B is for Best Show on Earth! 4. Wild West

Off to the wild, Wild West this post, with various cowboys, Native American Indians and cavalry types, a nice Tee-Pee/Tipi and - to start - three additions to the Totem Pole box, which is in storage, so they are currently on a bookcase!

 

They got shot twice! The left and right of both shots are easy, a Landi/Chromoplasto one in black rubber with colourful dry-brushing on the left and the Elastolin composition on the right, but the/a smaller, later one I think, there seem to be several variations.

But the one in the middle is unknown to me, it's a sort of hard plastic which could be polystyrene (Hong Kong or Spanish maybe?) or resin (Barzo? I'm not aware of one), so it'll need tracking down, but I'll find it eventually if no one tells us!

 

Later the same day - I had another look at it this afternoon, and it may be French, it's a lightweight 'styrene, with glue all over the base and some paper/card, where it's probably been stuck into a boxed-set or card, so possibly that Rene Fisher-Jem-Norev string?

Some more Rocco's, it good nick, such good nick I could take them off and put them on their horses with confidence their legs wouldn't break, and both tails intact! A Lifeguard has crept into the shot, but with thematic posts it's the exceptions which prove the rule!

 

Replicants US Dragoons, these were issued in a mid-year I think so missed a PW Show launch, or was it during lockdown and the no-shows era? Anyway, a nice set of unusual figures who haven't been done in plastic before as far as I'm aware, so a lovely addition.

 

Flats; as I mentioned the other day, I may open the Hong Kong pack as I have a better one, but I'd forgotten a bunch of loose ones have featured here since the original pack was shown, so I may leave it as is.

 

We've also looked at the silver chap before, ID'd by Brian Berke as having been in Lucky Bags way back when (late 1950's.1960's?), so he'll join a bunch of mates and there's often one or two in a Chris or Peter package, so that's a growing sample.

 

The blue guy is a bit bashed, but worth keeping as an 'only sample', and seems to have plugged into a base or something else, you can see the locating studs on the hooves of the two more-upright legs.

Small scale, and the usual bag of Hong Kong hollow-horsed stuff for the next big sorting of them, two Marx miniature masterpieces, a cavalryman with rifle intact and a gun, three of the coach crew from the company I can never remember the name of, the lady from the Morestone 'Wagon Train' and a Lone Star HO Indian who is so good I'll have to check him against the original before I can be sure, but I think he's an HK copy.

 

The chap in buckskins is from the Comansi 30mm range, and while painted like this would have been sold from tubs or window-trays, later, unpainted issues were presented in Esci-clone boxes.

French/Euro-premiums! Sam Joyce and three Indians, originally from Café Legal, but there were lots of issuers and I think there are three issuing companies represented here, Bonux and Codec, with the pink one a later rack-toy issue in soft plastic.

These are all slowly building better samples, and when they've all been reunified we'll look at each set separately.

A right old mix here! Chromoplasto in the centre, two Spanish (or Argentine copy) cavalry either side of him, one a copy of the much-pirated Britains Herald gunslinger! Outside them, on the ends, are two rigid ethylene or nylon ACW confederates, who might be Polish, or home-painted Hong Kong? Variations of the same Marx (?) pose, they are different tool cavities, with the sword/sabre version having a finger-guard.

In the foreground are a Coma/Co-Ma mounted Indian in buffalo headdress (so I have to find a horse! Did I post an 'Atlantic style' horse a few years ago? We may have a horse for him in the stash . . . yes!) and another Toumoulage, funny, they were esoteric things in the background of the hobby (as far as my viewpoint went) for years, now I've had several lots come in, and two Blog-posts on them in a year!

Another mix, all hard plastic; two Polish nylon's on the end, another of the Crescent/Lido set (also featured here recently multiple times), a pair of 'probably' French Indians (one painted) and a rather diminutive figure which might be a Reisler 40mm cowboy?

 

More! Soft plastic; Kinder, Dulcop, Timpo, another premium, all good stuff, the broken (?) lance might be medieval and is a mystery, the broken HK copy of Jean is just for completion - this is all the show's plunder; warts 'n' all!

 

Two Cherilea with separate full war bonnet! One's slightly damaged, but his headdress is the better painted, so I will swap them! The Argentine (?) Indian again, a bag of broken Lone Star and the large Speedwell/Trojan horse lifted from Elastolin.

 

And . . . this! Isn't it beautiful? And as you can see, my second this year, so delicate I've left them on the bookshelf (where they've been joined by five totem poles!) in the new flat for now, the show one has kebab sticks for the two flap-poles and both are missing base pegs, but yep; this is near the top of 1950-70's plastic production, The Britain's Herald Tipi/Tee-Pee.

I've left them as they came in, with one having the air-flap poles on the outside, one having them on the inside, without the instruction sheet I don't know which way Britains recommended, but both work, and both methods were used by different Native American tribal groups.

 

Thanks to all for everything last month; Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, and Gareth Morgan.

C is for Canoes - 24 - Langley Models

 Well, having pulled the 24th post and shelved three others, there wasn't going to be a 24th post on this 'canoe season', started by Brian Berke's sending of his images about (over?) two years ago. But Jon Attwood kindly sent these yesterday after some eMail shenanigans, so we have a twenty-forth instalment!

Langly Models have a vast range of civilian and military subjects, aimed primarily at railway modellers, among which are these two modern sports canoes, a single-seater and a double seater of the fibreglass-reinforced resin type.

 

Quite similar in looks to the Airfix commando canoes, you could equip the Matchbox guys with a few of these instead of their silly little rubber jolly-boat!

Many thanks to Jon for these, and many, many thanks to Brian for his original tranche of photo's which kicked this off, and for his patience as it kept being put back for one reason or another, in the course of it all I have added the new 'canoe' tag to a few older posts, and while I probably haven't found all of them, and we certainly haven't covered more than a few, it's a good basis for further study!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 3. Ancient and Medieval

So; continuing with the plunder posts from the Plastic Warrior show in Twicker's a few weeks ago, and we're looking at the older eras depicted by toy soldiers, because it's all about the Toy Soldiers, or at least it used to be, these days it's as much about the spacemen or civilians, but you know what I mean!

 

Andy came over and asked me if these two Elastolin were worth a fiver, and while I'm no expert on the subject I said I thought they were given that they were two variants of the same figure, in good condition with the latter, rarer (or less common) moulding, only for him to frog-march me over to the seller? Before I knew what had happened, I was the proud owner of both? I'd thought I was just giving advice!

And they do make a nice pair, there are books published in Germany which go into intense detail on the left-hand figure, with endless colour variations, paint styles, base type hierarchy and so on, while the right-hand figure is unusual for being a harder plastic than the polyethylene of some other samples I have.

 

There are also French and Spanish copies of some of these, usually without the edge/rim to the base, and often silver or gold plastic, sometimes primary colours, usually unpainted.

 

A handful of 40mm Starlux medievals, who happen to split equally into blue/green and red/yellow armies for the purposes of photography, not planned as I picked them out of a larger sample. I have a few others somewhere, I think some have been on the Blog passim, so hopefully when we see them again, they'll be an even better shot!

Food premiums came in the guise of a Kinder Gaulish warrior and two Shredded Wheat 'Kings & Queens' series, I have lots of the latter, but don't know if I have all of them, and seem to grab them whenever I see them going cheap, and they are all over the place, so hopefully when I get them all togther there will be a full set - relief flats with the data on the flat back.

A nice handful of the early Cherilea knights, only bits and pieces, but there's a complete figure in the centre and enough bits for a second, sans helmet. I have managed to get several lots like this over the last few years (I know I have a whole archer somewhere), so when I look at them in full in the future we should get a better idea of them.
 

A small discussion was held about these, from which I gathered they exist, they turn up occasionally, they're interesting, but not interesting enough to buy, so I bought them! I wonder if they might belong with the previous swoppet types, from Cherilea, but currently 'unknown', the arms in non-matching plastic are heat-welded on.

Small scale from three sources and came in three donations I think with a bunch of Italeri/Zvezda Normans, a sub-piracy of Supreme's small-scale horse, a Giant knight and another Norman with a touch of paint.

 

This year's new set/s from Replicants were a selection of ancient/medieval levy/revolting peasants/belligerent civi's . . . they're not going to take it any more! Either side of which are two of the helmets from Airfix's 1:12th scale (six inch) character kits, being Richard III's on the left and the Black Princes on the right. As you can see they'll make nice enhancers for shelf displays or similar?

 

I've left them in the bag for now, but they are sculpted in Peter's usual, very animated, style and a nice mix of male and female types, with a lute player chivvying them all along with a Hay-nony-no, although the lady with a cleaver seems to have heard it before - once too often; you can have too much of a bard-thing!

 

Now . . . I have to get all these right, 'cos Brian Carrick put me right and then I must go and change the old post, which I could have/should have done three weeks ago, but life's too short and it's my 'eemies' who get excited about my odd errors, not me! These two ARE Guilbert from France, as is the horse, who is missing his tail.

 

This is a Colorado horse, which came with the Musketeer lot, also French, but maybe for Wild West? I have somewhere a bunch of painted French Wild West by several companies, in a little box which I think came from Sam of Sam's Minis, and I think they have been repainted, but I must sort them out one day, and hopefully there may be a rider for this beast?

 

These two are Ludorev reissues from the Rene Fisher lot below and like the lot we saw a while ago, one needs a new wire sword, which I will do in the fullness of time. I don't know about the half-barrel/bucket, which could be from anywhere, it looks like the kind of thing toy circuses make elephants or tigers stand on!

 

The Rene Fisher originals, which I think I called Guilbert (on advise) when we looked at them last time, I think we saw them all then except the Milady character figure, but in the meantime I had picked-up a third lot, which hasn't been Blogged yet, so we'll revisit Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan!

 

Bad rust on the two either end's swords, while an unstable red paint will need stripping which could lead to a repaint, but they are duplicate figures, so it'll be fun to give them a less toy-like countenance!

Thanks to all for everything last month; Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan and Michael Mordant-Smith.

C is for Canoes - 23 - Marx

I've recived shots for a 24th post, which won't surprise you, you had no idea of the plans, but they were originally for 22 posts, which stated to look like more a week or so ago, although the original 24th was to be Thomas-Poplar, but I may hold them for now as we covered them quite well a while ago here, and they can be a stand-alone post in a few weeks, or something?

 

In the end we might have got to 30, but I pulled the posts on Modern Metal production as the images were mostly current commercial ones sent to me more for reference, and likewise a Ron Barzo post, where I think The Toy Soldier Company are still using all the images! But, Dogs Of War, Frontline, Jon Jenkins and Little Legion all have very good white metal native canoes, Barzo have done two or three over the years, in resin, and I meant to do the Crescent slush-cast lead one, but it didn't happen!

 

Did we do the five-piece plastic Cherilea one? Oh yes, years ago, now tagged, and the other day, with bits and bobs in other posts . . . My 'eemies' have very small victories, but they have very small minds! Heehee!

 

Marx UK version of the Johnny West canoe, Now I have a confession to make here; when we were kids I hated the Marx 12" Wild West set, for a number of reasons, all of which fail to meet the test of retrospective scrutiny. To wit: Wild West (we had Action Man, and he was all WWII-to-Modern), PVC accessories (like late Action Man sets!), Hong Kong manufacture (well a lot of Action Man's stuff especially the stuff shared directly with GI Joe was firmly stamped HONG KONG!), different articulation (they still pose well), lack of real-cloth over-clothing (they are well detailed) . . . it was simply some sort of childhood/childish snobbery!
 

The fact is, as 'any fool know', they are very well-made, characterful and the PVC accessories have mostly stood the test of time, if I had a better budget and more space I'd probably start collecting them!

 

Luckily I don't have enough of either, but for those who do, they don't seem to be that rare (but then neither is Action Man these days, after the heady gold rush of the 1990's, a lot has come out of the woodwork!), although, I'd collect through part/bitty/job-lots, as the near perfect ones are often set far higher than they are worth!

But the canoe doesn't seem to come up so often and may be worth any premium it carries, there were none available when I looked on evilBay the other day. A US made version, shown above, I think.

 

Marx also did a 54mm/1:32nd scale canoe, and this is Brian's reissue. We saw the nominally 'HO' one, in the small scale post a few days ago. Many thanks again to Brian for the images.

B is for Best Show on Earth! 2. Airfix and Related

I had some luck with early Airfix at the show, and there were some related bits, so I shoved them all in one post, except the two early motorcycles which ended-up in a mixed shot in the Civilian Vehicles post!

Two of the Airfix mounted figures after Bergan/Beton, both mounted on soft polyethylene horses (with the correct bent tail and cavity mark), although being a hard polystyrene themselves. The lefthand shot is missing the hunter, who turned up later, hence the rethink on how to do the posts!

 

As a result that image also has two probable Argentine figures a ceremonial type (top right, integral moulding) and a Native American (bottom left, separate rider) along with two other 'styrene riders, one of whom seems to belong with the marked-Ajax horse, the other is from the Magnetic 'Bucking Bronco' novelty act - the third I've picked-up in a few months, typical; isn't it, like buses; you wait ages for one, then three turn-up together!

A mixed bunch of the early 'eight figure set', being, from the left; Airfix Paratrooper, possible pair of BR Moulds Japanese and three of Peter Evans' home-casts. The first having the clear mould-release pin-mark which seems to differentiate the Airfix originals, the two Jap's missing an obvious mark, hence the possibility they are BR and the trio being a sharper, rigid resin to the softer pink one we looked at last year?

 

In the last lot from Chris Smith, I held over a bunch of these from the plunder posts, and I picked up a few more the other day, so a major re-hash/addition to that page will be forthcoming, as are similar changes to the mounted 'Bergan Beton' page where an awful lot have come in recently, in addition to the two above.

This is a fun shot, or at least the upper one is, the lower one is a closer look at the five Gulliver Japanese infantry, one of which is based squarely on an Atlantic 'Sendai' sculpt (Gulliver's go-to for piracies when they weren't copying Reamsa, Comansi or Jecsan!), the other figures being four old Airfix Sculpts.

The upper shot has, in addition, two rather wreaked Airfix originals for a not-very-useful comparison (they've both had their feet mucked-about with), suffice to say the Gulliver are a little smaller, but well sculpted. And in the foreground, a gloss-painted 'Toy Soldier' style home-cast piracy in lead/whitemetal with a wire bipod.

Not Airfix but of the same era, the same rarity value as the 'eight' and the same esoteric range, are two on the left from BR Moulds, a Lifeguard which is almost certainly from the Trojan set (post coming) and an Indian who doesn't seem to conform to any of the known BR mould-tool catalogue descriptions, and has something of the Sacul guards in his plastic colour, but seems to be from hollow-cast, so got included here!

 

These were mixed in with everything else! They go in a big bag which gets sorted into the master-collection/future stock every few years! I actually found a Prussian advancing from the Waterloo sets the other day, trod into someone's lawn, so Airfix 'HO-OO' have become a standard feature of the Anthropocene geological layer, along with crisp packets, chocolate wrappers, drinks bottles & cans, cigarette filters and vehicle parts/metal or rubber fixings!

 

Thanks to all for everything last month; Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith and Peter Evans,

Thanks to all for everything last month; Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan and Micheal Mordant-Smith.

C is for Canoes - 22 - Others, Unknown

Quickie tonight (this morning!), it's funny how there are rhythms in randomness, I often lose or drop my posting rate as a new month starts, and it's nothing deliberate; purely real-life intervening, but as phenomena, these events do seem to come around regularly!

A couple of shots I took at the end of the domestic photo-shoot, using a couple of my buckshee paddlers (20% of the vintage Cherilea items acquired!) and showing one of my unknown boats, it seems to be two halves, but no sign of glue so possibly friction welded and again, like many of the others; a bit too smooth, but would benefit from a painting, by someone who knew what they were doing! Timpo load fits nicely! Unmarked, but Hong Kong - I think, and a polystyrene or hard propylene?

 

I also have this which is quite a big beast as you can see from the two Crescent Natives. It's  hard polystyrene as well, and ribbed a bit like the Thomas/Poplar ones, but with wider gaps between the ridges, also like them, it is sufficiently rounded and keeled to lean to one side on a flat surface, and would certainly displace enough water to float. Any ideas on either of them? Is this one a roof-load from a dime-store car?

B is for Best Show on Earth! 1. Introduction

So, it was the best show on earth three weeks ago, and a bloody good time was had by all, well, most, the Army lost the Rugby to the Navy which is a sufficiently rare event to consider them to have had a shit day! I filled my boots with nice things, and other people helped, but I've decided to treat the plunder like one of Chris's donations and show it thematically.

 

All sorted!

 

So having started to shoot it in a more random fashion as in past years, with individual donations highlighted, I re-shot it by subject-matter, and thought I'd do an Intro' to use up some of the otherwise unused images, and thank everyone at the start.

 

Fantasy & Sci-Fi

 

But I'll add a 'Thank you' paragraph to the end of each subsequent post. I know I get a bit anal about thanking people, but if they've gone to the effort of giving you stuff, saving-up stuff for you or let you have stuff cheap, it's only proper to thank them.

Bag of bits from Brian Carrick

Bag of bits from Trevor Rudkin

Bag of bits from Peter Evans

Bag of bits within Peter's bag of bits!

We have a toy charity here, have you encountered it yet?

Other countries have them too, but nobody seems interested in them!

Heehee!

I also bought this, for a bit of fun, I'll read it and do nothing with the knowledge! I do actually have lots of war gaming books in the library, a testament to past pretensions for something - possibly - better than blogging toys! And for the often very useful appendices!

 

Odds, mostly small scale.

Andreas Dittmann gave me the three on the right.

We'll look at it all in subsequent posts.

The Replicant's purchases all together!

Very blue this year!

We won't look at all these in subsequent posts, as this is the shot of things which got left out of an earlier thematic photo-shoot! Another - probably French - soft plastic Captain Video robot, and another Hong Kong - probably Blue Box or New Maries/Lee Chung - water well, this one with the bucket! A Hollow-backed sheaf (or 'stook') of corn which I've never seen before and a large gull which may be Spanish or Argentine?

 

The little blue lady is from the Morestone TV-tie-in Wagon Train, an Airfix huntsman, a straw-bale which is based on the Scalextric one, but is not, neither is it the flimsy blow-mold usually found in HK racing sets, but is actually a heavy injected polyethylene, so equally new to me?

 

Boat and barrel will join similar piles, eventually, and the spear, a fearsome weapon which looks like it should be wielded by a 70mm Zulu, is actually from those 54mm plinth-based Spanish museum figurines I think, and may be quite a ceremonial/presentation type?

A few Civilian types.

I must also thank Adrian Little for lots of sold well- below value stuff, and Gareth Morgan likewise, whose stuff took another week to sort-out, and then needed sorting into everything else for the big shoot, so didn't get an overview-shot! Lots to come, but like the 'Canoes Season', I'll intersperse it with other posts, to mix-it-up a little!

C is for Canoes - 21 - Others, Known

Scraping the tail-ends fo the folders now, and we've missed loads, but it's been a reasonable wizz round some of what's out there, and here are a few shots, mostly from the Internet, of other brand's canoes.

 

Alphabetically, we start with the Lego canoe from the Wild West range, pretty-much gone now, and started after my Brother and I had given-up Lego, it's obviously marred by the locating-studs in the bottom of the boat, but could provide the basis of a reasonable conversion into something more realistic! 

Safari . . . humm . . . I'm not sure that it's even a vessel to be placed on water, as it might be a cooking/washing utensil? That half-hollowed log next to the boy, centre-right is what I'm looking at, more of an Amazonian Indian practice piece I fear!

Schleich go with their usual larger scaled piece, but it's nicely finished and would make a good war canoe for war-gamers, as it would take a shed-load of 54mm Native Americans!

 

Starlux chose a sort of vac-formed piece which has more of the look of a Nile Vessel, of several thousand years earlier, made from bundles of reed-straw! But, it was only ever meant to be a toy, and its fragile nature means it doesn't turn up often.

 

This is the smaller, earlier Tim Mee again, I somehow missed the image when doing their post a week or so ago, my bad! It's got those weird pins on either side to hold it level and upright, which makes you wonder why it took until Britains/Timpo to come-up with waterline versions, until you realise many hollow-cast and solid metal makers had flat-bottomed canoes, for years or decades prior, and that Tim Mee were just guilty of trying to be too clever!