H is for How They Come In - Theo's Parcel 1 of 2

This lovely parcel of Euro-treats (all the more so since the uneducated mass voted Brwreakshit!) arrived at the start of October . . . where's that gone? I don't know about you but someone's just stolen more than six weeks from me, that's nearly two months-full!

Anyway, I'd all but forgotten that Theo van der Werden asked for my address ages ago, and despite his own real life tribulations, he managed to send these to the blog and there's a fair lot to look at so let's get stuck in!

I actually came home to this on the doorstep, as it came via a courier, not Royal Fail, so it hadn't been with whatever came that morning and by the time I came back from town (with a dinosaur in my grasping mitts) it was sat there, "Hey Dude; look at me!" you will notice that Theo put his beloved Snakes & Ladders game on the top, a gift I appreciate more than the rest of the contets of the box, which are all lovely.

As an aside, anyone in the UK notice Collectors Gazette managed an article on Snakes & Ladders a couple of months after I'd posted the subject twice? They just did military trains too . . . again; a month or so after we looked at them here, twice . . . filed under the 'fancy that' news department! But then we've had ten-years of their A-Z trope, which began about six months after this Blog was born with, err . . . an A-to-Z trope! [whispers . . . they also seem to use Moonbase for ideas, but at least they sometimes credit that site!]

Now, these are really Easter gear, but a donation report is a donation report, so here they are with two broken legs courtesy of the courier, easily mended the same day, but we'll look at the close-ups next Spring. On the right is the catalogue image from DS Plastics (also courtesy of Theo - the dog is from another set), which lets us know who was behind them! Aren't they sweet; they're all little Easter-eggs!

Evolution! My town purchase the same day!

Also from DS Plastics, these are smaller (60mm), soft polyethylene versions of the footballers we saw both marked to Pak-Me-Mee (white plastic) and unmarked (flesh coloured) in a 110mm (four inch) size, whether this means DS Plastics made the [earlier?] original hard polystyrene ones is still anybody's guess, but is seems more likely?

Next to them, on the left of the upper image are two of the Manurba athletes, but when I say Manurba, there's always the caveat these days that they may be Dom Plastic or Heinerle, and no one seems quite as sure as they used to be about all three!

Ancients and Medievals include a small soft 'ethylene Marx mounted knight from the late window boxes (picked-up two interesting ones at Sandown on Saturday), a larger silver Marx, Supreme sculpts from two of their sets (top left) and the copies (middle and bottom row), a really nice catapult, Jean rider in the less common black plastic and a Hong Kong horse taken from Timpo.

A wodge of Revell WWII figures (with WWI French) in 1:72nd scale, mostly US forces; Infantry, Paratroopers and Marines) and some British Para's in need of some paint stripper.

Army Men and Astronauts, accessories and a large roller! The ruined wall is particularly interesting, being a single moulding with a 90° turn. A couple more Supreme copy knights are joined by the small combat  soldier (top left by the barbed wire) who might be French 'bazaar' production; he's got his sleeves rolled-up and a M1 carbine which could put him in Vietnam, but as a fighter in the earlier Indo-Chinese conflict I suspect?

Note also the Arifix copy 'Afrika Korps'-man who's converted by the simple expedient of adding the Infantry helmet to an originally cap-wearing sculpt!

Wild West and a unusual superhero type who is a solid, and probably from a blind-bag or capsule line/rage? The two painted cowboys are new to me; similar to those you can find in the UK, whether Herald, Lone Star or Crescent copies, and in the same pale plastic of some oblong-based figures I've got, but here (two Swoppet copies) with cloud-bases and brighter paint.

The flesh-coloured trio are Airfix 1:32nd set copies, but not in the usual creamy-white either, I may have brands (or set titles) for them on one of the dongles, I know I have had some luck identifying two lots of the paler ones and may have ID'd these too?

These premiums are lovely, and a whole set; to my shame I thought I'd scanned the Albert Heijn insert sheet and accidently put it with all the other capsule stuff, but I can't find it, so I must have forgotten to? Anyway they all went off to storage weeks ago, so we'll have to return to them another day, I think I have another set by the same maker, so we'll do them together with their inserst, in the meantime - they aren't the Ziani set (12 rather stilted figures), nor the Kinder set (a basic 10 figures), but 15 main/supporting characters, 17 if you count the chipmunks!

Many, many thanks to Theo, he has sent lots of images to the blog, but usually one's and two's waiting for me to get round to them, or around to them again, and I know he's having his own real life difficulties, so it's very kind of him to go to such effort right now, if at all and I'm very grateful - Cheers Theo!

Missed Sunday by a hour; Doh! Part Two sometime tomorrow later today hopefully!

News, Views Etc . . . Busy Today, Sandown Park Tomorrow!

 

Another day where Real Life impinged upon my abilities to Blog frivolous toys - How very dare it! While - don't forget - it's Sandown Park tomorrow, and with mild temp's and reasonable weather forecast, there's no real reason to not make the effort!

Probably try to start to make the move to think later about how to tackle posting something more substantial on Sunday? In the meantime two old shots of a post-'H is for How . . .' photo-shoot/sort-out, both from January 2019, a Chris Smith Xmas-lot if I'm not mistaken, it's all in the stash for future posts, what can you spot?

F is for Fatabet - the Slimfont of Self-indulgence!

Yeah, there'll be a few of these going forwards too; it's my Blog! We’re back to early ideas of mine which were fleshed-out when I got stuck into CAD, but this one goes back to my childhood, or - at least - teenage flirtations with design, and my attempt at an alphabet or font I originally called 'Fatabet', pronounced fat-a-bet, for obvious reasons!

The pages of my old sketch-book from collage, back in 1981-3, and my attempts to design an alphabet in which all the letters were contained within a circle; I think there were a couple in the 1970's; Lettraset did one with smiley-faced suns I think, but despite having both Lettraset and Mechaorama catalogues, I didn't crib from them (if they come out of storage I'll compare the closest, but they may have been lost in a flood back in 2007?), and sort of gave-up when I couldn't solve a couple of letters, the 'B' was one and the 'D' which still niggles!

However, CAD was an obvious opportunity to have another stab at the old idea, and I quickly got some geometric rules established and started playing around with the harder letters and some punctuation. You can see that 'B' (and 'D') along with 'Q' are coming out of the circle and I'm still not 100% happy with the first 2, the 'Q' however works, as it's already an odd-one!

I quickly used it for my signature block on all my drawing files/print-outs, and started thinking about other treatments; most fonts have a bold and italic version, so in playing-around I've ended up with several potentials!

And yes, the Fatabet got renamed Slimfont, although I know I could never use Fatboyslim, or Slimshady commercially, or not without passing many pieces of silver to two guys who probably have enough already!

Slimshady actually gave me the ultimate version (see below), while I don't think I named the one bottom-left, which ought to be Slim Outline but I already used Slimout for the standard font, so maybe Slim Jazzy?

Here we see CAD'ed versions of Slimwall (greenish) and Fatboyslim (multicoloured), which - latter - gave me the idea for a Christmas card I think I posted here at the time - 2012? With a construction stage at bottom left, before I'd positioned the light-source for the shadows, and at bottom right, my prepared design doubled for printing on A3 card-stock.

Which is here again! Well, it's only about six weeks away now! You use a single 'light' so the lines from the shadows, followed-back through the letters, all go to a single vanishing-point to enhance the 3D effect of the letters floating over the 'card' on the card!

And no matter how bad the year's been I hope over the next few weeks, your Christmas this year shapes up to be better than the last two - it can't just keep getting worse . . . can it?

Some other stuff, even in the digital age, it seems a lot of paper still finds its way into the project folder, not all of it explainable, but clearly I've started tackling the numbers and looking at font-size or kerning (ratios of gaps between certain pairs of adjacent letters) or something!??

I don't think I ever progressed beyond the numerals you can see here (left) or have even got to choosing a final from some of those where there are alternatives shown, but I was doing it in college-time and had other stuff to get on with.

Once I had a near finished alphabet (right) I moved on to other things and haven't got much further, I tweak something from time to time, but time's short these days, although I hope one day to put a finished version on a free-site like DAFonts.

One change you may have noticed is that the parallel line 'rule' established by the original 'A' and 'B' from my teenage version, which was carried on with the 'C', 'E' and 'F' (still not happy with 'D'!) and then taken through the whole alphabet, has now been dropped for 'W' following the enforced  'angle rule' for 'X' and 'Y', which I think makes it much better, the 'W' isn't just an upside down 'M', but a new letter in its own right!

Indeed you wonder if the reason all those angled letters are all at the back-end of the alphabet ('Z' is another) might be because when they were codifying it (monks? a Caesar?), they'd run out of strait and curved shapes/combinations which were suitably different from each other!

But back to Slimshady . . . once I was 3D CAD'ing more complicated solids than the pulled-out 2D of Fatboyslim, the obvious final progression was a fully 3D Fatabet (top right), which replaced my signature panel on the 'paper space' drawing files - main/left-hand image, taking the original circular disc concept to a full sphere.

New 'W' mind! The constriction of boolean geometries meant some simplification to get the curved ogee 'edges' to go-in properly! In simple terms, boolean means "Right, OR wrong, there is NO grey", and if your invisible mesh, underlying everything, has a single fault, the whole thing is 100% wrong!

I'm actually tackling a letter 'R' in the bottom-right shot and you can see how you pull-up the 2D 'R' (white lines), leaving you with an extruded, R-shaped rod (red lines), which you then subtract from a solid sphere (pink Lines) leaving you with a stable ball-letter, that then needs some sharp-edges rounding-off, which is where it can all go very wrong; if the continuous ogee (which runs right around the edges of each 'trench' or hole) won't go-in when told to!

For instance, the ogee running round the larger trenches in the 'H', have to have a greater radius than the smaller trenches in the 'W', which can affect the visual uniformity of the different letters in the alphabet, a uniformity which is precisely what I've been trying to achieve sine 1981! 'D' notwithstanding - the bastard, so; you have to compromise at each stage, but these two look OK together  . . . I think?

And . . . it's all good fun, that's the thing, it's another skill, it's another life-experience, you know? Another box ticked in an otherwise miserably short life. Parachuting is still on the list!

T is for Two - Cowpoke's and Injun's

Been busy yesterday annd today, but not on toy figure stuff, so nothing for a while, but let's redress that with a quick pair now, off to the wild, Wild West we are . . .

Bought this morning; we've seen various elements of large and small sets from this unknown Chinese maker, on two continents and under a dozen brands/brand-marks (Maxxi Toys, Stobok, Funtastic, Aliki, Liberty Imports), this one is PMS, and possibly a McColl's exclusive, if you can find a McColl's still open, some seem to have been saved for now, IF they have a Post Office attached?

My favorite of the four; waving a sawn-off, up-and-under in his non-shooting hand, while keeping a firm-grip on his bottle of hooch with the left . . . "You're mah bloody best mate you are, gee'us a fight yer' varmint, hic!"

This was in Picasa and may be a variation of a previously seen shot, but let's get it cleared; how the horses are put-together. A while ago I broke-up the 'everything else' folder and created thematic folders which are easier to scroll through, the wild West folder, for instance has 149 images, the old one was 3000+, but it means I can start to find stuff for 'bitty' posts, or to add to posts like this!

Also in that folder and originally downloaded from Amazon (probably last time we looked at them), I didn't note a brand (there were several!), and it's the biggest version of the many sets available, with everything - wagon, coach, Indian camp, sky-burial platform and figures + accessories and scenics included.

While these have been in the Rack Toy Month zone for more than two years and missed being published both last year and in this August's RTM, just gone.You can see elements of both Britains Swoppet's and Timpo in them along with copies of the Lone Star separate bases.

To be honest I thought they'd gone-up here 14-odd years ago, as they were in the first bunch of 54mm purchases at one of those last Dave McKenna-run Birmingham Toy Soldier shows in 2008, 9 or '10? Anyway, high time Benkson joined the tag-list!

Of the various Hong Kong swoppet copies/piracies, these (available under various names and as generics) are the ones most sought-out by dodgy-dealers, as the spears get used with Crescent or Lone Star medieval swoppets, the tomahawks get thrust into the hands of Blue Box knights, and the necklaces get re-used on the Britains Swoppet originals as they are the same PVC - caveat emptor and all that!

B is for Berline - Historex No. 30306 Plus Various Other Pre-configured Sets

A Berlin is a type of fully-sprung 'luxury' carriage, usually enclosed (Preiser do a number of both closed and open configurations, in HO-gauge compatible 1:87th scale), originally a German design, add an 'e' and you have a French one!

I couldn't be arsed to add all the catalogue numbers to the title track, so they are in the above images, I think the 30306 is a later code? I don't know what l'Emperor's original code was?

V is for Vivandiere - Historex No's 761, 762, 763 and 744

I think the closest translation is 'provisioner' or 'provender'. and it doesn't seem that the British army had quite the same role, there were hanger's on, women and children with some connection to the soldiery helping out at camp, and following the army, but not the semi-formal, vaguely uniformed women who served the French army, a concept which was passed to the American army during the War of Independence.

There's also some 'camp' stuff in there, but we can tell from the catalogue codes they are all expected or intended to be used together. And obviously, this cart was not within the Gribeauval System, and while of a common cart design, probably differed between Vivadieres?

News, Views etc . . . Herald Toys & Models Update - Cherilea Week!

Newer new news from Barney's site;

". . . this week is Cherilea week, as we list more from the superb Wiltshire collection, having a particularly strong Cherilea section, with a number of loose sets, including Swoppet Spacemen and Mexicans. Have a good Bonfire Night!"

Barney's still here;

Website

evilBay

N is for Nottingham Mafia's 'Normous Men . . . and things!

I have a few of these elsewhere, I think we saw one in the comparison shots on the Airfix Space Warriors page, but I've had a bit of luck with two lots, so we're looking at them next. I nearly got a third lot, but two other bidders recognised them and bid each-other way out of my bracket!

Games Workshop's experiment with large scale 'Fighting Fantasy' figures, not as unsuccessful as some would have you believe, and I suspect many are still out there in the half-forgotten collections of sixty-something's who were into Games Workshop back in the late 1970's.early 1980's, and who would have grabbed these without thinking.

Indeed; while they don't show up that often at the moment (hence silly prices), when they do they are as often on the card as loose, but on the card they are identifiable and fetch the really silly money!

As you can see you get a solid 'ring-hand' body with [interchangeable] head and a selection of weapons, staffs, tools, shield &ect., which would come on a circular runner behind the figure in a blister card, figures were always grey, while the 'weapon runners' were a matching-gray, silver or gold. Relevant runner blisters' also got a sticker for the shield.

Hero Knight type and obvious Dwarf, there were about 30 figures I think (so I have some way to go), and they were divided into good and bad, more D&D than W40k, but then early GW was more D&D than W40k!

Good Wizard and bad Wizard . . . any resemblance to Gandalf and Saurman is purely coincidental, and no - the Nottingham Mafia haven't asked me to say that! As GW's small scale had left 25mm behind, in favour of a 28-mil which by the time everyone had invested in 'Slotta' bases made everything closer to 30mm-plus, so too, these were way beyond any pretense at 54mm, with a 60+ size bracket.

Orkey Boys (or Orky Boiz if you've been captured by the Mafia!), one needs paint-stripping, which I will get round to one day, and because they are soft polyethylene, unlike the 'styrene (or whitemetal) of their smaller cousins, it will be a relatively simple procedure.

2nd purchase and I think I've run out of blurb-material . . . subject, contents, packaging, maker, scale/size, material and some opinions? Boxes ticked! Well . . . what to say . . . the long-sword is a Hong Kong copy of Cherilea I think and nothing to do with the rest of the stuff in this post, nor do the daggers look right - medieval Britains Swoppet was my first thought; for the small one, but it fits! I suspect the larger is Playmobile or something like that?

Beyond wizardry . . . this chap is a full-on necromancer and the first thing he seems to have brought back from the dead is himself! Given the size of these, I think it's fair to say they could have been better sculpted that they are, they have the same 'heavy' sculpting with chunky steps between over-emphasised detail elements, as found on the smaller gaming stuff, but they can still paint-up well.

Another goodly-knight or Adventurer, I gave him the dodgy sword as the others had gone away - which means I have these in three places now . . . Doh! More when I find them and we ended-up with enough blurb for the last two paragraphs!

And . . . going back to my comments about where these [mass-produced] figures may be hiding, I wouldn't be surprised if they become increasingly common on the sales market over the next ten-to-fifteen years, and some of those silly prices may well become obsolete?

R is for Roma in Resin

Another purchase, a while ago now, was these resin Romans also going un-bid, on a low start price which I snapped up, as I've so much resin now I've stopped resisting its inexorable advance into the tubs of polymer loveliness! I am resisting 3D prints instead; 10,000 sculpts in any scale you want? That way madness lies!

A Centurion, three Legionaries, a pair of Gladiators (two Murmillo/Thraex types I think), and three members of the Vatican Guard, who may be modern or historical, I'm not sure if they've worn the same uniform for ever or if it was re-introduced at some point for ceremonials? As a lot they reminded me of some of the stuff we saw courtesy of Brian B in this post, and clearly are of that ilk - tourist souvenirs.

The Centurion; nothing special and at around 45/50mm they won't fit that closely with many of the others in the Roman tub, although the thick bases will help lift them into the ranks. All manufactured in a rather pallid flesh-tone resin, and being not well made (like a lot of this tourist stuff), they have the look of the undead about them!

The Troops; and indeed a repaint would improve the lot of them considerably, the throwing-weapon shafts are steel wire, so the odd lengths (see first image) make no sense beyond a lack of duty of care in the manufacture, and the four ancient soldiers are marked on the front-edge of the base 'Roma', Italian for Rome, so obviously tourist keepsakes.

The Gladiators;, improved by A) apparently having a better/different sculptor who fed them properly, B) having all-over paint including the flesh and C), being irregulars! I like these two, and not having Rome on the base may have come from somewhere else, there are lots of visitable circus arenas', beyond the Coliseum? But one suspects they were all bought together!

The Vatican 'Swiss; or Papal Guard; they have a flag-stone pattern on their bases, no title (not enough room for 'Guardia Vaticana'!) and some odd-looking pole-arms which should be beefeater-type halberds, but are all three different, in two cases due to short-shotting; they are resin, not the metal of the Roman Infantry, and again, poor quality control is to blame.

Having picked them all to pieces (it's the nature of this rough resin), I still like them, the Vatican Guard are unusual, they all add to the whole, and they were cheap!

H is for How They Come In - Recent Purchases

Just a Picasa clearer; a few things I've managed to snaffle in the last few months, which were shot and sitting in Picasa waiting for a job, and this is it!

These were two or three lots/sources I think and we may have see some of them already in show reports, but here they've all been cleaned, some of them were very dirty. I just love 'em and will always grab them when I see them going cheap (£€$12 or £€$24 per figure on eBay gets ignored - they're not rare!), as there are a lot to find.

Here we have three of the late phenolic/early - less than stable - 'styrene ones in bright colours, with, upper left, three similar-aged silver ones, so probably all original Lido or Winco Condar, while the rave-dancer, top right, is a more modern lightweight polystyrene one with a better finish.

The blue one had black spots on, which might have been a past-owner's paint, or a slow-growing mould eating something in the polymer, I couldn't tell, but it hasn't fully removed despite some serious chemicals, so the now pale-purple staining seems permanent?

Going un-bid-on on evilBay, this was Jecsan or Reamsa, I can't remember, the former I think, to go with those over-sized nativity figures I bought in a charity shop a few Christmases ago? And it's big, about 8 or ten inches, gone to storage now, so I can't give you a definitive size, but more Palm-tree comparisons (we did some of the flats a while ago) are in this Blogs future!

I got a eMail from Chris Smith with a link to this lot and one bid secured it! I have some of most or most of some, but as grist-to-the-mill it was worth a speculative bid, and the highlights were the two musicians and the four Wild West, which I think are 1970's French bazaar copies of Dom-Heinerle, Siku or similar, earlier, German premiums?

The pile of pastel Cowboys and Indians are also interesting as they are late, sub-piracies of Giant's own Britains copies, while there are a few plug-in US Marines from rack-toy rubber-boats, a lovely little dog, two Thomas paddling Indians which may be the Giant-copy size, but later production than them (so French copies of Manurba's version?), a Chinese Villager and . . . the rest - cheers to Chris for the heads-up!