O is for Original Generic Primogenitor?

This is a bit of fun, bi-lingual (English-Spanish (or Italian)) but with no branding or clue to branding, however it seems to be either contemporary with, or - more likely - an earlier iteration of the figures later cleared in header-carded bags by Toyway?

It's probably a little beyond the Rack Toy classification, through contents and price-bracket, but it's still a collection of Hong Kong/Chinese plastic-tat, so in to RTM it goes! I took two sets of Photo's so have picked the best of each for this post and here it is in its entirety.

The packaging was a bit dog-eared, and while I straightened it somewhat with an iron, it was a temporary fix for the photo-shoot. Note how different the two vehicles are in the press photograph on the back of the card.

Close-up; the figures were obviously pegged-on randomly, as there are two pairs here where all four poses could have been used, something to keep looking for, as their finish is different from the Toyway ones.

The vehicles have a lot in common with the set of three 'fliers' from Blue Box, but here have those strange motors which if you push them too hard, slow down! So you give them a steady push and they sort of grind themselves off the kitchen counter at snail's pace using an 'inexorable momentum drive' engine!

In the artwork they have red or sky-blue transparencies, but mine both have blue-black canopies which show little of the crew-interiors, and if there is any clue to brand it would be in the logo on the bonnet, which is a meaningless W-plus!

Direct comparison on the left, a reminder of the Toyway's contents on the right, the two vehicles and the flag don't seem to have been carried across, but the hillock/rocky-outcrop and both items of ground-equipment have been, while Toyway always include the four poses.

The main difference is that the Toyway are plain gunmetal 'silver', while the generics have a coat of flattish or 'silk' finish silver paint. The blue / black / pink & red detailing is the same on both issues.

On the base we have clues to both unknown firefighters and mechanics we looked at a year or two ago, plus other figures which may or may not be in the same hard polystyrene, the farmers are common is a dozen versions of softer polyethylene and I have yet to encounter hard plastic knock-offs of the Airfix US Infantry, so as always with these art-room/press images; one can't take them as evidence of anything, and with no brand it's not proving much-else!

I suspect these will be found in old 1970's catalogues; Kays, Littlewoods, Index or Argos, here in the UK, whether the Spanish had similar I don't know, they could be seaside whinging-stopper's too?

A trizion lenta seems to be with slow traction but it could be with slow friction in Italian if the 't' is a poorly printed 'f' - A frizion lenta? And was this an early Pocketbond import?

08-07-2023 - US imports (with a different sticker on the bonnet of the 'saucer') are clearly marked (C) G.L.J. Toy Co. Inc., Syosset, N.Y. and 'Made in Hong Kong'. According to the US Coastguard (the wonders of Google - and the fact GLJ seem to have been in inflatables (and bendies!)) they also had Offices at the Toy Building 200/5th Avenue.

N is for New Ray!

Following on from the previous posts and getting the obvious title above them, this is a quick look at one of the 1:32nd scale sets, non-military.

Taken from the Country-Life line, and in a third graphical style, I believe this set dates from around 1999 - the date may be on the reverse of the card but it went to storage before I bought the lovely A3 scanner I'm now using!

It is in the catalogue we saw in the previous post, but that example is in the brighter green graphics and sharing an assortiment code; 05232 with seven other sets - again, there may be a numerical with this one, but it'll be on the back with the bar-code, so whether it's the same or not I can't say!

Not the best shots I'm afraid, sometimes direct, bright sunlight just washes the camera out, it doesn't happen often, but summer seems to be when! Bottom left has the foot figure showing the course to one of the 'spare' horses, the other three shots are of the wall jump and show-jumper. PVC horses and figures, 'styrene accessories and 'ethylene plants.

Not up to the overall quality of the Britains sets/figures, it holds-up well against the Parker-Palitoy set and the less common Thomas Salter set with it's Hong Kong copies of the Britains, add the three Corgi figures from the alternate offerings of Horse Box and with all the above you can mount quite the equestrian event these days . . . Pony in my Pocket also had various obstacles for show-jumping.

E is for Ephemera - New Ray Catalogue

Don't know when exactly this catalogue dates from, but I believe it to be slightly earlier than the 1996 sets we looked at this morning, so maybe 1989-01'ish? These are high-resolution scans, but the catalogue was a low level three-colour dot-matrix printing, so a lot of it is not as clear as we would like, but seems to be a pretty comprehensive listing of their sets before the graphics change to the sets in the previous post.

 

These day's it's all online http://www.new-ray.com/html/products_catalog.php?id=1 but mostly larger-scales and mostly die-cast stand-alone models, rather than the range of polymer play sets seen above!

MOC is for New Ray Play Town

Apologies for the large number of small-scale posts this RTM, as I recognise that if, in a hobby of - for arguments sake - 1000 fans, there are probably only 40-odd aficionados of the smaller scales to the same level of seriousness, it just so happens that one of the boxes in the garage that had to go up to the storage-unit was wedged-in and I could only get it out by tipping it, which required emptying it first, so with piles of stuff everywhere, it made sense to photograph them and they were mostly from my old small-scale exclusive collecting days!

And it gives those who don't rate 'plastic smalls' another day-off from studying my Blog!

These two have been in the collection since I don't know when and I bought them I can't remember where! But it says 1996 on the back, so possibly a cheapie store in Camberley around-about then . . . or Woolies'? Before they folded!

Both from New Ray, they are scaled pretty accurately between 00-gauge (1:76^th) or European HO (1:86/87^th scales), although described as 1:72^nd scale and - I'm guessing here - there must have been a selection (two of one and three of the other, according to the card backs?), from which I took one from the farm series and one construction, both from the overarching Play Town lines.

Backs of the cards give an idea of other items in the range, and the next post, following, will have more of this stuff from a slightly older catalogue.

Close-up of the contents; there was a lot of this stuff around in the mid-1990's, all or near-all plastic, there's a move back to die-cast vehicles these days, in the cheap toy field, I suspect due to the breakability of plastics? Meanwhile, the more highly-detailed European plastic makers have been consolidated under a few larger parent brands; same things happened with HO/OO railway makers/brands.

Best thing in the farm set is the greenhouse! Figures are showing heritage in Elastolin and Preiser I think and we have seen another of these little trays at some point on the blog . . . I'm not sure if it's in this post, or somewhere else; still to be sorted into New Ray's box?

Some of the lose examples include another figure insert-tray, complete and two more of the Elastolin rip-off 'land army' girl in her dungarees with a few other bits. I know I have some more in the TBS box, so we will probably return to these at some point, but maybe only on the A-Z pages, when I finally tackle that project probably.

There aren't many missing though, I think there were three sets of four civilians and one set of four emergency personnel, with a few more animals, only horses and cows?

A few of the just mentioned farm animals and the 'cowboy' from the other side - the ID clues are softish PVC in white, with thickish bases, ovoid for large items/animals, penny-round for figures.

While New Ray's 1:32^nd scale range included a large military series, the HO range was exclusively civilian, with some large sets including ports and battery-operated trains, cranes and suck-like, which will be along here at small scale world shortly!

W is for Wedge-Hand Warriors

I've been after a set of these for ages, I have one or two somewhere without weapons, or with the wrong weapons, but I knew what they were as they seem to have been common about 15/20 years ago - around the time 'The Wall' came down, and there had been several dealers; one in Ireland, one in the US and one in the West County (I think) selling the boxed sets, usually for a reasonable amount, but at the time I wasn't really buying online.

And while more recently I have bid and lost on a couple of boxed sets (or dropped out 'cos they went too-high for my wallet!), I spotted a lose but complete set a while ago and got it for a reasonable price (can't remember if it was bid or BIN?), so while a box is always nice, and makes for a longer Blog Post, it's really all about the figures, so -  with all the accessories - let's have a look at them!

Progress again, they seem to have been one of the more prolific of the Russian figure producers, surviving for some time after the end of the Soviet Bloc and with factories/licensees in some of the satellite countries, these Alexander Nevsky Knights are notable for having slot/wedge hands like the 1st version Cherilea combat infantry. I've also seen them described as Progress Medieval Retinue, but don't know if that was an/the official title or a Western translation?

Also like their British counterparts, these are not rubbery or 'grippy' hands, but quite rigid polyethylene hands you have to force the accessory into only for it to pop-out in play! The archer gets two plug-ins which are a bit more successful, while the chap in the middle of the upper row has a more conventional ring-hand for his sword.

The accessories they come with (and the ease with which they are parted from the figures is/was the driver for trying to find a boxed set!), some can be swapped between figures, but they aren't terribly good swaps - visually - and with differing thicknesses of shaft or handle; are really figure-pose specific?

These all ended-up with rather busy backgrounds, so I will revisit them at some point with a plainer setting, but for now you get the idea, the Soviet equivalent of rack toys gets shoehorned into RTM again!

I suspect they are the same sculptor as the set of WWII Infantry with the plug-in red-flag we've seen here (with Chris's help), and are reported to have first appeared in 1976, but with only the five poses in this set, possibly because of the extra effort and second mould-cost required by the accessories?

I ended-up with a couple of images which cropped so similar again, they make for a nice .gif, which gives the impression of 3D without faffing-about on making a short video which is often more effort than it's worth.

Progress Russian Alexander Nevsky/Medieval Retinue knights' set - box ticked! I'm now searching for a complete set of the MIR copies; cruder sculpts, also silver PE, but with plug-in heliotrope pink/red bases, making them even more 'swoppet'-like!

F is for Flexible Friends; an Update

Not really rack toys per se, but in the same pocket money bracket, so acceptable in Rack Toy Month, I think, and it's a while since we had bendies, despite a shed-load of them a few years back, and this is another post which quickly went from 1 collage to six images in about five minutes!

This came-in back in January I think? I've totally lost the plot this year on most things everything! Schleich bendy astro-spaceman type and he was going to be a stand-alone post, but then I remembered I had some wild west in the big folder who have been there for ages, as I keep forgetting what's in there!

Unmarked they might be Hong Kong, but I have a feeling someone said they were Italian? It may be that the Italians also got them from Hong Kong, as these were in a pick-box in a newsagents' back at the start of the Blog, so not that old, but old stock!

From behind; they are smaller too at about 54mm-compatable, to the Schleich's 70/80-odd (I didn't think to measure any of them - Doh!) and a softer PVC than most bendy-toys.

Thinking there might be some more [bendies] I started going through the 800-odd toy folders and found these in the ''Brain 2016-17'' folder . . . whoops! So Mr Berke must have sent these during the main period of Bendy Posts, but somehow they got lost . . . by moi! I think we did look at some Brain-provided bendies at the time, and he definitely sent a NJ Croce figure or two to the Blog which got posted, but anyway . . . sorry Brian (Brian knows how much other stuff is in his folders, but it will all appear here, eventually!).

Loony Tunes bendies - how cool are they!

I then finally realised I'd purchased these back in Jan/Feb sometime, probably about the same time as the Schliech? When I tried to clear 2021 by shoving a load of posts back to 2004, I'd left the spaceman in 2021, so there were two stand alone posts, eight forgotten Cowboys & Indians and the lost Loony Tunes in two different areas of the Picasa index and four folders! What am I like?

"I dub thee;

Sir Bent Bendie the Bender, of Bendsville, Bendsylvannia,

go forth and flex thyself!"

I think I bought them from a seller in France, thinking they might be Brabo, but they are just marked 'made in Hong Kong' on their back legs, but minty-fresh, or NOS as some put it! And possibly there might be more musketeers in the full set . . . and a Richelieu?

It's also worth noting that the above caption would have been considered inappropriate 30 or 40-years ago, but I'm pleased to say we've come far enough in our liberal tolerances that I don't think anyone uses the word in its negative connotation anymore?

So that's them then, 15 more bendies for the 'Bendy-toys' tag! I was in TK Maxx the other day and they didn't have any NJ Croce stuff, but they tend to get them in for Christmas, so I'll keep my eye out for them later in the year.

Ah-soh! is for Grasshopper!

I always try to sneak some of  the former-Soviet Union's equivalent of Rack Toys into RTM, however, this time it's a current set, but one of the more affordable sets from Biplant, as opposed to some of the incredibly expensive (for no real reason) sets emanating from the former Bloc.

Unlike the combat sets we saw, which come in a standard header-carded 'bottle bag', these historical sets come in wonderful display 'cabinets', which here gives us a lovely Imperial Chinese style building/roof reflecting the original Shaolin Monastery in Dengfeng,Henan Province, China.

Six of the floatiest flying Ninja David Carradines' you'll ever see! The plastic colour makes photography hard, but they are nicely done figures, all clean shaven heads and lethal weaponry! You can see also how they seem to pair-up if you were to be minded to paint and base them as mini-vignettes or a single larger diorama.

While this guy has the air of a master about him, maybe a trainer/instructor or older monk, with a heavier sword (for whacking students with the flat-side of?), bulky shield and substantial cloak. He also lacks the dynamism of the other six, but is still a nice figure. He'd also paint-up nicely as any 'biblical' era man-at-arms, albeit a bald one!

Packaging scans; the others sets get variations of a castle/fortress look which is not quite as ornate as this one, so this one might be the one to go for first! They're currently available from several dealers on evilBay (which is getting very evil these days!).