may have guessed from the above I'm not terribly enamoured of this set? The game claims to be for from two to five players, but it's one of those games where you have to have all the characters, all the baddies and all the little bits of paper in-play for it to work, so if less than five players start, some of them have to play multiple characters and there's tons of prep to sort out all the little paper bits, it's a marketing thing and frankly we have to start understanding there just isn't enough planet left for this kind of shit. Anyway; box-ticked.

W is for Well . . . Follow-up to the Follow-up

Barney Brown of Herald Toys & Models sent these in case I didn't mention them in the follow-up to wells; which I hadn't, not only that but I had presumed the Taylor was from the hollow-cast mould and fingered Barratt as possible source of one of the two unknowns!

The truth is Barratt & Son inherited the T&B mould and FG Taylor's is the much copied version, although I think heavy cross-bar notwithstanding, the Speedwell is based on this - 'this' being the Barratt one!

This is the lead original, although the company is known as a hollow-cast producer, items like this are more traditionally made, poured-lead 'solid' castings, this is a cross-over piece with a plastic roof on a metal body, so is probably 'Barratt' rather than 'Taylor & Barratt'?

Production was eventually all-plastic and here is a later one with polymer body and roof, but still with a metal bucket and wire winding handle. You may have noticed - before reading this far! - another piece of plastic, on the bottom of the moulding? Well . . .

. . . I think this well is the first of the wells we've looked at, which is designed to hold actual water? The 'cap' is manufactured from neutral granules, is semi-transparent and can only be there to provide a seal so that water can be poured into the mould . . . how cool is that, it was the 1950's after all!

Many thanks to Barney for (what are very good-) images and the data, I'll update the other two posts to reflect the new information with links to here.

Previously;
Original Post
Follow-up Post (post below this one on the page)

F is for Follow-up, Q is for Question Time, W is for Well, Well, Well!

Chris sent an interesting item to the Blog the other day, or pictures of it which is just as good! Further to the water wells I shew (like showed but shorter!)* the other day . . .

*Heay, cummon' Throwed/Threw, Growed/Grew, Knowed/Knew . . . can someone get all those wiggly red lines off my word.docx?

On the left of Chris's line-up here is the F.G Taylor well we saw last time, on the right is the Speedwell again, but the one in the middle is a newie! Chris wondered at Blue Box, I though similar and consulting the farm guru; Barney Brown over at Herald Toys & Models brought a confirmatory response, although he was no surer than either of us, it's just a hunch we all share?

There are two problems with calling-it for being Blue Box, the first is a Google search for all the various Blue Box and clone 'Home Farm' sets and similar items don't reveal this well, and secondly; it's not marked, which most - if not all - the larger items from their farm sets (window-trays or big-box) are/were.

It has some of the tropes of Hong Kong production though, the spray-painted bright green, thick plastic winder, shiny-polymers, even the mould-release pin-marks under the rim? An alternate proposition is that it might be Barratt & Sons, as if the Taylor's inherited the mould in the great post-war divvy-up, the Barrett's would have needed a well for their farm?

Note the separate plug-in woodwork for what is otherwise ostensibly the Taylor design, and the plastic bucket. I'm sure I've seen one of these, I remember the kink in the winding arm . . . possibly when I was  a dealers apprentice! Barney's seen them as well.

I even checked the Codeg Camberwick Green sets in case I'd forgotten an accessory from the larger village boxed-set! I hadn't.

Anyway having contacted Barney I also sought and gratefully received permission to use the image I had mentioned last time, both to embiggen this post and  . . . well, to grow the well of knowledge of wells - I should be stopped!!

It shows another variation of the Taylor design (far left example) which could be any of the Speedwell stable-mates (Trojan, Kentoy, Una/VP), newer 'old' plastics (BMS, BR), or Barratt, or even (shiny polymer!) a Hong Kong pirate? barney says it came in a 'substantial' collection of Taylor farm though?

So; follow-up followed-up, the question marks are does anyone know for definite who issued/made either of the unknown wells . . . well?

Thanks to Chris Smith and Barney Brown for the above images.

Barney Brown of Herald Toys & Models cleared up the Barratt question here, so we are still looking for two other names to pin to the unknowns!

F is for Follow-up - Pyro Sailors

By way of a follow-up to his own donation to the Blog, Brian Berke has sent the following to add to the post with the Pyro sailors from April gone . . .

The Pyro Schooner model kit came with colour-matched runners of the figures we previously saw as stand-alone marine-modelling accessories and - for a second - I thought "What a swizz, you had to buy two packs (of the seperates) to get all of them!", then I realised the kit has two duplicate runners!

However Brian further reports that the later iterations of the kit (Life Like and Lindberg 'Classics' boxings above) don't have the figures included, which is odd as Pyro being gone (for the moulds to move-on/change hands) you wouldn't be able to source the little set we saw last time, or not with assumed ease?

I guess it was a separate mould, which would make it a smallish, man portable tool, which may have been nicked at some point, damaged or lost? Anyway, whatever happened to the figure mould; many thanks to Brian for the follow-up!

G is for Get Shorties!

Or; F is for Follow-up - ABC Marines

Chris Smith sent these two to the blog, and they are well worth the sending . . .

This is firstly his versions of the ones we looked at the other day, to the left of the rank (first three figures), but to the right are four smaller sub-piracies who have had white gloves and trousers in the past, while retaining black-belts, so clearly close-in hand-to-hand combat experts, all four of them, lovely find!

While here we see them in new colours, but the smaller sub-piracies again; note the different reds of the far-right chap's arm-v-body. This is really what collecting's all about, Swoppet knights? There's 97 lots of them on eBay right now - half mounted, several with tags/packaging - they're not rare, just nice!

But if anyone finds these between now and Christmas, send them to the Blog because they'll be as rare as the above figures and we'd all like to see them!

Cheers Chris, definitely not box-ticking!

G is for Gilmark . . . again!

I posted two of these back in 2017 after a nice exchange with Ed Burg over at Toys & Stuff, but another exchange had then already been in gestation since about 2009, to wit a pair of first version Airfix Attack Force Patton's leaving these shores in a swap for 'something nice', well, that something-nice was finally settled-on the other day, and here, courtesy of Ken Taylor (who doesn't have a Blog I can link to!) are the other two Gilmark's.

I say the "other two" as I believe they only did the four military models in their wider range of dime-store vehicles, although some of the 'space trucks' come in a  metallic khaki which could pass for 'army man' colours and may find their way into the collection at some point!

But today we're looking at the White's scout car and Priest SPG, both equipped with a 105mm gun. technically a Priest should have a 25lbr and be in UK service, this being a Howitzer Motor Carriage (HMC) M7.

While some of the US half-tracks were fitted with guns for close-in infantry support, I don't think a scout car was ever so fitted, and this has limited traverse depending on which side the out-worker has heat-welded the plug-in - on mine he can sit on the right-hand corners and fire out of the left-hand corners . . . I'll look for one with the opposite configuration; they were only a dime!

The Gilmark with a far more recent offering from late 'Hong Kong' or early 'China', the method of attaching the gun is very similar, a plug-in, whose spigot is melted back, underneath, to provide a permanent washer or hub to prevent it being pulled out. They were common enough at toy soldier and war-games shows in the mid-1990's for me . . .

. . . to hoover-up three of these un-attributed/generics for what was pennies! My gun line with the gun-less one we looked at back at the start of the Blog being used as a 'defrocked' ammunition-carrier, command vehicle or forward-observation-post . . . in the rear!

What I like about the cheapie, is that it pays full homage to the older one (possibly without knowing of the Gilmark at all) with no metal parts, it's 100% plastic and a worthy successor to the dime-store toys of the past.

While putting them away I was reminded of the thermal-printing on some of them. This post ought to be accompanied by a few Spencer Smith troops, especially as both the 'here' and the 'storage' lot have been combined now, but since the Ed post I have discovered I already had an armored car, located the gun-less hull above and lost both the two in that post!

When they all turn up (they haven't got far) I'll do a 'final' post, maybe next summer in the garden with enemy and such-like, these dime-store toys always look better en mass! Cheers Ken!

A is for "And Now For Something Completely Different"!

A title I fear we have had before at least once, but after that vintage Soviet-bloc stuff, we're going the other way entirely with this little post, we looked at the figures from "the other" Kentoys before, here, but the rest of the play-set had some stuff of interest; primarily to war-gamers and/or modellers/dioramists in the 1:72nd-scale bracket.

No matter how hard you tug your brain when doing rocket-launchers (the other month) there will always be a few who fall through the net (I found some other green ones while looking for this lot's tub!), and here another one, not cap-firing, but sprung-loaded and ready to scare some kittens!

I think the truck and bottom - green part - of the rocket's cradle started life as a fire appliance/ladder-truck, in red plastic! It's a sort of late-FROG or Scud mounted on a vehicle which would disintegrate if asked to actually launch the thing, but for a bit of battlefield tactical-support in an 'old school' game, it's ready to run!

 It's escort-vehicle is a reasonable rendition of a Panzer IV and possibly the source (for the pirates) of the twin-barrelled ethylene rack-toy effort which was kicking around the pound-shops and 99p-stores a few years ago? Colouring would need sorting, but again, when I bought this (early 2000's?) it was just a cheap, ready-to-go 1:72nd scale model - bargain!

While support/C&C crews can travel to and from the weapon store in relative comfort, with a pair of 'technicals' (Toyota and Honda I think?) in a rather fetching 'British racing-green'!

However, the budding gamer's table isn't complete until it's littered with gribbles (like Tribbles - lots of them and they get in the way - but not so furry) and the set didn't disappoint with multiples of all these; a gamut of civil riot-control barriers and preventative-signage, and military defence stores including what appears to be elephant caltrops! You got two each of the larger pieces and four each of the smaller ones.

That's it; another box ticked, Kentoys (the other one!) NO 29645 - Military Base 1:72 play set.

K is for Kid's Stuff!

Another Russian maker, another new name to blog and new to the English speaking hobby, here at Small Scale World.

It's funny I posted that Krugozor the other day and TJF followed it up with a Russian post of his own (he did the same thing with the previous Polish post), but I'm bringing stuff new to the English speaking hobby, he's telling us about third generation copies of Linde copies of Dom (or Friedel or whoever - I really don't care Deadleaf) (which he had to get from someone else because he's a dealer not a collector), that he doesn't know the name of and which will be all over evilBay for the next 18-months! Yet, apparently, we’re supposed to think this makes him a legend and me the idiot?

This stuff has been around on the Russian sites for years, so I'm not much taking credit for it, although there's the effort of finding it and translating it, but it's in a different league to what TJF does and it's tiresome that all he's got is copying what I'm doing, or what a magazine's doing or what another site's doing! Tiresome and unoriginal, that's TJF.

Anyway, 'Kid' or Malyesh; another of the Moscow firms which were swallowed-up by Krugozor, but unlike MKI, don't seem to have survived the break-up after the Iron Curtain came down . . . well, it sort of fell-down didn't it!

The full translation makes Kid the obvious choice:

Московский завод пластмассовых игрушек «Малыш»

˅

Moskovskiy zavod plastmassovykh igrushek "Malysh"

˅

Moscow plant of plastic toys 'Malysh'

Малыш» = Malysh = Kid (think: Kiddycraft, Little Tikes, Kinder), otherwise it would be a right mouthful! Although I will tag them as 'Kid Toys Moscow'.

Above is a cross section of their toy soldiers and a sample of the colours, and they are 'toy' soldiers aimed at infants, the small ones were five kopeks when a Ruble was 60-odd cents, so maybe 1½p?

These are worked in the same stable PVC-like rubber material as the MKI cavalry, and one or two other colours exist, including a semi-transparet yellow, but they may be polyethylene production (possibly from one of that Odessa mob!), I've yet to find out.

I thought these two were different, but the red one's lost his plume, they are from a set of four which consisted of two Frenchies and two Russians, I'm missing the Russian with shako, who is similar to the yellow Frenchies seen in this post, but with a shorter headdress.

These only seem to come in the one pose, although there are differences between my two, the bases are quite different (one a squashed ovoid, the other penny-round), as are the bayonets and the way they hold the butts of their muskets. Also one is marked with a price the other isn't, and apparently some carried the bear-logo but I don't have any of those yet.

This was a single lot and when I saw it on feebleBay I wondered if the others I had might not actually be board-game playing-pieces, but the info' from Russia is clear that there's the one set of four Napoleonics and the other larger chap, all sold from counter-boxes I think; you may have been able to get one of each of the Napoleonic set (with or without an aeroplane?) in a little bag?

Added later the same day - when I was picking these up, I kept thinking I'd seen them before and/or that I must have some somewhere, if you're getting the same feeling looking at them . . . it might be because they are the same size and have the same bases as the hard styrene, yellowish GI figures which came with the bigger Pyro boxed sets of dime-store AFV's!

C is for Collectivism

Or 'collectivisation' . . . we saw in the previous post how modern Russian collectors were 'accusing' an Odessa factory of "copying" the MKI riders, but the thing is, under the Soviet system of socialism (which was the other side of the Fascist coin, and had little do with socialist principles for not very long!), it wasn't about copying in the piracy sense of the word, but rather being allocated the permission, or even ordered to produce something which might have appeared first elsewhere.

We've seen it with Progress, where the set of revolutionary cavalry were issued in the Bulgarian factory in Sofia, in primary colours, by Progress Russia (probably one of the Moscow plants but they had several) in red plastic (and by at least two other plants) and we're looking at it now, where we find one (of several) Odessa plants producing items previously credited to Kultbyttovarov (Craft Workshops) - who were also in Odessa

It's the micro-ships, or a complete 'Marine Parade' micro-navy! З-д "Полимер" г.Одесса = Z-d "Polymer" h.Odessa = Zavod "Polymer" from Odessa = 'Odessa Plastics Factory' are the culprits this time, and . . . being only just down the road from Kultbyttovarov in a nation with umpteen time-zones, whatever the relationship between the two plants and/or the two mould tools' was; true-piracy it wasn't.

You get . . .

Marine Parade Complete Set

• № 01 Destroyer

• № 02 Battleship

• № 03 Boat (x2)

• № 04 Submarine (x2)

• № 05 Torpedo Boat

• № 06 Hospital [ship]

• № 07 Cruiser 'Aurora'

They come in many other colours, I was watching some blue ones the other day but they were a bit tatty and then I found the whole set so grabbed them, but neither colour is particularly easy to photograph.

The Kultbyttovarov ones (two green above, red below) are if anything the slightly better mouldings, and are about a millimeter longer and have smoother waterlines but are otherwise the same, albeit wearing the logo missing on The Odessa Plastics' ones.

So it would appear that whenever, whoever (by way of a Communist-party apparatchik) gave the clearance for the second factory to cover the same models as the first, he or she was talking to Odessa Plastics about Odessa Kultbyttovarov!

Different logo to the cat/bear's head of Kultbyttovarov on the Odessa Plastics Factory flyer, and with the markings only found on one set, we know they are separate production tranches from different tools and that - consequently - even ignoring colours, we have twice as many to find . . . the beauty of collecting!

My whole fleet steaming into action to give Fritzie a bloody-nose! Although the 'Torpedo Boat' is more of a post-war surface-to-surface missile carrier of rather fictional design? And the Aurora is an old WWI/Dreadnaught-era vessel

You may have noticed the Hospital ship is in need of a doctor itself; the seller had several sets and they all seem to suffer the same shrinkage damage, but good ones are out there as this page can attest.

The scale too, is all over the place, rather like the MPC 'minis' and a comparison is needed, but that can be for another day!