T is for There are Two Things That . . .

. . . fall out of the sky; rain and bird shit! I did say - the last time we looked at them - that I was running out of titles for the growing plethora of paratrooper posts! AND, as they keep coming-in to Small Scale World; so I have to keep posting them. I'm sure you can understand that as an ex-infantryman, it was only a matter of time before I dug-out the old rivalry! Fancy - jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft, gripping a bed-sheet . . . idiots!

Speaking of the last time we looked at them, opening the post is this image from Brian B which I've previously mentioned I'd forgotten to use, being a variation of the other Jaru cards we've looked at; dated to 2014 it's two years newer than the previous examples, despite being quite scuffed on the rack! And follows the same design we've looked at once or twice now, going back to the 1960's - at least.

And speaking of Henbrant - as we were in yesterday's 'dog-post' - these two are being carried by Henbrant as single-figure novelty/party favours. Again; common designs around at the moment (Airfix clones of the paratrooper with SMLE and the Afrika Korps officer) and looked at here at Small Scale World under a couple of brand-marks already.

The last time we saw them they were in Playwrite and Unique branding (the Playwrite being this size, the Unique slightly bigger), which is another piece of synergy (we had some yesterday!), as these . . .

. . . are by Playwrite! But the synergy doesn't end there, as Peter Evans (roving reporter for Plastic Warrior magazine) reminded me on Tuesday-last that Playwrite is the new moniker for WH Cornelius / Success (WHC) who I had just mentioned to him weren't at the Toy Fair, but they were - as Playwrite! Although I didn't see these on their stand, I did find them a few hours later in the party superstore!

Another much-used paratrooper design; with every likelihood of the rest of the para's coming out of storage before July, we will recap all the old ones with the storage ones and see them all together. And a figure-design also being used . . .

. . . by Aeromax / New World Toys in this carded example also sent to the Blog (and closing the post - like bookends!) by Mr. Berke.

This version of the sculpt has been bling'ed-up with the addition of a flashing LED and a translucent body material. He'd be more fun if he wasn't equipped with one of the new style 'net' canopies which I think are a bit naff!

Thought for the Day 27

For those who think someone else will 'sort it all out' . . .

We know what happens to those

who stay in the middle of the road -

 they get run over.

- Aneurin Bevan

D is for Dogs

I'm not particularly a 'dog person', I'm a cat person, I find dogs to be a bit simplistic, slavishly sycophantic and/or bad without the character of cats, I was fond of our Red Setter when I was a kid, but that's the thing, the brainless befriending the brainless! Nevertheless, when dogs come-in to small scale world we will show dogs, and two lots of doggie-doo came in last Tuesday, so; let's revisit dogs!

Peter Evans donated these to the Blog last Tuesday morning, and life being what it is; I then found another canine candidate later in the day!

Perfect Moments (who we have looked at recently) have marked their moniker on the package, they look a bit like the Henbrandt dog, but seem to be a different set, although painted like the Henbrandt set of wild animals (in the above-linked post), so possibly the same factory, however there are several sets of these small animals doing the rounds at the moment.

These are also smaller than most of the dogs in previously canine-themed posts, and would - with a bit of a re-paint - go well with 54mm figures; maybe better with 60 or 70mm figures?

But to argue for the other side; you may remember that both Perfect Moments and Henbrandt use the Oker cellulose-bag packaging?

As you can see they are all reasonably recognisable breeds, under the poor, glossy paint-job and even the poodle is bearable (I hate poodles with a vengeance - horrid little cotton-balls of flouncy ponce!).

Then (Tuesday) on the way 'back to the sticks' I popped-off the travel network at Clapham Junction to check the cheapie-discount stores I remembered being there in the 1990's, and while they had all gone (as I suspected) there was a larger 3-unit party-shop roughly where a couple of them used to be sited, and I managed to get a small bag of novelty stuff, which we will be looking at over the coming days.

Among those novelties were these capsules, none of which had any clue as to their contents, and after I'd opened a few I realised they all had the same thing (which I have in storage - green with a blue collar . . .maybe, red collar?), so I grabbed one, not knowing I already had the Perfect Moments dogs in the bag I was carrying!

Marajà are one of several brands connected to the capsule toy company LZ - Zàini from Italy, which is how I came by the first one, about 15/20 years ago! I think he/it was in a hollow-chocolate bear with a Christmas style foil wrapper, but clearly someone (there's no branding on the toy) had a warehouse stillage full of the things, and here they are, many years later, the other end of Europe, being sold at 20p a-pop, no chocolate!

So; thanks to Peter's gift, a bit of synergy and a global glut in polymer novelties, and we have a dog-post . . . and we all know what dogs do to their posts - another reason to distrust them!

P is for Papo - 4 - Pirates

Papo also have a nice range of pirates and while the larger ones will have limited appeal to followers of the blog (excepting that more and more people are coming-round to the scale creep through 58, 65 and eventually to 70mm); they are also doing a 'toob' of the 55% / 56mm'ish Mini⁺ range as well.

Full size (70mm) pirate'tess on a raft with the toob in the background; I can see a lot of applications for the raft with other figures and other scales, not least as a replacement for the hard to find Atlantic Odysseus' raft of the Argonauts!

This is the old packaging so they are called *Papo Mini, but are now listed as Mini⁺ as opposed to the smaller 'Mini' range (only knights and fantasy).

Pirate ship play set with a wooden vessel, I will try to track-down a decent sample of these before Talk Like a Pirate Day, but for now, these give an idea of the sample.

The 'budget' (read cheaper) play-set in slot-together, compressed cardboard depicts a tied-up vessel which has been turned into a sort of pirate club-house, but as the first rule of pirate club-house is that no one talks about pirate club-house; I can't say anything else about the ship/pub/fort you see before you!

Another view of the toob, sadly (and probably due to the size) they didn't have the smaller figures on display at the toy fair, so they couldn't be photographed, but that just leaves us with an excuse to return to them again one day!

The Mini⁺ Pirates in the catalogue, a lot of the images in the catalogue are reversed from real-life, which makes trying to ID them a tad problematical. The shark-man and lobster-man are - along with the skeletal fighter - more than a slight nod to Hollywood's Pirates of the Caribbean, and there are more marine-monster men in the 70mm series, with turtleman, octopussman &etc.

Whoever came up with the fat, topless pirate carrying a cannon like a bazooka (mirrored in the standard-sized range, where he's also heavily tattooed) deserves a long-weekend and a bonus!

There's more to come on the fantasy and knights/medieval ranges, but I think we can look at that in a while, we've had a good dose of Papo and there's other stuff in the queue!

Though for the Day 26

More people go to art galleries and the theatre every week that go to sports fixtures . . .

Art is of import -

Many creatures can do conventional labours; 

few can fashion raw-material into beauty

- Piers Anthony

'Juxtaposition'

P is for Papo - 3 - Animals

Photo's aren't so good, so I'll just chuck them up here as a guide to what's available, the circus trainer is the standard 70mm range, while the parrot is out scale, but many of the animals are - while there is a range of a half-dozen or so 'Giant Figure' animals, for infants, but within the animal range there is a large variation with small animals (birds, rodents, lizards etc..) being sculpted larger and large animals (humpbacked whale) being sculpted much smaller.

New for 2018 in the flesh.

All the animals and civilian additions for the 2018 season as seen in the catalogue (there's three more new dinosaurs and a caveman missing), the arctic native is lovely and if they weren’t so big, they'd be more useful for 'old school' figure collectors, although that accessory set of tools may be of use to diorama modellers in 1:35th/32nd scales?

Wild Animal Kingdom shop display-stand

Marine Life shop display-stand.

Both the above are pre-cut card dispensers for the retailer to fold and slot together, each coming with a compliment of animals to match the illustrated frontage-cards, there are also more substantial particle-board stands with  metal fittings display in various sizes, and a revolving, wire-hook tree for some individual animal models - available as key-rings.

P is for Papo - 2 - Toy Fair Video

I shot this at the Toy Fair and I'm afraid it's fighting both my inabilities to take vaguely professional-looking video in a hurry, which leaves some of it jerky or fuzzy (or both!) and the resonance of the strip-lights being used on the display stands, which leads to flickering, but there's some stuff in focus or well-lit, or even both!

The forts are wooden and in the catalogue, as are most of the pirate ships; however there are also heavy pressed-card 'play-sets' at a lower price bracket. Whether wood or compressed-card, they mostly seem to be a joint venture with another company, or sub-branding called Isiploy or Isiplay?

Thought for the Day 25

And sadly; education's losing . . .

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe

- H. G. Wells

P is for Papo - 1 - Brain's Met' Visits

Mr Berke, friend of this parish, sent us some of these shots a month or so ago, after he had popped-up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY (one of the benefits of living in/near a major city is that you can 'pop-up' to world beating venues!); they following the little lot I found before Christmas, I - wondering what size the monochrome ones were -  asked him for more details and he kindly went back and got the answers, which came with more images last week.

Since when there have been a few developments, and as a result we're going to have a Papo mini-season, but we'll start with the 'follow-up'.

These are the same size (the 'Mini' line) as the set we looked at the other day, but in a monochrome finish of silver and gold, there is a set of knights as well, but Brian shot the fantasy set, as much to illustrate the weird juxtaposition of selling fantasy 'things' in a museum dedicated to actual, antiquey, 'things'! And yes I made up the word Antiquey! Turns-out I didn't; Spellchecker just didn't like it!

As we will see later in the mini-season, there are painted versions of this set, and some of the poses are based on figures from the larger sized range, such as the skeletal warrior and the Ork-like, Schreckanator!

A close-up of the header-card showing clearly the design features of the figure most closely answering to the title 'Ring Wraith'!

When Brian B returned to the Met' he managed to pose the set next to a full sized one for direct comparison. Papo themselves (I was chatting to them on Tuesday - as you do!) don't give them a scale or a specific size, describing the new ranges as 55% (Mini⁺ 56mm) and 45% (Mini 40mm) of the size of the 'standard' (70mm) range.

These are the 45% figures (as were the ones the other day) and they weigh-in at about 40mm.

Another full-size one on display in the Metropolitan, the heraldic charge in the background (of a Griffon?) makes him look a bit like a wing'ed avenging angel!

More fantasy in the museum! There are several nice dragons on-sale alongside the skeletons, Orks and co., and while I guess anything which might encourage the kids back for more has to be applauded, one does wonder why the shelf-space isn't just given-over to more [factual] knights!

I'm not sure if these are both Papo, the silver one was available from Papo last year in a brown paint-scheme, is also available in Gold, and a new version for 2018 is in a green scheme, I can't find the blue one at all, so it might be worth picking-up either of them if you're passing the Metropolitan and happen to be into large dragons!

The real McCoy - being actual, factual knights! They look a bit familiar, and while one suit of armour looks pretty similar to another suit of armour (of the same period) I'm wondering if these may have been used as the basis for some of the Aurora plastic kits or the Marx polyethylene large-scale figures?

Thanks to Brain for the shots and there's more Papo on the way.

Thought for the Day 24

For all those who have! . . .

Every man thinks meanly of himself 

for never having been a soldier

- Dr. Johnson

News, Views Etc . . . Breaking - "A load of old rubbish - but is is art?"

Received from Tom Clague in Oz earlier today . . . brilliant!

Hi Hugh,
There is an art exhibition on here in Sydney I thought you might like. It's called 'Jurassic Plastic', and its basically dinosaurs made from thrown out toys!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulperc33jo2oadw/jurassicplastic.jpg?dl=0&raw=1

Closer in on the dinosaurs face, you get to see how many bits they're made from:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/btwicgwub6or95u/head.jpg?dl=0&raw=1

There are about a dozen dinosaurs roaming the floor. The landscapes across the floor were amazing too, colour graded into various toy types:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gx6t9rtemkq7qy1/landscape.jpg?dl=0&raw=1

No small scale stuff unfortunately (i found one Matchbox US infantry clone in amongst things), but some Japanese anime oddities. I wondered if anyone can id this bloke, about 1/50th scale:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v52ces9g2b90oo0/mysteryfigure.jpg?dl=0&raw=1

Hope you like it, exhibit is Jurassic Plastic by artist Hiroshi Fuji, if folks want to Google more.
Cheers,
Tom

=================================

Sydney Festival Page
Tom's Blog

Thanks Tom, we love this stuff! 

Thought for the Day 23

For those who don't believe the hype . . .

Where there is light, there is always darkness.

And it is because the darkness runs so deep

that the lights burn so bright
 

- Clive James

(on the city)

S is for Sort-of-Unknown - Game Playing Piece

Last time we look at the Warthog for a while - promise! I know what this is, it's a game playing piece, I know it's on one of the dongles somewhere, but I can't find it . . . can you?

Every 'beach-buggy' needs a hippy! Pudding-bowl/Page-boy hair-cut, and possibly a cartoon-related game, I seem to recall it has a 'get your team home' mechanism, with four each of these figures in four colours, but I may be wrong, and I also suspect it was aimed at the under-12's, but then so was most of the stuff we collect!

He reminds me of the weird little medic/doctor in the Albatore strip sets from Atlantic! Can you jog my memory of the real source?

Geoff eMailed me with the answer - Parker  Games Take the Brain, three poses but only two colours so not quite as I had remembered it!

S is for Sort-of-Unknown - Rubber Knight

I had a lazy weekend (still recovering from that pesky flu!) and there's nothing got ready for tomorrow and not much for today, and I'm actually in London all day today, so I'm leaving you with a couple of puzzles you may be able to help with, if you've got a bit of time on your hands; this is the first!

A nice model of a knight, similar to Soma, or Papo minis,  and coming-in at a straight 50mm, he's a very soft PVC type polymer and he is marked . . .

. . . "Safan Knight with Halberd China". Now it's definitely Safan, not Saban (who licence Power Rangers stuff to Galoob and other Anime/Manga characters to the Zaini/LZ capsule-egg people), but I have nothing in the files, I have really tried to make it Safari but even with a jeweller's loupe it's not '...ri' it's an 'n', so; your mission - if you chose to accept it - is can you find out anything else about Safan?

Another later!

Thought for the Day 22

For those who demand the right to say whatever they like . . .

People demand freedom of speech 

to make up for the freedom of thought 

which they avoid 

- S. A. Kierkegaard