P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Modern Combat Types

Toy and Model soldiers; where it all started! Onwards and upwards as they say, with the next batch of donated figures from Chris Smith's last parcel, and we're into khaki military, but as I've added some sailors it's really 20th/21st Century!

 

Two Toy Story chaps flank the last Blue Box WWII figure I needed to complete an at-least-one-of-each sample of them, and it wasn't the usual 'I don't need this so you can have it' donation from his purchase sorting, it was a 'I have one you can have' from Chris's collection, so double thanks for this chap. I have quite a few, painted and unpainted, but they are all missing their mine-detector, which is too easy to pull-off, or be short-shot in the moulding-tool.

 

Not sure if I have the other two, but there were several sets over the years, and until I get them all together, I won't know!

I think these are Pilsen from Turkey, but the Solpa figures from Greece (next door) can also have the contouring on the base some of these have, and as Solpa also sourced capsule-toy robots and Hong Kong small-scale stuff, it may prove to be that Solpa were using Pilsen?

A mixture here, with a Galloob Micro-man, some HK chaps, a bubble-gum premium and what appears to be a homemade/home cast clone of a French plastic? The two HTI's (right) both have the base marks we looked at briefly a few years ago, but they are different marks, so when I get round to an HTI A-Z page, there will be a few of them to study!

These are second generation copies of New Ray, I think, I got quite excited about a couple of the poses a few years ago, following one of Chris's earlier parcels, but more have come in, overtime, and they are less exciting now, maybe, but there seem to be two tranches/sources, so there will be a full article one day!

Arguably common, but there are many, many variations of these mid-80's rack-toy clones of Airfix British paratroopers, with or without beret/helmet conversions (at the factory) and in dozens of sizes and many plastic colours, so always welcomed for the final sort-out!

Kit figures, two Aurora Russians on the left, and two early (1950's) 'box-scale' on the right, but the chap in the middle is new to me, a scale-up of the Nitto 1:76th German (which was a copy of the earliest Tamiya German set I think?), and in a 'German' blue-grey plastic? All five are glueable, brittle polystyrene.

Probably Kwong Shing  (Kamley-Kositoys-KS) figures, but these coloured ones are less common, and well worth adding to the stash for the final A-Z line-ups! Here, oxide red and grey, rather than the silver we've seen before, I think?

Still need set titles or a maker's marque for these Hong Kong sailors, originally thought to be Navy or Police, for a while, and in discussion with other collectors, the turning-up of the semaphore chap rather confirms the former at the expense of the latter, and probably from a 1980's big-box naval vessel or aircraft-carrier playset? they are around 18/20mm.

B is for Better Beneficence Bag!

The same week as the bits in the previous-but-one post, had me finding two more charity-shop bags, which was pretty synergetic as you don't often find one, or you find several bags of animals, but two bags of figures, a couple of days apart, was quite unusual!

 

I seem to remember this was a fiver, so a bit more than twice the other one, and sadly the same problem with brittle early British figures, but they made-up a smaller portion of the lot, while the combination of Timpo and dodgy Hong Kong Swoppet copies was obvious.

A quick sort on the hotel table gave this breakdown, nothing exciting, but when you're in a bit of a collecting dessert, any bag of bits to sort gets the archival instinct flowing! And it's all useful stuff with Britains Swoppet spares, a few usable Eyes Right bits and other interesting items.
 

There was also a bag of the modern version of Gogo 'Crazy Bones', but with the weird bases, I really only bought it for the packaging samples, both the green bag things and the blue/purple boxes, I won't subject you to them in detail now, but one day they will need their box-tick moment!

 

The highlights, three Timpo Romans, ACW from both sides and different sculpt-generations, Crescent Mexican clones and a rubber Swoppet knock-off, not too shabby for five-quid!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Historicals and Ceremonials

There's no better-or-worse with these groupings, it's just the easiest way to begin the sorting, as most of the large scale collection is archived thematically. The small scale remains mostly alphabetical by company/maker, with only the unknowns thematic, but in the larger scales it seems better to separate them by theme, within which they are all equally valued, and equally useful, in their section of the whole! Today it's the more colourful soldiers from Chris's recent donation parcel!

This was actually a purchase from Chris, which was put in the box to save on postage, and turned-out to be a Reamsa cavalryman, Royal Escort Squadron, I believe, and doesn't seem to have been in the Gormasa-Soldis tranche of reissues? Now he just needs a horse, but as mentioned in related-articles passim, I think I have some somewhere!

 

Novelty Ninjas from Panosh flank a larger unbranded/several branded (generic!) figure, who is a more contemporary (or still recent) capsule-toy type. All three are manufactured in soft PVC style polymers.

 

From the left: a base for the via-Portugal premiums used by several French products, which had here, been paired with one of the smaller Kinder issue figures, which his locating pegs don't fit! A ceramic priest type, from Japan, a slightly damaged Marx Miniature Masterpiece knight - I have more damaged than not, and will have a modelling session with their polystyrene arses one day! Finally, a new sculpt of Welsh lady 'redcoat' to put the fear of god into French marines! She was obviously another (most of the previously-seen were) tourist keepsake, keyring

 

With sizer - a bit blurred, without sizer - a better shot! A home-casting mould Prussian, a naked lead figure around 40mm, he may have had a brand, but with everything that's happened recently that mental note has been lost, and what looks like a French (or Spanish?) copy of a Reisler (?) Band Major, he could be quite recent, he's very clean, and very flashy, almost a test-shot? The sizer is an Airfix clone.

 

Lovely novelty ceramic drummer, about 45mm? He's smaller than the others we looked at a while ago, and we will return to him/them, as more of the others came in a while ago, but have gone off to storage, so a better overview of them - as a genre or trope - is definitely in the pipeline!

 

And a nice bunch of slightly battered Oojah-Cum-Pivvy's, from India, via Shamus Wade, but being terracotta, they will restore quite well, both with superglue and modelling clay, while the powder/poster paint is equally easy to touch-up, so I will get decent samples of each uniform type from this lot. And again, many thanks to Chris for all the above.

B is for Benefaction Bag and Benevolence Boys!

I haven't been doing much Charity Shop stuff for a while, but did have a couple of good plunder purchases, and this was all garnered back at the start of July, a small bag of plastics and a couple of larger figures from the white-elephant shelf.

A ceramic 'fairing' of a clown, probably copied from a better known or more commercially named maker, I thought it had shades of Fontanini's sculpting about it, and it was cheap, so home with me, it came, although home was - at the time - a motel!

 

A resin tourist jobbie, I don't know if it's a local British thing, of something brought back from maybe Canada or even Australia? There is a cap-badge of sorts, on the helmet, which vaguely resembles a Roman numeral III, if that rings any bells?

 

While the princely sum of £1.99 secured this for the stash, although if a Prince only had 1.99 he'd be considered pretty poor, as Prices go! I could see the level of damage, but thought , at that price, it was still worth a punt.

 

All that damage! It would have been nice if one or two more had survived, but I guess little fingers had handled the pack without due care and attention!

 

Relatively common Matchbox, mostly Germans, with Audie Murphy to keep their heads down! Interesting that they still have quite a few of the little 'sprulettes' (my term) on their bases, these are designed to allow the flowing polymer resin to continue-on beyond the limits of the product, ensuring the actual product section of the mould is fully filled, and you don't get short-shotting.

 

A few useful bits survived, although the Hong Kong copy of a Lone Star sailor is missing his foresight/muzzle. The US Cavalry food premium is worth the whole two-quid though, as his pennant is often short-shot, especially in the metallic variants, so he was a good find. I'm not sure if the two horses are Spanish, or copies from Greece, France or Hong Kong?

 

Survivors of the handling, but one has to remember they will be as brittle as the other Lone Star figures, and treat them accordingly? How they come in!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Peep's 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles!

The vehicular component of Chris's recent parcel contains some interesting bits and bobs, and with nothing more solid to put in the introductory paragraph, let's just get stuck into the imagery!

 

We saw them in the introduction, blocking the 'photo-booth'! Four of the polystyrene premium racing cars, along with, at the front; a robot-car (see below), a mazac game-playing car and a Hong Kong copy in soft polyethylene which has HONGKONG along the bonnet (hood) rather than a racing number.

The car/bot is channelling those odd weathered 'stones' from Kinder, with a sort of non-transforming Transformer twist! A small chunk of polyethylene, it's probably a gum-ball capsule-machine prize?

Artillery came in the forms of a Christmas cracker version of the old Giant gun in approximate 20/25mm compatibility, and a large naval piece, which I suspect once had a firing mechanism and probably knocked something down, but whether that something was figural or more skittle-like is still an open question!

Micro-minis, the trio to the right we've seen before, while the 'styrene PT boat could be cracker-fare or a boardgame playing piece, but looks to have some age, 1950's maybe, and possibly not actually polystyrene but a more phenolic or formaldehyde-based polymer?

Two wagons, both based on the early 'West' German stuff of Maurba, Siku or others, but both from Hong Kong, the nearer a sub-generation piracy of one of the commoner wagons, the circus wagon behind being as well-finished as the Wilton set we looked at here, but needing wheel sets, and suggesting another source, as the colour is both wrong for the same wagon in the Wilton set, and different from the Wilton green?

The Stuka to the left would seem to be a new version of the MPC Mini copies, being the fourth or fifth lot of those knock-off's, with two commoner rack-toy types behind, a Galoob Micro-Machine in the centre and two of the blister-carded rack-toy types to the right.

 

We will hopefully return to all these 'odds' in greater detail one day, as they slowly gather in their bags to make usable or complete samples, and I thank Chris again, for putting them aside for the Blog.

G is for Generics Identified!

We've seen these chaps twice now, as upscaled soft PVC-alikes and as these small 'generics' from Amazon, here, but I was in TKMaxx the other day, so I grabbed the best one by price/contents and shot the other two!

 

The other two sets, one having two figures, the other having none. The main difference over previous viewing is that we now have a branding, quite an oddly-spelled one; Kimsc Ardi, which a quick Google result reveals to be a common branding on .ue (Ukraine) and .ru sites, with further digging pointing to a parent company in China called Xinyu Toys - the same as the previous XY set, so more confirmation than actual Identification!

 

The set I bought, because . . . more satellites! These are the smaller version figures (40mm) in hard styrene, and in the googling I've found quite plain versions and those with more painted highlights. Equipment seems to be a mixture of US-NASA stuff and China's own modern moon-shot stuff.

These shots were in the 'latest toy shots' folder following an off-to-storage photo-shoot a few months ago, and show a probably Pioneer (definitely Realtoy/Dacron) trio on the right, a similar 'unknown' on the left and another pair in the centre, I can't recall, all modern PVC-substitutes, with three knock-off's of the Kimsc Ardi-Xinyu-XY figures. There's a lot of this stuff about!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Sports & Civilians

Off and running with Chris's donation parcel from late March, and it's the sportsmen and civi's first, with some interesting bits and a couple of all new ones.

 

This is a set I'd always hankered after, not so desperately that I sought it out and bought it, but unless you specialise in Merten as a core section of your collection, there is so much stuff by them, you just grab what you see, when you see it, if it's affordable, but I'd always looked at them in the catalogues and thought "That's a useful set", and here it is courtesy of Mr. Smith!

It's one of two sets in the catalogues, and if you were a wargamer, making an Italian Army, these would slot right in to an alpine unit, with the Esci-Ertl, Atlantic and - if you're lucky - Co-Ma Alpini figures! Also, I don't think there's a comparable set from Preiser, their's are walking with slung rifles I think? Something to check for another day!

 

Note also that an untouched set has the figures in the same configuration as the catalogues, a continuation of the very early issues where they were sold with the runner (incorrectly 'sprue') still attached to their heads.

A couple of the footballers usually associated with Parker/Palitoy, but there is more to it and a longer article is in the long queue, these 'novelty' games tend to generate copies and/or get licenced out to other brands or as cheap generics.

 

The fact that the blue one was in poor condition has allowed me to show some of the components, and you can see how the bent wire runs down the spine and hooks into the thigh, allowing a spring in the body to operate the kicking action when you press the head.

 

Another of the little Spanish terracotta figurines who have been slowly growing as a group, over the lifetime of the Blog, most as gifts from Chris or Peter Evans, or charity-shop purchases, I think we are over the baker's dozen now! I believe this chap is a shepherd?

 

Speaking of shepherds', I suspect this is German, I think I've mentioned before, when we were kids, (1969; so I was only five) we had a motoring holiday of Germany, and one of my abiding memories is of this mountain, possibly on the NATO side of the Erzgebirge, up against the Rhine (?), which was called something like Dwarf Mountain, and had a kind of Greek-columned building at the top (which was buried in low cloud the day we visited), and where A gift shop had this kind of stuff. I'd love to know where it was/what it was really called, if any German readers can recognise the description!

 

10 years later the shops in Bad Tölz were still full of similar stuff, but, while the later stuff was mostly real, wooden Erzgebirge, this is plastic, after the wooden patterns, as were the little chromed-gold dwarfs we bought that day, up the mountain!

A Betterware gift spoon with figural handle, this was actually the second thing ever blogged on the Blog, back in December 2008, but that one was a pinkish-maroon (what fashionista's probably call 'cherry yogurt'!), so a nice colour variation here, and presumably more to find?

 

Assorted sportsmen, I think the riders are Christmas cracker types, they may be from a board game, but I've never found it, while these little toys turn-up in most mixed lots of small scale, and have many colours and quite a few pose variations, while also being quite crude flat/semi-flat sculpts, so one suspects cheap novelties.

The wrestler is probably contemporary/near-contemporary, and is actually a mini action figure (points of articulation), but at this size tends to stay in the collection, as the Galoob Action Fleet types survive! The blue & white footballer is a cake decoration in search of a base (with one of the earlier, better football strips?), and we've seen the athletes before, many to find in a dozen sizes and loads of colours/base types. The fallen figure is Subbuteo I think, one of the oversized players you used for defending goal or taking throw-ins?

The other civilians include a sub-piracy of the Blue Box copy of a British race official, a turquoise lady, probably from a boardgame, a Lledo baker's boy, a dimestore vehicle figure (? I think we may have seen them in other colours, so maybe also a boardgame counter-piece?), Blue Box road worker copied from Dinky and an ex-Britains zoo-keeper sculpt, whom I suspect is from a set of rack-toy firefighters.

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these.

M is for More Lead!

Twice in two days! Just a box-ticker, I found these shots of one of the Panits Lazlo sets from Hungary, which I think we looked at, not that long ago, so just to add them to the archive as it were, here they are!

 

As last time, they are a mix of factory painted piracies of Airfix and Esci sculpts, probably from home-cast rubber-moulds, and presented in a small carded blister, I think the text on the card-front literally translates as 'metal figures carton', so a kind of pocket-money kiosk cheapie, like the Polish plastics we've also seen here.

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Introduction

So . . . Having some idea what was coming down the tracks toward me, Chris Smith actually sent me his 'next parcel', a week or two before Plastic Warrior's show, and in the end I pretty-much shot them altogether, the week after the show, which was three months ago now, so well over-due for Blogging, as they are sent, in part, for you to enjoy too!

 

The de rigueur shot now associated with these posts here at Small Scale World, of the amassed parachute toys/paratrooper figures, and this lot didn't disappoint, with what I think is a new size (or colour) of large blow-mould, a Brabo knock-off caricature and a possible new sculpt of blow-mould in the middle!

Keenly diving into the box (which I forgot to shoot in its entirety this time), and balancing piles of interesting bits on the back of the sofa! We'll be looking at it all again in the forthcoming posts.

More goodies in the bottom of the box . . . I'd run-out of perches to balance stuff on, and resorted to putting it all back in the box, until I'd cleared the table, a week or so later for the photo-session! What can you spot?

They did go back-in semi-sorted, in self-seal bags, some individually, some thematic, so they could be further sorted (and amalgamated with the PW show stuff) more quickly as they were all put away a week or so latter.

This was actually the 'photo-booth' at the flat, so I was rather stuck for backgrounds, once I'd started putting thematic piles on it - the need to feed the addiction take all self-control away! Here are the parachute toys, racing-cars, aeroplanes and others.

Bits and pieces, the camp-fires, hay/straw-bales and treasure/pirate chests are becoming sizable side collections, and at some point we will have posts on all three, the pink ice-cream sundae will be from some modern thing, Polly-Pocket like maybe, or a Lego knock-off? Shields and weapons have their own bags, while the pink wheel will go in the spares until ID'd/needed, it looks like a central wheel from a plastic aircraft toy, so could prove very useful, maybe years from now?

This is extraordinary, because I could swear we had this as kids, I mean, I know we had them (it was part of a set), but this actual one seems to have all the same warps and marks as the one I last saw in the late 1960's/early 1970's, I don't suppose it is, but . . . it all has to come around again, if it hasn't gone to landfill/incinerator?

 

If I recall correctly they were for drawing round, and then filling in with the minor details laid out as lines, and there was a sort of pale blue star with halo maybe, like the USAAF roundel of WWI/II, and a pushchair/baby-chair possibly, in pink? But they might be false memories created by seeing this after 50-odd years! Fun thing, and a nostalgia hit, for me!

Equally interesting, Chris doesn't make a habit of sending non-figure or figure-related stuff in his donations, but this was - upon inspection - an obvious inclusion, as not only is it plastic (our core interest here - he says, the day after a lead-article!), but it's marked Dibro! The same people who made the push-and-go 'space tank'/SPG?

Clearly they had a nice niche producing high-quality plastic novelties alongside the usual suspects of Kleeman/Tudor Rose/Lipkin, before Hong Kong's lower grade rip-offs took the market away - see also Cle, Siku et al! They are still going, unlike Tatra who have vanished during the lifetime of this Blog!.

The other standard shot these days is the assorted seated figures, all divorced from their plastic, tin-plate or die-cast vehicles, planes etc . . . and here's another nice sample, with the blue lad in the middle all-new I think, a pair of the Revell/Monogram GI's to be reunited with their Jeep at some point and a Tudor Rose dumper-driver!

 

A collective of Kinder, or Kinder-like; I'm not sure on the moped? A near complete pirate and the same torso in another colour, some kind of Sport Billy (?) athlete with press-on cardboard kit, another Samurai, to be stripped and matched-up with the other bits in a bag (or two) somewhere, and a Viking!

 

This was a lovely surprise, minor damage was what probably got him into the box for us, because whole, they are not cheap, it's World Cup Willie, from Marx, as a 'Rolykin', from the pig's bladder kicking competition held in 1966, which some of my compatriots spend a little too-much time reminiscing on!

 

What was left after I'd taken all the other, forthcoming, photographs! A Hong Kong knock-off of Manurba's minisub pilot, an infant toy figure who's a bit faded in the printing department and a Weetabix Puff-Kin!

As always it's impossible to sound grateful enough for these parcels Chris (and others) send the blog, but, believe me, I am very grateful, as many missing links, missing pieces of the bigger jigsaw and other interesting items appear in them, as if by magic! So thank you, Chris.