M is for Micro Minis

We did a bit of an overview on these micro-mini's a couple of years ago, and Ed Berg has recently done a season on his, and there's not a lot to add here beyond eye-candy, for now, and hopefully nothing to tread on Ed's toes, but Brian sent several nice lots of the integral-wheel teenies for us to look at.

These are lovely, because despite having most of the AFV's, 'Planes and ships/vessels, all of which we have seen here, I had none of them! They are the MPC Mini's, and these are roughly one-each of the various makes from the lot, in which the full sample was bigger, and the duplicates were all different colours. I'm not sure how I ended up with a hole in the middle, but I kept adding and moving around to get a nice looking shot, and must have spotted a late duplicate and not replaced it!

 

Of interest is that the Jeep, Mini-Clubman ('Morris') and old crock seem to be in a different scale/style, and might indicate more than one master sculptor behind the set? Also, the old crock (a Packard) gave rise to a copy which keeps popping-up as a Christmas cracker toy or gum-ball capsule-machine prize!

And, while we're looking at them, I will repeat the call made several times now on the Blog over the last fifteen-or-so years, for the whereabouts or a contact for Bob Maschi (or his heirs), whose MPC Mini's guide, bound, sits with my Tim Geppert and and George Kerton originals, (all a bit black & white, and a bit dated now, but well-loved), as I do still owe him for it!

 

A mix of Lido, Empire and/or Acme? As Ed was pointing out the other week, it's not necessarily clear (see below) so, for now, just nice little cars and things! I love the bulldozer, it's small-enough to be an Engineers' vehicle with micro-armour!

 

Real wheels! Behind are three of the Tootsie Toy mini die-casts, there were similar lines from Marx, and someone in Hong Kong, and when we were very young my Brother's godmother, who lived in California gave him a little suitcase full of them, I can't remember which lot they were, but the jeep was different - if memory serves - a sharper, squarer moulding, and it had a seperate, weeny trailer!

 

In front are what I initially thought were game-playing pieces, but actually the red one is a different sculpt, a two-seater, so they may be a similar line to the Tootsie Toys, but older, lead slush-casts? Turning to O'Brian (8th edition) gives me Barclay, CAW/C&H or Kansas as likely culprits, but no direct match?

 

Comparison between the two Jaguar's in the parcel, MPC Mini on the left Tootsie Toy on the right, back when we (Britain) made some of the best automobiles in the world! I think they are both representing the racing D-Types?

 

While this illustrates the problems in trying to attribute these, the cream-white wreaker has 'wheels' and a sharp, clearly delineated hook, the chocolate-brown one has 'wheel fairings' and a less obvious hook, and the red one (which came in with a lot not seen on the Blog yet), polyethylene, is a poorer copy of the 'edible' colour Hong Kong ones Brian sent years ago, which we saw last time. And I can only assume they are in the order they were copied from each other!

 

So, that's the end of Brian's parcel, five posts worth of lovely, useful, interesting things, gap-fillers and new questions, thanking him greatly for all of it, but as we're finishing on micro-mini's, I forgot to include in that September '22 overview (above link) another sample, sent to the blog by a Scandinavian reader . . .

 . . . whose subsequent submission to the blog is also being held over, as I really can't bring myself to promote Russia, or things Russian until Putler's dead, or we know the outcome of the current barbarism in Ukraine. Nor do I have any time for those traitorous, anti-democratic fuckwits, who do. It's about principles - you either have them or you don't.

 

But these are northern European cereal premiums, in the style of various others, or all these moulded-in-wheel mini's, although there only seem to be two mouldings here, a VW Beetle and what might be another Jaguar, a Riley or Austin Healy, which seems improbable? And I'm no expert!

So apologies for not posting them last time (it all gets posted in the end!), and many thanks to him and Brian for everything. Because the MPC Mini's need a good clean, which I haven't got round to yet, and all need to be ID'd better, we'll probably return to them in a short while, with the other bits that have come in?

J is for Johnnie Walker

The iconic 'Striding Man' logographic has been used to market the 200-year-old whisky brand since 1908, now owned by drinks giant Diageo, the walker was commissioned by another; Sir Alexander Walker, the grandson of the eponymous Johnnie Walker and is counted as one of the earliest corporate marketing mascot/symbols.

 

Marx produced several of these figural mascots, as 'toy' figures, in different scales, presumably as presentation pieces, or some kind of promotional freebie? We've seen the Dewar Highlander from White Lable whisky, as a small scale one (30mm) here I think, back at the start of the Blog, while the 60mm one needs his ceremonial mace fixed before he appears here, but this is the Johnnie Walker, in the same style and probably from the same Hong Kong factory as the Warriors of the World, hard polystyrene, factory-painted figures, and there is a 30mm scaked-down version too.

The latest version has been plagiarised by the Right-wing misogynist 'Proud Boys', Trump's storm troopers, although the brewer is threatening to take them to court. I also have a lead semi-flat (from Britains - I think) somewhere, so one day I'll try to do them all in one post!

16th - Brain Berke has sent his, so he can go here, I've cropped him out of a larger image which has left him a bit pixelated, but you get the idea, and he's reputed to be supplied by Britains, as a 35mm, solid lead/tin, semi-flat.

T is for Two - Marx Fort Bits

A couple of bits I scanned last night while looking for other things, and while I could have sworn we'd seen this first one here already, I can't find it under the 'Marx', 'Forts', 'Paper' or 'Cardboard' Tags, so I must have posted it on Faceplant and then lost it somewhere?

No matter, fresh scan, these actually look a bit flimsy against the card building kits Britains was doing around the same time, but that may have something to do with scale, they are a bit larger, and are probably unique to Marx Swansea and the UK? A fort and Hospital, scaled for the Playpeople (Playmobil under licence), and it's interesting that in the blurb they are called 'Little People' which was actually a Fisher Price thing.

 

For years, I'd never encountered these or their remnants in the wild, so, wondered if they were they ever issued, this is from the 1978 catalogue, and '76-80 (the same years the Playpeople were available) is what you might call the interregnum, no; 'drawn-out death', with Dunby-Combex at the helm, and while some stuff did get out, it was all a bit hit-and-miss? However, I have now/since seen them on evilBay, so they did happen!

 

At a figure-height of 7.5cm things made for Playmobil could/can be used with larger toy soldiers and model figures.

Just the scan of the instructions for the Miniature Masterpiece forts, which we looked at here. It's a bit tatty, but might be useful to print out, if you're selling one without an instruction sheet?

15th - I did find it and it is now Tagged-up the same as this one, so it's now on the Blog twice, but that's just how it rolls sometimes!

A is for Army Men, From America!

Actually there's all sorts in Brian's parcel, but we're starting with two absolutely classic 'Army Men', bagged rack-toy types! After which, it's quite a space/sci-fi themed bundle this time!

So these are they, a new'ish set of Matchbox GI copies, from Japan? And the MTC set Brian had previously sent us, and becasue the figure mix in this second sample was not so hot (four running guys), I open the other for a better look below, and will keep this as the 'mint bagged' sample.

 

But first, back to the Japanese firm, it has a US arm in California, but is, I would suggest, a sign of changing habits, globally, as America (and by association - Hasbro, Mattel and Tomy-Takara - the rest of us), wean themselves (ourselves) off Chinese product? Daiso, therefore, possibly being the van of more to come?

 

Strangely, scanning the card and shooting the figures close-up, then bring the two images together without a borderline, has produced a collage which is better than the shots of the whole item, which were troubled by reflections!

Isn't it ironic?!! The one figure, missing from the bag I opened, is in the other bag four times! One of each, with most taken from the bag Brian sent last time, they are, on one level, trash, but equally, are 'proper' TOY soldiers, and kids love this stuff, big enough to take to the beach (70mm) plus, and as valid in my collection as anything else!

 

A sample of the 'Army Women' from BMC, they are every bit as fun as they looked when first announced (here actually!) back in August 2019. What I like is that most of them are aping the old Tim Mee cold-war figure poses, but as women, nothing sexualised, just soldiers who are women, and these are the best colour to have - cheers Brian!

 

Three Mexican copies/reissues of the old Mark 60mm spacemen, I have a growing sample of these now, you may recall Peter sent a pink one . . . orange? I think he was orange, a while ago, and I do have some older ones too.

This is the whole line-up, I think this is an early guide from The Toy Soldier Company, although it's called a Toy Soldier Guide, and as I said, I have various others in both a darker metallic-blue and a paler metallic blue-grey, which all seem original, along with some grey reissues I think, all helmetless, but the helmet which came with the orange one is different to that issued with the grey ones anyway!

 

Brian also sent a nice sample of the MPC astronauts (one of each pose here, there were more), in red, white and blue (very patriotic!), which I needed, as I have the LB (for Lik Be, obviously!) copies, from late MPC sets in HO, with this colour way, along with those Nasta Industries copies in the same three colours, but otherwise had only the gold-orange-yellow ones from the XL5 boxed set.

 

Here's a quick comparison with the silver one Peter Evans sent the other day, and serves as a presage to a forthcoming article with a wider look at these figures, from various sources.

These are interesting, and I'd love to know more, if only so I can label the bag! They look like Pokémon, mostly after transformation, but are unmarked, so even if they are Pokémon, will be unlicensed, but I suspect either a rival product, or a total knock-off line, possibly from capsule dispensers?

While this is awesome! We've seen them before, Peter has sent me two lots over the years and I found a bunch myself, which have been covered here on several occasions, so I've left them in the bag for now, but I am looking for a flat-topped cake at some point, for a full parade! They are cake decorations and based on Britains 'Eyes Right', but scaled down, and quite exquisite, and there's 40-odd in the bag, so a major parade is calling.

However, I grabbed this shot off of that evilBay a while ago, and it shows little boxes that allow them to be used without a cake, by receiving the cake spikes. It's the only time I've ever seen them, so don't know if they are original accessories, or something an owner has fashioned from something else (and I have shots somewhere of them in cake decoration packs without the cubes), but it's worth looking out for a few.

 

You may recall Peter mounted some of his in pairs on old Timpo bases! I will need to scratch-build at least one bass drum, which has never turned-up and doesn't seem to have been made as part of the set?

Thanks again to Brian for all these, it's the extensions, connections and 'further's, which make these donations so useful, and as I say, we'll expand on the MPC spacemen in a day or two.

F is for Fort Mavrick, without the E!

Heay! For years, they thought I was 'only' dyslexic! We had a group-project at Uni', where we had to renovate/rebuild/replace (the choice was rather ours, but front and back walls had to line up) a crescent, down near Elephant & Castle, and after weeks of individual project work, Design crit's, building crit's, more crit's and so on, we were required to place them altogether for the end-of-year exhibition, to which parents and the like were invited, which left us having to fill the empty corner with something, we whacked in a roundabout I think, and some formal beds, but I thought the kids who might live in our eclectic collection of . . . . dewllings (?) might like a play area, so this was born, literally overnight, as it wasn't part of the marking process!

The base was just a sheet of sandpaper! The whole thing got a bit warped in storage over the years, and realising I'll never be an architect now, it went on the fire back in 2016! I had no use for it, everything dies in the end, and at a scale of 1:50 it could really only be used by Space Marines, and they are too busy with Morlocks and Slitheens and suchlike, to find the time to relax on my wobbly rope & log bridge!

 

The two end pieces however, taken from old Hi-Fi equipment I think, or a TV set, are that compressed, die-cut hardboard I mentioned in the previous post. The one having bundles of wire directed through the holes, the other separating wires on the prongs . . . it must have been a TV!

 

There's a PC element to the construction, with no gates, easy access and the lookout accessible from the fort, but outside of it, although the leftie elements are balance by the fact that they could hurt themselves easy-enough, but - I like to think - in a non-terminal, character-building sort of way!

F is for Forts

A couple of 'seen elsewhere's and a more recent scan from . . . probably Military Modelling, I can't remember! Forts and things, mostly wooden, all scanned from the archive.

Some confusion over this one, I thought it had come from the James Chase collection and been supplied to Plastic Warrior at the same time I got mine, but in fact it was an A. Hood of Cumbria, who sent it to PW (issue 62, 1997!), my cutting (with surrounding articles) came into my possession around 2005/6? I thought it was probably die-cut, printed, pressed hardboard, but Mr. Carrick reports that they are individual slats tacked into place, probably box-wood or a similar knotless-softwood?

 

This was in the James Chase ephemera, and I think it's a FAO Schwarz catalogue, but I can't swear to it, as there was a fair bit of SS Kresege stuff as well. And we have the Crescent Hollow-cast, Tudor Rose (?), Lido et al., here as T Cohn, wild west figures, with those comedic pot-bellied cannons which can fire both matchsticks and BB pellets! The fort and rock emplacements are tin-plate.

 

While this is card, and designed for displays/shelf backgrounds, with a shallow countenance and two shelf-battlements, I don't know what happened to CTA, but they advertised for a while in the modelling press, around the turn of the 1980's?

 

And as a bonus, to bring a bit of colour to a grey post, here's an old Hamley's catalogue page from 1972, with a mix of commercial (Britains [riding school], Exin [fairy-tale castle] and Blue Box [garage, I think, or Fisher Price?]) and more locally sourced/craft stuff in wood, ply I suspect, certainly for the slot-together Western fort, not so sure about the medieval castle, while the farmyard is probably that pressed hardboard.

P is for Plastic Toys!

The title of Bill Hanlon's excellent book on Dimestore Dreams of the '40s & '50s, and the core of this blog, no matter how much metal, wood, glass or card sneaks in! Alongside the military vehicles, which Mr Berke sent us the other day, was a plethora of civilian transport delights, most being of the 'dime store' variety, and this post is looking at the larger examples.

Left to right we have here, a 1911 Maxwell Roadster, a 1911 Daimler and a 1911 Renault, all made in Hong Kong, and my initial thought - given the leery colours - was Wilton's cake decorations, but they are different, so these may have just been pocket-money rack toys, like the ones we saw in a bit of a mini season a while back, but lovely additions to that particular oeuvre!

Two of the vehicles had been enhanced with 'ticker-tape' type-written graphics, which had seen better days, but with weathering/discolouring looked like a comercial exercise, until you realised one was a Marx tanker, the other a Dillon-Beck 'Wannatoy' utility/tool-locker truck, so I removed the remnants, which proved easy, as the glue was some water-based animal-stuff, like the old 'Gloy' pots at school!

 

There were actually a fair few Wannatoy or DB marked examples, including the boat and three 'rigid' trucks - we saw the artic's here, years ago! Indeed i think there were five different markings between the seven items. One of the spare cab/tractor-units had a different hitching mechanism/method, and I thought I might be looking for new trailers, but the aforementioned Hanlon book put me right.

 

I had seen the unmarked yellow bit, and decided it must be part of a construction vehicle or earthmover, but it turned out it's the other half of the 'new' Wannatoys cab design, but I'm still looking for the outer-end of the arm, for now it can do service as a tow-truck!

 

A lot of red, in the parcel, it has to be said! Three lovelies here, with a Renwal delivery van, we know it's a delivery van because it has DELIVERY written across the roof for police helicopters!

 

In the middle a Thomas Toys marked sedan, or at least I think it's called a sedan, in the UK it would be a 'family saloon car'! With a soft polyethylene dream to the right! I thought it might be a T-Bird and was googling with image-results by year '51, '52, '53 etc. . . and getting nowhere, before switching to Processed Plastic soft top, and finding it was a '56 Cadillac El Dorado, which I should have recognised, but I only drove the hard-top!

 

Stop me if I've bored you with this already, oh! You can't, it's a Blog . . . Hay-ho! Many years ago, like about 25, I worked for a stretch-limo' firm for a bit, actually ran into a childhood mate, but have since lost touch with him again!

 

Anyway, they were mostly shitty-old Lincoln Towncars from the 90's, ratted, sparking mother-boards you had to hold against the shocks with your spare hand to keep the gizmo's shining for the punters, awful things which had been hammered doing the LA-San Fran-Las Vegas triangle, 100's of thousands of miles. And in various liveries of silver, graphite, grey, white (weddings!) and two-tone.

But, there was one original 1960's 'Beatles & Stones', presidential Cadillac El Dorado ('68 I seem to recall), in black, with all leather, slightly stretched with a little B&W TV, and mahogany veneer bar, it only sat about six (some of those Lincoln's could hold 12 or 14 topless tarts!) in a small broken-U, but compared to the modern shit, it was one classy lady!

 

One summer evening I parked-up in the big Sainsbury's at Hatch Warren in Basingrad, while my fare did their function, and I went in for a snack and when I came out I had a crowd! She was lovely, and this little toy, albeit an earlier model, will remind me of her! She broke down as often as the others, though!

If you need a Limo', go to a reputable firm, with new cars and a landline, stay away from the local-press guys with their old cars, a mobile number and maybe a hosted webpage, you could spend half the night by the side of the motorway, or miss your flight, and you rarely get your money back!

This was funny, I'd literally mentioned it in passing a few days before it dropped on the porch, unannounced! It's the dairy boardgame, which was from Hasbro, and four players go around delivering milk, eggs and butter (I think) which fit over the different studs on the back! There was a green one in the parcel, but Royal Fail did their worst, and I have a bag of green bits waiting for a glueing session.

 

Some more polyethylene, the two to the left are in the style of all that German or Scandinavian vinyl, but in 'ethylene, and probably some similar infant/first/early-learning type thing, 1970's maybe? The tractor is lovely, marked Hong Kong, it is a direct copy of the Jean Höfler one which I have in military and civil types, so it will be nice to compare all three sometime.

While the sports car [muscle car!] is in a similar vein to the first two, I suspect enhanced with aftermarket or old leftover kit transfers, and while I would clean them off if I was sure, I'm not, and I'm even less sure about the blue paint, not obvious in the shot, but which runs around the lower quarter, and might/might not actually be factory-finish, so I wouldn't want to lift that at the same time?

Two of the little Pyro's, an Ideal 'aerodynamic' trailer (very 1950's), which is a fair lump of stable cellulose-acetate, a Banner road-grader, I think I have the military-green one somewhere (?) and a locomotive conductor's caboose from Lido Lines!

 

While this is a mystery, there's a feint USA mark under the right corner of the bonnet/hood, but no other markings, and it clearly had some interactive properties which are now half-missing, a hole in the rear only reveals that which is no longer there, while a sliding piston thing at the front has no obvious stop, trigger or function? I don't think it's dropping low enough to fit in a road-slot?

 

I suspect either a jump toy, with the trigger in another component (ramp or launch-mechanism), or a magnetic novelty with parts/a corresponding magnetic-wand missing? So any help tying this down to a maker or a set would be happily accepted!

 

And many thanks to Brian again, for this pile of brightly-coloured treasures!

L is for Last-cast Round the Attic with a Torch!

Does it need blurb?

Didn't think so!

T is for Two K's!

There should be another round-up of American makes here, but I'm starting to lose where we are in this odyssey, so I'm going to start getting the final post together, as a 'page', at the top of this page, so it can stay out of the way, in edit for a few weeks! Purely, in order to get the order back, in my own head and make sense of it all.

 

However, here's a couple of K's, just to get them up here! And they can then share the link, with Kibri appearing below them on the final listing page!

 

Kato taken straight from a Walther's catalogue, I was wondering if we weren't missing a bunch of Japanese makers, but with Minikin now covered, and most of the miniature artists we have looked-at elsewhere seemingly using Preiser or Noch for their wonderful creations, I'm suspecting the Japanese market was either quite small, or dominated by Western Imports, prior to the proliferation of Chinese knock-offs we all now have, but Kato was a domestic producer, with a small line of figures who exported the other way!

 

While these - image gratefully received from Jon Attwood - aren't strictly model-railway figures at all, being instead Kemlow's die-cast vehicle accessories, but, obviously, coming from the same stable as BJ Ward's Wardie Mastermodels, and at around 25/30mm useable on a home layout in the 1950/60's! Morestone/Benbros also produced a number of HO or OO-compatible die-cast figures with their wagons and carts.