M is for Man Down! Meeediic! Maaan Doouuwwn!

The hero of at least one past Christmas post; Sergeant Drill has ceased to hang . . . sniff! He suffered a catastrophic fracture or two, and went to the great green glass-recycling basket in the drive, a couple of three Friday's ago.

Following his accident; All the King's horses and all the King's men were summoned, but being rigid plastic proved no use at all! However, the yin-yang was strong in that one Luke, and the next day I found another in the DEBRA charity-shop for 20p!

Along with a nice glass fir-cone (another side-theme in the bauble stash) and a pink parcel for the 'gay' tree, and here pictured with two sets I grabbed in Homesense, the TKMaxx home-ware vehicle. So as one leaves the ranks; another joins.

Truth be told I have a couple of duplicates of the newly-lost one in my own stuff, so next year (I won't be doing a tree this year, still a little raw, and the house is chaotic!) we will have the full parade, which should be about ten, or twelve, of all ranks now?!!

The new one has a rather annoying grin, which I could have done without, but beggers can't be choosers! And he's a little smaller than our recent casualty, so he bridges the gap between the fourTKMaxx smallies of 2016's purchase and the older, larger or 'standard' sized chaps.

And here he is with this year's previously seen additions to the figural element of the tree decorations. not that they are the only ones, as this year's TKMaxx buy . . .

. . . included a daft cat with a flower in its mouth and a dog, who are both from the little boxes of smaller decorations they've been doing for five or six years now, which are very useful for filling the gaps at the top of the tree.

I also grabbed these in The Works, they have also had them for several years now, but each year the selection on offer is different; one year it was assorted sizes in the pack, another year it was larger pairs, last year - I think - they were all metallic red or gold; no good for toy soldier photography (or war gaming), but this year it was a useful 'five small' in pine green or snow-covered!

N is for Nostalgia - Snakes & Ladders!

This is a very old friend, and in remarkably good condition remembering how often we played it Although the width of the fold-line shows that it has been opened and closed many times. I've seen PC versions called Shutes & Ladders, but where's the fun in that? We want great, big, SNAKES!

I loved this as a kid, branded to GJ Hayter & Co., of Bournemouth, under their famous Victory mark; I just loved the rich colours of the snakes, the Christmassy border - the whole thing. It's actually a particularly hard one to finish due in no small part to the big, blue, Mr. 93-25 who sends you back three-quarters of the board!

We also had a family rule that you had to 'throw your finish', which meant that if you were on say 98 and threw a six you would have to go 99-game-99-98-97-96, and hope for a four next time, but if you were on 98 and threw a three, you'd end your turn on 58! With three snakes on the top-row, they were sometimes long games, but fun and a great teacher of humility, humility and cynicism! As every time you thought you had it in the bag, it went South!

Even the label is rather fine, I think? If I recall correctly, these were sold in the old-school newsagents and corner shops (almost totally disappeared now), just loose boards stacked up in a box on a lower shelf, with Go boards, Sorry, Backgammon and a Chess/Draughts one etc . . . So this was probably at Webb's in Hartley Wintney and we (Bro' and me) may have chosen it, at some point?

News, Views Etc . . . Additional Image and Press Relese

I've added the Kleeware catalogue image to the Ideal/Kleeware 'Big Bertha' post from a while back, it does have the tilt visible, which rounds off that post nicely!

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News from Barney Brown at Herald Toys & Models, who has added new stock, given the speed the swoppets cleared-out the other day, you need to get a shift-on!

". . . this week we have for sale the Glasgow collection of Wild West figures, including a number of Charbens and Crescent 'Movables' (with our sister eBay Shop having for auction a substantial quantity of Timpo Swoppet-type figures and wagons from the same collection). We also have many more discounted items within our SALE items with many further reductions, so Get Them While They're HOT!"

L is for Last Minute Present Idea

If you're the other side of the Pond! Sent by Mr. Berke, who has been busy ensuring his grandson has a roaring time on the 25th, these are the latest in prehistoric entertainment from Greenbrier in the 'States and DTSC in Canada.

From the left we have a Stegosaurusaur, a Rex-sized raptor, a actual T-Rexington and a flappy-chappie down the front! These are in a larger size and look to be very good for the pocket-money/rack toy price-range they will be in, I saw similar stuff in The Works the other day, but hadn't taken my camera, doh!

Ray Harryhausen eat your heart out! The Pterasaur fights one of the now finished SCS Direct fantasy figures, he (the skeletal human) doesn't look too fazed, but if you're [un]dead and already pretty-familiar with Hades, I guess another demise is just part of the job description!

I had to look twice at the knight, I thought he was one of the K&M/Wild Republic set! While the ladies aren't taking any chances, that shot will go through the roof of Rex's mouth and straight into his very small brain! The SCS figures paint-up nicely and scale well with these beasts.

Oh! . . . Well, it's a very big axe and he's quite a small target? I think the Steggie' is just a panicking veggie, so it's those two-foot long, Atlantic-grey claws old Gimli needs to watch-out for! Cheers Brian, they are nice dino-sculpts, and the SCS are looking good!

S is for Seasonal Scraps

A few Xmas-related items I couldn't shoe-horn into other posts!

The only thing I found in Flying (formally just-) Tiger which was worth a punt, and then only because it was only a quid and I had a pound on me for parking, that I hadn't needed because the old Jobcentreplus was shut early and I thought that if - as a tax-payer - I part-owned the place, I could park there! Wooden snowman, ski-sticks, no skis!

Meanwhile, this came in from Brain B in the Nu Yoik, and I feel a bit guilty as a result, because both Asda and Poundland had smaller nutcrackers for tree hanging, 70/80mm maybe, but I just wasn't in a nutcracker mood this year and left them all regimented on their hooks!

Jo-Ann Stores paint-you-own, dress-your-own and sticker-your own, nutcracker fairy! Of course you can leave the skirt off and with that crown and some diligent painting, make a 'proper nutcracker of the he-fairy variety! "Steal some of the hair for a beard and no one will know, Dr Frankenstein?" Thanks Brian!

This has been hanging around by the front door on the old telephone stand for years, well decades according to the date on it! A lot of corporate cards are just naff shite aren't they? But I felt some effort and thought had gone into this piece of direct-marketing, so I thought I should record it before it went to recycling!

You may remember me mentioning I'd gone back and bought two duplicate cake-decorations in Hobbycraft when I posted the others a couple of weeks ago, well, I took them back and exchanged them for these two.

The polar bear was a nice sculpt and I can't say no to a motorcycle even if it is a scooter! Compared with the Airfix one, you can see it will take one of the many orphaned 35-45mm riders piling-up in that zone! I was tickled by the two holes in the pack to stop the handlebars breaking, but which makes it easier for them to catch on things . . . doh!

P is for Profuse Plastics from Pandora's Box!

Crimbo' 2021 hasn't had much of a festive feel here, but the effort has been made, and perusals undertaken, and this is what I purloined on a recce' to Pandora's Box in Basingrad the other day.

And shout-out to them as they had the only face-masks in three towns on the 13th March 2020, when we went into lock-down (understanding the science and following the story since 24/25th Dec. 2019; two things our useless cock of a clown Prime Minister seemed blissfully unaware-of at the time), and I managed to grab enough to last until they became more readily available here (in Sainsbury's) a couple of weeks later.

Two resin unicorns (as 'last year' now, as flamingoes are 'last decade'! Although cacti seem to be on the rise?), but from a tag already on the Blog; Puckator, who did the pirates, so I thought I'd better grab them and chuck them up here to fill-out that tag! And they are a nice 28/30mm compatible, so role-play gamers could keep an eye out for them? But then it's cheaper to add the tip of a toothpick to any suitable horse!

The strange 'yoga' Santa's; we may have seen these before, with or without packaging and/or spikes, or even me removing the spikes, but it might have been another set, as there are two or three of these smallest size? Anyway, with packaging and spikes - Anniversary House!

The similar figure next to them was in a display-box at the counter when I went to pay for everything else, branded to Doric (who have also been here at Small Scale World before now), they were mostly very pricey, but one compartment/section in the middle of the tray was cheaper so I bought one of each in that price bracket, he was one.

In fact we dealt with them at length in 2019

The other item was another of the old winter cottage designs we saw here, and which I suspect is a cleaner and better painted version of the third (newest type) in that Post, but it might be a re-cut fourth type, I won't know until they are all got together in a year or so.

In the meantime I had found the bisque original, suggesting that Gem/Festival added the shrubs to the opposite corner to try and hide a bit of plagiarism (although Musgrave was probably around to have provided the master for this one too?), which would mean that the HK copies are in two yolks of a ven-diagram; from-Gem (with shrubbery), from-bisque (without) and it would be nice to find a chalkwear one (if it was done in plaster), for the 'whole' set!

How quick did they get these in the shops?!! the craze is weeks rather than months old (well, about four months, in August of this year none of us had ever heard of it, now no-one hasn't!), and there was a whole box of reasonable sculpts, over-moulded in three colours of substitute-PVC and fitted with a key-chain loop - Squid Game guard, no brand. the big-head renders them 'deforms' or semi-deforms!

I listened to a fatuous piece on Radio4 (which is a shadow of the station I've listened-to all my life) when the craze first became noticeable about how it is a variation of Tag, or the British Bulldogs game, when in fact it's a parable about totalitarianism, closer to hunger-games and taking a deliberate side-swipe at the capitalism which has trashed the planet and is now creating whole swathes of young adults in the UK and America, who can't feed themselves on their wages, or ever get a car or a foot on the housing ladder. While the Korean kid's original is a more complicated struggle between two teams.

Squid Game

Squid (game)

I think I may have bought these before and bloged them (the tags are in Picasa's tag-archive!), but here they are again! Imported by BCG Ltd., and with no other obvious brand, and poor copies of Matchbox 8th Army and DAK. If I have bought another set, I'll open one when I find the other and we'll add them to a Rack Toy Month.

Pandora's Box is the only retail outlet round here with a turnover of traditional rack-toys and novelties, and they don't turn-over that quickly, but it was a fruitful visit this last time.

We have a couple here in Fleet; Izzy's who use Tobar and another which seems to be semi-permanently closed these days and stocks Red Deer, but not all the stuff from them that Peter Evans manages to find, so "keep looking around" is still a must!

I is for It Would Seem . . .

. . . that apparently the shiney rainbow mouse in my scanner is far more interesting than poxy toy soldiers . . .

. . . full set of rear beans and a muzzle! What can you do; the scan was still usable, so I left-off moving him 'till the bar had returned!

S is for Seasons Scenery from Scully & Scully!

Let's get a few seasonal posts out, before the season's over! And many thanks to Brian Berke, our agent in New York for his regular update on the changing face of Scully & Scully's window displays, he's back today with their Crimbo' 2021 efforts and they are as gorgeous as always.

The anthropomorphic animals of Easter give way to human children eager to meet Santa or open presents, but there is still lots of wildlife perched in or under trees and things, and as beautifully painted as always . . . no other blurb necessary, you know the drill by now!

Obviously pre-painted, German-made, whitemetal flats of various scales, designed purely for decorative purposes and - I believe - the sort of things sold individually, in faux-silk lined boxes, for many of your Earth-shekels, per item! So we are lucky to see them here so regularly, for free - many thanks as always to Brain!

C is for Contributions and Comparisons

As stuff comes in to the control centre here it doesn't always get sorted immediately, indeed, some sits around for ages - Chris sent me a box a couple of weeks ago, which I haven't shot properly yet, I've taken  a sorting shot I meant to get up on a Faceplant group but haven't yet, however I may do this evening (Wednesday).

But it means that sometimes things can be united with other 'additions' before they are fully reunited with things in the main collection (especially in the last few years with bits of it in storage or the attic, often both), while other things might be sorted quite fast and I may or may not do shots for a follow-up, this post is a few of those moments!

This was the simple bringing together of the rocketry in Chris's April lot with the similar items in Peter's March donation as they were still at hand and the rest had gone-off to storage already!

I have lots of this sort of stuff, and a whole folder of eBay images over-texted to ID them all one day, and there are many, from the little red or yellow bullets from the plastic hand-gun key-rings through Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox up to larger battery-operated or push-and-go vehicles from Hong Kong, and at the moment I have them in four bags - small, medium, large and model kit!

You can see it will not be an easy job, the two large white ones are clearly from different sources or batches with notable changes in tool-design, despite being visually the same missile. The spring-laucher won't launch either of them, suggesting a missing collar, washer or widget of some kind, while the grey one is probably from a Sci-Fi thing or larger, modern 'China' aircraft toy? But, one day, if I live long-enough, we'll get a good guide sorted.

We've seen these before, and they come in all the time, but as you can see, there seem to be an infinite range of colours! This is the 'master collection, combined with what was quite a large bagful I'd built-up here, and confirm what was suggested when I Blogged the 'here' ones a few years ago; two poses each of cowboy and Indian.

They are very small, maybe 15/18mm, in Peru they had a similar set of race horses with moulded-on rider, they look to be larger 20/25mm and with only the one pose and Rolo Roncallo at the Minitoys Peru Blog (about ten steps down the page) reports "Race horses: usually come with a card and die race track. Also variations.".

Now; while I have many of the Westerners, I have none of the racers (despite having lots of other small cracker or board-game riders), so it would seem to back-up something I've pointed-out in the past - these HK (now China) novelty/generics companies had many items in their trade catalogues, and different customers could order different items, it happens that someone in the UK (probably Tom Smith) ordered a load of the Wild West figures, while someone in Peru ordered the race horses.

Which of the two, or which others in the same style/colours were in your jurisdiction?

This is just putting away the mine-clearer, or not putting him away - I decided he was so different he'd need his own bag with all the generics until more of his mate's turn-up! Chris's donation figure is sandwiched between the Toy Story bucket figure and larger Burger King Toy Story giveaway. But anyway, this is the current extent of Tim Mee and their takes-off's as of 22nd March . . .

. . . I've since had a couple more lots come in including some multicoloured ones with both bright-green and red mine-detector figures, who are now waiting to join the others in their bag, in that box!

Meanwhile the Airfix dog flat Chris sent is a totally different sculpt to the one on the Airfix card! And it's becoming clear there are two sets/tools for these, which raises the possibility of two sources; Airfix and . . . Kleeware? We have several cows extant or listed (one of which is a bull?), two elephant variations, two lions &etc.

Left shot shows the collection to date with enough variations for me to have already got confused and had to adjust the little word-for-windows table several times, on the relevant page, when I next update it there will be Dog - Type I and Dog - Type II!

However, and in the meantime; Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior magazine has confirmed the greyhounds as being in an old, early Airfix catalogue (or price list), although there are six poses, I only have five.

I don't know if you (loyal reader) were here or recall when I got both excited and confused over these a few Rack Toy Month's ago, but it turned out the ones Chris originally sent had fallen down the back of a bookcase! I found them a couple of months ago, after the painted one (here on the right) had been added to the others and sent to storage, so the four on the left should be 'new' even if we've seen them before!

Basically I shouldn't have got so excited about them, I've since seen them a few times, there are several sources and they are recent-to-current and I think they were tracked-down to/as copies of New Ray originals? So Peter Evans and Chris Smith had ended-up sending me these, Chris twice, and one or two others have appeared, but thanks to both of them, for everything they send to the Blog.

H is for How They Come In - April I - Chris - The Rest!

We're working - vaguely - backwards from the 20th century with this post as we cover the historicals, ceremonials, Wild West, medievals and ancients from the donation Chris sent to the Blog back last April.

These were accompanied by a number of eMailed images from Chris's own collection and have been covered in full here now, being both Polish sourced Plasticom and Polish takes on Plasticom, with more Plasticom 'Soldabars' added to the post! WWII/Modern infantry and Wild West.

True Wild West here, and a really nice mix; we have one of those teeny-tiny cowboys (in Peru they had a very similar set of race-horses and jockeys), another pod-foot in metallic blue, as I said only the other day, you can't have too many of these as there are so many to find!

The semi flat in red soft plastic is also nice and more have been seen here in their own post somewhere. One each of the Waddington's copies will join their mates but the metallic-purple trio are very useful. I think I've singled them out before, in silver and possibly brown or gun-metal, copies of Elastolin plastics and probably a [French?] premium, but so far a brand has eluded me.

These are all worth a word, starting with the Beefeater, who may be a tourist memento bust, or part of a larger chess-set? I can report that both he and the 'swizzle-stick' from the other day just managed to fit in the tub all the Beefeaters are in now! Some shuffling was required!

The outside pair are recent (but discontinued) Spencer Smith Wellingtonians, inside them are a pair of Raja 'Regiment' TV-related Portuguese ice-cream premium cavalry, and in the less common colours, so a real treat, while the two versions of a stroppy corporal could be early Kinder?

I say that because they seem to be based on the set from Portugal which has been issued by several premium-givers over the years, but as larger figures with separate bases and slightly finer sculpting; these being smaller, slightly 'blobbier' and having integral bases. Both sets have been credited to Kinder, but the better ones may have been dragged in (as other things have been) erroneously by over-enthusiastic Kinder collectors!

Very interesting; an AWI copy of a Britains swoppet, but as a single moulding, the locating stud suggests Wilton or someone like that (Carousel, SSCO, Grandmother Stover's, there were a fair few), but he could plug into a touristy thing? He's lost the end of his musket, but as a first sample is very gratefully received!

A painted Hun (warrior with bow - simple), we looked at them back in March here, and I'll keep him painted (is it your work, or the standard, commercially available Toy Soldier Co. paint-job?) as he's the recent Chinese gold-plastic production-run underneath.

The other two are chalk and cheese; on the right is a bog-standard MPC 40mm knight in silver (Ed Burg just posted the fort carry-case here), but the chap on the left is a first for the Blog and the collection (I have a mounted figure or two who may go with him I think, somewhere), and could be a European premium.

He has something in common with the soft polyethylene premiums from Portugal, but they were Starlux copies, I don't think this is a Starlux pose and they were off-white he's silver! Equally he could be a crudely added addition to a toy fort, it's quite a rough moulding, or even a 'from hollow-cast' but they tend not to have such heavy bases; he's very interesting!

There will be one other post related to this lot, but in the meantime my gratitude to Chris Smith for sharing them with the rest of us.

H is for How They Come In - April I - Chris - Combat Armymen!

So to actual toy soldiers and military model figures, for those loyal readers with stricter criteria to their collecting! And this lot had some real treats in it . . .

I've seen the two on the left somewhere in a catalogue I think, they are copies of Airfix (obviously) but quality is a cut-above the usual rack-toy 'armymen', the material too, which is probably polypropylene rather than 'ethylene and paint has been added at the production stage - anyone recognise them?

The mine-clearer also is interesting as while he pulls from both Tim Mee and MPC sculpting, he seems to be a unique pose, while in the background three Kamley/Kosi/KS types, in blue, for the Khaki Infantry page which is overdue for a major update (stuff from Chris, Brian and others), but which won't now happen for a while yet.

These were a real treat, and that's the official paint-job! Polands PZG copied the Airfix Paratroops and issued them in several colour-schemes, of which this was the leeriest by a country mile! Seven poses are known - click on 'Żołnierze' and then 'Spadochroniarze brytyjscy'.

It took me a minute to remember why I'd shot this guy in close-up, but Chris reminded me it was marked Macau (yes, I should have shot the mark and collaged them, but they are off in storage now!), I think I may have had another come-in, but can't remember if it was the same pose or the running guy, nor indeed, if it isn't the same figure confusing me as everything was being sorted and moved back in the summer, but unusual to have rack-toys marked Macau.

Aurora Sherman, a spring-loaded pistol, they also came as key-rings and are plastic copies of die-cast novelties, also from Hong Kong and also available carded or as key-rings. Another revolver; a cheap action-figure pistol (or Christmas cracker prize?) and a helicopter who probably belongs on the deck of a largish-scale aircraft-carrier, 'big-box' toy? The tank-trap (Czech hedgehog) is Matchbox I think, but fully compatible with the similar Aurora ones.

The de rigueur seated figures - the more the merrier as there seem to be lots of originators beyond the Payton history, and many colours! The larger one may be Hong Kong, while the yellow chap is jeep crew , definitely from HK, and again several variants. A Marx soft-plastic Brit' from the later window-boxes and a 1:48th scale German tanker completes the line-up.

The kit figure could be Bandai or Nichimo, who both had ranges in that size back in the 1960's, as I know more of the Bandai kits; I suspect he might actually be Nichimo? But other 1:48th makes were around, and in recent years it (the scale)'s seen a resurgence, so I'm only musing out loud!

Already seen elsewhere, a nice line-up of parachute troopers, they will - in time - all be sorted onto that page, which is on sabbatical for a while, due to real-life circumstances, but of interest here are the two on the right-hand-side with their weapons in their hands, the smaller ones tended to get a few issues - gum-ball machines, Christmas crackers and make-weights in larger carded rack-toys.

The small one on the end is almost certainly a cracker prize, and as always - I couldn't share it with all of you if Chris hadn't sent it in the first place, so many thanks to him.