L is for Lots of London Loot - Two is a Pair!

Continuing with the various donations which have come back from London 'Taaarn' over the last few months, and we're back to August for this lot which all came from Peter Evans, so thanking him before we start, let's see what was in the bag!

 

An eclectic mix of figures we've probably seen before, with clockwise from the top left; Lido French Foreign Legion officer, Crescent for marked-Kellogg's medieval archer, astronaut (K&M I think?), Matchbox Adventure 2000 figure and the Corgi camper having a Barbecue!

 

In the centre a novelty, overmoulded guardsman with what seem to be a simlified SA80 (so quite modern), with two of the Hong Kong figures, copied from and sometime carried by cavendish Miniatures, and nice to get a loose Hourse Guard with his sword arm complete!

 

We looked at the main sets/games with show-jumping kit, not that long ago, well, just a year ago, so this will make a nice addition to that tub! I suspect it might be from a kid's magazine cover-gift, I occasionally see such things, but it's very well-made, and wile a bit small for something like Playmobil, could be from a Gymkhana by them?

Three ACW from Hong Kong, copies of Timpo 1st version figures, there are lots of these waiting final sorts (some cowboys and Indians recently came in, also from Peter, which should be in one of the later posts in this sequence), and the unusual aspect of this clean sample of one maker's stuff, is the pegs are still with the figures (which will help ID them) and the weapons match, despite being two colours, so a further ID'ing clue!

This is fun! Reasonable rendition of a Tricerotops, in the style of those Blue Box monsters from Gormiti, we looked at here at Small Scale World, a few years ago, but of a smaller finished size, it has a pop-together element with ball-&-socket hips, shoulders and tail section, anyone know the maker/set/line?
 

Two bags of small-scale, ancient, in the post-Giant Wild West (1960/70's) and more modern in the WWII figures - I seem to recall those quite good, near-28mm copies of Airfix were around in the 1990's?

 

A couple of 'clean' Britains farm animals, two Airfix babies and a couple of old Hong Kong copies of Britains (officer) and Crescent (damaged shorts guy), which will be sorted into the rest, where the shorts guy may be the only one in blue plastic, so stays until he's been sorted - a damaged sample is better than no sample!

An eclectic lot! At the bottom a set of Matchbox lumps from the 1990's, above them are a nice little cannon, probably from a quite juvenile mini-playset? With a Nottingham Mafia horse, home-painted, while at the top we have an Autobot/Transformer type thing, possibly a modern capsule toy, a Culpitt (and others) cake decoration Indian, and the Giraffe from the Tupperware alphabet blocks.

 

Modern animals, medium-small, but quite nicely done and probably from the same - yet to be identified - set, possibly a toob/tub thing?

 

Top left is Iggle Piggle, I think? From In the Night Garden, below him is a pencil top of Raymond Brigg's The Snowman, with what would appear to be three Pokemon, although I'm not so sure on the purple dragon chap? Many thanks again to Peter for this eclectic bucnh of polymer personages!

P is for Popup Games

Another new name encountered at the Toy Fair in Kensington back in January was Popup Games, a clever use of paper folding to produce games which can be taken with the players, mid-action, and carried on with at the other end [of the journey] by the simple expedient of opening the game up again, and finding the previous state of play popping-up, as it was left!

 

Ludus latrunculorum, latrunculi, or simply latrones ("the game of brigands", or "the game of soldiers" from latrunculus, diminutive of latro, mercenary or highwayman) was a two-player strategy board game played throughout the Roman Empire. It is said to resemble chess or draughts, as it is generally accepted to be a game of military tactics. Because of the scarcity of sources, reconstruction of the game's rules and basic structure is difficult, and therefore there are multiple interpretations of the available evidence.

 

- Wikipedia

Five Lines (Greek: πέντε γραμμαί, Romanized: pente grammai) is the modern name of an ancient Greek tables game. Two players each move five counters on a board with five lines, with moves likely determined by the roll of a die. The winner may have been the first one to place their pieces on the central "sacred line". No complete description of the game exists, but there have been several scholarly reconstructions, including Schädler's and Kidd's.

 

- Wikipedia

 

Tafl games, also known as Hnefatafl games, are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a chequered or latticed game board with two armies of uneven numbers.

 

- Wikipedia

As you can see from the Wiki' quotes, there is a pattern here, as well as being fold-away games, they are specialising in games which, while maybe not familiar to the man in the street, have been known to mankind for centuries, or millennia! I didn't see the Game of Ur, but it may only be a matter of time?

 

A more traditional game, instead of the playing pieces (which you will note were all figural), slotting down into a box-like structure, with the chess set, players get pieces with three-dimensional box-bases, where, provided one player keeps the boxes toward him and the other away, all will fold neatly, and tightly into the playing surface, at any point the game needs pausing.

 

Quite apart from the idea of folding games, and the plethora of ancient games re-imagined, there is also the ecological aspect of a 100% paper/card product, so I hope Popup Games do very well, and a couple of them rather reminded me of all those inter-war/post-war games like Tri-Tacktics and Dover Patrol.

 

Some pop-up retailers took the Popup URL a year earlier, so they can be found under the owners name, here;

https://www.hawcockbooks.co.uk/pop-up-games

L is for Lesser & Pavey

Shot these at the Gift Fair the other day, these are tin-plate and resin piles of shite, the sort of thing you find in 'boutique' shops, garden centres and TKMaxx, bought, put on a shelf for 30, 40 years, knocked-off by the odd cat or grandchild, then dumped in a skip by the executors or sent to a charity shop, who, if it's obviously damaged, dump it in a skip!

 

The tank is a sort of Italio-British Panzer II! While the helicopter is a mishmash of several, but the Jeep and Land Rover were quite good.

 

There were civil items too, quite a few, but I concentrated on the military stuff, you'll be familiar-enough with this stuff, from the 'smarter' end of your high-street! And it's another box ticked - Lesser & Pavey.

 

Website;

https://www.leonardo.co.uk/

L is for Lots of London Loot - One of a Few!

A fair bit of stuff has come in over the last few months, most from Peter Evans, some from the late Michael Hyde's estate, some of it donated, some of it paid for, but often not for much, and some bits which have got in there, but may be from other sources, because they all got shot in batches. So I'm just going to post it all as H is for's.... but as L's! With many thanks to Peter and thoughts for Mike and the Brother who survives him.

 

Useful bits and parts including most of an Airfix 88mm gun and tractor, but the obvious item of interest is the box at the top left, which is a further packaging of the teeny-tiny AFV models we've seen a few times now, such as here - as Empress.

 

Another box of bits, half of them Rocco Minitanks, the rest quite an eclectic collection of components, beebo's and oddments! The Rocco will prove perticularly useful, I have a large tub with most of the main range (the first 150-odd numbers), and many of them are missing the odd bit!

 

Unbranded, as a generic, the Hing Fat American revolution figures, not sure it all the poses are here, and for reasons of intrinsic idiocy, I photographed the majority of the poses present in the red, and only the remaining odds in the blue, when it would have been better to shoot them the other way! Another project which went on the back burner, but will be done one day is a page on/of the Bicorned/Tricorne forces from Marlborough to the French/Indian wars, and I can shoot the blues then!

 

A bag from The Toy Project, which I didn't open, but which had some useful bits in, astronauts from two sourses, a kitten and a puppy and a Corgi/Dinky (?) firefighter. The kitten looks like it might be from a board game?

A cereal premium Wellington, I only mentioned them the other day! And a blow-moulded bear, which was probably flocked once, and almost certainly a key ring, the use of the latter employment leading to the loss of the former coating!

 

The vatican guard from MM, one of the more eclectic sets of 'HO/OO' figures, and almost certainly from Mike's collection, he had got around to undercoating one-each of the three poses, the full set is covered by Dave over on PSR, from the style and material, I wouldn't be surprised to learn of a connection between these and Caesar Miniatures?

 

The Life-Like State Coach kit, it seems to be complete, so will get a making in the future, if only so it can be photographed 'whole', it's an old Miniature Masterpieces tool, a strange tie-in between the - then - nascent giant, Revell and the soon to fade Adam's Action Models. Thanks again to Peter for getting all this to the Blog.

News, Views Etc . . . Blogging

You wait ages for one and then two come along together! As well as a bit of a post-fest here, I've been posting elsewhere two;

 

♫♫♪♫ Cap-Tin Scar-Lurt! Hees In-Di-Struc-Tabul♪♫♪♪

I've added quite a bit to the following posts on the Airfix Blog

 

ACW Artillery

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2010/06/1962-american-civil-war-artillery-s14.html

 

Cowboys

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/search/label/Cowboys

 

Guards Band

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/search/label/Guards%20Band

 

Guards Colour Party

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/search/label/Guards%20Colour%20Party

 

 

 

I've also added three posts to the But is it Giant Blog, which, with the first being published on the 15th, was, I think, before the recent flurry of Giant-related posts elsewhere, always better to be found leading than following!

 

But is it Giant

 

And there's more to go on both Blogs in - hopefully - the near future!

O is for Orange Tree

Shot these up at the Birmingham Gift Fair, the sort of thing which will turn-up in mixed-lots, years hence, and nice to see a bit of 'eco' wood, among the miles of poured resin and injected plastic!

 

That's it, a few figurals; thick, wooden flats, box ticked!

Website

https://www.orangetreetoys.com/

P is for Pantasy - I think?

I didn't get the name of this stand at the Toy Fair, but Google suggests the products are made by Pantasy, although the stand may have been another agent or importer. Lego-likey building bricks, so not much blurb needed!

 

Licences for Manzinger Z, Garfield, Astro Boy and King Fu Panda among others, with different figure configurations and a few original brick-designs. That's it, a quick box-tick.

 

The only link I could find is the Amazon Merchant Portal;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=merchant-items&me=AYPPXM2KSN87T

News, Views Etc . . . Blogger?

Haven't had one of these for a while!

 

Trying to find the Kennedy space set on Ed's Blog, now found here (cheers Robert) - https://toyconnect.blogspot.com/2012/06/marx-4625-action-cape-kennedy-carry-all.html - I found his Tags were stuck at Hing Fat, mine are stuck at Maerklin, I hope this is a Blogger/Google thing, and that they are working to fix it, the other day my Tags were stuck in the B's, so they seem to be making progress, it only seems to be affecting those who have adopted the marginal, linier, alphabetical-list format, people with blocks or the random size-for-number ones (cloud/frequency stuff) seem unaffected? But for now, you'll have to use the search-box, which is quite good, I often use it myself!

 

Also, might as well remind you now - Sandown Park's Toy fair on Saturday! Be there or be unable to spot the bargains!

 

Random toy shot!

 

I bought these back in March '23, and never got round to Blogging them! They are part of a long-queue project to look at all these! Interestingly, the bright-coloured and white ones are soft polyethylene re-issues, dating between the originals and the Glenco set. While the dung-green one is a hard polystyrene version of the usually soft Hong Kong copies!

 

T is for 'There Be Dragons'!

Probably a title we've had before, but whatever, we're over 5000 posts now, so you're bound to lose track of a few, or at least I am! Had a nice chat with the Westair guys at Birmingham the other week, unlike Ancestors of Dover who wouldn't allow photography . . . you go to a fair to promote your products, hire a stand to display your products, and then don't allow attendee's to cover your products?

 

But while I was chatting I shot off a few pictures of things which caught my eye, and this is them;

 

Various busts and things, busts are a side-arm of the hobby I've not really travelled to, although there are a few plastic ones in the pile, mostly the old famous/historical persons or footballer/Wild West cereal premiums, and a number of tank crew/commanders, but I know some people almost specialise in busts - for their display potential, if nothing else.

 

We saw these a while back, but worth another shot, they offered me one as a sample, however, I reminded them they had given me one last time, and I'm really, really not at the shows for the scrounge, but to genuinely see what's happening in the hobby, or to the hobby's advantage/disadvantage!

 

Necklaces! It's funny, but they could just as easily be key-rings, phone-hangers or luggage-tag ornaments, and, in the case of those little plastic guardsmen, all four and more - earrings and snow-shakers! Once you move away from the purism of Britains, Timpo, Elastolin, Marx or Starlux, and throw your eyes wider, there so much of this stuff, you'll never find all of it!

 

We've seen all three on the Blog now, in one form or another, but not the Pyramid, which I shall now be looking out for! Many versions of the gun over the years, and I think I have more than one design of the trebuchet, so copies-of-copies abound!

 

Figural, sculptural, Teddy Bears and Rodin's 'Thinker'!

What's not to like?

 

These were all new, I have a feeling the Rep' said they were retailing a lost cheaper than the Schleich/Papo stuff, but price is always down to the end-seller, and if the trade price is low, it could encourage scalping? 

 

Also I think I was impressed to find they were a substitute PVC, rather than resin, so quite robust, but I'm now not sure if that's a false memory or wishful thinking? But twelve, out there now, and excellent enhancers of a Nottingham Mafia game table!

 

Westair Reproductions website

https://westair.co.uk/