About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

O is for Olympics!

So, one of my earlier purchases did a get shot before I sent the box up the road, and it raises a point I didn't mention in my 'lots' of 'wrong' history the other day, but it was pretty obvious if you studied the photographs.

It is that with some of the figure sets, the contents are, to say the least, assorted, with duplicates, often the same pose/colour - pointing to a lack of mixing before packing, or an incomplete pose-count.

Note that this set has a set number/order code, most do, but some are on the fronts and some are on the backs, and the reason I listed them alphabetically is that I couldn't find enough images of both sides of the cards to build a decent list, I will, when I get my seven/eight out again, probbaly find them all. If you read anywhere "the card has a stock number which many of the other cards do not have", be sure - you are reading bullshit.

The seven poses I've ended-up with, as stated last time these are the 'Euro' poses, not those issued by Marx, and not those issued in UK Cereal, neither of which have a torch-bearer, so are all just 'athletes' against this set's Olympic figures! I suspect there should be eight?

That's a question mark because I don't know for certain, it could be ten or more, I'm not sure, you see, Kent, Paul, Stadinger, Fuckwits Anonymous . . . if I wrote there were eight [as a fact], and they supplied them to Choco-tag-nuts in brown (because Choco-tag-nuts had them in brown), I'd be making things up as I go along, and I try not to do that kind of shit here!

 
These were offered by DS Plastic in Holland / the Netherlands, and are probably 35/40mm flats/semi-flats, possibly soft polyethylene, and which may well have appeared in De Gruyter lucky/gift/surprise envelopes, and I wonder if anyone has actual examples they could send to the blog . . . or send it to a leading magazine - Plastic Warrior has recently covered all the other athletes?
 
I had a go anyway;
  • 1008 - Action Athletes
  • 3006 - Antique Cars
  • 3002 - Comic Animals
  • 1001 - Comic Moon Figures
  • 1007 - Comic Pirates
  • ???? - Dogs - Mexico
  • 1003 - Dolls of the World
  • 3004 - Dune Buggys [sic]
  • 3009 - Historical Transportation
  • 3003 - Horse-Drawn Coaches
  • 1011 - Robin Hood Figures
  • 1022 - Soldiers of World War II
  • 3001 - Super Motorcycles

Put in numerical order;

  • 1001 - Comic Moon Figures
  • 1003 - Dolls of the World
  • 1007 - Comic Pirates
  • 1008 - Action Athletes
  • 1011 - Robin Hood Figures
  • 1022 - Soldiers of World War II
  • 3001 - Super Motorcycles
  • 3002 - Comic Animals
  • 3003 - Horse-Drawn Coaches
  • 3004 - Dune Buggys [sic]
  • 3006 - Antique Cars
  • 3009 - Historical Transportation
  • ???? - Dogs - Mexico

So, it's not 'many don't', it's all do! Stadinger was making it up as he went along . . . again! Hahahahaha, fuckin' unbelievable, isn't it? It's fuckin' unbelievable! But they keep doing it, in the desperate hope they may, one day, really catch me out!

The 1xxx's are probably numbered-in with other toys/novelties/playthings, the 3xxx's suggest other Italian/R&L type clip-together kits/funnies may still be to find?

H is for Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Rubenstein is the New Rock & Roll!

They just can't help themselves, can they? I knew exactly what I was doing, and they have proven nothing other than that there are more sets than the 12? I think I suggested as much, when I said . . .

 "which is not to say there aren't more"

. . . but twelve would have been neat, and ten seem commoner! TJF has practically had a real cum orgasm in public over a header-card for what are obviously trashy rack-toy clones! Is it any surprise that an import-export concern carried Hong Kong Stock?

Away from this still limited, but now 13-count toy line, they would have had knock-off torches, sewing sets, key-rings, kitchen gadgets that break the fourth time you use them, plant pots, macramé sets, cruet sets, shit scissors . . . you know what they would have had!

 
Kindly, TJF confirms that the card dates from the 1980's, and was 'closeout', which again takes us away from the 1950/60's cereal premiums, and could be old stock from the 1977 days or something more contemporary . . . pretty-much what I dug-up, and he's certainly done Kent's arguments (if he really has any?) no favours!! Fancy having the card without the figures?

And I'd already confirmed they 'do figures' - I showed them!???? He then says, "So it is likely they did a header card Soldiers of the World" . . . why? Why is it likely? Because they sound the same? Simplistic tosh, the evidence (circumstantial) is they took multicoloured shite from anywhere or anyone except Tatra, the dullard!

He then claims the Tatra are R&L, which even the R&L experts don't! They have the lovely Aussie flats of Diggers. And the grandiose shite in his last paragraph is hilarious, I'd be embarrassed to be caught writing such narcissistic rubbish! Or having it written about me!

What I've said, and I will say it again, is that THERE IS NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that they ever carried the Tatra-for-Kellogg's/Nabisco/Peak Freans et al 'Soldiers/Warriors of the World/All Nations'. Nor any evidence for the link to silver/gold cereal premiums, beyond the hearsay present on Kent's site for years. I have never said they didn't 'do them', just that the evidence isn't there?

Now if Mr Specher is to send empirical evidence in his fantastic forthcoming article, then that query will be put to bed, won't it? And the whole hobby will know a truth, but as The Jabbering Fuck is relying on another card-top altogether, I suspect we'll be waiting a long time for that particular evidential revelation?

Is he going to show us the dogs . . . I haven't found the dogs card yet, either . . . let's hope for his sake they are silver and gold with no signs of the staples being tampered with, because otherwise he'll be adding nothing to what I showed/said the other day? Who bought the Dolls of the World on Tuesday, was that Kent? Oh, he could send those to the magazine, couldn't he?!

And wouldn't we rather an American collector tells us accurately, about an American toy importer, than have to wait for a Brit to come along twenty years later and try to undo some of the falsehoods and myths about cereal premiums! So I - for one - am really looking forwards to his article with a barely contained joy, indeed I think I might have fun going through it with a fine-toothed comb!

Now, don't get me wrong, DO NOT get me wrong, Kent has done some amazing work for the hobby (I don't think TJF has, particularly . . . new production? It's on 15 websites!), both by himself, and in league with others, and I have sung his praises here many times, I have posted about 100-links (?) to his pages over the years, but this day was always coming.

Indeed, I have had private conversations with (closes eyes and counts quietly), one . . . two . . . three . . . at least five/six people off the top of my head, over the last four or five years, some a decade ago, predicting this moment. So they won't have been any more surprised than me to see Standinger's arsegasm, nor even, if they noticed Kent's comments the other day.

He's always been conspicuous by his absence, it was notable how he almost seemed to start commenting on Shite Stuff more after the war started, so his associate membership of the PSTSM was always badge-clear! And he started adjusting his site to reflect things written on my Blog within months of my starting, never crediting, never acknowledging, even as I sent him traffic? Something I've also pointed out to people over the years. None of this latest skirmish is any surprise to those who matter.

So the question was only ever, is he going to avoid eye-contact forever, stay 'neutral', sit on his hands over on the verge? And it was beginning to look like he would, but for reasons known only to him, he lost the plot on Monday and fell off the wagon! And because - as you know - I was up on my high horse (it's almost like somebody else scripted half of this!), I couldn't help him up!

Far from Kent's "You got a lot of the history of Rubenstein International wrong" (I didn't even cover much history) or Stadinger's "....contained a number of mistakes", there was one error - on the status of a non-toy soldier charity-trust thingy! Nothing in Kent's comments on my post, nor in TJF's little turd of a piece . . . piece of a turd, corrects or contradicts anything I reported last Monday.

Still; Kent is going to put us all right, hopefully including his own site, which has always contained questionable details, as fact, on Rubenstien, with his future article, it's gonna' be awsome, let's all big it up - coming soon, the fundamentally stupendous, encyclopedic, vastly better than Hugh's, fuller than a full shit-truck's, history of Rubenstein, the article that will save the hobby!

Worth a re-read, as I knew exactly what was happening, and pulled no punches, while Kent was pretending he didn't, but read his words after seeing the Jabbering Fuck's post and it all makes a sort of gutless sense? And a rare link to the almighty arsehole's Shite Stuff, but given his posting rate recently, he needs the traffic!

Oh fuck!, NOW they've annoyed me . . . 

  . . . talking about traffic; TJF's idiocy has sent an extra 6000-odd viewers my way, and the 5-million clicked over a couple of days early! I was hoping to catch-it on the nines, the zerros or the one, over the weekend! Heay-ho, there's always the 10! If I live that long?

Notice we also clicked-over the 4,500 posts during Rack Toy Month!

See, a big bump! The trouble is Stad's Shite is such thin gruel these days, I only visit it about once a fortnight to see if he's posted, anything, at all! It just so happens, it's often on a Friday! [I can't take screen-caps as jpg's on this pice-of-shit Windows-11 machine, so I have to shoot the screen, and I'd already turned the main lights off, me and Bosey-Boy were snuggled for the night when I found the PSTSM arsholery!]

And don't imagine all that traffic came from him, this will be the word getting round, the Vichy will be there, a cock-wacking monkey lizard or two will be there, a cheque-keeping Spanish author and his fan-boys, Deadleaf and the other one, the AFD will be there, a right-wing antipodean, then there are a couple of facebook groups which have been infested by some of my 'eemies', so the word got around; "There's a fight in the playground, Kent finally got off the fence!" All the people who pretend they've never found the Blog will be there, as they were - like Kent - all along, as they will be - tomorrow!
 
You see, all these guys are to the left of the bell-curve, if you know what I mean, while I'm to the right of it, so if I'm never going to see eye-to-eye with them, I might as well learn to enjoy rebutting their stuff!
 
Consider this, up until 48 hours ago, Kent had four sets I think, on his Rubenstein page/section, with some questionable facts. yet when I show eleven and mention the dogs (which Kent's got) The Jabbering Fuck busts a blood-vessel over a thirteenth, at me! Not the 5th, 6th, 7th . . . at 'well-researched' Kent? Why? Why is it, that they hold me to a higher standard, than they hold even themselves to? Huh? Why is that?

Back in the autumn, last year, or the year before? Or every year! TJF did a post with six figures, he got four of them wrong, and it was five corrections from three of his mates and some input from a Brit over two days, before they were all singing from the same hymn-sheet!
 
And that was fine, that was nothing more than an unfortunate series of multiple 'brain freezes', totally allowed . . . I get one detail out of whack, not even a fact, sometimes; just if I don't mention something, I get "Card or paper? Where was they from? How many? Who's that? When? Why?

I am literally held to a higher standard than everyone else! Why is that? I know! And why isn't all this fantastically new and accurate 'history' (of which I got "lots" wrong, apparently), not already on Kent's site? Was he saving it? Was he saving it for us all to enjoy on a rainy day?

There is one inaccuracy in my previous post on the subject, the family's [non-toy soldier] Foundation is not still active, there were about eleven companies between the three (Irvin, Ralph and 'L' - no inaccuracies there), ten had nothing to do with toys and I didn't follow-them up the other night, turns-out that when I downloaded it all, way-back-when, it still was active, I suspect the other 'still active's will prove not to be, too!

Apologies for that, mea culpa, and I'll wear sackcloth and ashes for the rest of the weekend! And sorry for the poor imagery here, really, but it was short notice and I only had a few unused images left-over from the other day!

To be honest, TJF's latest . . . spat? Attack? Is more sad than anything else, the attack on me personally is lacklustre and half-hearted, his own input is wrong and inaccurate, I think he used a similar title before, and it's only a few paragraphs? The whole thing lacks substance, lacks meat; it's pallid, he's not even trying, while Kent hides in my comments, pretending he can't see, what we can all see with our own eyes?

And I know what you're thinking, "Hugh, did you climb on your high horse just to get the Jabbering Fuck to push you over the 5-mil, with or without the fortuitous intervention of Kent Sprecher?", and, would you know it, in all this excitement . . . I've clean forgot.

Oh . . . and there's still three Rubenstein posts in the short queue!

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

U is for Usborne Publishing

Who took to threatening fellow-Bloggers back at the beginning of this Blog, some 15-odd years ago, god knows what they will make of a completed work, but at least two people received take-down/cease-and-desist eMails, way back when, just for publicising their (Usborne's) products!?

Scan of an old photograph of an old made-up, card model I did around 2003/4, and which was taken by a friend's kid to his junior school to be put on a bookshelf or something until it had accrued a thick-enough cover of dust to justify a trip in a skip during the summer holidays!

I hid the join in the two base-boards with coloured pencil on the moat and some scatter material in the courtyard, and I built it as per the instructions, down to the cocktail-stick flag-poles. I still have the knights in a little tub somewhere, in fact we may have seen them here at some point? The wall above the portcullis gateway had no fixing flaps or tabs, so had a tendency to lean forwards!

And it struck me, while building it, that it would be very easy to make a much bigger castle, from several, identical, Make This Castle / Make This Model Castle sets, building a much longer perimeter wall with all sorts of towers, and leaving the keep in the middle rather than in one corner!

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

I is for Inflation!

For those Brwreakshiteers who wanted to take us back to the heady days of the 1970's, here is a lesson on the sunlit-uplands of post oil crisis inflation!

Basset-Lowke 'The Waterloo Cannons'
Daily Telegraph Magazine (Sunday Supplement)
No.469 October 26th 1973


Basset-Lowke 'The Waterloo Cannons'
Sunday Times Magazine (Sunday Supplement)
November 17th 1974
 
In less than fourteen months, they went up nearly 25%! That's how it was when we were begging to join the EEC, which De Gualle had tried to keep us out of (The UK's applications to join in 1963 and 1967 were vetoed by the President of France).
 
Basset-Lowke, an old railway modelling name often used by its various owners for oddities which don't belong in the standard lines! Lovely looking guns and just the sort of thing to turn-up in a charity shop, or auction job-lot. Possibly a bit big at around 60 or 70mm compatible? Anyone know them?

K is for Khaki Infantry Page - Update

I've added some images from Chris Smith to the Khaki Infantry page, they are up the top with the Britains sentries, so you don't have to scroll down the page!

I've also added some 828 stuff, started a section for them, below the Hong Kong generics section, moved some of their stuff from there and added notes to the effect the previous '823' attribution is probably just a poorly registered stamp. No firm brand, but enough for a seperate section now. And you will have to scroll right-down the page to find it!

S is for Seen Elswhere - The Italians are Coming!

I almost can't write for excitement, someone made my day earlier this evening, in fact he made my fucking year, it's like Christmas just came early, so a quick post on a few bits I've already posted elsewhere. Mostly Fontanini, but a bit of Garibaldi, all from the Roman Boot!
The Knights; We've actually looked at a pair of the larger ones and their Hong Kong blow-moulded clones before here at Small Scale World (which nobody follows - except everybody), but this bunch is, I think (I could put 'we believe' and then you'd really think I know what I'm talking about, huh?) a complete set of eight poses in the 75/80mm line with the same plug-in bases and silver wash over matt black.


Couple of close-ups showing the standard base and . . . errr. . . that's about it! They do all have date-captions, but I didn't think to write them down, so - another day! Lazy research, that'll be the problem!


Then, also from Fontanini we have Brain Blessed and his daughter, singing the Siegmund & Sieglinde duet, from Die Walküre at Bayreuth a few years ago! God knows, the fevered mind of Simonetti as he tried to finish a Commission while hallucinating with a particularly severe bout of gastroenteritis?

But Peter Evans, roving reporter for Plastic Warrior, reports either seeing or buying them from Hastings in the past, so they were a real thing! Aren't they charming? My piss-taking aside, Fontanini did a set of the Italian Commedia dell'arte, so a little theatricalise on their Normans (or Anglo-Saxons; it's not clear!) is to be excused, if not actually expected! I Really need to find the rest of this set!


The two Vikings are in the same size as the Knights, but with integrated bases, so you can see our Sieglinde (well, if she's not a 'she', he's a very pretty boy; no reading stories to kiddies in Florida, in that getup, mate!) is around 100mm in comparison.


Finally, a quintet of Garibaldini from Nardi, another Italian maker. I think they may be supposed to have red kepis, which, if they are, are obviously missing - I may have some spare Kinder ones I can force-on with a bit of horse-gum!
 
The same sculpts were used for Confederate and Union types and RCMP (as these, but no neckerchiefs and wearing lemon-squeezer hats), and possibly US Cavalry? These are a near 54mm. There were larger sizes of these as well, and compared to some of the dancing loons which came from that stable, these are quite reasonable figures.

Monday, September 11, 2023

R is for Really Rubenstein!

Ooop . . . just let me get up on my high horse . . . that's better, now, where was I? Oh yeah! Rubenstein. There isn't much on Rubenstein within the hobby and most of what you will find seems to be conjecture dressed-up as fact! So I thought I'd add my tuppenceworth to the mix and probably ruffle a few feathers!
 
Rubenstein were a US jobber, one of a dozen or so companies/entities started by Irving Rubenstein, sometimes with his Brother Ralph, or possibly a wife, 'L' (?), always in or around North Hollywood, California. Rubenstein International were incorporated in 1977 (too late for some of the premiums they are credited with?), but are no longer active, although several of the companies (mostly involved in B2B sourcing, services, or marketing) are still extant, along with a family foundation.

On the left are the Euro-premium pirates (eight sculpts in the UK [Kellogg's] and 20 poses elsewhere, under several brands), on the right my fledgling Rubinstein collection about two years ago, I went on to add about three or four more sets, but they all went to storage about 12-months ago! Some described - by Rubenstein - as 'Made in Mexico', other's (most), 'Made in England' (not 'Britain', not 'The UK'). I have so far found one set credited to having been 'Made in the USA'.

The Robin Hood figures are the same version described elsewhere in the hobby (marked with small 'Canada' monikers), and seen elsewhere on the Blog against the New Zealand-made versions. As one of the 'made in England' sets, this would suggest someone larger than Tatra (for instance) as they must have been big enough to have a Canadian office/subsidiary?

The athletes are after the 'Euro' versions (with Olympic flame carrier), not the Kellogg's or Marx sculpts, and while both figure sets are soft polyethylene, the dune-buggys [sic] are hard polystyrene, like the R&L mini-kits, from Australia, but not marked-up to them.

Other figure sets include the ex-Raja Conjunto do Espaço 'space set' (which explains a question-mark from the very start of the Blog; my shiny yellow one is Rubenstein!), ex-Commonwealth Plastics dolls and possibly the dog breeds, but this is where I need to point out that so far, and I have been looking hard for over three years, there is NO empirical or circumstantial evidence for the Soldiers/Warriors of the World/All nations having ever been in Rubenstein packaging?
 
And if the dogs were issued by Rubenstein (and I suspect so), they were the multicoloured ones (from Mexico; not England), NOT the silver or gold ones issued with Nabisco breakfast cereals in the USA, for which the evidence is as sketchy as for the military set.
 
Indeed, let's get this out of the way, Rubenstein International were an 'Import & Export' outfit, according to their licences, and it's very unlikely they ever "made" a single toy! So whoever was supplying Rubenstein, would also have supplied the cereal or ice-cream guys &etc., and earlier, I think. Also - we know Tatra (for instance) were responsible for the warriors/soldiers . . . in silver and gold!

The R&L styled mini-kits, I now have three of these for us to look at in greater detail another day, indeed I think most of these are the shots of the auctions/BIN's I won, I wouldn't use so many evilBay images in one article if I didn't think I had a tad of moral ground under my tippy-toes! Not sure if I ever succeeded in getting the Cars, but I know I bought two sets of motorcycles, so I can make one set up, for a Blog post!

I actually managed to get the Antique Cars photographed, though! But I think I might also have got the set of Wagons, although I might be confusing it with the Historical Vehicles which I know I got but also didn't photograph? Interestingly, while the Dune Buggys are polystyrene, these are polyethylene, and the Penny Farthing in the Historic's set is probably the one Brian Berke sent to the Blog, as an addendum to that premium kit post!

So far the only set sourced in the 'States which I've found, which is not to say there aren't more, but the same eleven sets keep turning-up, with a possible run of the dogs in multicolours, making a dozen.
 
These are also nothing like the others, and we saw a pale-blue Hong Kong example of one of these in Chris Smith's last donation, so, a common gum-ball machine prize, or those rack-toy cards with a bunch of teeny header-bags for a dime or sixpence?
 
All of which gives us;
  • Action Athletes - Mexico, after Manurba/Linde et al.
  • Antique Cars - England, after R&L?
  • Comic Animals - USA
  • Comic Moon Figures - Mexico, ex-Raja premiums
  • Comic Pirates - Mexico, ex-European tool
  • Dogs - Mexico, ex-Nabisco premiums
  • Dolls of the world - Mexico, ex-Commonwealth 
  • Dune Buggys - England, after R&L?
  • Historical Transportation - England, after R&L?
  • Horse-Drawn Coaches - England, after R&L or Pyro/Kleeware?
  • Robin Hood Figures - England, previously/also Canada, after Marx
  • Soldiers of World War II - Hong Kong, contents unknown, Airfix clones?
  • Super Motorcycles - England, after R&L?

Sourced from England x6, Mexico x5, Hong Kong and the USA x1 each, for a twelve-count, which make-up grosses, which is how this rack-toy stuff is ordered/wholesaled thirteen-count; a bakers dozen!

The reason I've question-marked the possible R&L connection, is because R&L is another one where there may be falsehoods hiding as fact. When they turn-up in British or European products as premiums, they usually have A) very fine parts, B) 'R&L' somewhere on the runner, these four/five sets (the Dune Buggys may be from another source) are simpler and unmarked, while there is the various Italian sets of similar kits and the De Gruyter connections to consider.

Still no soldiers/warriors, though! Four days later - Still no soldiers/warriors!

Thanks to the Jabbering Fuck and Kent Sprecer for their contributions, not!

Sunday, September 10, 2023

E is for Eclectic Donation!

Well, I seem to have found a fix for the problems with editing since the changes in 2020/21, especially the annoying habit of not loading images in the right/desired/numbered or even date/alphabetical order, preferring to sometimes load in reverse or just reverse the first and last images . . . I think at lest once or twice, it's totally jumbled them!
 
And of course blogger have locked all the chats screaming for a solution, but this kind person has an answer, I've just tried the piece of code, the 'bad' code was there, I replaced it and these all worked in one hit! And I forgot to add the xxx's or any text, and it still worked!


Shooting yesterday's plunder earlier I realised I still have a London Show and possibly a Sandown to Blog, so I am behind again, but they are self-imposed criteria which probably don't bother you anyway! This is the second of Jon Attwood's donation parcels - which was taped, piggy-back fashion, like a space shuttle, to the main-booster tank of his third parcel!

Jon is having a clear-out, so it's an quite eclectic mix he's been sending the Blog, which makes for more interesting posts, as there's something for everyone! This is a lot of figure-modellers or figure-painters stuff, mostly whitemetal with a bit of plastic/filler, and some repainted or home-cast solids from Hollow cast, and it's a question of what can you spot?

I have a soft-spot for Hussar uniforms, inherited from my late father's interest in Yeomanry uniforms and that excellent series of articles on the same in Military Modelling in the 1980's! I think the WWI/BEF type is an original (Britains?), as is the farmer's wife, but she has been repainted, and I may try repainting her again to something more blue maybe, certainly less pink!

Schneider moulds, or maybe (UK) Agasee, what I like - as a sample - is the variation on the blue, giving us a European on the left, British on the right and Central American in the centre! A lot of guys melt this stuff down to make their next figures, but I like to hang-on to it, as a sample of what went before, these could be home-cast/painted or something more commercial?

The horses that came with the above. The one on the plinth looks more ornamental than 'toy' and the two medieval ones in front need a name as they are definitely commercially painted. I have a fancy a bunch of these were seen/discussed at the NEC years ago, and someone ID'd them as a Spanish make, but I could be confusing them with some other's, they had similarly decorated riders with lances in swivel-arms I seem to recall?
 
Adrian Little kindly looked at this for me, and he thinks it may be Hyde, but without a rider he couldn't be sure what set/series it was from. He suspected a jockey in silks, but it's sadly lacking a tail. Again, it would have been ornamental rather than a plaything, and is quite large (1:25th'ish?), but a useful sample nevertheless!
 
Now, these are fascinating! One of the articles in the long-queue is the recent 'Steam Punk' sets from Hornby under the old Bassett-Lowke branding, and while I shot pre-production stuff at one of the toy fairs, these are the actual figures (BL8011 Steampunk Passengers Standing Pack 2), one of two initial sets, there were also some 54mm figures, for figure painters. A really useful addition, thanks Jon!
 
Not my best shot, but I'll shoot them again and add them to that forthcoming post.
 
I also loved this, it's the Cadbury's Caramel Bunny, who - you may remember - had a breathy, flirtatious manner with a voice provided by Miriam Margoyles, in a sexy West Country accent, imploring the other woodland animals (or her beau) to "Take it easy with Cadbury's Caramel!" !
 
Funnily enough, I had just taken in a small set of Lone Star Treble-O-Trains, so there is a small overview in the pipeline, I sold my childhood sample at a car-boot about 25-years ago in a misguided moment, and have regretted it ever since, so it's nice to be reclaiming those memories!
 
I think these three are Dinky, and hoses and taps are missing on the pumps, but again it won't stop them featuring in future comparison or over-view posts, so it's all useful stuff to arrive unexpected in the post! Funny; the Lone Star N-guage traffic lights had little paste-jewelled red and green lights, while in a much larger scale you just get spots of paint!

Pairs of Matchbox road signs, two die-cast on the left, two plastic on the right. I think we've seen these before, but they are always useful as they tend to lose the little waterslide transfers, and you definitely need pairs of Level Crossing signs!
 
Marked Strickets (C) 1993 (I think), if that means anything to anyone, I first thought he was a Native American making a bison sign, but I think he's a dark-age warrior; Viking or Anglo-Saxon type, making a bull's head sign with his thumbs, some kind of tourist memento or museum keepsake? If anyone knows more, we all need to! About 45/50mm?
 
For some reason, he reminds me of Nigel Planer's Hippy from The Young Ones! "Like, man, you love the bull, you play the bull, you ARE the bull, d'you see, Riiiick?! Possibly from a fantasy boardgame, although I don't think so?
 
The Leyland Motors sign has joined the pub-sign already and is the swinger from one of those cocktail-stick/toothpick type publicity things, barrels have their zone, and Paddington will be off across 'The Pond', as a small thank-you to another contributor, who I know, knows a Paddington fan!
 
Cereal premium dog (Rice Krispies Champion Dogs), and a bear which I should know, or do, but van't recall, something like Corgi Circus I think, Jon identified the horse between the two as one of Salco's little wagon horses, from the gypsy wagon I think?
 
Probably another home-moulding shot, but it could be from a boardgame, but with so little paint remaining, it's hard to call! Around 35mm in scale/size, and we have seen a few similar ones over the years, both larger and smaller, with a few more in storage, we will have a good round-up of these, one day!
 
We saw the painted 'Huminiatures' from Slater's a while ago, but we haven't looked at the more modern sample. I thought we had, but I got a bit depressed about that box when it suffered badly in the 2007 flood, so I've looked at it a few times but not shot them!
 
However, I'm now keen to do the complete overview, as these are the unpainted Huminiatures, in a crinkly cellulose pack (for railway modellers on a budget), along with a pack of bases (pre-cut clear 'syrene in the Roco/Preiser style), which I didn't know existed.
 
Note the continuation of both Wardie/Mastermodels and Randall/Merit DNA in the sculpts . . . There are related posts in the interim queue! And one day I will try to pin the whole story down, but I need everything out of storage first, and as the chap from Pritchard's (Gaugemaster/PPP and now Ratio and Modelscene) couldn't bring himself to tell me, beyond an exasperated eye-roll a few years ago, it may never be accurately transcribed! Briefly I think it goes Mastermodels-Merit, with Slater's copying, but that's over-simplified, as we shall see shortly!
 
Many thanks again to Jon for all this stuff, it really is all gratefully received, and - as mentioned - will enhance future posts on motorcycles, Slater's, even barrels & water-butts!

Q is for Question Time - Famine?

It's been a while since we had a Question Time, and this is an odd one, but I feel it should be more obvious an answer than I have so far uncovered, or failed to, so can anyone help ID this figure?

About sixty or seventy millimetres, but of a child so 100-mil plus in scale. He is clearly holding a bowl, but is it an empty food-bowl, or a begging bowl, and is he in an aid-queue or looking/waiting for non-existent food?

Polystyrene and with no signs of glue or other fixing on the underside of the base, I feel he must be some kind of famine-relief fund-raiser, or token of such, but who issued him, the UN, War on Want, Oxfam . . . There are so many NGO's trying to save the millions of souls failed by capitalism and dictators (there is enough food, land and money on this planet for all eight-million to enjoy a decent standard of living), it could be any of them.

And when, 1970's, 1980's or earlier? If this rings a bell with anyone, I'd love to know more about it. He seems to be more Asian than African or generic, and the lack of gunk on the base-underside, suggests he wasn't attached to a donation receptacle/collection-box, but issued as a figurine? Was he part of a set, maybe a family group?

P is for Pressman's Paper Parade!

Shot on Adrian's table at yesterday's Sandown Park toy fair, these are lovely, box has collapsed a bit over nearly a century (WWII'ish), but Pressman are still with us as a games and puzzles manufacturer.



Simple die-cut press-outs, with seperate 90° slot-in bases, they are sort of Military Academy type 'proper' toy soldiers and I thought they were rather lovely! Thanks to Mercator Trading for letting me shoot them.

Friday, September 8, 2023

B is for Blimey, That's Big!

Or at least, it was three nights earlier! I have from time to time tried photographing the Blue Moons, 'Harvest' Moons or the odd eclipse over the years, results being usually only for home consumption! But this recent one was so close, I got a half-decent result with my little pocket Nikon!
 
Typically, particularly as we have been sweltering under clear skies ever since, it was cloudy on the night, and the next night, but on the third night after the full moon I managed, with the aid of a farmer's fence - up at relatively light-less Blackbush - to get this image of it with a big-bite out of it, but still very close to Earth.
 
There will be another chance to see it on the 29th I believe, not as close, but 'closer than', if you know what I mean, and I might try getting a shot of the New Moon over the 14/15th, which I've never tried before, but if it's so close it may be photograph'able?

A is for Apropos The Previous Post

Just a couple of quickies; 
 
First, don't forget it's the Autumn Sandown Park Toy Fair tomorrow, it's going to be a lovely day for it, and while the air-con' might struggle to keep the place fully cool once it's full of exhaling, warm bodies, it's never too hot, although it will give the all-day attendees a dry throat! Anyway, get on over and fill your boots with old kid's playthings!

Secondly, I found a few more of Claire's Creations images from this Spring (couldn't find the Lifeguard?), so here they are if you're thinking of dropping her a line with an idea for a figure.

The Guardsman

The king

An old-school Gypsy wagon

A canoe! With a mouse!

This was the online image from which Claire modelled the Horse guard she made for me. I might have a go at sewing-in the red cord which runs round the centre of the cartridge-belt?

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

F is for a Bit Floofy!

Well, soft anyways! Some of you may have noticed that some event for non-self-determinist fan-boys occurred up in Laarden Tarn' earlier this year, in celebration of which an old friend of mine, Claire, produced some hand-knitted (or crotch-et-ted) members of the Royal Family,  Life Guards and Royal Guards, to which, when I saw them on Faceplant, I added my usual pithy call for Horse Guards, and damn-me if she didn't make me my very own Horse Guard
 

We had similar soft-toy animals when we were kids, my brother had 'Bill' the guardsman, who ended-up with some of Grandad Hall's miniatures, a sam-brown from a fancy pet collar and a paper-knife sword - he should appear on the Blog one day, he's somewhere in all the stuff I've been moving around.

While there was also a blue and white lamb and a Santa Claus, I think they all came from patterns you could buy in newsagents, or that came with housekeeping type magazines . . . there always seemed to be a table of them at church fêtes!

Beautifully made, he's about eight inches in his boots and the metallic wool is very clever. I'm sure Claire's Creations would accept commissions if you have a good reference for her to work from, and you can contact her on the above details.
 
Guarding one end of the bookcase!