O is for Overview - Art's Nativity Again!

So, we've looked at the small scale, and we've looked at the larger ones in a set, this is just the main set of figures, from two sources in close-up. I seem to have shot two sets of comparison photo's, the 'before glue was removed' shots on the white bedspread, the after glue was removed shots on the black background.

Those sold separately, or in sets (without being glued into a vignette) have card or cartridge-paper seals on their hollowed bases, which presumably help them stand on uneven surfaces like the pillow case 'snow' my Mother always placed round the tree, a tradition I've carried-on!

The cards are coded and have a clear Art Plastics logo-mark, it seems the Kings' codes can be interpreted as White King, Coloured King and Kingly King - he can't be King of Kings, 'cos that one's in the manger! The inset close-up is COw!

Speaking of the cows; the glued-in set had a paler wash than the separates, and I found the easiest way to get the glue off (an old brown contact-adhesive of the Evostick type) was sit them in hot water for a few minutes which softened-it off enough to peel away, without, it was more flaky, but firmly attached.

The other animals, having said I don't think these are Fontanini copies (one is, see below), I'm pretty sure they are copies of someone else's (European) sculpts, the sheep are very familiar, as is the 'mirror' image sculpting of the pair, but I haven't ID's the donor yet? Or if I have - they are lost on the Blog somewhere!

The Holy family, and a King, showing the difference in the brown wash (actually a semi-transparent airbrushed coat), The left shot taken before the grub was removed from the bases.

The Wise Men . . . or definitely Kings in this case! A major colour-scheme difference in the kneeling monarch, gives a collecting aim, and hope for wider variations still to be found in the other two? As we can also see with the red Arabian headgear chap; some variation in the existing scheme too.

This shepherd-boy IS from a Fontanini sculpt! In fact we will be looking at his donor in a few days time if everything pans-out, and it doesn't always! He's quite a common figure in various forms, and I think it's down to the rather unique was he's carrying he lamb, it appeals visually, so was much copied.

The vignette's figures were also very dusty, the bases were much darker than the loose set, after cleaning!

I'd shot the loose sample at least twice in the more distant past and these are those shots! stuff does just pile up in Picasa, and one of the things I've tried to get done this year is a better system, or more ordered way of storing them all so I can find older images or supporting stuff!

The angel; it (they are sexless I believe . . . when they aren't impregnating virgins for their boss!) has a hollow back and you can see where it was glued on the wings and the back of the head.

An Art Plastics variation next time, after more of Chris's donation.

C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Transport

'Planes, Ships which might have seen trains and automobiles'! Some interesting items were among the vehicular portion of the parcel from Chris, and we're looking at them in this post, starting with my favourites . . .

. . . two anodised aluminium artillery pieces! One slightly crushed! I mean on one level they are the cheapest of cheap tat (and Chris is in agreement on that point I think, I'm not slagging-off a donation!), and as Chris pointed out, probably made yesterday, but on another level they are fantastic, you will by now have figured I like the eclectic, the unusual, the not necessarily seen-before, and these tick all those boxes!

Imagine for a second, these, on a shelf, with some of those 'home cast' spirit painted semi-flat colonials, or sub-scale hollow-cast penny toy soldiers, in shiny pink, heliotrope red, apple green or turquoise? D'you see? Fantastic!

So really pleased with them; they are constructed in a similar fashion to tin-plate toys - slots, folds and soft rivets - but are all lightweight aluminium, and while you may well find similar in an Asian import emporium tomorrow, equally, items like this have been around for years, and this kind of stuff barely ages if looked-after, so they may have some age?

I think the 'napoleon' gun once had some kind of wire or tube trail, which slotted into these two fold-backs, so I will at some point make a replacement with a piece of heavy-gauge brass wire, or tubing, but to stop it tarnishing I'll have to varnish, I suspect? Bending tubes this small is hard without kinking them and would require long thin springs, so it'll probably be wire . . . a sharp A-frame with two tabs to slot into these channels?

Likewise - with the naval gun, I have inherited a brass ring-sizer, and various tiny silversmith's hammers, so I think some gentle tappity-tap-tapping will restore both ends of its barrel and a gentle squeeze in the middle with a leather wrapped pair of pliers will sort the whole thing out . . . then I'll probably find one, pristine, in a charity shop! 

The truck on the left is marked Snap, so had to be Kellogg's Rice Krispies, and there's a page for that! Cereal Offers have the whole story! I had thought it might be a Kinder Unimog upon first sighting, but that'll be for another day. The bulldozer is one of the early, post-war replacements for the card counters in Monopoly sets!

These need further work, probably French premiums, others exist but I don't recognise the ASM mark on these. In 'the stash' I have several sets of these; Bonux has a set I think and they are similar to EKO's commercial set (Spain), while some of INGAP's are already on the Blog, but they were probably copied from someone else and 'W.Germany' was in there too?

On the right the Hong Kong copies of the MPC 'Minis' we've seen before, but there are variants and it's always worth checking them against the rest, while on the left is what I suspect is the forth model in the British comics giveaway we've also seen here, but not this one, which is a Stirling Bomber I think?

This makes sense as the other three I've found (bits of!) are two figuters (Spitfire and Me.109) and a German bomber (Heinkel?), and they were sold in packs of two, so maybe you got two bombers or two fighters, OR two Allied or two Axis? Anyone get Fury, Valiant or Warlord back in the day and can tell us?

The little concord is a mystery, possibly a cereal premium, but a bit small so more likely a capsule-machine/Christmas cracker type, I may have one, in red or green? The rest are 1/600 scale naval aviation machines from model Aircraft Carrier kits, the twin bomber probably being from a USS Hornet kit of the 'Doolittle Raid' (Revell?). Look how big the Tomcat is compared to its WWII ancestors; it can probably carry more war stores than the weight of one of the old planes!

Motor cycles consist of a rack toy in chrome-finish which is new, a cracker/gum-ball type in hard plastic (never have too many of them!) and Indie's ride, loose which will help future comparison shots, along with two larger scale figures for the tub of such chaps, one of whom appears to be an Evel Knievel knock-off!

While on the vessel front we have another lovely Viking tourist memento, but, is it from Scandinavia, or York? The motorboat is a real treat, I have somewhere a survivor of childhood in a badly painted (by me) MTB, which came as a set of four, and while I've seen them on the card (a whole trade carton full at the NEC show), the seller wanted far too much for them, so I passed, therefore it's nice to have one come in, out of the blue.

The two life-belt rings (another came-in today, red/white one!) will go in that bit of the spares zone dedicated to such things, they are often off-the-shelf separates in various sizes, sold through Hobbies, Polk's or Billings and turn-up in loose lots when collections get dispersed by surviving relatives! While the last item is in one of the canoe posts already, and lacks a Smurf crew-member!!

Another 'thank you' to Chris Smith for all this, it should have published much earlier, but today was bitterly cold, and the fire nearly went-out twice, keeping me busy staying warm, or keeping Boysy-boy warm . . . what - he's got four bare feet!

A is for Art's Artisan Accouchement!

Don'tcha' just love Google! We looked at several uses of Art's smaller Nativity figurines last year, and some of these (next few Nativity posts) were supposed to publish then too, but time waits for no man!

This is the smaller (12 items) set of Art's take on what are - I think - old Italian Precepi, in the larger size; not Fontanini sculpts, as far as I know, and there are several sets to look at one way or another, but this is another of those ready-made vignettes with a small assortment of the main characters, a few wood off-cuts (actually carefully formulated pieces, for mass-production!) and - not forgetting - some moss!

Carried/commissioned by Birthdays, the card & gift chain, I took the opportunity to look up Gloria In Excelsis Deo and find out exactly what it means (so you don't have to!), and it's "Glory to God in the highest" which makes sense, it then gets complicated and starts talking about the 'greater' and 'lesser doxologies' . . . at which point I lose the will to stay interested!

You can see that the wooden components are machine routed (larger parts) or die-cut sheet materials . . . nowadays it'll all be laser-cutting! The plastic figures are glued below the moss in the same manner as the previously seen ceramic ones.

Note however; that Joseph is unpainted apart from a few gold-painted highlights, and the baby Jesus is moulded into his manger - as with most of these sets more of a Moses-basket (some irony there!) than a actual manger. And in doing so; follows the smaller scale sets we looked at last year.

C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Ceremonial & Historical

Less fighty-bitey, but still fighting men! Dealing with the ancients, medievals, ceremonials and other more colourful types and there were several interesting things among them, not least a childhood favourite, but smallies first;

Seven Giant or Giant-like, the green 'loon' being a less common moulding to find, three items from Quaker Oats's premium line of Gladiators, a broken Marx knight from the Miniature Masterpiece range, I have a whole tub of these, and being hard, glueable polystyrene; I have every intention of having a conversion session in the future, chopping some to save others as all-new figures! To his right (as we view) is the rarer soft plastic version from the window-boxes, which - as they only had a few figures per set - are hard to find loose.

Now, these were awesome! I'd actually found two, a pair in this colour-way and another pair, on feebleBay a day or two before these turned up, while looking for something else, both pairs were chipped, so I left them but, it reminded me we had a drummer when we were kids, he broke once or twice.

Mum dutifully glued him back together with Araldite and rubber bands, this, back in the days when Araldite left a brown vein through the work to show the mend, like cheap Kintsugi (another one for NZ Paul to Google)!

Anyway, to get half a platoon in one lot, no appreciable chips or scratches was a lovely surprise, so a mid-post 'Thanks' to Chris for these lovely chaps, our drummer was yellow or yellow/blue if I recall correctly, so other colour schemes may well be out there. The 'Foreign' probably masks a Japanese origin, although West Germany earned the same moniker between the wars (and immediately after the second!).

Chris even sent the originnal gift- box! As you can see, with or without the packaging, there is a fourth, smaller compartment; I believe that's where 'our' drummer would have been found. A lot of these would have been broken-down and sold as single mouldings in gift shops, tobacconists, corner shops &etc., or eve as actual Fairings so our drummer may have come singly, that way?

But I have no idea if these are 1950's (probably, more likely) or 1920/30's, in which case our drummer may have been a junk-shop find, or part of a mixed auction lot of the type Mum used to bring back from Persons here in Fleet, from time to time!

These have only ended-up in this post as opposed to one of the later ones by dint of the slightly military/ceremonial type on the right, but he may be a bull-fighter/gaucho type, or a Camargue horse-catcher type (their traditional dress seems to be black), or is he a mounted member of the Vatican Guard? The sort of thing you might get from a broken snow-globe, but no sign of glue, so we may assume a set, somewhere, factory painted?

The horse may be from a circus set, while the dancer must be a decoration for cocktail glasses, but she appears to have no damage or missing part, so seems to have been attached to whatever piece of fruit or vegetable (those f**king olives; they taste of soap or armpits), via her pointed foot, or equally pointed hand?

Two sucker Guardsmen; too cool for the photo-bay, so they were attached to the mirror in the bathroom and turned though 90° to make sense - he's actually shooting the ceiling! The Highland piper is one of the - previously seen here at Small Scale World - PVC key-rings, his loop removed and a base added!

Finally the third chap (40mm Hong Kong swivel waste) arrived just as I was shooting some others for a post (I know, we've seen them two or three times already, but I like them!), and he was a colour variation (a more-orange torso, paler trousers) so quickly got added to that in-the-queue post!

My first 'putty' coloured Kulikovo example, his lance-tip is missing, but I have some old Testors body-filler somewhere which is almost the same colour, so with a bit of Plastercine I should be able to mould a new tip straight on, using one of the existing sculpts?

Above the Hun is a Jean knight (or Blue Box? I'll have to compare side-by-side) in a darker gunmetal to the usual silver and below him another of the 'brown' Tatra for Nabisco premium figures, with this Conquistador it's clearer to see the brown is actually a dark bronze/gold than it was with the previously seen Zulu.

And this one is another marked 'Made in England'; I'm still looking for a made anywhere else mark, and having tracked down most of the Rubenstein bagged sets now, have still to find one for these - in any colour - so am starting to question the [exclusively] American 'fact' that they ever had anything to do with them, either as themselves or for, or on-behalf of, a third party / Cereal company?

Cheers to Chris, lots of useful, interesting things here!

S is for Seasonal Shelfies!

In a recent 'News, Views . . .' I added a shot of an 'off the shelf' nativity scene/ready-made set I got from a charity shop a year or two ago, I actually got two, and the other is also in the queue, but in the meantime Brian Berke sent us a few shelfie shots he took in New York the other day, in part to confirm my suggestion that you can still get these craft sets (last two shots) if you look around for them, and in part because it's Christmas!

The seller was describing them all as 'ceramic' but these look to me to be poured resin, the sharp-edged detailing and the amount of dislodged polystyrene balls from the expanded packaging trays point to that, and both sets are short of what seems to be the average of 12 pieces, but still give you the Holy family trio, three wise men and a smattering of shepherds' & stable-animals, the set to the right also gives you an angel!

These are ceramic, and there seems to be five or six Mary's, at least three Little baby Jesus's, assorted Kings/Wise Men and an angel, but Shepherds are thin on the ground and Joseph has obviously stepped outside to look at the Star! Pick & Mix, or mix-and-match Nativity

Rather like how the French Santons, Italian Precepi or Spanish terracotta figures (what's their Spanish name?) are sold, indeed, the larger ranges from Fontanini in the smaller sizes (40, 60 & 80mm) were sold the same way, so you could add one or two support characters - rural subjects/artisans, or another camel - every year or so.

Available now! Just like my 'vintage' one; which may not be that old - see future post? The same 'crafted' wooden stable, the same moss; green and soft for the first few years, and similar sets of slipware (hollow) 'fairing' figures in china-clay or bisque porcelain, glued to the base, any mess hidden by the mossy carpet of 'straw', indeed some sets have straw, or hay.

Many thanks to Brian for these, as stated above; they're all out there now. We'll be looking at a few more Nativity sets, interspersed with Chris's donation posts, for the next few days.

C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Combat Types

The 20th Century, all boring and Khaki, but where most of our Toy Soldiers, or an awful lot of them, are set! And as has become the tradition here with both Chris's and some of Peter's donations, we start with the parachute toys!

Paratroopers; to those who don't get excited by these they probably all - from post to post - look similar, but there are so many poses, so many issuers and so many variations of each that there's always something new in a lot like this, and as I see them go through evilBay, I slowly get to ID . . . some of them!

These are a bit of a mystery, they are very similar to some of the Domplastik (Heinerle/Manurba) stuff, but their's was all post-war fatigues or NATO, while this pair are apparently WWII Germans, and while there's an outside chance they could be Franco-era Spanish fascists, the belt-order equipment is very German, I wonder if they could be accessories for a large 'beach-toy' type vehicle/big-box set?

A nice group of odd's and sod's here with, reading from the top left; kit figure (quite small so may be from a Revell 1:48th AVF, two of the smaller Arco Rambo set figures and a vintage Airfix piracy from Hong Kong, followed by three Supreme's and a Polistil die-cast Russian, also taken from Airfix - his green wash has mostly washed-off!

Two larger figures, one older, on the left, a 2d generation piracy of one of Blue Box's 5" figures I think, we saw a Blue Box painted radio operator a while back I think, the other a modern GI, seen often in smaller sizes.

Like the paratroopers and the civilian equivalent of this line-up, what 'junk lot' would be complete without a bunch of vehicle drivers, motorcycle riders and passengers of various types!

The most numerous type here come from all those makers who've had a go at the truck we looked at here, and quite apart from the fact that I've still to sort them all out properly, the crew will all need to be matched-up one day too!

While the other three will be from similar vehicles, the painted one in the middle may be from those Hog Kong 'Cricket' rocket launchers, the pale-face is polystyrene and could be from a kit, the smaller chap is definitely new to me, and obviously slots into his seat with the lug on his bum!

Rather taken with these, I have a lot of these Hong Kong-produced Airfix 8th Army clones, but none with these bases, and as they are unmarked, they could - again - be from a generic 'big-box' play-set . . . which might have carried a Western branding or two? New to Blog anyway!

Four Cromoplasto figures in three poses and two paint schemes, I actually bought these from fleaBay only for it to be Chris who was the seller, so they came in the same parcel and can go here! They tend to be a love/hate thing with collectors, being semi-flat'ish and a odd vulcanised rubber, usually this brown or black, but the space figures were a silver grey, I quite like them (but what don't I like!), some are not so keen!

We've looked at these, but the bulk of my sample is from one source/batch, while there are many shades and several types, so this selection where hardly any are the same colour will definitely enhance the 'master collection'!

The smallies, various branded types in PVC-alike from Kentoy [HK] (top left), Galoob - four figures from three lines plus a civi' mechanic and Redbox's Motormax clones of Matchbox figures, with two newer Americans in polystyrene which I think might be Valiant - terrible helmets, they look like Volg's!

Finally; a pale grey polyethylene Matchbox copy and another of those Airfix 1st type piracies. Many thanks as always to Chris Smith for letting me share these with you all, off to a good start, I think!

C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Intro'

OK, it looks like the Canoes will be January now, if they are lucky, it's not that I've got tons of stuff in the long queue, that's a given (!), it's that I've lots in the medium and short queues too!  And if I don't clear the Christmas stuff - or at least some of it - it will be hanging around for another year, while I must catch-up with both donations and show-reports (Sandown and London are sitting here!), so I'm going to try and alternate Chris's donation with nativity stuff first, and then we'll see what's left of December!

Signed for and collected the keys to the flat today, so I'll be busy in the background getting this place empty! Made some space in the storage units at the weekend . . . sorting cold stuff in minus-3, in a steel shipping container, while losing the light is no fun I can tell you! But it keeps me young!

The seen elsewhere shot; all Chris's donations have been fantastic, however I get the feeling he's got more of a measure of the Blog and it's needs over the years, as this one was particularly super, with lots of unusual figures, rare gap-fillers, one-off's, novelties and things which, while we may have looked at them before (Tyrolean weather-clock figures for instance), will undoubtedly enhance future posts on the same subject.

One of the things I didn't shoot separately for the other posts (I think we're going to get 8 or 9 posts out of the whole box) was a bag of Kinder bits, and while I'm not sure if the Esquimaux see above was in the earlier post, mentioned the other day in a follow-up, it might have been; it's been a pretty chaotic last few months!

I actually picked up a few the other day with that yellow Arctic denizen, but the two medieval crossbowmen in that other lot were as brittle as hell, so when we get round to them, they will need a bit of strategically-placed blue-tack to be remotely photogenic, but I have others!

While the 40mm horseman here needs his paint removed, they also suffer from brittleness, perticularly of the thin parts (from day one!), so that'll be a careful, or gentle job, once I'm settled elsewhere.

A bag of bits on the left (nice barrel) and a bag of Giant/Giant-like bits also went to the mighty* sorting zone without a closer look. The green blob is one of those palm-squirters from a Christmas cracker, several bits of meat were rather intriguing, the red thing is a petrol-pump and I'm loving the Scot's Monarch's Arms, paper sand-castle flag . . . there's a tub-full of similar items somewhere in the stash, waiting for their 'overview' moment!

* mighty because of its daunting size, not because it's powerful!

This was a lovely thing to find in a toy parcel! It's a self-published book from 1997, the author goes through the building of a home-injector, part-by-part and it's real Heath-Robinson stuff (or, because the author is an American; Rube Goldberg'ian stuff!) , I aspire to have a go, but I'll need a workshop, and probably can't run to one on what will be my budget in the Spring, but I was thinking of joining one of these craft/tech cooperatives, so maybe yet?

Cheers Chris; another fantastic lot . . . I'm off and running; 'combat' stuff next to keep the fighty-bitey bits as far from the 25th as I can!