A is for And so, to Reading!

While I'm playing catch-up with the big shows (after PW, there's another Sandown to cover), there have been other incomings, with both my own and Peter's car-booty to come, various new-production results of shopping trips, and this, a quick pop-over to the teeming metropolis of Reading in April, for the BMSS's annual show, where I found a tub of Circus awaiting me, courtesy of Adrian little, some interesting stuff on Steve Vicker's table, and a few other bits.

 

Another sample of wooden ceremonials, probably from Germany, but not necessarily, these things are pretty universal, and the red/blue of Danish guards is also the standard paint-job, a bit damaged, but that too, is par for the course, with wooden toys this small.

 

Another of the Dunbee-Combex era, Marx Disney figures in PVC.

The Britains Lilliput OO 'Trooscale' Centurion, compared with the Airfix 'readymade', bottom-right, a nice find and cheap because it has a few paint-chips, in the die-cast world things are either mint, and pricey, or gash! It's clean-enough for me.

 

On Steve's table were a bunch of Athena ceremonials, and I grabbed one of each, three sentry/guard duty types and eight bandsmen, there was a 14th but he was damaged, and the cymbalist only has one cymbal, but as a catch-up sample, they'll do!

 

A - probably commercial - BR Moulding behind, and a chap in front I don't entirely know, he looks familiar, in a sort of Cherilea fashion, but is too small for them, can't be either of the Charbens ones (oval or round bases), so Hilco from hollow-cast? He's soft 'ethylene, against the BR's hard 'styrene.

 

East German at the front? Reamsa reissue of a Mountie, probably from Marksmen, Gulliver copy of Atlantic's Apache hunter, a Poplar-Tudor Rose (green) and Crescent hollow-cast copy in yellow at the back.

 

The hard plastic chap in white is a ceremonial from the Principality of Monaco I think, but probably a French-made figure (there was a plastic maker in Monaco, but they made Britains and Crescent copies!), while the other two are Spanish, Reamsa 1st version, I think.

 

Some unpainted Britains Deetail ACW, also on Steve's table, someone recently posted the bugler, in similar nakedness on the Friends who like Plastic Warrior Faceplant group, you do find them from time to time, usually old out-painters stock, filtering their way to market as sheds and cupboards are sorted-out!

 

While Adrian's tub of Circus (his third in two years) was very useful, none of the rarer mouldings, but something more useful, confirmation!

 

The third image is sadly fuzzy, and I only realised when I edited this, last night, so there’s no time to reshoot it, but a very useful sample for showing three tool-cavities, with long, thin left foot (shorter figure), rounder foot and short foot, and with the bases being one Maysun, one 'Hong Hong' and one blank, confirms that most of these Crescent copies are the same Marty-Maysun--M Toy production,

 

For years, I've kept these in two or three lots, due to obvious differences, especially among the standing-tub markings of the Elephant and the Lion's box. But getting these three together, the same quality, plastic colour and paint, means they can all be unified now, and I can thin them out, to a better 'overall' sample.

 

One Crescent original among them, the right-hand elephant, with the beach-balls in two colours, a very useful addition to the whole sample.

 

While a couple of Corgi's Cinderella Coach horses w=also work for circus animals, the jockey is a Hong Kong copy of Britains jumper, and the Charbens clown has been repainted! Many thanks to Adrian for the freebies!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Speedwell Medievals

A trio of Robin Hoods, including a rather nice heat-conversion, a pair of Little Johns and two of the Sheriffs men, or eight, but you know what I mean, see elsewhere a while ago, not much one can add!

 

That's it, that's them, enjoy!

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!