H is for How They Come In - Brian, Two of Two

Which is really post number three of the lovely things Mr. Berke sent to the Blog for me to share. And we will start with the other mystery suprise, and again we need an ID on these new to hobby-collection-Blog figures!

Who are these lovely ladies? Approximately 54mm, and two being more realistic (on the left), two a little cartoony (right-hand pair), really loud colour, but from whence and whom have they come?

 

If they were found here, I would assume a kids comic/magazine, they all have something on them these days (forthcoming posts, but I don't watch them like I used to when Dr. Who Adventures was giving away figures regularly!), but they've come from America, and I don't know if they have the same type of kids magazine freebies . . . Interesting figures though, and totally new to me?

 

Basically we've got: Dancer Babe, Royal Babe (fairy-tales for the use of), Superbabe and Rock-Chick Babe!

 

Equally, loud colours for these MTC carded rack-toy party favours, and probably quite recent production as they are sub-copies of common sculpts doing the rounds and probably seen here before in more 'normal' greens and khakis, but I prefer these dudes!

 

In with the micro-smallies we looked at the other day, were a whole bunch of other kit figures and these are they, I won't say much as they are all going to need a major session at some point in the future, but I think the two astronauts (top right) are Revell (1:48th kit?), while the six dark greenies are old-school from the 1950's.

The sandy-coloured panzermann and girl might be Heller or Italeri, they both included interesting figures, suitable for dioramas in their kits? While the two white pilots (bottom right) might be Cylons or Earthmen from 1980's Sci-Fi kits?

I know, I should save them for Pirate day, but I feel donations should be fully covered, I used to do highlights but when everything is this good? And these are all interesting, the lower - black - figures (poor shot I'm afraid) are the Toy Major originals, and they look bigger that the various copies we seen so far (we may have seen one or two of these?), so a decent comparison article of the three or four sets will be a definite feature here one day, but they are all in storage at the moment, so it may be a while.

 

While the yellow line-up are the Imperial ones I've been after for ages now, reduced-size copies of the larger Hing Fat figures, these are from the two-adversary sets, we have seen here as shelfies before, possibly from Brian, and I've now tracked down the Police & Skeletons, Zombies & GI's (ex-Tim Mee GI's) and these Pirates fought red Ninjas which I may still be looking for?

 

The base mark.

Now . . . MPC armaturtoise! Clearly marked, and I will have to go back and check those blue & green ones I picked up at the last London show, as I carefully avoided calling them MPC, and just said probably premiums, as I wasn't sure, and they didn't seem to be marked, but I'll check, and a new colour anyway!

Speaking of colours, there are nice, common-enough copies of Airfix Indians, but in an unusual colour way, and like a lot of the rack-toy figures in the stash, overdue for a sorting, I have ID'd several sets and makers for them, but it's a question of tying colours and base types to downloaded and catalogue images of sets!

Marked Hong Kong, and another genre needing a better sort one day, these may be the ones issued by Payton, but I think they went with other colours, copies of MPC's figures and seem to be limited to 5 poses only?

This is what Brian sent all the micro-figures in, and it's a carry case for C-in-C micro-amour, which was fitting for all those diminutive figures, but my first example of packaging, or C-in-C anything, so cleaned and saved!

And to wrap-up, some proper rack-toy army men, not some people's cup of tea I know, but they will all get sorted one day, and a lot of them will get some kind of definitive attribution, so the more, the merrier!

 

Again, I can't thank Brian enough for all this, there are some real treasures here, as well as in the two previous lots, and I'm very grateful. I hope you've enjoyed them too, and if anyone ID's those heliotrope-pink figures in the first shot, they'll be doing better than the 'group experts' elsewhere!

H is for How They Come In - Brian, One of Two

I was trying to get them all in one post, but it wasn't going to happen, even with collaging, so I've split them sort of equally! A lovely parcel came from Brian Berke in New York about a month ago, and it was full of lovely things - you may recall we looked at the micro/space stuff the other day - and, of which these are the first half of the larger stuff.

 

 We're going to start with one of the real mystery suprises . . . my first thought with these was 'Flipper' the TV show (some Larami rack toy from the 1970's), because of the two dolphins (did Flipper have a mate?), but the characters just don't match, and these look much younger/newer, although they could just be clean and un-played-with?

 

But we have a girl (Flipper has two lads) who looks to be in medieval clothes, or 1950's snow-garb, she could even be a page-boy 'he', or a young (and poorly sculpted?) cheer-leader? With her is a ground-crewman of some kind (helicopter, carrier-deck?) and mechanic/sunbather/daydreamer, who's possibly the poorest sculpt?

They seem to have come along with some standard 'rack-toy' GI's copied from Airfix and more seventies in look and feel. Indeed, I did seperate them, but realised subtle changes of shade of the plastic colour were in both bags, so the soldier's bag is rolled up and placed in the character's bag, suggesting I'm not 100% either way, but don't want to seperate them until I know for sure!.

Now, come-on guys and gals . . . who knows what about these, someone must know something? That there are colour variations suggests quite a production run, and whether they were made last month or forty years ago, someone must know something? It's quite a hard polyethylene or nylon'y polymer? Can anyone help ID these, they need to be in the Tag list correctly!

 

5-5-24 - Brain himself came up with the answer the next day! But it took me a while to get a shot and wait for it to disappear from the sales site! They are Marx, from a late Dunby-Combex/Burbank era playset, Undersea Adventure, from about the same time as those odd, carded, 'shelf' vehicle rack-toys, or the late Guns of Navarone photo-art boxings. These khaki ones are reissues. I believe the vehicle stared in a few space playsets as well!

There were a nice bunch of flats, a couple of poses are similar to those ascribed elswhere to Cracker Jacks, particularly the bucking cowboy and baseball hitter, but they are not the same, and the [sports?] shooter too, while the ones in the larger image have the same bases as some Cracker Jacks, the others don't, so some other source maybe? The boxing kangaroo's "Put-em-up put-em-uuuuuup!" suggest an Australian connection?

 

I've divided them up (and photographed them) in three lots according to those bases, with the vehicles having quite angular ends, the bulk ovoid or 'cartouche' bases, and the other two figures something in-between, I suspect they all go together, but it helps to identify differences at the start rather than later!

We love paratroopers here, we love paratroopers in donation parcels! And this quite large one, is a different version, again, of one we've seen here before on more than one occasion, with quite high production values and a very small Hong Kong mark in the parachute case/bag.

These are US Cereal premiums, given away with Nabisco's Rice Honeys, and apparently manufactured by MPC, each has its name on it and there are some less common ones among them, and they are biggish with the Oarfish at 140mm/5½ inches, that's about half-a-banana, for some Faceplant readers! Clockwise from the flying fish;

• 17 FLYING FISH 20 IN
• 6 MANTA RAY 20 FT
• 17 NEEDLE FISH 5 FT
• 5 PORCUPINE FISH 5 FT
• 4 OAR FISH 30 FT
• 18 SAWFISH 20FT
• 3 GREAT WHITE SHARK 21 FT
• 9 BARRACUDA 10 FT

Ten feet? Ten phuqing feet? That's more than fifteen bananas! I thought barracuda were slightly-vicious, angry-salmon things you could punch on the nose, I don't think I'm ever going in the sea again . . . they come in herds, you know! Yes, there are two 17's?

 

Three lovely, full-on 54mm-compatible fantasy figures which I haven't found on Shaun's site yet and don't recognise, but they look a bit Tolkien'esque? So possibly a recent knock-off, although by recent, one has to remember how quickly the last 22-years have sped-by!

Lido Wild West, and originals, not the slightly insipid pastel ones from Hong Kong I have somewhere, so useful additions for future comparison shots, a modern AWI figure (Accurate/Revell or Imex?) and two very interesting copies of the M-Toy/Marty (Maymoon) barbarians, but in a smaller size, fantastic!

I can't remember who the big guy kneeling with the radio is, Marx, Ideal, or late Aurburn? But the others are the larger size of MPC, and are very useful as I have a few that are darker and lighter greens or metallic blue and silver, so these mid-olive green ones are a nice addition.

 

You know I struggle to thank these guys enough for these donations, and the best thanks is to share them enthusiastically with the rest of you, but many, many thanks to Brian, there are some real treasures above, and more to come, which, if I can blurb them up in the next hour or so, I'll schedule to publish for 9:30 our time (GMT).

And can anyone ID the dolphin 'playset' figures?

P is for Polotoys

Another set of old 28/30mm role-play gaming-figure, or similar knock-off's, you can see how they would have gone well together as a pair mid-posting on the 31st of last month, but, there you go, I totally lost sight of them in the bottom centre of my desktop, where I'd left them to remind me they were there - hey-ho!

Polotoys seem to have been incorporated in 1985, and share the Blue Box building in Hong Kong, so may well be another branding of Tai Sang, but they haven't got enough of a presence online to dig that deep, more of a straight marketing 'brand mark', than one with board-members and press-releases etc., . . . one supposes?

 

Similar to some Games Workshop stuff, and you may recognise the MB Games poses from Heroquest (also GW in a roundabout way, Citadel?) but again I think there will be other names in the frame as the victims of the plagiarism!

As per the Blue Box Japanese yesterday, I seem to have had two photo-shoots! The pink dragon is a bee-eye-tee-cee-haitch to photograph, and I know I have one or two more somewhere, as I shot a different one (unknown at the time) in a comparison shot a few years ago.

 

The horses, possibly based on the old Nottingham Mafia poses, but so simplified as to be new sculpts! And with no rider in the Polotoys set, I tried the Toy Major one, and he does a fine job of filling in, a tad too big for the mount maybe, but . . . it's fantasy, and it's probably a Steppes pony!

While this comparison with some DFC (Dimensions For Children) daemons, gives a good idea of the size which is heading toward 54mm. As always Shaun has all of it here, with packagings, the Schilling set is very interesting as the 'H' branded Deetail clones have been linked to Kwong Wah in the last few weeks (subscribe to Plastic Warrior magazine), which would mean the contents have been bought-in from more than one source.

News, Views Etc . . . PW 2024!

I haven't had that many 'News, Views' this year, just been too busy, but the all important one is in now and it's good news . . . Plastic Warrior's show for 2024 has a confirmed date!

That is all!

S is for Sometimes . . .

 . . . I can be a silly-old Hector!

 

Having nearly (there was the forgotten skeletons shot!) managed to get out all the Halloween posts, on Halloween, which included some I was working on the same day, and others which were all together in the 'Halloween 2023' folder which gets added to all year, plus any contributions, the 'special' days become a panic and lead to a sigh of relief if they mostly come off, and having got everything out of Picasa, I was happy.

 

But, I just noticed a folder on the desktop which simply said 'Halloween' and I thought "Oh no, I've forgotten a/some contributions?" (as they tend to end up on the desk-top!), but thankfully it is two fanatsy lots, I'd put on hold for Halloween, and they can go anytime, so here's one!

 

Issued in the mid-late 1980's, you are supposed to get four polyethylene figures in a polystyrene 'toob' made to look like a lookout tower (just the sort of random 'folly' role-players like on the gaming table!), but mine had five if you include the dragon, which we saw here once before, so I must have two, as I know I grabbed that one at random, at the time, and posted it as unknown!

 

The figures are based on old Ral Partha figures I think, or some similar range, Aureola Rococo (minifigs) or AD&D? Pretty sure I had the lizard with a club in that dark-grey whitemetal, it used to oxidise to! And they were sold like this, the lid taped-on over the label, so a counter-top 'outer', with maybe 16 or 20-odd towers?

The four figures from my set, I do have some more, lose, somewhere, but this stuff is all in storage now, however, as always we can rely on Shaun at Fantasy Toy soldiers to show the rest! And a second series, which has escaped me entirely! He also thinks the contents sometimes exceeded the stated number, good way to get kids to go back for another set, I guess - convince them they are getting a 'forbidden' bargain?

The other side of the dragon!

BB is for Blue Box

Except that prior to BBI nobody used BB except Mr. Sell, who abbreviates everything! An uninspiring heading, but a simplified one I don't think we've actually had before, and it's a rather uninspired article I'm afraid, unless you're very new to the hobby, in which case you won't even get the Sell reference, but might get a lot, or something, from these images!

 

I shot the mounted Japanese officer as I was putting them into storage, but the shots didn't add much to what had gone before, so the folder just lay there, I got some more unpainted ones as 'bi-catch' with a lot of British Infantry (the only 1960/70's Blue Box figure I still need from the four sets now, is a decent British mine-clearer, they are always either broken or short-shots!) so shot them again, and at some points I spent a few minutes shooting the mounted figures again - twice!

 

So there were all these images in a folder, none of which add much to previous posts on the subject, therefore it's not a follow-up, it's not a box-ticker, I guess it's just a Picasa-clearer! I'll throw them up here, move a couple around and with minor captions, let the images tell their own story, remembering to thank Nazar Marchenko who filled the original gaps in my fledgling sample, eight years ago.

Painted officer, mounted

 

Comparison between painted and unpainted officers

Horses are different colours

 

More! More officers, more horses, another horse colour

Unpainted set of foot figures from both sides

Random shots and a base-mark with the '3' cavity numeral

Top image is plastic-colour variants isn't it!

Mostly unpainted against a few painted

Must have been a late-in trio?

All the unpainted's from both sides and the officer

An evilBay lot, which appears to suggest, as I'd mused . . . mooted (?) in the past, that they all had an issue, at some point, with the plug-in 'farm/zoo workers' base, as that's Aussies, Japs and Germans now found either with the green oblong base, or, in this case, needing them!

 

With three horses and only two riders, a long term goal is to find a third rider and paint him up, with a set of the infantry.

B is for Box Finally Ticked!

I've had a bunch of these playing pieces in a matchbox for the longest time, but never had a clue as to what game or set they belonged to. The suspicion was always that they were from a board game, but it wasn't until I was looking for something else that I finally encountered them about two-and-a-half years ago, and it's our old friends Merit!

 

I know it's considered a bit non-U to name-drop, but sometimes you have to, and I'm pretty sure General Horrocks used to come to the house when we were little, certainly it was a name I heard a lot, and I recognise the little black & white thumbnail of him, above, but I would have been very young, 6-8'ish, or birth to 8'ish maybe, and all sorts of people did come to the house!

 

Mum used to do dinner parties, for which she would often get help from the MOD, or even one of the unit chef's to help prep' up, in the afternoon, as they were official or semi-official dinner parties, given Dad's position, and while I think Sir Horrocks was among them, he could have been a face on the TV, filling the spot more recently filled by Sir de la Billière, who's knee I apparently sat on more than once, so who knows!

 

But . . . if he did come to the house on occasion, and if ten-year-olds can pick up the game and play it with "gusto", why didn't he bring me a copy? Yeah! You See? There's a question for the great man to answer, what happened to my free copy of Merit's 'game of skill' - Combat? I wouldn't have spent all those years wondering where my little matchbox of crude tanks (no aeroplanes) came from!

General rules (in black & white) army-specific rules (which I haven't read, in order to locate the differences?), cards and a dice, all the usual paraphernalia of a board-game with some degree or elements of complication/sophistication . . . which a ten yer-old can play with gusto!

The uncut sheets of topographical, geographical and foliant* elements of the battlefield. They are produced in a kind of smooth, but floppy PVC, which could be adhered to a similarly smooth surface, by the physical properties of friction applied though something called 'Lateral adhesion'.

Relatively common when I was a kid (car showroom price labels were a major application), there was quite a variety of novelty items in this material (including Merit's own Pocket Battleships - see here before at Small Scale World), think Fuzzy Felt without the fluff! And on the right, the gaming board!

*There doesn't seem to be a collective noun for greenery, but rather lots of type-specific ones, so I invented a word which looks and sounds good (after all Agent Orange was a de'foliant?), but it turns out 'foliant' is a type of book (with folded pages - like atlases), borrowed from German or Dutch, so feel free to insert one of the following: Canopy, Carpet, Forest, Landscape, Gleam, Grove, Hedge, Thicket, Verdure!**

**It's 'vegetative elements' isn't it? . . . Doh!

Having not read the rules yet, I have no idea if this set-up is even legal! But I gave the Red forces a decent arrow-punch to split Blue, but gave Blue superior air-assets in theatre, to devastate from above, and come back from the northern flank, rolling red toward the viewer! It's anybodies game, we just need to read the rules . . . or make some up!

 

This is what really interests me! Diesel-punk tanks in two sizes, one (the larger) looking like something the Russian's probably lost in the snows of Finland, the other looking like something the Russians expected their Paratroopers' to protect their heads from! Look to the Skies . . . Oooooffff!

 

Alongside which are aircraft with no visible means of motive power, but which still manage to look like scaled-down versions of those 1950's food premiums from Germany, probably made by Manurba!

F is for Follow-up - Remembrance Sunday

Which this is, all day! Brian Burke sent me some fascinating images yesterday, by way of a follow-up to the poppy post I left up yesterday morning, while waiting for my pick-up in the early hours, for onward transport to the toy show!

I think this is a lovely poppy! This (left) is an American one, and in Brian's own words;

 

"On the right UK, from some years ago when in the UK in October, on the left USA from two years ago. Hard to find here where Veterans Day is not the same meaning as UK and Poppies are sold by Veterans of Foreign Wars members (VFW Posts)"

 

I had no idea the American did them, albeit as a minority thing? And I love the little beady centre to the poppy, and the fact that it's got a more environmentally friendly wire stalk with green paper wrap, like those bunches of mushrooms, grapes or mini-baubles you can get for Christmas trees, flower arranging, cheese-boards &etc., and which are among the oldest surviving decorations still findable.

 

So many thanks to Brian for that speedy follow-up! I also think, Australia/NZ do them as well as Canada, are any of them different to the Haig Fund/British Legion ones, they must be, even if it's only the message in the centre?

And it's funny, I 'ummed & ahrred' about my last paragraph in the previous post, but decided - with everything else going on - to leave it in the post anyway, I do wear my heart on my sleeve, as well as a poppy on my breast, and subsequent events involving Tommy Yaxley-Lennon Robinson Wanker and his Right Wing mates attacking the Cenotaph (as Madame Cruella and the tabloid press, as good as invited them to) while the 'Left Wing' Ceasefire in Palestine march behaved itself elsewhere in London at the same time, only proved I was right to do so, that I was correct in speaking out.

The Left is right, and the Right is wrong, always has been, always will be . . . all of Human History is about the slow progress (oh so slow) of the Left, of tolerance, of liberal values, of science over 'belief', and the sacrifices in all wars are for that aim of a better world, not a worse one. In the last 15-odd years, the Global establishment as been dragging us into a worse world, and a bigger war is coming. Please, this day, of all days . . . Remember them.

A

R is for Remembrance

Those who've stuck with the Blog from the start will know there have been one or two false starts with other Blogs, one of which is still lying there dead, another was Other Collectables, a blog which was imported and subsumed by this one after about a year and a half, and 20-odd posts, to which I haven't added much since, although the idea is to have other collectables from time to time, and of which this could be seen as an addition.

A collection by default, and I'm sure many households in the UK (and Canada?) have this box, tub, tin or drawer somewhere on the premises? For those who don't know about 'Poppy Day', here in the UK, and Canada I believe, we commemorate our war dead, by wearing the Haig Fund poppies for a week or two leading-up to the nearest Sunday to the 11th Hour of the 11th of November.

 

Services of remembrance are held in most churches and/or at most war memorials, on the Sunday, for those who wish to join in, while more personal tributes can be undertaken in relative privacy away from (before or after) the organised activities, and small crosses can be left, wreaths &etc., which remain up until the end of November in some cases, while two-minutes silences are held nationwide at 11 a.m. on the 11th (of the 11th Month, the time and day the armistice came into effect, at the close of the First World War), whether before or after the Sunday.

 

These are the poppies we wear, they represent the poppies which thrived on the war-broken ground of Flanders fields and the mud of no-mans-land, as they always do on construction sites and spoil-heaps, to this day.

 

But having made your contribution, and worn your poppy, two things become pressing upon its disposal, one, you must have the morality to buy a new one next year, not reuse your old one, and two, there seems something disrespectful in throwing away something which represents our own dead ancestors - so in the box, tub, tin or drawer they go!

 

This enables the above picture, which shows the evolution of the Remembrance Poppy in my lifetime, with a heavy, felted-card one on the left, a bit like blotting-paper, but it didn't immediately disintegrate when it got wet (which was quite common back then), it comes with a long-stalked and quite thick 'stem'.

 

Then four sub-versions of the current one, the flower now in impressed cartridge-paper, first with a shorter, thinner stalk, then the addition of a piece of foliage, thirdly, a side-branch/catch was added to help keep it in the button-hole, and finally the side-branch then got remanufactured in heavier plastic as they had a tendency to pull-off

 

Alongside the final version is the all paper one which has been gaining usage in the last few years, and will probably become the norm, as we try to phase unnecessary plastics out of common use.

 

Top right I have doubled-up an old sun-faded pink one, something we used to do with the old ones when we were kids, you could get two or three under the button before it started threatening to pop-off, which this was, as I shot it, I think the two pieces of foliage were one too many!

The four stalks, oldest on the left, current on the right, the message in the centre of the button changed from Haig Fund to Poppy Appeal sometime in the 1990's I think, and the whole exercise is to raise money for the British (or Canadian) Legion, a charity which supports ex-servicemen, and provides social venues open to the whole community, but specifically aimed at ex-servicemen.

The oldest and newest on the left, with two versions of the all-paper one on the right, a selection is provided at each collection stand/table (often manned by ex-servicemen or their widows), and here we have one with a sticky patch and the other to be pinned-through with the dress-makers pins provided.

Other poppies exist, I have a huge eight or ten-inch lump of polyethylene vehicle-badge somewhere, which were common for a while around the turn of the century, attached to the radiator with a cable-tie (mine was on my Cittrowaan, a BX19 GTI RocketShip!), and they are still available I think, but the famous 'reserve' of the British has rather rendered them a bit naff and/or show-off'y, and due to their cost, people assume the owners are reusing them every year - shock horror! Also, the changing design ethic of motor-vehicles means more and more of them have nowhere to locate the poppy!

They were originally silk, and hand-made by disabled veterans, and there must have been other designs over the decades between 1919'ish and the 1970's when my felted big-boy was made and procured, probably compulsorily at school! But if you chose to collect them, I'm sure you could have years of fun tracking them all down?

 

A lot of the officers wives' used to have jewelled-silver broaches from Garrards, but they knew to wear them on their dress or blouse and make sure they had a fresh Haig on their coat or jacket, and you can get the enamelled 'pins' from the sellers every year, if you are a pin-head - what pin-badge collectors call themselves!

We'll be at the Sandown Park toy fair today, and at 11 a.m., there will be two minutes silence, wherever you are, please remember them, because they died for a better world, not the intolerant fascist one Rishi and Cruella are trying to create. Not the illiterately idiotic one Truss nearly foisted on us, and not the murderously immature one, Boris and eye-test-man ran for nearly two years, but then . . . none of them have served five minutes in the forces, yet they've all gone down to Lullworth, Warminster or somewhere, to drive a tank!

G is for Gun Again!

Pretty sure we've seen both of these before, but I managed to shoot them together while they were off to storage a while back, and it's a quick reminder that BP Fairs Sandown park toy fair is tomorrow, all day, and it'll be a good one, because the weather forecast is fine, just the place to pick-up vintage Merit guns!

Slight colour variation between batches, but the important element is the change from wooden to plastic wheels, and that's it really, Merit Gun, the Merit tag will reveal the box somewhere as well I think.

C is for Clipper and Cable Car!

A couple more novelty, card-packaging vehicles, and first we'll have another bus, but it's not flogging chocolate bars this time, rather tea leaves! Although, why do they call them tea leaves when they are little crumbs of tea-leaves? Leaf-tea I get, tea-leaves I don't!

 

You can make a decent collection of this stuff, and that's how I've ended up with a dozen or more (no, I only scanned these four, so the rest can wait for another day!), I'd bid on a junk lot of railway accessories, and when it can time to pay for and collect them, it turned out there were two boxes under the table, with the same lot-number, full of miscellaneous bus-stuff!

 

Our scalers are a little younger now, school-kid sized, next to the conductor, who's around the 40mm mark, and again we have a product-related number-plate. The '49' still runs from Clapham Junction up to Shepherd's Bush and back, I have myself ridden it once or twice, but not for over a decade. Clipper - who still seem to be going - aren't actually on the route, being from the West Country!

While the Cable Car contained four Wispa bars. I think these might have been a present from someone who didn't know me too well, as I hate Wispa bars, a cheap, claggy rip-off of Aero, and with hardly any bubbles, quite disgusting, and I thought they'd ceased to exist (Caramac just died, so it's Gold Bars or nothing kids!), but was disappointed to see a heap of them in Sainsbury's this afternoon!

F is for Farm Follow-up to the Farm Follow-up!

I found the March 1955 Tudor Rose leaflet sorting other stuff over the last few days, paperwork; don't yah just hate it? And it has the farm set! Which (previous Post) is about six Posts down this page.

No wonder the animals have been coming in so slowly and so few at-a-time, allowing for losses and damage, you need to find the remains of a lot of sets to find all the animals in all the possible colours, although it's starting to look like the fencing was only ever manufactured in brown.

 

The wagon is a version of the nodding-horse wagons, popular at the time, but instead of the cam-wheel under the horses, a more complicated arrangement of sliding draw-bars seems to have been employed, presumably to get round someone else (Thomas/Acme, Dillon-Beck, Hardy?)'s patent/copyright?