. . . but we've sort of sorted some of it
out, for now!
This wasn't in the queue a few days ago! I
bought a nice (well; tatty!) set of Shackman
novelty pencil sharpeners from New York a few weeks a ago, which were going on
the back burner, but Chris Smith posted some nice thematic shots on the Friend's
of Plastic Warrior Facebook group earlier this week, which lead to a
flurry of activity there and here at SSW Towers, leading to this post!
First a quick look at that Shackman set;
it's been mucked about with - I suspect end-of-line/ex-shop stock, put back in a
box and sold as a set when it's meant to be broken down in a small stores?
There's an extra Beefeater and the Indian is a suspect inclusion, but a nice
sculpt in a civilian role as hunter rather than war-path warrior.
Quick confirmation of the empirical
evidence for the doubting Thomas's and make-it-up-as-you-go-along-brigade, Shackman were a jobber specialising in
the novelty/tourist trinket end of the market (a bit like HCF here in the UK), I'm also collecting their novelty-matchbox
pencil sharpeners with 'Mocherette' in them (I know, I know, I'll get round to
it, but probably next year now - most of the photo's are done!), although,
further back (1950's), they also imported some of the Erikson/Authenticast copy sets from Japan as more mainstream playthings.
If the boxes were sold as sets, I suspect
the chap here would have been one (?) of the missing figures, the pair in the
two central shots are Chris's, the sharpener on the left is mine now and the
other pair on the end are an Internet couple! Tyrolean dancers who could be
German or North Italian . . . Austrian or Eastern/Alpine Swiss!
Back to the set, and they all (including
the Indian) have plug-feet and separate bases, which are glued to a standard
pencil sharpener which I remember being included in cheap Christmas crackers,
and have seen on gum-ball vending machine cards. The Indian however plugs straight
into a flimsier pencil-honeing device.
Chris's however are integrally moulded with
base and figure as single moulding, not two pieces. Now I already knew - and
you may remember - we had seen the Beefeater before here, when by coincidence
Chris and Adrian both gave me examples a few days apart, neither of them are
marked, but a policeman we will look at in a minute has a small KT on his base in an oval cartouche reminiscent
of the aforementioned HCF's little
gold stickers?
My dancer has a fuller set of marking (as
do the 'Internet pair' in the second image) and a stock/cavity number/code; 315, while Chris's lady (who's base has
been home-painted/re-painted white over the original balck) is coded 673, her partner 674 and lacking her ®
mark? The sharpeners, meanwhile, can be found with or without a pretty
bog-standard HONG KONG.
The earlier Beefeaters, along with the
stationary policeman from the boxed set have a disc-shaped blemish which people
(including me) would more normally, and erroneously describe or assume (never
assume huh?!!! Heeheehee!) as/to be mould-release pin-marks, but which are
clearly blanking plates or pins to hide the smaller mark of the policeman.
In the conversation at FoPW, Chris had
managed to find another figure on-line, which reminded me that Brain Wagstaff
had sent two to this Blog ages ago, as they were clearly influenced by the Commonwealth/Van Brode/Codec 'dancing doll' sets. The 'Brain pair' having no mark
on either side of the integral base, while the Internet one - also having an integral
base - on a pencil sharpener; neatly tying all the above (bar the Indian?) to
the same series.
Meanwhile, or actually closer to the Beefeaters
and the start of this little odyssey, Chris had spotted a policeman on
feebleBay ages ago, back near the start of Lockdown One, and I thanked him for
the heads up and watched it half-heartedly for several months (it was really
too pricey), now . . . I can't remember if the price came down or the seller listed
something else to combine . . . but in the end I did get it in the autumn/recently.
Here we see pencil-sharpener and non-pencil
sharpener versions of both Beefeater and policeman together, along with another
Internet shot of a new sharpener colour - new to this article mind; many
colours dropped out of Christmas crackers!
By this time ( a couple of days ago)n it
had dawned on me that the Highlander was also rather familiar, as we saw him here at Small Scale World not that long ago - green sharpener! Now, a
point of note; it would appear one is attempting Black Watch (left, 'new' one)
and the other the Gordon's (right, 'old' one). It may be the out-painter was
just running out of yellow on the brush, but it seems to be a deliberately
different shade of green and has not been applied to the haggis-bag or the
lower reaches of the pipe's webbing?
Which leaves us with the Indian from the
boxed set and a conclusion to formulate!
The Indian, is lovely, I don't know if he's
based on a donor, most of these seem pretty unique - only one of Brian's is a direct
copy - as sculpts, and the hunting with raptor is quite a German/East German
pose (if you know what I mean), however, he is plugged into a thin-walled base
which has a different sharpener, glued in, and it - the sharpener - has a
different blade design.
The differences outweigh the similarities;
plug-in feet, gloss-paint in a stab-and-hope style, so for now he must remain a
question-mark, there are other sources of figural, novelty, pencil-sharpener as
we saw not that long ago here.
But I suspect he is from the same
source, but the thin-walled case for the sharpener was easily damaged, and the
extra glue-step of a separate sharpener was more expensive, so he's likely an
earlier variant.
The conclusion is that with the possible
exception of the Indian, these are all from one, evolving series, from the same
source, and differing either for reasons of increasing the ease of production, over time,
or to comply with caveats from different clients, such as Shackman, from contract to contract.
They can be plug-in, or moulded with a base,
which may or may not subsequently end-up glued to a pencil sharpener which is
also available separately elsewhere. A variety of marks or no-marking can be found
on the separate bases, the integral bases and/or the sharpener-units.
There must be more 'world dancers',
possibly another Indian or two, and matching quantities of cowboy, still to be
found, maybe a Welsh lady and etcetera. I would also put a fiver, at least a
fiver, on HCF being found to have
shipped some of them into UK, and dare to say Tom Smith was in-there as well?
The only likely "KT" I can come up with is Kitoys
Traders Co., who were making/marketing mini-deform, pull-back-and-go, 'hot
hatch' novelty cars in the late 1980's from Connaught Road, West, Hong Kong and
may have been responsible for something like these figures a decade or two
earlier, if they were around then?
Despite the question-mark I will put them
in the tags, as I have one of the little cars to Blog - one day! And many
thanks to Chris Smith for several involvements in this 'Discovery', plus the photos,
Bill B for the Kitoys reference and
to Brian Wagstaff for the other images.
Small Scale World - weaving magic,
with lots of help . . . and more to come!
