X is for Xandria - Part One

I can't believe I hadn't used that title before given the paucity of X's to choose from, but I hadn't, so now I have. In the US, we know they were credited to a Xandria - Holland, and have to assume in Holland it was just plain Xandria, or at least, I think it was, there being nothing solid in the archive.

And I don't have to eat a terribly large slice of humble pie, as I corrected myself at the time on Moonbase several years ago, and have since established them as [Dutch] Xandria here too, although it is conjecture as that confirmatory evidence is still missing.

I have nicked the previously linked-to image from Kirk's site, purely for research purposes (http://secretfunspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/vintage-ad-sheets_28.html) in getting it all here at the same time, but have sent people there in the past and would recommend that you visit, it's a long post with tons of fascinating stuff; a Britains point-of-sale Ad', Monogram Luminators, toy filled promotionals, Lindburg.  (sadly no Verity or Una pens though!), somewhere I'm sure I have a non-promotional/un-branded version of the ice-scraper in the second image! And his farewell post (click on the header image to 'go' home) has cool stuff too.

Anyway, these (above) are mostly the Pixies, and I've told the tale of Auntie Ruth or Margaret giving us four younger cousins one each, one summer, and we will look at a few in this and the next post, but Xandria also did specific promotionals, Disney characters, TV related figures and other stuff. And it seems that - in the US at least - they were sold in little blister-cards.

Now on the day, way back when, I remember the dog tramp/hobo and the gopher/rabbit chef, one of which must have been my brother's, but I can't remember what the fourth was? The pig looks a lot like Podgy, from the Rupert Bear strip in the Daily Express (ad the lovely annuals, with their self-colouring pages), but is actually a named character from one of Xandria's promotional series.

You can also see fairy-tale characters like Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Jack of the beanstalk, stealing the Golden Goose, Hansel & Gretel a frog-Prince, witch,  the Pied Piper and a naked emperor!

My Xavier mouse, his tale was told in a previous post, but there were images left; when you find a elusive childhood memory's item, you tend to take a few shots more than you might actually need!

These three are from Theo, via eMail and his clever depth-of-field scanner, and are of a Policeman from a comedy TV series called Swiebertje (Swiper (or nicker? as in arrester?)), and the character is called Bromsnor (hum moustache), he's one of four in the key-ring line/set.

In the middle is one which Theo though might be from Hong Kong, whether because I originally though they were from there, or because it's a summer uiform, or a different material/style I don't know and Theo's too busy with Real Life to ask right now. Note the ring is a different - push/press - design too.

The third is a police-dog, obviously! He's from the large range of premiums Xandria did for the Tiel-based De Betuwe jam factory, they had a mascot (Flipje) who was actually a red fruit, although I'm not sure what friut, he may be a raspberry, or a more generic thing representing all the fruits in the local orchards (plums, cherries, apples?), he has a statue AND museum in Tiel town!

But the promotion had thirty-nine other anthropomorphic characters to collect, each with a different name and this policeman is called Agent Bulderen, he's dressed quite like a British beat-bobby, but as we've been a vague extension of Holland since 1689, that sort of makes sense! I think a meaningful translation is 'Agent Blunder'?

Two I picked up in a mixed lot, the damaged one is a Disney character (I've previously mused they may not have touched that franchise, but they obviously did!) of Pete, Bad/Black/Peg-leg/Pistol Pete! I think? He's lost his head and is packing a pistol, and you can see how the core (here snapped at the neck) of these figures runs up through the body and head to the ring-loop!

The other is a bit of a regency fop, and I suspect from the expanse of smooth front clothing/bib, that he is missing an advertising or branded promotional sticker, as several of those we will look at have.

Here they are again (upper shot) with the inset pixy from the advertising trade Ad., a grumpy looking fellow! Below them are three more which I think Theo sent me, but I may have taken it off of feeBay; a chap in a top hat, an Indian (is he the same character as those non-key-rings the other day?) we'll look at again in the text post and a clown, the clown I thought might not be Xandria the other day, I can forget something on the end of my nose, believe me! And a circus ringmaster, we'll look at in a minute, without his waistcoat & cravat sticker.

The big guy is also in the US image (with Puss in Boots) and you can see with his t-shirt/under-vest sticker how it could be easily replaced with a different sticker for a corporate logo or event, and - as stock items - even for something small like a local retailer or a village fête, maybe needing only a few hundred units?

Another gopher/rabbit type in a bell-hop's (urrrr . . . rabbit, hop, geddit!) uniform, which could be me over reading it as he's another Flipje Betuwe character, known as Trein Konijn (train rabbit), so I'm not over-reading it; he's a station hopping, bell-hop! It could get worse . . . no, he's actually a driver I think! He's missing a sticker round his hat.

The third is that ring-master and you can see, again, from the missing sticker, he could be used as an advertising hording for something else. Which [promotionals or premiums] seems to have been the driving concept behind Xandria's whole product range.

A close up of Pete's foot with the full licensing message, I have yet to find Hanna Barbera or MGM stuff in Xandria's styleing? And three more Flipje Betuwe characters, from the left in the smaller, face-on image; Juffrouw Geit van Geitenstein (Miss Goat van Geitenstein), Kapitein Rob (a walrus with a corn-cob pipe!) and Mol (mole).

Theo thinks the jam premium range appeared in the late 1960's which would tie-in with the Thunderbirds set  we looked at here also (some time after 1965/6'ish), while the US 'Branch' Xandria-Holland were registered in New York in 1971, with the 'Pixies' which would tie-in with when I was losing Xavier's cheese around 1970-72, clambering around in the hay-stack!

And they are mostly 55-60mm and PVC. We'll look at a equally eclectic selection from Theo in the next post.

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

So, continuing with Theo's donation to the Blog . . . I wrote as the opening to quite a bit of blurb, Monday night, for the finished article, which I then managed to delete!

Not the first time, it has to be said, but doing so brings with it both the depression of being very silly indeed and the knowledge you won't manage to re-write the article as well, in your own mind, a second time, it's one of those things, but I got the arse with myself, and sulked for a couple of days, then is was flat-viewing, then car trouble . . . then!

Anyway, we're here now, and continuing with Theo's donation . . .

. . . we'll quickly skirt-over a nice pile of Xandria key-rings, as there are full articles coming on them, but in the meantime and on the right, we have a mouse mascot/premium for the Dutch Frico (Friesian Co-Operative) cheese maker, they're still going and with both Edam and Gouda on their books, what's not to love there? Some warm sourdough rolls, salted butter, a few grapes and an apple . . . heavan! He's lost his nose though!

The other two are Germany's 'Swergs', can't remember if the Gnomes/Dwaves are Manurba (via Peltro or Fontanini, we had a link to a page of them once but I can't find it?) or someone else, although these days the caveat with Manurba seems to be 'Might not be, or might be Dom Plastik or Heinerle', and no one is as sure about all-three now, as they were a decade or so ago!

I think Theo explained the Indian to me but I can't find the eMail! Another mascot/premium type I think? The dog looks to be composition,but it's just playwear, and he's missing a hat, while the clown is hard make much of, he shares some properties with the Xandria stuff, but not the central core and could also be a mascot/premium type?

On the right we have two Oriental types with faux-antiquing, similar to other Euro-premiums, while we saw 'Bad Santa' the other day. The MacDonald's Dragon is interesting as I'm pretty sure I have another in a different pose, possibly two, so they must have been a Happy Meal set, but some time ago? And I like the blow-moulded mouse, reminiscent of some Soviet-era Russian/East European stuff and maybe also a mascot/logo premium?

Mostly Kinder and the hard plastic cartoon figures who have their dedicated collectors but aren't that rare, just fun! The fold-up/curl-up animals on the bottom row are modern versions of the older wheeled '90's one, while the sloth-bear is part of the current trend under MPG for realistic or semi-realistic (some have doe-eyes) wildlife sets.

Some more Kinder and other egg/capsule toys (Onken, Nestle), mascots and premiums, I rather like the grey bear who looks to be someone's logo-character? And the rail or bus/tram worker looks familiar? The four down the bottom (orange warthog to blue elephant) are rubber and similar to Schleich 'mini' animals, but more cartoony, and probably part of a larger set/series?

Loving the little tree and I think the sheriff's badge (from the typesetting/font) is for Desperate Dan, mascot of Dandy Comic for years, while the little green man may be an early (1970's) Kinder prize?

Above will probably go on to charity (in storage at the moment) as I can't start on Action figures, no time, no space and the wrong generation! Although - see below - for a exception, but they all get recorded as they come through and the little Playmobil-like character may be an early Maxi-Egg prize?

While the stuff below used to be a single takeaway tub, but are now sorted into a stack of thematic tubs; traffic lights, road signs, other street signs, traffic cones, pumps & dispensers, street-lights/lamps, barriers, other street furniture &etc! All grist to the mill and one day I'll get an ID page organised for them all.

Only recently covered the integral-moulded wheel minis', but there's a few here (and I found a lot from a loyal reader in Finland I left out of the recent posts, so follow-ups coming!

In this lot are three nice Kinder old fashioned cars (middle left) and a die-cast from the same source, several earlier trucks (top row) some of which may be Siku, which might actually make them DS Plastics of Holland as they inherited a lot of Siku's 1950's novelty moulds.

Nice Land Rover (sans windscreen) and a teeny-tiny Transformer type with a double-barreled turret, and I think I've seen that Grand Prix racing car, either on a card, or in a board game?

This is lovely! Modern (1992) and made by Bandai, it's a near perfect 1:76/72nd scale, pull-back motor Thunderbird 4, and will look good on a shelf with those Captain Scarlet conversions from Airfix cowboys; I know they are different franchises, but one show's 20mm puppets are good enough for another's!

Almost saving the best for last, these are action figures, but they will stay, as they are plug/pop-together, soft polyethylene (think Airfix or Jean), and when I first saw them I thought either the Plasty-Airfix figures to go with the tee-pee we saw here a while ago from Gareth, or maybe Jean/Manurba.

But the Plasty-Airfix figures are smaller and there's nothing useful or obvious on Google for either Manurba or Jean, and both Theo and myself have drawn a bit of a blank. The problem being they are totally unmarked. Also they wet to storage before I measured them, so I can only say I think they were about between four and six inches.

The closest I've found is several models of Wild Bill Hickock (and a Wyatt Earp), from the Legends of the West set by Exel Toys of Hong Kong, which are apparently both marked, and dated 1975, but the figures seem to be joined/jointed with steel-tube rivets, while the donation samples are all-plastic, take-apart/plug-together?

The best I can come up with is that they must be copies of the Exel set (itself ripped-off/resurrected in 1991 by Imperial, with fatter polypropylene figures), probably by an anonymous rival a few blocks away from wherever Exel had their plant? Or; an earlier/later version of the Exel set? But any help from Action Figure aficionados would be appreciated to tie these down, or even just add a bit of background however shaky?

Many thanks again to Theo for all these, I hope I've done them justice shareing them with you, lots of interesting stuff, and we're starting to build a nice picture of DS Plastics here at Small Scale World, with gap-fillers and Kinder bits for future posts . . . Xandria next, then London, then Chris's lot, Peter, Sandown Park, more capsule updates, more other stuff . . . and canoes! Cheers Theo!

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!