H is for high Street Menagerie

The last of the 'Local' posts for Local People! These are actually from August 2021, they didn't do anything this summer - as far as I know, and they haven't done a Christmas one since I covered the giant nut-crackers a few years ago now.

But there have been some replacement Christmas lights, so maybe the budget went there? No blurb; it's really an exercise in clearing stuff from the laptop, and most of the animals are the same as last time, but there are a few changes (penguins and giraffe?), and I didn't get the leaflet, so don't know if this is all of them? But, they are figural and plastic . . . of a sort!

M is for Mawkishly Meowy Moggies!

A bit of non-Toy Soldier self-indulgence today, but it is Christmas and if I can't post this sort of stuff at this time of year when can I?!!

I found - at the back of a cupboard - that I'd inherited a rather Disneyfied mug with two cracks in it, as I wouldn't normally give such a pinkly sentimental piece house room, and as the finishing of any drink in it would result in two ceramic ears butting your forehead, it rather had to go. But it was loved enough by my late Mother to be kept at the back of the cupboard, so the overly-sentimental Hugh thought something better be done to retain the memory, for another decade or two, gods willing, at least!

A sharp blow from a heavy kitchen knife seemed to be the likeliest move, so placing a folded towel on the floor and kneeling over it I'm afraid I gave kitty a bit of a sharp whack up the jacksie with said implement, which worked a treat! Glued over the glaze with a bit of slip, the slipwhere kitten popped-off with barely a scratch.

I then filled her (pink bow?) with tiling-grout, let it go off, causing it to shrink back into the hollow/cavity, repeated the exercise and gave the rough finish a bit of a carving and filing.

Ergo; one slightly surprised looking, pink-bowed, all-white kitten joins all the genuine fairings and 1950's 'mantle ornaments' in the cat zone of the collection!

Where she will be joining - among others - these Charity shop, 50p jobbies! Three chalkware (mother-cat needs replacement eyes) and one ceramic of the Siamese type, these have been in the queue since 2016! Siamese's were very popular when I was a kid, you don't seem to see them so often now.

Back when the motorway network consisted of the M1 and A1(M) and getting round the top of London involved long journey's through Berkshire, Buckinghashire, Bedfordshire and Essex (where you raced from traffic jam to traffic jam!), there was a house somewhere which had two straw Siamese cats sitting on its thatched-roof, I sometimes wonder what happened to them? There were others, one gatehouse had a peacock, another cottage had several foxes!

The ceramic one (right) was made in Sussex (but not the famous Joan de Bethel 1923 - 2017), while the chalkwear examples (left) are just 'British Made', all seem to be cheap, smaller attempts at the better known and more sought-after Goebel or Winstanley Siamese's? Which is why they are 50p, not 50-quid!

That's it, something more acceptable to the hardliners later!

T is for Two - Machine Gunners

As I may have intimated, I acquired a few machine-gunners the other day, and while most of them will just be filtered into the collection for future use, there were one or two which are worth a closer look as stand-alone figures.

This is the Belgian firm of JSB, you may remember I had a very poor figure from them which I seemed to save with a thick coat of plumber's sealant a few years ago (he was still fine and stable last time I looked), he was also a pretty realistic figure, not something which can be claimed for this chap, who's channeling American 'dimestore' sculpts from the likes of Barkley or Manoil; single-highhandedly engaging aircraft (or cliff-top dwellers) with a 40mm pom-pom!

His barrel was very bent (further up, like a priapic flaking flak gun!), but I mannaged to bend it the other way with the hot-water system, although I was very careful and had several incremental goes, as I do't know what polymer this is, some phenol, formaldehyde or cellulose-based material I suspect? Proper toy soldier!

As is this fellow, a seven-part assembly of blow-moulded and vac-formed polystyrene (or celluloid, but I think the former in this case) sheet from Japan, he has moving arms and may have had a moving head once; it's now glued, fixed to the front. I don't recognise the logo-mark, which seems to be a single China-Japan-Korea compatible ideograph character ' 金 ' ?

But what a fantastic survivor of 1950's novelty tat. And; out of six successful bids (and one bidding war) to get most of them (one lot was lost to someone else), not to mention some mail-fail, probably my favourite out of the whole lot!

1-Horse Towns' are for 1-Elephant or 1-Camel Too!

I've been after more of these for ages, but what turned-up was a variation on what I was expecting! There are the W.Germany marked originals, the origin of which is supposed to be Manurba but these days that could be open to correction, then there are the Hong Kong copies, both of which come with moulded-on/in wheels and separate wheel/axle assemblies, but these arrived with separate wheels and metal axles, like a lot of other 1960's rack-toy jeeps and things.

This is them, the giraffe wagon is very similar to my German one, and with two each of horse, elephant or camel as draft animals it's reasonable to assume they are a complete set, I particularly like the elephant-drawn ones which have a monkey and cat on their roofs respectively. I think the orange one is the laundry wagon; it has a chimney and t-shirt drying in the kicked-up dust . . . nice!

Here in the 1966 Wilton's catalogue, they are the same colour/wagon configuration as the new sample, so we can be pretty sure they are the same set, and that the 'complete set' assumption was correct!

Whether it goes as far as six tools run in six colours (to match the catalogue art!), but those colours only, consistantly, or just coincidence I don't know, but I'll keep an eye out, and the evidence so far would suggest so? Fifty-cents for the set - those were the days!

PW is for Polymer Warriors!

Just a quickie, picked these up the other day as part of the 'machine-gun' lots, I missed them first time round although I was in the room I think, but I was there as a small-scale collector only and probably turned-down the free one at the door . . . shock horror!

The guys at PW have over the years managed to commission a re-run of Dulcop's tools, import Hing Fat, save the Rocco moulds, liaised with the saving of other moulds, offered other figures from time to time, published, or supported the publishing of a number of other books and guides, and - I think it's fair to say - supported the fledgling Replicants? A list which all other toy soldier magazine teams can only envy!

To commemorate the occasion of their 10th year of publishing and the putting-on of their legendary shows, they gave away one of these to each entrant to the 1995-show, back in the Queen Charlotte Hall days, just off Richmond town center, I think the door figures were red plastic, but lots of other colours/shades where run-off.

Those other colours were also available at the show, in these bags of five, but for a few silver-pieces, and as you can see mine are two dark, two mid- and one lighter green in that shade/range I call 'herb' green, which is 'errb to our French and 'urb to our US readers!

The figure is a late C19th 'colonial' era soldier, standing at attention, wearing a solar topee/pith helmet (safari helmet, salacot, sun helmet), or sola/shola topi - Indian, because it's made of shola pith!

Designed and sculpted by Peter Cole (of Replicants) for the magazine's tenth birthday, and it was intended (I think?) to go with those early Zang/Herald for Britains figures similarly posed - Sikh Indian, Highlander, 'Khaki Infantryman' and Guardsman (a few of which were also in the lot with these).

I now have a few, to make up from my previous heretical approach to the larger size, with red, bright green and purple-marbled ones being seen here in the past I think, so hopefully I'm forgiven, but I'll stand-by for corrections on the above details as it was a while ago and I wasn't paying attention at the time!

Plastic Warrior's Blog

T is for Two - Slime Zombies, or Rather; Zombies in Slime!

Sometimes I can be a bit scatter-brained, and this post is the result of a little moment of scattered brain! I've been tracking down the output of EMCE before they get too expensive or hard to get . . . there's a sweet-spot between new (a bit pricey for what are basically rack-toys) and when they are getting hard to get (also pricey), when people who've been gifted them and don't want them, sell them off for less than they are still listing for on Amazon "none in stock, we don't know when they will become available again" (half of Amazon is dead pages!), it's that sweet-spot I'm after!

I knew there were glow-in-the-dark Zombies in slime-bins, so when I had a moment I searched for them on feebleBay, and one chap had some up for auction in the 'States, so I popped a bid on and crossed my fingers!

But, in those lines of similar/sponsored stuff underneath the listing was another chap, offering three, for considerably less, BIN? So I quickly grabbed them, uncrossed my fingers and desperately started hoping someone would out-bid me on the first lot!

Needless to say no one else bid, and in the end the larger lot arrived before the by-it-now lot, not that I'm complaining they were both not due until the 19th and we're in the middle of postal strikes (I'm totally supportive of; having spoken to both my beat Postie and the parcel-van guy).

Anyway I started shooting them for the EMCE post, and scanned the box they came with (1st image above), only for the other three to turn-up a few days later, and they were something completely different! I hadn't bothered reading the blurb or studying the pictures, just saw 'slime', 'drum' and 'zombie' in the title-bar and hit Buy It Now!

But it was a pleasant surprise as they were more slime Zombies, just not the EMCE glow-ones! So, I took the first lot of images out of the EMCE folder (which is stuffed with other stuff, and may get further broken down anyway - gaming, horror, Star Trek?) and fashioned a quick T is for Two!

The late three being Dolgen (Dollar General Stores) Parts Alive, Spill & Rebuild Oil Can Slime, with a Lego-likey zombie figure! Here scaled with one of Berserker's mates who came in with a junk-lot the other day - he, himself, went to storage ages ago!

It was during this process that I discovered vinegar is the solvent for slime, I wanted to flush the muck away, only to find that neither washing-up liquid, nor TFR had any measurable effect! Although, when I say 'discovered' . . . I Googled it!

The seller included a loose figure which appears to have had a strange reaction to the self-seal/click-shut bag he came in, soaking-up more blue than the bag ever possessed, but I'll keep him like it, it works quite well!

Obviously the figures are the same as the standard WWII Zombies we looked at here, and with one per 'oil drum' I'll leave the rest for now, I just don't have the time to be wrestling with multiple slime and vinegar patties!

Forewarned (or previously experienced) is forearmed, so with this brown-black gloop, I just wrapped it in kitchen-paper and burned it on the stove! You can see it had invaded the packet the figure's parts were in, so it was still a messy business, but I rescued all his components.

There had been a leak from the 'sealed' capsule too, and like the EMCE Aliens egg-slime the other day, had set to a rubbery polymer which I could just rub off where it was stuck to the sticker-wrapper, rather than the cellulose outer wrapper.

So quite by the result of too much speed and not enough haste or something I ticked two boxes, and learnt more than I need to about the properties of slime . . . you can also make it yourself, but as most of the recipes seem to include white wood-glue/PVA, I wouldn't advise it?

The fact that the Dolgen 'kubrick' Zombie is the same as the one on the can-art, suggests they are all the same so I will keep the other two sealed as well. He seems to be a US policeman in a WWII German helmet? While the EMCE as well as sharing billing with PX / Previews Exclusive again, are further credited to the Brilliant Novelty Company.

F is for Follow-up - Esquimaux Explorers

A quick follow-up to October's post on Kinder Arctic subjects, as I managed to pick up a colour variant on Friday, which we can have a quick shufti at! And re, that previous post's title, it's bloody cold now, they recon minus-7° tonight, which may be balmy for some of the Northern/Continental Loyal Readers, but it's pretty rare in sodding Hampshire!

This one is all a primrose yellow, I could look up the code and value but I think I've made that point, and it'll all be on the A-Z's one day, or at least that's the plan! He comes with an ice-axe and husky dog, rather that the skis-&-sticks of the previous example

E is for Exhibition - Fleet Library 2022

This year's theme is back to construction toys, a theme they (Fleet Historical Society) covered a few years ago, but it's mostly new examples, and I've ever seen the Phillip's sets before, or not so I've remembered?

 

 

We looked at these sets here