H is for How They Come In - New Name!

Actually I have mentioned Jon Attwood a couple of times already, as he has been partaking in the day-to-day life here (comments, feedback, emails etc . . . ) for a while now, sent canoes in time to catch that 'mini-season' and - as we will see in a minute - we've already seen some of Jon's contribution in the novelty animals post a few days ago, but first I find myself thanking someone for their supreme generosity in sending their odds, sods and chuck-outs to the Blog, rather than eBaying, car-booting or charity-shopping them.

 

And once they are sent, it is right I share them with you, as I'm doing here, that's half the idea, but the other half is in the strength all these donations contribute to the 'whole-picture' going forwards, as evidenced by that 'funnimal' post, which can sometimes take a little more time to work through, however, for now, many thanks to Jon, for the three parcels we shall be looking at in the next few days . . . and a fourth, which I'm still sorting/photographing for future sharing.

 

Somehow they have loaded in reverse order, I'm afraid Blogger is dying! Like the schools, courts, roads, water/sewerage systems, and even democracy itself, blogger is a little broken now - so-many updates over the years have rendered it glitchy!

 

But this was going to be the last shot, it has now (sniff-sniff) gone to charity, it went with the permission of Jon, because it's a little outside the parameters of the Blog, and very large, but it is figural, and it is fun, so I am very happy it came through my fingers, and I could shoot it first!

UK readers will instantly recognise it, but for our foreign readers, this is Bertie Basset, mascot of best-selling, household-name Basset's Liquorice Allsorts ("which sort of Allsort is your sort?" went the tag-line / ear-worm, for many years), here rendered as a CD holder, with secret drawer. The drawer would have contained a plain, crinkly bag of Allsorts, and has room for a few more CD's as you can only get a few in the round compartment.

It would have been a novelty item issued at Christmas, probably repeatedly over two or three years, or maybe at Easter, but you'd expect something more seasonal tying it into that latter holiday? All polystyrene, it's a survivor, that's for sure!

I think these must be garden-centre fare? Or florists/cake-decorators stuff, to which I suppose we should add window-dressers? Large, polystyrene dragonflies in two sizes of transparent plastic, there's no sign of a wire, nor a stick of some sort, but heat could quickly introduce such a thing to the underside, while florists wire or clear tape could lift/fit them into an arrangement/display?

 

Again, a bit outside the Blog's remit, but I've hung on to them as the insect zone isn't as well-represented with samples as other branches, and when the thematic pages come to be added to the A-Z Blogs, they will make a larger section for the dragonflies, and a better comparison shot with all the others! And they will be brilliant for fighting spacemen, with coloured lighting!

I adjusted the contrast to highlight the detailing, but collaged both images as the 'before' image wasn't that shabby really!

Getting into stuff you'll recognise; and with the porcine catapult ammunition from Horrible Histories (Worlds Apart) are the mini animals we looked at in better depth the other day, I'd forgotten when writing it, that these three had come in so soon, but the cat one is the most 'cermaic' knock-off looking, with a decorative finish clearly aping a glaze. The 'Roo with a Joey is Kinder.

 

I think all the dogs are new to Blog/Collection, while the laying sheep is early British, but I can't place him right now (he'll be on Barney's pages!), and the camel is a chunk of Wend-Al aluminium. The mini cow is a lovely wooden Erzgebirge piece, and I particularly liked the little white deer (bottom left), who is polyethylene and very well sculpted, but unknown to me . . . a die-cast farm, zoo, or hunting truck maybe?

Army types included a nice sample of home-painted comic-flat Washington's insurgents, who need to be finished-off (with paint!) at some point, so much effort has already gone into them, it would be a shame to strip them and throw them in Boston harbour?

 

Top left are the smallies, mostly Galoob, but the blue 8th army piracy is useful. Top right are mostly spares, but useful-enough, especially the Minimodels bits, which being polystyrene can not only contribute to the renovation of their brother figures, but also more esoteric modelling/scratch-building with other 'multipose' stock from Airfix, Tamiya, Historex &etc.

While the Roman is Blue Box (BBI for Poundland over here) and lacks a shield, and the chap lying in front of him is another of the Aurora Japanese AFV crew, and seems to have been painted by whoever painted the officer I've had for about 25-years! I'm sure it's coincidence based on the limited pallet available to modellers way-back, when!

Jon wonders if the firefighter is a Cherilea hollow/slush-cast, while the other two are from the Airfix kit I think. Loving the Mr Man, and a Lucky Toys mechanic is always useful, to compare with all the others, re. base-mark. The two colourful teenagers are Galoob again (untransformed Power Rangers).

 

The really interesting figure is the dancing girl, she is about 25/28mm compatible, soft but dense polyethylene or 'propylene, similar to the earlier (?) flat dancers ('Euro-premiums', 100 Dolls etc....), but fully-round and I can only imagine she is from a boardgame of some kind - as the archer next to her, is? At first glance I thought she might be a Merten unpainted medieval lady, but no; she's in soft plastic.

These are both interesting, on the left unknown mechanics, possibly from a kit, but they don't seem to be Aurora, Tomy or anyone like Preiser, so an ID, if you know, would be very useful. While on the right, are what I suspect are pretty recent (i.e. China not Hong Kong) copies of the old Triang Scalextric figures, and again, a positive-ID would be a positive advance! They may be late/currentish  Hornby, manufactured for them in China?

A very useful bunch of trees and foliage, including the three lead pieces to the right, a number of Britains pieces and three palm trees which I think might be above-average quality cake-decoration pieces, possibly from one of the Britains Hawaiian dancer/ukulele sets?

Vehicles and accessories; lovin' the eyes! They'll definitely make a come-back here in a Halloween post at some point, you can still get very similar items (I saw some in The Works the other day), while the ships are Manurba or Siku? There are hulls as well I think, but I have growing bags of such vessels from a dozen sources, and again they will come back here one day as part of a fuller overview.

The little green tri-wheel'er is Balaban Guida (a capsule toy issuer from Spain or Turkey?) and the blue wagon is a Hong Kong copy of the Preiser/Roskopf one. What else can you spot? It's all grist to the mill, and you can never have too-many Christmas cracker motorcycles!

Only a few days after I mentioned the product-placed Gogo Crazy Bones (Disney etc), here's two English Premier League footballer Gogo's! Beckham? who's he? There is a growing tub of cocktail-stick/toothpick pub/restaurant signs, very common when I was very young (1960's) they've totally disappeared now as a publicity device? I'm guessing they have their own collecting community and my sample will only ever be a 'sample', but this is a rather nice addition.

The Piratey bits and Halloweeny cat are by Rinco, (Yiwu, China), and the Post Office pillar-box is new to me, and might be touristy or from a die-cast set, while the antique wooden spinning-top will join that growing tub of tops and counters.

Finally, (and this was supposed to be the second image?*), a few boxed items; The Germans will get made-up one day . . . I have a bit of a stash of unmade kit figures; Tamiya, Heller, Airfix, Bandai and the Monogram family etc . . . and there will be a thematic 'ID' page on the A-Z's one day, to which these will contribute.

 

The Westair 'Mocherettes' are very useful for having a site specific packaging; Bath 'Baths'! While you may recognise that the Airfix Hussar bits are the third lot this year (there were two lots in Plastic Warrior's plunder), and there's probably enough to make up a whole figure now!

Many, many thanks to Jon for all this 'stuff', it really is all grist to the mill, in the best meaning of the word, and builds the bigger picture. It is amazing that people like Jon (and Adrian, Brian, Brian, Chris, Gareth, John, Trevor, Peter el al.) save this stuff for me, and I only hope I do it justice in sharing it with the rest of you, and will use it fully going forwards as it contributes to comparisons, overviews, thematic posts and company listings - Cheers Jon.

*Yes, I could move them all about, but life's too short, and if that's how they loaded, that's how I'll blurb-them-up!

S is for Seen Elswhere - 40mm Comansi / Novalinea

These were not only seen elsewhere - on the intermawebby thing - recently, but are the shots (in colour) which illustrated my (black & white) article in One Inch Warrior magazine about . . . err . . . 20-years ago? I really don't know where the time goes, but I suspect Hell has played it's part in stealing the hours, days and years! Only scans, and lowish-res', so captions, rather than full blurb, they'll be looked at properly, again, another day.

 

Long boxes, I believe these were saved from a damp shed in Malta (?) or Cyprus, by that stalwart finder of nice things, Mike Harding, back in the early 1990's.

 

The box art from the three of them.

 

Loose figures as found in the sets, unpainted examples are from the later Novalinea branded sets, painted will be Comansi issued.

 

Horses, Indians get a quiver of arrows,

cowboys and cavalry get a sheathed rifle.

Accessories are the same as for the 54mm range.

Except the Teepee / Ti-Pi / Wigwam, which is downscaled.

 

Both sides of a flyer, which came in a larger set.

This was in the tub my loose samples came from, it went the way of all flesh, being very discoloured and brittle.

Comparison between the Novalinea box and one of Esci's classic red-box sets, a clear attempt to impersonate and (given the contents) mislead. And a bit naughty as Franco died in 1976, while Spain would join the EU in 1986, so there wasn't the 'Franco / dictatorship' excuse of being 'out in the cold' to justify such piracy against a near-neighbour?

Base marking of the 40mm figures.

I'll do a better job in the future with photography!

The Yolanda mark is the same 'Saloon' font, in the same 'TV' frame!

This was the label from a tub of 54mm figures, and the reverse of the sheet shows it to have been recycled from the Thunderbirds line, which included new character figures and some of the earlier Ovni ("UFO") space figures reconfigured as 'red-shirt' army-builders!

RTM is for Rack Toy Moment

Because Rack Toy Month is over! It's bloody September already? How did that happen . . . I blame the movement of the planetary bodies in the heavens, paying absolutely no heed to my needs!

 

I've actually taken the last apple off the tree, six to eight weeks earlier than any previous year? And the blackberries/brambles are going over a few weeks early too, while the raspberries did nothing . . . we haven't got long, these are signs of severe stress which has the plants desperate to seed because they think/know they are going to die.

 

To which end all the azaleas, except the big yellow one, have gone, the bay went and all but one of the mini Japanese acers. Next door have a brown chunk in their hedge, two doors up have lost their roadside leylandii (despite all the rain this summer) and I've given up trying to save the box from the invasive Box Moth - three attacks since March!

In the meantime, Brian Berke found this in his home city of New York, and it's a fine curtain-closer, for Rack Toy Month!

In his own words, as I can't add anything;

 

"In the last hours of Rack Toy Month I came across this set: SANITATION

Now in NYC there are Sanitation Department Police who give tickets for health violations so that vehicle is OK.

The header card says: ACCOMPANY YOUR CHILDREN TO GROW UP TOGETHER! which is fine but look at the top two figures, Rambo who no doubt is part of NYC's war on rats and then a soldier with a shoulder mounted bazooka! A little excessive even for NYC rats, I hope they never get that big!

I like the recycling bins."

And those figures look similar to other 'Army men' we have looked at here, so it might be possible one day to tie them in with a branding, although it is carrying one; Huan le D-somthing? Many thanks to Brian!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Wild West

A few bits I've posted elsewhere on the internet in the last eighteen-months or so, all on a Wild West theme, nothing to get too excited about, but getting them up here, so I can get them off the new Laptop, which I still hate!

 

 

These chaps, which were donated to the blog by Theo Van de Werden elicited no response here or elsewhere, but I found them looking for something else! They're Baravelli, who seem to have contracted quite a bit of unique stuff from the former British Crown Colony, so while they may have had other branded issues elsewhere in the world, Baravelli is good enough for me, and being 100% 'toy soldier' polyethylene I will hang on to them for the time being, thanks again to Theo!

This was funny - not my pun, which was predictable, but the aftermath; I posted this back in January, as a joke, which read "Jean Hoefler trading as 'Big', got . . . err . . . very big!", only for Deadleaf to post all six figures a few weeks later, then some other futwit sent them to a magazine (whose readers would mostly have seen Hairband's already!), now . . . I know my 'eemies' are desperate for any crumb that they can award points too, but really?

 

This stuff is German, both subsequent 'contributors' are Germans, it's not rare, and I would expect two middle-aged German collectors to have their local production to hand? Indeed, why hadn't they shown us their 'treasures' years ago? Why wait 'till I've posted one, for a laugh, a cheap-laugh at that, before stampeding to the public sphere with their take on it?

 

Aber ich habe auch einen, tatsächlich habe ich sechs! It was a joke . . . but it's deadly serious to these pathetic point-scorers, when they're not trying to hide their purchase-guilt from their 'fat, psychopathic wives' (thanks Pink), by doing the housework! There; I just clawed some of the points back! Pathetic, isn't it?

We've seen another Argentine copy of this Timpo Hopalong Cassidy copy, on the Blog (dirty-white on a brown horse?) already, but I managed to find another pair, second Hopalong and a copy of the Herald Indian with full war-bonnet, on the same Timpo horse piracy.

We saw these in full here, so it's just clearing the picture, Hong Kong/China solid copies of older HK copies of Timpo and HK 'swoppets'.

N is for Novelty Animals

I can't remember if someone mentioned these in a comment on an 'H is for How They Come In' post, or if it was in an email, but a conversation was had, to the effect that I would blog them more fully another day, and it turns-out I have more here than I think I have in storage, so here they are!

These cats, are the ones my collection started with, not these specifically, who have only recently build-up here, and I do have a better sample in storage, they are also, along with the frogs, the commonest, or at least that's my experience, I'm sure different animals prove more or less popular in different countries/sales territories and would have been ordered-in accordingly.

I'm equally sure any similarity with the Marx Minikins 'Figaro' from Pinocchio, is purely coincidental, as there were - between 1900 and the 1970's several similar short, fat cats in popular fiction or the arts/entertainment, including two Felix's (I think), Penelope Pussycat, [Babbitt &] Catstello, Muff (from Tom & Jerry's Fluff, Muff & Puff kittens), Corky, Fritz, Lucifer, Pussyfoot and others, so these were aiming at a well-worn constituency!

 

I thought I had a card in the archive with them all on it, as a 'rack-toy', but I can't find it - although I found other things to enhance the post - so I can't tell you if it was an adult with six kittens, or all six as small or large mouldings. The smaller mouldings are commoner, as they were chosen for gum-ball machine capsule-prizes, among other things.

Pigs are also popular, and the Hippo's seem to turn-up with more regularity than some of the others in the range. I don't know, but suspect they may have got themselves into Christmas Crackers at some point, or maybe only the larger ones? They don't all seem to have larger versions, though.

 

The frogs, with a gum-ball machine's insert card below, I have seven poses here, maybe more in storage and there seems to be an eighth on the card, which also has a duplicate for a five count.

 

Other examples, again; there may be more in storage, but you can see it's all the things people tend to collect - puppies, owls, moo-cows, chicks etc. . . I think there were small elephants? The kitten doing a hand-stand (like one of the pigs), is from a later set, not connected with the (1960's?) black ones. While, I didn't realise I'd hidden the tortoise!

 

The tortoise and the rodent (far left) may be from a line of Netsuke look-alikes, their decoration is finer, and they are more realistic sculpts, indeed the rodent may be an Asian water-rat or vole of some kind?
 

The hole in the underside is the unifying factor with all these, although as you can see here, some don't have one! The smaller kitten has the standard hole, while the whole set of pigs (with the exception of 'hand-stand') have one which is large enough to make them pencil-tops?

 

The prone kitten has an oblong hole, and smaller base area figures tend to get smaller holes, and the frog to the far-right has a medium-small one. While typically the large-sized ones have a larger hole, the pair of frogs here have a small and medium-small hole, just to be different!

There is a tendency within the hobby to call all this type of feature mould-release pin-marks, but I suspect that's not the case here, and it's more about minimising material-used, and/or preventing heat-shrinkage on tools with a fast cycle-rate?

I think these have both been on the blog before, but they turned-up while I was looking for the other bits, so here they are again! These three cats are in storage, but probably not yet with the 'master' sample, so you can see there will be quite a few in total.  The bear is later, and probably from a different company, but more on that in a mo'.

 

Just a quick-one on all these, they are similar to Kinder's 'hard plastics' and Kinder followed the concept of cartoony 'styrene animals, but the Hong Kong ones mostly predate Kinder by a decade or more, and while some of the above were claimed in early Kinder collector manuals from Germany, I think they've mostly been excised from current edits as there just wasn't the empirical evidence.

A set of clowns are within the oeuvre, usually sold as cake decorations, as were these Santa Claus figures mucking about, again, slightly newer and contemporary with the bears, we saw them here, with a Model Power iteration and links to Tobar (Hawkin's Bazaar) in the comments! Note the Greensward Leprechaun!

 

I also noticed, while sorting this stuff the other night, that those garden gnomes (hollow plastic, wheel barrow and garden-tools lot, and musician lot), have a smaller, solid iteration, which may be part of this extended range? Six clowns are also sold as cake-decorations.

I've tried not to lecture or pontificate this Rack Toy Month, but I often come back to one message in RTM, with this cheapo', novelty type stuff, you can only pin them down to a brand if you have the packaging with them, otherwise they are any one of several brands AND several anonymous/generic issues, and I'm sure a quick search of evilBay will pull Unique, Carousel and/or Grandmother Stovers into the fold!

To which end Wilton carried families of larger animals, glossy airbrushed; pigs, lambs, squirrels, poodles, pandas, rabbits, chicks &ect. Typically, they were two or three babies and one adult, Culpitt had a set of chicks, but they are larger, and mostly in storage (if I have more than one or two?), so can wait for another day!

F is for Follow-up - A Splash of Paint

A pair of rather colourful Astronauts now. This could equally be a 'T is for Two' post, but we have looked at one in detail, and covered the other in passing, in a roundabout sort of way!

 

So, first, the eraser Macro Nauts we looked at here, I have now found a painted one, which makes sense as they were made of that silicon rubber which makes crap erasers, just smudges the pencil and eventually splits down the weak-points, so, selling them as painted playthings would be an obvious step! I don't have anything on maker/brand or set yet, but I'll be looking!

While this guy is interesting because when we looked at the Kinder version, someone, elsewhere (of course), made a comment to the effect he 'thought' they were Azrak Hamway (AHI), but they weren't, although they are clearly copies, here's an AHI original, and he's about 75/80mm to the Kinder's 35/40mm!

F is for Follow-up - Space Flats

I don't know how I've ended-up with all this space stuff, it was supposed to be vehicle-figures-vehicle-figure post and then move-on to something else, but there's a folder full of the stuff and I just carried-on working through it! In the meantime, I shot this to confirm an earlier comment . . . 

. . . re the green semi-flat chap having been issued by Montaplex unpainted, and here we see two in yellow, they seem to be from the same tool, so someone must have bought a bunch to paint-up and sell at a different price-bracket, because you do see them like this from time to time?

 

Posed with two contemporary figures from Torgano (grey) and an unmarked white version of the Linde/DS Plastics (Plasticraft) spaceman we looked at here. The helmet is a non-canon one which happened to fit . . . 'ish!

11-Sep-2023 - definitely not French! He is pathetic, isn't he? "Neh! I got one too and mine is blue!"

2 is for 'Men From Outer Space'!

Picked this up a while back, ostensibly for the 'missing' pose, from this post (was it really five years ago? I don't know where it goes!), anyway, because I spotted the pose I didn't give much more attention to it beyond noticing it has the same card-art as the previously-seen set, but with a 2 instead of a 3 . . . begs the question; was there a 4 (with one of each pose), or even a single 'Man From Outer Space'?!

So, what I missed, was that the lenticular eyes on this pair are printed in a Nordic-blue, rather than the black/gray ones I've seen hundreds of times over the years, possibly on every other example I've seen - which still had the eyes, tatty ones are usually missing them! So, that's a rack-toy variation on two counts, Giant copies, box ticked!

Q is for Question Time - Rack Toy Question

Sean at Fantasy Toy Soldiers had these somewhere, and I think he has more poses than me, but he too was asking for further information, so, hoping there are different readers here, I'll ask too - does anyone know anything about these chaps and chapesses?

They are about 50mm (a Hing Fat trait?) and pretty mid-to-late 1980's in style; a bit Star Wars, a bit Nottingham Mafia, a bit post-apocalyptic and straight-to-video! Medium density polyethylene and, apart from the sci-fi subject, typical 'army men' rack toy fodder.

Colours are also very Hing Fat, ignoring the two shades of grey, and these are also very reminiscent of the Galaxy Rangers from Hing Fat, which is not to say they are Hing Fat, but might be, or might have been supplied by them for someone else?

 

Looking at the two in the larger picture, could they be meant to be Buck and Wilma from Buck Rogers, after the 80's TV series? They carry no mark (which is also the case with the Galaxy Rangers I think?), and I have one heat-shrinkage figure who is useable - the white plastic chap in the small picture.

S is for Star Patrol

Do you remember those Imperial glow-in-the-dark bug-eyed aliens we looked at a while back, well, they did them in a smaller size with armoured space-marine types and a few lumpy space vehicles as real rack-toy trash; brilliant!

The boys in gunmetal; there are five poses and each is in a different 'battle suit' and they are a similar hardish polyethylene to both sizes of alien.

The aliens come on all four of the larger poses, I only have three so far, but that's the fun of collecting! They are in the same three glow-in-the-dark colours, but don't have their eyes painted in.

 

A part/near complete set on evilBay a while back, in trying to brighten the contrast it may have lost a bit on the aliens, and I suspect there's a second flat ship missing, I have none of these, but must find the space tanks! It may even be most of two bags?