P is for Pirateology!

Having mentioned the possibility that the two smaller figures in the round-up might be from a board-game, I can tell you only that it isn't Pirateology, because that's here, right now, and it has different figures!

I thought we'd had the Dragonology set, posted up here, but looking for it just now, quickly realised it's still in the long-queue! Nevertheless, this is a sister game, Pirateology (presumably 'the study and understanding of pirates and piratey things!), from Sababa Toys (via Esdevium Games (Paul Lamond)), and it's a game . . . with pirates!

 

Based on a series of books by Dugald Steer and Nghiem Ta, it followed the Dragonology, Egyptology and Wizardology books, and has since been joined by Oceanology and Monstrology! I'm not going to pretend to know anything about them beyond the fact that clearly a franchise has been born!

 

Skull dice and coins which have gone in the spares pile for future . . . God knows what? But the little PVC-effect micro-pirate ships are rather lovely and will join the Galoob vessels in the relevant drawer of the little cabinet, we looked at a while ago.

 

The rest then went to recycling, I just haven't got the space, and would likely never have played the game, the capitalist, consumption-driven system produces mountains of this stuff, and I just waited for one going cheap (£5.99'ish), to get the figures.

 

And this is they; the meat & four veg'! About 35/40mm, quite well painted and a couple of obvious specifics; a China Sea pirate and a Berber/Barbary/Ottoman Corsair, they are really nice for board-game figures, but you'd have to be careful, as it's all in the base-colour as to who's 'marker' is who's! They seem to tie-in to the coloured banners and flags/pennants on the ships.

ITLAPD - is for Incredibly The Lad Acquired a Plethora of Desperadoes!

AHH-Harrr! Mee'arrties! Anotherrrr Int'ernationaaal Talk loik a poirate day be upon us arrrlll, and despoite the storrm-clouds outsoid, we be ready with a foin selection o'piraty plaaasstik!

To be honest, each year I wonder if there'll be enough to find for the next year, but it always seems to accumulate through the year, along with donations of both figures and images the supporters of the blog always contribute. As has become the norm in the last few years, we'll start with the odds and sods.

This was the ITLAPD 'seen elsewhere' image about three years ago, I think we saw them in detail last year, so it's just a Picasa-clearing box-ticker and colourful bunch of Hong Kong's finest Marx knock-off cake-decorations!

 

I think these were all in Chris Smith's Spring parcel, and are a right old collection of ner'do'wells, the smallest is a rather large pencil-top, the three to the left are probably all from 'big-box' infant toys or play-sets, while the lady is from the Webbs 'Supertoy' sets.

 

These two went to Charity with Chris's blessing, after I'd shot them for this post, and a couple of close-ups were also taken, the Disney mark might be 'Store' or licence, but I think he's Peter Pan, not PotC?

 

These are a real find!  A bit crappy, quality-wise, but growing on me, and we saw them before, a year or so ago, unbranded here, but under Kipp Brothers in the 'States, I now have more poses, and a branding! The axeman with cutless from last time is missing, so it looks like an eight-count on the total poses?

Jemark Pirates are the local mob, and I think these might have come from Peter Evans a while back? Standard rack-toy import fare, probably more likely found in party-shops? We have a large party-shop in Farnborough, and I check the Clapham one every January as regular readers will know, but they neither, ever have figures in their pirate sections!

 

Upper shot here is another lot of recent or contemporary rack-toy types, and it's proof that it'll be years before I have all or most Pirates, and yet the same exercise can be done with Romans, clowns, elephants . . . Nobody can ever have everything!

Below is a probably French figure, around 60mm I think, I forgot to measure him! More chalkware than some olin-composition, maybe pumice? He needs a bit of surgery on his right forearm, but is fortunately the kind of pink-shade you mix from red & white, so a mend will be well hide'able when I get around to it!

A mixture of figures which have come in over the last 12-months from all sources, on the left a PZG copy of Marx's Captain, two shots of a nicely painted, flamboyant chap from Cane, channelling Captain Harlock and a couple of small Vinyl oddities around 40mm, which might be from a board game?

These have all come from Jon Attwood, in two or three parcels with some Halloween stuff also from the same importer, who in this case is Rinco, and he got them as a job-lot from a closed-down beach-shop/kiosk. Erasers (halloween) and rings (here) and in over-moulded rubber, and a pirate theme!

These (upper shot) are currently in Poundland, and many thanks to Peter Evans for announcing them on his Faceplant group, I actually got a bunch of other things, but thought the three 'PLDZ' Hidden Garden naval items were piratey enough for this post!

 

While below the new resin treasure chest joins several others and a couple of piles of loot, again, all come in, in the last 12-months. The little green one looks familiar, but I can't place it and the large one with a base is a Disney Pirates of the Caribbean piece.

 

The small, odd shaped pile of plunder may be from something like Mighty Max (?), while I think the other is out of the top of a larger treasure chest I may already have, or still be looking out for?

 

These were a charity-thing, I think (apologies if you sent them?) and will be from a smaller 'big-box' play-set aimed at younger kids. I suspect the blue chap is a revenue-man, but not depicting a Brit . . . Spanish or generic 'toy town'? Fun, anyway!

Finally, three cannon; one from Technolog I believe; the grey one, a little PVC one which is Toy Major's design and might be an earlier one from the skeleton warriors sets? The red one is from a current rack-toy set (marked 'China') but I don't know which one yet!

 

Two shots of a home-painted Kinder pirate, who will need to be stripped-clean at some point, and a pair of the Papo 40mm's, a set which is still notable by its absence from the Blog in its entirety . . .Maybe next year?

A is for Addendum

Well, I don't think it's technically a 'Follow-up' and it's not really a 'More On' (far too much input from morons this week as it is!), so addendum will do! Just a couple of pieces from Picasa which add to things said in other posts this week.

We saw these in a show-report back in 2018, when I bought a few from the seller at the Plastic Warrior show in Wilton/Twickenham, SE London, now as it happens when I got them home, they'd been mucked about with, so I don't have all the correct contents of all the boxes, and while I said - at the time - they'd get their own post, they never did!

But I'd forgotten I'd shot the rest, on the seller's stall, in case the five boxes weren't 'all of them', so here's a perfect example of the Italian output of Food Premium style novelty mini-kits. If I recall correctly, they had no branding; packaging or product.

 

But they are not R&L, they are not Rubenstein, they are not Tatra, they are not DS Plastics, or Siku, or Manurba, they are Italian. I think a fair few of us are familiar with the CGGC motorcycles (and the lovely figures - some of which would end-up in Kinder-eggs a decade later), also from Italy, and I have seen lovely N-gauge train kits in smaller boxes (something like 'Eppi', but I forget the actual name), one of which is very similar to the R&L animal wagon.

 

The frames are relatively unique and assemble into a fancy base after you've made up the kit, and they are manufactured in a dense polymer which is a nylon/rayon type or possibly a hybrid propylene of some kind, sold two kits to a box.

While this is the rather poor rendition of what I suspect is meant to be a Douglas F4D Skyray, from Montaplex of Spain, it's in a different league, being soft polyethylene, chunky and simplified, it just reminds us of the breadth covered by these mini-kits as an oeuvre!

It was sold in larger multi-sets with three other kits, in little single envelopes (early iteration, I think) and as an accompaniment/accessory to some of the figure sets, pretty randomly in the latter case!

B is for Beach Buggys [sic]!

When I was a kid I always wondered what '[sic]' or '(sic)' meant after a word or phrase, and while I did ask the odd adult from time to time, I clearly didn't ask the right ones (with 4-billion people to the left of the bell-curve [phrase du jour!], there's a lot of pretty thick adults out there, people; be careful!), and while I kept meaning to look it up, I'd never remember to, when a dictionary was nearby!

Eventually, when I started my Encyclopedia of Military Abbreviations (don't ask, several box-files of shite, all in long-hand, several formats/part-drafts and unlikely to ever be finished, but it probably kept me out of various troubles!), I did finally look it up! I'm sure many of you, too, now know what it means, but for those who don't - from the good old Oxford English;

 

Used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original, as in a story must hold a child's interest and ‘enrich his [sic] life’ or a hero of antient [sic] Rome.

 

In our case, here, the word should, correctly, be 'Buggies' or 'Buggy's', not the given Buggys. Now I know one or two idiots across the pond will assume I'm having a go, specifically at America/American and that therefore I'm being "racist" (again!), but I'm not, I'm just correcting an incorrection* in the correct manor [sic], because I like a bit of correctness!

*Noun. incorrection f (plural incorrections) a fault, default or impropriety, especially of language. State of what is incorrect. (dated) Character of what goes against courtesy and politeness (Heeheehee! The Rubenstein card is impolite!).

 

Rubenstein's Dune Buggys [sic]; As you can see, they - like ALL Rubenstein sets - have a stock code (3004), and you can find them in single colour sets and multicolour sets, two production tranches or one quirky production run? If anyone knows it will be Kent Sprecher, hopefully he'll tell us, with empirical supporting evidence, in his forthcoming, world-saving, Hugh-beating, article of grand-importance?

Six different designs, very much in the style of Rosenhain and Lipmann from Australia, but are not R&L, and are not claimed as such by the R&L experts. R&L did do vehicle sets including the Dragsters which are certainly in the same vein, but where R&L have lots of fine parts (or several per kit - wheel hubs and axles in particular), these are much simpler kits.

Unlike some of the other vehicle sets from Rubenstein which are a softer polyethylene, mine are in a hard 'kit' polystyrene, however the multicolour set may be the opposite, and it might be that they all got issues in both plastic-types/colour-ways, I don't know, but hopefully Kent will tell us everything, about everything, all at once?!

 

I should point out, before some bottom-burping oaf in Pennsylvania hysterically reports "Ah-Haa, they've all got a name he didn't tell us!", that they all have a name and I haven't told you, only because I forgot to write them down before they went to storage, life is too short and it gives us an excuse to return to them another day! Like when I build the other four . . . I was in a hurry, this all happened about a year ago, you know? I can't presage the idiocy of idiots, 24/7/365.

 

R&L did however, supply Aurora with their little kits, at the same approximate time Rubenstein were carrying their Dune Buggys [sic]! Sold as Snap-a-roos, they were the cereal premium sets, as sixes, sold in little boxes, which is how these (and similar domestically produced) sets were also issued in Italy.

But then 'Burns' reports this group of three, apparently simple, small, clip-together kits as being announced in the 1973 Lindberg catalogue (or catalog, not a '[sic]', but an accepted foreign variation of English), which was subsequently never issued. The feeling being that they were supposed to be, or seemed to have a connection with; the eponymous 'Kilroy' of World War II fame.

 

Which, applying TJF's logic must mean there's a Kilroy 'of The World' fame, out there too! And can you hear that scratching noise in the background? That's Sprecher quickly adding a paragraph to his Magnum Opus! He's probably added several in the last seven days.

That they (the Aurora set) never appeared and Rubenstein's wouldn't appear until sometime in or after '77, suggests that the Rubenstein set, was whatever was left after the above three pre-production artworks went through the production process, those driver/Kilroy figures would have required much more complicated (and therefore expensive) tooling for undercuts &etc . . . so there is a possibility they were simplified into this set . . . but I stress, that it's casual musings on the subject, not canon-history or any fact of any kind.

Another candidate for the Aurora no-shows is this similar set from R&L, but again, not these, and again; fine parts, a feature. However, there are similarities in one or two of the main-parts, with both the Lindberg drawings and the Rubenstein set, so who knows; Burns didn't, I don't, Sprecher doesn't, The R&L guys don't and TJF never will!

F is for Follow-up - GI Flats

Here's a fun one, ready to publish a while ago, but stuck in the long-queue for obvious reasons; forewarned is forearmed! Remember when we had a look at what used to be the Bonnie-Built flats which have grown to encompass all sorts of figure-issues, on three continents, in two sizes and several plastics . . . well, check these puppies out!

I found the Armoured Cars! Argo at Loeser's, was one of the two brands I added to the canon on that occasion, unlike TJF I don't brag 'Discovery' all the time (although I did brag a bit at the end, that time!), but whatever they are, whatever you want to call them, there have been plenty of them here, over the years, and this one - like the next - came from the late James Chase collection, back in 2005/6.

 

What is known in legal circles as a 'manuscript note', that is an unattributed (or handwritten) document or part document, usually undated, which nevertheless adds to the evidential 'bundle'. In this case, a newspaper cutting discussed in the previous post, as was the likely 'Loeser'.

 

The shot on the right was an accidental no-flash, which came out well-enough to give a better idea of the true or everyday colours, but has reflected off the rust to make the underside look far worse than it is!

 

 

I still need to find the Ambulance at some point, but it's nice to be able to explain the weird artwork in the advert to myself! Clearly some BB's are fed-in through the hole in the roof and the wheels drive a firing mechanism, spraying pellets all over the place - parents must have loved it!

I'm not 100% sure quite how that system works however, and when I have time at the other end, I will unfold the floor tabs and strip the spare olive-green-one down to see how it works, and decide whether or not they all need restoring, I suspect they might be jammed-up with old pellets! Or worse - Junior's 'replacement' pellets, whatever they turn out to be!

A reminder of the other figures I added to the canon in that post, the Spencer issue, as Jan put it so wonderfully at the time, 'Pancake Soldiers'! An image also from the Chase collection, and also disassembled in the previous post.

 

An image which aught to be exclusive to this Blog, as I scanned-it from the original cutting, cropped it, cleaned it up and produced a rich-text version of the blurb to accompany the finished image.

 

Over the intervening five-and-a-half years, since that previous post it's become pretty obvious all the Spencer's are Spencer Gifts, still extant with 600 outlets in North America (USA & Canada).

 

Which only leaves the question of why, after stealing the image from me, did Kent Sprecher decide to tell everyone they were English? Screen-cap above, he's probably got a Spencer's round the effing corner from where he's at!

Not 'British', not from the 'UK' but specifically; "English"? You need empirical evidence to make statements like that, and the only evidence we have here, is the phrase 'Corpsmen' and the Dollar price? Two very American things!

 

An image thief, AND stupid. He literally didn't even read the article he was stealing the image from - probably in a guilt-hurry to download the .jpg and get back to pretending he's never seen or found the blog!

He's had that up there for at least four five years (I published on the 16th October 2018, it was on his site by the 8th December, having not been there on the 8th November), completely made-up and false caption for an image he hasn't asked me for . . . and yet he's decided to get off the fence and take the gloves off, while TJF has weighed-in! Well, learn to take your spanking like a man, 'cos there's plenty more of it to come.

___________________________________________

Later the same day - Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive! Kent wants us to believe he got it from a sales list???

 

What a sales list from 1961, full of tons of similar rare stuff he hasn't shown us yet??? A sales list of images from my Blog? A modern sales list using complete imagery from 1961 newspapers he decided to crop identically to mine??? A Sales list that informed him England has a chain of shops called Spencer (maybe he's thinking of upmarket clothing retailer Marks & Sparks!), that operated in dollars??? Which he just happened to find days after I published??? How stupid does he think everyone else is?

All he needed to do to save some face was blame an anonymous contributor for sending it to him, and take it down with a mouth-drying apology, but no, he's chosen to double-down on his theft with a cockamamie stack of implausible horse-shit lying! In my book, someone who is a liar and a thief, is a crook. If you are not straight, you're crooked.

O is for Olympics!

So, one of my earlier purchases did a get shot before I sent the box up the road, and it raises a point I didn't mention in my 'lots' of 'wrong' history the other day, but it was pretty obvious if you studied the photographs.

It is that with some of the figure sets, the contents are, to say the least, assorted, with duplicates, often the same pose/colour - pointing to a lack of mixing before packing, or an incomplete pose-count.

Note that this set has a set number/order code, most do, but some are on the fronts and some are on the backs, and the reason I listed them alphabetically is that I couldn't find enough images of both sides of the cards to build a decent list, I will, when I get my seven/eight out again, probbaly find them all. If you read anywhere "the card has a stock number which many of the other cards do not have", be sure - you are reading bullshit.

The seven poses I've ended-up with, as stated last time these are the 'Euro' poses, not those issued by Marx, and not those issued in UK Cereal, neither of which have a torch-bearer, so are all just 'athletes' against this set's Olympic figures! I suspect there should be eight?

That's a question mark because I don't know for certain, it could be ten or more, I'm not sure, you see, Kent, Paul, Stadinger, Fuckwits Anonymous . . . if I wrote there were eight [as a fact], and they supplied them to Choco-tag-nuts in brown (because Choco-tag-nuts had them in brown), I'd be making things up as I go along, and I try not to do that kind of shit here!

 

These were offered by DS Plastic in Holland / the Netherlands, and are probably 35/40mm flats/semi-flats, possibly soft polyethylene, and which may well have appeared in De Gruyter lucky/gift/surprise envelopes, and I wonder if anyone has actual examples they could send to the blog . . . or send it to a leading magazine - Plastic Warrior has recently covered all the other athletes?

 

I had a go anyway;

• 1008 - Action Athletes
• 3006 - Antique Cars
  
• 3002 - Comic Animals
• 1001 - Comic Moon Figures
• 1007 - Comic Pirates
• ???? - Dogs - Mexico
• 1003 - Dolls of the World
• 3004 - Dune Buggys [sic]
  
• 3009 - Historical Transportation
• 3003 - Horse-Drawn Coaches
• 1011 - Robin Hood Figures
• 1022 - Soldiers of World War II
  
• 3001 - Super Motorcycles

Put in numerical order;

• 1001 - Comic Moon Figures
• 1003 - Dolls of the World
  
• 1007 - Comic Pirates
• 1008 - Action Athletes
• 1011 - Robin Hood Figures
• 1022 - Soldiers of World War II
• 3001 - Super Motorcycles
• 3002 - Comic Animals
• 3003 - Horse-Drawn Coaches
• 3004 - Dune Buggys [sic]
• 3006 - Antique Cars
• 3009 - Historical Transportation
• ???? - Dogs - Mexico

So, it's not 'many don't', it's all do! Stadinger was making it up as he went along . . . again! Hahahahaha, fuckin' unbelievable, isn't it? It's fuckin' unbelievable! But they keep doing it, in the desperate hope they may, one day, really catch me out!

The 1xxx's are probably numbered-in with other toys/novelties/playthings, the 3xxx's suggest other Italian/R&L type clip-together kits/funnies may still be to find?

H is for Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Rubenstein is the New Rock & Roll!

They just can't help themselves, can they? I knew exactly what I was doing, and they have proven nothing other than that there are more sets than the 12? I think I suggested as much, when I said . . .

 "which is not to say there aren't more"

. . . but twelve would have been neat, and ten seem commoner! TJF has practically had a real cum orgasm in public over a header-card for what are obviously trashy rack-toy clones! Is it any surprise that an import-export concern carried Hong Kong Stock?

Away from this still limited, but now 13-count toy line, they would have had knock-off torches, sewing sets, key-rings, kitchen gadgets that break the fourth time you use them, plant pots, macramé sets, cruet sets, shit scissors . . . you know what they would have had!

 

Kindly, TJF confirms that the card dates from the 1980's, and was 'closeout', which again takes us away from the 1950/60's cereal premiums, and could be old stock from the 1977 days or something more contemporary . . . pretty-much what I dug-up, and he's certainly done Kent's arguments (if he really has any?) no favours!! Fancy having the card without the figures?

And I'd already confirmed they 'do figures' - I showed them!???? He then says, "So it is likely they did a header card Soldiers of the World" . . . why? Why is it likely? Because they sound the same? Simplistic tosh, the evidence (circumstantial) is they took multicoloured shite from anywhere or anyone except Tatra, the dullard!

He then claims the Tatra are R&L, which even the R&L experts don't! They have the lovely Aussie flats of Diggers. And the grandiose shite in his last paragraph is hilarious, I'd be embarrassed to be caught writing such narcissistic rubbish! Or having it written about me!

What I've said, and I will say it again, is that THERE IS NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that they ever carried the Tatra-for-Kellogg's/Nabisco/Peak Freans et al 'Soldiers/Warriors of the World/All Nations'. Nor any evidence for the link to silver/gold cereal premiums, beyond the hearsay present on Kent's site for years. I have never said they didn't 'do them', just that the evidence isn't there?

Now if Mr Specher is to send empirical evidence in his fantastic forthcoming article, then that query will be put to bed, won't it? And the whole hobby will know a truth, but as The Jabbering Fuck is relying on another card-top altogether, I suspect we'll be waiting a long time for that particular evidential revelation?

Is he going to show us the dogs . . . I haven't found the dogs card yet, either . . . let's hope for his sake they are silver and gold with no signs of the staples being tampered with, because otherwise he'll be adding nothing to what I showed/said the other day? Who bought the Dolls of the World on Tuesday, was that Kent? Oh, he could send those to the magazine, couldn't he?!

And wouldn't we rather an American collector tells us accurately, about an American toy importer, than have to wait for a Brit to come along twenty years later and try to undo some of the falsehoods and myths about cereal premiums! So I - for one - am really looking forwards to his article with a barely contained joy, indeed I think I might have fun going through it with a fine-toothed comb!

Now, don't get me wrong, DO NOT get me wrong, Kent has done some amazing work for the hobby (I don't think TJF has, particularly . . . new production? It's on 15 websites!), both by himself, and in league with others, and I have sung his praises here many times, I have posted about 100-links (?) to his pages over the years, but this day was always coming.

Indeed, I have had private conversations with (closes eyes and counts quietly), one . . . two . . . three . . . at least five/six people off the top of my head, over the last four or five years, some a decade ago, predicting this moment. So they won't have been any more surprised than me to see Standinger's arsegasm, nor even, if they noticed Kent's comments the other day.

He's always been conspicuous by his absence, it was notable how he almost seemed to start commenting on Shite Stuff more after the war started, so his associate membership of the PSTSM was always badge-clear! And he started adjusting his site to reflect things written on my Blog within months of my starting, never crediting, never acknowledging, even as I sent him traffic? Something I've also pointed out to people over the years. None of this latest skirmish is any surprise to those who matter.

So the question was only ever, is he going to avoid eye-contact forever, stay 'neutral', sit on his hands over on the verge? And it was beginning to look like he would, but for reasons known only to him, he lost the plot on Monday and fell off the wagon! And because - as you know - I was up on my high horse (it's almost like somebody else scripted half of this!), I couldn't help him up!

Far from Kent's "You got a lot of the history of Rubenstein International wrong" (I didn't even cover much history) or Stadinger's "....contained a number of mistakes", there was one error - on the status of a non-toy soldier charity-trust thingy! Nothing in Kent's comments on my post, nor in TJF's little turd of a piece . . . piece of a turd, corrects or contradicts anything I reported last Monday.

Still; Kent is going to put us all right, hopefully including his own site, which has always contained questionable details, as fact, on Rubenstien, with his future article, it's gonna' be awsome, let's all big it up - coming soon, the fundamentally stupendous, encyclopedic, vastly better than Hugh's, fuller than a full shit-truck's, history of Rubenstein, the article that will save the hobby!

Worth a re-read, as I knew exactly what was happening, and pulled no punches, while Kent was pretending he didn't, but read his words after seeing the Jabbering Fuck's post and it all makes a sort of gutless sense? And a rare link to the almighty arsehole's Shite Stuff, but given his posting rate recently, he needs the traffic!

Oh fuck!, NOW they've annoyed me . . . 

  . . . talking about traffic; TJF's idiocy has sent an extra 6000-odd viewers my way, and the 5-million clicked over a couple of days early! I was hoping to catch-it on the nines, the zerros or the one, over the weekend! Heay-ho, there's always the 10! If I live that long?

Notice we also clicked-over the 4,500 posts during Rack Toy Month!

See, a big bump! The trouble is Stad's Shite is such thin gruel these days, I only visit it about once a fortnight to see if he's posted, anything, at all! It just so happens, it's often on a Friday! [I can't take screen-caps as jpg's on this pice-of-shit Windows-11 machine, so I have to shoot the screen, and I'd already turned the main lights off, me and Bosey-Boy were snuggled for the night when I found the PSTSM arsholery!]

And don't imagine all that traffic came from him, this will be the word getting round, the Vichy will be there, a cock-wacking monkey lizard or two will be there, a cheque-keeping Spanish author and his fan-boys, Deadleaf and the other one, the AFD will be there, a right-wing antipodean, then there are a couple of facebook groups which have been infested by some of my 'eemies', so the word got around; "There's a fight in the playground, Kent finally got off the fence!" All the people who pretend they've never found the Blog will be there, as they were - like Kent - all along, as they will be - tomorrow!

 

You see, all these guys are to the left of the bell-curve, if you know what I mean, while I'm to the right of it, so if I'm never going to see eye-to-eye with them, I might as well learn to enjoy rebutting their stuff!

 

Consider this, up until 48 hours ago, Kent had four sets I think, on his Rubenstein page/section, with some questionable facts. yet when I show eleven and mention the dogs (which Kent's got) The Jabbering Fuck busts a blood-vessel over a thirteenth, at me! Not the 5th, 6th, 7th . . . at 'well-researched' Kent? Why? Why is it, that they hold me to a higher standard, than they hold even themselves to? Huh? Why is that?

Back in the autumn, last year, or the year before? Or every year! TJF did a post with six figures, he got four of them wrong, and it was five corrections from three of his mates and some input from a Brit over two days, before they were all singing from the same hymn-sheet!

 

And that was fine, that was nothing more than an unfortunate series of multiple 'brain freezes', totally allowed . . . I get one detail out of whack, not even a fact, sometimes; just if I don't mention something, I get "Card or paper? Where was they from? How many? Who's that? When? Why?

I am literally held to a higher standard than everyone else! Why is that? I know! And why isn't all this fantastically new and accurate 'history' (of which I got "lots" wrong, apparently), not already on Kent's site? Was he saving it? Was he saving it for us all to enjoy on a rainy day?

There is one inaccuracy in my previous post on the subject, the family's [non-toy soldier] Foundation is not still active, there were about eleven companies between the three (Irvin, Ralph and 'L' - no inaccuracies there), ten had nothing to do with toys and I didn't follow-them up the other night, turns-out that when I downloaded it all, way-back-when, it still was active, I suspect the other 'still active's will prove not to be, too!

Apologies for that, mea culpa, and I'll wear sackcloth and ashes for the rest of the weekend! And sorry for the poor imagery here, really, but it was short notice and I only had a few unused images left-over from the other day!

To be honest, TJF's latest . . . spat? Attack? Is more sad than anything else, the attack on me personally is lacklustre and half-hearted, his own input is wrong and inaccurate, I think he used a similar title before, and it's only a few paragraphs? The whole thing lacks substance, lacks meat; it's pallid, he's not even trying, while Kent hides in my comments, pretending he can't see, what we can all see with our own eyes?

And I know what you're thinking, "Hugh, did you climb on your high horse just to get the Jabbering Fuck to push you over the 5-mil, with or without the fortuitous intervention of Kent Sprecher?", and, would you know it, in all this excitement . . . I've clean forgot.

Oh . . . and there's still three Rubenstein posts in the short queue!

U is for Usborne Publishing

Who took to threatening fellow-Bloggers back at the beginning of this Blog, some 15-odd years ago, god knows what they will make of a completed work, but at least two people received take-down/cease-and-desist eMails, way back when, just for publicising their (Usborne's) products!?

Scan of an old photograph of an old made-up, card model I did around 2003/4, and which was taken by a friend's kid to his junior school to be put on a bookshelf or something until it had accrued a thick-enough cover of dust to justify a trip in a skip during the summer holidays!

I hid the join in the two base-boards with coloured pencil on the moat and some scatter material in the courtyard, and I built it as per the instructions, down to the cocktail-stick flag-poles. I still have the knights in a little tub somewhere, in fact we may have seen them here at some point? The wall above the portcullis gateway had no fixing flaps or tabs, so had a tendency to lean forwards!

And it struck me, while building it, that it would be very easy to make a much bigger castle, from several, identical, Make This Castle / Make This Model Castle sets, building a much longer perimeter wall with all sorts of towers, and leaving the keep in the middle rather than in one corner!

I is for Inflation!

For those Brwreakshiteers who wanted to take us back to the heady days of the 1970's, here is a lesson on the sunlit-uplands of post oil crisis inflation!

Basset-Lowke 'The Waterloo Cannons'

Daily Telegraph Magazine (Sunday Supplement)

No.469 October 26th 1973

Basset-Lowke 'The Waterloo Cannons'

Sunday Times Magazine (Sunday Supplement)

November 17th 1974

 

In less than fourteen months, they went up nearly 25%! That's how it was when we were begging to join the EEC, which De Gualle had tried to keep us out of (The UK's applications to join in 1963 and 1967 were vetoed by the President of France).

 

Basset-Lowke, an old railway modelling name often used by its various owners for oddities which don't belong in the standard lines! Lovely looking guns and just the sort of thing to turn-up in a charity shop, or auction job-lot. Possibly a bit big at around 60 or 70mm compatible? Anyone know them?

K is for Khaki Infantry Page - Update

I've added some images from Chris Smith to the Khaki Infantry page, they are up the top with the Britains sentries, so you don't have to scroll down the page!

I've also added some 828 stuff, started a section for them, below the Hong Kong generics section, moved some of their stuff from there and added notes to the effect the previous '823' attribution is probably just a poorly registered stamp. No firm brand, but enough for a seperate section now. And you will have to scroll right-down the page to find it!

S is for Seen Elswhere - The Italians are Coming!

I almost can't write for excitement, someone made my day earlier this evening, in fact he made my fucking year, it's like Christmas just came early, so a quick post on a few bits I've already posted elsewhere. Mostly Fontanini, but a bit of Garibaldi, all from the Roman Boot!

 

The Knights; We've actually looked at a pair of the larger ones and their Hong Kong blow-moulded clones before here at Small Scale World (which nobody follows - except everybody), but this bunch is, I think (I could put 'we believe' and then you'd really think I know what I'm talking about, huh?) a complete set of eight poses in the 75/80mm line with the same plug-in bases and silver wash over matt black.

Couple of close-ups showing the standard base and . . . errr. . . that's about it! They do all have date-captions, but I didn't think to write them down, so - another day! Lazy research, that'll be the problem!

Then, also from Fontanini we have Brain Blessed and his daughter, singing the Siegmund & Sieglinde duet, from Die Walküre at Bayreuth a few years ago! God knows, the fevered mind of Simonetti as he tried to finish a Commission while hallucinating with a particularly severe bout of gastroenteritis?

But Peter Evans, roving reporter for Plastic Warrior, reports either seeing or buying them from Hastings in the past, so they were a real thing! Aren't they charming? My piss-taking aside, Fontanini did a set of the Italian Commedia dell'arte, so a little theatricalise on their Normans (or Anglo-Saxons; it's not clear!) is to be excused, if not actually expected! I Really need to find the rest of this set!

The two Vikings are in the same size as the Knights, but with integrated bases, so you can see our Sieglinde (well, if she's not a 'she', he's a very pretty boy; no reading stories to kiddies in Florida, in that getup, mate!) is around 100mm in comparison.

Finally, a quintet of Garibaldini from Nardi, another Italian maker. I think they may be supposed to have red kepis, which, if they are, are obviously missing - I may have some spare Kinder ones I can force-on with a bit of horse-gum!

 

The same sculpts were used for Confederate and Union types and RCMP (as these, but no neckerchiefs and wearing lemon-squeezer hats), and possibly US Cavalry? These are a near 54mm. There were larger sizes of these as well, and compared to some of the dancing loons which came from that stable, these are quite reasonable figures.

R is for Really Rubenstein!

Ooop . . . just let me get up on my high horse . . . that's better, now, where was I? Oh yeah! Rubenstein. There isn't much on Rubenstein within the hobby and most of what you will find seems to be conjecture dressed-up as fact! So I thought I'd add my tuppenceworth to the mix and probably ruffle a few feathers!

 

Rubenstein were a US jobber, one of a dozen or so companies/entities started by Irving Rubenstein, sometimes with his Brother Ralph, or possibly a wife, 'L' (?), always in or around North Hollywood, California. Rubenstein International were incorporated in 1977 (too late for some of the premiums they are credited with?), but are no longer active, although several of the companies (mostly involved in B2B sourcing, services, or marketing) are still extant, along with a family foundation.

 

On the left are the Euro-premium pirates (eight sculpts in the UK [Kellogg's] and 20 poses elsewhere, under several brands), on the right my fledgling Rubinstein collection about two years ago, I went on to add about three or four more sets, but they all went to storage about 12-months ago! Some described - by Rubenstein - as 'Made in Mexico', other's (most), 'Made in England' (not 'Britain', not 'The UK'). I have so far found one set credited to having been 'Made in the USA'.

The Robin Hood figures are the same version described elsewhere in the hobby (marked with small 'Canada' monikers), and seen elsewhere on the Blog against the New Zealand-made versions. As one of the 'made in England' sets, this would suggest someone larger than Tatra (for instance) as they must have been big enough to have a Canadian office/subsidiary?

The athletes are after the 'Euro' versions (with Olympic flame carrier), not the Kellogg's or Marx sculpts, and while both figure sets are soft polyethylene, the dune-buggys [sic] are hard polystyrene, like the R&L mini-kits, from Australia, but not marked-up to them.

Other figure sets include the ex-Raja Conjunto do Espaço 'space set' (which explains a question-mark from the very start of the Blog; my shiny yellow one is Rubenstein!), ex-Commonwealth Plastics dolls and possibly the dog breeds, but this is where I need to point out that so far, and I have been looking hard for over three years, there is NO empirical or circumstantial evidence for the Soldiers/Warriors of the World/All nations having ever been in Rubenstein packaging?

 

And if the dogs were issued by Rubenstein (and I suspect so), they were the multicoloured ones (from Mexico; not England), NOT the silver or gold ones issued with Nabisco breakfast cereals in the USA, for which the evidence is as sketchy as for the military set.

 

Indeed, let's get this out of the way, Rubenstein International were an 'Import & Export' outfit, according to their licences, and it's very unlikely they ever "made" a single toy! So whoever was supplying Rubenstein, would also have supplied the cereal or ice-cream guys &etc., and earlier, I think. Also - we know Tatra (for instance) were responsible for the warriors/soldiers . . . in silver and gold!

The R&L styled mini-kits, I now have three of these for us to look at in greater detail another day, indeed I think most of these are the shots of the auctions/BIN's I won, I wouldn't use so many evilBay images in one article if I didn't think I had a tad of moral ground under my tippy-toes! Not sure if I ever succeeded in getting the Cars, but I know I bought two sets of motorcycles, so I can make one set up, for a Blog post!

I actually managed to get the Antique Cars photographed, though! But I think I might also have got the set of Wagons, although I might be confusing it with the Historical Vehicles which I know I got but also didn't photograph? Interestingly, while the Dune Buggys are polystyrene, these are polyethylene, and the Penny Farthing in the Historic's set is probably the one Brian Berke sent to the Blog, as an addendum to that premium kit post!

So far the only set sourced in the 'States which I've found, which is not to say there aren't more, but the same eleven sets keep turning-up, with a possible run of the dogs in multicolours, making a dozen.

 

These are also nothing like the others, and we saw a pale-blue Hong Kong example of one of these in Chris Smith's last donation, so, a common gum-ball machine prize, or those rack-toy cards with a bunch of teeny header-bags for a dime or sixpence?

 

All of which gives us;

• Action Athletes - Mexico, after Manurba/Linde et al.
• Antique Cars - England, after R&L?
  
• Comic Animals - USA
• Comic Moon Figures - Mexico, ex-Raja premiums
• Comic Pirates - Mexico, ex-European tool
  
• Dogs - Mexico, ex-Nabisco premiums
• Dolls of the world - Mexico, ex-Commonwealth 
• Dune Buggys - England, after R&L?
• Historical Transportation - England, after R&L?
• Horse-Drawn Coaches - England, after R&L or Pyro/Kleeware?
• Robin Hood Figures - England, previously/also Canada, after Marx
• Soldiers of World War II - Hong Kong, contents unknown, Airfix clones?
  
• Super Motorcycles - England, after R&L?

Sourced from England x6, Mexico x5, Hong Kong and the USA x1 each, for a twelve-count, which make-up grosses, which is how this rack-toy stuff is ordered/wholesaled thirteen-count; a bakers dozen!

The reason I've question-marked the possible R&L connection, is because R&L is another one where there may be falsehoods hiding as fact. When they turn-up in British or European products as premiums, they usually have A) very fine parts, B) 'R&L' somewhere on the runner, these four/five sets (the Dune Buggys may be from another source) are simpler and unmarked, while there is the various Italian sets of similar kits and the De Gruyter connections to consider.

Still no soldiers/warriors, though! Four days later - Still no soldiers/warriors!

Thanks to the Jabbering Fuck and Kent Sprecer for their contributions, not!