O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Cowboys & Indians

I seem to have done particularly well on the Western front, out there in West London, last June, with a lot to look at and eventually sort into the main collection, and with bits from all over the world, and at least two lines here, now, it's best to get started looking at them!

 

Indians.

 

Cowboys.

 

In their boxes.

 

A fantastic start to the day, when Adrian Little showed me these, I was sure they were Torgano, but thought I'd check, so, this is what GoogleAI had to say on the subject . . . 

 

"The term "Torgano Cowboys" likely refers to Les Cowboys Fringants, a popular Québécois band, and the phrase is a play on their name, which translates to "The Frilly Cowboys". The band is known for their folk-rock music and socially conscious lyrics."

WTF? Obviously Google didn't add the accents to 'Québécois', and it didn't get a single detail right, either! It was simply making it up as it went along, to please it's human task-master - me! All these AI bots are filling the internet with falsehood, inaccuracies and complete bollocks! Bucket-loads of it. It could have defaulted with "Did you mean . . . ", but chose to lie through its teeth instead!

 

These are early (1950's?) Torgano, they did the space sets the same too, with an interim version (1960's?) in one-colour, undecorated hard plastic, and integrally moulded bases (the ones here are glued on), which may have been someone else? And finally the soft plastic, slightly rounded-out copies, of the 1970's blister-cards, in various coloured polyethylenes.

 

This was a nice find as well, as we've seen the Stage-coach version, or bits of it, under a couple of Hong Kong or phantom brands, on the Blog, in the past, copies of various European makes/premiums, from people like Alkastap, Texas/Isus or Clé (?), but it's nice to now have a complete wagon. Elsewhere in the last year or two (possibly not on the Blog) I've found the mounted figures that clearly go with these, so when they're all brought together it'll now be a decent, semi-definitive post!

 

Also Hong Kong, I think, copies of Jecsan, but they may be Jecsan, I didn't have samples of either to judge-from, and the Spanish makers do like a bit of sandy-yellow polymer? Perfectly scaled to go with the slightly less hideously-caricatured Lik Be/LB Westerners, and some of the larger Lucky Luke stuff, a market the Spainsh figures were probably aiming for!

 

Don't know! Probably Hong Kong, or even 'China', they are very clean, and copying other figures, both Swoppets and Jean Hoefleur solids, new to the collection though, and new to Blog!

 

These we have seen, under several brands now I think, and were the default rack-toy/paty favour Cowboys & Indians about 15-years ago, so keep turning up now in mixed lots, happy to receive them though, as with limited colours and poses, there’s a chance of getting a complete set of every pose in every colour without much effort!

 

A mix of bits here, with a lovely flourescent yellow-green copy of Britains sitting elder, two Supreme accessories (canoe and totem pole), which think I already have, but wether I bought them, because they were cheap, or they were in one of the donantions, they will need to be checked against the master-lode!

 

The little runner is the accessory 'sprue' for the Timpo chuck-wagon I think, while someone ID'd the camp fire a few years ago, I can't remember the verdict then, but it'll be labelled in the stash! And who can refuse a purple tee-pee, or Miniature Masterpiece totem-pole from Marx!

 

Useful odds-and-sods here, with Thomas/Poplar/Tudor Rose foot figures, two of the Hong Kong copies of the Britains/Paramount/et al six-shooters, a pair of early Hong Kong copies and the brown one to the right may be another Koho, in the smaller size, damaged, but a first sample of the pose?

 

I forgot to record whether this was a Brabo or Imperial branded chap, or just another Hong Kong generic, but still, more bendier bendy polymer for the bendies tub! And in near-mint condition.

 

Argentinian, and not in the best condition, but I now have five or six of these in a tub somewhere, so a growing sample of figures which tend to be hard to find this side of The Pond?

 

Slowly building a complete set of loose Supreme/SP Toys stuff, with this vaguely Alamo/Magnificent Seven chapel, being from the large sets and as background in the flatter 'window trays', I think I only need the raft, another building, and one of the wagons for completion now, the fun of collecting!

 

A box-ticker . . . in a box! It builds the complete story of the figures/sample.

 

This was gifted by Michael Mordant-Smith, and is another of the test shots from his new Toy Soldier company, which is finding, cleaning and getting back into production, a variety of moulds, and I love the purge-marbling of red/black on this figure.

 

Another useful Hong Kong item, is this Lido knock-off, as I have one or two in different packaging, all generics, but, again, building a bigger picture!

 

A mix of mostly Hong Kong, not sure about the big green guy, he has a base like Tim Mee, especially the German ones, while the Native on the left is Kinder, for the spare parts tub, although he only needs a correct weapon!

 

A mix of mostly British branded stuff, some in a bit of a state, 

along with a harder to find Jean and a horse from Safari.

 

Broken, metal, but an only sample!

 

More of the Lucky Bag figures form the 1950's, and a new Indian pose I think?

 

Very useful against one of the longer term projects, there is a tendency for some people to lazily state these all as either Star or M-Toys, but in fact there are about seven or more types out there (same with the Knights and ACW etc.), and with people Like Transogram and Blue Box also having their own lines, there's still a lot of work to be done on a definitive ID list of Hong Kong swoppet clones, and items like this will help. Note how the people (likely women) picking, tend to grab from one batch/stillage, leading to colour bias in each bag!

 

To which end (previous blurb) all these go in a large tub, sorted either by base, or sometimes material, with regular sortings to match-up all the odd torsos, legs etc . . . Until the picture is complete, and the loose samples can be matched to the sets obtained, or internet images accrued!

 

A similar project is the Hong Kong 'hollow horses' and their associated accessories/foot figures, here a mixed lot will go in a separate bag with a note, to be sorted . . .

 . . . while this clean sample of 'Wavymane' will be sorted straight into its correct zone, after checking weather they are type I, II or III (type IV is a variant!). But, they will get a separate bag, as this sample has the uncommon red horses, and again, note how the picker/packers have put green figures on all the red horses, because that’s the two heaps the line manager gave to them, to pair-up!

 

And again, this year thanks are due, alphabetically by surname, to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Thank you all.

3D is for Other Blogs, Really!

Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love tolerate the polymer printer!

 

Donation!

Many Thanks to Tom Clague

('Tomholio' around the Internet) 

 

Many years ago, although it seems like yesterday, I just don't know where it goes? And, it goes there quicker every year, but many years ago, 2007/2008, on the HäT forum, which was a very different beast then, it has since been heavily bot-edited by 'H' for perfectly understandable reasons, no criticism, and moved home/platform a couple of times, and is now a more corporate or pro-brand site, but many years ago we used to have a lot of fun on there, sometimes it would degenerate into silliness, other times the less humorous' would take offence, often about something which wasn't actually aimed at them, but there you go, all humour requires a certain level of grey-cells, some more than others, but many years ago, the Brit's, Antipodeans and some of the Canucks/Yanks would have some real fun . . . but we also had some more serious discussions, and many years ago, we had a thread on 3D Printing!

 

Straight out of the printer. 

 

At that time, the first commercial machines were just becoming something a semi-affluent Western hobbyist, within the 10%, globally, could look at affording, and a lot of potential was held by the nascent technology, or series of technologies, as there are various methods employed in Deposition-Modelling, or Rapid Prototyping (which includes CAD/CAM and CNC)*, as 3D printing is known to those at the cutting-edge of the Industry.

 

*Computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacture, computer numerical control['ed machining].

 

When cats'll fly!

I was quite hopeful at the time, but also pointed out that it might end the toy soldier industry as we then knew it, however, and thankfully, time has shown I was wrong on that one, and despite many friends, acquaintances and fellow-Blogger's having 3D machines of their own, or using the bespoke print-on-demand sellers around the place, most of the then new names in the hobby are still going, including HäT Indusrie!

 

This one's got no name!

 

The other criticism I had, or shared with others in that conversation (long since deleted by the forum-police 'bots), was that it would cheapen the concept of figure collecting, by making anything and everything available to anybody (who could afford it) in any scale, at any time, and that has come true!

 

Is there a doctor in the house?

 

Anyone, with the necessary skills, software, or scanner, or a useful mate so equipped, can scan any figure ever made, or design any figure you can dream of, in your wildest imagination, manipulate the file in an infinite number of ways, and print the results in increments of any scale from a couple of millimetres to whatever size you floor, drive or yard can sustain, without damage!

 

Airfix knock-off, and with naked girlfriend!

 

And that printing can be via simple filament feed, liquid or powder sintering, or deposition of layers, or that was the situation when we were having that conversation, with the new, affordable 'home PC' machines mostly being the filament type, now known as Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), it's probably still the commonest form of home printing. And is also the technology in the rather very disappointing pen I looked at, here.

He used to drive the Millennium Falcon, you know?

But not in these threads!

HO/OO (left), 25mm (right)

 

Increasingly sintering is becoming affordable for the home printing enthusiast, and you can 'sinter' powder or liquid polymer, and metal (now called fusion), they alll have their own jargon! Vat Polymerisation (VP, for liquids) or Powder Bed Fusion (PBF, for powders!), with VP broken down into Stereolithography (SLA, usually using lasers) and Digital Light Processing (DLP), with fusion further divided into

 

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS - for plastics), and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) or Electron Beam Melting (EBM) for metals, these can be called Directed Energy Deposition too, althogh technically that's a sub-type with at least six systems!

 

HO/OO Turkey - incredible levels of detail.

 

Other systems are Material Jetting (deposited droplets of photo-polymer material, are then cured by UV light, we looked at a simple version of it, here), Binder Jetting (A print head deposits a liquid binding agent onto a bed of powder material, layer-by-layer, to hold the powder together, developed many years ago by the movie industry for scenic backgrounds, I believe?), and Sheet Lamination, where, thin sheets of material are bonded together and cut to form layers/shapes.

 

 ♪♪♫ She wants to break free!

She wants to break free from your lies
You're so self-satisfied
She don't neehee'eed you

She's got to break freehee'ee!

God knows!

God knows She wants to break free! ♫♪♫

 

And all the above, is only simplified, for modellers and wargamers! There are more than ten forms of Vat Polymerisation, eight types of Powder Bed Fusion . . . µSLA anyone?That's Microscopic Stereolithography, to you, Sir!

 

Anatomically correct nudes above,

Brazilian Turkish surgeon's 'skills' on display below!

 

And if you can afford a metal fusion printer, you can make yourself an indestructible copy of the Hong Kong/Laramie jungle superhero The Phantom, in a material designed to withstand the strains of motor-racing engines, aerospace components, or satellite thrusters! While meat (pork, beef and fish), replacement skin (also meat!) and concrete are all being successfully 3D printed.

 

The names are Bond, Roger and Shaun!

 

But, another criticism, at the hobby end, a lot of the stuff is manufactured from low-grade polymers, deliberately biodegradable polymers, or polymers with unknown long-term properties! And, a secondary aim of this post, is to explain why I don't really post 3D printing, won't often, and chose not too, back at the start of the blog, really.

 

Aping around, monkeying about!!

 

It's not snobbery or superciliousness, but that the infinite parameters, of scale, pose and subject, along with the possibility that your downloaded figure, posted from South Korea might disintegrate in six months, along with my lack of knowledge of the subject despite following it pretty closely, and - while I was doing 3D CAD - with some interest, just means I'd rather concentrate on existing vintage, and modern new production.

 

"Sonta-haa! Sonta-haa!"

There are two people who do post a fair bit now, Shaun, over at Fantasy Toy Soldiers, has posted some exquisite figurines in the larger scales, which would be a joy to paint, and Russ over at Plastic Toy Soldiers has started posting the odd 'Combat' 3D prints. It's not that I won't post 3D printed figures, I will, from time to time, I have one or two, I think, but I'm not going to collect them, there aren't enough hours left in the universe to get them all!

 

♫♫♪ "We're only passenger, we wanna' get off" ♫♪♪♫

 

And, just in case you didn't get my attempts at humorous captions, here's what Tom said about this lovely little parcel from Down Under, with grateful thanks to him for this donation, and thanks to Adrian for receiving the parcel, while I'm stuck in Limbo! Tom posts some of his 3D prints on his blog;

 

https://tomertonvillage.blogspot.com/

". . . a bit of background: Often the 3D printers i've bought from will include a number of duplicates - ostensibly just to make use of the resin pool they load the printer with . . . in this bag, we have an assortment designed and printed from various places around the world.

Sontarans Designer Wayne Peters has a number of excellent free Doctor Who files on cults3d.com. I downloaded these boys, and had an Australian printer make me a 1/76 set - she kindly included these larger prints. 

 

Movie stars in pink Ebay is awash with sellers from China who have a cornucopia of 1/64 scale figures - to go with Hot Wheels type cars. Along I came, and asked if they could print in 1/76 scale. This caused enormous confusion, and led to them sending figures of all shapes and sizes.

 

Doctor Who piracies Warning: the Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy in your possession are wanted men, on the run from the law! These are indeed piracies of larger scale game pieces. I won't incriminate my source - instead, I'll quickly distract you with... 

 

Curvy ladies from Turkey, surprise surprise, what do middle-aged men want? Curvy ladies! Designer Phnix3d from Turkey obliges, with thousands of sculpts. His novelty is that he provides both a dressed and nude version of each pose. Model rail companies have done nudies before [I know, I have several of the 'naughty' Noch sets! Ed.] , but never to this quality (or ballooning imagination). The flipside is, he does a handful of male figures, who, dwarfed by their lady friends, frankly look a bit lost and embarrassed. The prints themselves have come all the way from the USA, where printer 'DoubleG Diecast' has these, and hundreds of other figures listed.

 

Planet of the apes, 2001; DoubleG also has these movie characters. As with the pink Chinese prints, I suspect the designs are scale downs from larger multi-part designs (copyright & intellectual property are not well respected concepts in the 3D printing world).

 

'Man who wants to break free', from Vietnam My model village could do with a good hoovering,Ii'll be setting Freddie loose once I've painted him.

 

. . . I've found it fascinating to keep an eye on 3d printing, asit'ss evolved from fairly naff filament types to incredible high-resolution resin machines now. Absent from this bag, I shared you the link to Smart Models UK previously; his are perhaps my favourite 3d printed model rail range, which he sells in neat little sets (alas with no duplicates), recommend . . .

 

. . . One to check out - I like both the style and the subject matter of his various figure sets: https://www.smartmodels.org/" 

 

2001 - The future was many years ago!

 

As a post scriptum, and given what I said about plastics, these came halfway-round the world in a jiffy bag, are all less than 30mm, and the only damage was a couple of bits of Sontaran, which will need glueing, along with Doctor the 7th's umbrella, Freddie's hoover and the wings of the flying Cat'sect. But Clint's cheroot and Connery's gun, survived whatever the international post can throw at a small parcel!

M is for Marx Space - Other Bits

A few other images I took while getting all these posts into some sort of sense or order, mostly from the loose stuff I had here in the sort of, last 24-months-odd acquisitions pile, there is plenty more in storage, I've always regarded all the Marx, MPC, Briatins, Timpo, Starlux, Elastoline &etc., stuff a bit 'box ticky' as there's tons of it around, plenty of collectors and loads of sites, but actually, in doing these posts, I've found either a dearth of decent Info, or gaps/conflicts in what is presented, or said, so when I do get everything together, I'll try to box-tick more of the supposedly common stuff!

 

These were already in the recent stash (rather than the collection), and they highlight one of the more interesting things I've noticed about all these Marx sets, each set has adjustments made to suit that set, which has lead to lots of variations to collect, more, I'm sure, than the few I've mentioned. Here - for instance - the tall rocket tower in gunmetal, doesn't sit flat, because it has two longer spigots in its hollow underside to local into a base-moulding that only came with some/one set/s.

 

While the yellow set here, which I assumed was a reissue, is actually a third size, to the two I've already highlighted. Also down the front you can see the triple-disc thing, now complete, along with a sort of searchlight thing, and the 'computer-table', now complete with its radar basket/salad dryer! Note also, the middle silo of the fuel-storage facility now has an extra collar at the base of the joined-pipe.

 

To which end, I shot these three, and you can see there is a 1.5/2'ish millimetre difference between the three mouldings, more than can be accounted for by shrinkage between harder and softer polymers, say, but, in fact they are all of similar density, although the gunmetal is a 'styrene, the mustard probably 'ethylene, and the lemon maybe 'propylene (and a Mexican re-issue?), however, the fact is - they are three separate tools.

 

Which does rather call into question, the whole 'mould (or 'mold') shot' shtick, some American collectors have been using to annotate their research, could we, in fact be looking at one tool list, from one factory, or one period in the company's history, or one auction?

 

We know some Marx figures (Warriors of the World and Miniature Masterpiece) could be produced in several factories (US, Hong Kong, Taiwan, 'Holland', Germany, Swansea), sometimes at the same time, and it looks like the same may be true for a lot of Marx's output, and that maybe, the tool lists are only a guide to some production, for a limited period, in one region/territory? While other, duplicate tools were authorised, or sent-out, with changes to the 'standard'?

 

A comparison between the 45 (Moonbase), 54 (Kennedy) and 70mm (Woolworths?) figures, It's not terribly clear, as I should have placed the tape-measure the other way up, so it started level with their feet, but you get the idea!

 

While I was shooting that, I shot this, the 7 humans from the 4-ich set.

 

But the white Alien was in another bag, which led to this all-Marx 'scaler' shot, with my only polyethylene 45mm, one of the Space Patrol, in the same metallic-blue as the 70mm robot. And I have another PVC-rubber crawling alien, not mucked-about with added home-paint, like the PVC sample!

 

The red figure is from the Mystery Spaeship, the yellow a re-issue 70mm, the sea-green a 4-inch original, and I added a spare 54mm silver astronaut, I also had here, there may be more of the smaller ones elsewhere in the storage.

 

The yellow 70mm was also in a separate bag, and has now joined these chaps, three reissues (Mexico, courtesy of Brian Berke) and one blue original, I think I have the whole set in blue somewhere!

 

Another one, I seem to have shot at some point, with a load of vintage stuff!

 

While Theo van der Weerden sent this to the Blog, several years ago, and again it seems to show the Mexican reissues (or are they from Marx Germany, Marx Holland, Heimo or a Charmore tool?!), in two shades of yellow and blue, with red, silver and green.

 

There were other things which seem to have missed the photoshoot, or just been lost in the first box-content's shot, a couple of the base-mouldings, again one was from the Moonbase sets. A NASA lifting body type thing, missing its missiles, in 'Marx' metallic blue, but made in polystyrene, got put to one side and not photographed, and there were other bits, so I'm sure we'll return to it all one day, not least - once I've found enough rocket sections, to make sense of all the part rockets, I've still left from the Kennedy and Space Patrol sets!

W is for What Might Have Been!

The future's bright, the futures white with orange highlights!

 

Original artwork for what was proposed as the next generation of Britains Starguards/Aliens, Star-Force/-Raiders/-System and their other 'Space' lines, within the Deetail range. I don't recognise the artist's signature, if anyone knows who he or she was, I'll add it to the post.

 

The Hexagonal 'turret' was to be a modular, plug-together construction system, like the hub-UFO's in the Swizzles Matlow candy-holder set, which would build up to ships, stations, or - as here - accessories on a set of vehicles of which this was to be the vanguard! There were both constructional/connecting tubes and plug-in weapons/equipments, proposed.

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Circus

Because I made a major purchase the day of the show, there's enough for a Circus post this year, instead of shoving them in with the civilian/sports post, and what a purchase it was, and very welcome, even though we've seen all the separate elements before. Fingers crossed they load in the right order . . . 

 

. . . and they did! Wouldn't want to re-sort these one at a time, plays havoc with the formatting! A nicely labeled Crazy Cown Circus from Frazer & Glass (F&G . . . like LB for Lik Be, just sort of works, always has!), lovely 1950's (or late 40's?) lining paper/gift wrap on the box, and similar to some Italian stuff we'll be seeing in these show-plunder posts soon.

 

How you bought your cheap ['er] plastic toys in the years immediately before I was born, loose in a box! Or singly from glass compartments in Woolworth's! A complete set, the seller admitted it's made-up to completeness (I think he has a perfect one in his collection), but after 70-odd yeas I'm not complaining, and would have made it up from my loose ones, if it was incomplete, anyway.

 

One-ring circus!

 

Always nicer when it's yours, rather than an Internet image!

 

Balancing and Tumbling Acts, I don't know what I was thinking the other day, of course you could get a single one, without any signs of glue - the A1 Clown! But here with base, unlike the baseless one we saw the other day.

 

Three in line, and note: different spots, shape, base v baseless, cone hat size &etc.

 

Juggling Acts.

 

Ringmaster is a standard clown with no top-hat?

But he does have the red trousers.

 

Equestrian Acts.

 

Seller had added the band! I have recently come-across a dog, with top hat, in the same vitreous 'styrene, which I believe may be another late addition to this set (to go with/accompany the hoop-clowns?), it's in a forthcoming post, somewhere, I think, if not, I'll dig it out and get it up here with a few links back and forth. On the subject of links, the last time we looked at a few question-marks and variants, on these, was nine years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/c-is-for-crazy-clown-circus.html

 

But the F&G Tag or Crazy Clown Circus will get all the thoughts/posts in one hit! 

Another marked Maysun set, of Crescent copies, adding confirmation to previous utterings here about them/that! With a couple of loose horse that have good paint, and one will need to be used to replace the brittle on in the bag, whose lost it's legs!

 

Charbens, a nice clean sample, with opposite colours of both clowns!

 

Late Corgi, I think, on the left and another M-Toy on the right.

Thanks this year go to, alphabetically by surname, Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Thank you all.

M is for Marx Space - Space Tanks! Alright . . . Space Plant!

Also in the Captain Space box, but actually from the Luna sets, was a trio of the tracked exploration vehicles, which one needs to colonise a dusty ball of pumice and "orange dirt!" One or two of my existing white ones have crept into other posts over the years, but here's a slightly grubby pastel-blue set!

 

The fuel/water bladders, treated as wheels, something various militaries have experimented with since before I was born, but which don't ever seem to have caught-on in general use, or commercially? The actual tractor for them (like MPC's, a rather clumsy-looking, bulky affair) is missing from the box, and only the Dozer 'tank' seems to have another, suitable towing hook.

 

Bladder parked-up and dozer engaged, dome-space is carved out of the crater-floor!

Is this a simplified version of an old Marx battery-operated floor-toy?

 

After a quick clean, which the other two also got, before I shot them!

 

This is the crane, or tow-truck/wreaker, and we can see where Giant (and to a lesser extent/greater stretch, Lik Be) got their little centrally-placed domed cabs from, for their own space tanks. But Marx has the better-sculpted running-gear, of the three fleets!

 

The Space Tank'er, a pun so good it's worth using twice! Embossed into the tank-ends, on both sides, are the same Florine, Hyrdrogen, Oxygen scripts of the stickers surviving on one set of my fuel-tank silos, I have a mind to get a few more of these, old or reissues, and 'do' something with them, paint or conversion wise?

 

All shot with the Marx exploding mountain in the background. 

E is for Eye Candy - Timpo Police Tourist Trinket

Actually a 'Seen elsewhere' item, but the two recurring titles will be interchangeable!

A simple window box with a commercially available postcard as the backdrop, and a set of the Timpo 'solid' Police figures. There appears to have originally been a smooth foil round the sides of the box, to illuminate with reflected light?