D is for Donation - Chris - Animals

The backside of this pair (ooh missus!) is the recent parcel from Chris Smith and the animals therewith, and it was quite a fishy sample! But sea life seems to play fourth fiddle, to farm, zoo and dinosaurs, so it's nice to find what was available, over the years!

 

A couple of incomplete walkers, as with the Jigtoys, and cereal premium mini-kits, there is a tub for bits of these, and hopefully, eventually, enough parts will enable the reconstruction of some, I know I have a spare blue leg in there already, so the dog may walk again, but it has to be the correct leg!

 

On the subject of dogs . . . I love the blow-moulded celluloid effort from Japan, he has a tree hanger, and I hadn't even entertained the idea that such things might be used in that way, but with modern families throwing movie villains and Disny characters on their trees with gay abandon, I guess anything is possible in the non-bauble, bauble world!

 

Three! Looks like someone's fledgling collection of Octopi (and squid) ended-up in Chris's odds tray! I do have a few Octopuses and squids (fight among yourselves on the correct plural, spellchecker is happy with both), so, hopefully, we will have a post, or page on them one day.

 

Reptiles and anphibians, often got a shared set, or even shared book-space, when we were young, and with three 'rubber jigglers', there's plenty of nostalgia in this shot. The orange one, nylon I think, washed out by the flash, may be a place-card holder, it has a large, triangular wedge under his belly, which it's sitting on, and you could curve a place-card/name-plate through the slots of its arms, but then again, I may be over-thinking a game-playing piece?!!

 

The originals of the mini Elephant flat seem to have been US-available, US made, and hard polystyrene, these soft polyethylene ones which turn-up in the UK will be Christmas cracker novelties. Two squirrels, another favourite subject, the bisque one has lost an ear which would be hard to replace, but might perhaps be built-up using the superglue/baking soda method, and a file?

 

The plastic one may be from a kids comic/magazine set or something, while the little white lamb is almost certainly adrift from his/her small, cheap, Hong Kong nativity set?

 

These are very interesting, probably Hong Kong, and never to be ascribed a maker, they are a set of sharks, including some unusual ones, like the Thresher at the back with the long upper tail fin, which they use as a whip to herd small fish like sardines into a bait-ball! Or the Saw Shark, front left.

 

Pencil tops, they are mostly marked 1980 / 5p, as can be seen on the upturned Bowmouth Guitarfish, possibly by the collector who purchased them, as a lot, and recorded the price and date, as it's not something you'd find on a tub of them, back at the time?

 

 

Another shark, and several interesting fish, some copies of US originals, and at least three probably belonging to sets/part-sets already in the pile, so very useful, Chris was taken with the flying fish, and it's a lovely sculpt, while the seahorse is a scale-up of a similar one seen in a past sea life roundup, even to colour and type of plastic, so they probably belong together too?

 

Rubber jigglers of a whale and a lobster, I shot the whale from an awkward angle, but it illustrates the gape-mouth, a feature of many jigglers, from alien monsters through full Chinasaurs, to this chap, or chapess!

 

This is interesting, it's fully fired porcelain or fine china, as opposed to bisque or terracotta, and fully glazed in two colours, I suspect it might be a chopstick rest, but not the common 'Blue & White' ones normally found (post in the queue, and boat seen in the last 'brown water navy' post), so it may just be a French pudding prize, or more miscellaneous keepsake/collectable?

Again, many thanks to Chris for these, all new to collection and new to blog

Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish! 
A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh. 
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish! 
That went wherever I did go.

D is for Donations - Peter - Animals

The sorting of the animals is going to be one of the bigger tasks, one day, the hobby is probably bigger than Toy Soldiers, certainly, it supports several vigorous forums, and there are as many makers, if not more, while mine are rather in an anonymised heap within the bigger stash, but they keep coming in, and here's some more!

 

A nice cat, which looks like it might be an accessory from a non-animal set of some kind, the lizard is from the little small-scale, rack-toy play sets from Toy Major/Ackerman, while the bear is both a bit crude and a bit unusual!

 

A whole sub-genre are this smallish scale, softish vinyl sets from toobs, tubs or bags, which are sort of 35/40mm compatible, but really 'bag-scale' or unit scale, and while some are marked, other's easy to ID, many sets are to be found on FeeBay-Amazon-Alibaba, as generics or under obviously phantom brands. These seem to go together, but a couple of them are questionable. Nice, different, cactus!

 

Two generic rack toys, over-stickered to Toys As Fun, which I could have saved for Rack Toy Month, but I think there's plenty for then, and this is the next size up, again, a bit unit-scale (elephant undersized, pig oversized), but mid-sized animals are coming out as 54mm-compatible, which is useful for dioramas and vignettes . . . big cat stalking a patrol, that kind of thing!

 

A couple of proper antiques, I love these! The pressed-wood farmer seems to match the common girl feeding chickens we've seen here before, in point of fact, she or her chickens, turn up so often she must have been from a popular set, for several years, but this chap I've not seen before. Although the blue paint has suffered badly, the other colours remain in sufficient quantity to give a good idea of what he looked like new!

 

While the horse in tin-plate might be a cigarette premium, while we, here in the UK, had cards and silks, as giveaways, some brands on the continent had tin-plate flats, prior to replacing them with the numerous plastic flats used as premiums with other products too. You fold the base out, after the item has been slid out of the packet of cigarettes.

 

From a more recent pick-up in London is another Toy Major lizard (used as a dragon/monster/dinosaur in both the cavemen and medieval sets), two tree frogs and a very daft-looking sauropod!

 

Some larger animals, I think a couple were Triple-A marked, and the green pony is from the Tupperware interactive building blocks, we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/11/g-is-for-great-grey-green-greasy.html

 

Where they were used as, removable, playable rattles, in opaque blocks, unlike the transparent ones from Airfix and others.

 

A large lump of dense vinyl, makes a rather nice Hippo', and these are starting to grow as a side collection, purely by accident, and we did look at a load in a lazy post a while ago!

 

This is from PMS, and I ummed-and-arrred over whether or not to open it, in the end I though I had to, or I wouldn't know what I was dealing with, and was quite suprised to find a gold mokey!

 

I don't know wheather it's a 'chase' figure, or if the whole range is finished in a similar fashion, nor do I know how many there are as there;s no flyer/leaflette . . . probably a £1-shop thing, and therefore stripped to the minimum on unit-price!

 

Another group of - probably - related small vinyls - wild!

 

And another - domestic!

 

Mentioned the other day I think, and seen with a few others a while back, oh yeah, it was the post on mixed shots, a week or so ago. Anyway, here's the farm one, courtesy of Peter, and these sets annoy me, nice animals in a vague scale, so why add huge dogs and ginormous poultry! They haven't even got the excuse of box-scale, because there's plenty of room occupied by the plastic end-filler!? I know, it's a cost thing!

 

Again, many thanks to Peter for all these, they're not just grist to the mill, but also 'bricks in the wall', gaps filled in the archive.

L is for Lost . . . Kitties!

I'm going to try and tackle the backlog of capsule toy and bland-bag stuff, popping one between each pair of donation posts, and it seems fitting to start with another contribution! Brian Berke found these back in the autumn of last year, and from the date given and the price, we can assume clearance of an unsuccessful line, so good luck finding any, but someone will be selling full sets on evilBay at some point, almost certainly for a premium they don't merit!

 

But, it's cats! And we like cats here, even daft, multicoloured, cartoon cats, and this is how they come, a quite substantial 'blind box', like a small milk-carton of the 1980's. Not Lost Kitties, just hidden, by Hasbro!

 

The material seems to be a wheat-chaff sand, titled "moulding compound", so a bit like Play-Doh maybe, but with more texture on the fingers? It looks like peanut butter, and one suspects the warning on the packaging wasn't enough to prevent some juveniles helping themselves to a portion!

 

Obverse of the flyer, should enlarge to the point where you can get a good idea of the whole set, which probably never went to a second wave, despite the urging to buy before early 2019, suggesting a limited shelf-life, as things like Shopkins and Lego minifig sets have, to make way for the next tranche/issue?

 

It's looking even more like peanut butter, once Brian started digging in it, I'm actually going to have a soft roll with PB, as soon as I finish editing this, as it's making me hungry, just looking at it!

 

Well, I didn't make it to the end of the editing, I finished the line and made myself a quick Warburton's soft white with Sunpat smooth . . . Much better now!

 

It says three items, but I suspect that's a sticker in the bag, for a four count, emergency-green, contortionist 'Cubbie' cat, basket, calculator (as '80's as a folded, waxed, milk carton!) and sticker. For the right age-group/target market, I can see these being a lot of fun, but with the wrong marketing, or the wrong promotional budget, many of these concepts fail within months, remember the Horrible Histories figures?

 

We don't see him so often these days, only due to circumstance, but the very useful Crescent sniper, size comparison shot, says these are quite large compared to some of the other blind-bag toys out there. Many thanks to Brian for spotting this, and sending us so many images.

D is for Donations - Chris - Civilians

So, the twin of the earlier post, and a similar but different assortment of non-military types, these winging there way here from East Anglia, courtesy of Chris Smith, just in time for the BMSS show, where I picked them up the other day . . . a month ago, and with only a month (today), until the PW show, we're into peak 'season'.

 

Another pencil top, another strip (Holland!), one of the spring-loaded guys from another type of table-football game, and a nice sample of the Subbuteo kicker, to compare notes with PPP's goalie!

 

The little one is also Subbuteo, seemingly someone's prized paint-job, removed from it's base, the 'super-deform' shortie, looks to be from the blind-bags we looked at a few years ago . . . can't find them, so they may be in the capsule toy/blind-bag queue!

 

And the horse rider is a cracker gift, we've definitely looked at before, but it's a fun collect, as there are dozens of colours, and several slightly different sculpts, usually only visually obvious from/in the horses' legs.

 

Rather bashed Lego cyclist, who may provide a useful spare one day, being styrene, as is the Hong Kong guy in the bag, who's card is in the queue, as an Italian-language generic, and the fact this one is in a different bag, means it's worth keeping him in there, until I know better . . . Could be a reseller thing, but I suspect not?

 

A larger Christmas cracker bike, and a similarly 'cheap novelty' skateboard, make-up the human-powered section of this donation.

 

Big Babies! The brown one (yes Waynetta, we've covered that off-colour [geddit!] joke in a previous post), is probably the most interesting here, as it's a hard-plastic copy out of Aitch-Kay, taken from soft rubber Western ones, which were issued by someone like Topps or Panini, I can never remember?

 

The small blue one in the romper-suit is a baby-shower/cake-decorating type, but with a bit of age, while I suspect the hunk of ham (?) is an early polystyrene dolls house accessory out of the same colony. The rocking hose without a tail, is polyethylene, and may be early British . . . Hilco, Charbens? It's not Taylor or Barratt, theirs were either slush-cast lead, or 'styrene? Although the cat families and puppies were polyethylene, weren't they, maybe put them in the frame with the other two!?

 

The other four are useful grist to the mill, with the large creamy-white one being unusual, if only for it's size, which is the larger Doll's House size, I wondered if it came with a change of simple costumes, but the pose isn't right? 

 

Lots of useful stuff here, with the Subbuteo policeman, being an early (pre. Stadden days) one, which I may not have (when we had an overview of mine, a good while ago now, it became obvious there were three generations of some of the pitch-side stuff), while behind him is yet another version of the growing Dinky-Blue Box mechanic group, with a good version in blue 'styrene with a neat lozenge base.

 

The orange pair are the rarer ones from the Corgi Juniors gift set, the Fontanini dancer is useful, as I know I only have a few, and the yellow chap, bending over the casualty basket (almost certainly from one of those 1970's-early '80's wire - or battery-controlled helicopter sets), is a mystery, I suspect another Carrara* figure, but I don't know, some kind of slot-racing accessory for sure, can you help?

 

While the two big guys are modern'ish, she's a from an Elastolin farm sculpt, I think, we've seen him before, but as a Policeman, with a different hat/head-sculpt, and - like her - is one of a number of larger figures, probably for smaller hands, she's 70/80mm, he's heading for 90. 

 

*I need to sort that Tag out, it's got conflated with Carrara Marble! 

 

These are bugging me! Years ago, I picked up two of these, with little slip-on black belts, which could be military, or more utility? In the style of some American production, I'm sure these are Hong Kong. Two of the above are the same poses as my old sample, but the third isn't, and I think we have a new colour, I also think a couple more, sans belts, may have come in over the last few years, but I just don't know where they came from (set wise), or who/what they are . . . soldiers, sportsmen, telecoms linesmen/road gang?

 

And I'm only guessing at cracker toys, or 'gum ball' capsule stuff? Indeed, when three turn-up together, a bag/set starts to look the more likely. But this is why I collect all the esoteric stuff, and it's only with the help of people like Chris, Peter Trevor and the others, that we get nearer to answering these questions!

 

We only had a follow-up on these a short-while ago, and here's seven more, including a totally new one, in the larger scale, but clearly factory-painted, so there's another whole set to track down! He looks like he may have been aimed at the cake decoration market, rather than rack-toys?

 

Two more of the Terracotta Spanish tourist-trap figurines, I've rather lost track of the growing sample, but look forward to bringing them all together for a better overview one day. I said she'd come in, when we looked at her partner (in need of a hat) fourteen months ago, a Flamenco dancer (she looks like Betty Boop!) and guitarist, ready to entertain the unwashed masses, whinging about their cancelled flights - because there’s a fucking war on, you morons!

 

Oops, went full-rant there, albeit poetically! These are a lovely find, they're the little soft plastic copies of the Leyla figures, we've looked at a couple of times now, but all in one colour and the better quality samples, were they late production, unpainted Leyla, perhaps supplied to someone else?

 

Lovely little thing! Doll's house, or more honest novelty? Cake decoration, or just a simple novelty? From the quality I wonder if she's actually Japanese? No, she's got a tree-hanger; novelty-bauble, skiing kid - fantastic!

 

Matchbox cherry-picker, sans truck, on the left (but it's all about the figures!), two of the 'Crazy Clown Car' policemen, a beach-toy crewman and three hard polystyrene firemen, in a semi-transparent azure-blue plastic, really nice figures, you know, a tangibility, a je né sais quoi? Which, as I thought French, would be logical! Chris also thinks French, or Dutch?

 

The de rigueur line-up of seated figures!

D is for Donations - Peter - Civilians

Right, I seem to have found my mojo, if only temporarily (there's often a hiatus before Rack Toy Month!), so I have a plan . . .

 

Actually the plan for right now was to be in Camden this afternoon, but that didn't happen, if you made it, I hope you had a good time and found nice things, I'm contemplating telling the Pentagon Natwest's head office is a hive of Iranian plotters

 

. . . and we're going to get all the stuff from Peter Evans, several donations, some car-booty and gifts, and all the stuff from Chris Smith's huge parcel, published over the next few days, twined by theme! Staring with the civilians;

 

We've seen something similar from Keycraft (dinosaurs) and HTI (various), while these Dancers are from AMO Toys in Denmark (as importers/source), and looking at the back of the pack Ninjas, Soldiers, Wrestlers and Monsters are out there somewhere. I think it's supposed to be pronounced wall'ee, to rhyme with crawly, rather than as my childhood nickname!

 

Speaking of wrestlers, these WWE ink-stampers, are very-much in the same vein as the Fortnight, Gang Beast and Ninja Turtle stampers currently out there.

 

Partial contents of a table football game, you get different types of table football, flicky, leaver kick, sprung figures, horizontal bars (mini 'fussball'), and magnetic wands, from whence these have washed up here!

 

There's a post on kicking footballers in the medium queue, and this guy joins a blue one we've seen recently, they're Peter Pan in origin, from the Cup Final game.

 

We've seen the Mousetrap diver before I think, but possibly in another colour, and older sculpt, he seems to have had a makeover, the torso to the left is one I've alluded to several times and needs to be sorted out with all the other sets of four or six primary-coloured board game figural, while I suspect the C3PO is a game playing piece as well, but I don't know the game offhand? It's not one of several Monopoly versions, nor is it the Star Wars Risk, so, any ideas?

 

A group of nicely done, but probably quite recent or even contemporary, road workers, and a diver who at first glance looks like the Hing Fat ones, but he's actually a better quality, and may be from a more nameable/recognisable make or brand's set, just I haven't recognised or named it!?

 

Another modernish road worker on the right, an early, factory painted Jean goose-girl from the farm range, and between them one of those fun gems you find in all these odds and sods, a Hong Kong, reasonable quality copy of an old bisque cake decoration, but in hard polystyrene plastic.

 

More of the Chinese knock-offs we got sent by the German agent, back at the start of the blog. These are large, O or G-gauge, and unlike the previously seen stuff, have locating pins on their feet.

 

The smaller chaps here ARE the Hing Fat ones, while the larger bloke has probably been tied to a carded set in the archive, but likely a generic? And the reason they're down here, is because these are from the latest lot, were shot months after the others and for speed, I'm loading them as they sit in the folders!

 

Three of the Teamsterz road menders, an older one in sea-green (actually, probably a fireman), an unknown race-team mechanic or garage accessory and the small one may be that group of Pioneer-Dacron-Realtoy stuff?

 

Another trio of Teamsterz (HTI), a cheapo rack-toy in brown we may have seen/ID'd before, and another of the Tesco-Woolie's et al ones, all building up for the firefighter page . . . which will happen!

 

Another of the Hong Kong fatty footballers, pencil-top rather than key-ring this time, and a new pose and/or colours I think, a large shepherd of the ELC type and a rather crude driver, probably from a farm tractor, from the stance?

 

All good stuff, and many thanks to Peter for spotting, accruing and/or saving it.