L is for The Longest Yarn - The Build-up

I managed to get to the D-Day exhibition yesterday afternoon before work, it was its last day showing at the Garrison Church, here in Aldershot, and it is now off to climes anew, I will post all the current, planned dates at the end of the final post. I had only been told about it the previous evening, and as wool has been in the tag-list for a while now, it seemed like the ideal opportunity to add to that!

 

It is - as hopefully you will see - the most extraordinary thing, at the same time, fun, entertaining and educational, yet also; poignant and very moving, and tells the story of 6th June 1944, in wool. I took 200-odd photo's and rather than add my own commentary, thought I'd let the pictures speak for themselves, but don't think by seeing these, you don't have to see the actual exhibition, it is well worth the time, there is so much to see and take in, and little details hidden everywhere, which are often lost in the flat images here.

 

The work has been done entirely by - I believe - French volunteers, and the exhibition is moving to Stoke Minister, Stoke-on-Trent where it will open to the public on the 21st of November 2020, all being well, if you are in the area, check your local press for details.

 

There is a book available from the website (https://www.thelongestyarn.com/home), explaining the panels and history of the work, that long-day 80-years ago, and the making of the panels, the book is also one of the main fund-raisers, for the moving and stageing of the exhibition, which is entirely self-funded, although also supported by corporate sponsors and volunteers.

Wherever you manage to see it, the exhibition is entirely free, and you don't need to book, just turn up and prepare to queue, the queue was not as great as I had feared, giving it was the last day to see it locally, and I was through in less than an hour, but an hour well spent; Loyal Readers - The Longest Yarn:

 

 

At which point some 195,700-287,000 sailors, nearly 8,000 glider-borne & paratroops, around 156,000 ground-troops, 8,000 RAF & 15,000 (?) USAAF personnel, and countless civilians, from at least 15 countries, in or supporting 7,000 ships, 178,000 vehicles and over 11,000 aircraft, stiffened their war-wearied shoulders and turned, like a dragon of vengence, toward Normandy.

N is for Novelty Horses

I've sort of been bumped into posting this before it was as authoritative as I'd hoped it would get, but there was a discussion about them elsewhere the other day, and I want to post the link to this here, to explain/illustrate what I said there!

 

This was in the long queue and has been building for a number of years, Chris Smith also helped with both images and links, he, having already sent a few loose ones, in his donation lots, over the years, and what's missing here today is the smallest sizes, which is how I encountered them first, as a small scale collector years ago, but they are all in storage!

So we'll start with those images from Chris, we've seen the horses before here, and mused on them, their purpose and origin, but this illustrates how useful they are, the figure here is a Starlux confederate officer, and while the horse is more of a pony, you'll ride anything three years into a war which is eating horses!

 

Also, his feet are too far forward of the stirrups, but how many toy solders fit even their invisible stirrups properly, other than Britains and their PVC ones in the better ranges (Eyes Right, Swoppets and the better farm stuff), and those where the hinted stirrup is moulded to the foot!

 

And it's the stirrups I've questioned before here; are they 'Western', Spanish, Mexican? Does anyone recognise them, I assume they are the heavy, shielded ones which are supposed to protect Cowboys and Gauchos' from cattle's horns?

This is one way we now know they were retailed over the years, and each plinth is slightly different, I may have some of the foals, loose, and probably damaged, in another bag of the 'Unknown Horses' zone, but I can't say for sure, I know I don't have any in the bags with the adult horses.

 

Mine, upper shots (busy desktop, just before Halloween a year ago), has lost its foal but the glue-marks are there for one, while the two eBay samples, lower images, are the same hoses pose, and foal, but with the foal positioned differently for both glueings!

Here's another way they seem to have been sold, but one suspects this is a wholesale thing, rather than retail, but it could have been for restocking a counter-top retail dispaly of some kind? The final shot is missing three of the variants, which, if you study the upper shot, you will quickly work out are 3-each of two poses (standing and walking slowly), for 6-each of six colourways.

 

As well as shop stock, this is probably how they were sent-on to whoever was creating the plinthed novelties, or [slightly brittle] key-rings, or however else they were sold? Which is the next remaining question, how and when were they sold?

 

Do you remember encountering them? I'm guessing maybe places like the gift shop at The Alamo might have been a likely venue, mid-1970s? But could you find them in the tourist areas of Hong Kong itself? Other Wild West venues, were they aimed at girls maybe - you know "Collect all twelve types, open Bank Holiday Monday!", that kind of thing? Were there larger multi-animal plinths, or smaller single-adult versions?

 

The evidence of a missing foal on mine, and another colourway.

As I say there are two poses, at least four sizes (the spotted one here is a bit larger than the other three), one of which is definitely missing from this post, but there may be two in the smaller scales for five and two missing?

 

There are more colourways than are to be found in the stock-box above, and the adults are far more common survivors than the foals, the predominance of the standing pose in this post may be accidental, rather than true across the line?

 

They are not particularly rare, although undamaged plinth types are uncommon, and they are a hard polystyrene, both materially and paintwise similar to the LB (Lik Be) fox, or Culpitt 'Funnimals', which could be a clue to the maker for these horses; clearly sold as several types of novelty or tourist keepsake? What can you add?

S is for Shelfies - Asda Supermarkets

I seem to have had quite a few shelfie sessions this year, we've seen a few, and there are still a couple in the queue, this was some shots I took back at the start of October in Asda, now free of Walmart, but facing a huge debt-constructed black-hole, which seem to have been created by the new-owners using the company as a piggy-bank!

 

I was seriously tempted by the guardsman, given the number of existing chaps in the 'novelty' sub-zone of the ceremonial stash, but thought four-quid was a bit steep for such a simple toy, and concluded that a picture would suffice!

Equally novelty, these are your bog-standard streachy animals, in some kind of gloop-in-a-bottle, as with all these shelfie shots, taken to help ID the stuff lose, in the future, although they are the sort of thing which will probably get several formats/outings? Here credited to Toymania.

I think these are new tubs, obviously, there are so many variants of the palm trees out there now, you never know if they've been bought in as make-weights, or if you're just looking at a new packaging of something seen before!

Reasonable sculpts, as I say, probably seen before, and not given the imaginative colourings of some modern dinosaur models, however, there's not many in the tub, and at the origianl £15, far too much? At the reduced £9 a bit better, but still pricey for what you get, there's a post coming on a wildlife set from another store chain, which at £9.99p will be worth a comparison with these.

Again, there's only six or seven animals, in a larger scale, and a lot of 'playability' detritus, but, to be fair, the size of the tub is deceptive in that these were smaller than the usual tubs.

A is for All-sorts of Argentine and Ante American Armed-forces

Both loyal readers and more casual visitors will be aware of the successes I've had tracking down various bits of South American toy soldiery and model figurey over the years, especially in the last few, with 20 of the 35 uses of the Argentina tag being in the last six years, and here's a few more Argentine or believed to be Argentinian pieces, and some other South American makers.

 

This chap was sold as an Argentine model of Santa Anna (Mexico - Alamo insurgency), but I wondered if he mightn't be one of the Argentinian revolutionary heroes, so googled them, they were all in blue jackets! So I returned to Santa Anna, only to find he's always in blue too! Simone de Bolivar? . . . Blue, or blue-black! So your guess is as good as mine, unless you're an Argentine collector and know who he was sold as?

Although he fits much better on the horse in the previous shots (an old Elastolin composition horse copy?), he was sold with this horse (vaguely Britains), marked Gulliver (which the figure isn't) of Brazil, which he really isn't comfortable on, so as well as not being sure who he is, I'm not sure if I've found his horse yet!

 

I guess all those South American revolutionary wars were modelled to some extent on the French Revolution, or the American War of Independence, to wit; throwing off the yoke of the old European masters, or a more-local tyrant, and, as such, the leaders would have looked to Washington or Napoleon for their sartorial guide, beyond the prevalent fashion of the day?

 

And, as we saw the other week, Napoleon liked he blue AND his green! So I'll go with Santa Anna, as the slight;y more popular figure, historically, across the whole continent, possibly for being the last South American to give Uncle Sam a bloody nose? I've seen other Gulliver figures on this horse, and they fit it properly.

Along with him and the second horse, there was another Gulliver piece, the African warrior at the front, a horse far to small for the General; a copy of the Britains Trojan horse, marked Industria Argentina and an unmarked copy of Charbens or Britains draft-horse, which is unmarked and could be Hong Kong output, but is I suspect from the same lot.

 

I think we've seen the more modern triangular lozenge mark in a previous Gulliver post somewhere, but here's the earlier one in a sort of 1970's Lettraset curlycue'esque font, it's not the best image, but . . . black plastic!

Ind. Argentina announces this rather battle-damaged Jeep as another Argentine piece, it's also marked 'Eplax', whom we have to assume to be the maker! A composite model, with a hard PVC or vulcanised rubber body, soft rubber tyres on steel axles, a polyethylene steering wheel and a sheet-alloy (probably pure aluminium) so soft it bends if you look at it wrong!

 

Hopefully a future find, even in a similar state, will give me the missing wheels/axle? Until then, this will sit in the collection as a 'better a damaged one than none' example! It seems very similar to a Birmania one I have in a set which I thought I'd shown here (should have been part of the Plastic Warrior show reports), but have shown elsewhere, only that one is lacking the seat-holes.

This is also similar to a tree in the Birmania set, a polystyrene plastic flat with detail in relief on one side and a blank reverse, painted as if the detail it there anyway, but in a more basic fashion than the obverse!

A bit of an oddity, this one, it's a sort of blow-moulded rubber bath or pet toy, sans squeak (not that there's a hole for one, or ever was one, I'm just trying to describe the feel of the thing, under the paint), and may be home painted, and not Argentinian at all, but it came with some of the other pieces on this page, so can sit here, until its origin is more empirically known! 54mm'ish assault-boat!

Another Oklahoma figure has jointed that growing sample, you may remember I missed-out on some at the Plastic Warrior show, back in May, but picked-up a mounted lancer. This guy is obviously based-upon the Britains Herald American Civil War trumpeter.

 

The closest match I could find on these near-60mm figures, was some Gulliver/Casablanca production from Brazil, but not exactly the same as my pair, and mine aren't marked. This and the next shot were my attempts at arty-farty photo's, with views of the Toy Soldier library in the background, both images 'seen elsewhere' a couple of years ago!

 

This is actually Mexican, from Ara (or ARA? Family Arakelian) and depicts a Mexican lifeguard trumpeter, in the uniform of the Mexican-American war, I can't find any modern images of them as ceremonial troops, so I don't think they survive as such, but I could be very wrong on that one?

 

This is a set of figures from Trovador, also of Argentina, the warriors were copied by someone else in an unpainted form I think, and I dare say a couple of shields are missing here. The figures seem pretty unique, but the elephant is lifted from the Britains' baby elephant.

 

Another seen elsewhere image, these may be Oklahoma too, as they seem to have targeted Herald for their mentor! However, another Argentinian company - Grafil - are known to have targeted Lone Star, while the Marx figure could be another South American company, but seems to crude for the Mexican Plastimarx who used original moulds, not forgetting there's a Timpo sculpt in there too!