BB is for Monkey Buisness!

Blue Boxes from Blue Box! Someone (a friend) drew my attention to these a few years ago, and while they were outside my budget I grabbed a few shots of the two sets at the time.

They mostly seem to be the standard zoo/jungle animals, as carried in a variety of sets/lines by both Blue Box and Redbox at various times. Of minor interest is that the mini-farm set flagged to both Elgee (overprint) and National, between them, also carries Blue Box product, as also carried by Marx.

 

However, the gorilla posed carefully with a blob of glue, on the dolls' furniture being used in the left-hand set, seems to be a set-specific sculpt, based on the standard walking on all fours model, but with his arms moved?

Likewise, the elephant-rider here seems to be based on the walking monkey with swivel-arms you find in the Noah's Ark sets of Blue Box, Holly, New Maries and others, where it's usually grey plastic with a more gibbon-like head? I have no idea how many other sets there were in this line, but they are fun!

C is for Camberley's Carnival Carousel

I don't know about your local 'hood, but here in Fleet, one of the many empty retail units has been filled with a sort of community-hub, information centre and whole-food promoter, which may or may not be run by the local authority or the local business body?

 

Back in 2021 I spotted a similar enterprise in Camberley over the ranges, which seemed to be more a combination café and outlet for the local library, or given that the Tories have closed more than 500 libraries in the last 13 years, it may have been a replacement for the library? 

 

Anyway, it was closed, but in the window was this rather fine scratch-built fairground scene which I shot against some harsh reflections, these are the best shots that I managed to render viewable with a bit of cropping and some contrast work!

 

If you missed it, the history of the piece in on the sticker attached to the glass or acrylate cover in the first image. A couple of the figures look vaguely familiar, but I can place them, so they have probably been heavily works to turn them into young civilians! And that's it blurb-wise, just some pictures of a beautiful thing!

P is for Playset of Polymer Performers!

A small victory for my research efforts with this one, as I've had the cutting in the archive since 2005, but have only recently found the set, badged to someone else, but I suspect they are one and the same, certainly the carry-case/tub-graphics seem to tie in, but more globally it may have been a common contractable 'generic' at the time?

 

 

On the left we have the original cutting from Lidl's weekly flyer, so my handwritten date would probably have been the due date, the following week, rather than the date I got the flyer.

 

For those whose countries haven't yet encountered such stores, they started life in Germany (there's a similar-sized rival 'Aldi'), where I knew of them from my time there, not as a kid in the 1970's, but as a soldier in the later 1980's, although I think the one local to Wavell Barracks was another store brand altogether!

 

They pile-high with a basic range at low prices, and enhance their offering with bulk-ordered household furnishings, goods, tools, toys and the like which are announced the week before in the little flyers or pamphlets which in a quiet week might be a three-page gatefold, and in a busy period like now might run to 16 stapled pages, with occasional extra flyers/validation periods (of a few weeks, or 'while stokes last') for meats, wines & spirts, or - now'ish - toys and sweet treats/cheese etc.

 

It is from one of those flyers that this page came, while on the right, we have a Padget marked tub, which seems to have the same graphics. But the label goes on to say Padget Trading Limited C/O [care of] Padget Services, so apparently not our more commonly seen here, Padgett Brothers (A-to-Z), but probably a similarly-named, similar importer, who 'got the gig' to supply these to Lidl at the time?

 

Obviously, our interest is in the figures, which are of a mixed quality, around 45/50mm, and PVC, the dancer/performer figures, being based on sculpts going back to at least the 1960's are quite good, and the magician (who has to double as ring-master) is passable I suppose, as are the clowns if you assume they have papier-mâché heads, and take into account the giant shoes, but the pair of acrobats are bloody-awful sculpts of some hidiousity! I suspect I got an extra figure, but luckily of the better sculpt!

Anatomically incorrect, clumsy-looking and as un-athletic as it's possible to be, she still managed to get across the high-wire while I changed films; Hee-hee! The high-wire consists of three parts, so you can have a single span (as here) or a double, they locate into the crossbars with little spigots, and the trapeze uprights can be two heights.

 

The animals are really more tub-fillers than anything else, with an inordinate number of tigers, given the lack of a big-cat trainer! Most of the baby giraffes won't stand up and have a completely different paint-treatment to the adults, and all are in a very stiff PVC-alike. The adult elephants would make very nice war-elephant conversions in the 1:72nd to 28mm range.

 

The stands combine into a half-circle, so two sets would make a full ring, but leave you with a lifetime's supply of rather leery tigers! And the all-male lion family in two sizes are hardly going to jump that burning hoop! As I'm sure you can see, scale is all over the place!

 

 

The stands are all in a 'styrene polymer, but the other accessories (and the shrubs) are polyethylene, so the fact that the clowns' cannon looks like it might be the same as Hing Fat's pirate cannon, probably suggest an origin for those (polyethylene) parts, certainly I think the shrubs are theirs too, and possibly the zoo-cage pieces, with the [softer] animals & figures, and [harder] stands possibly from another/other source/s?

 

In total there seems to have been six sets in that week's 'assortment', and this poor quality image should help ID jungle (larger animals by the look if it) and sea animal (mixed sizes) sets in the future, although from time to time one would expect one or the other to turn-up in some sort of played-with condition.

 

 

Thought for the day

If you write - the animals and figures, and stands, it reads clumsy, but if you write - the  animals & figures, and stands, your brain reads the ampersand as 'n or un, so; Animals n'figures, and it reads better? I don't know if it's something unique to English, but it's purely psychological, both lines are technically correct, however one scans in the brain as acceptable the other doesn't? Is there a word for this, or is it a known 'rule'?

H is for How They Come In - Sandown - September, Part 2

Continuing/completing the plunder posts from the last Sandown Park toy show, from BP Fairs (the next one is on the 11th of November I think), with the other half of the purchases/acquisitions!

My third Cherilea Dalek, I think I have a black and a sky-blue now (or was it silver? It's on the Blog somewhere!), so with this one a reasonable 'sample'! Although I've read that the plug-in tools are being reproduced, so I'll have to check their quality against the older ones, as it's very clean!

 

Now . . . we've had the above figures before, I think I have more than a baker's dozen now, and with colour variations! Each time we've seen them I've stated I know the game but can't remember it, well, it's Alibi, or "Dennis Wheatley's exciting new game Alibi", published by Geographia Ltd.

 

Below them are three Wardie/Mastermodels OO-gauge figures and two larger figures which will be from British minor makers wagons, carts or milk-floats, still to be attributed, but that will be for another day, there are lots of them!

Odds and sods, including a Timpolin mechanic, original Ral Patha 'fantasaur' and the metal chap, top left, who often turns up (I have a bagful somewhere!) and is a Tootsietoys soldier from the sets with the small die-cast trucks which are the same as the (Charbens?) lorries we saw here years ago - button-searchlight, pom-pom gun or etc.

 

Adrian Little of Mercator Trading found this for me! Having wanted some for years, i've had three come-in this year! Another Milwaukee Zoo marked Mold-a-Rama figurine, this one of a T-Rex, I've seen a similar crested 'Duckasaurus' about the place!

 

I paid over the odds on this and got laughed at by Adrian and Gareth, but I rather liked it, and don't mind, something is worth what you pay for it! Britains village pond, I have the swan and some cygnets for it, I think, so it's got a purpose!

 

And this was dirt-cheap, but seems to be 'all there', a future project will be to finish it/rebuild it, and I'll scan the box in, so next time we can look at it in more depth. But I'm not sure if I'll stick with the fiddly foil-covering the previous owner had embarked upon!

H is for How They Come In - Sandown - September, Part 1

Catching-up with the show-repots as another Sandown swings towards us, I was as frugal at the last show as I had been in London earlier in the year, but still managed a fair pile of plunder to share.

These were cheap as chips, probably cheaper, these days! The sort of stuff we used to find in our Christmas Stockings back in the 1960's, Japanese, litho-printed tinplate whistles, it was the cowboys which attracted me, but in the end I bought one of each as there is a large'ish selection of novelty plastic and tin whistles, pan-pipes, whizzers, kazoos, clickers and the like kicking around, so one day they can have their own page!

 

A handful of the Marty/M-Toy (May Moon Industrial) fantasy warriors from the 1980's, I have some and we've looked at them once or twice, but it's worth buying them when they are reasonably priced, for the weapons, which are always short?

 

My expense of the day, there are two wheel/axle sets missing, but the armoured-car is a duplicate, so a bit of cannibalism will get these Triang Minic's back in road-order! Civilian versions of the lorries and car can be found, while we've seen dessert versions of the two AFV's (and the caterpillar-tractor?), and the whole set also comes in RAF blue-grey.

 

Metal from Adrian's cheapie-tray, all aluminium, and one first supposes, all French, but I'm not sure on the scarecrow? The Drummer is Quiralu, not sure about the machine-gunner either, but I think it's actually the British Wend-Al which is probably the attribution for the scarecrow too?

 

The Marx mini-animal, in its original Hong Kong generic box, over-stickered to Combex, who were part of the tail-end of the Marx UK story, so that all makes sense! Adrian had put it to one side for me, so many thanks to him!

 

Not sure on the kennel/out-building, while the Grant's Whiskey premium (die-cast by Britains), is an ongoing thing; I have lots of them in several places, and I don't carry a wants-list, so I tend to grab them when I see them going cheap, against one day bringing them all together and working out what I've got, what I need and how many duplicates I can offload to pay for any missing ones! High numbers tent to be harder to find.

 

Adrian also had these for me, he'd been following the previous posts on the subject, three Lone Star and one Charbens, to be sorted into the collection when the others turn-up from storage!

 

Tudor Rose boats, I actually took the mast from the white one, to complete the bi-colour! Later re-issued by Springwood Mouldings in netted bags as beach toys, which is pretty-much their original purpose! These are marked Tudor Rose.

 

I think this was Poplar Plastics, but we may have just mused on it being so? Can't remember if it was marked, it's big, about 10-iches long, or approximately 150mm figure, and if not Poplar will be Tudor Rose or Kleeware?

 

A small selection of smaller farm and zoo, nothing particularly rare or exciting, but it was a 50p or quid bag? The deer is a little Japanese blow-mould (polystyrene), and the polar bear will be a cake-decoration, also hard 'styrene. The Britains calf is near mint-paint, so probably the highlight.

F is for Further Follow-up - Gay Gem Hawaiian Dancers

We looked at the Britains-copy Hawaiian dancers here, and then there was a quick follow-up here, and I've now found this in the archive, it's not much use without the figures, but from the illustration it would seem to be one of the straight piracies rather than the clip-on skirt versions, and with the tree, probably the ones in the latter images of the above link.

Gay Gem, who often turn-up on evilBay with this kind of stuff, as I say; not much use, but it's in the tag-list now, under 'Hawaiian'. This would have been from the James Chase collection, and as the figures weren't with it, they probably went through the main auction at Christies, while this was in the ephemera-dump/polymer-overspill sale at SAS Auctions a few months later, all back in 2006, I think?

E is for Epemera - The 'Other' Gem

We often feature, here at Small Scale World, the output of Gem, Gemodels, Gem Models, the cake-decoration and novelty figures of George Musgrave's 'Gem' and Festival (as also supplied to and copied by Culpitt et al), he who also sculpted for Britains, among others, and I have mentioned from time to time the name change from Gem, to Gemodels, due to the threat (or veiled threat?) of legal intervention from the other Gem.

And here is a flyer for the 'new' narrow-gauge locomotive kits, which would have been mixed-media (whitemetal and brass) kits. Running on TT-gauge track for an in-scale rail-gauge, this was the existing Gem company which forced the name change on Musgrave's enterprise.

B is for Bergan and Beton!

This is both a quick box-ticker and a bit of fun! In the parcel from Jon Attwood, there was a Bergan Toys (Beton) figure, which didn't seem to have been photographed either in the lots we've seen, or another still in the queue, and when Jon mentioned it the other day I got worried in case I'd not shot a bunch of figures, but I found him in the first post, I just didn't mention him in the blurb, anyway by then I'd shot everything I'd found, so we can have a quick-look

 

This is what has come in over the last 18/24-months; less any which went to storage last autumn, and they are an ecclectic snapshot of some of the variations you can find of these figures.

 

With - from the top left - A Plastic Toys copy in hard 'styrene, another hard plastic early figure with paint, one (from Jon) with the leachate you sometimes find on these figures, in soft 'ethylene, a similar soft one in blue (for Navy or Army Air Force?), and a later stable-green one with no leachate below.

Bases, the one from Jon lacks the formal information in the middle depression, but you can see the clear 'B' intertwined with a 'T' of the logotype on all three of the Bergan/Beton bases, the Plastic Toys copy is unmarked!

 

This rather dented chap has been hanging around in Picasa since I shot him in 2013, and is another copy, from Reliable of Canada, in soft polyethylene again, he's suffering a bit of sun-fading in addition to his surface dinks!

While two of them came-in just under year ago, along-with an early seperate-based cowboy, and they were also in Picasa! It's a measure of my lack of imagination that I'm still using the same sheet of black cartridge-paper!

We looked at my existing small samples here, while the last (and best) words on the subject are on Ponylope - this link is to the 'WWII' page, but then click on 'WWI' and '*Beton Variations' in the left-hand menu to get far more than I will ever be able to show you!

U is for "Up Yer Ladder, Pal!"

This is an odd one, I've seen foreign-language versions, usually by equally esoteric makes as this one, Action GT being a TV-marketing enterprise who had some success in the late 1970's-1980's with mostly Hong Kong imports branded to them here, and other firms (Pressman, Remco (Big Trak?), Schmidt Spiele, Tyco &etc.) elsewhere, relying on a business model which seemed to consist of big-box, statement toys to 'make your year's money over/with the Christmas season'!

 

The game itself is a pretty random luck-oriented one, but obviously the 'hook' is the large apparatus which can be set up on the floor for the family to gather round and marvel at while smiling inanely at each other, and laughing a lot, in the - then - prevailing fashion of 'nuclear' families in televisual advertising!

 

The 'ladder' frame is manufactured in a rather flimsy polystyrene, unlike the figures and sacks which are all made of a hard-wearing material which could be a dense polyethylene, or a nylon of some type?

Having mentioned them; as toy/figure collectors our interest can be twofold, firstly, the obvious piracies of the Britains farmer have an appeal to completists, 'cameo' collectors or hard-core Britains' fans, while the supply of up to 16 sacks in up to four colours (you rarely see it complete, but you will often see it, incomplete, at the larger car-boot sales) might be useful for modellers or dioramists?

As you can see, the copies are around 40mm, and taken directly from the late version, PVC/vinyl farm-hand, who would have been easily obtainable in the former colony by whoever was pirating it for the Western buyers!

 

The hair-trigger hinges (they are weighted on the near-side, by being wider that the back portion), means you can drop your own figure, by himself, if you are too ham-fisted, but even if all players are being careful, three will usually send them all tumbling to the bottom, often carrying a few others with them. I'd imagine that with a shaky granny or fidgety juvenile involved, it became almost impossible for anyone to finish, and therefore a frustrating game which didn't come-out of the cupboard in subsequent years?

Original TV Ad.