W is for World Dolls/World Dancers Part 2

Actually the first subjects are called 'Dolls of Our World' but like the 'Dancers/Dancers of the World/World Dancers' they are known as World Dolls. Clearly meant to be touristy keepsakes, sold individually from tourist attractions and gift shop/kiosks, they would - most likely - have been marketed by salesmen and through wholesalers catalogues.

The original figures as sold by the Commonwealth Plastics Corp., Leominster, Massachusetts, USA, in a phenolic resinous flesh-coloured factory painted plastic (top row) from - I would guess (from the nature of the rest of the contents of the collection they came with) - 1930's-1950's. Later production was unpainted (bottom row, far left 1950's?) and finally the figures were made available in multi-coloured polystyrene (rest of bottom row 1960/70's?) with thinner bases.

Commonwealth seem to have been owned/operated by/as part of the Aero Plastics group by the Catalucci family, who's decendents have recently opened another plastics factory in Leominster called Phoenix Inc.! Research however leads to an apparently unrelated high-tech plastics company with a near-dead website called Phoenix Co.Inc. (rather than plain 'Inc.'!!) in Texas!!?!

These are copies of the Commonwealth Plastics, almost certainly from Hong Kong and came either in the ivorene plastic of European giveaways (top row) or in various shades of off white (bottom row), pantographed from the originals they are slightly smaller.

Here we have some World Dancer figures, as well-moulded as the Commonwealth ones, but by a company called Van Brode, operating out of Clinton, also in Massachusetts (so - given the size of the States - some clear connection there!). The strange lozenges are missing from the base underside which is now smooth, and they are clearly marked, most on the rear edge, but the West Indies guy has a larger marking on the underside, so at least two issues?

The connection hinted at above is not quite as clear as say - they bought the Commonwealth moulds. First; the Van Brode figurines are in pairs (like the Britains 54mm/1:32 Ethnic Dancers) with one being the musician the other the dancer. Second; the Van Brode figures are reversed (where similar to) Commonwealth poses. Footnote; Van Brode manufactured C-Rations during WWII and these figures were almost certainly a premium given away in the breakfast cereals from their mill in the (late?) 1950's. [Kent Sprecher (toysoldierHQ - link above) now has them actually putting the figures in ration packs for the Korean War - Given the number of Asian looking figures in a full set and speaking as an ex-soldier; I can think of nothing worse, while freezing in your fire-base on the Imjim River, than finding a Koren looking figurine in your Chili ConcarneMRE!!]

Here are more modern copies of both manufacturers products in 30 and 20mm. Top row; Four hard polystyrene Commonwealth poses, two with a chrome/silver over-spray, an unpainted and a basic factory paint-job. Bottom row; a soft polythene Commonwealth, probably from a Christmas Cracker, a vinyl factory painted doll I'm told is a Portuguese food premium and a baseless copy of the Van Brode Hawaiian reversed version.


Size Comparison shot of some of the above, top left to bottom right they are; Commonwealth; Early, late and 20mm copy, Commonwealth; Early, mid, late, 20mm copy and lastly; a copy of Van Brode's reversed Hawaiian dancer.

Last Night's Visitors

So who was in the garden last night? Easy;

Next door's cat.

A fox, who took the fat-ball off the bird-table.

A pigeon who took a look at the raided bird-table!

A cock-pheasant who let everyone know he was around in the early hours, they're almost as bad as peacocks at this time of year!

W is for Whiteout

Sorry, just couldn't resist a quick photograph session outside this morning. Shot over the back hedge with the local fields in the background.

Esci 'Smoke Units'

Esci Sd.Kfz.250

Unknown resin BA10 (I think?) and Fujimi KV

Sepia'ed in Picasa!

B is for Bits and Bobs

The recent snow and stuff has slowed work in the garden, pruning has come to a complete standstill and we have to be careful were we walk so as not to tread on the snowdrops and other bulbs as they come up through it. So a few miscellaneous shots taken over the last few days.

This was the by-product of my 5-week bonfire, the orangey-pinkish stuff is the soil that went through the fire with huge forkfuls of wet leaves and the stuff I raked out from under the shrubs and boarders. It makes the ash 'heavy' so that it doesn't blow away and can be spread more easily on the land. So far, twenty barrow-loads have come out of this heap and have gone on all the roses, the veg garden and the tomato trench in the greenhouse. The raspberries have also had a bucket load or two, as have the currants.

The Tomato trench has also been half-filled with home made compost, after which it was topped-up with new soil, taken from a path-straitening project elsewhere on the grounds. Here you see last years compost on the left and this years ready to be covered on the right. I have put a lot of peaty leaf-mould on top to speed up the process and prevent a dry layer of half-composted stuff needing removing from the top when we uncover it next autumn. There is no Laylandii, Yew or similar fir/evergreen cuttings as they take forever to rot and tend to puddle an oily slime like Amoco-crude! Not many shrub cuttings get in either, but lots of grass mowing's, moss and weeds, shrub-bed raking and the scrapings from the kitchens. No meat or fish, no bread (only because it all goes on the bird-tables) and no fat (same reason), finally a couple of layers of old carpet are thrown on, fur side down, and the whole left to sweat through the year.

A couple of trees I photographed up on the Ridgeway path above Wantage the other day, it was bitterly cold, and we found a monument to the 'Barron Wantage' who seem to have got a VC in the Crimean war, but having been without a computer for a week I haven't managed to look him up on Google yet!

The first bunch of Snowdrops to poke up, taken a couple of weeks ago, we now have loads of them but they are all under snow at the moment.

And the Lord sayeth unto you; "Yey, thou art a gullible fool"

This is the little 'affirmation' sayings booklet that helps a 'born-again' Christian get through not a day but two whole months! Ahh...bless. Of course - to obtain it - money had to change hands on the steps of the temple...

It contains little sayings from the elders of the religion, bible quotes, modern language edits of the parables, dates in the ecumenical calender, that sort of thing, and it really helped some of them get through January and February of 2009...Great!

But what's this? It's been "...previously published 1996"? So the sayings from the little-baby-jesus that helped them through '96 are good for '09? This is no better than the Horoscopes in the tabloid rags.

These people simply aren't Homo Sapiens, they are Homo Almostsapiens, able to conform to the model of a human being while having less intelligence than a hungry squirrel (or even just a greedy squirrel!), after all they still believe in a Pan-dimensional Mega-being! And the people who preach to them, who sell them these booklets at the coffee mornings - charlatans!

One hopes that Selwyn Hughes and Mick Brook come to a sticky end...

W is for Weston

I have a suspicion these date from the late 1950's or early 1960's. They are factory painted metal and would have been competing with the Comet/Authenticast stuff. I think they are still in Walther's, but as unpainted castings, however, my Walther's box is still under a pile of Architecture and AFV boxes, so I can't check yet!!

If it wasn't for the very different code numbers on the back, this group look as if they go together, and as it is, certainly tell a little story; The guy on the left is off to play a few hands of late-night poker in the drawing-room car (he has those sleeve covers on, whatever they're for?) while his missus has been caught by the waiting staff with her PJ's on the floor and not a lot else to cover her modesty!!

The code on the rear of the pack. I do have some similar figures by Comet and another early US manufacturer, but - you guessed it - they're missing! When I find them I'll post them and cross reference with this entry.

W is for Wiking

Produced at about the same time as the Lego figures and the first appearance of Jouef's rather crude effort, these were at the budget end of the model railway figure market.

Coming in little strips of 4/6 items (depending on the size), you were to brake-off the figures when you got them home. Notice the man carrying a sack in the packet on the far right, he was pirated by EKO along with a few others.

A few of the vehicles by Wiking (pronounced "Viking") also include figures, and here we see the VW Beetle with two passengers and a Fork-lift operator. When collecting, certain items are always going to collect a premium, as more than one group collects it, both 'Bugs' and construction equipment have a second set of collectors and - with Wiking - you are fighting specific Wiking collectors as well!


Close-up of a complete strip, this is the 'standard' strip of 5 items, in this case a family group.

Footnote; some early publicity material and catalogues meant for the US market actually spell it 'Viking' as the Americans couldn't get used to the W/v differential! These were shipped to the US quite early and in some quantity, where they went head-to-head with the heavy-metal products of Comet/Authenticast - amoung others - for the 'Railroad' market.

W is for Willie

Not a lot needs saying here, there are better metal blogs around than I could create (check some of the links at right), if not there, it's all in Garrat, Jones and co.

30mm Colonials from the fair hand of Edward Suren.

First up; Boar Commando - I think?

British army line-infantry from the Sepoy rebellion period?

Zulu Warrior

If anybody could furnish me with the correct code numbers for these I would be most grateful.

W is for Wagons

Also missing back when I did 'H' (or was it 'J', I think I may have done the horse under Jordan ?), was the wagons by the same company, I knew I had a couple, and I knew I'd seen them in one of the moves, but...well, they've turned up so lets have a look at them;

The boxes, next to the horse I covered whenever....to look at them you'd think they were real back-street, after-market lead blobs from the 1970's, but inside the very nondescript exterior lie wonders to behold;

Two sprues of very well moulded, very fine work, one being the main body parts, the other being chassis and other bits in another colour, plus long pins to be cut to length for axles. These are closer to 1:87th than 1:76/2 but in a Wild West diorama would blend beautifully into a scene.

Also the instruction sheet is very comprehensive, with lots of drawings, a long description and detail sketches. If I ever get doubles of these I WILL make them up, no matter how old or rare they are!

W is for Wireless!

Back when I covered the Sd.Kfz.251 Half-tracks I mentioned that I had built a 251/3 IV with added communication equipment a few years ago but couldn't find it! Well, it's turned up, a little the worse for wear.

It was - to be precise - in pieces, I'd dropped it during the move and just thrown everything I could find among the boxes (on a patterned carpet) into a tub. The Notek light is a permanent casualty and will have to be replaced when I find the spares cabinet!

Although - like most of my models - a bit amateur/inaccurate, it was in it's day one of my favourites, as it was the first time I used the rub-down lettering method for the markings, with a yellow undercoat, it was also a major triumph at the time to get the long pneumatic pole-aerial to look right...this was attempt No.3 I think! It still isn't very good by the standards of competition entries today, as it needs to be fatter at the base and get smaller in stages, each stage having a clamp and the whole steadied by two high and two lower guy-ropes. But it did what I wanted it to do and that was change the look of the parent vehicle somewhat!

Radio equipment was all scratch built from photographs and again has been superseded by much better photo-etched stuff, the crew were the driver and officer from the Airfix Sd.Kfz.222 and a (Fujimi?) tank commander.

The crows foot aerial on top of the pole, for years it had a four-way 'foot' made from fuse-wire, tonight it got a hasty five-way (which I think is correct?) using paintbrush bristles and a black marker, although it went semi-transparent when the flash hit it...you win some, you lose some!!

Whoops!

No not snow! I had the blue screen of death last week, she's up and running again and normal service should be resumed tomorrow!

Today potted-out Broad Bean and Sunflower seens, prepared pots for Tomato seeds (from last years tomatoes) and sorted the greenhouse and tool shed, and got snowed-on a lot!

E is for Effing Microsoft

I had the blue screen of death last week, she's up and running again and normal service should be resumed tomorrow!

Frivolous Barack?

Barack Obama's first few days in office have been accompanied by some snide articles or radio pieces about the number of parties he attended after his inauguration, his trip round Air Force One and so on.

Well no one can seriously deny him the right to attend the parties held in HIS honour, by the people who not only funded his victory, but who will be needed to support, lobby for and - maybe - fund his policies.

Likewise, If I was reminded by one of my staffers that I had a big sky-blue Boeing 747 with built-in bath, bed, 'phones and Office, I'd want to take a look! Does this merit, not just the column inches it's received, but the tone?

No it's envy, pure and simple. Give the guy a chance, when you start a new job, you get a week or so to find your feet and sus things out, it just so happens he found his feet walking round a 'planes carpet!

F is for Frozen Landscape

These shots were taken round the garden during the recent cold snap, we woke up one morning to find that freezing fog in the night had turned the universe (or our particular corner of it) as white as if it had been sprayed.

The wonderful Cedar of Lebanon, the photograph doesn't do justice to the majesty of it all dressed in white, with the first tips of Crocus and Daffodil poking up under the canopy. We have a real problem with squirrels digging them up so I planted some new ones the other day round one end of the bench.

The Holly down the main drive, it had been given a halo of ice on every leaf. Pruning and cutting back in this sort of weather has to take a bit of a back-seat, as you can't damage or kill the most hardy of shrubs without meaning to, although we did take out 80% of the leaf and 50% of the wood from a Laurel the other day, and gave two others a bit of a kicking!

Winter blossom with a frosting of Ice, the Roses looked really lovely with each spine or thorn having its own icy overcoat.

V is for Vero

This is one of several examples of Model Railway stuff I have from behind the Iron Curtain, Vero seem to have been an East German concern, and while I first thought it would be a copy of Wiad or Faller or somebody like them, it seemed to be a quite unique design when I got it home. Dual language instructions in German and Russian were the pointers to it being from the 'wrong' side of the wire. Internal blackout sheet for electric lighting, this follows the practice of Kibri, Faller and co. in the West, although without all the curtains, screens and blinds that come on a separate sheet, for daytime displays. Majority of parts laid out, the three little paper bags contain two types of scatter material and all the small parts. The green 'propeller shaft' bottom left, is the sprue. Loosely assembled, in total contrast to most of the western manufacturers; there are no locating channels, stud-and-holes or anything, so the modeller would have to assemble the whole building 'by eye'. However there is the same attempt at a self-coloured kit we had over here - Airfix being the notable exception!