C is for Cone'ucopia - 2 of 2

This is still out there, I've seen it quite often in petrol stations (service stations), and some of the smaller convenience stores, or at least those which carry stock from BJ Toys, such as the Premier store in Pirbright, which seems to have replaced the NAAFI, and from which I got mine, at about the same time Peter Evans also found them, and mentioned them to me.

 

BJ Toys; blue cone is for blokey kids, pink is for less-blokey kids! I got a blue one!

 

A real cornucopia!

 

Clockwise from top-left; Rocky keyring and collector/backing card; sports themed puzzle and colouring book; a self inflating light-stick (read 'lightsabre'), which I haven't inflated yet; a multi-hole bubble-wand and bottle of bubble liquid; three packs of fizzy candies; a Dino' mini-set, which contains stuff we've seen in BJ carded sets here at Small Scale World; and, finally, a Letrabot blind bag.

 

The dinosaur, comes with a ridiculously over-sized egg, which is more chicken than dinosaur, so clearly the egg came first! And a new take on the current palm-tree design, in that it's a single moulding, with bi-colouring, dwelt-on before, here.

 

I see a lot of this stuff in the fish departments of pet stores or garden centres, even at The Range, and I suspect that industry might have had a hand, along with the fake flower people, in the multi-colour shot techniques becoming so common now.

 

Rather aptly, I got the letter H, and it's a simplistic transformer 'bot'.

 

Sub-branded Planet White, which may be a wave-indicator (?), the Letrabots (or Letr-A-Bots) are from an Italian outfit called Ciciboom Srl., and Letranimal, Kartbots, Numberbots (with symbols) and Letrazoo also exist!

The cones retail at £4.99, and with the equivalent of three rack-toys, and several other novelties, I think they are worth the money, for kids that is; this sample will be enough for me! Remember, sometimes we buy this stuff so you don't have to, otherwise we'd probably be desperately scraping flying saucer pictures off of that evilBay!

N is for Nearly the Nativity!

It's the 20th! I don't know where that month went in such a hurry, but it did! I haven't shot any Nativity sets this year, nor have we had a chance to clear any of the unused stuff from last year, or the years before, all sitting down the bottom of Picasa at 1968! But, to prevent anything else joining them, there are still a few bits from this year to get up here, and this is Brian's Nativity finds in a store in New York.

 

The Archangel Gabriel getting busy with Satan! Two sizes.

 

The family shot, then they were off to Egypt as asylum-seeking refugee migrants!

 

OK, got it!

 

But did they pay?

 

13 pieces is a fair count, and beautifully presented in gold silk!

 

Quite a few styles, from the super realistic miniatures through to the mawkishly sentimental cartoonish baby-faced stuff, but nice that you can 'pick and mix' off the shelf, or slowly add items, year to year. Mostly resin, but it looks like some may be china? Many thanks to Brian as always, for sending these into the Blog.

T is for TAG

Which may or may not have stood for something longer like 'Toby and Garry' or 'Turner and Griswold' but nobody seems to know? The general acceptance being that it just refers to the tags they came with, but I feel it may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum, especially with the capitalisation of the TAG, on the tags!?

 

RAF Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps, Infantry (with a camouflaged beret!), and the Parachute Regiment, done in what is almost a Belgian (Durso) style, the same sculpt being used with different paint on the berets to represent several of the main protagonists of the British Army in the then, just finished, World War.

 

The reverse of the tags have a small thumbnail sketch or written vignette of the unit/figure represented. Their post-war issue being revealed in the text - 'served', and 'earned', in the past tense.

 

 

 

The officer corps were also represented, and here we see a standard Army officer, and RAF 'wallah' and their corresponding tags, the arms of the flyboy are uncomfortably wrong, in that the left arm should be slightly forwards, in time with the right foot.

Our Allies were also modelled, and here we see two GI's, and it's nice to see them in both 'white' and African American skin-tone paint-jobs, because we appreciated everyone who helped. Although without the tags, the black soldier may have been representing Brazil, who sent troops to the Italian campaign?

 

This seems to be a better rendition of an Infantry beret, but again, might be representing Canada or something like that, I don't know how large the series was, or how many nations were represented?
 

A comparison between the two shows a marked size discrepancy between the different mouldings, and is that a fledgling (at the time) UN flash on the GI's shoulder, maybe he's the Brazilian?

Ceremonial uniforms of both our own and allied armies, with a 'Highlander' (no specific regiment given) and a Cossack. I have one in another colourway somewhere (seen on the blog years ago) and have seen others, there may be as may as four different treatments of the decoration on this sculpt, even six - black, red, and white coats, with reverse versions?

 

A difficult subject, the Cossacks, as they fought in large numbers on both sides, mounted troops being very useful in winter snow, and for covering distance over the steppes in summer. Those fighting with us, were of Russian descent, those fighting agin' us, were fighting for Ukrainian Independence rather than in support of Nazism, while atrocities were committed by both sides.

 

The Women's Royal Army Corps weren't forgotten . . .

 

. . . and both the Monkeys and Snowdrops got a look-in!

Quality of finish varies, my Cossack is so tough or dense, and so smooth I thought he was resin, for years! While the figure on the left is a much rougher moulding, almost as lumpy as the worst examples of wood/linseed composition figures.

 

The first four again, showing the berets a bit better, the Para's is far too dark, as well as the odd Infantryman's two-tone headdress! Also showing the identical obverse of the tags through this sample, I don't know how many series' there were, or even if they ever got round to a Series 2?

 

     

W is for ♫♪♪♫ Well, There's a Small Boat, Made of China . . .

. . . and a silver one, covered in gold! ♪♫♪♪

 

It's chapter three of the 'Brown Water Navy'

 

Chapter one - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/b-is-for-brown-water-navy.html

Chapter two - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/04/g-is-for-growing-brown-water-navy.html

These are very different from the previous (and each other), yet strangely similar, the smaller being the sort of chopstick-rest, a smart Chinese restaurant will let you take, at the end of the meal, as a keepsake of your dining experience, and people collect the rest in their own right. A simple glazed porcelain, in 'Blue & White', it's similar to the boats in chapter one!

 

While the other was inherited from my late Mother, and follows a common pattern, so, while very-much a handmade and hand-finished item, certain of the components were 'mass-produced', along the lines of a factory process, but at a craft level where things changed from time to time, or varied between batches/regions. The best bit it the crewman, who's about 25mm!

 

There's also a lovely cloisonné turtle on the deck, I'm not sure if it is a mate of the pilot, or supper! I guess it depends whether it is on its back, or the right way up! It doesn't actually belong to the model, of course, and the stand is carved wood, I wondered at the crudity of the carving, but suspect a deliberate thought, to represent rough seas?

 

This is referred to as silver nef, but is very much the late 19th/20th century substitute for the real deal, a growing middle-class with disposable income wants what the truly-wealthy have, but can't afford a large three-mastered galleon on wheels, so settles for something like this, or a filigree gondola!

 

And, also, very much a tourist piece, but up-market tourism, of the colonial administrators returning to the motherland at the end of a posting, type thing, or presented to someone upon retirement, or posting-out, you get the idea. And it needs a really good clean, as it is silver and silver-gilt under all that oxidation and dust!

 

The basket for the fish, being protected by the 'top hat' outer, has kept the shine of the gilding a little better than the rest of the vessel! You can also see from this, that the ropes and ties on the vessel seem to be twisted copper wire, some of which hasn't taken the plating terribly well?

 

The Chinese Junk style sail on mine is a pressed pattern of woven palm-fronds, while a couple of similar raft-vessels I've found on the Internet have actual interwoven, fine silver ribbon, which must have taken someone, probably a kid, hours and hours!

 

Both vessels are of simpler construction (apart from the intricate sails), and have a lower freeboard than mine, but they are also 12-trunks across the deck, to the nine bamboo poles of mine. Although both seem to be incomplete, so it's not a fair comparison, and I only use them to confirm their ubiquity, out there, rather than work out the who's, why's and what for's, of things which would have been made in different places, maybe decades apart.

 

♪♪♫♫ Everywhere you go'ho'hoh, always take a navy, take a navy, with yoooou! ♪♪♫♪

I is for I read Comics!

I know, but we're all allowed a guilty pleasure! I mentioned the other day, I visited Forbidden Planet on my last visit to London, and while it always depresses me (I remember when it was 90% second-hand comics out of corrugated-card cartons, off bare floorboards round the corner, now, it's all shiny Kidult crap! But I managed to find three tomes this time - the last few visits I've left empty-handed!

 

I love these, I got the first volume of Legends of the Guard, as a Library sell-off a few years ago, so I was very pleased to find the second, on a yellow ticket (all three of these were in the 'bargain bin' shelves). To describe this is not easy, but if you imagine an illustrated Silmarillion, but written by mice, about an ancient mouse civilisation, you'd get the picture . . . s!

 

The original/core series (set as if in the present day of the mice) are written by David Petersen, but the various stories in Legends, are from the past of the mouse lands, and are told as tall-tales 'down the pub', with different artists invited to draw, 'ink' and/or letter the stories, which are just absolutely charming, and unlike a lot of my graphic-novel library, are as suitable for kid's as they are appealing to adult readers. If you haven't discovered the Mouse Guard yet, I recommend you do so!

 

This was a bit of fun, as it's a modern 'treatment' of the old movie, using all-new artwork based on the film, rather than the original cells or screen-shots, it was dirt cheap and took about 20 minutes to read from end to end, but the whole point of this kind of thing is the visuals, and they are sumptuous in this, capturing the original, perfectly. "Blue Meanies, Blue Meanies!"

 

I don't know if you are familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation, but this has a close connection to the previous, in that the Den segment of the 1981 Canadian animated movie Heavy Metal, was directed by a Yellow Submarine veteran, Jack Stokes!

 

I first encountered Den in Heavy Metal, the magazine, not the movie, and it's best to say the visuals beat a very confusing series of story arcs, and it helps if you read each story as a stand alone with some similarities to that which has come before, Den being the late Corben's 'Star Wars', going back to his early years, but with less control on timelines or character development!

 

This is the third in a series of [relatively] new collections of all the Den'i'verse, and I'm now looking for the others!