B is for Battle of the Bi-Trons

You may remember that back in 2020, Chris Smith sent us some robots in one of his donations to the Blog, and at the time I didn't have a maker, but a few months later (2021) I found this set, too expensive, on a Buy-It-Now, told Chris, and put a note on the original post and have since mentioned it cryptically, as and when we've seen bits from it, in other posts, I kept watching until the price came down, and I've now got one, so let's have a look at it! Robots & Space Tanks!

 

Due to the lighting on the day and/or the colours, photographing the whole card wasn't easy, but between the two shots I think I've done it justice, and you can make out most of the elements, the Pikit Toys sets (for that is where we still are, this early in RTM) with this bordered cartouche card-art, were also issued by Gordy International in the USA, with their info' overprinted along the bottom edge.

You get two sets of Bi-Tron robot battle suits, obviously ripping-off several Japanese Anime series including - I suspect - the 'mecha anime' series Dougram or Votoms? One set, here in blue, are the 'good robots' the other; bad!

 

As I wondered at the time, the plugs in the backs are for the turrets which come with the accompanying accessories, a slight daftness, as being single mouldings they can't be bent or animated into a pose where they can realistically fire at anything other than the sky!

Bad 'Bots are red! Whatever colour each 'army' is, you do get four unique sculpts in each quadrigeminal (it sounds more spacey!) team, Only two are carrying weapons, one in each team, here it's the chap on the right.

Early indications were that these yellow versions of the good 'Bots are Gordy and the Blue; Pikit, but then I was reminded that Chris's donation came in three distinct shades of blue (from more than one set, there were duplicates), so I suspect it was a bit more random, or they were issued by another brand, maybe at another time?

 

But this lot did come from the states, with 'normal' red Bad's, and I've seen a second set with yellow 'Bots, also across the Pond, so it may be a 'rule'; certainly a guideline?

Space Taaaaaannks! These are always green/red, and the same oxide-red as the naughty robots, some of which may be copies of the old Kenner Mega Force sci-fi'ish armour? Slightly larger than 1:600 micro-armour, they might be around 1:300?

AT-AT . . . not! There's also a walker, who comes with four jointed legs to be assembled by Junior, and then lost forever in the garden! I'm really not sure on any of the specific origins of any of these models, but I'm sure they are aping other toys, maybe Tomy and/or Takara stuff which never got Western distribution?

For instance, I thought this robot transporter was from the Takara Votoms range (as I pointed out previously; Bi-Trons - Vo'Toms . . . geddit!), but the one I was thinking of, has a rigid chassis and eight wheels/four axles, in-line, but I'm sure I've seen this prior to the Pikit set, so it's probably out there as something else!

Likewise, I think this might be ex-Takara, or certainly I think I've seen it in a Mecha' cartoon, it's a twin-rotor, very sci-fi, heavy-lift helicopter/sky-crane for recovering damaged 'battle suits', and a rather nice thing to find in a rack toy!

The final item on the set's card is an attack helicopter, and given advances/changes in real life attack helicopters since this toy was issued in the 1990's; quite similar to some in service or heading for service now!

 

As rack toys go, with or without piracy, this is a really nice little set if you have the sense of imagination for sci-fi/futurism, or are a fan of anime Mecha's, however, for simpler minds it would be a bit of "shit" to be left on the peg in favour of a farm, zoo or 'Army Men' set, or some Chinasaurs!

T is for Two . . . Birds with one Stone!

A quickie now, as a follow-up to the previous post, where we saw some non-Rado/Ri-Toys figures in a Pikit Toys set, to here where we see a Pikit set which IS Rado/Ri-Toys!

 

On the left; the 8th Army as sold by Pikit in the UK, on the right Germans in the standard Rado packaging, both being scaled-down copies of Airfix 1:32nd (54mm) figures, we know this because [with the exception of the French Infantry] they only ever have the seven poses from the larger sets! It's also easier to pantograph down than up.

 

A couple of close-ups of the Pikit-supplied figures, you can see the slightly hollowed underside to the base and the distinctive H·K mark found on all the figures of this line . . . sometimes!

Because, they can also be found unmarked, as here, where - from the crinkly, cellulose, carded, bottle-bag -  we can guess probably a set of JoMe 8th army, have the blank bases.

 

JoMe (which might be Jo Me, Jo-Me or Jome?) were a German importer/jobber, and from the 'China' rather than 'Hong Kong' on the packaging samples, were a later issue, so it's reasonable to assume the earlier iteration are marked H·K and the latter figures are the unmarked.

 

Another, definitely JoMe set with unmarked US Infantry, you can see how the logo might be interpreted any of four ways! Note how the flash affects the apparent / visual colour of the plastic! That's three birds . . . lucky shot!

 

The German's in the Ri-Toys pack above are also unmarked, but I have both 1:76th and 50mm Ri-Toys with the H·K mark, packaged. the sets copied by Rado (correctly: Rado Industrial Company) ran to eight, all Airfix copies;

• German Infantry
• Afrika Korps
• 8th Army
• US Infantry
• Australian Infantry
• Japanese Infantry
• Russian Infantry
• French Infantry (copied from the WWI HO-OO set, and scaled up to 45/50mm)

with the Airfix Australians replaced in the larger-scale range by copies of the Blue Box Australians, a subject I think we've looked at separately, once or twice! There's a lot more to all this, and we will return to these sets another day, probably on the Giant or What Blog.

Rado / Ri-toys also went heavy on ex-Marx figures, but they seem to have had access to the original tools there, so it wasn't the same kind of Piracy as with the Airfix / Blue Box clones. Marksmen carried a lot of this in the UK, but it too is all for another day!

P is for Pikit Toys

Have we had that title before? Many, many moons, and a fair-few new-moons ago, I posted some of the Tank Transporters here, and the unknown Hong Kong one, bottom left image in the collage (second picture down, in that post), is now known!

 

Or at least one of its importers is! Pikit Toys, a short-lived but quite prolific while it was going, outfit from Birmingham, and for those fatuous gits who keep posting stupidly ignorant questions on quora.com; no, not the new one in Alabama, the old, original one in the Midlands, England, Britain, the UK!

 

Some Pikit sets were also imported by Gordy in the US with a different overprint, I don't think this set was one of them, but someone else may well have done so - Laramie or Ja-Ru would be main likelihoods?

My loose one was (still is!) missing its rear ramp, I thought I'd mentioned it at the time, but I'd carefully hidden the loss with an Imperial staff car! What? Misleading journalism? In the 'Free West'? Surely not! Next, someone will be trying to convince you the Daily Mail and Sun are full of shit and everything that comes out of Trump's press-office is a lie! It's shocking, we're all going to the dogs!

Clearly cobbled together by a middle-man from the products of more than one of the smaller toy makers in the colony (there were 2000-odd registered there at the time), the transporter is a multimedia model with working metal axles, polyethylene tyres and a well detailed, roughly 1:76th in-scale, polystyrene main-body, while the two little tanks are common HK fodder, found in various sets from various makers and or under various brands/brand-marks, so, not much to learn there.

 

But the figures (Airfix 8th Army clones) do seem to be married to the Jeeps in origin (plastic colour), so a small clue against future research, they are similar to the Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) ones, but with solid bases against the slightly hollow ones of Rado, a bit bigger too, I think, in a year or two I will nail all this down on the But Is It Giant Blog, indeed I probably should have posted this there? Another day, new images!

Aaaaannnnnd . . . that's Rack Toy Month, off and running! You can all sod-off on holiday, and hope, maybe, I'll have something more worthy and meaningful for you in September! Those travelling incognito can find something similar to post on Faceplant!

A is for Aaaaahahahaaa, aahh, haa, haaar!

Which may be the sighing-yell from The Good The Bad and The Ugly, I'm not sure if I got all those 'a's in the right place?!! Just a quick follow-up on the Argentine Tarzan post of the other day (two posts down the page), and to welcome the Blog's newest fan, Mr. Incognito? Those who know; know, hee-hee-hee!

 

Friend of the Blog Gisby pointed out a marked similarity between the Marx Indian with knife and the various Argentine iterations of Tarzan we looked at the other day, and I thought I had one here for a comparison shot, but I only had the MPC copy (far left here), so the one on the right is from Worthpoint, and while it may not be obvious, there is, in other shots, from other angles, a clear resemblance between them, the Argentinians having raised the arms, while MPC move a leg slightly.

 

I'd also forgotten how big the pink Argie is, next to the painted one which goes on the elephant, I would say the lead one is 54mm, the painted one was about 60/70mm (same as the WoW-style painted Marx one here from Worthpoint) while the pink one is nearer 90/100mm (so that Jaguar probably does go with him?), and the MPC clone is closer to 50mm - all by eye, mind, I didn't measure any of them!

This chap's come in recently, the Blue Box kneeling, we saw them (there's a standing one too) here at Small Scale World, years ago, but the paint on this one is marginally better than my best example, so will become the new No.1, when they are all reunited in the new house . . . which is closer now this one's on the market! He needs a careful clean with a cotton-bud!

Mr & Mrs Gorilla visit Tarzan for tea! Also a recent purchase, I have all the Dulcop figures in storage with some of the animals, so the Tarzan is a duplicate, but I needed both gorillas - Lord of the Jungle, King of the Apes!

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 -

Welp, it seems to be Rack Toy Month already! But I've the Sandown sequence to finish first, just a few composition figures I picked up as samples or to compare with those in my existing collection.

 

Three - in khaki - marked NB for Nazaire Beeusaert, the Belgian composition maker and a fourth - sailor - who may be from the same maker, but is unmarked and a little smaller, so he may be another Belgian maker, they had several manufacturers who shared a certain style?

A Zang to check against the existing sample behind, and in front two which I was told were TAG, and may have shown here as TAG? Except I don't think they are, any more, TAG's seem to be larger, better detailed models, so these two are probably one of the other early British composition makers?

An unknown prisoner (who probably doesn't go with the Mountie, but 'goes' with him quite well here!), with his hands tied behind his back (possibly Italian?), and, errr, a Mountie! The Mountie is Durolin, from Germany, and I'd happily accept any help with ID on the seated Westerner?

He's quite rough and looks cheap, his paint a water-soluble thing, which has soaked and spread into it's not very dense composition, which almost has the feel of old egg-boxes, but isn't papier-mâché as far as I can tell?

 

And a few close-ups of the RCMP figure and his base mark, in the best traditions of learning something new every day, or whenever you can (life-long learning!), I was today-years-old when I learnt that in French they are the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada or G.R.C., which may be the 'R' on the left side of the saddle-cloth, with MP on the other side for Mounted Police, but a quick google-search only confused, with various saddle-cloth marks including a badge, but MP on both sides seeming commonest?

D es para Dos - T es para Tarzans Argentinos!

Bit of a fun post this evening, and quite a few years in the gestation, as the first image (last shot below) was taken back in 2016, with the elephant migrating to the stash a year later, only for me to find the leery one on feebleBay a while back and for it to take so long to get here, there were barely any records of its ordering left in my account profile by the time it turned-up!

 

Here he is, a Tarzan from Argentina, riding Bagheera, whom he doesn't fit-on too well, but as we'll see, he's meant to go on an elephant, and I'm not sure this Bagheera even goes with this set, he's a slughtly better quality in both plastic (can't really go wrong with black!) and painting?

 

Close up's of the eponymous panther, it also shows how Tarzan's knife is joined to his waist for the moulding process. You can also get an idea of the difference in finish quality between the two, if you didn't in the first collage, but I'm looking for filler blurb here!

 

I suspect he actually belongs with the blow-moulded elephant here and/or the Tarzan that came riding it, the left-hand figure in the lower shot, who when I first saw him WAS still on the elephant! Sadly, they got separated, and when I was having a 'look-out for elephants'*, it came home with me, only for the Tarzan to go elsewhere!

However, I had managed to shoot the Ape Man? . . . the Man of the Apes, in a thematic shot with a couple of the Wundertüte figures normally ascribed to Jean, Manurba, Dom or Heinerle, but which I suspect, going on both their material and the paint, are from a still to be identified supplier - as far as I know, no empirical evidence of them being any of the former has ever been shown?

 

But, it (the image) lead to the fortuitous coincidence that I had a shot of the missing Tarzan who goes on the blow-moulded elephant, still in the archive, and he is not the same as the leery one in the upper pictures, indeed I think the heliotrope pink one is a sub-piracy, but the Panther may well belong to the set including this lower Tarzan & elephant, he's just as likely to be from a Disney knock-off set though!?

There's no sign of the missing weapon/equipment (another knife?) being attached to the [probably] earlier figure in the same way / same position, nor are the hands the same, but sculpting of the main folds on the loin-cloth are the same, so copying was involved one way or the other!

OTSN auction shot from the Pielin Brothers' collection, showing the - also Argentinian-made - lead figure, upon which both the above are clearly modelled, along with a snake who's probably a solid, in fact I suspect both might be, rather than hollow-casts?

 

* I often have a mental list of things to look out for at a show, as a default against not finding anything in particular, in the past it has been Romans, anything/everything Fontanini or it might be straw-bales, it's been water-wells, or, as in this case elephants!

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 - Composition Artillery

This wasn't a find, I'd ordered it in advance to collect on the day, and it's a mixed bag with several items of interest and while the figures are composition, the guns are both a die-cast / tin-plate mix with real rubber wheels.

The groups as bought, I have always wanted a decent sample of the 40mm figures, these are Lineol, and while I have managed a couple of musicians, one or two marching troops and a Tank Commander we saw here a few years ago, I didn't have any 'fighters'.

The mounted figures and standard-bearer can go with my existing paraders, while I'll look for a second gun for these chaps to crew (you will have noticed the further piece here is a US equipment). And I'm very happy to have my first explosion, having admired them in the past!

Adrian had a 70-mil artilleryman in his cheapie tray, so I bought him to A) compare with the smaller ones, and B) have a sample! Both figures are a clearly grey colour rather than Feldgrau or field grey, so a Luftwaffe unit?

 

I think the 3.7cm PaK-36 infantry AT-Gun is by Hausser-Elastolin (who had their own limited 40mm range), and it's a lovely piece, I love the pre-war ones with their three-colour schemes, but this is equally 'dinky' and fires individual, round, paper 'amorces' from an anvil-type firing plate off a finger-trigger, to the right of the breech.

 

The other gun in the lot is proving hard to ID, I mean it's obviously a US 155mm M1 Howitzer (a confusing gun to look at as it's layout is similar to the commoner, smaller, 105mm, and it shares a calibre with the more famous in the public eye Long Tom), and it's clearly marked JAG's Copyrights. The elevating mechanism is partially damaged.

 

But I can't find anything about JAG in the die-cast reference library, or on-line? Although, anyone who's tried using the old black and white French tome, will know it's almost impossible to follow, but my go-to cheat - Schiffer's Emergency Vehicles - doesn't list a JAG either, (and that has everything!) so if you can help with anything on the firm I'd be grateful.

 

There was a JAG's Trophies of London, a few years ago, could this be from a presentation plinth? An unusual piece for a UK company to make as a promotional, as it was neither an item of service equipment here, nor, as far as I know, licence built here for anyone else? It has the look of French Dinky about it, but isn't? It could be German or American in manufacture?

 

It's also in a smaller scale, so goes better with a few Airfix odds I had to hand, the image on the right is from Korea and you can see the model's wheels are a bit smaller than the service item. I'll look out for a 40mm compatible Pak-40 or '88 FlaK in tin-plate, for my artillerymen, but not for a year or two!

F is for Follow-up - GLJ is for Get Looking in your Junk pile!

Weekend Job! Just a quickie, but quite important as it's a new name which will enable all sorts to be ID'd, and, while the images here are a bit shite, you can look at the original post to get a better idea of the contents.

You may remember when we looked at these a while back; Original Generic Primogenitor, well, they weren't generics, they were fully marked underneath you just couldn't read it the way they were tied-in at the back of the card, in actual fact they are claimed by the G.L.J. Toy Co., Inc., of Syosset, New York.

 

The toys are dated 1978, GLJ applied for trademarks in 1979 and 1980, so must have flourished then, with various infant toys, rubber gorilla's (KK) and other stuff coming-up on search results, but that's the brand for those Toyway astronauts, and the various other mechanics, firefighters, GI's and farmers shown in the previous post, so you can dig them out of the shite pile this weekend, isolate them and give them title!

Aaaaannnnnnd, wouldn't you know it, a few months later, and for the ninth time in the last twelve months Woodsey has managed to find/post something, recently seen here, feigning complete ignorance, despite the fact he always comments here at Christmas, although he sometimes deletes the comment after I've got the eMail notification? It's getting boring, Paul. "What do you think, readers!"

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2023/12/slo-mobile-space-alien-set.html

Different contents, and a better-branded box, two discoveries over here, and a Google-search result over there, but don't credit your source 'ay?

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2023/12/slo-mobile-space-alien-set.html

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 - Civilian Vehicles

The civilian vehicles I picked-up at Sandown back in May are probably more interesting than the military stuff, but it's a question of personal taste, and it's not like you're going round a show trying to work out what's cool or not for a future Blog post! Although you do sometimes buy things for a blog post, mostly it's filling-gaps, ticking boxes or grabbing interesting, or unusual curiosities or novelties!

 

 

A couple of bagged Hong Kong rack toy vehicles, seperate purchases I think, but shot together for this post. The Surry wagon is my second, and with the first in storage, I'll wait until I can compare them before I open and construct one. The tractor I may have loose somewhere, but I thought I'd better get this one to tie-in the Thomas-Poplar looking driver.

 

A pair from Tudor Rose, A London Taxi and Bedford / Morris (?) type minivan, the Taxi will be off to New York soon in exchange for the Marx one we looked at the other day, and it has slightly more realistic wheels/tyres than the van!

 

A few shots of the van, with the Taxi's belly-mark inset, bottom right. The marking on the van was quite poor, due to play I think. Garden/beach toys, the van has working rear doors and a sliding side-door. Those wheels though - "Purest Grreeeen, Blackadder!"

 

This was lovely, an Archer steam road-roller, I don't know if they were imported from the US at the time, I suspect not, but rather imported more recently by a collector, I will try to get a Tudor Rose (or Kleeware) one, and a Lipkin one, so we can compare with the Merit one! The red button on the nose is the knob of a pull-cord wind-in motor, not that common a motive system, but there were a few back then. I also have the Pyro (and Banner?) in 'army' khaki!

 

Not sure about this at all, the card looks fake, home-printed on a PC, but a small company may well have done something like that back in the early years of computing and desk-top publishing, yet the contents are genuine enough, and maybe it was last-minute clearance or something of a 'Friday Afternoon' or 'Monday Morning' project? Also despite the busy graphics, there's no real branding, but it's hardly a typical generic either?

 

Poplar Plastics; this looks to be an early and not wholly stable plastic, but only the v-point of the blue moulding seems to have distorted slightly? A nice model anyway, and I'm a bit of a sucker for plastic racing cars!

 

Airfix - another! I put a Hillco cowboy on it in the absence of a motorcycle rider. I've picked up a few of these now, and that page on the Airfix blog will get an update with new images. Blue body with red wheels seems to be the commonest combination, I have several now, different shades of both though.

Another Poplar product, this shares the baseplate/chassis with the Easter Bunny egg-cart we looked at a few years ago, albeit with slightly different mountings. The wheels and chassis are polystyrene, the horse and cart-box, polyethylene.

 

The cart doesn't seem to come with or be fitted for hay-racks, but has seating, presumably from it days as a Thomas Toy when it would have come with a set of those seated PVC rubber kids?

U is for Up The Pole!

I had an interesting 2020-2021 with one eBay seller, he had a shit lot (not a shitload, different meaning altogether!) of clearly brittle Cherilea Wild West with some Hong Kong copies of Jean thrown-in for good measure with a couple of other bits and he wanted something extreme like 48-quid BIN. I offered him £25 I think and he turned it down, about six months later I offerd him £20 and didn't get a response, then, at some point Chris Smith spotted it and I told him the tale, I don't know if he made an offer or not, I don't think he does Wild West, but then, about eighteen months after I'd first seen it, I tried again at £20.

 

He turned it down the same day and offered me something like £32 again, so I made another offer of £15, and that generated an eMail! "But you offered . . . " etc. So I explained it was mostly shite, but I was happy to pay 15-squids for the Totem pole and in the end I think we settled on £18+£2p&p? or the original offer from the best part of two years earlier!

 

Some of the amounts may not be wholly accurate it was a while-ago now, but you get the picture, hard work from someone who really hasn't a clue, but has been 'taught' by scripted day-time telly-shit that everything in his attic is worth a bloody fortune.

 

There was a bit more than in the image, and a pile of broken bits below the crop, but you can see it's only the Totem Pole which is interesting, and it's very interesting!

How it arrived! One of the reasons I wasn't willing to shovel money at the guy, everything else went in the bin as even though I tried to save some of the heads, belts etc . . . they crumbled like biscuits! Well, the HK went to charity, I think!

 

However, I managed to get it all glued-back together and it's still in one piece, although I do treat it with extra reverence, and it has its own little plastic box to live in. Not to be found in the PW Special Publication on Cherilea, I can't see who else it could be, and I don't think I've ever seen another, until Bill 'Wotan' emailed a while back . . .

. . . with the news, he'd found one too! And his is a base-varient with an integrally moulded base? And, arguably nicer colours! On his Blog, the sepia wash he uses has made it even nicer! Cherilea Toy Totem Pole with a subdued orange/grey thing going on.

 

There are signs of it being glued to a baseboard; the original window-box maybe? The three upper sections are exactly the same as mine, but the lower section is obviously quite different. Cheer to Bill for the images, have you got one of these, what base has it got? If the plug-in came second, some might have the later, heavier base with flat/right-angled sides/edges?