L is for Layouts and Little People!

There were quite a few figures in the huge box of mostly animals Jon Attwood sent recently, and we're looking at the smaller-scaled stuff in this post. Of interest as my intention is to get some model-railway stuff posted over Christmas, because it's a long time since we looked at any of it in any depth, and the last time we did, it was all that Preiser/Merten stuff, which won't feature this time round!

A late ('yellow' pull-off lid) box of Airfix Platform Figures was stuffed with small scale . . . err . . . stuff! And this is me sorting it into piles! Most of it is grist-to-the-mill stuff you wouldn't want me to go through pile by pile, but what can you spot - the image enlarges quite big, but a little pixel-fuzzy.

 

Some highlights from the previous though; the paratrooper is from a parachute-plane kit, but I can never remember which is which, as there are more than one with a figure, one is Airfix, another Monogram I think, which may be this one? Then a Blue Box German throwing  grenade over a damaged, but rather fine (Edwardian?) board-game piece, to his US oppo', while another of my favourite little Hong Kong cowboys charges into the fray!

 

Faller scenic sets, these are the really useful sets of 'bits', rather than specific kits, and I well remember those coin-operated railway dioramas at mainline and terminus stations in Germany having the contents of 973 stacked round the two cottages under construction, which would be made to look on fire with blackened timbers, cotton wool, hidden red and yellow grain-of-wheat bulbs &ect . . . so the fire equipment of Roco, Preiser, Herta, Praline and/or Wiking could be given something to do, for a feature in one corner of the layout!

 

A lovely sample, of samples, of metal railway figures, both bigger name and after-market, old and new'ish. Jon has also sent images, and I have also had both a photography and scanning sessions, so there will be intermittent posts on some of this in December, all going well.

 

We looked at these years ago, they were samples from a dodgy outfit in China/US/Germany, and Mike Niederman confirmed Tomolio's suspicions they were Presier copies, but fun nevertheless, as figure collectables, and seen here in what looks to be OO- and O-gauges. Upper shot is duplicate poses in the two sizes, lower shot are colour variations of the OO figures.

 

Hong Kong knock-offs of Merit/Randall scenery, with the white stuff attributed to Blue Box and through their Sunshine lable, Marx!

 

Jon also sent this for a very interesting advert on figures from a maker I only knew from their similar ad's in the military modelling press, where they were promoting 1:90 or 1:100th NATO recognition models of Cold War armour! All for the forthcoming posts on Railway figures!

Thanks again to Jon, for all this, which is already proving useful and will continue to do so for years to come. You know, everything which you physically have in the 'stash', is something you don't have to search for, at some point in the future, to feed blog articles or illustrate points!

M is for Merched Cymru

Or 'Welsh Ladies' to the occupying English, while - "Formidable infanterie de ligne" to French invaders! And yes, we sort of had that gag before! Really an F is for Follow-up, as these keep coming-in, and of course they do, they were (are?) in one form or another, a standard tourist trope/souvenir, and there will be many around, some commoner than others. 

Indeed, it's one of the big gaps in the hobby's knowledge, these localised figurines/figurals, I do have a couple of Christ The Redeemer's from Rio, a few Virgin Mary's from the Vatican, Italy, Lourdes or wherever, the Tzar Gun from Moscow, and the Russo-Ottoman war gun from Bulgaria (Or Hungary?), but there are hundreds of these sites, statues, famous guns &etc., from all over the world, and the bulk of the touristy 'toys' from them, are missing from the bulk of collectors' collections!

For instance, I know I'm short of Irish Ladies/Irish Dancers, and Leprechauns, although some of the latter are repurposed gnomes, which I do have in the collection, sans the extra green decoration!

So, not strictly to scale; a new keyring, the previously-seen keyring, un-drilled in the hat, but with a hole in her back (for mounting to an egg-timer or something?), the old styrene one we have seen before and the one believed to be Cherilea (or Charbens)? I think someone was questioning it's attribution the other day, so 'believed to be' is the way for me to go!

 

It's funny, I have my critics, many of them, all waiting to pounce on the slightest error (or even just flat omissions), even as they ignore their own, or each-other's howlers, so I've learnt to be as careful as I can be, while still passing as much as I can on, to you, as accurately and comprehensively as possible!

 

The facts here, are that the figure has a base unlike those of other figure production from either Charbens or Cherilea, and as a commission from a tourist whole-seller in Wales, or serving Welsh retailers, could have been made by any one of several dozen other British figure producers, or several hundred, even thousand plastic injectors, not known for their figures. And - so far - I don't think it's turned-up in any of the reissues from either firms' mould-banks.

As I mentioned only the other day, at a point in around 1998, there were 3 injection-moulders within yards of each-other in the commercial belt between Frimley and Camberley, that they have all gone now, is a moot point, they were there, and they were only the ones I knew of, there may have been more - there are three or four still listed on Google Maps, none being the ones I knew back then, and in the 1950/60's there would have been twice as many.

And with those musings in mind, returning to the 'Hong Kong' not her usual keyring self; these items are used not only as key-rings and egg-timers (why I suspect she has a hole in her back), but also as/for attaching to pincushions, barometers/thermometers, note or calendar holders, key-cups, egg-cups, hooks, knife-racks, cruet sets, anything you can think of as maybe being sellable, to people from elsewhere, looking for a small, travel-friendly keepsake or memento of their trip to your neighbourhood, your attraction!

Now, I also think the vinyl one may have been in Chris Smith's last parcel, but in looking at that folder to ID it, I can't find it, so either I shot the pic's for this post (which has been growing in Picasa for a while) and forgot to include it in the plunder-post shots, or I ended up combining it with the key-ring I picked-up in a mixed lot a while ago, while putting-away Chris's stuff, but in any event Chris has sent some, and he definitely sent the reconstituted slate one we also looked-at here, so many thanks for everything he does for the Blog.

M is for Many Moulded Malleable Mammals!

Part three of Jon's big box brings us to the Mammals, although a bird snuck-in under the radar while I wasn't paying attention, and the rest are definitely from the Zoo/Jungle/Wild zone, farm and domestic will come later!

Big cats, 1 of 3, cheetahs and leopard'ish critters, I like the big cats but there is a tendency to use the same moulding for different cats, or just not pay much attention to the things at all, so while the Britains one is a 54mm leopard, also found in black as a 'panther' (melanistic leopard), the pair in the next size up look more doglike, as does the orange one to the right, he has quite a hyena'ish head/jaw!

There was a bit of a comedy involved in this image, as I shot what I thought was all five Cheetahs, then reshot 'all' six, before finding another one under the dinosaurs! The big, dark, stretching one (lovely pose) is Triple-A (the 'AAA' mark), the others, all generics, for now.

A pair of colour variations of the same toob' animals, and a larger one which is actually a lighter-weight than either of the smaller brethren, being manufactured of some slightly-foamed polyethylene?

 

Big Cats 2 of 2; hunting! They don't often bring down any but old, infirm, or very young, lost giraffe's, who otherwise enjoy a relatively blessed existence. The larger lion is a China-marked newie, the other, a similar sculpt, is an older Hong Kong toy.

The giraffes are three old HK's, probably from different tranches of the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus giraffe carrier, and two larger modern chaps, one clearly marked KS in a similar oval to Toy Major, the other a generic for now.

 

Three generics here, and the really big one is a Toy Major, probably from a pick-box/counter-display. And when I say 'Generic', the hope is a fair quantity of them will be attributed in the near-to-medium-future?

 

Smallies; seem to match each other with plastic type, sculpting, size, China-mark etc . . . and probably came together in a toob or small-tub, but sometimes the small ones are chucked into tub-sets with larger animals to make-weight, or add to the item count

 

Big Cats 3 of 3; The big orange beast at the back is a Toy Major animal, marked Cheetah! The cub to the right is another AAA, while the flocked guy to the left is just lovely, but of unknown origin, with no dinks or worn-patches, he really is sweet!

 

Three generic elephants, one of which was marked ELEPHANTCHINA and for a moment, just a moment, I wondered if I'd left it out of the prehistoric animals post! And, all three newish sculpts.

 

Thanks again to Mr Attwood for sending us these, they make a nice change from 'armymen', Wild West or space/fantasy, especially as we head into the Christmas season - Fleet had its night market tonight, nothing on the council or Fleet BID Faceplant pages . . . of course!

ITMA is for It's That Man Again!

The hype has been growing for a week or two now, with the BBC's Radio4 and World Service both covering a certain new movie more than once in the last few days, it's all about some Corsican chap 'Blownapart', from the Wellingtonian period, who did something notable, or infamous? And the talkie-format, moving-picture presentation opens worldwide, today!

He's been modelled a few times, indeed we've seen him here before, so often, he has his own Tag (yeap, it hurt!). And here we have a large fairing in the centre, flanked by two substantial home-painted model soldiers on plinths, in the 80mm bracket.

 

Then the smaller front row, around 54/60mm scale and from the left . . . 'Metallion' of the younger artilleryman, two French-made Jim, a JSB from Belgium, Hong Kong's Blue Box (courtesy of Chris Smith's forthcoming donation-plunder posts), another French plastic (Acedo maybe, or Cofalu/x, Guillbert/Clairet, someone like that?) and a faux-antiqued tourist piece in slush-cast base-metal.

 

******      ******      ***      ******      ******

 

On the subject of the title, for foreign readers; ITMA was the moral-boosting comedy sketch-show on BBC Radio from 1939-49. We lived, for a while, next-door to Clarence Wright, who had retired to Alderney, he played several of the well known characters, among whom were the Commercial Traveller and the Man from the Ministry, and I had the pleasure of chatting to him on several occasions, when he would tell the most irascible stories, which I couldn't possibly repeat here, even if I could recall them, but I remember him as a thoroughly nice man.

W is for Water World

The next part of Jon Attwood's donation parcel to be looked at is the sea, pond or river life, and lots of interesting items were hiding among the dinosaurs, to be uncovered and shared here.

Bottom feeders, and the nice kind which aren't bidding against you on feebleBay to turn a quick profit on the only two things in the lot worth the not quite as much as they will reappear for, a few days later, on a BIN!

The larger lobster is marked for Shing Hing, and the two bigger starfish (brittle-stars) are maked BCLA 1997, which may mean something to someone (there could be a connection with the US 'jobber' Imperial?), the rest are simple 'China' marks.

Sharks, the two yellows are from one maker, the other pair from another, with a simple 'Shark China' on the yellows' (colour variants of the same sculpt) and only a China on the other two.

 

Mostly unmarked or carrying simple China-marks, the reef and flat-fish, I think the unmarked may have "Hong Kong" age, while the others are a little newer.

 

The cetacean sample has big whales (they're not a country Donald!), modelled small! Dolphins and probably a porpoise (I'm not sure if I know the difference - like kangaroos and wallabies; does it just come down to size and blood-tests?!) and a killer whale, off to Gibraltar to sink a yacht!

 

The fur-seal pup, is a two-part, possibly Iwako type eraser, but the polymer's a bit too hard, and the grey pup in a larger scale is in a dense 'polystone', and again the small sample ticks all the boxes, with seals, sea-lions and a walrus!

 

A frog of more decorative/ornamental origin, and two turtles and a tortoise who dragged some lizards to the party! For terrapins, see kangaroo/porpoise note above!

Again I thank Jon for sending them to the Blog, and we will have final reckonings when all this stuff is reunited, soon I hope, and we can start tying all the odds into sets, and attributing them to brands, lines or generic rack-toy titles!

S is for 'Soldiers'

I wonder how many loyal readers from the UK (or elsewhere if it was syndicated?) will remember, in the autumn schedules for 1985 (or '86/'87, maybe, elsewhere?), a broadcasting-extravaganza of a televisual production, with all the Reithian boxes ticked - Educational, Informative and Entertaining - called Soldiers, and presented by the mighty author of airport-carousel paperbacks, Frederick Forsyth, no less? A strange anti-war, Brwreakshiteer conservative!

Below is the promotional leaflet/marketing press release, which doesn't appear to be copyrighted, so I don't have to worry about the 'fair use' paragraph or anything! It is one of many pieces of crap in the stash which will have to be dealt with over the next few years, and recycled properly or sold to some other mug, but which might jog your memory of the series;

No? Well, it was a long time ago, and I certainly don't remember it being on the telly-box, despite staring in it! But then I had gone off to Austria (pretending NOT to be a British Soldier - they were neutral!) to do my Ski Instructors Course and be lectured into the benefits of regular colonic irrigation by a BASI instructor who had gone beyond Hippy, and was full-on nut-job, but he knew how to ski, and teach skiing!

 

You see, the supposedly 'independent' BBC, are not above getting so close to the Ministry of Defence (MOD), they can save a small fortune in extra's fees, by employing the British Army - for nothing! It's called low-level corruption, and happens in 'so called' democracies (favourite phrase of Trumpies and fuckwits), all the time!

The real reason Napoleon lost the battle of Wahterrr'looo, was not because he had the shits all day, nor was it because he'd spent the previous two decades killing the flower of France or leaving them casually in Egypt, or all over Eastern Europe, it was because the Allies had superior transport - heay; the camera never lies!

 

A-Company, 1 Glosters, being a company of somebody else;

 

"Form squares! And prepare to defend against cavalry!"

 

I'm in there somewhere, but I can only - now - name Benefield, Thomas, Carl Kerry, possibly Freebrey & Cpl Cordingley? Waiting, endlessly waiting for something violent to happen, the lot of the Infantry.

 

And you see, the reason we never got paid, was that the Army are considered to be paid 24-hours a day (which of course means they are well below the minimum hourly wage!), so 'didn't need' paying twice?

 

Prouse and Alan Greathurst? I have a friend who made her living as an extra, Natwest commercials, London's Burning, all sorts, and when she did a non-speaking role as body-double for the remake of Lost in Space, she made enough in eight weeks to allow her to emigrate (Canada), with her family . . . I reckon that the good-old 'Dear Aunty Beeb' owe me about ten-grand, more with interest & inflation, the thieving shitbags!

 

While we were in Kenya, earlier the same year, some elements (Support Company, I think?) were used in anachronistic kit, to do a WWII beach assault from Landing Craft, I don't know if it was the same production, or some B-movie which ended-up straight-to-video, or on the cutting-room floor, but it was another dodgy deal, using British troops for free labour, for profit! But then, so was building Daniel arap Moi's private airstrip . . . another story for another day!

D is for Dinosaurs, Lots & Lots of Dinosaurs!

And we arrive at the first post from Jon Attwood's latest and huge donation, which will be the last dinosaur post for a few days (already another one in the queue!), and because there are lots of animals to come in Jon's posts, I will try to alternate between donation and other posts for the next few days.

Because Dinosaurs are one of the unsung corners of the collection, which, apart from a few small scale and novelty types, have only really started accruing in the last 15 years, they all need a huge sorting and attributing session, likely to take a week or two, which won't happen for a while, and I can't pretend to be an expert on any of it, consequently I thought to do these as thematic shots, by way of an overview of what's out there, particularly of the Hong Kong / China variety, and to thank Jon properly for them by at least featuring them all here once, as while we will see them all again one day, they will be sorted into sets, by brand/maker . . . hopefully!

 

Here are me'fave's, the Dimetrodons, which, as I mentioned the other post ago, are not technically dinosaurs, but rather, to quote Wikipedia "a genus of non-mammalian synapsid that lived during the Cisuralian age of the Early Permian period, around 295–272 million years ago", in other words, among the first larger animals out of water, but not the first, and possibly warm-blodded?

 

Although there were also small ones, and two similar species - Edaphosaurus (large grey above), and Secodontosaurus are among the toys, which should be leathery, not scaled, but I just like them for reasons of childhood fancy and nostalgia! The pale gape-mouth/spotted pair which are a classic 'chinasaur', are actually dated 2001, but probably shot from old tools? the teeny-tiny one is marked Koka China which would seem to be a branding?

Triceratops, Styracosaurus and similar Ceratopsians, among other favourites from childhood, as there were quite a few different ones and they all looked suitably wacky, and of a mind to not be a carnivore's lunch, or not without a damaging fight! Always stand up to bullies! The blue one second from right is marked Chasmosaurus.

A couple of Protoceratops on the right and lots of Kerthunkersauruses, more formerly known as the Ankylosauria, I have always called them Kerthunkasaurs, because Ankee . . . ancky . . . Annekey . . . the real one is too hard to spell!

The bright green one looks like an infant or bath toy, could even be a pet toy, but no squeak, while the four small ones in the middle would look to be from the same maker, but two species, and have the look of erasers, but are polyethylene. The big Proto' with the red head is a lovely sculpt, well decorated, with a nod to modern birds such as the Pheasants? Or, yes, some monkey's arses!

 

Pterosaurs, when I was a little kid, there were really only two of these in all the books Pterodactyl (it's OK with this one, spellcheck gets it!), which all four of these are, and the dog-headed one with a parrots beak, now there are loads, but not many toys, and few really-good toys as they don't lend themselves to posing! But these are all quite good, compare with the various eraser Pterosaurs, which all look like comedy vampire-bats!

Stegosaurs, didn't we all have a soft spot for these, I'm sure half the reason we liked them was because they had a whole driveway of crazy-paving on their backs. You don't see much crazy-paving these days, but when I was young it was everywhere, the ultimate recycling of not so crazy paving!

 

The second largest (green with red plates) is marked SH, which I think is Shing Hing, still around, they did that four-nation tub of 'army-men' in Smyths a few years ago. While the dark one back-right, is called Tuojiangosaurus on his belly, but is using a classic Steggy' tool, the true Tuo' should have spikes or narrow, tapering plates?

 

Sauropods, due to their immense size, they are nearly always a compromise on scale/size, even from good, branded makers, and while the palaeontologists have classified loads of them, we tend to think of Dippy's, Brote's and the other one, and wasn't one banned, but has it come back again, and did two switch name or classification and, and, and, they are really big aren't they?

 

I like the biggest one (marked Apatosaurus) with the head turned on the horizontal. The two long ones are variations of the same tooling, and both also marked SH for Shing Hing.

 

Parasaurolophos, one of the duck-billed dinosaurs, again when I was a kid, the more normal duck-bills tended to be modelled, but now this one with its hollow trumpet is everywhere! And again the red-headed one is particularly smart-looking, while the one bottom-right, with a flap of connecting skin, clearly establishes himself as a different species/subspecies within the genus. he also looks related to the Silurian Sea-Monsters from Dr Who!

 

I couldn't remember what the bumpy-headed ones were called (like I ever knew!), but googling 'Grape headed dinosaur' gave an instant 'Pachycephalosaurus', and I think the various plate-heads are related carnivores, the double crest/crown one is Dilophosaurus, if Gooogle is to be believed!

 

It's confirmed by the bellies of the large green one (Toy Major) and the generic brown one next to him, if you won't trust Google! Face-on to their left is the peach/cream Corythosaurus,

 

You know my view on Spinosaurs, just cheap Dimetrodons! The two little ones look like they could be freebies from the Dino-mag we looked at a few posts back? And two paint-treatments of the same sculpt at back-left.

 

Carnivores; the two biggies at the back are marked Deinonychus on their Chinese bellies, and are paint-variants of the same uncommon, but quite realistic sculpt. And while there was T-Rex and Allosaurus when I wer't'lad, now there are lots of these Carnosaurs.

 

No names on them but various takes on Velociraptor, almost unheard-of in my childhood, they may have been in the books but I don't remember them, now made famous by the Jurassic Park movie-franchise, they are everywhere! They have also been bigged-up in other ways, by the filums, and were actually quite small.

 

Latecomers and oddments include a nice duck-bill (back-left) with an unmarked spiky-fellah in front of him, with a similar skeleton, a cartoony chap and another Pachycephalosaurus to their right, who missed his family picture!

 

Which leaves three dragons! The two larger just marked Made in China, the smaller green one unmarked, but looking like a Pokemon or Anime/Manga character of some sort, with very stylised spikes?

 

Sorting 2020

Just before they went in the car to storage!

 

Many thanks to Jon for all these, they will all be sorted into the master collection (shot above) at some point, and sorting was done as I went, as certain groups made themselves obvious, the gape-mouths with their '2001' mark, were a largish group for instance, so we will return to them as those groups, another day!