H is for How They come In - Even at Christmas!

I had an emergency Christmas parcel from Peter Evan arrive out of the blue the other day, small but perfectly formed with several items of interest, so let's have a look at it . . .

Two Disney figures (centre) and two Disneyalikes (outsides), from three sources, I think the Jasmine is Kinder; she's a polypropylene kit in three parts, I don't know where the Wasabi comes from, he's a bit Phidal-like, but on the small side and a softer PVC as are the two 'princesses', but they are not actually Disney, being Papo's 40mm fantasy models.

I love these! I think they are probably cavemen, but Peter wondered if they might be South Sea islanders (she certainly looks the part!), which would be nice, as there might be palm-huts or a dug-out canoe somewhere, they are also interesting for being two-part hollow mouldings like those dinosaurs we looked at a while ago. I guess a rack-toy thing and large'ish at 80mm

Wing Lung's copies of Matchbox US Infantry in 30mm, the MG gunner was missing from the end of the runner last time we looked at them (also courtesy of Peter!), and I think the other missing pose is probably the shooting officer as seen here, oversized and marked 'China', and also in the lot sent a couple of days ago.

These are some kind of rack-toy Transformer knock-off, there are no instructions, but trail-and-error will probably suffice, and I will build one, one day, just for fun! I have a yellow one somewhere, which probably also came from Mr. Evans, and the red one has a short-short component, otherwise they are the same tooling.

Cheers Peter - fun post for Christmas, and "Happy Christmas" to all Loyal Readers, let's hope 2022 is an improvement on the previous two!

Which also means that at some point in February we will have 22:22hrs 2nd of February 2022 which could be shortened (at twenty-two seconds past the minute) to 22:22:22-2/2/'22 . . . if that's not an invitation to one of Beelzebub's underlings - I don't know what is! Look out Yellowstone - your time may be at hand!

T is for Two - Dozens of Droids! 'Droids Galore' even! A Plethora of Droids . . .

. . . more Droids than you can shake a big stick at! The Droid mother-load! Droidload? Droidsville, Droidsylvania . . . Droidtopia? This was as a result of a chance happenstance type of synergic coincidence'y thing!

I was looking for the SCS Direct Robots set, as it was one of two known SCS sets I didn't still have (the other is a set of 28mm Role Play figures I may have seen a while ago in a weird sort of head-shop in Basingrad priced-up for far more than they are worth!), in the cause of which search I found a bagged set of Wall∙E robots, so a 'T is for . . .' post was born!

Because - in the end - the 'find' arrived earlier, we'll look at the Wall∙E stuff first; but here are the two together, the Wall∙E in a header carded bag, the SCS in a huge but not really strong-enough plastic tube or 'Toob'. Contents also vary as widely with 15 pieces of harder plastic against 52 pieces of a modern PVC substitute.

Branded to Thinkway Toys as the parent and imported (into the UK at least?) by Vivid Imaginations who are a brand in themselves, we get 15 different robots in a J-hooked, header-carded bag (it's going to be a geeky post as I have 19 images of 42 pictures/scans to blurb-up!) with colourful artwork.

The Wall∙E sculpts are an odd thing, not totally unique, but there are few examples in the whole hobby, and while I know there are some others; I can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head (actually; some of those European margarine premium flats of the larger buildings are an example) - they are semi-flats, but sculpted with a level of view-point/vanishing-point perspective, giving them a distorted look from some angles, but enhancing the 3D effect of a relief-flat, if viewed head-on, from the front or back.

Wall∙E himself is the only character to get duplicates, with one each of three poses as seen here.

The other yellow plastic (a softish but tough material, which could be a polyethylene, or a polypropylene or one of the modern hybrids?) figurines include - from the left a Light-bot (Doh! They're Bots not Droids . . . I'll have to redo the whole opening!); Umbrella-bot (behind); Beautician-bot (in front) and Defebrillator-bot.

Weird tombstones! The rest of the set are in white plastic (same tough, soapy polymer) and clockwise from top left in the left-hand image are - Steward, Massage-bot, 'M-O' (medical officer/orderly?), Eve (Wall∙E's paramour), Vacuum-bot, Autopilot, Paint-bot and 'Gopher'. If the card (next shot) is anything to go-by, we are looking at the back of Vacuum-bot in that left image, but it's all a bit academic!

Because I did rather go for broke on the imagery with this post, here's a confirmatory scan of the naming pannel! Heay; anyone who's followed the Eraser-bot posts knows I like robots, and let's be honest, the more bots you've got . . . the less bots you still have to find!

And - just a quick one . . . if I buy something I rarely credit the seller as it's mine to do what I will with (I credit donations and contributions, but no one can remember or find the name of every seller at every show or auction site), however I happened to purchase this from Eric Critchley, one of the old guard, a regular contributor to PlasticWarrior magazine and someone I've probably always looked-up to (or envied?!!), and he happened to send a second set in the parcel, free and as a suprise, so I was able to open one for the images and keep one mint.

As I'd bid without really looking at the set, and sort of assumed it would be like other rack-toys (or the SCS set), in having duplicates and had already promised those duplicates to another friend of the Blog, I was able to send that friend the lose set, with some SCS's. So many, many thanks to Eric for the kind act, which was very-much passed-on.

So, now we get on to the 'Droids' proper, deep-space, far-away, super-dooper, fighty-bitey battle-bots! These are under the WD / Wicked Duals branding, and while I'm not sure which is which, I think these are the older iteration, with the boxed sets branded straight to SCS being the newer issues.

And - of the four (or five?) sets we've seen now - I've had two of these older tubes (or three? God! It's all on the Blog somewhere!), and the tubes DO NOT travel well. Not only do they shatter, shedding their load, but the outer box can be damaged as well (Amazon; my money putting that slave-driving, popinjay fucker in space and he can't even send me a parcel in one piece!), so when the contents have the quirks previously highlighted here at Small Scale World, you can never be 100% sure it didn't happen in the Amazon warehouse rather than at SCS Direct's packaging department.

As well as the shattered tube/holed box, there was a certain amount of damage and one missing piece in the whole lot . . . sigh! It's the modern, run-out of ideas, sliding into oblivion, world we live in now!

However, it was the first set which had a 'correct' count, both in the advertised number (52 items) and a 50/50 colour/pose split. There were only one of each colour for two in total of the pairs at the front of the parade though, so me and the guy I split them with got one each; I think I kept the grey's and sent the two rusty ones!

There is a real mix of genres within the set and we see here a nice Japanese-style manga-anime type (bottom right) two 1950's 'pulp' types (top right - including one whom looks a bit like Bender, but a more businesslike Bender!), while the main picture has a droid who would look more at home in 2000AD's Robohunter strip.

Another Futurama'esque droid here, I don't know if it's a helicopter or a press? But, as it's fiction - it can be what you want it to be! The arms are very Bender-bot and will also go very well with those rack-toy 'Bat-bots' of which we looked at a new one the other day courtesy of Chris Smith, who have the same kind of shower-hose/ducting arms!

Bottom left - every SCS Direct set seems to have a dragon! I'm lovin' the tortoise battle-droids (top) with pop-out weaponary, something Star Wars Genosian about him, while the wheeled 'Bird-bot' one (bottom-right) looks energetic to the point of demented!

Top left is another who could be from a 200AD strip or Japanese TV series, while the others are more steam-punk, with a pulpy one top right and a insectoidal-droidal across the bottom.

Pure 1950's pulp here, but also harking back further to HG Well's War of the Worlds with all those tentacles and the tripod perambulation? Or Jules Verne - I can imagine rows of these hanging limply in racks in the hold of the Nautilus?

Two big cheats with this set were A) really heavy bases, so heavy they all suffer from shrinkage warping after mould removal and B) eight rather pointless pieces of scenery! The tool box (right) is half-useful I suppose, but the wall (left) is a hollow-backed piss-take!

The 14th sculpt - which was probably my favourite - is another 2000AD'esque one, but more Judge Dredd or Ro-Busters and is tracked, like Wall∙E, hence the comparison here, although I suspect the SCS Direct one would eat Wall∙E for breakfast! He's telling Wall∙E what he saw off the shoulders of Orion!

A couple more comparisons. Between the two sets and ignoring the odd sculpting trope of the Wall∙E set, there is a Robot for every occasion/eventuality here, and being inanimate objects lend themselves to any type of painting from polished chrome-spray through glossy showroom, battered, to rusty, military or mauve!

We haven't seen 'Berserker' much this year, but then it's been an odd year (2020.2), anyway here he is giving a scale to one of each of the SCS Direct set's Droid-bots! It's the Mercedes showroom circa the year 2525 - if man will still be alive!

Mah'favourite!

T is for Tuf-Tots Toy Trucks

With or without the hyphen, but no second 'f '! A small range which - despite coming from a company whose real name was 'Die Cast Machine Tools' - was destined to remain a basic and small range.

However I believe it did well as an export-line; you seem to see more in the 'States these days on evilBay, and which would get a leery paint-job with coloured wheels at a later stage, but this is the early iteration.

You can see that all four sports coupes are available with or without roofs and the cab-unit of all the trucks is the same - a vague US Ford F-600 type, so there's only about six unique vehicles in the range! Note the three boxed sets and the message "...available in the series as shown" . . .

. . . as, typically, mine is different with its configuration having three accessory pieces, all of which have the feel of the Treble-O-Train range (as do the vehicles really!), by which I mean simple castings with some sharp edges!

I've had this for years, and due to the position of these as being of secondary (to Matchbox), or even quaternary interest behind the Husky/Corgi Juniors and their own Impy line; it wasn't that much . . . a fiver maybe, I built my collection as a semi-permanently skint, tight-arse, dipping into rummage trays and the bulk-bins under tables at shows, so wouldn't have given much more for a non-military set with no figures, but the accessories might have got me to eight-quid!

The windmill is a half-relief in two parts with a  rivet and to be frank, the signal box from the OOO-guage ('N') railway is better decorated!

The bridge is what probably sold the set to me, as it's a lovely little Bailey for bridging a stream to get your Sherman's across Normandy, even though the scale's out; that's how my brain works!

While the barrier-operator's hut/sentry-box is also a semi-relief, but saved by a plank-seat! the car has one of those many seated figures I mentioned the other day as turning up in just-lots, sans car!

The trucks; not a lot I can add.

My Brother had a godmother in California, and one year she came over to visit (probably when it was still 15-hours via Iceland or Greenland or something!) and she brought him a set in a carry case, I think they were Tootsie Toys minis, but Marx had a set as well, anyway; while they did have wheels, they didn't have drivers, roofs or windscreens and were very thin metal, with even sharper edges and rather slab-sides, also they were all single mouldings, finished in one colour, so although the Tuf-Tots weren't the best of British, you can see why they still had some appeal.

M is for Monkey Business!

In the UK we are - I think it's fair to say - quite enamoured of our Chimp's Tea Parties; of which there are at least two plastic versions and three or four hollow-cast lead ones, but in France they went with a more natural setting for their apes to play in!

On a busy table, with all sorts of other stuff going on (Asian deities, pencil sharpener Panzer III and submarine, gnomes, 'white button' mouse, enameled fish, HK copies of Crescent Romans & Swoppet's building, Russian flats, space set, Kinder figures . . . ); we have the Clairet monkey tree!

The two primates have enough dynamism and the tree enough foliage-denuded branches for various set-ups, although I'm here to tell you a couple of spots of Blue-Tac would have helped!

 

Starlux did a similar one (images from 1975 (Colour) and '84 (B&W)), but with all arms up, there mightn't have been as much play-ability, although they had more hooky-hands, so could have been moved about the tree more easily and stayed where they were hung, so it's swings and roundabouts.

That's enough monkeying-around, get a grip!

Y is for Yabba-Dabba-Doo!

Here’s something nice for the festive season which doesn't include guns and stuff! Not that I don't post military stuff over Christmas but I like to try and keep it light, and it's a good excuse to Blog some of the more esoteric novelty stuff, and this is pretty esoteric and definitely a novelty!

Kohner's window (and door!) tray of the Flintstone Circus; they have grabby hands and feet giving them the stack-ability of Kleeware (and other)'s clownsand policemen, but with a circular grip allowing for stunts!

Nine main characters and a policeman in three colours of a pretty bog-standard, softish, polyethylene and while being semi-round/semi-flat caricatures, or at least accurate renditions of their cartoon personas, are also about 54/60mm, although with the kids and pets all the same size, it's really 'no scale'!

There also a bunch of chocolate-brown 'circus equipment' being half gymnasium stuff and half tricks with two drum plinths of the type you might have expected a man with a whip to be trying to get lions, tigers or elephants to stand on! The weightlifters barbell is made - appropriately - with rocks on either end, while the stool and a trapeze frame are in clip-together parts.

I only took one shot and it clearly looked better to the naked eye! It's a single pile of everything and everyone! So a bit of a box ticker and as they are now in storage; I will try to remember we need to return to them; in a year or two!

H is for How They Come In - April II - Peter

Mr Evans has sent me quite a few red-cross parcels in the last 12-or-so months and I'm not sure I've shot all of them, but here is another that - I seem to remember - actually came the same day as the one from Chris Smith we looked at the other day, certainly I got the shots mixed-together at one point!

These are the newer items from Hing Fat, and Peter has definitely sent me more of these; Aussies, knights in two colours, most WWII nations, lots of French (who are in a separate post I think), all sorts, here we have Russians, Modern GI's and Scot's elements of the Eighth Army;s Dessert Rats on the left and the museum gift shop-intended Chinese terracotta army and ancient Egyptian themed sets - which got a brief mention on here a year or two ago - on the right.

Previously, Billy V (an Imex brand) carried Hing Fat, but I believe some of these are currently hiding under Stevens International branding on the other side of the pond, they carried the earlier version of the Russians (Italeri winter-uniform piracies) with factory paint about eight years ago, and are carrying the Afrika Korps from this range for definite - as I've downloaded the image at some point!

Odds & Sods; the two ACW are Billy V's Hing Fat's I think! A Manurba Bundeswehr in grey, Hong Kong swoppet copy and a nice Wilton/Culpitt scale-up of pne of the Washington's Army figures from Airfix, used as a cake decoration.

I never know with the orange chap what's an Airfix/Mattel (?) original, what's licensed in Spain and what's copied by Star Toys in Hong Kong, I can only tell the crude Montaplex 3rd generation Montaman knock-offs! I love the Smurf too; busy cycling!

Theo Van der Weerden confirmed that the orange chap is a Matchbox Mobile Action Command figure; cheers Theo!

The 'army-man' helicopter will join the rest for future comparisons, and hopefully be ID'd at one point, and while I'd love to ID the two space-paratroopers, there are many of them, and most are generics, but that is an on-going project in which I have had some success, however; it's currently in hiatus!

This is a nice little (near 'micro') novelty truck, loosely based on an old Bruder pocket-money toy (from long before there were 'Kinder eggs'!). Probably from a Spanish or Turkish capsule toy of some kind. Bruder didn't arm theirs with a large rocket; theirs was part of a construction range, not a destruction range!

Another bunch of the smaller vinyl animals, another ongoing ID project, and I think we've looked at these before, as I remember highlighting the confusion of paired hippopotamus and polar bear sculpts, this cleaner sample seems to rule one bear out of the set, but still the two hippo' designs!

Many thanks as always to Peter, for an interesting pile of polymer goodness, from which we've also had a couple of RTM posts I suspect, or will have!

W is for Wild West . . . Checkers!

This is really an addendum to a post published here ten years ago! A better look at one of the three games mentioned on that occasion, by two brand marks (Triang and Omnia), using the Minimodels Wild West figures, originally sculpted by Charles Stadden and manufactured at Minimodels' Havant factory on the South coast.

I'm not sure if Triang's game should be quite as sun-yellowed as this example, it seems a little too subdued for attraction on a shelf, and with some water damage, may also be suffering from non-art-room sun damage too! They don't turn-up on evilBay that often but when they do the sky is bluer!

Quality Assurance Inspection; the production values of putting this together must have be enormous, bigger people; rivals, like Waddington's here and Milton Bradley in the 'States had been throwing everything in placky-bags set in 'styrene trays, for a while by the time this hit the shops, and pairing-up all those figures and setting them in three different, die-cut holding devices must have taken someone forever, even once the operator was practiced.

Almost certainly done by women, possibly out-workers, but I think you'd need to do this in-house with stillage-bins of draughtsmen, bins of figures and the quite huge box - I couldn't scan the board as it's over A3 on a side and the box is bigger! Plus; all that was after they had all been run in one of two colours of polymer and hand painted with between three and five colours!

A reminder of the four figure poses, where these differ over the half-dozen other iterations of the figures (2 other games, window box, cake-decoration bags, shop-stock counter boxes etc...) is that they have added studs which connect with a hole in the draughtsman, the fit is tight and the figures are a frangible polystyrene, so damage would have occurred from first play on Christmas Day!

They are lovely figures, but that frangibility means finding them intact is hard, the six-shooter being the one most likely to survive, the tomahawk being the least likely to be found still attached!

M is for Man Down! Meeediic! Maaan Doouuwwn!

The hero of at least one past Christmas post; Sergeant Drill has ceased to hang . . . sniff! He suffered a catastrophic fracture or two, and went to the great green glass-recycling basket in the drive, a couple of three Friday's ago.

Following his accident; All the King's horses and all the King's men were summoned, but being rigid plastic proved no use at all! However, the yin-yang was strong in that one Luke, and the next day I found another in the DEBRA charity-shop for 20p!

Along with a nice glass fir-cone (another side-theme in the bauble stash) and a pink parcel for the 'gay' tree, and here pictured with two sets I grabbed in Homesense, the TKMaxx home-ware vehicle. So as one leaves the ranks; another joins.

Truth be told I have a couple of duplicates of the newly-lost one in my own stuff, so next year (I won't be doing a tree this year, still a little raw, and the house is chaotic!) we will have the full parade, which should be about ten, or twelve, of all ranks now?!!

The new one has a rather annoying grin, which I could have done without, but beggers can't be choosers! And he's a little smaller than our recent casualty, so he bridges the gap between the fourTKMaxx smallies of 2016's purchase and the older, larger or 'standard' sized chaps.

And here he is with this year's previously seen additions to the figural element of the tree decorations. not that they are the only ones, as this year's TKMaxx buy . . .

. . . included a daft cat with a flower in its mouth and a dog, who are both from the little boxes of smaller decorations they've been doing for five or six years now, which are very useful for filling the gaps at the top of the tree.

I also grabbed these in The Works, they have also had them for several years now, but each year the selection on offer is different; one year it was assorted sizes in the pack, another year it was larger pairs, last year - I think - they were all metallic red or gold; no good for toy soldier photography (or war gaming), but this year it was a useful 'five small' in pine green or snow-covered!

N is for Nostalgia - Snakes & Ladders!

This is a very old friend, and in remarkably good condition remembering how often we played it Although the width of the fold-line shows that it has been opened and closed many times. I've seen PC versions called Shutes & Ladders, but where's the fun in that? We want great, big, SNAKES!

I loved this as a kid, branded to GJ Hayter & Co., of Bournemouth, under their famous Victory mark; I just loved the rich colours of the snakes, the Christmassy border - the whole thing. It's actually a particularly hard one to finish due in no small part to the big, blue, Mr. 93-25 who sends you back three-quarters of the board!

We also had a family rule that you had to 'throw your finish', which meant that if you were on say 98 and threw a six you would have to go 99-game-99-98-97-96, and hope for a four next time, but if you were on 98 and threw a three, you'd end your turn on 58! With three snakes on the top-row, they were sometimes long games, but fun and a great teacher of humility, humility and cynicism! As every time you thought you had it in the bag, it went South!

Even the label is rather fine, I think? If I recall correctly, these were sold in the old-school newsagents and corner shops (almost totally disappeared now), just loose boards stacked up in a box on a lower shelf, with Go boards, Sorry, Backgammon and a Chess/Draughts one etc . . . So this was probably at Webb's in Hartley Wintney and we (Bro' and me) may have chosen it, at some point?