B is for Blobby Blobby!

No, not the dying-pig screeching, pink, polka-dotted product of early-evening televisual entertainment for the Morlocks and Yahoos, but a pet project of mine which was five years in the gestation/completion and has sat in a folder doing nothing since (another eight years!), so this could also be S is for Selfindulgence!

It started with a sketch, I had thought that you could have a chess set where the pieces were simply letters identifying the role of the piece, P for Pawn being the starting point, I then extruded the King to denote his seniority - despite the original idea being small flat magnetic 'travel chess' pieces -  before I knew where I was going I had abstracted the Bishop (B), gone back to the Pawn, had another go at the King (top, and top-right), designed all their plan profiles (bottom-left) and got a Mk1 Pawn - bottom right.

New sheet of paper; and designs I was happy with were quickly thrown-up, they aren't all the final designs, but the base was pretty-much decided upon and the idea of fluid lines and abstract designs were established, I was aiming for something between sand-blasted wood, and those turd-towers you make on the beach by dribbling very wet sand through your fingers. Well, some of us did!

Some of you will already have spotted an obvious mistake, but like walking away from a crossword puzzle and returning to it to get the clue you're stuck on, or after the 'Can't see the wood for the trees' aphorism, it took me (and the various tutors/fellow students involved in the below images) until preparing this article to spot it, so I'll save admitting it to the end!

I then modeled working prototypes in air-drying clay; the king's a bit droopy! I only have this low-res' crop out of a larger image of the old 'Cabinet of Curious Things', but a few years later I would be off on the CAD course, and these became a step on the way!

Pretty-much as the clay ones but the Castle now wears a simplified version of the King's crown, and the Knight has lost his bulgy-eyes for little pin-pricks which only hint at a face, the bishop gets a deeper valley between finer sides to his mitre-hat. This is still a 2D flat space drawing, coloured with a gradation tool in the lower image to give a false appearance of 3D.

Chees Set! Heay; they're working drawings in cyberspace! It's an idea though, with that plastic American cheese - you could injection-mould them and once the game was finished (pawns/queens) you could eat them with crackers and a nice wine!

When manufacturing a Staunton set for competition, the factories spend longer hand-carving the Knights (4 pieces) than they spend producing the rest of the set (28 pieces), and you can't begin to make Knights until you have been at the factory for several years and have mastered all the other pieces.

It was a bit like that with my Knight in the end, instead of lathe, saw and blade, I had the Boolean commands of extrusion, union, and subtraction, but it's a messy business while it's happening! I won't bore you with a detailed explanation of the steps but the main one is to pull out the whole profile (a), and the width of the head (b), subtract them from each other to get (c), which you then tweak with a standard base!

In the end I added a mane (of sorts) and the final piece works I think? I know some abstract, graphical or 'space-age' chess sets have Knights which don't look like 'knights', but in the end I felt a little homage to Jacques was in order!

I don't seem to have replicated him four times and coloured him properly for these screen-shots but you can see how he'll slot-in and I think the overall works, the idea is to get it on one of the 3D printing sites, it'll be free, I can't see demand making it commercially viable and if it's free you can forget it once you've uploaded it!

But he is here in this outline screen capcha'. The 'deliberate' mistake . . . I've got the King and Queen the wrong way round, the nipple should be the King and taller, while the rubber-glove full of air should be the Queen, and shorter! It's an easy job to switch them, but fancy not noticing for what's been 13 years since the first sketch! Anyway, I think it works and it'll give the haters something else to hate!

Copyright Hugh Walter ©2009-2022

MB is for American Heritage!

American Heritage was an umbrella brand-mark for a series of Milton Bradley (MB) products (now MB Games and since 1984 part of Hasbro's portfolio) which seems to have begun with trading cards of 'old timer' cars around 1961 (some of the images of which - I'm pretty sure - ended-up being issued as place-mats here in the UK?), but which through the 1960's and into the 70's gave us three board games with figures, and two others which pique the interest of war gamers, but which (all five) are really family games with family-game mechanics.

We're looking at Hit The Beach, obviously channeling the US WWII pacific campaign, and in particular the island-hopping of the Marine divisions. In addition to the American Heritage moniker, there was also a further universal - to the five games - Command Decision Series sub-brand marking with a circle of stars.

I've  posed the ships and 'planes; when new the four US units are on the runner with the two accessories just laying on the blank area of card, held there by the runner, from which they need to be removed! Normally they hide under the board with the other ten Japanese machine gunners.

The island is a strangely symmetrical archipelago with a central feature and various islets to be 'hopped', while the Japanese figures look a bit like one of the Dunkin (and others) bubblegum premium sculpts, but I'm sure it's more coincidence than any copying, by either side.

The US forces or 'beaches'; blue beach, red beach &etc., consist of two US Infantrymen and two Marines along with one-each of the Naval and Army-Air support, figures are bigger than the commoner Battle Cry 20mm ACW's, at around the 30mm mark and I think it's fair to say the Marine has a more gung-ho attitude!

The vessels look like armoured tugs, but the Liberator bombers are rather nice, red and black are upside down so you can see the crude landing gear, that's it, another box ticked, it's been a while since we had a board game, although there's still about five [shots taken] in the long queue! Actually we had the Tri-Ang checkers, only the other day . . . Doh!

It doesn't seem to have been a particularly big seller (by the time it came out US involvement in the Vietnam War had seriously ramped-up and anti-war feeling was beginning to be heard), and when they were re-issued in 1975 it was dropped/replaced by a fifth game, which was set firmly in the more 'patriotic' era of the 1770's - as the bicentennial approached!

The American Heritage series:

• Battle Cry - ACW (1961 & 1975)
• Broadside - 1812 (1962 & 1975)
• Dogfight - WWI (1963 & 1975)
• Hit the Beach - WWII (1965 only)
• Skirmish - AWI (1975 only)

K is for Klutz . . . No, No, No . . .

. . . I dealt with TJF earlier!

This is further to the lone vinyl Pirate I identified back in September, which had actually been ID'd by someone else, a few years ago, in Plastic Warrior Magazine (issue 185 has just hit the metaphorical newsstands*), and my search for the other figures, there is a fourth; Harry Potter, but I think I have him loose somewhere.

So, I managed to track down the other two Klutz sets, and this is how they come; a large number of interactive, pre-printed cards in a variety of shapes, with various slots in them so they can be stacked a bit like Galt's Octons. Then there's a calender-spined booklet and the set-relevant figure, a backing card holds it all together.

The Spaceman from Klutz is quite 1980's TV series in styling with a touch of Buzz Lightyear even the face! A back-pack rocket and 'sonic sword-gun' thing are matched with urban combat kit and Judge Dredd boots!

The knight reminds me a bit of a wingless version of the LJN / Matchbox / TSR goodly knight (or "Good Paladin") 'Strongheart' from the Dungeons & Dragons 45mm figure set, but a little more serious - if waving your sword around is more serious - klutz!

Some sample pages from the fort booklet so you can get an impression, I carefully removed the figures and pared-away the remains of their blisters and gave the two booklets to a charity shop, where they sold the next day, as they still had tons of play value. That's it - a quick Klutz box-ticker!

Wikipedia: Klutz is a publishing company started in Palo Alto, California in 1977. It was acquired by Nelvana in April 2000 and became a subsidiary of Scholastic Inc. 

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* By 'metaphorical newsstands' I mean you actually have to subscribe, and (for newer collectors - Lockdown has changed the landscape of the hobby!) it's a mail-only subscription, which you can do here, or; if you are on Faceplant - direct message them here, and yes (for seasoned Loyal Readers) - I know I'm behind on the PW reviews, but there has been other stuff going on the last 24 -months which are - in some parts - ongoing, so I'll do them when I do them!

TJF is for The Jabbering Fuck!

How long ago was it he last swore he was going to ignore me and have nothing to do with me? And yet there it is, another two paragraphs trying to justify his autumnal and Christmas fuckwittery! I guess his 'people' love it though, so hat's off to them . . . MAGA hats?

 

Image - Mark Hamill (yes; that Mark Hamill!)

2 hours later - That's funny, 8 direct views of this morning's Progress post, 14 direct views of this! Extrapolate that ratio over all today's traffic and you realise he doesn't get it, but he's going to keep plugging away . . . hey-ho!

F is for Follow-up - Progress WWII Russians

I managed to find a full set of the Progress Russian Infantry (going very cheap or I would have waited) a while ago, and while I only needed the three Chris helped-out with last time we looked at them, I thought "When will I see them again?" so grabbed them!

We saw the backs of most of them when we looked at them last time, so just a re-hash from one side, they have faint traces of paint on them (a pale flesh on hands and faces, no other apparent colours), so earlier (?) sets seem to have carried paint, but I've seen them on packaging (near mint) without.

And as Chris suggested last time, still only the nine poses, I guess they considered it a set of ten items with the flag, not that any set of toy anything has to have round numbers and many don't, but with toy soldiers you tend to look for six, eight or ten &etc!

Having accepted I would have a bunch of duplicates, they came in a darker, flat green than most of my existing metallic ones, or the pale-jade above, so I will probably hang-on to most of them for a fuller sample in the near future at least, right now they are still in two places so I haven't had time to fully-compare them.

The best of the bunch, he can be holding it in a brisk updraft (right-hand pair) . . .
. . . or on a slightly breezy day!

A is for Aladdin

Ten years before Brave, and one of Disney's most successful movies ever, and another one I haven't seen, but I've caught a few clips and remember enough of the story from childhood to be on top of it!

It was - in fact - so successful that a lot of figurines have resulted, and from time to time we've seen them coming-in in mixed lots with me muttering vaguely "Might be Kinder, probably Phidal, to big for . . .material is like . . . " &etc.; so it's nice to get a complete Phidal set, to start ID'ing them all more accurately!

Goodies, baddies and some morally ambiguous types! With reference to what I said in the previous post, you can see the play-mat here is just four crappy stills form the movie artwork/backdrops, and of little use to ought but a child, which is not a criticism per se, these sets are very cheap and the - relatively high-quality - figures are all the money, so that fact they mostly have basic text on the five-or-so stiff card pages and a naff play-mat is, rather, par for the course!

Close-ups of the various characters, scale is - I think - all over the place, but figures is figures, and with Kinder and other capsule toys and other set (there's a nine-piece set with the queen from Disney themselves - some of which we may have seen in those odd-lots), you can always mix and match!

He was genuinely intrigued by the tiger!

B is for Brave Busy Book

I mentioned in another post over Christmas how TKMaxx didn't have the usual pile of Phidel Busy Books this year, and to be honest, the supply of them has been dwindling for some time, after trying to scalp a couple of extra-quid per unit, WHSmith seem to have stopped stocking them (locally at least) some time ago, and my last few trips to TKMaxx haven't seen any, but I have managed to pick-up a couple at Charity shops, and this in one of them!

Brave, a Disney Pixar movie which - like most of Phidal's choices - has totally passed me by! Not only that, I'm an old git, it's bound to happen; but I've never heard of it, despite it's having won lots of awards and sounding like I'd probably enjoy it (?) - I Googled it!

If the Mother turns into a bear (she does!) I guess the three little cubs are also the 'triplets', who might spoil the movie for me, I hate the annoying brat/comedy element (Daggit, I'm talking to you, and you Scrappy Doo, and yes Tweakie!), so three is just too much! But the mother/bear is a nice sculpt!

Most Phidal sets have rather naff play mats which consist of stills from the production, but this could have limited use as a pocket war games mat? Heavy cover, light cover and a quest/target to defend - the Henge!

That's it, box ticked.

D is for Donnnnn'Pushhhh Meeeeee!

After you've enjoyed the risibley funny sequels - which certainly didn't pan out in the real-life Iran, Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan - as empty-headed action-movies, it's worth remembering in the original, John Rambo (for it is he!) was a disgruntled, ex-grunt 'patriot; shooting-up his own neighbourhood!

On another site someone was asking about Rambo figures the other . . . month? A while ago anyway! So I've got this little overview together, despite most of mine being in storage, in fact; they never came out, but the narrative can still be expressed with what I do have!

The above shows the header card from a line of Maqueta Rambo (Rambo figures) rack toys coming out of Mexico, by Gemelo-Plast (Ruben Juarez Gemelo), who are using copies (lower centre) of older - probably Arco figures (lower left) taken from the marked Arco smallies (lower right) which we looked at back in the early days of the blog.

This was in the bag, another has a jeep, a third a jet-plane, and it's just a question of getting past it with a box-tick, so we can get back to the figures!

This is all the Gemelo's I've ID'd so far, each bag has a small mix with duplicates, so I can't be sure I've found all of them, 'bowman' and 'crossbow' Rambo's are missing for starters? Large lumps of - probably - polyethylene and I guess the odd red ones are 'commie-bastards' to be deaded? The standing firing is a simplification of an Arco (?) crossbow pose - you can see he still has the explosive arrow tip!

Here we have the smaller, definitely Arco and larger 'probably' with an Airfix figure for scale, below which we have a newer set, which while not portraying the Arco sculpts, do nevertheless carry an air of Rambo (or Platoon; is that meant to be Willem Dafoe's Sgt. Elias, second from the right?) about them. All the above - bar the Airfix cold-war warrior - are courtesy of Chris Smith I think, mine are elsewhere!

I've actually just grabbed these off the blog (so you should have seen them before!), as it (right-hand image, also from Chris) shows a bigger, baseless Rambo with bow, who may be a third iteration ofArco's, or another copy, but is of better quality that the Mexican ones, although is probably from the donor set for them?

On the left a set I found to explain another point sometime, credited to Black Temptation (an Amazon or Ali  Baba phantom brand if ever I read one!), we can see the first three of the poses (reading English-wise) are based on the Arco Rambo sets.

In the past we've seen a clear Rambo or Rambo knock-off in silver here, probably from a  rack-toy type mini-playset? While this crossover set mixed old Matchbox poses with Arco influenced figures and all the Reisler WWII prone figures!

F is for Four Fingers of Fictional Fun

A few Sci-Fi bits and bobs which were kicking around various corners of the Laptop, and which might as well be shoehorned into one post to clear the decks a bit!

Star Wars key-rings; We've seen a few before now, but I thought a comparison was in order, and we have - from the left - an LED torch, Lego 'maxi' Darth Vader, followed by three normal 'minifig' sized rings, then an Applause young Anakin/Vader, which I think is part of the avalanche of merchandise which accompanied the fourth/first movie.

I don't know how many there were in the Applause set, so the gap is for the missing Vader in an otherwise complete set of the capsule key-ring figures, cleared through The Works a few years ago, then to Pound-Plus, branded TPF Toys for shipping-in by STL.

ET's, a planetoid's worth of ET's! The three to the right are licensed LJN, and from a set of six (or eight?), while the chap on the left is marked J.A.R. Sales, and may be more of a knock-off than an official product, but both lines are dated 1982, so may both be legitimate?

I have no idea how many of the JAR ones there were and scale on them is 'big' as he fitted in a bikes shopping basket I seem to recall (never seen it, have no intention of seeing it!), so about 1:18^th or larger? I guess there was half-an-idea for them to be compatible with dolls, for playing-out the movie scenes?

Ignore the Greek, he's been joined by three of his compatriots recently and will be Blogged separately at some point. I managed to pick up both the Remco divers from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea last year, but they have been separated already, one here, one in storage - funny story; TJF managed to score a brownie-point with this one when I posted it elsewhere, but really, Journey to the Centre of the Earth / The Land that Time Forgot / 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea / 10,000 BC and a dozen other movies of the time were basically variations on a theme!

The metal-detector/mine-sweeper one is missing the base-stud, but as it's only used to lock them onto the floor of their retail carton, it's more a question of Do I remove the other one?

The chap to the right is supposed to be Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the head's all wrong, so I'll leave it to a jury, preferably a Bristolian one! He's a soft polyethylene and Argentinian.

Picked this up cheap a while back, as a sort of follow-up to the other day's Lunar Rover post; it's Dinky France selling-off the Zygon War Chariot crew figures as 'astronauts' in their spare-parts program! Daft in'it . . . got tub full's of orphaned seated figures and I go and get three more, but it's always about the packaging!

The funny thing is I know I have a metal Gort somewhere but can't find him, and there are more ET's in the post, so we will be returning to both those subjects in the not too far future!

H is for How They Come In - June 2021 - 3 - Chris

I bought something off Chris in June, possibly one of the items in the previous post, and although he'd sent me a big parcel a few weeks earlier, also included these with the purchace.

All sorts, of which the highlight is probably the three Wild West (top of picture) which look Polish (bases) but are probably French 'bazaar' figures, but not common ones? The flocked donkey next to them is cool, he's a mini blow-mould under the fur! The pale-jade French firefighter is probably another bazaar figure, while we had two paratroopers and a . . . in a minute on that one!

A small group of margarine premiums (top left) balance a similar sample of Commonwealth 'world dolls' except these are the later sub-piracies. And speaking of pirates; the big brown fellah is a Brabo 'Parafool' missing his chute-loop and waving a short-short cutlass! Various cake decorations and mini's can also be seen, along with an oversized copy of one of  Arco's smaller sized Rambo figures and a nice pile of Kinder bits (bottom right).

That other figure - he might be a parachute toy, but I suspect - from the locating studs on his hands - that he is a swinger, spinner or revolver! He's some kind of superhero, with a possible sun-motif on his chest, but it could just be a runner gate-mark or release-pin blemish.

I asked the chaps and chapesses on Brian Heiler's Faceplant group if anyone knew, but apart from a suggestion he might be a "...Palmer Scuba Diver figure or VooDoo", both of which drew a blank, there cameth-forth an answer none, so if you can help? He's also a bit 1950's pulp, rather than '70's Marvel/DC?

Cheers, as always to Chris Smith, for the bag of bits, all really appreciated.

H is for How They Come In - June 2021 - 2 - Three Days in June

Toward the end of May last year I went a little mad on evilBay, call it shopping therapy, call it depression, call it extravagance . . . it wasn't a good time, there were no shows, lock-down was into its 26^th month and it's comforting to go and buy shit, however transitory the feeling it brings, so that's what I did! And I like to think I have a good eye, so it's all worth a look, these are some shots I took not long after the Postman had been!

Tuesday 8^th June - Parcels from the four corners of the world here, almost, with packages from Amazon, the USA, Ukraine and Greece all arriving together! From the latter came the Louizos Toys Wild West set, which I hope contains cowboys around 50/54mm and probably of the Solpa type, but I don't know as it's sealed, and having never seen one before I thought I'd better keep it sealed for now!

Below the unknown cowpokes we have a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtle Anthropomorphic knock-offs from the former Soviet Union, and bunch of Japanese glico-style spaceships and UFO's, but from the 'States, and a rather nice magnetic bottle-opener which was one of two I got in the last 18 months or so, I thought it looked like a Matchbox GI-copy, but it's closer to the Marx 60mm sculpt.

This single parcel arriving the next day was several lots from the same seller (Tony; a friend of the Blog), and contained all sorts of nice things, starting in the top left-hand corner, and moving vaguely clockwise - several swoppet knights, some Elastolin 54mm and some Hong Kong copies of Britains mounted Swoppets.

Below which is a handful of the RP issue of Co-Ma's Roman sculpts, with enough duplicates for me to send the five I hadn't previously been able to, to Peter, small thanks for all he sends to the blog, and who I'd originally sent my only one, we now both have a full set!

An empty swoppet box I can fill at some point! Two empty Airfix boxes and a bunch of loose Airfix figures, two of the new 1:144 war-gaming AFV's which have become popular, literally over the lifetime of the Blog! Below them are two Roskopf blisters, which are nice as I previously only had them loose, or in the small tan boxes, while in the bottom corner two sets of the Roco-Minitanks 'Artillery Group' (copies of Tamiya's 1:35th scale desert-attired 25lbr crew), so I will - at some point - make one up.

The 'box-square' of figures to their left are more modern HK/China (Rado) & Caesar and older Roco and Eidai figures in various amounts with a Japanese officer from Marx Miniature Masterpiece's lines.

To their left a mix of larger figures and above them smaller Giant, post-Giant and Montaplex, other HK figures of interest and a 45mm Ri-Toys (a.k.a. Rado) French soldier taken from Airfix. In the centre we have an Airfix boxed 6x6 truck, a post-Giant two-horsed, articulated chariot, Eidai FlaK's (one mounted on a  half-track) and Roco SPG.

While the 11^th brought a very eclectic mix, which I thought to shoot, but not the best photograph of the three, nevertheless full of nice things!

In the distance, lined-up on the laptop is some Comansi Wild West, but not just any-old Wild West, they are the five character sculpts (husband, wife, two kids and uncle) from the High Chaparral, in front of them some cake-decorations (I can't even remember - one looks Chinese?), a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea . . . heehee!) diver from Remco, another PVC bird from that set we looked at the other day and some Toy Major knights.

We saw the two Soviet-era AFV's back in the summer or autumn, the V2 will be made up at some point, I intend to compare all three - Condor, Eidai and Revell! While I'd forgotten the two Hong Kong AFV's, they are the same maker as the one we looked at the other day, so I'll be able to cannibalise one of the Dingo's to give the Humber it's missing set of wheels.

Other AFV's include two guns and the weird six-wheeled AMX30! Three swans (?) a bag of ? (something), and finally; a set of Supreme Saracen/Livonian type knights made up an eclectic list of arrivals. Most got sorted away quite quickly and sent up to the storage unit, some just packed in 'To be Sorted' boxes, so I will have the fun of discovering them all again at some point!

H is for How They Come In - June 2021 - 1- Peter

That's it look, 2021 is 'The Past' already! Continuing with the catch-up on last year's donations to the blog, brings us to June, where quite a bit happened while I was busy doing other stuff - only 8 posts in June!

This lot came to the Blogquaters, via Peter Evans, and the obvious object of our attention is the bagged rack-toy branded to a 'Deluxebase' which I suspect is a phantom, with two large 120+mm astronauts, hollow, they are kit-type polystyrene, manufactured in two parts and glued together. I also like the radar which will look good with Mattel 'Star Wars Command' rebel snow-troops!

There were a bunch of the Hing Fat's I think, but I shot a representative sample and put the rest with Peter's previous donation against Blogging them as sets at some point. A Supreme small-scale horse, similar (Polly Pocket knock-off?) type and larger medieval one are all interesting, with several kit figures and a couple of Giant knights.

A nice Cherilea platoon signaller in 60mm tops of the lot, many thanks to Peter, as always, it all finds a place in the whole.

News, Views etc . . . General Roundup

Obit's
I don't often stray into gaming territory, as it's really a different bough rather than another branch of the hobby, but this guy was clearly loved and respected within the industry and too young, RIP

Stewart Gilray

Another Toy Soldier Collector (ad' pop-ups)

Mark Francis Gross

 

TableTop Games Listicle

As simplistic and - no doubt - as controversial as any other listicle, but with some useful side-links

Mudlarking

Well, it's a figure!

Refighting the Punic Wars

Nice image of antiqued Greeks

Warhammer

Nottingham Mafia!

 

 

Nostalgia

I had to refresh after clicking the cross-button on the pop-up - old Dundee toy stores!

 

Memories of a Rugby toy shop

 

And another in Rushden

Miniatures

I cant's remember if I've posted this before, but there's tons and while Prieser and Noch figures are to the fore, he uses all sorts of scales and figures, and of all the sites with this type of stuff, Tatsuya Tanaka's is about the best.

ACW

Nice set-up in Pennsylvania

Beautiful Brass

Vizagapatam Toy Soldiers