H is for How They Come In - Chris - October 2021 - Mixed Stuff

I think! I have another lot from Chris Smith which is in a folder marked December, so it was further down the list of catch-up 'H is for...' posts, but then I realised I had a sorting picture dated the end of November, so it had come in earlier, and yet these are dated the middle of October, so they too may have been put to one side and photographed a while after they'd come in?

It was all a bit hectic in the autumn . . . still is, just had four days in the garden trying to sort the stuff from the sheds, greenhouse and garage, but don't seem to have got far despite working till dark! Anyway, another 'junk' lot kindly donated to the Blog by Chris, with a view to sharing the highlights with the rest of you and seeing what I highlight!

Starting the sort, and you can see a lot which won't be in the two posts this time, and there's no rhyme or reason for what gets shot and what doesn't, and something which won't get included in one post, might make another.

The things which stand out on the day get photographed, it's all got a place in the collection, and things ignored on the day, might 'make' a thematic or maker post, years from now or provide the only example on an A-Z page entry - when they gather pace!

There was a nice selection of Dinosaurs, which varied from the poor, mono-coloured, multi-sub-generational copies of old US sculpts to the very realistically painted ones top-right and bottom-left (I do like a Dimetrodon or two!), and the two top left, who were fantastic!

Gotta'be a highlight of the whole box! Plug-together, articulated dino's in an HO-OO compatible size . . . bargain! Rather generic 'meat-eaters' and I suspect a cereal premium, or cheap carded rack-toy, mid-1970's maybe? But absolutely delightful - anybody know anything else about them, how many were there, who issued them?

This is interesting, the locating stud/perching spigot on the underside is (I believe) compatible with Lego technical stuff, now years ago I had some chrome-plated jeep stores (jerry can and spare tyre), probably Hong Kong, which went-on as they were beyond the scope of the collection, but they were useable with Lego, so it may be that this pterosaur is a Mega-Bloks, Tomy or other, more minor Kiddycraft-clone's 'playability' accessory?

Other wildlife! Another of those Indian plaster, wire and wood birds, a lovely 'styrene pig who's beautifully marbled and I love the fake netsuke monkey, while I had a scruffy example of the small (35mm) bendy-chimp, but I didn't know he came with a larger bendy-parent!

I think the red horse is from the R&L/Kellogg's horse box (can't remember if it was in two parts or what plastic it was now, and it's away, sorted!), while the flat pair of Dachshunds are a wishy-washy white plastic, so probably Christmas Cracker or gum-ball capsule machine prize, rather than a creamy-white Euro-'margarine premium'? All good stuff!

Chris sent the yellow ones in the lot we're looking at here, and I photographed them with some I'd already put on the side, which may also have come from him or Peter Evans, but may have come in one of a couple of real cheapo' HK-junk lots I'd purchased last year for one or two figures? Point is, solid piracies of Hong Kong swoppet copies (of the Star Toys type), of Timpo - that standard bearer is not bearing Timpo anatomy!

More annoying, I know I have now found a brand-mark for one of the two types (deep, hollowed or shallow, smooth bases), but I can't find the reference just now (the reason I had the others on the side!), so we'll have to return to them at some point when it turns-up.

An eclectic bunch, the Household cavalryman would seem to be a HK-copy of Britains Herald, but with a solid (clumsy) right-arm, the damaged figure is very interesting (one assumes die-cast or plastic vehicle accessory), as he's a scale-up (40mm'ish) in polystyrene of the Matchbox 25mm hunter from the 1-75 range.

Love the angel, she's a bit sexy for a nativity set, and looks vaguely familiar but I can't nail down the memory? The guy in the floppy-hat may be a cuckoo-clock barometer/weather-vane person?

Top left I think I've seen on an LRG forum described as a gum-ball copy of some better Japanese Kaiju/Anime character? Top right also looks very capsule-machine, while the broken gymnast finds a home here due to the number of different versions of them out there and plethora of sizes and colours;  - any sample is better than no sample!

Not quite in focus, sorry! I was going to do a whole page of firefighter figures (and various people; Chris, Brain B and Theo V-de-W helped with shots), and I will, but not as soon as I'd hoped, and when I do; these will all be there! In the meantime; obviously two large-scale vehicle accessories and a more 'army-man' rack-toy type who had a painted helmet when new.

There's a lot to ponder here! Love the 'Cleatus' teeth, because they're designed to give an over-pronounced 'toothy' over-bite, they have teeth-grips instead of being designed to slip behind the gums, or go-over the wearers teeth, consequently I haven't been spotted trying them on, as I don't know where they've been!

Two cracker/gum-ball pistols will join the growing bag of such novelty items and the sack of corn is another thing which I can't place but which looks familiar? Don’t know what the cow's head is from (orange blob), maybe one of the Mattel custom 'chopper' motorcycles?

The 'Tardis' is probably a European call-box, police or breakdown, and an accessory from someone like Majorette or Solido? The well is a nice piece, we had a bit of a mini season on them a while back (back in the early lock-downs?) with help from both Chris and Barney Brown, and this is a colour variant of the Barrat one. Chris actually sent me another well (in the Nov/Dec. lot) and I have in the meantime combined all mine - as they went to storage, so we will return to wells in a year or two!

Finally a nice late Giant-copy wagon, dog-kennel (or z-gauge locomotive shed!), and a standard Hong Kong army-man flag, but with an unusual design on the flag!

This is an amazing survivor; a very delicate, polystyrene, novelty 'plane, which I seem to recall makes a dive-bomber's wailing noise (or bee's hum?)  if you blow or suck on the large engine, but as with the Cleatus teeth, I don't know who sucked it last, so I gave that test a miss, but one day I'll give it a clean and have a go!

Many thanks to Chris as always, and part two will be the military!

B is for Bunnies - 3 - Chocolate Bunnies and Bits!

As I was replying to Brain's eMails last night it crossed my mind I hadn't checked Picasa for any 'Easter' tagged folder/s waiting patiently for their day, so I did and found one with two images, to which I added a third later, this is the crumbs of Easter, at the end of a nusy weekend on the Blog!

A Cadbury's mini 'super-bunny' compared with two sizes of the famous Lindt gold bunny, I think this was my edible haul at Easter 2019, when the world was still sane'ish! And - to be honest - I think most of them are supposed to be hares (Osterhase), but we ran with a Bunny trope this year!

Brian sent these last May and while the aim was a Wind in the Willows post, I felt they were eggy enough for an Esater post, I think they are Ceramic gift-shop ware, but they could be chalkware and I don't know who the maker/branding is?

Downloaded these from an eBay lot a while back, couldn't resist them! They are by Goula (who's wooden station with plastic flats (nice book-ending to the days posts!) we saw on the Blog here - fourth image down), and they too are all wood . . . and wire.

That's about it for today, Happy what's left of Easter!

P is for Polish Roundup - 3 - WWII / Cold War

The third lot of PZG that's come-in recently was this little lot (plus the two figures from 'Four Tanker's & a Dog' we saw a few days ago here in other mixed post) and consists mostly of British production knock-off's, but there are some original Polish sculpts too.

Two ex-Airfix WWII Soviet Infantry, one compared with his donor (grey), all seven Airfix poses were copied, and the clones are a little smaller than the figures they're aping.

Also a pair of US Infantry, again; ex-Airfix doppelgangers, again all seven poses were lifted, and they are painted to match the Soviets, whether this means they were sold as a set of 14 from the same side or two sets of seven I don't know, but the PZG website separates them.

A Polish copy of a Trojan / BR Moulds rendition of an older Crescent hollow-cast figure, painting is quite (six-colour-) colourful on this chap, almost as if the painter liked the figure as much as I do!

Timpo also got the pirated treatment, with the 10 of their larger GI set joining two other (ex-French - Mokarex - production?) figures for a 12-count, these yellow bases can be shared with the previous Airfix clones, as can the paler green paint job on the other crawling chap. From the fact that some of the poses weren't copied by the British plagiarists, suggests PZG took these straight from the hollow-cast originals.

Original sculpts of Soviet-era stuff here, and while the No.2 on the bazooka is missing, they still make a nice vignette of an anti-tank crew or 'brick'. Technically post war/cold war Polish infantry, they can pass for WWII Soviet infantry.

Compatible with the previous set and including the same bazooka, these are painted as Paratroopers, but you can find them with black, blue (UN), green or khaki (above) berets. Both sets are quite large so I have a ways to go, but I've made a start!

B is for Bunnies - 2 - Scully & Scully Ceramics

More from Brian B; more from Scully & Scully's window - they don't have the level of exquisiteness we saw in the sea-creatures a year or two ago, but nevertheless, they are from the same school (possibly the same maker) and are both very fine, and rather fun!

Bank-holiday derby? I guess he's 'City' in that blue"

Awwwwe! A rather crestfallen one in the background . . . what's occurring there? An egg count has revealed filching, I'll bet!

The gold 'paint' is probably real gold leaf, fired-on! Cheers Brian, charming and a little more apt to the season than killer alien Xenomorphs!

P is for Polish Roundup - 2 - Wild West

I also picked up a nice little lot of PZG Wild West figures back around Christmas, and it's them we're looking at here! Fully round, they did get flat tee-pee/tipis, and I have the double one somewhere (on the Blog under the PZG label), but as a flat and before I knew anything about PZG, or collected the larger scales it went in the small-scale, flat, Wild West zone!

Hollowed-out bases, the one in the middle could use a re-paint, but that's not my schtick, and I love the guy on the right, it's a fact that some European makers were far more inventive in their sculpting than the 'Mid-West/Plains' types (with northern Totem Poles!) of most British and American makers, although MPC's witchdoctor is a favourite of mine.

Again the middle one is the poorest, his shotgun has been sawed-off for a blag! the chief also has lost the pointed tip of his lance while the other guy (copy of something East German?) is a tad bigger.

Accessories; the stunted tree is a Britains copy, while I love the fire with a small calf BBQ'ing for the returning war-party. These are basically my first PZG Indians, I have the blow-pipe figure somewhere and the flat, but I think that's it, so to mix metaphors; it's nice to get this duck off the ground and running.

Previously seen elsewhere; a reminder of them as a group shot, with the reverse shots and various base-styles employed by PZG, side-by-side.

B is for Bunnies - 1 - Scully & Scully Flats

So I got these emails from Brian Berke (our roving reporter in New York) last night, which changed today's plan slightly and to which were attached this years Scully and Scully widow displays.

For readers new to Small Scale World, these are a delightful happening which in a good year arrive in my inbox three times; Christmas, Easter and Halloween, but some years they do something else, while this year Brian reports that the windows weren't good for photography, until - I guess - yesterday.

Scully & Scully are best described as an up-market bijou interiors, import and gift shop I think, and if you are new to the blog, best thing is click on Scully & Scully at the end of this post, or in the tag-list down the right-hand side, to find many similar delights, as there won't be much more blurb!

Following plastic, painted, Polish flats; whitemetal, painted German flats . . .

A really lovely lot this year, as always, and I thank Brian again for sending them here to share.

P is for Polish Roundup - 1 - Flats, Semi-Flats & Historical Solids

So the plan was always to have three posts here today catching-up on incoming polish figures over the last 14-months, and as a foil to yesterdays space-horror, which only got Easter Sunday because I thought, well, the eggs! And I didn't have anything more festive.

That changed yesterday evening, with the recipt of a couple of eMails and a quick search of Picasa; so we're going to try six posts (I won't make a habit of it, except on ITLAPD!) before the clock register's Tuesday. How we do will depend on a number of factors, not least the weather - I must mow the lawn - second cut!

This post is the oddments, and we're starting with a small mixed lot I bought a few months ago, mostly flats, but not the hard 'styrene flats I got from Grzegorz Maciak, these are more like PZG (recycled Nylon-66), slightly softer, and painted after PZG too.

Indeed, most are credited to PZG on that site we've visited before, these being found under the last button (Inni) which I think is the equivalent of 'other' or miscellaneous? Clearly a Polish winged-hussar and two Cossack types, although (as some of you will know from your studies and others from recent current affairs programmes) at the time both were part of the Empire of Poland-Lithuania or The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but they posed better attacking each other!

Note to Putler - don't attack the land of the Cossack's with a bunch of Siberian conscripts, you'll get your nose burnt, along with most of your tank-crews . . . and your best boat!

A little light reading I've inherited! I've actually had to pack it for now, but I will read it soon, in the meantime, it seemed to be the perfect backdrop to the two figures.

Another unlikely pairing, a contemporary levy (?) to the previous mounted figures faces off against a Highlander? In a sky-blue kilt with his tartan lines at a rakish angle! he looks like he might be another plastic figure taken from old Schneider's home-casting moulds, but I think the Eastern sculpts here are all originals?

The guy on the right is also credited to PZG, but the other two remain question-marks, and he's a swordsman not an artilleryman, but again for the sake of a photogenic vignette; it'll do. They are also from very different eras!

This chap is apparently Urlich von Jungingen from a set of Grunwald 1410 figures, and note he's posed on two different horses, as that was what came in the lot! More a fully round, he's some semi-flatness to him and his horse, and both have the look of what we or the French might call 'from Hollow-Cast', but I don't know if there was a lead progenerator?

This was a shot I took a while back (two years ago) of my small sample of what I thought were all Napoleonic troops, but actually there are troops of several nations and several conflicts many years apart, so it became my even smaller 'samples'! But it makes a colorful group of what PZG (and another maker I think; I've lost the note!) were capable of.

Seen before but this is the 'appeared elsewhere' image! Bought at the pre-Christmas London Show in December, and note the chap in the middle is the same as my existing one, but a deliberately different shade of blue. There is a fifth somewhere I think, so that's a better sample than some of my PZG sets! But they're all growing.

L is for Louche & Lanky!

The only thing worse than a blind bag, is a blind box! With a blind bag, you can squeeze it to find the pose you're looking for, or discard the one's you've already got, or, you can learn/look-out for the pack code-numbers after Small Scale World gives them to you, as was the case with Horrible Histories . . . sadly no one did it for the second wave!

But with a blind box, you haven't the faintest what you getting, and while the blurb says "...from 4 to 8 figures" I've only seen the same three or four-figure sets (unless they're counting eggs and 'Norwegian' containers, which would be double the swizz! But anyway the above is what you were looking out for to 'army build' your big-box playset; a rather naff card thing with plastic decks/edges.

I seem to have deleted the original image, so I'm reusing one I've used elsewhere a bit sooner than I might usually, but se la vie as the French say and they know what they're talking about, they all speak French!

How they come, I don't see up to eight figures in either of these, it's a four-count every time!

I think I'm missing two Colonial Marine poses, another with the thermal lance and a trooper, but I think I have all the characters? However, as you can see, and apropos the title of this post, while beautifully sculpted as far as detail/etching goes, they are all too long and thin in the vertical!

And it's not even an anatomical thing particularly, just that they seem to have been designed by one of the not-so-good stand-in Judge Dredd artists! They're all about seven-foot-six and streaks of piss!

I'm also missing one of these Xenomorphs I think, running/lunging forward with the tail out back, but I won't be buying one soon as they will turn-up loose in a year or so, they must have sold quite well, as there's always plenty of these on eBay (which may - of course - just mean they didn't sell first time round!), but to get the three I need (there may be a Facehugger too?) I would have to end-up with twice as many duplicates however I worked it, so I'll wait.

They're usually around the $£€-25/30-mark (always look for those around 12/15, they're there), with the odd idiot wanting 70 for his 'really rare' set! And buy the opened ones, so you know what you're getting!

These are also a bit lanky, but it works quite well with them, and possibly the best way to game the franchise would be with these Aliens, the Walmart egg-aliens (suitably painted) as juveniles and the Lanard Corps Elite 'Space Marines'?

I think I bought five sets to build my sample, in total, and this one may be the mythical '8 figures' one! Two Xenomorphs, four eggs (the missing ones brought the price down and how many do you need? . . . Oh, a cavern full!) and three containers which could be food, ammo, medical supplies or science'y-stuff, but they remind me of Norwegian containers used in the modern military to keep foot hot or cold.

There's also four window-box sets which consist of one-each transparent blue Xenonorphs (or one has four transparent blue eggs) and US Colonial Marine named-characters in grey plastic, which - as of two minutes ago - I've two in the post, so a follow-up, soonish? Now to be found here!

That's it, an uncommonly eggy Easter, just not the sort of eggs you want to find on a hunt round the garden. Palisade/THK Aliens - This time it's . . . err . . . skinny war!

H is for Happy Easter Bunny . . . Not!

 

Stolen from Todd Killinger on the Pod Stallions Faceplant group