Because Adrian and myself had a bit of a
debrief after the show, and a reckoning of what I was buying from him,
everything got a bit muddled-up on the bench in the 'Meccano' summer room, so I think the easiest thing to do is
deliver them - in lots of ten-images - as I shot them later that night and
yesterday. I'll try to credit everyone for any freebies as I go.
And we're starting with a freebie from
Graham Apperley, who gave me a tub of bits before the show started, which was half these and half the next shot. Some
of these are marked CHINA, so probably not of great age, and may still be
findable in garden centers or gift shops, but they are charming, and continue a
tradition from that part of the world which is over a 150 years old. The man in
green (who I initially thought was a duck!) is less than 3mm thick and about 5-high!
I have Japanese and Chinese variations in
composition, this 'bisque' ceramic, blow-moulded celluloid, harder plastics and
lead. The older lead ones often come with long wire-spikes embedded for more
permanent placing in plant-pots (Bonsai &etc), those without spikes were
for more temporary displays in sand-trays or maybe as cake decorations?
To be honest, I think all the larger people
could be from other, older sets (the CHINA set is the very pale, clean
material), and some could have some age, even considerable age, the sitting
lady in blue for instance? I have the frog in several sizes (in fact didn't
Britains or someone do a lead set for their garden range?), while the birds are all new to me
and quite exquisite. The larger pieces, including most of the rickshaw are
slab-cut and slip-glued.
Also in Graham's tub was a nice Matchbox
farmer with his dog still attached, two PVC figurines (which I assume are from
the same set of Dark Horse's franchise
Hellboy?), a metal horse which I
think was Crescent, but might be Charbens or Timpo (for OO railways anyway), we looked at them back at the start
of the Blog, along with a buckshee Esci
horse and a cake-decoration coach in a lovely toffee & caramel marbling!
These were actually a late-in-the-day
purchasing decision, they were on Adrian's stall, and no one had shown much
interest in them, and I was chatting with Chris Smith (friend of the Blog!)
about something else, and we came round to Eastern European figure-matters and
I pointed these out to him suggesting I was tempted, only to promptly talk
myself into putting them on the 'settle-up' pile!
The thing is, you should recognise them as
it's not long ago we looked at them here, and they are obviously copies
of the JSP/Injectapalstic/Culpitt,
separate base version, Wild West figures, in a bazaar or rack-toy style. Which
could make them French bazaar clones, however they have also the look of some -
particularly Hungarian - Eastern European stuff?
They could - of course - also be Injectaplastic late production (or
batch, their production was done in Macau), they did move to polyethylene, and
there's a nice article (well, I hope it's nice) on that in the queue! So a bit
of a mystery, but I've never seen them before?
The archer being absent from my samples of
the painted figures, could be the missing 8th figure, rather than
the tee-pee, which [attribution] only raised a question-mark over the fort and
other accessories in the carded sets!
These weren't specifically on my 'shopping
list', which consisted of things I'd thought of in the last few weeks, but I am
always on the lookout for the early version Cherilea
swoppets, and Adrian had these on top of a rummage tray which I snaffled as we
were setting-up!
I will probably take the webbing from the
right-hand figure, and with one of the heads and the rifle, make-up the left-hand
figure to 'complete', but there are other bits in their tub, so I may get two
whole figures, out of the collected shrapnel?
Theo sent us a nice sample of these a few years ago.
Meanwhile, a day or two before the show,
I'd been chatting with Matt Their - who wrote the definitive series of articles
on these for Plastic Warrior magazine - and mentioned that if he still had his
and was moving them on, I'd be interested, but sadly he'd already sold them.
However, he sold them to Adrian, who found
them in his stock later in the day! So they came home with me anyway/after-all!
And again I have a few somewhere, the chap with the bayonet and the prone pose
complete I think, with some bits, so a session of part-swapping and I should
have a decent sample of these, these are the type 1, the type 2 are the
previous trio/Theo's and the type 3 were looked at here.
You see, there's a story attached to this
card too! Mostly told here at Small Scale World previously . . . I
had the choice of this card, or the cows, many years ago, many, more than a
decade for sure, and I chose - for reasons I've never really understood - the
cows. I had a better stab at an explanation when we looked at them.
Since when I have found a loose silver one
of these kneeling-firers, three charging soldiers which I think are (now; must be) Plástico Osul, and now this card, which
Adrian thinks he bought from the same dealer . . . probably/almost certainly one of the two I
passed-on, on that day, nearly twenty years ago!
A mixed bunch of military hardware, with
an Argentinian polystyrene jeep that has a tin-plate screen, on the left, the
grey gun at the back is the Star Toys
'German' 25lbr in 'Aussie' jungle configuration, I may have one somewhere, but
couldn't remember, so in the pile it went, the full-shield 25lbr in front
is another HK rack-toy piece but in a mix of 'ethylene and 'styrene.
Then there's the full Tudor Rose A/T gun train, with the limber lacking a towing hook,
but I'm pretty sure I have a good one in the spares box, and enough windscreen
parts to fix this otherwise good jeep, while the little jeep in front is
lacking wheels, and goes with those diminutive Humber 1-ton's I think?
Adrian Little practically threw this at me,
and I could have saved it for a rack-toy month (RTM) post, but seeing as I
photographed everything I might as well post it all now! Branded to WH Cornelius's mark Success, they are still going, now under Play Write.
The car is a soft blow-mould with more
solid tyres, however the pump looks to be another blow-mould but doesn't give
easily, so may be polystyrene, the age-fogging on the bag (millions of
micro-flexings and scratches) make it hard to tell without squeezing it 'till
something breaks, which I'm not doing!
Another one Adrian drew to my attention,
easily ignored as 'just another Hong Kong copy' of the Britains Herald tee-pee/tipi, I recognised the [French] coats of
arms as placing it with the JEM-Norev
reissues of RF-René Fisher
medievals (which included the Lone Star Richard I copy), there are Flanders and
single lion versions of the water-slide transfers too, probably others.
And this is deliberately half-obscured as it
will be in a future post and go on the parachute toys page, but is a nice,
boxed example of a now-familiar fat chap in a Rocketeer helmet! Comando
[sic] is the given Spanish branding, the figure is not offered-up as a military
toy specifically either in its sculpting/equipment or colours, but it is - to
an extent - on the box-art, with civilian aircraft types dropping khaki troops!
Many thanks to Graham for the tub of
goodies and . . . part 2 along shortly!
