W is for Wild, Wild West!

I have absolutely no idea what these shots were aiming for, I suspect I was intending to take more, and sort of lost track, we may have had a few posts of the back of them over the years, two of them were taken on the 23rd March 2020, so two weeks into lock-down and a household that included two cats and a mother who have all departed now. Another a fortnight later in April, and the last in September of the same year, all seem to be the sorting of Wild West figures, but without more context, I'm just chucking them up here to get them off the laptop!

 

Literally, for your own amusement - what can you spot?

With the lovely Boysey-boy, back in April, mush better behaved than his equally missed mother, I still miss him every day! He's protesting with a concentrated silence because I have encroached onto his fleece, on the left here.

B is for Bevy of Bright Baubles!

Hay-ho, busy morning, but I seem to have a moment of quiet now! A few Christmas baubles I have seen around, or shot out and about, which for whatever reason were left where I saw them!

I really can't remember where I saw this, or imagine who would want it on their Christmas tree, it's all a bit Halloween rather than Christ's birth, but it is a traditional glass blown one, and amusing?

 

Garden-center the other week, I think?

Under the glitter is a pink/purple zone toy!

Asda Stores; horrid! Fine as key-rings, fine as mobile-phone loop hangers, but on a Christmas tree? Seriously? I wouldn't want to be seen dead with this shit on my tree? We are sliding toward oblivion on the slimy piled-remnants of the salesman's product-placed bollocks. But look at all those empty hooks, they've sold hundreds, to little consumer-units who haven't the faintest idea what Christmas should be about.

 

TKMaxx; variations on a theme, more commonly seen here in relation to cakes, or, on one occasion, a music box! Too big and baseless for figure collectors, and too girly for my tree, they stayed where they were!

 

Also TKMaxx, but a few weeks later. I would have bought this, if it was a single, but it came with that phuqing-awful controller? Who the hell would put that on their tree? And it's too poor to go to charity either. And, it's a games-controller, not a B/O robot control? Just naff!

 

As were these (TKMaxx, not naff!), I actually bought them for some friends of Mums, who are both keen gardeners, with the instruction that if they don't like them, they can pass them on, but I hope they will, they are fun, harmless and not some licensed bollocks!

 

I think I found this lot on evilBay, last year, doing all the Nativity posts, now, I'm not religious enough to put them on my tree, but they are blown-glass, and quite well executed, so if you were religious, I can see the appeal. And if you were clever, you could hang the Little baby Jesus with his Mum & Stepdad, in a slight hollow portion of the tree and have the rest surrounding it . . . I'd spread them all over, so they had to shout at each other!

 

I think all the rest are feebleBay finds to be honest, I thought these were nice, because, Soldiers! And a sort of Santa/Eastern-Othodox looking mage!

 

I saved this shot as we had these when we were kids, in fact I think there may still be a blue survivor, and possibly a pink one with my 'gay tree' stuff, the missing ones are another polka dot, and three green versions of the others, probably Woolworth's, back in the day and I always wondered why the unmatching polka dots were in there, with the banded ones!

 

And another military type to finish off!

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 6 - Ancient, Medieval & Ethnic

The sixth part of Chris's donation stuff, and there's some really nice bits, including at least one other contender for best in box! But there's some other really nice bits, not least these large knights;

At first glance you think modern, Chinese take on the old Fontanini museum gift-shop stuff, and in that you're not exactly wrong, they have the appearance of blow-moulds, but are pretty solid, so some form of rotary-moulding I suspect, and are about the same size as that large Hussar/Chasseur we looked at the other day.

 

But they have the little gold sticker associated with old museum stuff, or the novelty imports of HCF, which if nothing else means they have some age to them, and would have been competing with Fontanini!

But back to the ancients which were going to be first, and these are the small scale bits, two Quaker Food's mounted gladiators who were missing their horses, untill they turned-up in the big bag of hollow-horsed cowboys!

 

A Lucky Clover chariot and crewman, a really nice find as one of the few non-Giant's ID'd (here at Small Scale World!), and several post-Giant Romans, including two who may be new, the bases on the two orangey-flesh coloured ones look particularly thick?

A headless Hong Kong copy of a Britains Trojan is better than no Hong Kong copy of a Britains Trojan, the Marx/Marx-knock-off (Cane?) needs a sword, and the Viking takes the prize here, he's a Horrible Histories pencil top, I think!

 

Best in box? It's only a green Tatra 'Soldier of the World'! The two silver ones are East German copies of other-peoples better figures, and I have quite a few now, were they Marolin or one of the lesser 'peoples brands'? Two spare shields, although I'm pretty sure one is a French farm-door from a Matchbox kit!! But it would make a very good, crude shield for a man-at-arms, while the gold knight, is interesting . . . 

. . . as he is quite well done, in a late Britains Deetail style (and about the same size), but has a peculiar plug on his underside, which I hope someone will recognise as a distinctive 'system' from someone, somewhere. The other figure is a 'Warriors of all Nations' premium figure from Tatra, in green, how cool is that?!!

 

The funny thing is, like the dark brown Zulu who turned-up a while ago, he seems to have been gold once, and the gold having worn-away, has left a base material, slightly translucent (like the Zulu), but green rather than brown? the similar Egyptian was a flatter brown, but the hint of gold was there too.

 

Exin Lines prince, archer and ghost, stand behind two Blue Box micro-playset knights. They are next to one of those rack-toy Asian civilians and a Giant medieval horse, behind which is an MPC or copy (I didn't look, and there's not much in it) 40mm medieval and finishing-off the line-up, is - strangely - the second 12" Airfix Black Prince's crest, this year!

These are charming, and like most new finds, pose a new question or two, why has one got a definite region written into the sculpt, while the other is blank? The other looks North Coast thought, with that sow'wester, so, Normandy or the Cherbourg peninsular? And are they for stopping wine, or oil, bottles or casks?

 

Lovely additions to the stash, though! And a sort of resinated polymer which doesn't seem to be poured PE-resin? Yes, all polymer is 'resin' in the trade, but you know what I mean.

 

KT Tyrolean dancer, sans pencil-sharpener, two of the predominantly French premium copies of Fontanini orientals and a late Commonwealth (or copy) Austrian premium type.

 

While this is a really eclectic mix with the Little Baby Jesus, probably rudely removed from a snow-shaker, or hollow Christmas-tree bauble, a large Alpine figure, probably from some household object like a clock or ashtray? An oriental lady from a vaguely 54mm rickshaw, and the puller from a larger rickshaw, and finally, an exquisite carved-wood farm lady of the Erzgebirge type.

 

All very useful and some fantastic things, I can't thank Chris enough for all this, but to share it with the rest of you. It's Willian Tell! Green . . . Tatra!

A is for Art Studio

Not really a part of the current sequence of railway figure posts per se, but rather a follow-up to this old post, and in particular the artists which I mentioned had been included in a Faller set, and we actually looked at that set's contents in an even earlier post here.

 

It happened that while looking for everything else, I passed this in the files, and while I'm not going to subject you to all the 'lost directions' in those files (but a lot will feature on the A-Z's one day), these do illustrate the use of Presier figures in a Faller set, something which probably only occurred a few times if again, and I stress, I'm not aware of another set that actually had figures, but they are often in the catalogues wandering about, and the odd, other Faller set, lends itself to some 'subject-related' figures?

 

The blackout sheet for electrification of the interior also contained a few paintings to be set up around the studio or on the easels, and there were three teeny nameplates on the set's packing sheet!

Bottom left shows the Preiser accessory runner with the art equipment, and that's it really, just ticking a box re. old references!

K is for Kong, The King . . . of The Apes! The Jungle, The Weird, Whacky Island, He Was Just THE King, of Everything, But He Couldn't Sing 'Hounddog'!

This set is new to me, seen in my collection, by Ideal of Hollis, NY (anyone know that town? Answers on a postcard, I don't care) dated 1976, and if I ever saw it anywhere else I must have just clean forgot it, in all the excitement!

Everyone loves a board-game at Christmas! This would have been under people's trees in 1976, the box is printed with some weird ink with is just rubbing-off now, and which also reflects flash inordinately, so I shot it twice to get something useable!

 

The Twin Trade Towers, funny what survives a cataclysm like '9/11', you actually get the one, but shooting it with and without Kong, makes for a poignant juxtaposition of the two images. I have some book-matches from the Restaurant at the Top of the World somewhere, as well, not quite the same as Titanic pillow-cases, but close, in a way?

 

 

Figural playing pieces include four 'special force' players who have to chase The King up the tower and try to kill him without getting knocked of, while Kong just needs to get to the top . . . but a game for 2-4 players, so presumably 'the bank' moves Kong?

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10306/king-kong

The rest of the paraphernalia! That's it, box-ticked, and in the tags, which - I suspect - is what this is all about . . . just be honest!

S is for Stretch Ar . . . Star Wars

I shot these in Lidl a couple of weeks ago and posted them on Brain Heiler's Faceplant group page, as I know there's a fair-few Star Wars fans there, and Jay Luttrull reported they were showing up at Meijer and Walgreens, where they are likely to hang-around longer than the week or so of Lidl's weekly-bargain model!

If you were a fan of Stretch Armstrong, Stretch Monster or Stretch whatever-the-other-one-was-called, you must want these! Star Wars stretchers, from Character Options, although the bad guys seem to have carried more sway in the design-meetings!

K is for Kibri

This one's a bit of a box-ticker, compared to some of the others, and I've duplicated an image by scanning something already on the blog, but there you go, it's still quite interesting as Kibri (Kindler und Briel) have had three generations of figures.

Jon Attwood's loose sample is bigger than mine! But are they Kibri or Leyla, if you recall we looked at the Leyla issue here, and while they are always shown in the Kibri catalogues as fully painted, or fully decorated anyway, I don't know if that's how they were sold, as I've never seen the early Kibri packs/cards?

 

So they may well have just bought-in the Leyla figures wholesale? Or even. as the Leyla logo on those late cards is disguised as a station name-plate, just put a Kibri sticker over them? Or, did they obtain the Leyla intellectual property, upon the demise of Leyla?

 

This is from a Walther's catalogue, around the late 1990's I think, and shows what were shipped, or orderable from the 'States, via the Teminial Hobby Shop, being a B&W version of the old Kibri catalogue images.

While this is that Kibri catalogue imagery (the duplicate!), which I dealt with here a while ago, check the Kibri tag to find it and a very interesting petrol station! But it clearly shows two generations, the 'Leyla' sets, three seperate six-figure/item sets and one combining the first two, then three sets which look like the Roco, or Preiser sculpts, along with some animals, ditto - or even Merten for the animals?

More recently, the only animals in the catalogues have been these two sets of the same cows with different decoration. Having not handled them, I can't say much beyond that they are some kind of polymer and look like reasonable sculpts of modern dairy cattle.

 

The more recent Walther's (this one's the 2000 issue) show the final, third generation, which are the strange, slightly over-scale figures, which are more suited to the stylised models of architects or town-planners than a model railroad? Note also, more cow options, but I don't know the difference between the two B&W cow listings?

The 2000 Walther's N-gauge catalogue also has them, they must be so fiddly to glue-together, it could drive you to suicide, as heads smaller than pin's go flying across the workspace for the umpteenth time!

Jon's set, mine are browns rather than blue/yellow, and can be seen in both One Inch Warrior magazine and a more recent Plastic Warrior, which is lucky, if you subscribe . . . http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/. The most interesting thing about them is it's one of only a few examples of over-moulding in small scale, with the heads moulded in one colour and then hats/hair moulded in a contrasting colour, pale-blue and yellow in the above sample.

 

There have been one or two other examples of over-moulding here, the Gem for Culpitt's experiment with footballers springs to mind, but there was another I think?

Also from Kibri catalogues, no figures sadly, although there are some in the studio shot, but lovely buildings for wargaming or role-play. I have three or maybe four of the five, in storage, and one day we'll get them out and have a proper look at them, but they are still mint/sealed, with their distinctive Kibri blue-ends.

 

Eko, from Spain, the great pirates of other-people's figures, lifted some of the sculpts for their civilian set, but whether they were pirating Leyla or Kibri remains lost in the mists of time - I suspect the former?

S is for Seen Elswhere - Fontanini

Just a couple of finds from Fontanini which have come in over the last year or so, 2 of the 80mm polyethylene Napoleonics (90-odd with the bases), with their flat-matt paint-jobs, and a larger 150mm (who's 185mm all-in with base and Carrara-marble plinth), who has that distinctive antiqued wash, over his PVC, for most of the colours, I think they wash all the colours, then overwash with a watered-down/thinned sepia-brown or dark varnish?

Both the smaller ones still have the spigots for those mahogany-brown plastic bases, so I had to shove them deep into the bedspread! And like an idiot, I didn't think to take two bases of those Knights before I offered them as swaps . . . Doh!