H is for How They Come In - Sandown Park, November, 1 of 2

Well, I certainly didn't think I'd be doing a two-poster here, I was still on a tight-leash, and behaved myself, with a total spend of well under a hundred which is not common these days, back when I was a small-scale collector I could go to a show and get away with 60-quid, and still go home with huge bags of shite to sort out, not that you find those bags for a fiver these days! And I've just done a London show for less than 60, but they are future posts!

This was a real bargain, or two, the Brabo soldier (who I've been after since I first saw him in evilBay about 15-years ago) was a grail-find, and came in the bag with the scenic bits I think (Timpo, Britains and Speedwell), but the 'witch' was a surprise find, more so as we saw it here, quite a few moons ago, as a probably American newspaper cutting, the cutting is almost certainly American (it was from the James Chase collection), but this figure, clearly the same, is equally clearly marked MADE IN ENGLAND?

 

As an aside, it had escaped my notice that the Timpo sandbag-walls came in two sizes?

 

Novelty tape-measure, almost certainly from Japan, and you can see the tape is mostly missing, after failing near the spring. A quick google suggests I may be able to track down a replacement with the same dimensions, if not I have some old 'boring' key-ring tapes somewhere, and I bet the mechanisms will prove useable for a restoration job?

 

The Indian is a caricature type, but would go well in a display with the similar figures from Jecsan and Lik Be / LB, as they are all as daft as each other!

Some kind of Transformer knock-off?

 

Space tank! Space rocket! Space robots . . . Spacemen! A few days later, Chris (forthcoming posts) sent me a better rocket! All grist to the mill here, I'd love a brand on the tank if anyone recognises it?

 

Skandi' tractor, German coach and a pile of shite! Actually a couple of useful jig-toy trucks, one of which will need paint stripping, a Lucky Clover chariot (and very brittle driver) and cracker-toy, water-squirt pistol novelty.

 

This is fascinating, if only for its age, it's marked-up Pressman who are still with us, but will be a WWII-era, US, austerity piece, it's seen better days and with both the box and the soldier 'tray' now failing all over the place, Adrian announced it would probably be going in the bin, so I ended-up with it!

 

After I'd cobbled together the previous shots, I finally released them from their die-cut slumber, and popped one together for this post, but they are all in a bag, and I will try to find a way of displaying them at journey's end.

Duplicate Montaplex ACW set, still carrying a late 1930's bomber! And one of the 4D puzzle toys, we have looked at before now, seems to be the same as the Poundland Tiger/M1's of a few years ago, but another issue/tranche, here as a generic?

T is for Two - Mini Crackers

Way back when, Crackers tended to be limited to the actual dinner, you all had one and shared the hats and prizes if one person 'won' two ends, you then read the joke and wore the hat. Extravagant families might have a second pull before the pudding course, but there was the undeniable guilt of redundant hats?

 

In order to get round the unwritten limits on cracker engagement, some wag in cracker-central came up with the mini-cracker, which lived in the tree as a 'decoration' and cried silently 'pull me, pull me' for the entirety of the tree-up period. Pester-power (spoilt whining) did the rest!

Here we see generic and Sainsbury's branded versions of the same common mini-crackers, I'm really after another (1960's) set, which comes up regularly, but always goes for silly money, so clearly other people know what they are looking for, in the meantime these later ones (1980-2000's?) which flourished under several guises, are often going for no money, and these are from a few years ago (left) and this year, a charity lot (right).

 

You can tell they are the same from the little bells and Christmas trees glued to them, which didn't change for over a decade and can be found on the larger crackers, presumably from the same source/origin, too, whatever the design of the crackers themselves, which - with these minis - is always a variation of the metallic 'Christmas colours'.

 

But it's the contents which interest me and hopefully some of you, and here, mercifully, the rings have tied them together as closely as the glued tags! Only seven left in the first - generic - box, a full complement of eight in the newer, charity set.

 

Of note; another micro-racing car for my long-term project, the diminutive copy of a Layla type railway figurine, and it solves the question of the different bases on some of the copies, I thought we'd looked at more of the Hong Kong ones than we did in the linked post, but there are some (the above . . . golfer?) with better bases, but poorer sculpting than the Hong Kong bagged sets you could get in model railways retailers back in the day. Obviously, these crackers are one of the sources of them.

While the Sainsbury's-branded set is also interesting for having four items at normal cracker size (fake finger, moustache, ring and fly), and four mini-versions of what would normally be bigger - rocking bear, whistle, charm and the relief-flat crab. favourite here is the microscopic warship, we had a bunch of these in soft, silver polyethylene when we were kids, and I've found a couple over the years along with a red one, but this bright green one is the first polystyrene one I've found.

M is for More on Märklin

We have looked at the larger Hong Kong copies, and mentioned the smaller ones in passing once or twice, but we've never looked at the originals, nor properly compared them all, so this is really the first proper overview of Märklin's OO/HO figure sets.

The original manuscript-notes from my old book-project, it's not been updated since . . . ooh, before 2005 at least, some of the entries are now '2nd format, second draft' with older ones being fourth draft, 1st format, so it's a while since I last edited it, and it may date from the early formation of the manuscript in 1994-7?

 

However, it stands up well, I suspect that item '6' (figure type) is incorrect, they will be centrifugal-moulded, poured-lead, rather than what we think of nowadays as 'die-cast', and obviously '11' (format/packaging) is wrong, they came in little boxes of ten items each, as we are about to see!

 

I have five! Three from 0201 (top left), and two from 0203 (top right) compared with the little piracies which turn-up from time to time. They were pirated twice, the small ones are unpainted, reduced-size polyethylene, and may date from the late 1960's-early 1970's, there were a few in my biscuit-tin, back in the day.

 

And, almost certainly earlier, they were 'used' as a basis for caricature, cartoonish copies (of 0201 only), in a larger size, coming out of Hong Kong in a hard polystyrene - lower right, in the 1950's, we looked at them here . . .

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/11/c-is-for-carded-cartoon-characters-for.html

 

. . . and I needed the lady in green to complete my loose sample!

From the 1959 catalogue we have the full contents of 0201 and 0203 (sans the guy leaning on his shovel who is hidden under the overlapping corner of 0201!), with 0201 blown-up and compared with some recent newcomers, sadly, three damaged including the guy in green who was (is) the last one I need whole, for a complete loose sample, but, good things come to those who wait!

 

The full contents of 0202, with an 0201 lid, courtesy of Jon Attwood, I saw a few of these in the listing room at the old A4 Bath Road site of SAS Auctions many years ago, and a few weeks later they didn't go cheap, hence why I only have the five loose ones! Having been copied in neither of the pirated sets, these are the rarer 'sculpts'.

 

From Schiffmann's Band 12 collectors catalogue (pp.147) I can further tell you 0203 also had a seperate label on the box, which showed the track-gang ('maintenance of way') in action, 0202 shared the label of 0201 despite not being illustrated on it.

 

I almost prefer these, they take rough handling and are very colourful, although we had the better stuff from Hornby-Tri Ang, and later Wrenn, Graham Farish et al, when we were kids, they were added later, to our first carpet-railways, which were the grey, plastic-tracked, clockwork trains from Tri-Ang (and Playcraft?) with primary-coloured wagons, and these guys are just made to go with them!

So far, the silver is proving the hard-to find colour, and pose-wise, now I've found two more carrying shovels, the site-Forman/surveyor, with his map, is the 'rare' pose! There is a clear HONG KONG mark along the beam of the sleeper (tie) being carried by the duo, and all the above are to a lesser or greater extent flats or semi-flats (demi-ronde).

Right, many thanks to Jon for the boxed set's images, and I think that's done them all justice! Boxes ticked!

 

But we still have this similar 'mystery' set . . . 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2014/10/u-is-for-unknown-ho-railway-flats.html

H is for Horrified B-Movie Victimes

Let's just unpack that, shall we? They are horrified, fair enough, something bad's happening, they are B-Movie, because A-Movie actors don't ham-it-up this bad? And they are victims, apparently none of them will get off scot-free, even if they survive unscathed, the trauma will be with them forever!

Accoutrements / Archie McPhee's novelty terrified citizenry, they are fun, and nicely done, but they are too big for most toy or model figures to play with, so it is a case of posing them with the cat, or a teddy-bear and then sending them to the back of the kitchen drawer, or recycling!

The couple, he hasn't a clue, but he'll drag her with him!

And the hysterical one!

The ladies; light-pink looks like she has a plan and is determined to carry it out, or try it, dark pink has accepted here fate, which buys everyone else some time, while Big-Ted stops to eat her! Green has frozen and will be next! Avoid-snog-marry I think!

The guys aren't doing much better, but red, orange, what colour is that? Shirt-man has found a gun, he's probably a concealed-carry geography teacher (explains the shirt), 'cos everybody knows the more guns you can get into a classroom, legally, the safer everyone is! Indeed, the more guns the better, the staggering death-tolls in Europe, and particularly Britain, is purely down to the lack of guns!

 

I guess they are really designed for big gorilla or Godzilla type toys, or those soft-play giant dinosaurs, something like that? Anyway: box ticked!

C is for Crescent Railway

I thought I'd posted the correction to these some time ago, but I can't find the post/link, however, I have now updated the three existing mentions I knew about and added the Crescent tag, to what was 'believed' to be Hornby.

The history of which is in those posts, or one of them, I think? But it was always a question mark, with the various railway modellers at Sandown Park not being sure either!

 

Anyway, we're back to them with a full correction and a full set, plus some, courtesy of Jon Attwood. And the above are his full set of the Crescent (not Hornby!), soft plastic figures as included in a set of die-cast scenic accessories for HO/OO model railways.

 

But of even more interest is this pale blue figure which Jon donated to the Blog, look at them now . . . the darker blue of Crescent cowboys, and the paler blue of Crescent-for-Kellogg's cowboys! It's almost blindingly obvious once you know . . . once you know what you are looking at! It's like Lik Be having an LB logotype, whatever the mule-stubborn ones want to hang-on to.

 

And not only does it become obvious, but then you can go back to the primary sources and find it was there all along, in the 1960 catalogue! 11 years ago I first posted them as question-marks, and in all that time no-one, not even me, came up with the answer, so much gratitude to Jon, for doing so and filling in the gaps!

And it's a nice coverage of railway staff, representing a porter/baggage-handler, a train/platform guard, driver/engineer/grease-monkey and a stationmaster/ticket inspector-collector. But quite oversized at 25mm+ with thick bases, compared to everyone else's OO-gauge people, and positively dwarfing any true-HO-gauge figures.

K is for Kinder Cam Toys

A common trope with Kinder since the start, is toys with offset, angled or split axles or studs (offset cams), whereby the offset section/s drive other components, which produces novelty action as the toy is pushed or pulled over a surface, not much blurb needed, so here's a few I shot earlier!

Group shot!

Note different style of ice-cream cart with lower sides.

News, Views Etc . . . Toy Memes

A few toy or collecting memes or toy-related cartoons, which have crossed my path recently, one way or another;

Preiser conversions?

Recent!

Spoiler - they're not, there's several hundred-million years between oil being laid-down and the first dinosaurs! If oil was laid-down as the theory dictates, and it's only a theory!

 

Love this one!

C is for Crafty Sugar!

It's been a funny old day, my Northern friends are all posting pictures of 2-to-3-inches of lovely, fluffy snow on their Faceplant feeds, we've just had a shed-load of rain! So, plans to hoe the weeds on the drive have been replaced by a Picasa-clearing session! In fact I've done more to sort out the desk-top, but some other folders have been found/sorted.

 

As a result of the latter, this is stuff from several folders, and the above are, I believe Dr. Oetker (pronounced "errt'ker"?) edible cake decorations, although being made of a commercial royal-icing designed to produce figurines, I wouldn't suggest trying to eat them, if you value your teeth, they are rock-hard, indeed, probably harder than many rock types!

 

They were purchased (probably in Sainsbury's) and photographed back in 2020, and then lost and forgotten about in the sadness of that season, languishing in a folder I'd buried, only to resurface in today's shenanigans!

These were purchased and photographed in the last month or two, definitely from Sainsbury's, and look identical, but are not Dr. Oetker, being styled House of Cake, and because I didn't know when shooting the first lot, I would need the logo, I didn't shoot it, just memorising Dr. Oetker before they went-off to storage (they will last as long as chalkware, with the same care and lack of damp!), so while I 'believe', I can't say definitively?

 

Older ones.

 

Suffice to say that they are the same, except for the likely different card insert, and Dr. Oetker don't list them on their site any more, so the new brand-mark may mean both were bought-in from somewhere else?

 

Morrison's (and Waitrose/John Lewis) are both stocking these, under the Cake Décor branding, a nice set of three sugar craft figurals, with a very similar Santa, but a rocking snowman, along with a rather surprised penguin.

 

And Asda are carrying this pair, obviously from the same source, but branded in-house, and while the Santa is the same sculpt, they have gone with a companion Rudolf, although it should be Rudolfina, as male Reindeer lose their antlers after the Autumn rutting, the females retain theirs through the winter, so Santa's team should really be girls!

The three Santa Clauses together, the Asda one has a better red than the washed-out pink of the Morrisons' one, but I suspect that is down to batch? While the Sainsbury's one, which I'm pretty sure used to be Dr. Oetker has the better packaging, for a product which although as hard as rock, is as likely to chip as slate!

Tesco haven't had anything like this (a few 'button' relief-flats), on several visits to the big one in Aldershot, nor a shelf-gap or label for any, while Aldi and Lidl wouldn't stock something so specific and minority interest?

W is for Which Reminds Me . . . Elektrokideez!

Apropos the Trolls in the previous post, reminded me these have been in Picasa since '21, sent to the Blog by Peter Evans in one of his many donations, it's an ephemeral capsule toy, troll thing, not the new trolls, but not the old ones either, sort of  . . . intermediate trolls!

Certainly closer to the old ones in shape, they have the various coloured bodies of the new ones, but themed around popular musical genres! From the Hong Kong/Canadian WowWee, and obviously serving a secondary purpose of pencil-top, I think they are just called Elektrokideez?

 

Although the folder was titled Rock Trolls, I may have made that up in a hurry to name the folder . . . I hate naming folders, especially when uploading images, I tend to just run my finger across the keyboard, so I have lots of folders in Picasa starting asdfgh . . .  or qwertyu . . . or even, being daring - mnbvcx . . . !

Packaging gives you a better idea than my blurb ever could! They may or may not have been common in shopping-centre dispensers a few years ago, or even now, but will clearly turn-up in mixed lots for years to come, and presumably - they are commoner in Canada?

F is for Follow-up - WH Cornelius / Success

This was supposed to be a follow-up to an August (Rack Toy Month) post . . . at the end of August! But things slide here at Small Scale World, and now's as good as any time! I found the catalogue the previous post's images were taken from, and there was a bunch more stuff of interest to Loyal Readers, if their interests are as eclectic as mine!

 

Lots of Gum Ball/Cracker fayre to be seen in these random contents, along with larger novelties, and we've seen most of the smaller stuff in one version or another here, at least once!

Trolls; somewhere there was a mountain of these, and all sorts of people issued them in all sorts of formats and sizes, usually credited in the first instance to Russ Berrie (and no, It wasn't a pun, he was Mr. Russell Berrie), the iconic Trolls, recently trashed by a movie which changed them all into multicolour-skinned, multi-shaped parodies of our little tanned/pink childhood friends.

Another source/set of the small PVC-vinyl animals, and some bendy-smilies, similar to those we've seen here from Henbrandt and messrs' Generic!

Oww! More to find than we have so far found!

Bigger animals, novelty animals and counter-box stuff.

More of the same!

Jon sent us a tailess version of the scorpion only the other day! 

This was actually shot on 35mm I think, by me at one of the first toy-fairs I ever went to, I think I met Paul Morhead there, who I already knew (he'd got me the 'press' ticket), Peter Evens for the first time, and someone else, whose name/face escapes me now?

 

The other three were obviously looking out for 54/60mm stuff or useful scenics for Plastic Warrior Magazine, I had been tasked with the first small-scale Toy Fair report for One Inch Warrior, and managed these, some Blue Box fort sets (the animated cartoon mini's - Cavalry, Knights and Pirates . . . were there Romans?) and a few other bits, I think I mentioned the Balsa boat-kits from Hobbies Annual and possibly the Great Gizmo's dime-store revival stuff, but some of them might have been another year, it was all over 20-years ago, where does it go to, all that time?