E is for the Elephants in the Room!

This is a fun post, mostly new to hobby, Blog and Internet - except eBay, where they all came from! Credeco, a new name to me a year-and-a-half ago when I bought the first of these (a couple were on another blog years ago), and while these have mostly been posted elsewhere in dribs and drabs over the last year, the article folder has been on the desktop for most of it, slowly being added to!

Where we 're up to now were up-to when this post had 12 images! Although there are more to find, a strange mix of wholly original sculpts of some ingenuity or imagination, and crude cut-n-shut copies of Britains Trojan warriors, from this lesser Spanish make, in the bazaar/rack-toy style.

This was the first one in the bag, he came with two other non-Credeco lots, and the seller (Miguel Angel) included a freebie (some Italian swoppet Wild West figures)! How could I not buy a War Elephant I'd never seen before!

Following up the seller's other lots while leaving feedback for the first three purchases lead to two more! One has a hole in it and I wondered if someone had cut the rider out, but I've seen another one others, which are the same (and now have a second, see below), with a rider in a different colour, so they may seem to have had single-moulding and two-part lines?

Equally, I'm not sure if this was factory paint or home paint, but I wasn't convinced as to the latter, so deciding on the former, shot the hell out of it (in case) before sending it to the bleach vats for an overnight snooze. Either way it's not good painting.

Overnight snooze in the bleach vat!

Gives me a unit of 35mm Carthaginians! They're not terribly realistic, obviously, but no worse that certain Cherilea output I could mention - and often have! They are, after all, proper 'toy' soldiers first, and I imagine if not actual sobres, as least kiosko! The red soldier may be missing a spear-tip, standard or sun-shade of some kind? Also they fit quite well with the Rojas e Malaret board-game war elephant.

By now I was on a roll, or a quest, found the mounted ones I'd remembered elsewhere, and managed to grab these two with the blue one in the final image, obviously taken from Britains Trojans, one is just near copy ('Ulysses', right) with a head swap, but the other ('Ajax') has had his broadsword replaced with a rather crude spear.

The Ulysses knock-off has a hole in his shield which seems deliberate, but has no apparent function and may be something like a broken mould release-pin that somehow got stuck or fired into the figure?

'Paris', Troy! The archer gets the biggest makeover, losing his bow, arrow and quiver in favour of a sword and dagger, which rather leaves him looking like an over acting character hamming-it-up in a pantomime!

The final purchase (for now then) was these three, it was the Roman on a camel I'd remembered (or found in the archive folder for Creadeco, which is the same thing; that's the whole point of the archive!), 'Hector' loses his javelin in favour of an axe, and a wood-axe at that! He also gets a head swap, while 'Achillies' now has Hector's head and a move of his sword-arm, both have been given new hoplon shields.

The mounted figure is the best (and I love the elephants), and why not, the Roman empire had a vast desert boarder in North Africa/the Middle East, camels are recorded as coming west with Darius and/or Xerxes, so whether Roman or Greek (Carthaginian or Trojan) why not have him on a camel, especially as his protagonist is an Arab! He's half Britains 'Agamemnon', and half the Marx cut-and-shut with came out of Hong Kong courtesy of Giant and others!

Yeah, I seem to have taken and awful lot of shots of them for some reason! Checking the old Trojan post here I wonder if these aren't actually copies of the 'believed to be' French bazzaar rack-toys, some of which are in that post?

The above has been ready for publication for some weeks (some months for the early drafts), but I took delivery of what will be it for a while, the other day so we plow-on, although no 'family photo' as the rest seem to have gone to storage!

This is another of the elephants with the hole, and you can see how a little diminutive figure is just stuffed in the hole like a cheap Hong Kong turret crewman! I think the silver on this is factory-paint, and having stripped the other, will probably leave this one as it is?

A couple of close-up's really taken to help me see if he was 'meant' and yes, that's all tool-machined marks round the feet, not a figure taken from a base. The trouble is, with my eyesight these days he could be mistaken for a damaged figure, and while it wouldn't stop me keeping him as a sample/example if I found him, I bet a lot of loose ones have been chucked-out as being [or; appearing to be] both damaged and odd-scale.

The horse is a ringer, taken off of a wagon team, so I still need another camel, but the figure is lovely! Tumanbay eat your heart out, my General Qulan rides again!

A few recent sellers on Todocollection, I think the archer may be an Atlantic roman stuffed in the hole? Evidence, so far, seems to point to four slightly different elephants, being two pairs of similar variations of the same sculpts, the one providing two with separate crew (head-spike and no head-spike), the other two with integral crew (sword & shield and sword & spear/parasol/standard?), and all possibly being variations of an original master, with leg and trunk changes?

Finally, not Creadeco - this guy was bought with the two red ones, as I figured he might go with them, but he's a lot taller and was obviously a copy of something else - he looked familiar? He was neither the Elastolin or Reamsa pointing chaps (which I thought of first) the former's holding a scroll in the left hand, the latter is pointing the other way!

In the end he turned-out to be a copy of the Jecsan Centurion! He also looks slightly effete, like he can hardly be bothered to point anywhere with any seriousness! "You! Soldiers! Err . . . go over there and do . . . something useful, but don't trouble me again"

Creadeco Punic Wars - box nicely ticked I think!

T is for Two - Tinny-tin Tins from Tinslyvania!

Or; N is for Nostalgia - Look what I found! There's actually all sorts of stuff coming out of the woodwork, and not just from my late Mother's effects, I've started finding stuff I've not seen since it went into storage, or even things I couldn't remember having! But here's two tins, which are interesting for very different reasons, a third title could have been F is for From the Sublime to the Ridiculous!

My Grandfather's Princess Mary's Christmas Fund tin, 1914, not exactly rare, but some of the prices on feeBay, for poorer examples, suggests this is worth a half-dozen of your Herald swoppet knights, on horseback, equally, you can find copies for 15 or 20-quid! Issued to various groups and tranches of service men and women from 1914 onward, I won't bore you with the whole tale; you can read it all here - IWM.

The contents of Granddad's tin; the pipe has been used, and I guess the longer stem was his own and just kept in the tin as  a spare/fall-back? The tobacco pouch is missing, along with the photo's seen in the above link, but I know I've seen the little one of Princess Mary, and possibly the one of the King and Queen, while sorting so we will return to this as I reassemble it more fully in the future.

Indeed I know I have the bullet-pencil in my own collection (and always wondered whose 'cap badge' it was - it was sold to me by the late Eddie Audsley - vintage tool expert - as Trench-Art), the cards are in the envelope and we'll look at them in a minute, but the piece of scrap-metal is more interesting.

A direct translation of the German Brennstoft Übernahmevent is 'fuel takeover event' which I suspect transliterates to fuel cut-off valve? Something like that; fuel safety valve, and presumably came from an enemy vessel? But who's and when? 

Granddad served first on HMS London supporting the ANZAC landings in the Dardanelles ('Gallipoli'), where gunboat activity is known to have occurred, and mostly (early) German vessels re-flagged to the Ottoman's but with German crews or - at the least - German officers?

Equally there was activity in the Mediterranean in support of the Italian fleet, where again Motor Torpedo Boats and Motor Gunboats played a part on all sides, while the final hostilities of that period was Granddad's apparent participation (vessel currently unknown) in the Russian campaign of 1919, where both (all!) sides lost, captured or sank motorboats which might have been supplied by Germany, or taken from them in 1918?

And I'm only looking toward the smaller vessels as they would be most likely to have fuel cut-off valves (or their labels) easy to hand for a quick removal with a sharp implement for keepsake/trophy purposes?

The cigarette packet is quite small, now . . . I wondered if that was for space, or budget, but suspect they were often (even commonly?) smaller than the ones we are used to now, filters weren't introduced widely until after the Second World War, but it's about a half of the mass of a modern pack of filterless Camels - which this author has had cause to persevere-with, in the past, when filtered ones weren't around!

The two cards; and two points of note; firstly while the 1915 card is shown on the above Imperial War Museum link (and in the excellent primer - Tommy’s War: British Military Memorabilia 1914-1918 by Peter Doyle), neither source explains how a second (or subsequent?) card/s was/were issued/received once the recipient had been given his or her 2014 tin. Now I get that if your tin was one of the late ones, you might get a card for whichever year you received it, but how did you get a second, and why do they all seem to be '14 or '15, where are '16 and 1917 cards?

The other point is a bit darker, the dropping of 'Happy Christmas' from the later card; clearly someone pointed out, to the committee organising the fund, that it was impossible to have a happy Christmas under fire in a trench full of mud, rats and body-parts? Or on an Atlantic convoy looking for submarines which were looking for you, in an ice-storm? So the epithet was shortened to 'Victory' wishes only!

Anyway, that's the sublime, now I'll lower the tone considerably, with the ridiculous!

I found this in the garage; modern archeology -  Knickers in a Tin! I vaguely remember Mum's rather flighty Canadian friend Janet (of Perrier premium fame) giving it to her for a laugh one Christmas when we were quite little (Janet also took Playgirl magazine!), and it became a staple of my Mother's breakdown-kit, moving from car to car, and thence, eventually, to a damp garage where the conditions have faded all but the British Knickers, so I can't tell who made it, or when, but I think you can still get such stuff in Anne Summers or other adult outlets, as Stag or Hen gifts?

Realising it was to all intents and purposes gash now, I took the trusty army tin-opener to it, to finally reveal the supposed risqué contents . . .

. . . only to find slightly twee knickers, with a Union flag overprint on some indestructible faux-silk, metallic blue, granny-pants! What's left of the tin will be weighed-in with the next lot of scrap metal and the knickers have already gone to the clothing bank! More tins to come.

F is for Follow-up - Babes in Toy Soldier Land!

A quick follow-up to this post on the Wilton copies of Marx's Disney figures, I found the two Marx I have!

Private's Chivalrous or Courageous were the names for the two - identical - drummers, with no packaging I'll call him Fred! You can see (left of each shot) he's a tad bigger and slightly better detailed; in both etching and painting, while the Wilton drummer has a fat head!

Marx did a forth pose which wasn't pirated by Wilton, to my knowledge; dubbed Valiant or Hooligan! I'll call him Bob! They - the Marx originals were sold individually in sentry-box shaped cartons with their names, or in various window-box combinations of three figures, nameless.

Marx also reduced them for their 'Disneykin' range of Miniature Masterpieces, where the four got a window box, I don't know if they ever got the separate, single-figure Disneykin boxes, I suspect not. The forth sentry pose, here damaged in a feeBay screen-shot, seems to have been re-designed for the small scale iteration.

F is for Follow-up - Divers

Brian also sent me some diver stuff to follow-on from the recent post on that subject and I gained a few more the other day, almost by accident!

We've seen Brian's self display before (in another diver 'follow-up' post I think!), but there are new faces in the line-up; at that time it was the three whitish ones in the back row, they have been joined by two Lik Be (LB) cake decorations (they had a carded issue or two as well!) in red, a nice figure in front (metal?) and the larger chap at the back.

Cap'n Pugwash is still keeping an eye on his increasing motley crew!

Brian has actually found two of them, and using the stuff on the feet found them to be by Bonkers for the Ryan's World franchise. Brian reports the figures are solid with no movable parts which somewhat restricts play?

I have seen the gift eggs in various supermarkets and other outlets, and had even got as far as working out there are different themes to the different trays/counter boxes (boys, Girls etc . . . ), but the graphics are too 'busy' to work out if there's anything useful to us in which tray's eggs, so I've ♫ . . . walked on down the hall ♪♪!

Clearly they are worth a shufftie, and if anyone can enlighten us further, that would be grand. The Ryan's World 'phenomena' is best explained by Wikipedia for those who haven't encountered it.

In the meantime these turned up the other day in a lot I'd bid on for something else, and to be honest I hadn't really registered them in the evilBay images beyond maybe clocking them as 'better' or earlier Hong Kong copy stuff, but actually they are quite good paint Lone Star survivors and will need comparing with my 'master' sample, which we have seen before. Although I think most of mine are the James Bond orange ones, so these may be a very useful surprise?

F is for Follow-up - Split Screen Jeep

Keep yer' split-screen Beetle, it's a fire hazard now anyway, and treat yourself to an M38 Recoilless Rifle carrier! Following the six jeeps or part jeeps I spirited away from Plastic Warrior's recent London Show, Brian Berk was reminded of one he's seen back in march, and sent some photo's to the blog. Gratefully received as it's a while since we had a real vehicle here.

The subject is a 1952 Willys M38A1-C (for 'cannon') Jeep, with a distinctive split screen so the barrel of the recoilless rifle can be secured for travel. Note the round in front of the jeep, about the same size as the Wombat rounds regimental prisoners used to have to carry above their heads to and from the Cookhouse!

The only model of this I've encountered is the Roco-Minitanks one, which is a standard jeep with a full windscreen and the gun sitting high on a rather fictional tripod, it was copied by Aurora and UPC and possibly Marx - so; as Brian pointed out in his eMail, "It would make an interesting customizing project". Note also the re-positioning of the spare wheel and Jerry-can from the normal places on the rear, to give the crew room to maneuver the weapon.

And thanks to Brian for the images - Real McCoy!

F is for Follow-up - Khaki Runnings!

I managed to grab the Battle Space, at the weekend after all, so managed a quick shoot of the closest Model Power  'twins' and took one of the military locomotive pool while I was at it!

Mobile missiles; both utilising their maker's flat-car, both spring-loaded and both having the large elevation tap-wheels, but otherwise quite different, the Model Power is err . . . underpowered, but as it's a polystyrene model, it would break quickly under the power of the Tri-Ang launcher which packs a serious, pre-H&S punch!

To which end, the Triang-Hornby missile is a rubber-tipped affair in softer polyethylene to take the strain, it also looks more like a Tallboy or Grand Slam (aerial bombs) than the Model Power's Honest John lines. "It'll 'av someone's eye out"!

Tank transporters; the earlier British one being a bogie well-wagon (that is a lower cargo 'well' between the raised twin-bogie (truck)-mountings) which reduces the height of the center of gravity, while Model Power utilise a clip-on set of chocks with a standard flat-car.

In fact, in the West, tanks are chained down with between four and eight chains which are screw-tightened, you only have to watch a few 'funny' tank-fail videos to understand the current Russian failings in Ukraine; while we winch-on and tie down, they rev-up and mount like dogs on heat and drive off, losing the thing at the next roundabout if it didn't fall-off on loading, or crush its own lorry!

Exploding cars; mechanisms were actually quite different (I didn't have time or space for more detailed shots this time, and while both have the look of North American 'reefer' wagons, Model Power go with a 50ft one, we Brits matched our road wagon limit with a  40-footer! Rememeber also HO is also scaled smaller (1:86/90) than OO (1:76/72), so the British model looks a bit 'chunkier'!

I have an old 1970's Walther's or two, and among the pages and pages of transfers for home-builders, mostly for reefers or passenger stock, are quite a few military ones, so you could with the two Q-Cars, this pair and a few kits, build a long, but visually rather boring (if more realistic) logistics train, but you'd need to glue these two shut first!

The loco's; we've seen the two main brands before, but of interest is the one down the front left, which is a clockwork 'cheapie' from Playcraft via Jouef of France. not specifically military, it happens to be the right colour, and adds variety to my fleet!

We loved our 'starter set' clockwork's when we were kids, and used to run them on a figure-eight inside our electrified double-oval, if we were quick we could get four trains moving at once without a crash . . . we weren't always lucky - figure-8's have a crossroad!

It's one of those quirks of toy history that at one point you had OO-guage train sets/lines from/branded-to Tri-Ang, Rovex and Mettoy Playcraft . . . all ultimately Lines Brothers! I should also mention the track, which happens to still be around despite having long lost its usefulness.

It's a sort of resinated or 'Bakelite' treated card (like the ties in old plugs which hold the cable tight), obviously for power-insulation, with the shiny (non-ferrous) rail fasteners (chairs or tie-plates) riveted through the card every forth sleeper (tie), I did have a brand name for it, well . . . it's somewhere in the archive, Hammant & Morgan maybe (our transformer was theirs), Hamblings, or early Hannants? One of the mail-order catalogues in the archive has/lists something which fits the description anyway!

It was the home-fitted rail on our train-set which was bought 2nd hand by Mum at Persons Auctions here in Fleet (long-gone, along with County Tractors and First Inertia), and somehow she managed to hide it (about 6ft x 8ft) from us until Christmas morning, I'm hoping, when I lift the boards in the loft, in the next few weeks, that I may find it's still there with its household gloss 'landscaping', but it may have gone years ago? It was old, crumbly, early (1960's) chipboard.

K is for Kicking and Screaming . . .

Hard to believe that a modern set of such poor overall (paint and fine detail) quality could feature on the Blog for a forth or fifth time, but that is what is happening here and a follow-up to various follow-up's, found in The Range, Aldershot (looking for hose connectors - always check the toy section!) and branded to the previously seen PME, but with a new header-card, it's those footballers' again!

Although, if you're a racist, this isn't a set for you, oh, no-no-no, you go and sit in your so wrong, white-right zone and leave the rest of us to enjoy the fact that a set that's been around for over a decade now has finally decided to represent what's happening on the pitch!

Sticking with one of the previously seen colour schemes, shirt wise, we now have 50% of the players showing obvious ethnicity and the knowledge that the Ref' might be a gay Scotsman, or even that one of the players might be gay, means inclusivity finally comes to the hallowed turf -  provided it's icing - as it has in real life! And it's Pride month - go Justin; you've got the ball ('Forest strip!), score goals on a green cake!

T is for Triffic' Train Set for the Troops!

Here's a book which needs to be written . . . a look at all the military train sets and the relationships between them? As we'll see, this set bears a lot in common with the old Tri-Ang/Hornby 'Battle Space' sets for instance, and while the modern Model Power branded, seems to be from older AHM tooling, so could be Japanese in origin as AHM worked with a lot of Japanese firms, or Rivarossi from Italy?

Anyway, I haven't got time to do it but I hope someone does, with the O-guage stuff as well as the HO/OO . . . but I might make a start in a while, after getting today's post's star!

I bought this HO rated set at Sandown Park for 30-quid which I thought was a bargain, and although I knew it was a modern (still in production?) set, I was right as Googling has revealed prices from $40-loose or incomplete to $250+ for sets, so £30 for a loose train, with no evilBay global rip-off charges, seems - indeed - to be a bargain.

The locomotive is what I - as a non American - consider to be a typical, even 'iconic' mid-late 20th century diesel unit and the caboose (brake van) is equally typical/iconic of its type, here marked-up as a troop carrier. We'll look at the other two in closer detail.

An Honest John lookie-likee, which rests on a launcher that bears a resemblance to the Tri-Ang one; but all in plastic and with a simpler push-&-click loading action. The real link is the winding wheel, which mirrors the Battle Space (and earlier non-Battle Space) Tri-Ang one.

A nice rendition of an M47 which apparently never saw combat service in US hands, but gave true birth to the M48/60 family, and here on a flat-car. The chocks are a clip-in single moulding, so could be put on civil-coloured (oxide-red) rolling stock, but it would probably have to be the same AHM/Model Power stuff?

In these though we get both closer to the older British models with an exploding box-car and further away with the huge rail-gun, while the one in the middle is a Q-car, hiding a nasty, if rather anachronistic surprise!

I think the mechanism is similar to the UK one, but mine are in storage, so I can't check them, but I'll try and dig them out over the weekend, if memory serves this is harder to get and keep together, but then it doesn't work when you trip the switch! Only falling apart when you pick it up to reset it . . . doh! And obviously because I only got the rolling stock, I don't have the track-side trigger, but the Tri-Ang trigger may work, or be made to work?

The 'Q-Car' has two Flak 18/36 German 88mm guns hidden it it! The Tri-Ang version had a twin rocket launcher, but employed the exploding car mechanism/body, while the Model Power one has simple (and preferable) click-shut, manually-operated, drop-down side panels.

While this beast has no comparison in the Battle Space range! It would benefit from a bit of detailing (stowed stores, hand-rails/guard rails, a breech of some sort, I've stuck a shell on the loading chute which was kicking around (Airfix or Lone Star SLR bullet?) in one shot. It could also use some more obvious support wagons than a cabose!

These are fun things and when I'm settled I'll try to track down some of the other obvious ones (Tyco, Bachmann, even Jakks Pacific) and we'll compare and contrast, one of them does a loaded Honest John on a articulated lorry trailer, there's a pricy three-coach Ambulance train from another and some more realistic ones from Lima, but they are top dollar!

News, Views Etc . . . Passing of Clive Smithers

Very sad news, and I don't know how I missed it, but Clive Smithers passed away last year. I didn't know him personally, but I think I'm still linked to all his Blogs: Hinton Hunter, The Lone S Ranger and Vintage Wargaming, and either he, or another of the party invited me to join a non-public Blog where attempts were made to ID old lead figures, where all were friendly and polite - I wasn't much help on that front (I think a few early metal posts had given a false impression of my knowlage in that field!), and I quietly excluded myself after a year or two when it had gone quite.

Clive did a lot of important work ID'ing the old Alberken 'S' Range (precursors of Minifigs) and tracking down the more esoteric Hinton Hunt's, he also kept the early Lamming sculpts in the news, so will be sorely missed by the War Gaming hobby.

His collection is currently being sold by his brother, and there is more here;

https://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/20175401.toy-soldiers-get-thousands-pounds-auction/

And a lovely tribute here which I seem to have missed at the time;

http://prometheusinaspic.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-old-metal-detector-personal.html

Off to the great board-game in the sky huh? Rest in peace Clive.