H is for How They Come In - Sandown - September, Part 1

Catching-up with the show-repots as another Sandown swings towards us, I was as frugal at the last show as I had been in London earlier in the year, but still managed a fair pile of plunder to share.

These were cheap as chips, probably cheaper, these days! The sort of stuff we used to find in our Christmas Stockings back in the 1960's, Japanese, litho-printed tinplate whistles, it was the cowboys which attracted me, but in the end I bought one of each as there is a large'ish selection of novelty plastic and tin whistles, pan-pipes, whizzers, kazoos, clickers and the like kicking around, so one day they can have their own page!

 

A handful of the Marty/M-Toy (May Moon Industrial) fantasy warriors from the 1980's, I have some and we've looked at them once or twice, but it's worth buying them when they are reasonably priced, for the weapons, which are always short?

 

My expense of the day, there are two wheel/axle sets missing, but the armoured-car is a duplicate, so a bit of cannibalism will get these Triang Minic's back in road-order! Civilian versions of the lorries and car can be found, while we've seen dessert versions of the two AFV's (and the caterpillar-tractor?), and the whole set also comes in RAF blue-grey.

 

Metal from Adrian's cheapie-tray, all aluminium, and one first supposes, all French, but I'm not sure on the scarecrow? The Drummer is Quiralu, not sure about the machine-gunner either, but I think it's actually the British Wend-Al which is probably the attribution for the scarecrow too?

 

The Marx mini-animal, in its original Hong Kong generic box, over-stickered to Combex, who were part of the tail-end of the Marx UK story, so that all makes sense! Adrian had put it to one side for me, so many thanks to him!

 

Not sure on the kennel/out-building, while the Grant's Whiskey premium (die-cast by Britains), is an ongoing thing; I have lots of them in several places, and I don't carry a wants-list, so I tend to grab them when I see them going cheap, against one day bringing them all together and working out what I've got, what I need and how many duplicates I can offload to pay for any missing ones! High numbers tent to be harder to find.

 

Adrian also had these for me, he'd been following the previous posts on the subject, three Lone Star and one Charbens, to be sorted into the collection when the others turn-up from storage!

 

Tudor Rose boats, I actually took the mast from the white one, to complete the bi-colour! Later re-issued by Springwood Mouldings in netted bags as beach toys, which is pretty-much their original purpose! These are marked Tudor Rose.

 

I think this was Poplar Plastics, but we may have just mused on it being so? Can't remember if it was marked, it's big, about 10-iches long, or approximately 150mm figure, and if not Poplar will be Tudor Rose or Kleeware?

 

A small selection of smaller farm and zoo, nothing particularly rare or exciting, but it was a 50p or quid bag? The deer is a little Japanese blow-mould (polystyrene), and the polar bear will be a cake-decoration, also hard 'styrene. The Britains calf is near mint-paint, so probably the highlight.

F is for Further Follow-up - Gay Gem Hawaiian Dancers

We looked at the Britains-copy Hawaiian dancers here, and then there was a quick follow-up here, and I've now found this in the archive, it's not much use without the figures, but from the illustration it would seem to be one of the straight piracies rather than the clip-on skirt versions, and with the tree, probably the ones in the latter images of the above link.

Gay Gem, who often turn-up on evilBay with this kind of stuff, as I say; not much use, but it's in the tag-list now, under 'Hawaiian'. This would have been from the James Chase collection, and as the figures weren't with it, they probably went through the main auction at Christies, while this was in the ephemera-dump/polymer-overspill sale at SAS Auctions a few months later, all back in 2006, I think?

E is for Epemera - The 'Other' Gem

We often feature, here at Small Scale World, the output of Gem, Gemodels, Gem Models, the cake-decoration and novelty figures of George Musgrave's 'Gem' and Festival (as also supplied to and copied by Culpitt et al), he who also sculpted for Britains, among others, and I have mentioned from time to time the name change from Gem, to Gemodels, due to the threat (or veiled threat?) of legal intervention from the other Gem.

And here is a flyer for the 'new' narrow-gauge locomotive kits, which would have been mixed-media (whitemetal and brass) kits. Running on TT-gauge track for an in-scale rail-gauge, this was the existing Gem company which forced the name change on Musgrave's enterprise.

B is for Bergan and Beton!

This is both a quick box-ticker and a bit of fun! In the parcel from Jon Attwood, there was a Bergan Toys (Beton) figure, which didn't seem to have been photographed either in the lots we've seen, or another still in the queue, and when Jon mentioned it the other day I got worried in case I'd not shot a bunch of figures, but I found him in the first post, I just didn't mention him in the blurb, anyway by then I'd shot everything I'd found, so we can have a quick-look

 

This is what has come in over the last 18/24-months; less any which went to storage last autumn, and they are an ecclectic snapshot of some of the variations you can find of these figures.

 

With - from the top left - A Plastic Toys copy in hard 'styrene, another hard plastic early figure with paint, one (from Jon) with the leachate you sometimes find on these figures, in soft 'ethylene, a similar soft one in blue (for Navy or Army Air Force?), and a later stable-green one with no leachate below.

Bases, the one from Jon lacks the formal information in the middle depression, but you can see the clear 'B' intertwined with a 'T' of the logotype on all three of the Bergan/Beton bases, the Plastic Toys copy is unmarked!

 

This rather dented chap has been hanging around in Picasa since I shot him in 2013, and is another copy, from Reliable of Canada, in soft polyethylene again, he's suffering a bit of sun-fading in addition to his surface dinks!

While two of them came-in just under year ago, along-with an early seperate-based cowboy, and they were also in Picasa! It's a measure of my lack of imagination that I'm still using the same sheet of black cartridge-paper!

We looked at my existing small samples here, while the last (and best) words on the subject are on Ponylope - this link is to the 'WWII' page, but then click on 'WWI' and '*Beton Variations' in the left-hand menu to get far more than I will ever be able to show you!

U is for "Up Yer Ladder, Pal!"

This is an odd one, I've seen foreign-language versions, usually by equally esoteric makes as this one, Action GT being a TV-marketing enterprise who had some success in the late 1970's-1980's with mostly Hong Kong imports branded to them here, and other firms (Pressman, Remco (Big Trak?), Schmidt Spiele, Tyco &etc.) elsewhere, relying on a business model which seemed to consist of big-box, statement toys to 'make your year's money over/with the Christmas season'!

 

The game itself is a pretty random luck-oriented one, but obviously the 'hook' is the large apparatus which can be set up on the floor for the family to gather round and marvel at while smiling inanely at each other, and laughing a lot, in the - then - prevailing fashion of 'nuclear' families in televisual advertising!

 

The 'ladder' frame is manufactured in a rather flimsy polystyrene, unlike the figures and sacks which are all made of a hard-wearing material which could be a dense polyethylene, or a nylon of some type?

Having mentioned them; as toy/figure collectors our interest can be twofold, firstly, the obvious piracies of the Britains farmer have an appeal to completists, 'cameo' collectors or hard-core Britains' fans, while the supply of up to 16 sacks in up to four colours (you rarely see it complete, but you will often see it, incomplete, at the larger car-boot sales) might be useful for modellers or dioramists?

As you can see, the copies are around 40mm, and taken directly from the late version, PVC/vinyl farm-hand, who would have been easily obtainable in the former colony by whoever was pirating it for the Western buyers!

 

The hair-trigger hinges (they are weighted on the near-side, by being wider that the back portion), means you can drop your own figure, by himself, if you are too ham-fisted, but even if all players are being careful, three will usually send them all tumbling to the bottom, often carrying a few others with them. I'd imagine that with a shaky granny or fidgety juvenile involved, it became almost impossible for anyone to finish, and therefore a frustrating game which didn't come-out of the cupboard in subsequent years?

Original TV Ad.

L is for Les Tuniques Bleues

Recently released in English (2008) and now known to some of you as 'The Bluecoats' this pair are characters in their own long-running series of comic strips and albums dating back to the 1970's, and in the style of Lucky Luke, that is, the Euro-comic style of bandes dessinées.

From the left; Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield & Corporal Blutch, marked Dupouis '98 (the Belgian publisher), these were by Papo,  and are a modern replacement-PVC around 80mm (Blutch) and 95mm, but I didn't measure them exactly, when I shot them!
 

H is for Homemade Halftrack

This is a bit of fun which came-in with a mixed lot of AFV's from off of that evilBay, I was bidding on the lot for something else, but this was with them . . . 

 

. . . recognisably the old Airfix Sd.Kfz 7 tractor for the 88mm Gun, it's been quite neatly converted into a GS-wagon/workshop bodied version, just needs some markings, although it's going to need rear wheels and some paint to stop the melting! If you recognise the work, why did you let it go? OBE, box-ticked!

F is for Fruity!

Not figural in any way, but as we've just had a few eraser-posts and regularly cover other novelties here at Small Scale World, I thought we could tick this box on the way through!

 

Little fruity erasers, with fruity-smells! The larger one is actually a rather smoothed-off tangerine soap I've currently got next to the sink! Japan, no brand known, box-ticked, and I think these might have been a donation (in which case they will be credited somewhere on the Bog), but they may have come in a junk lot from an online-auction?
 

M is for Mini Micro Men Mecha's & Monsters

As I mentioned the other day, Brian Berke has sent another lovely parcel to the Blog, and I will cover it fully after I've done Peter's parcels and the last show-report, as it has some very interesting stuff in it, but some of it was so interesting it was deserving of a seperate post, and this is that post!

 

When he emailed me to let me know the parcel was on its way, he added "There is a small box of possibly the smallest plastic figures ever, I would paint them if I could see that well!", and I replied that I could only think of some which came with either a space station or nuclear submarine kit, some of/one of which lots I have in storage, but badly painted (in red & black so probably from the space station kit), so I was looking forward to seeing what he sent, and what he sent was beyond my imagination!

 

There were actually two little boxes, one stuffed with figures I did recognise, the other having all sorts of kit figures from Tamiya's 1:35th downwards, to the diminutive little chaps seen here!

The ones I recognised were the MPC/AMT/Ertl figures from the Battle of Hoth model kit, part of the Star Wars range! On the left we have the Hoth Base's Rebel defenders, with (top left) an X-Wing pilot (who can be 'Luke'), on the right the Imperial Snow Troops, although I'm not sure about the pointing rebel, he may be a turncoat Imperial trooper!

 

During it's 1980's meltdown Airfix carried some of these, and I have a few in that washed-out shiny-grey 'styrene they used, but I only have three Rebel poses I think, so this, nine-poses, was a real surprise, and in a neutral fawn, better for painting . . . if you have the eyesight! And there's probably a hundred in the box, so you could incorporate them in some wargame with maybe Galoob's mini space-craft/vehicles?

I thought these two might belong with the Mecha's below, but they might be from one of the Lost In Space kits, as why would they be taller than giant robots! But clearly measuring something much taller than themselves, and in typically 1960's 'space' fatigues!

These are those mentioned Mecha's, and probably from a more modern kit, but all this stuff goes back to the 1980's now, so maybe not THAT new, and again, from the size of the bot's, something much larger, like a huge space-ship or diorama kit? Possibly, of course, a more esoteric board-game?

These have to be a space-station kit? Or one of several Apollo kits, I've recently picked up the Revell 1:96th kit, and I think the Revell 1:48th kit's figures were elsewhere in Brian's parcel, so who did a 1:150 (approximately N-gauge) NASA type space kit? Aren't they charming? They may be from an International Space Station kit, if that's a hatch-cover he's waving about?

 

 

On the right is another of the AMT-Airfix (et al)'s kits, this one is actually 1:72, and obviously Jabba's Kowakian monkey-lizard; Salacious B. Crumb (the 'monster' of the title), from the Throne Room kit, we looked at some of them here.

 

The coffin lid is a complete mystery, looks like the same plastic as the mega-bots, but a totally different subject mater? Maybe some Aurora horror kit which has escaped my attention, or a detailing on one of those Ed Roth'esque custom-car/cartoonish vehicle kits?

The NASA type is around 9mm, and the Lost in Space chap is a good 15mm, with the Star Wars upright pilot & bino's guys around 14mm. A lovely bunch to find in a parcel, and many thanks to Brian for sending them all to the Blog.

 

Meanwhile, in the sands of the deserts of Egypt, especially the plain behind the great pyramids, the wind occasionally reveals these teeny-tiny sculptures, likely religious tokens, votive offerings or similar keepsakes, here a cast-gold antelope and a small lioness, probably carved in turquoise, the stone, although it could be glazed-clay 'faïence'?

 

The image was from the internet, and has been sitting in Picasa for years, waiting for exactly this post, it knew . . . It knew! And that's the gods of the Pharaohs for you, don't mess with them!

B is for Blast Off!

I'm sure we've had that title before, but it keeps appearing in popular (and not so popular) culture, the 'Blast Off' hook; books, toys, board games, T-shirts, nightclubs, maths programmes, several movies, songs, poems. . . and now, these eraser sets!

I thought I'd shot these on the rugs from the kitchen before I put them into storage, but I'm not so sure that it's the same pattern, so I'm not so sure that I did? Therefore, they may be feeBay images, but whatever, you can see a nice set of erasers with a large'ish astronaut and some space-related items - a nice pulp-type ship atop a 'pillar of flame' (to milk the metaphors) and two planets.

 

Then I saw this in Home Bargains the other day for less than a fiver, and thought "Blog!", so grabbed one, not realising the contents were different, so I will go back and try to get a spaceship one with another-colour of figure for a follow-up post!

 

Credited to a TJM, which I think is the in-house label of TKMaxx? Which would mean that TKMaxx, Homesense and Home Bargains (a downmarket clearance type rival to B&M) are the same company, as is Maxisave in Australia! We are being corporatised!

 

Clearly the UFO (or it is Saturn, one of the planets in the other set, given a skirt?), needs some hot water, and the shooting star is the weakest of the seven items ID'd so far (astronaut is the same in both sets I think), but - from its shape - would be the best eraser!

 

The pencils are all gray/graphite pencils, not coloured 'crayons', and each has an uplifting motto, including the eponymous Blast Off! There's no sharpener to get them started though, which given the cheap nature of the units we've looked at here at Small Scale World for things like novelty sharpeners and Christmas crackers, seems a bit tight?

S is for Sometimes . . . I Can be a Fuckwit, Twice in a Fortnight!

When I published the Robots the other day, I had totally missed a much bigger folder with a shed load of mostly eraserbot shots in it! Anyway, I found it a couple of days later and after a quick "Doh!", cobbled the next two posts together (helped by a recent purchase) and chucked a couple of dozen -  mostly Internet - images back into the generic folder for another day!

I'd forgotten acquiring these a while ago . . . last year some time, even before the posts I did at the time, simple flats, but colourful, several sellers were selling them individually for silly money, but I found one who had the set for a reasonable collective price, we'd seen similar flats (or 'tiles'?) before, so it seems a new branch of the collection was calling!

 

Here the red one is compared with those seen in that/those previous post/s, and you can see these are toward the larger end of the spectrum, at around 60mm, but the fun is in adding six items to a growing sub-genre!

 

Spotted this set on feeBay, branded to Emson, can't remember why I left it at the time, possibly because there were only the two figurals, for a high BIN, or postage from somewhere else was ridiculous (global shipping program anyone?)? But they are interesting for having a semi-transparent polymer with flecks of glitter set into it.

 

I also saw these TV related ones online somewhere, probably an incomplete set, and, like all these: the artwork is waterslide transfer-printed straight onto the blocks of eraser rubber.

B is for Big Box! Two of Two

It was a big box! This is the rest of the polymer plunder in Jon's third parcel to the Blog, and again there are all sorts of useful bits and pieces here, and one lovely thing!

 

I think this is all Cherilea, but I've got into trouble in the past saying that about stuff which is actually Hilco, or even old enough to be Johilco, so for now it's provisional! Farm and zoo have very much taken a back seat over the years of the Blog, but hopefully when it all comes together shortly (and I've been saying that on-and-off for nearly three years now!), we will have some mini-seasons on it all, and I'll get the thematic pages knocked-together on the A-Z pages!

More cavalry mounts, always useful as the riders often come separately, sans-weapons and the wholes have to be reunited as a kit of parts, three Deetail, one Herald, one Timpo and quite a good-quality Hong Kong copy of Timpo at the back.

Donkeys, asses, mules and/or ponies, including a daft one from Kinder (heay, they all have their place!), the one with a ribbon is a MEG 'Pocket' pony I seem to recall, and the brown on white should have been in the first image?

Rabbits, I am really looking forward to sorting the rabbits out; in addition to the large lot I got for a song on evilBay a couple of years ago and Blogged at the time, I have found a similar sized lot, a smaller lot from a charity shop and had several purchases of useful individual rabbits (and a plastic version of the hollow-cast family - Taylor and/or Barratt?), so there will be a serious page on rabbits one day! The two brown ones here are the cleanest I've ever seen?

This is the 'lovely' thing! What a thing to find in a parcel of someone's collection sorting! Those who have followed the Blog for a while will know I have a bit of a thing for cable-drums and cable-drum carriers, specifically set-off by my childhood Hornby-Triang one, this is the full-on Binn's Road O-gauge version, in wood with paper overlay detailing, mint-in-box!

 

A truly delightful piece, I have an old tatty-one, possibly with different graphics, but this will fit on one of the OO flat-trucks/bolster wagons . . . I reckon . . . if the sniper-wagon fits under the tunnels, this should! There is also a short well-wagon, I could look out for one of them at Sandown Park? Brilliant!

Two modern farm people from China, one probably to go with a boxed show-jumping set of quite large scale, the other more toward the Elastolin 70mm, and in their style, all will be ID'd from the animal forums in the fullness of time.

 

Along with an orphaned piece of barbed-wire from an 'army-man' set and a piece of scenic rock from a similar rack toy or big-box set, missing some plug-in's, such stuff can often be ID'd from old catalogues.

Odds & sods including Kinder bits, a fluffy dog (who might be a badly-drawn cat), a Playmobil horse and a goose which truanted the poultry-shot! I know I have the late Herald charioteers, placed on bases, but I don't think I have the chariot, so half of one is a start, and I'm sure I'll find one with a complete drawbar and broken wheels for a bit of cut-n-shut surgery?

A super lot of bits here, mostly Britains Herald, with some Swoppet stuff and plenty of spares, the two green bits bottom-left, are from the farm fencing, specifically the style I think? The crawling Indian was always one of my favourites!

 

A few military bits finished the lot, and a Christmas tree hanger erzgebirge figure who looks a little like a Chinese mandarin in his court finest! A Timpo lookout/sentry needs a base which I have somewhere, and the blue policeman seems to be from the same source as the Ackerman (and everyone else) set of six combat troops we've seen before here.

As always, many thanks to Jon Attwood for all this, it may be his chuck-outs, but it will all add to the whole going forwards, and there's always new or useful things in these lots, while that cable-drum . . . lovely!

There's still another big parcel from Jon to Blog, three from Peter Evans, one from Brian Berke (with some very unusual figures), and a Sandown park report, all of which I will try to clear in the next week or so, and I've found a bunch of Charity Shop purchase posts from 2021/2 which need to be cleared!

 

B is for Big Box! One of Two

I can't believe it's nearly forty days since I covered Jon Attwood's smaller of two parcels? The time just flies at 'our' age! Not that I can be accused of tardiness, or idleness; there have been 70-odd posts since then, but very much playing catch-up with the 'H is for' department, for the next few days, as another Sandown is flying down the tracks toward us!

 

This is the contents of the third parcel from Jon, which the second was taped to, and there's some lovely stuff among the chuck-outs, and everything is Greatfully received! Quick shout-out to Peter E and Brian B, they both have posts in the pipeline, which I will try to get out in the next few days, along with the last Sandown shots!

An absolute mass of Horses, I have a tub of similar stuff, but with few duplicates I can see, and while there may be some similar small ones in the mini-PVC 'toob' toy box, they come from so many sources it's impossible to find all of them!

 

As it happens there is a complete (I think) set of Safari mini-horses toward the centre/bottom of this shot, and I've photographed them separately as a follow-up, I had two duplicates, but they were both sufficiently different to warrant comparison images!

More obvious cavalry mounts, some well known and some less so, my pre-existing box has a lot of this kind of stuff (mostly Spanish or Italian I think, with a few Frenchies), while here we have mostly British and some new production (Accurate/Imex/Italeri types - with bases), the two green saddle-cloth horses may be Spanish, and I'd love an ID on the big black fellah, he looks American maybe?

 

Wild animals, and again there's useful stuff, or new to collection items here, the eraser hippo being a charmer, the large panda and a couple of the elephants had marks I think, but being as how I'm trying to vacate this place (next Friday I think?) and keep the flat tidy, everything's getting sorted and stack a bit rapidly!

 

Hopefully, I will go back over some of it in the weeks ahead, I know I promised to get the brands of the biggies from the small-box post, and we've seen others, so I'll plan some follow-ups once I'm kicking my heels in the flat!

Piggy-wigs! I'm sure I've said before, you can never have too many piggy-wigs, so I'll say it again! The cartoony one is definitely new to the collection, as are the three white-ones I think, but several others look to be new, it'll need a bigger sorting!

 

Sheep, goats and lambs, I hope to sort all the Hong Kong stuff out one day, if not brands, at least sets, but with the goats I think the task will prove impossible, someone like Blue Box or Holly copied it first (ex-Britains), and then everyone else copied it, most of them are unmarked, some of them are very poor examples, and they are all shiny-black polyethylene with a bit of white paint, but one day, I'll have a try!

A handful of cows here, and there's some very interesting stuff, with Crescent and Cherilea and some early British (Trojan/Kentoy?), with an unusual one to the front-left, which I think is Matchbox?

 

A couple of errant sheep one of whom probably needs three dogs to control him! Two of the dogs (left pair) are also new to the collection, while the Hong Kong 'Lassie' will need to be compared to the others against mark - sculpting - paint-colour.

 

The same note on goats, applies to the poultry too, ascribing them all in the future will be a nightmare, and it may well be that both poultry and goats were produced by one or two minor factors, and then bought-in by everyone else as bag/set-fillers?

However, this lot also has easier stuff to ID too, like the two creamy early British produced ones with their red-brush swipe, the PVC duck (middle left) and a couple of hollow-cast ones at the back! The flapping goose is Crescent.

 

Some riders for those horses at the top of the post, not sure if the Athena (Greece) ceremonial's horse was in the lot (might be in part two?), but I may have a spare somewhere. The policeman is Corgi and the race-rider is an unknown - to me - Hong Kong chappie I think, the rest are Britains production of various generations/sets.

Many thanks again to Jon, it really is all useful grist to the mill, and fun to share with the rest of you, while I'm slowly building a decent sample of the Life Guards mounted musicians! Thank you Jon.