D is for Dapol

This is just a quick box ticker to get the stuff up here, I have a lot of Dapol stuff in storage with header cads and suchlike, but as a quick box ticker, this will have to do!

An early catalogue shows the same Hong Kong sourced PVC figures that Hornby, possibly Thornton and Lifelife I think have carried in the last 20-40 years at one point or another.

 

 

Later catalogues carry the imagery of the sets they seem to have inherited from Airfix, with the bases being changed from small squares and oblongs to landscaped (or lumpy) 'cloud' bases.

They also carried the Station Accessories, but in the same soft cream-white polyethylene as Airfix, and as the set seems to have become harder to find in recent years, the suspicion is they only obtained back-stock of Airfix production and have slowly used that up?

 

The three sets with a few other ex-Airfix kits in a later catalogue.

 

When redesigning the bases, Dapol also added their own corporate marks to the old Airfix tools, meaning they are now, indisputably Dapol product!

Example of the Dapol runner, complete, they tend to sell three runners in a set, passengers or workmen, and being polystyrene kit plastic can be remodelled or converted with relative ease!

Dapol are still going despite the bad luck of past works-fires and the BBC's underhand pulling of the Dr Who licence, just before announcing they were bringing the time-traveller back. These are the current shots of painted-up sets on/from their website;

https://www.dapol.co.uk/

T is for Totally Forgot!

I'd totally forgotten Scully & Scully, but unbeknownst to me Mr. Berke was waiting for an over cast day to photograph them with minimal reflection off the windows, and as I have an old School friend who's spending Christmas in New York and has been posting near-endless picture of a city cloaked in clear blue skies for the last fortnight, I can attest to how bright it's been! She's now moved on to Quakertown in Pennsylvania, and I can equally attest that the sky in that part of the world went grey!

 

So Brian got out and shot the bestest shots, of this season's Window Display, of professionally-painted whitemetal flats, and there's a definite theme this year with most of the sculpts depicting the same white-whiskered gentlemen in a red suit, lined with fur.

 

Best Santa Ever!

Beautiful study of a medieval horse?

The Easter animals haven't been forgotten!

As exquisite and charming as always, many, many thanks to Brian for taking the time and spending the effort to get these to us in time! And wishing all Loyal Readers a very Happy Christmas, and let's hope 2024 is an improvement on the preceding few for everyone!

L est pour le Coffret de Jeu des Navires Captain Video Supersonic Espace. . . Pas!

Pretty sure these are French (They came from France) and might be Alkastap or Alca/Al-Ca Capell (?), but with no other clues I'll tag them with all the usual Captain Video stuff, as they aren't on Alphadrome's plastic check-list yet, although given the amount of my Blog's stuff that little scally has put on there now, it's only a matter of time before he nicks these, only that won't help with an ID, will it?

Seem to be from the original tools, but until I have them side-by-side I can't say for certain, and obviously copies of the Lido Captain Video Supersonic Space Ships seen here before now, but in softer polyethylene, rather than the frangible polystyrene of the originals.

 

I haven't found the fourth, finned-body yet from this source, but did get a duplicate of the most 'space vehicle' version of the other three, although it's more of a wheeled-bomb than a proper 'space tank'!

 

You can see the bright scarlet red matches the equally soft plastic versions of the Captain Video figures which came into the collection ages ago, and have been seen here more than once I think?

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 9 - Wild West

So, we reach the end of another fantastic donation from Chris, and in the end I got it down to nine posts, not that I try to minimise it, but I tried to go for an 8/9 images per post, to keep it interesting, and today, it's the Wild West.

 

Two of the lollipop figures, and I think one French, one Polish? The other yellow one seems to have some contention in that I showed one pack, and someone else recently posted them as something else, while the painted cowboy is from the Bucking Bronco magnetic novelty of the 1950's.

 

And we have another Blue Box character figure, I think he has a damaged bow, but a 'styrene figure, sold singly to scud-about in the bottom of a biscuit-tin or cigar-box with everything else is bound to get damaged, so if you have a whole one, I suggest you're a lucky chap/chapess? And it's from the 12 known poses, not the mythical 31, still up there as a falsehood!

This was in the 'Bulgarian' bag, and if it isn't another iteration of the old Britains Hollow-cast Colonial/Yeomanry-era cavalry horse! The Indian may not go with the rest, but I think he does, same plastic, and he fits, he's just got shorter legs?

 

Small scale to be sorted another day, but items of interest are to the right, with foot figures, Blue Box bits, a home -painted tee-pee/tipi and the hard plastic roof guard from a die-cast metal stage-coach I always forget the maker of, but hard to find with the rifle intact, and in the less common brown plastic - they're usually black.

More of the Crescent/Lido family, we had a good look at them once or twice recently, and there are three different sources represented here, marked, unmarked and a soft 'ethylene one, so they will get sorted into the main and revisited in the future.

 

Three probably French bazaar types from two sets on the left, with three of what I used to call Culpitt's on the right, but we now know they are also, or can be Jouets Super Plastic set from France, as almost certainly supplied by Injectaplastic, while with the animals Azur, Prior and Rena also become involved, and a further chapter involving farm and circus, with another branding, is growing in a folder in the long queue.

 

Hong Kong copies of Gulliver (Brazil) copies of Atlantic (Italy) figures, scaled between the sizes of the Italian originals!

 

Mixed lot, all interesting with a Hong Kong sub-scale rider, I think I have a spare stubby-horse for him somewhere! A larger copy of the Airfix/Tudor Rose et al rider for the old Britains horse seen above from Hungary, Airfix and Britains piracies of enough merit to have their own zones, and a hard-plastic horse we will be returning to soon.

 

A hard polystyrene canoe with is clearly marked Tim Mee so I'm assuming its Timmee Toys but I stand to be corrected by one of those more knowledgeable, yet normally less vocal than myself!

I can't recall if this was in the Hungarian bag, or is just another Hong Kong piece, but rather unique with the rod-stand, and obviously a copy of a Britains Herald piece, it's a lovely addition to the stash?

 

As is this! How fantastic is this? Obviously a Christmas Cracker/'Gumball' novelty, with a lenticular picture of a chap struggling with a bucking horse, just a lovely thing to be sent, free, in the post. And an amazing survivor of the . . . 1970's?

And this is Chris Smith's third parcel this year? With two lovely ones from Brian in the 'States, while Jon Attwood sent four huge ones which were really five, because two were taped together! Peter Evans has sent half a dozen bags of bits and brought more loveliness to shows for me. John Begg, Adrain little, Gareth Morgan and others have saved bits for me, or put interesting things aside to give me 'first dibs' and it's difficult to get across how grateful I am to all of them, but believe me, I know and appreciate how lucky I am to have that much support, when I have so many apparent 'eemies'!

 

Cheers Chris, another parcel full of beautiful things, interesting things, quirky things, funny things, rare things . . . I'm very grateful.

B is for Buses - Part II

Not that there was a Part I, but we looked at A-C last time, these are D-M and there will be one or two more in the fullness of time!

 

Funny old day, this morning through to the early afternoon was all a bit of a rush, with banks and technology, technology and banks, bleuh! Then this afternoon/early-evening was very laid-back and lazy, I almost started several different posts, but thought better of it [couldn't be arsed] and did some scanning, not these, these were done with the railway stuff the other day.

 

Then out to dinner, which finds me at half-eleven pleasantly relaxed by good food, good beer and good company, but hopefully alert enough to get this up without too many typos!

 

Like the previous ones, this is a novelty bar of something which doesn't appear to have been chocolate at all? It came in a job-lot, so I'm here to tell you I didn't have to try it, and it's not as much of a playable thing as those Cadbury's ones we saw last time either!

Being as how it's rather two-dimensional, with the interesting artwork on one side only, but it's definitely a bus and a novelty box, so in the tag-list Earthlore goes! Do you think it's all been about tags, or the Lik Be being LB thing? I guess half-a-dozen-odd know? Common-sense and humanity are never strong bedfellows!

 

A lot of Bus companies issue card models of their buses, and the rest of these are of that type of thing, with these being from just before the Bus Wars in Greater Manchester, following the mostly unwanted, and over time, pretty disastrous Tory privatisations of said buses!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Buses

While these are a private enterprise, I think, from the diversity of Buses/Companies depicted. Published by MA Arts, they are all 4mm scale or designed for OO-gauge model railways, where card models have an honourable history!

 

Dressed-up as postcards, you can see from the stamp-outline and address area, they are extra-large postcards, but wouldn't it have been cool to get one of these from Granny & Granddad in the post?

Marked-up to a City of Oxford Motor Services Ltd., this has the secondary trope of being a timetable aid-memoir, but scale is unknown, probably toward 1:64th if it is specific, it's also quite flimsy, sort of book-cover paper? It's pre-slotted and no cutting or glue is required.

Not that sure if this is MBF by Nimbus, or Nimus for MBF, but I suspect the former, and another scaled to 4mm/OO-gauge. We had these round here for a while as Busy Bee, or Beeline, I can't remember! But they ran a Fleet-Hartley Wintney-Hook-Basingrad route, I think, and used to dive off the roundabout at Fleet Station like Agostini was driving, and late for his tea!

You have to colour these yourself! I've credited them to Merseybus, given the paucity of details, and the fact that three are badged to Merseybus? And I think they are probably also all model-railway scale, I've rather unscaled them rendering them unreproducible, as they are all still in copyright, even if the publishers have all gone?

C is for Carlsberg Don't Make Toy Soldiers . . .

. . . but if they did, they wouldn't look anything like these;

 

EKO - probably the worst Japanese Infantry in the World!

A is for Again! Art Plastics

Now, Brian has sent me a load of Nativity stuff from the Big Apple, which I told him I would shove down in the Christmas 2024 folder, because, as you can see (it's the bloody 20th already!) I am running out of time, and still have some cake-dec' images I might get up here, however, as we looked at Art Plastics several times a year ago, and as Adrian gave me this as an early, unwrapped Christmas present last Friday, here's a nativity scene!

These are, as mentioned, the Art Plastics again, and as mentioned last year, very prolific with various sizes and finishes of this set, with alternate poses, hard and soft-edges versions, yada-yada . . . Here painted and glued into a little stable set-up, the lambs asking why there's a baby in their food tray?

 

Sphagnum moss, boy, they liked glueing sphagnum moss into their nativity-set roofs back in the day! It is the same set as the boxed one we looked at a couple of years ago, but I never took that one out and shot it separately, while with this one the box is a bit meah! Around 35 (Joseph)/40mm (Wise Man) and polystyrene, except for the sphagnum moss (I hope Brit's are saying that to themselves in Lenny Henry's David Bellamy voice!).

 

Mark on the base underside of the stable.

KUM is for Rotor Ship!

Very much a follow-up to this old post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-article-has-been-long-time-in.html

. . . and it's been ready to go for a while, but I hadn't got round to it, until I mentioned it in the previous post and thought, "Yep, nice bit of Dime Store tat for Christmas!".

So first-up are the two from storage, which I managed to dig out of the Garage and shoot in the autumn before all the heartache with Katie-cat and Mum, after which I sort of lost interest for a bit, the military one has lost two blades, but still looks the part and has the RAF roundel/National marking missing from my other khaki example. While the blue/white combo' is the one in Fairylite marked packaging.

 

All four 'on the tarmac', except it's now-five-and-a-half, as we shall see in a minute, no, it might be six-and-a-half, because I think I ended-up with the ACME one, but it went straight to storage.

 

I re-shot the Injection Moulders' (IM) Rota Ship's box again, it had a good outing last time, but what the hell! I love how the end folds down into a launching garage, which has all the graphics of a 1950's amusement at Coney Island!

 

And this is the rather tatty Fairylite box

 

But this is new, joining the fleet in February '21, according to the photo's! This is the Cheerio (UK) packaging of the same machine (all marked - REGD DES Nº  844987) from Thomas/ACME, and it goes one better than Injection Moulder's box-end, the whole box (less the bottom panel!) is an aircraft hangar!

 

It's more simply marked ACME HELICOPTER, suggesting it came via the Canadian parent of Cheerio, via Thomas/ACME themselves. The other two shots are from the Intermaweb-thingy, and show a really nice colour combination in grey/red and a lovely marbled-heliotrope one, rather ruined by the extremities, in a red which is from a different part of the colour-wheel and clashes!

 

Quick one, it can't have escaped your notice that after 15-years of rubbing along happily, someone has decided to competitive-blog against me? I haven't the faintest idea why, but he's been doing it for over a year, and he did stop responding to eMails a few years ago, his mucker didn't, but he did, and now his mucker seems to have joined-in anyway?

 

Anyway, I like to Blog my collection, and increasingly I have the archive to hand, or, at least about 14 meters of it (A4), there's a similar amount in the storage unit, and if I wholesale scanned that, the tag-list would take half-an-hour to scroll at full speed!

Now, in blogging, my collection or archive, along with submissions, I will use the occasional eBay or other image, to enhance a post, like this one, 90+% mine, but if I started using the stuff I've kept off the Internet, wholesale, as they do, we'd be here 'till 2525! And, apart from submissions, that's all they've got? eBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates and Google?

 

If they really think that it's a good idea, to start a war, now? I'm up for it, I'll start digging out all the stuff I tend to leave to them, or in the past have sent to them? Think about it. What is it about Christmas that brings out the worst in some people?

While this, this is the KUM! And it's the dog's bollocks! It's a W. Germany knock-off, of the Thomas/ACME gear-ratcheted helicopter with a truncated tail, and enlarged crew-compartment for the fitting of a pencil-sharpener! How cool is that? Too cool for cyclical flight-training school, that's how!

 

They might be planeings, but they're not helicopterings, are they! The shaving-compartment, which was missing off the one we saw earlier today, although that had the pencil-feed from the back. KUM have produced a wide range of novelty pencil-sharpeners, and could be worth a side-collection on their own. And this collage was made in April 2022, coincidence happens!

 

I loved it so much I shot it thrice! This is the 'half' referred-to above! Here posed with a combination of Atlantic Italian Air Force and Preiser Luftwaffe accessories! So there you go, yet more on the Thomas-ACME-IM-Fairylite-Cheerio-KUM et al (don't forget the French and Scandinavian versions!) helicopter!