OB (?) is for Toy Leader, Pioneer, Woolbro and probably Zita et al?

Those loyal readers who have followed the Blog for some time will know there's usually one or two posts in RTM which get bogged-down in the minutia of branding, phantom-brands and brand-marks without proving much beyond the fact the Chinese/Hong Kong/Jobber branding can be a nightmare!

This is sort of one of those, but it also adds a bit to the Pioneer story (mostly uncovered here) and gives us a couple of what I suspect are quite late (i.e. quite recent) Woolbro items.

A couple of different sets, credited to a Toy Leader and imported into the UK by Woolbro, we'll do the brand stuff at the end. Contents are similar to the Realtoy military sets, or the Peace Enforce set we saw last year? If you then click 'older post' you'll get the contemporaneous Woolbro set we also saw then.

One in temperate combat scheme, the other desert, are they post '90/91 Gulf War, or earlier, there's no clue on the packaging? The contents however are really quite interesting, with references to various other Asian toy-lines/Marques.

The figures, are they the same ones Stonegalleon carry, softer versions from the Realtoy tool, or straight Pioneer production . . . well, they are the larger size, so it would seem they are from the tooling used for the Realtoy (and other) sets, and it may be that the sharper, squarer based figures (last year's and the Zita set) are from the same tooling, but weren't commissioned by Realtoy (or whoever was behind Realtoy - Dacron, Smart, Supreme?), so don't turn-up in the harder vinyl with consecutive numbering.

The trolley I have loose in my collection, it's a darker green, and better engineered (I think, I'll have to compare them when all this shite is properly sorted) and I assumed it was someone like either Corgi (all those 1:48th 'planes in recent years) or New Ray, and the recoilless-rifle here looks ex-New Ray too, so it would seem we have a pattern emerging?

I think the trolley is some kind of air-force ground-equipment, a charger, tester, starter or something, while the AT weapon is looking a bit TOW-like so second-generation ATGM? I would add that the stadium/marshalling-yard lamp-stands were seen in that other 'group' of sets branded Supreme/Ackerman/Titan etc?

Neither picture is perfect I'm afraid, but two new poses (in these softer ranges), both known from the harder Realtoy sets; kneeling pointing in jungle-hat (boonie-hat)a nd the prone gunner.

Again, I think some of these have been seen in New Ray's superior (for rack toys) 54mm sets of ten-or-more years ago, namely; a four-crate, WWII German werfer of nebels and a US/NATO M252 Mortar, while the sandbag emplacement looks prety-much the same as the Realtoy ones.

The temperate set has a GS-bodied truck, while the dessert set has a lookie-MLRS-likey rocket launcher get up, which seems to fire the same 150mm Werfgranate as the crated infantry-support Nebelwerfer, from two side mounts with hinged covers.

The slogans on the trucks is interesting, they both have Aoutca Dnphentkul written on the cab-doors, which Google-translate identified as Hmong, an ethnicity from Laos, Vietnam and South Western China, allied to the US in the second Indochinese war, many now live in Thailand or the USA. There is no direct translation.

While the Myo Niutop Buti on the rear of the rocket launcher was tentatively ID'd as Pilipino, with a translation of something-something-'good'? Both also have a hawk or falcon with the English message 'Fighting Action'! The two odd messages point to a Hmong-staffed factory in the Southern Chinese Yunnan province, making stuff-up 'on the hoof'?

But the Vcuneld on the back of the GS truck gets no suggested language, so it could just be a random-word generation robot/algorithm, but these are probably 1990's and such things weren't common back then, especially in an Asian toy factory!

So, to my thoughts on the branding . . . obviously imported by Woolbro, and marked-up to 'Toy Leader' the logo can't possibly be made to represent TL, looking distinctly like an OB? It's how they roll out there, and why Lik Be are LB, not LP or IDL!

And on the other card, the logo has been covered (before the blister was applied) with what looks like part of an Easter-egg artwork (or something equally bright and cartoony?) sticker, suggesting even they (the factory or shipper/jobber in the Far East) realised the logo-type was daft!

There is a prominent consumer message in Greek on the back of the cards (along with various other nationalities) so, given previous posts here at Small Scale World, it may be that these could be found in Greece with Zita stickers, and I'll add them to the tags for completion, even if they weren't, the connections are all there!

I suspect this is Pioneer production, a generic, given a phantom-brand wash which hasn't helped, copying from New Ray's more original stuff, and rehashing some of the stuff they supplied to Realtoy, but in new colours and with the softer rubber-figures?

P is for Preserving Popeye's Poorly Packaging

Just a brief one, this is almost a re-run of a post I did with a similar box-frame from SAE of South Africa back at the start of the blog, but it may help someone somewhere fix something similar!

How the parcel in yesterday's post unpacked; the combined results of various postal services 'duty of care', coupled with the sellers decision to send an old and already torn carton in a heavy paper envelope with lose bubble-wrap and a sheet of card, the bubble-wrap rolled and bunched under the floating card and ripped the end of the box off!

Slide the contents out, unseal the glued flap and flatten out the carton, damp it and iron it flat, on the printed side I use a couple of sheets of printer paper (there's a change in my lifetime; 20-years ago I would have written 'typewriter paper' there!) between the work and the iron.

Bookbinder's licky-sticky adhesive paper-tape; Butterfly Brand is commonest, indeed, it might be the old one still extant, I don't know? Really it should come back as it's far more eco-friendly for parcels, if a bit messy!

Run the tape through the water so it gets quite wet, place it where required and then 'squeegee' it flat with dry cotton cloth or kitchen paper.

Cross-ply over particularly damaged areas, tares etc. And you need to cross the 'grain' of the tape, as it will help keep everything flat, over time the tape has a tendency to memory-curve back to the roll position, it's why you want to get it quite wet. Iron it dry, but with a lower heat, you don't want the tape popping-off, just consolidating flat.

Then cut back to any edges you've gone over, and here, I'm cutting the line of the original die-cutter, where Popeye overlaps the front as the material beside him folds down to make the frame-box. I use the fine No.11 blade from Swan Morton (No.3 handle)* as it has a very fine tip, and I use a new blade to get a sharp, instant cut with no snags. Obviously this is a posed shot, I would never use my left hand to do something requiring such accuracy and light touch.

* I have not been paid for this blatant commercial!

Apply a contact adhesive to one half of the previously sealed side. Allow it to go tacky. Bostik haven't offered any cash either!

Likewise with the opposite surface of the other flap of the join, watching for strings, all contact adhesives seem to veer toward stringiness, that's one of their properties!

Bring the two surfaces together, dropping the camera so you can line up the other end and get the whole thing straight! When you are sure it's all good, press them lightly together, you will have a nanosecond to change your mind and pull them apart again, or slide-squeeze them into line, then run you finger down the laminate with a little more pressure.

Finally I use a metal-edged designer's ruler to press the join heavily with a bit of back-and-forward 'sawing' action, getting into the two edge-folds to ensure a firm join. Again, you need to loose the camera, to hold both ends and press down, then 'saw' back and forward. You could use a piece of square-profile dowel or wood-strip, but you wouldn't get the required firmness in the middle.

The finished item can be seen in the previous post (forth image down), which will either be immediately below this post or can be found by left-clicking the 'older post' hot link below.

P is for Plastic Pastoral Play-sets

I think my enthusiasm for these was fully displayed last time we looked at them, following a  donation from Chris Smith, to which I was able to add a few which turned-out to be different, well, there are now three or four  types/sources and some additional components!

Also; reader 'jhnptrqn' if you are still following the blog, several clues to your quest follow . . .

So, I found this one first, from the hard, polystyrene cover/lid, and the full photo-graphics I think we are looking at a date around 1972-4? And I suspect it was probably commissioned by a department store, or big-store chain. "Up to 5 years of age" . . . caught red-handed, doh!

As I said last time; if it were found here (in he UK) I’d say Conran/Habitat or Heals, maybe Debenham's at a push . . . but it was found over the pond in the US where my knowledge of funky, modern stores of that era is zero! But it is an unbranded generic, of an overall quality you'd expect from a major departmental or mall-chain retailer, or maybe the 'big book' mail-order listers?

New this time - but seen in the feeBay image last time - is the dog, pine tree/fir, the twin-tower/gateway arrangement/thing and the picket fences I still think I may have a few of somewhere else. Also the two sizes of building. Still no pigs . . . wishful thinking!

Posed similar to the box-art; I seem to have the same 12 picket-fence pieces but one less of the two-bar fencing, maybe the fence-packer was having a bad day counting, however I suspect a loss!

Now, all this was happening about a year ago, and while I was taking mental notes I didn't write anything down, so I can't remember which set was the same as either mine (Hong Kong) or Chris's (unmarked), and I say 'which set' because another set turned-up a week or two later!

Also from the 'States, and clearly ascribed to Larami and their long-running visual-recognition line of Popeye brand-marked (but nearly always nothing to do with Popeye) rack-toys, is this set.

The postal services of evilBay (global shipping delay) and Roayl fail conspired to wreak the box, but that the seller put such a thing in a jiffy-bag didn't help! The next post will cover my fixing-it after a fashion!

Comparisons between the two show that the one is of a different class to the other (better box, rigid lid, twice the content-count), yet dimensions are similar so  one is based upon the other and both are probably - as I suggested last time - aping a Western product? Note: both Popeye and Popeye's are used.

As to that Western product . . . last time I suggested such luminaries as Galt, Hestair Kiddycraft or Triang Pedigree, to which you might add Pippin/Raphael Lipkin, or even the Design Centre in London who were behind a lot of modernist/post-modern toys, but I wonder if I/we shouldn't look further . . . Scandinavia, Germany maybe, Denmark? My British link was based upon the policeman we saw last time, but he's quite generic and some European countries had similar police helmets back in the day, if only for traffic direction or ceremonials? While 'jhnptrqn' remembered a possible French connection?

I don't know, but I remain on the hunt (if only to see if there are piggy-wiggies!), and finding out will be fun, which we will, one day, all this stuff is mass-produced and all survives somewhere.

Larami's set is on a blister held into an open frame by the fold-back sides, and the most notable difference (as I didn't record my notes on marks and release-pin dimples) is that some of the animals are in colours as leery as the packaging, with orange dog and horse and cows in pink and blue!

Combining the tower sections! "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down you hair!" I also remember (now) that the buildings in the two sets were slightly different, even though the tower stacked, with different dimensions on the Larami barn (right hand) and a roof with an inner ledge more like the smaller building's from the anonymous set.

One of them was the same as my loose ones (the unbranded one I think?), but with Chris's unmarked sample, we seem to be looking at at least three sources, which is not uncommon for this kind of stuff . . . how many spinning UFO disc-toys, how many ramp-walkers, or jig-puzzle issuers!

There was also an inclusion! The hair of a paint brush (used to clean or lubricate the machine-tools) or a factory cat's whisker managed to get caught in the blister-sealing iron, and survived for another four-odd decades untouched, stuck under the rim of the clear plastic cover!

We shall return to these, for sure, I like them and their design and place in plastics history is worth a study, while with three professions and a farmer, you feel there must be more figures, where are the women and children? And pigs . . . gotta keep the hope alive; farms need piggy-wigs!

RTM is for Rack Toy Month! F is for Fun-Tastic Fighters of Fire and Felony!

Well, saved July with a quick plethora of posts over 48-hours, lots going on in real life I won't bore you with; it's just life and it happens to all of us, but it did mean I just couldn't justify faffing around with toys on the internet! Although I posted the odd bit elsewhere, but they require simple uploading to the anonymity of auto-produced meta-data on the part of the host servers - a Blog actually requires a little actual work!

But, here we are, bloody August already! The weather's given us 20 years to live, which is nice, at least we have a target date now, I knew my '2055' was a bit optimistic when one of the activist science sites dropped to 2050 a while ago, now we're looking at 2040'ish!

But have any of your neighbours chucked out their tumble-dryer or dish-washer? Their Kärcher pressure washer, their four-wheeled gas-powered BBQ? Their fucking-great 4x4-crossover-SUV-utility Truck? No! So we're all going to die - quite soon . . . might as well enjoy tatty rack-toys while we can!

We actually saw variations of these sets some time ago here, with the same figures, and while these have been in storage since forever, the older post was ten years ago, so they 9the two paires of sets) are closer to each-other than to now!

Also there are three F's here; Funtastic, Fun-Tastic and Funtastik with a 'k', I haven't looked into it properly, but I think we worked out in the past that the first two are UK (one word) and US (hyphenated) branches of the same Hong Kong based jobber/shipper (with connections to many other rack-toy importers/carriers), while the 'k is another second use of the term as branding.

The figures; seen before more than once, following the Fantastic tag will reacquaint you with all sorts of polymer tat, including larger pose-counts of these, which seem to be copies (or just re-packs) of figures also carried by Ja-Ru.

The funniest thing about these is that the helicopter is a poor copy of the Thomas the Tank Engine helicopter, or at least I thought it was, I now can't find it, so it may be another kids license, I've definitely seen it in blue or white with a  face on!

F is for Follow-up - Merit 'Tarzan And His Animals'

Last time we looked at this set (ten years ago!) I suggested an Elephant was the missing animal, and I'm pleased to say it was! I also said if I got a better one, I'd swap box lids, but I didn't, I got a worse one, however it did fit the new A3 scanner so . . . swings and roundabouts!

Figures first, and the immediate question is -  was the previously seen set home-painted? I suspect not; this game probably ran for a few years and like a lot of people at the time (Britains, Crescent, Lone Star), painting was seen as a quick money-saver and got dropped at some point?

So now 'Ivorene' flats, in a creamy-white, the dark spots are the anchor-points of embedded metal plates on the underside of the base, used for magnetic manipulation!

The cage you are trying to drag the animals to, if you are the horrid player (nice players [Tarzan] are trying to save them) with a hidden wand, it's half Driving School and half Answer Robot (both also Merit games as some point), missing it's door/gate last time, when I unpack I will save this board and the older box!

I will also have to carefully transfer the older pull-ring, and it will have to be careful, as this one was complete until I touched it, whereupon it fell into three pieces and I have to assume the other will be equally age-brittled?

The magnetic arm with which you locate, capture and drag the poor animals by any-which-way (even tail-first) possible, back to the cage!

Scanned lid; a bit tatty, but higher resolution/detail than last time!

Rules, also scanned as a high-res' for those who need to know how it ends!

F is for Follow-up - Mini Windmills

Just a quick one to follow-up on the stackablewindmill we saw here, which I found at Sandown Park nearly a year ago.

The Hong Kong one I referenced in the above link is the grey one seen here, and it's not quite the copy I thought it was, so it may be more akin to a Dutch tourist keepsake like the one we saw more recently here, also a Sandown find. Although that yellow one isn't the HK's donor either having a round base marked-up as brickwork.

I guess there must be many of these, and the HK-copy is after one of the many! There is more similarity between the sails of the two illustrated above though, so some cross-pollination was going on, if only to save a bit on production costs. Typically the yellow one's gone away now, but wasn't here for the comparison shots either, so we will return to then all another time!

The three together, suitably painted, would give a lot of atmosphere to war-gaming the invasion of the Low Countries in 1940 though, a bit small for 1:144, a bit large for 1:300 micro-armour, but covering both!

TITM is for Toys in the Media - The Rest . . . For Now!

These are all the other things in a folder it'll be nice to see the back off for a bit, as they've been sitting around in Picasa for about three years now! Vaguely in order of their being deposited in the folder, with something a little different at the end!

Full page spread in The Metro or 'i', probably CGI'd Russian nesting dolls advertising a give-back to the LGBTQI+ community by Paddy Power . . . every time Russia scoured a goal, money went to Putin's hated gays! The funny thing is, I susspect Putin's an every-way predatory deviant . . . but the witnesses are probably all in the ground, except his poor ex-wife who's in internal exile in Kaliningrad!

And it's nice to see that while I was earning my own opprobrium from 'over there' for questioning some of the 'eastern' production, its promotion, price and where - exactly - the money was going, other - more mainstream - sources were also realising Russia was not a friend - of anybody.

Oh, I'll have plenty more to say on the subject, don't you worry . . . unless you're in the Penn-State Toy Soldier mafia, in which case you may well worry? I'll name you because you put your names to your insensitive comments, lacking all self-awareness, or awareness of the greater world picture, you nasty little, right-wing, selfish, brain-dead shitheads.

Taken before I'd got my new scanner, and sadly out of focus, but you can see it's Kenco using some cheapo, substitute vinyl-rubber, rack-toy Chinnamals to advertise their excellent granulated goodness! Yeah-nah-yeah, I used to take Kenco, before I realised Douwe Egbert's gave me an unending supply of self-seal storage jars!

I like this one, on one level it's a pretty non-descript advert for something your subconscious will ignore the instant you realise it's not for you, but on another level it's using a toy frog to trigger the large-print tagline, while the toy bus reinforces both the toy/key-ring motive, and that it's about two drivers, one having more useful insurance coverage than the other - get on the back of your better insured friend, or get the bus!

I think this and the previous were taken from copies of The Economist?

This is more of a joke-ad', I can't remember where from, but something like The New Yorker, circa 1960's, maybe something more mainstream like Mad Magazine? It is however; still 'toys in the media' and came via Brain Heiler's Facebook group I think?

Two from my Facebook feed, following the same trope of using a model house to sell on-line Estate Agency (Real Estate) services. The two buildings are quite different so may have separate origins, and I wonder if they might be houses for gerbils or other small pets, or maybe money-banks strategically posed to hide the coin slots?

Touristy/novelty pound/dollar-store stuff, though, I think? However - from the size of the hands - very useful for war-gaming in 54/60mm scales. Both could pass for Western Europe or New England and both are pretty simple, timeless designs.

Back to an old trope here, previously seen on a couple of book covers and a health thing; the model-kit runner. Here employed as street-furniture outside the Japanese HQ of Shizuoka Models, incorporating a post box, there are similar constructions around the plant's wider site, some in blue.

Real-steam steam-rollers (probably Mamod - the current Model 1312 [short version] looks almost the same) being used to sell the luxurious smoothness of Cormar carpets! Bry-Nylon was that terrible stuff which snagged you fingernails, skinned your knees and gave you shocks if you had the wrong footwear . . . and the shit which gathered in the little ravines between the fluffy-islands!! Published circa-1970; a magazine advert for awfully-awful, bloody-awful carpets.

Not a movie still, not a fan's CGI, not a 'toy in the media', and while Paddington has been seen here before now; not actually Paddington, not even a bear . . . this is a dog! A toy-dog if you like, a Pomeranian to be precise (no piccolo :-( ), who gets dressed-up as Paddington by his owner! You can't make this shit up, but he (she?) makes a very good Paddington!

F is for Follow-up - LLL is for Locati

One of the lesser competitors to Kinder who seem to come and go, this lot have gone (I think) although traces of them remain on the internet and they may have been swallowed by another firm, my Italian isn't that good, while I haven't the time to translate what's left on half dead web-pages or Google-Earth results!

I posted a couple of figures which had appeared in passing a while ago and then Chris Smith sent us one, which I've said is probably Kinder, but I'm not sure, well now I'm at least sure this one (below) is Locati, but that doesn't mean some are not Kinder issues too!

The figure in question, the three previously seen are more flesh-coloured, or light-tan with a less-glossy surface. He comes with a plug-in loin-cloth/flap, a totemic staff to hold and a lovely headdress with buffalo horn adornment.

However he and the two previously-seen figures all have a hole in the forehead, which is clearly to take the other headdress illustrated in the consumer slip (hidden by his furry slip-over one), and (further to my previous comments on these) I'm still convinced one of mine has a little flat drum which locates where this chap has his flap, a belief which is reinforced by the fact that there's a perfectly good sculpted flap under the plug-in one!

Yeah! Apologies for the blurry shot but he's gone away again so I couldn't re-shoot it!

A close-up of the figure, my suspicion is that the figures come from a  third party like Res-RP, Giodi or Dulcop and were carried by Locati and Kinder or someone else (Aras, Balaban, Cose Progetti, Czapp, LZ-Ziani, Marajà, Menotti, Metro, RK-Rübezahl - There's dozens of them!), with the one sculpt in two sizes and various plug-in, slip-on or other accessories like the wedge-in staff, here?

I have three other Locati gifts, so suspect these were the edible chocolate bears I bought in the Post Office in North Camp back in the late 1990's/early-2000's? It's all noted in the archive and I vaguely remember four of them, I have the wrappers somewhere in the archive too, as they were all different colours and metallic foil so quite pretty and worth hanging-on to as packaging. They were in a counter display box, two layers in threes or fours giving a 24 or 32-count for the whole box?

The Flamingo is very good and real 'Kinder' fare, while the teeny-tiny construction bricks (in a frangible eraser-rubber with polyethylene joint-wedges) is an old-old (1970's) Kinder design (I think), while the playtime milk-bottle (“Thatcher, Thatcher - milk snatcher”) is a crayon, another common Kinder trope. Were they [Locati] actually clearing old Kinder stock?

These three all state 'Made in the Philippines' while the Indian warrior is clearly claimed for Italy, where Locati are/were based in Magnago? Were old Kinder tools bought by a Philippine maker, or are they pure knock-offs?

A comparison with a Kinder Ostrich, Emu . . . (?) Big Bird! Kinder have done several flamingo's over the years, including one as good as- (or even the same as-) the Locati one, but here the Locati has the edge over the slightly lumpy and simpler Kinder model.

The Giocattoli Sicuri cartouche on two of the consumer-slips is the Italian toy-safety certifier, based in Laigueglia, Italy and formed in 1978.

TITM is for Toys in the Media - Soldiers

Being a round-up of toy soldiers in advertising and the wider world which I've been stuffing in the Toys in the Media folder for a while now, both modern stuff and some vintage bits.

This is a book I found on Amazon looking for something else, I rarely read novels (other than sci-fi) so it didn't interest me particularly, not that that doesn't . . . what I mean is; it's here for the cover not the contents which may be very good, but I don't care/didn't bother to find out! Modern 'army-man' pose, sinisterly blured, off-centre and allowing the shadow to do all the talking - good stuff!

Someone in Eastern Europe (?) is commando-bombing street signs with army-men, purpose unknown (road-sign sentries?), but it must be fun looking for them if you know it's going-on in your locale!

Another book cover, this one seems to show old Stadden designs for . . . Tradition? Old Guard? Probably from the 85mm or 120mm ranges? These have been painted, but silver, chromium-plated or polished pewter versions of many pieces exist. Again; the book and its contents are of no consequence to me.

This lady has a credit attached to 'Indigo' which means little, I think she was found on Twisted Sifter or Dangerous Minds, or off the back of a link from one of them? Modern Airfix copy (Afrika Korps officer/Rommel figure) parachute-toy converted to an earring! Although "converted" is a bit highfalutin' for cutting the strings and adding a wire-loop!

A well known (in its day) advertising campaign for White Horse Whiskey included this image, in various crops, which ran in the early 1970's in the Sunday newspaper colour-supplement magazines and on street hoardings I think.

I assume the figures will be something common (and relatively cheap) such as Minifigs (Miniature Figurines) but could be home-cast or something earlier like Alberken, while the farmhouse looks like, but isn't the Airfix 'Waterloo Farmhouse', I thought it was, but close-ups reveal enough differences to rule out the plastic kit. The descriptions and sketches of the time are many and enough to build similar farmhouses!

This is an icing plaque from crafter Yvette Mayorga and is all icing, but in a frame, not on a cake! Not sure if it's an army-man or a cowboy, but again a modern Hong Kong/China figure has been skillfully modelled.

The first series of Blackadder (The Black Adder) was the least celebrated, yet set-up all the tropes for the future works and is probably my favourite after the trenches of the last full-run. In one episode Richard IV (Brian Blessed) is war gaming 'diplomacy' with one of his lieutenants, using large (Papier-mâché, plaster?) figures on the floor, I took a few stills last time I watched it.

Then I thought where are The Avengers stills I took, only to remember I posted them ages ago!