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.

Monday, October 16, 2023

F is for Found Objects - Three of . . . We'll See

Stationary here at Small Scale World usually means erasers or sharpeners, and sometimes pencil tops and while there are some pencil tops here, there's also a fake, a novelty pen and a pen-converter!
 
Some stationary items I found in an old desk, there was much more obviously, conventional stuff, one of which is here purely for a scaler - the iconic BiC Crystal, but among them were a joke rubber pencil (silver jobbie) and a teeny-tiny rabbit pencil top, on his own bespoke, teeny-tiny pencil, both credited to the Japanese Kutsuwa, who are still going 50-odd years later, this is just the kind of thing they were known for in the age of miniaturisation!

Either PVC or silicon rubber, it's not that clear, a bit soft for the former and a bit hard for the latter, I suspect PVC, as it has reacted with the 'paint' coating of the pencil, usually a form of powder-coating back on the day, to produce a chip-resistant surface.

Two more rodents turned-up a few weeks later in another part of the house/piece of furniture, and they triggered a memory of my having bought them for Mum, with my meagre pocket-money years before, they came in a little PVC wallet with a matching mousey notebook, and I think there were about eight or ten different little animals?
 
My brother bought a similar set of Snoopy ones I think (just printed pencils, no toppers and a little bigger), we wrapped them, and hid them in the tree at Christmas, so when she was helping us look for our chocolate bauble treats, she found them! I think, over the years, they were used as pencils with her pocket diaries, which always lose their little pencils!
 
This was mine! I don't know how it's survived, lost under the bed and found by Mum after I left home, maybe? It's an arrow! You could probably fire it, from a small bow, but you'd need to weight the end slightly to stop it spinning end-over-end! Unmarked polystyrene, but probably Hong Kong manufacture?

It was a Christmas stocking filler, we would have got one each (she was always scrupulously fair) but my Brother's may not necessarily have been the same, just another novelty pen of similar/identical cost . . . might have been a giant nail?

This actually came in recently, but I thought it could be added to this page for reasons of interest, as while we have a couple of pencil-top posts in the long queue, this is more of a converter, turning the writing instrument into a fish . . . of sorts!

It's actually too big for pencils, but works well with these Sharpies, I want a bunch now, different tails, dinosaur tails, a kangaroo tail . . . shaggy-dog tails!

F is for Found Objects - Two of . . . a Few

Continuing with this little bit of silliness, and I seem to have shot these in different configurations - as I was sorting and putting away I guess? More bits & bobs as found over the least three years.

A bunch of keys, with a PVC peanut, possibly from the old VW Golf Mum had many years ago? Lego bits and a marble, a cat's collar bell (which will end-up on the Christmas tree, they fill all the teeny gaps at the top!) and a plastic ring - probably from a Christmas Cracker's 'ring-toss' game - which will go to 'spares'.
 
An old Remembrance Day poppy stalk (we'll revisit them one day) and half a pistol grip from a small gun, its antler-horn finish has mostly been scraped away, and I suspect Mum was mid-way through reshaping it to replace a damaged or missing one on another weapon when that too was lost or broken? Mum was very handy at that sort of home-craft stuff.
 
A relatively modern looking box of crayons (99p in Woolworth's, they're about a fiver now! And have their own collector community), a plastic bullet (anyone know the toy it came from?), a playing-card joker, bouncy ball, Airfix Paratrooper and a wooden elephant of some style!
 
Two balls, and while I've only just added a collective image of balls to the Jig-Toy Page, these two have yet to be added to that page, although a reverse-colours football is there! The larger one has the same mechanism (i.e. 'simple') as the modern rubber one in that other picture!

Most seen above, but the gold-paper cracker-crown is an addition. I believe the elephant was made by my brother in woodwork classes at school, and may be a pattern some of you will recognise from your own past efforts? And I've mentioned before his private army of red/blue uniformed figures! It contained all his favourite figures from about four different sets, it was officer-heavy!

The card is somewhere between the very small ones you find in Christmas crackers, and normal or full size ones, and I have a small collection of mostly jokers and ace-of-spades somewhere, so this will join them, and I'll blog them at some point!
 
I believe the ball is a Wham-O original, it has that strange creaking noise I've observed with them before, and while I 'know' what the two neutral plastic pegs are from, I can't - right now - remember, and it may have nothing to do with toys, but I shot them together, so I think it must have? Maybe they just looked useful?

Liqueur miniature crates! Very useful for Action Man (beer) or larger doll's houses (milk, or something 'girly'!), I've put the cover in the spares zone as I though it might make a good roof for a sci-fi building or space-station at some point! one is old and has been hanging around for years (red), the other was from TKMaxx a year or two ago -blue one.

F is for Found Objects - One of . . . Some!

As I've slowly been working through Mum's estate, I've found all sorts of odds & sods which are of some use or interest to the collection, some of Mum's, some of ours (my brother or me), so more nostalgic than actually useful, and I've been chucking them in various corners of Picasa (to be honest I've lost some!), and have been trying to sort them this evening for what I thought might be two or three posts, but I've just given up trying to make sense of it with that narrow aim, and will do a few smaller posts until I've run out of stuff!
 
This bowl was actually in a drawer, and was a mine of useful stuff!

This lot is a mix of counters and tiddlywinks, buttons and tokens. The buttons; the main pile, are interesting in only having one hole, and will be from mattresses, where they are strung-through to hold and tension the two padded-covers against the springs. More interesting is that they all seem to be bone or ivory, which is obviously why my Mother kept them when the mattresses died!
 
The game counters/tokens are also bone (two larger yellow ones) or ivory, while the coins are a study in themselves!

The internet can't readily agree on what these are, when they were produced or why, and some very fanciful explanations with some very dodgy logic are to be found, particularly on the metal-detecting sites, where there seems to be the added incentive of getting thirty-quid for them rather than the 50p they're probably worth!
 
But museums (including the British Museum) also have an interest in trying to explain why they have some, using-up exhibition or storage space! Suffice to say, they are probably Victorian gambling tokens, aping George III 'spade' Guineas, so called because the shield resembles a spade.
 
I had a theory they might be connected to the TV series 'The Good Old Days', maybe as attendance tokens, and while I have to believe the Victorian moniker given them elsewhere, they mostly seem to have started turning up after 1950, and with the show starting in 1953, and with some examples clearly heavier and better made than these rather thin, tinny ones, there may be something in that?

The rest of the contents include a pair of shot markers from our old Merit pocket/travel Battleships game (white and yellow cones), two insect eyes from the Beetle Game, also Merit (blue and green dots, and 'Cootie' in the 'States), several puzzles in metal and plastic (old Christmas cracker prizes I suspect), a Christmas bauble hook (always useful) and a pair of premium animals which are the Kellogg’s rather than the Dunkin et al., ones I think?

The five dice will go with all the others (a mass close to Io's now), and the other bits are purely domestic (bread-bag tie and electrical-plug insulator/cable-clamp), I have no idea what the red widget is, but it looks useful and is plastic so will go with the modelling materials, in the drawer of round-section 'bits'!

Which leaves the rabbit? Obviously fretted, and I have a vague recollection of Mum cutting it out many years, even decades ago, but I can't remember why? It may have been a backing for something she was casting in silver, and by 'something' I mean a relief sculpt of a rabbit! Or it may have been a replacement for a shaped-puzzle piece for which I can't remember the parent puzzle, but, as a familial keepsake, it will go with all the other rabbits!
 

Separately, I found my brother's Airfix T-Rex's head! Most of the rest of it is in the stash somewhere, as - being an inveterate ferret - I had some idea of giving it an alternate head one day! So it may well all come together, but I think one of the legs may still be missing, and the house is cleared now? There is a Stegosaurus, similarly afflicted, by the lack of a fourth limb!

Posed (in the left shot) with a 9mm short round (Stirling SMG probably) from the sandpit in the butts at Aldershot (where Mum won the Officer's Wives shooting competition at Airborne Forces week, one year!), my brother would have been about 13 when he painted this?

Sunday, October 15, 2023

T is for These Llamas are Alpacas!

We've seen Puckator a few times now, solid suppliers of novelty-tat to the gift-shop trade, and Poundland, where I think I found these a year or so ago, little lumps of solid resin in rather garish colours.

The orange one is realistic enough, but the blue would need to go, were you to be thinking of including them in a diorama or wargames force? Presuming they would be Llamas, I thought to check the difference, before posting, and the small ears and fluffy-brows/cheeks suggests that they are actually Alpacas! Being smaller animals, these probably scale-in for 54mm or thereabouts? Fun, done!


100 is for Pipers, Four Pipers!

We saw their board game I think, right back at the start of the Blog, so they've been sat there in the Tag-list ever since with a '1' in brackets, let's make it a two with these charmers, which I picked-up on evilBay a while back.

A blended whiskey, originally from the House of Segram (of the whacky buildings), it's now manufactured in Asia/the Far East, where it's one of the best-selling brands.

Added when doing the tags - no, we haven't? Must have been One Inch Warrior or something? Maybe we saw some of the figures in a plunder post, and they weren't tagged? I'll have to blog them at the other end! It was a boardgame anyway!

Flats, but chunky enough to be semi-flats, these cocktail stirrers, or 'swizzle sticks' could be cut to provide figures of around 45mm, and will have been manufactured by some anonymous local fabricator whose name we'll never know.
 
Worth a mention, to explain the previous line, when I worked at Rotamould (97'ish?), we had another plastics factory a few doors away, and when I worked in an office down the road a few years later there was an injection moulder in the unit ('lot' as the Americans would call it) next door, they have all gone now. While when I found Tatra, their website had a list of the 15-odd companies they had bough-out over a period of about 30 years, they've now been bought-out themselves.
 
Many people were responsible for the more ephemeral figures/figurals out there, and one can only hope they have another moniker to be known by, as in here, where 100 Pipers will suffice!

Saturday, October 14, 2023

B is for Battling Micro Tank . . . No 'S'

Because to get the advertised/titled Battling Micro Tanks, you need to get at least two sets, although there are three tanks to find! I found this in 2021, although it's copyrighted 2000, to a Teamforce Co. of the UK, and the contents will be all-Chinese.
 
A Sherman and Tiger still to be found, all sharing the same running-gear, but the Sherman having outer flats to represent the distinctive suspension system of the M4, but with only two per side it looks like a Stuart/Honey with ideas above its station!

The Mk. V Panther of this set. It's a tad deformed too, but holds the look of the real one reasonably well, just a little too wide for its length. They could have hidden the power button a little better, by placing it in the cupola?
 
The figures, around 28mm, are Airfix copies and resemble the ones being issued with Majorette military sets around the same time, with heavy bases, but new poses I think, however they could both be from the same subcontractor? Similar figures were issued by Skylark a few years ago, but they were very poor quality copies-of-copies.

The trees are also a bit Airfix'y - from the Zoo play set?

The batteries have all gone 'acid burst' and should probably be discarded, but they are pretty safe in their tray and I think I left them for the time being? Quite unusual to find 'Batteries Included'!

The radio-control unit is disguised as a grenade, which brings memories of Galoob's line of Secret Army Supplies!

Jean is for Jacquet

Just a bit of a box-ticker! I picked these up a while ago, can't now remember where or why, split them with a mate, but shot them first and just sort of forgot them!

Foxy fox, from a set of woodland animals which include a hunter, deer, a pair of squirrels etc . . . and this chap, as far as I know the Jean originals were unpainted, although earlier ones might have been, and these for Jacquet were.
 
The rabbit, or hare? The Germans like their hares, especially at Easter, so he may be meant to be a hare, but he's sufficiently rabbit-like for me! Jacquet were a commercial baker.
 
What separates the French premiums from the Jean originals (apart from the paint) is a heat stamped 'brand' on the base stating Jacquet, along with the moulded W.Germany mark. That's it, box ticked, Jacquet added to the tag-list!

V is for Voracious Verdite Vertebrate

An alternate title-idea was G is for Great Grey Green Greasy Limpopo River, but - although I can't find it - I think we did have that, many years ago?
 
A bit off the beaten track tonight, but a figural nevertheless, and a rather fine one! I believe it's carved from a form of stone known as Verdite (green-ite?!!), but something called New Zealand Jade can look similar, but should be much harder, this is quite a soft rock I think, not that I am any kind of expert!

Also known variously as Verdite Serpentine or Fuchsite, a group of rocks from Southern Africa, this was probably carved for the tourist trade, in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) by a member of the Shona tribe, and no, I didn't know any of the above until I started googling 'green rock animals' half an hour ago!
 
 
Crocodile rather than alligator, from the backplate and nose shape . . . and . . . Africa! I know you are supposed to know about teeth and stuff to really know what you are looking at, but this is a representative piece, not going for full realism, and as such I think the sculptor has captured it well?

I love it, it is a very characterful animal, with not a small amount of evil about its countenance, as it creeps-up on a wildebeest crossing somewhere on the veldt, waiting for a straggler, or a young fool to cross first!

It had an accident a few years ago, revealing a quite granite-like granularity to the unworked stone, which thankfully soaked up a couple of blobs of superglue and went back together perfectly.

The other thing I like about it, beyond the character of the sculpt, is the colour, or range of colours, which vary from deep olives and duns to flecks of malachite-green. During the resent Googling the last search was 'Verdite Crocodile', revealing this to be one of the better examples, sculpt wise, with modern ones being far more crudely sculpted/finished.
 
And it's about the same size as the late Britains beast (with moving jaw), so we'll probably look at them together with others (the Charbens is similar) one day.

Thursday, October 12, 2023

U is for Updates - Jig Toy Page

I've been adding stuff to the Jig Toy page for a few days now, and I think I added some stuff a while ago and didn't announce it, but there's still a few bits to add, by which time it will be about three times the size it was, but any order it had has been diluted by a more chaotic scrapbook approach.

Among the items still to be added are some larger puzzles from Character Molding of the US, which seems to be where my Fairylite 'Exploding Battleship' came from, no surprise as I pointed out at the time, they were all things to all toy men, including importers! I guess this was the 'Exploding Tank'?

The first word on these puzzles is still Rob's page, and he has added a tremendous amount since I last looked at it here;

http://www.robspuzzlepage.com/keychain.htm#pmid

Q is for Quiralux's Quirky Quarrelers

Just a quicky, this shot's been in Picasa since 2013, and I thought it could finally fly free on the Internet!

I thought these were probably late, or even re-issue medievals (from another party) from Quiralux, being a bit flashy and unpainted apart from the beginnings of some home-paint on a couple of them, but I was wrong . . .

. . . they are from a paint-your-own set from Quiralux themselves! Seen here on the right with one of those naff brushes and some pots of - almost certainly - water-based paint. A window-box set of painted ones to the left, although they are all the same as the Acédo ones we saw here I think? Who made them first, I don't know, but French-made foot knights and men-at-arms anyway!

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

G is for Giants, Galaxy Giants!

Could have been 'T is for Two - Scales!'! We're box-ticking the Tim Mee Space Patrol / Galaxy Lazer Team figures here today, still available from Jeff Imel under his Victory Buy / Timmee labels, and have been in production now, as several entities, since at least 2012, in various new colours, but we're looking at the originals here.
 
These are the original 54mm set, there is clearly more than a hint of Star Wars about them, but a bit of Star Trek too I feel, in the lady with the machine that goes ping! The more conventional pair of astronauts are lifting from MPC's set I suspect, with Darth Tim waving a sword about, and a Buck Roger's chap on the far left . . . box-ticking some serious box ticking!

There is a figure missing from the above, I know I have him in 54mm (there is another sample with all colours somewhere? But for now . . . 

 . . . we'll have to look at the five-inch/120mm version instead! Not Chewbacca, oh no . . . no, no, no, not Chewbacca at all, who's he, indeed! He even has The Hulk's ripped shorts and a pair of antennae, so you don't draw that conclusion! This also shows a third colour, a very 'spacey' gunmetal gray.

Not Buck, Not Vader and Artoo-Timmeepio! The other colour of the originals was a screaming, electric pink. Issued in 1978 (as 54mm figures, Star Wars the film had been released the previous year) the upscales appeared in 1979, probably to try and compete with Kenner's phenomenal Star Wars action figure line which was changing the toy industry forever, at the same time? These are also the 120mm versions.


The Turtoise (or Tortle?) and one of the astronauts, you can see the MPC DNA as clear as day in the latter, but Crabster (or 'Lobbab') has no real or obvious influence I can think-of, besides a dozen 1950/60's pulp sci-fi novel covers!

This blog also covers them;

http://secretfunspot.blogspot.com/2012/07/return-of-galaxy-laser-team.html
 
 . . . with a very interesting Argentinian side to the story involving Anteojito magazine, which I think has been mentioned here before, but isn't in the Tag list!
 
*********************************

10 days later and Woodsey's found some more!

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2023/10/tim-work.html

Monday, October 9, 2023

C is for Centaurs!

I've been wanting to track these Merten oddities down for the longest time, and eventually bought a mixed lot of ex-factory stuff off the German eBayer who seems to have inherited a shed-load of them! 
 
As far as I know there's only the three, and they must be quite a late thing as they don't appear to be in the early catalogues, but they are rather fine! The spear is a seperate moulding, for a ring-hand, and for now I've left the excess runner pieces and flashing in-situ. I think the dirt may be a combination of long-storage somewhere dusty, and mould-release agent 'going off'?

I do have one factory finished one, and the debate is do I try to paint the others to match, or do something more home-custom on them? That rather typical Merten-pink is a bit too bright for my liking, Mediterranean God's offspring would have been olive-tanned I feel!
 
From the 40mm range, and with no other fantasy figures I know of from Merten, I guess they were to be fielded against the medievals, to do battle with the many arm-variations of them and seduce the equally numerous medieval maidens which are another favourite of mine from Merten!
 
Comparison between the two like-poses. The runner remnant might be an actual 'sprue' it's quite solid-looking and cone-like, but the cone is facing the wrong way for a typical sprue, and one would assume all three would be on one still smallish tool?

M is for More Eraserbots!

We've seen these before, more than once I think, but I had a lucky visit to a charity shop ages ago, and in clearing this stuff, found the folder, so, here goes . . .

The rider is a part-work, of substantial poorer quality than the Osprey/Del Prado stuff, or even De Agostini or Altaya, but I can never remember the name of them, Alexander, Cassandra? Something like that! This was issue 1 and is quite common, I think we've seen it before too! One of Napoleon's generals, I think someone said last time?
 
But it's the erasers which are the highlight here, and as they are contemporary, someone must have seriously rejected them, for them to end up in a charity shop . . . who doesn't like eraserbots?
 
One of them is a new colour I think, but I can't remember which one (can't remember much tonight!), and I think there is a fourth, green-suit one still to find?