H is for a Handful of Hangers

Back to Key Rings, a collection in themselves, there must have been thousands over the years of which we've probably seen less than a hundred, and we're about to see one of them again, and not for the second time!

Seven keyrings which will become eight before the end of the post for reasons which escape me, but they are all figural, except the cannon, so they aren't all figural at all!

 

Seen before, and we'll see them again for sure, there are several versions, but it keeps us close to toy soldiers, before we look at some of the more esoteric samples! This one was quite clean, so worth another look, the Highland piper, and a common-enough tourist keepsake.

The cannon, a lovely little thing, all polystyrene, and while the carriage wouldn't stand up to one shot from the likely calibre of that large barrel, if you remove the chain, stick in on the deck of your pirate ship and blast any boarders with a barrelful of ballast gravel and nails, it could still be a game winner!

 

This was why I bid on the lot, I used to have one as a kid, and, indeed, the head is still on my now museum-donateable denim cut-off, but seen here in it's entirety. Mine was stained green with verdigris, after the number of times I was rained-on walking back from the pub or the station, causing the brass rings to corrode and stain the plastic! Like the gun, this one's 'styrene, the rest are PVC rubber, of one type or another.

Almost certainly - without checking - another Xandria, from Holland, and I think it's a non-Disney Cinderella, trying on the shoe, I'll have to find her Prince Charming somewhere!

I took a reminder-shot for some reason, in which (probably 'because') a skier joined the crowd, I think I must have put him to one side then noticed him half-way through the photo-shoot?

Three of them from the rears! The Sesame Street (Sesamstraꞵe) character in yellow is credited on the still extant price-label to EM TV & Marchandising AG, courtesy of Igel Speilzeug GmbH, so German in origin, if not execution, which - like most of these - will be Hong Kong.

 

The skier again, specifically a downhill racer, and the Imp/Elf revealing he doubled up as a pencil-top in some long-lost or forgotten Hong Kong manufactories trade catalogues! More key-rings to come! Always more!

T is for Two - Ceremonial Castings

I'm trying to clear some of the nascent posts in 2022, '23 & '24, which are now making-up a bulging 2025, that's how I roll! And Brian B from New York sent these to the Blog back in the autumn of '22, so well overdue for an airing.

It's one of life's quandaries that after a successful armed insurgency against their legitimate government, the newly independent Americans would spend the next 250 years utterly obsessed with their former parent, its royalty, its Parliament, its Capital, its 'pomp-and-circumstance', and its ceremonial troops, consequently, a lot of 'Royal Guards' figures have appeared on that side of the pond!

 

London Bridge is one of those makers, and with the old London Bridge having been situated in, errr . . . London, England, and it's now residing in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, the company seems to have named themselves in homage to the Mother Country, rather than for any geographical connection to either site of the eponymous water-crossing infrastructure!

Compared with the Britains Deetail figure, we can see the castings are closer to the old Britains 'Standard' 54mm (1:32nd scale), which is as it should be, the Deetail were heading toward the 'new' size of 58/60mm.

 

I'm not sure if bearskins have changed size over the years, but they are now 18 inches tall and over a pound in weight, built on a bamboo frame, I've handled one, at an auction-house, and they are very floofy! But older model soldiers and paintings seem to indicate one of around 12/14 inches prior to the mid-20th Century?

From the archive, and to make-up the image numbers, comes this flyer from Reb Toys' 'Castings' division (I believe they recently [last ten years?] changed their name to Miniature Moulds, and are now defunct?), and we see the same 'traditional' toy soldier lines in the sculpting, but you have to cast them yourself.

 

While they also supplied the ex-Schneider semi-flat / demi-ronde Prussian marching band, which you often see on feeBay, sometimes as ratted old damaged rubbish for re-melting, sometimes as nicely painted sets, often for a daft amount of money, for essentially homemade figures in an odd scale; about 40mm.

 

Many thanks to Brian Berke for his 'work in progress'.

B is for Best Bendy Band Babes Ever!

I had a parcel from Peter Evans yesterday, and I'll blog the rest in the usual fashion, but these need a post of their own, and I loved them so much, I got straight to it, Majorette Bendable's, whether majorette's or not, at 'Ball Games', Rose Parades, Independence Day, State Days, Town Fairs, the American's love getting their kids' into Marching Bands, so of course someone made toy ones!

I had hoped I could put a brand to these, but it was, in fact, a very similar TM by another maker (Tai Ming Industrial), so we're still looking for this TW or WT! As they are all coded 'W' it may well be the latter?

 

"Collect them!" it says, quite forcefully, but I don't need to, as Peter has sent all six, and you don't need to, because they're all here for you to see! Actually it's the same basic sculpt for all six babes, but where they don't need both ring hands, one tends to be left blocked-up with PVC paint.

 

A saxophone, a side-drum held high on the chest by the same strap as the base drummer's, and a trumpet (? You know what I'm like with brass instruments!), the Brass have two spigots either side so both hands can be attached (unlike the box-art), and you can then move the whole together, theoretically - because they are quite small for bendies, there's actually quite limited movement.

 

Base-drum and . . . Majorette Major? Didn't Joseph Heller do a skit about this . . . major Major Majorette-major! The shoulder strap of the bass-drummer has a very small nick in it which won't allow for full operation/posing, but I didn't want to try substituting the side-drummer's in case it's a sign of forthcoming brittleness, better to leave it on the ground.

 

And the French horn! Which raises the question of how many colours were they available in, and/or how many colours of instruments are out there? I'm also guessing all blue ones are blonde, all yellows russet or redhead and all green ones raven-haired?

Not that big either, about a true 60mm and a bit chubby in a slightly cartoonish or caricature style, but they'd go well as background interest with all sorts of 'standard' figures. Except that they are really kids around 85mm real scale?

 

She can do all the moves!

From ETSY via Pinterst, I think this is a vague approximation of the headdress aimed for by the Hong Kong sculptors, but I warn you, researching girls marching band hats and/or helmets is a fruitless, if interesting rabbit-hole, you probably don't want to fall-down!

M is for Motormax, from Redbox

Sort of running out of time tonight, despite finishing early, I've been deep in the contents of a parcel from Peter Evans (next post, brilliant bendy band babes!), so I'm throwing this up before midnight!

Various treatments of camouflage/paint on-, and plastic colours of- the 20mm copies of Matchbox US Infantry, as inherited by Redbox from Zylmex/Zee Toys a decade or so ago, and sold with the larger boxes of military Motormax sets.

C is for Composition Crates

As well as regular dips into (and revelations on) the model aircraft range of early Palitoy over the years, here at Small Scale World, we have also had numerous dips into the output of Zang and Zang for Timpo, using their Timpolin pumic-based composition, including several looks at the aircraft, showing the Horsa Glider for the first time, and the Navy which has since appeared everywhere!

Today we're looking predominantly at the B17 Flying Fortress, of which these came in, via a rather convoluted deal, a year or two ago, I spotted them late at night on feebleBay, eMailed a friend who I knew would A) be interested and B) most likely to be a rival bidder, he knew the seller, and wasn't that interested, so messaged him and bought them, the seller then posted them direct to me, and I settled-up later with the payer!

I know they came from one of the few decent toy museums still going, and may have been spares or just surplus to requirements and sacrificed to raise funds for more 'grail' or exhibitable items, but it was the first time I'd seen them. Note how the British one has 'our' camouflage scheme, the two US ones 'theirs', while a late-war (8th Air Force?) machine is finished in silver, and clearly caught flak!

 

I'm not sure if the rust-brown colouration in this damage/crack is the linseed-oil often used as the main mixing-liquid in compositions, particularly European ones, or signs of a metal armature being deemed necessary, on these larger models? There's no hint of them on the other aircraft, nor the figures, so I suspect not.

Having seen the Gloster Whittle before as an archive item, I now have my own, which Adrian Little of Mercator Trading kindly put to one side for me a while back. So I now have personally;

• Lockheed P-38 Lightnings (and the later Timpo diecast version)
  
• Boeing B17 Flying Fortresses
• De Havilland Mosquitos (two brandings)
  
• Hawker Hurricane/s (or Supermarine Spitfire/s, I can't remember!)
• Gloster Whittle

and we've seen here before, the;

• Horsa Glider

What will we see/uncover next? Or maybe Collectors Gazette would like to have a punt? What? All publicity's good publicity, isnt it? Heh-heh-heh!

U is for Ultraman Ululators!

Well, if they're not Ultraman I'm sure someone will tell me! What can I say about these? Obviously they're not strictly ululators, except that when operated by small children, I think whistles can be classed as ululators . . . "Ululation is a howling or wailing sound"!

 

For some reason I seem to have taken three sets of images from the front, but none from the back, and as I've had a mare of a round tonight - targeted/tracked box with different bar-codes on either end, one of which was correct, but the contents weren't, then I ripped my finger open and lost my vape, so stress levels rose!

 

Anyhoows, I can't be arsed to collage anything, so you get them raw! Novelty whistles, probably from Japan rather than Hong Kong, but who knows, not me, that's for sure! I'll use both Tags.

 

Ultraman 'type' on the left and a couple of Kaiju, one more monster, the other more golem? They're not vast, with the mouthpiece, about 3½ / 4 inches, and soft, blow-moulded polyethylene.

H is for Hot Off The Press

 

 

The new Corgi Stingray model's images are off-embargo,

and available for pre-order!

Just in time for the British Toy Fair at Kensington Olympia

 

The torpedo-tubes are a bit kwartch! 

What it should look like!

Product Information

The flagship of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP), Stingray is a renowned combat submarine piloted by Captain Troy Tempest and his hydrophone operator Lieutenant George Lee Sheridan, also known as ‘Phones’. 

The vessel was considered the most advanced submarine of the 2060s and was central to the WASP’s discovery of many advanced undersea civilisations, including the city of Titanica, ruled by the despotic King Titan and his warrior followers, the Aquaphibians. 

Measuring 85ft (30m) long, Stingray’s nuclear reactor powers a Dual Drumman Hydrojets Ratemaster Turbine that gives the vessel a surface speed of 400 knots and a submerged speed of 600 knots. This raw power also enables the ship to breach the surface and ‘jump’ out of the water for a short distance, a useful way to evade enemies. 

Stingray can safely submerge to a maximum depth of 40,000ft, comfortably above the deepest known point of the world’s oceans. A pair of landing skis can deploy from the underside of the hull to enable the submarine to safely land on the ocean floor. 

The submarine is armed with a complement of sixteen Sting missiles and carries several other small vehicles onboard for maximum operational flexibility while deployed. Most noticeable of these are a pair of Aqua Sprites, small submersibles located on the exterior hull of Stingray to port and starboard. 

The Aqua Sprites feature dry interiors for the pilot, detaching from the main hull and allowing for closer docking with other vessels underwater. In the event of an emergency underwater, the Aqua Sprites are also the primary means of evacuating Stingray. 

If the crew leaves the vessel in underwater equipment, they invariably use handheld Sea Bugs to enable speedier propulsion and movement while underwater. Above the surface, compact single-seat hovercraft called Monocopters are available on board to provide much quicker and safer movement over the invariable rough terrain.

Nothing about scale, price will be an eye-watering 40-quid!

T is for They're Too Big for My Layout!

As a fillip to this morning's post on the little railway figures Graham Farish carried (or commissioned?) from West & Short (West's Model Railway Accessories), these are some rather dodgy scans of even poorer old Xerox copies of a Corr's catalogue from the early 1950's.

 

Never pretending to be any sort of expert on this stuff, I'll turn to the often maligned JG Garratt, the sum total of his encyclopedia being always far more useful than the amount of (sometimes well-founded) criticism would indicate, and in this case, well worth a re-read;

"Graham Farish Ltd., London (fl.1950-53) A commercial firm which had many interests, model soldiers being in the nature of a sideline. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II they commissioned the then hardly-known Russell Gammage and Lieut-Colonel Nicholson to make a series of models which received immediate acclimation. At the same time they commissioned other models, including hussars, Duke of York, a highlander, an officer of the Horse Guards (1821), Bonnie Prince Charlie and military fashions of the 1830s from Nicholson, and a King John from Nibblet, which, however, according to Gammage, was never issued."

Obviously with little interest in model railways, Garratt, has only highlighted the 'figure years', so to speak!

So we can assume these are all the work of Gammage or the Colonel? And definitely no King John! It would be nice to link Nibblet with West's, because of the work he did for Airfix, but the railway figures don't have that facetted wax-sculpt style of the Airfix Cowboys or Combat Group, so we can drop that wish before it takes hold!

 

But, it cements Graham Farish in the Tag-list and introduces Gammage!

GF is for 'Grafar' or Graham Farish, and err . . . West & Short Ltd.!

Right I'm going to start this post by pointing out that in the research for all these model-railway figure posts, both those seen and those still to come, I found a forum online, on which one Jon Attwood, was exhibiting some mild chagrin that one of his fellow forum-colleagues had won an auction for a West & Short set, and further indicating that if any of the forum members saw any going, he was still very interested in obtaining one.

 

So, the fact that he is, a year or two later, sending not just images, but a whole, near mint set, to the Blog for me to share, is an act of extraordinary kindness, and generosity, well beyond the call of duty, as if any of us have any duty to our fellow collectors! So I am staggered to receive these, eternally grateful to Jon, and really happy to share them all, with the rest of you.

Way-back-when, seemingly before they were issuing their little booklet catalogue/modelling-guides (of which I have a few), Graham Farish carried (commissioned?) these figure sets from the West & Short Limited mention above.

And I use the question mark advisedly, as back at their start Graham Farish, were one of several companies (Basset Lowke, Hamblings (Bilteeze), H&M [Hammant & Morgan], K's [Keyser], W&H (Romford Gears), Prichard et al) supplying the model railway hobby by mail-order (as well as from any premises), all of whom tended to have a core product, whether locomotives (GF), rolling stock kits (K's), transformers (H&M), card buildings, or line-side stuff (Pritchard - Peco).

 

And with no other figures in their lists Graham Farish may have requested these, or just stocked them as they stocked other products, and it's not a question likely to be answered now?

 

I instantly recognised the figures, as I have some in the 'unknown metal railway figures' zone! Quite distinctive, with thin steel-plate bases, and blue paints which appear slightly metallic to the eye. This shot is from Jon, and shows his lose figures, to date.

 

Having sent the above images, Jon then sent this to the blog! It's a near mint set, with near mint contents, I don't know how to fully express my gratitude beyond the inadequate "Thanks Jon"!

But you guys want to see the contents! You get two little packets of that semi-transparent paper which stamp-dealers used to use, indeed, early stamp 'stock books' had strips of this paper across the pages before cellophane was invented - and for some time after!

 

One bag contains poses more likely to be associated with a locomotive's crew, the other clearly platform staff and porters . . . what happened to porterage? Wheels on suitcases' came long after porters disappeared, and some trunks had wheels, back in the Edwardian period, so the wheels aren't to blame!

The upper shot here is also of Jon's own sample, or should I say remaining sample, after his generosity? With the six figures from the box to the lower right and a couple of loose figures, Jon also sent me to share with you.

 

The fat guy asleep on a station bench is a lovely, nay 'charming' sculpt, and very few makers have attempted non-standard human forms, Preiser have, notably with their Family Krause series, old-man Krause being a tad portly, and easily identifiable in each set, but there's not much else out there?

And speaking of Preiser, after many years (several decades?) without figures in any iteration of their catalogues, in the recent round of mergers and amalgamations (well it was recent, 20-odd years ago!), and just as Bachmann (Europe) were taking them over, Graham Farish introduced these to their range, bought in from Preiser.

 

The two well-painted sets (018 & 020) might have been commissioned for Farish, but were/are in Presier lists too, along with lovely sets of Japanese, US and other nationality's railway staff/police/uniformed figures. Note - two fat ladies and a portly Deutsche Bahn stationmaster! I suppose, these days, they'll be called 'Rail Transport Senior Line-Managers'!

 

Note also that, as with the Primex/Vollmer sets we glanced at briefly the other day, the two generic sets (019 & 022) are given a basic paint finish, while for some reason sets 021 and 029 are given an intermediate or 'standard' paint-job? I suspect the seated figures will have the basic job?

Again, many, many thanks to Jon for everything he's contributed to this post, and the Blog.