P is for Premiums

New text

Despite the fact that it was one of my 'big' posts - gathering everything I know about something together with a decent spread of photographs,it was hopeless! So this is a big re-write, and should now offer the student of toy figure collecting a little more than it did, not least that the figures were given away with Quaker Sugar Puff's and not as I had pencilled in (with black ink) in the absence of the Cluck disc Toad sent me; Kellogg's!

We will start with that Cluck entry;

It's not bad for what was available to Wayne Ratcliffe back in the late 1990's, and is mostly correct. The question marks will come out in the wash below. he has made the Tudor*Rose error, or has he? He also tracked down an old comic-book advertisement for them which I'll also show for reference sake;

Old - now heavily edited - text

In America, these figures are easy...Thomas Toys, end of! In the UK, it's more complicated, although Thomas are likely to be the main originator, in the past both Kleeware and Tudor*Rose have been in the frame, Quaker carried most of the range, the variations we will look at below raise their own question marks, Manurba seem to have been responsible for lifting at least one of the mouldings, a few years ago people would tell me they were from Lido or Pyro moulds (they weren't), given away with Kellogg's (Doh!)...they weren't...and...and...

...lets have a look at them;

So, the figures, the upper row in each shot are those listed in 'Cluck' as being BOTH cereal premiums and the figures wholesaled to Woolworth's here in the UK, which are probably Thomas Toys, except that in the first edition of Cluck (above) he doesn't credit the canoe or paddler to Quaker?

The lower rows are those not so listed, with the Indians divided further into the two poses on the left listed as Woolworth's but not Quaker, the one on the right not listed as either, along with the backwoodsman/wagon crew, who's the passenger in the larger canoe below, not part of the Quaker giveaway, but definitely part of the Woolworth's issue, suggesting the other one have just been left of the list a swell but - see note under the colours shots below - the three Indians may be something else, and seem to be UK exclusives?

The blue not-listed-at-all Indian is a factory variation of the similar posed red one to his left (as we look at him), but with the tomahawk attached to the headdress and the body pulled about a bit, making the sculpting a little cruder. Oh - and the paddler is a girl, according to the Thomas Toys paperwork on Bill Hanlon's site!

The reason for the small size of some of the figures has always been given that the figures were to be collected and set-up in front of the card backdrops supplied by Quaker, to give a sense of depth or perspective and I think the blurb on the packets said as much? [now confirmed in edit, although the advert only talks of creating a 'film set' not the figures size or 'perspective'] However, this was Quaker either looking for an excuse for the truth because they didn't want kids involved in a shootin'war, or because they didn't understand the product and didn't think to ask Thomas after they'd ordered/received the batch?

The truth being; the two smaller figures and the canoeist ARE children! And were sold as such in Woolworth's and the States. I'm listing them all as a 45mm range.

Because I'm trying to get the alphabet done in a week, have lost the Cluck disc Toad sent me, and because this 'set' needs more research; I'm not going to dwell on it too much here [now edited and dwelt on at length!], just raise the questions rather than try to prove the answers, to which end I'm not going to get involved with the wagons or the mounted, as the wagons will be another post another day and the mounted will probably end-up on the Airfix blog, for reasons obvious to those who know the Bergan/Beton figures post on that blog! I'm also going to ignore (for the time being) the transport questions posed by the two seated cowboys [just prior to hitting 'Publish' - actually it does all make some sense, with a few question marks!].

The canoes.

The yellow one on the left is the common one issued to everybody by everybody...Quaker, Woolworth's, Thomas and whoever else!

The green one next to it is the 'double' canoe which is a Thomas/Woolworth's/whoever piece, but not Quaker.

The blue one seems to be a different version of the double, it's to be found in original ad's on Bill Hanlon's site (I should have looked at it again instead of just posting the link!), whether it came first or second I don't know, but the features in the bottom are to hold the figures a little better, so I guess it was the second version? This means the smaller silver paddler probably is the Giant copy?

The last two are hard polystyrene; everything else - apart from the family group below - in this post is soft ethylene and I've highlighted the longitudinal planks in the bottom of the far right-hand boat in the right-hand image.

Now I had a conversation with Andreas Dittmann (my 'go to' expert on all figures German, and most figures European!) about six years ago with the possibility that some of these were Manurba and he not only confirmed that they were, but sent me some images (thank you Andreas)...

The dark red one (which matches some of the darker 'Thomas' figures, is soft ethylene, and indistinguishable from the US/UK originals (a slightly poorer join line maybe?), while the others are hard plastic, and mirror the US/UK design apart from the 'MADE IN W. GERMANY' mark and a bowsprit, a left-over from it's use as a yacht, in which guise it has a receiving collar in the centre of the boat for the spigot-end of a small mast with plastic sail - for another day!

As you can see neither of them is either of the other two canoes, so there are still question marks over both of them, see the family below for one answer? This means that if you include the Giant and Manuba versions there are at least 8 to collect, 9 with the yacht, 11 if you consider the US produced ones 'separate'.

The one with the two longitudinal ribs is also to be found on Bill's pages, so I guess it's a US Thomas one...see edited note on the family below.

Colour studies, there are translucent (lower row of yellows) and solid-colour variations (upper row of yellows) in most of the main shades, and the pallet is basically red, yellow, green and blue, in bright primary 'infant toy' colours, with darker red's (they are much darker - maroon - under natural light) probably coming from the Woolworth's batches, not Quaker, but that is my unscientific personal opinion and should be ignored! A lot of the variation in the reds and yellows was lost with camera flash, they are all quite different to the naked eye in normal daylight.

One thing to note about these though, there are a smaller number in a sharper, more matt or chalky 'powder' blue or yellow, all from the three lower Indians in the first image above, the seated backwoodsman doesn't appear in this guise, suggesting that the three may be from a different range, set or even manufacturer? All these colours are common to most of Tudor *Rose's output, Poplar, Rafael Lipkin and early Merit...among others!

Top left finds the left-hand of the two hard plastic canoes with the figures that came with it, you will notice that there are no war-like poses in this group, I think they would have been sold as an Indian Family (like the proposed group on Kent Sprecher's page - link below) but with the canoe and paddling girl replacing the diminutive archer? As Thomas went from a PVC vinyl-rubber to polyethylene with both the Romans and the Spacemen; I find it hard to believe they suddenly made these in styrene. So; I reason (with no evidence!) that the mould was in the hands of Kleeware or Tudor*Rose OR someone similar for the moulding of this (maybe incomplete) lot? Or [added] that it is an import from the US, where they were issued in hard plastic at the beginning?

Top-right shows a couple of nice mould shrinkage variations that have come-out usable, the boy is just smaller (and more childlike I think...click on the picture to enlarge), the man appears to be walking toward the viewer as he looks for a target to his left!

The other two shots show the papoose and baby, and compare the two similar largish cowboys.

No more than an overview, we will return to these one day and try to nail things down a bit firmer, in the meantime I would be interested in your views. A couple of links starting with Bill Hanlon's...

Dimestore

...and Kent Sprecher's site, scroll down about three-quarters of the page for the Thomas;

Cowboys and Indians

Bill's added a lot of content to the site than when I last visited (helicopters!) [and I would have done well to read it!].

Then the other canoes on this blog;

Giant - Thomas copy
Post-Giant - long with figures

Concluding; probably mostly Thomas Toys, a smaller range issued to Quaker, a larger range supplied to Woolworth's, with three extra Indian figures, seemingly designed to fight the larger Cowboys (new info in the conclusion - English Lit fail!), moulds maybe handed-on for later polystyrene production, at least one piracy (Giant) of the double canoe, another unexplained and Manurba copying, licensing from Wales or maybe getting permission from Islin Thomas in the States on the smaller one? Seems clearer than when I started a hour or so ago!

Now all the above edited/re-written, here are some other relevant images, after which we'll leave this subject alone for a while, it's a mess now, but it'll do, I can rewrite it in a year or three!

So....new conclusion...We can't be 100% sure of the actual '16 different styles' talked about by Quaker or their comic book advert PR writers. If the wagon and horse mail-away doesn't count, should the mounted Indian count? We know the two cowboy riders aren't in the mail away, but their horses are so we must assume they were in the packets, to utilise a finger, any spare horses the child had or go twos-up behind the mounted Indian...no, he's only in the mail away?

There is another list on line - Here

But he's included a Lido figure and makes the Tudor*Rose mistake? He also leaves the canoe and paddler off the list, including one of the chalky axe-men along with his Lido interloper.

The above is my 'take' on what the 16 count probably consisted of, I know the canoe and girl were part of the promotion, because they are about the commonest of these to find from the set, and if they were Woolworth's only, they'd be as rare as the other non-Quaker pieces today, which they're not!

But it's my take only, and open to new evidence coming to light?

Now we'll look at everything else, the horse is the same design all round, with the moulded-on Indian's horse getting a nice fringed blanket, while the stand-alone's (and some of them don't stand happily, leg bending with hot-water gets them to behave!) have a sort of blanket/saddle 'hint'. The wagon horses have an oblong hole right through them.

These are most of the colours I have encountered over the years, the dried-ink blue ones being from a Hong Kong set, we'll look at (and open!) below...

...we have actually seen this before on the blog, but in taking some close-up shots of the contents I noticed the axle was through the bag, so I prised the staples carefully and built the 'kit'! I wouldn't normally do something like that to a one-off in the collection (I'm not so fussy about second or subsequent examples), but it'll last better with the bag and card in a click-shut with the contents the other side of a stiff card.

This is actually a Hong Kong copy; it's very good until you get up close and realise there's a marked fall-of in the finer detail, but size-wise it's hard to tell, so cut by someone who know how to compensate a pantograph properly!

At some point, someone at Thomas (or Poplar? They had some of the moulds made in the US for both of them, see the spacemen story on Bill's site, or in back issues of Plastic Warrior magazine) said something like "You know what...our smaller cowboy wagon; the one we sent to Quaker...it's a bit shit isn't it?!", at which point someone more senior said "Yes, let's redesign it with more wheels".

The result was a much-improved look to the same wagon which now has two drain-holes mid-way along the body! They just drilled four new open-clip axle-mounts, into the old mould.

The front wheels had come from (or were used on?) the other member of the transport fleet, a reasonable stage-coach. All these come in all four body colours, but always with yellow wheels. Thanks to Michael Melnyk for several of these wagons.

While the waggoner (spell-checker doesn't like wagoneer?) fits into both the two and four-wheeled (and Hong Kong) wagons with a rather painful-looking retaining spigot between his legs, the spigot is missing on the Stage, and in experimenting I found the canoe-trapper actually fits much better, pose-wise. I don't know if he actually came with it, or if - maybe - it came without a driver at all?

From the left; The two versions of the Thomas wagon (albeit one of them from HK) next to a Tudor*Rose wagon of the same size range and the Charbens one I picked-up a while ago.

Below them - also from the left - are the Thomas and Tudor*Rose drivers, a HK copy of the TR driver with a longer mounting-spigot and a polyethylene chap from one of the bigger wagons with an angled spigot, who's wagon I've yet to identify.

Literally as I was going to press this afternoon, I had an email from David Scrivener with the above shot showing the larger versions of the Thomas wagon drivers and mounted figure, with a standard (THE standard) 54mm control sample from Britains! Thanks Dave.

These larger wagons were often sold at the seaside in the kiosk that also sold sand-castle paper flags, the castle-shaped buckets for the paper-flags and blow-ups, and Merit, Poplar, Tudor Rose, Kleeware, Rafael Lipkin and others all had them, I have a few in storage which we can look at another day.

Last of the loose ends; Clockwise from top left shows the sample I've been working with, another shot of the two left-off all the lists, a shot of the blues which I forgot to do the other day and a close-up of 'The Three Axe-men of the Appomattox'!

As I say, this page is a mess, but it'll do for now, still don't know the story behind the other three Indians, still don't know the definitive listing for the '16', still don't know why everyone thought they were Tudor*Rose...but then I thought they were Kellogg's!

Couple of hours later...several typo's corrected and another email from David! He's only gone and sent us a picture of the Quaker mail-away boxes...

Interesting that they are both the same colours...new question - was the whole Quaker batch blue with brown horses and yellow riders? Thanks again Dave...that's wrapped it up for a while!

20-01-16 - This was sent in by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous...

It shows the UK version (I think) of the US set shown in Plastic Warrior magazine a while ago, the 'Fort' is actually titled 'Trading Post'

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

October 2020 - six years later and Gerald Edwards (Plastic Warrior issue number 180) is suggesting they were Poplar, and while they obviously were (that's a Poplar set immediately above!) and we dismissed Tudor Rose six-years ago (longer in my head!); all the Poplar-branded sets contain the two-axle wagon (if they have a wagon), so I think Thomas are safer for the single-axle wagon'ed premiums and - consequently - by time-line; the original Woolworth's supplies, although that may mean the five [often chalky] poses were earlier (and therefore Thomas) so may have been a separate tool which Poplar didn't inherit when it inherited the other Thomas stuff - khaki troops (also Taffy Toys), Romans, spacemen etc . . . probably in the autumn of 1960 when Alden Industries Inc., off-loaded the UK end of their purchase of the Thomas assets? Not that Poplar weren't anything other than a subsidiary of Thomas in the first place!

A week after that and TJF wants to blow-off, on the same subject . . . sweet, he's really lost without the rest of the hobby feeding him ideas!

 

O is for Ougen (by Elastolin!)

'O' is another difficult one to come-up with! And I've already got this out on STS the Animal collecting forum, but it's an interesting shot I took two and a half years ago and which has been sat in Picasa like a proverbial turd ever since!

A quick Google reveals that what little there is about Ougen is all Elastolin related, so not premiums (as I had thought - getting mixed-up with Onken I think!), rather the French marketing arm of Elastolin (Germany - the old enemy!). I'm sure Plastic Warrior has told us all about them in the past, but mine are in storage and Garrett says nothing!

Really just a packaging comparison shot, for what will have been late-1970's-mid '80's? With an Elastolin original on the left (contents aren't original though! Or; very 'played with'!), the Ougen item in the middle and then an 'HEIA' header-carded bag to the right, not sure if it was a brand as in Heia, or just an abbreviation for the information in the yellow disc...Hausser Elastolin International...Animals?

N is for New (Production)

Who'd have thought 'N' would be as difficult as 'X' or 'Q' (Z's easy!), nothing in Picasa I could easily hang the N hook on, checked the dongle for archive stuff; nothing there...not many N's in the total master-list either! So, bit of a cop-out with 'New'! But they are new, new but not nice maybe...

I photographed these 65/70mm figures on the store's rack, as although I have a side collection of paratroopers, they had plenty, so I'll grab one next time I'm passing! they are what they are, multi-generation sub-piracies vis-a-vis poses, but 'new' sculpts, that is - a bit thin and lacking the detail of the parents, but 're-cut' if you know what I mean!

These two 'toobs' were among the last and with these discount stores there tends to be a 'when it's gone it's gone' system of stock control, so I thought I'd better get them before they disappeared altogether. Indeed the military one had been raided through the bottom of the tube and may well be incomplete?

Marked-up to 'Top Toys', as are the paratroops, one suspects this is the store's (99p Stores) own branding for a generic toy and the true maker will - like most Far Eastern production - remain unknown.

These poses are quite common, and can be found in various sizes and materials from soft PVC's through to this hard polymer, probably propylene, or a dense ethylene? Bachmann carried several of these poses in a set about 15 years ago in HO, and the figures have turned-up in Italy, unpainted 'on-the-sprue' (Majorette?), while these are about 50mm and I've seen them at 60mil. Note the release-pin holes which mar most figures in both sets.

My ruling with these modern equivalents of the old rack-card toys, is to keep one of each figure pose in each colour, marked up with all the brands or importer 'marques' they are found in, with the photographs of the packaging cross-referenced (in the case of more than one source) in the archives.

Thought for the day; Course (with an s) and Source (with a c)...what's that all about? Bloody English!

M is for Mounted Medievals

Halfway through the alphabet! I'll leave the rest for Wednesday or Thursday, but to finish for now, a rather nice set of mounted knights from Crescent. Crescent always did their mounted figures in threes and the trick for a collector is to get one of each of the three horse poses, in each of the three colours...

...I fail, with two dark brown and no white, but that'll be easier to correct in the future than the figures themselves so not too shabby! Note how the lance plugs-in to prevent loss, the pose though is a bit awkward for that figure.

L is for a Little Lone*Star

One of which may not be...a sort of bitty post, but like the rest of this weeks A-Z push, designed to empty the Laptop of all the stuff I've been squirreling away!

Starting with the probably-not-lone-star figure; This is a Lone*Star pose, from the 'Harvey Series', but is believed to be a Harvey original. Like Britains taking Herald in-house, so LS (a mazac die-caster) took Harvey in-house for the production of their plastics (although they got the Bakelite type wheels and nylon linkage for the Treble-O Trains made elsewhere), or - at least - that's how I understand it, this figure is therefore thought to be one of the very early Harvey originals.

Lone*Star also made a very small range of 'swoppet' farm animals, the trick being to collect them with the original tag intact, seen here on the rear left leg. Both the above were photographed in that show-and-tell a while ago, and don't belong to me!

We looked at these a few months ago, I shot them on Adrain's stall at the Plastic Warrior show in May (new PW to revue, will do soon!), but he had them out again the other day, and although some have since been snapped-up, I had more time to sort them out and take new images of the various colour variations. Both of paint and plastic - it seems each figure has a reverse-colour plastics version, while paint variations are confined to the evil elves or pixies...or whatever they were; see older post!

K is for Knights Knot Known

I think we may have had that heading before too! Also; I DO know something about these, I know they are Portuguese and I know they were premiums, but beyond that I don't know who made them, or what product they were presented with?

These are about 40mm, and go very well with the Starlux knights and medievals by Merten and Elastolin, in fact they look like they might have been sculpted by the same hand that produced the Starlux figures? Anybody know who made them or what they were issued with? Ajax washing powder?

Added 17-06-2015: More  on them in Portuguese here.

J is for 'Hexan'

In the UK 'Swoppets' tends to mean either the quality of Britains (who invented the term that - through generification - has become THE word for all multi-part figures) or the colours of Timpo for the cheaper, commoner figure we all had a few of. But - in fact - most companies had a go at swoppets, changables, plug-ins or whatever they chose to call them and these are a rather nice carded example from the Spanish company of Jecsan;

You get a cowboy and an Indian in the same blister, so a story can be acted-out as soon as you open it, but far nicer is that the smaller blister contains a whole bunch of accessories, far more than each figure needs at any one point; spear/lance, shield, knife, two revolvers, rifle/carbine, shield, bow, tomahawk and Stetson. so lots of play-value, even if up to the point of being given this, you'd had no figures at all.

The figures are also nicely animated...far better than most Timpo, that's for sure! But a bit bigger than the UK standard 54mm, at around 60mil.

I is for Imposters

I think these are Fontanini, or at least I think the pair on the left are Fontanini, the two on the right are the titular 'Imposters'! Fontanini are an Italian company aiming at the Tourist keepsake market with figures in various sizes, taken from various subjects.

What's unusual about these copies is that while the originals are solids (in polyethylene) with a separate base, the doppelgängers are blow-mouldings with an integral 'rock' for a base! These figures are between 5 and 6 inches in height, a bit academic when the bases are so different, the swordsman smaller and the copies are also pantographed a little smaller, but I'm calling them 5 inch!

I only think they're Fontanini as they are missing the 'Italy' mark and spider logo commonly seen on this makers figures/bases. They are also likely (the originals) to turn-up with more ornate 'rococo' bases and I've seen other Fontanini figures with chinoiserie bases, always in that plain-chocolate brown plastic.

H is for Heritage Toys and Games

Or; is it Russimco? Can't remember if this has appeared here or over on Moonbase, but it's stuck in Piacsa waiting to be processed, so process it I will! Heritage Shops were (or still are? The town centre units seem to have disappeared during the recession but the airport outlets may still be going?) a chain of very expensive shops selling touristy tat, sometimes of some quality, but always for ridiculous money, hung on various 'hooks' of historical period, art movement or famous events/places.

This being a case in point; an all paper/card version of Battleships, with artwork that can't decide if it's 'pulp' or Jules Verne in style and which cost around £15.99 or something - a fair few years ago. Just wait until it turns up in a charity shop for 99p, I did! To be fair, it's the artwork I bought it for, mixed or not, the ships are Pulp!

There is a similar chain of shops who's name escapes me, who where selling a remake/re-issue of the old Answer Robot game last Christmas, again it was £12.99 or nearabouts and for a single modern copy of the old Johillco plastic robot, it's not worth the investment when it'll turn-up at a car-boot sale soon...

G is for Golden - Stamp Books

Some shots from the archive. Who had one of these...who remembers these? We had a Wild West one I think, and possibly a dinosaur one? But as a Toy Soldier collector; this is the one to get! Of course; they're not stamps in any meaningful use of the word, having no monetary value, being only pre-glued, perforated labels on sheets you have to separate yourself.

These have been pasted-in with some care and lined-up nicely etc..some you see have been glued by an unsupervised 5-year old and can be in a right state, although the real trick is to find one with the [licky-sticky] sticker sheets still in the front of the book, undamaged.

F is for Fairylite

I picked this up at Sandown Park a few weeks ago, it's a lot bigger than the Bell/Merit jig-toys supplied to Kellogg's, and the seller stated it was Fairylite, but there's nothing to indicate whether it is or not actually, so the attribution is to be considered provisional until I see a boxed or carded one somewhere?

'Battle Damage' Battleship!

It also differs from the other British-made ones by being polystyrene, while the earlier ones started life in Cellulose acetate and then moved to a softer ethylene with US puzzles and HK copies of all in styrene.

Fairylite were importers from HK (and Japan) but also combined, sourced toys closer to home and seem to have made some themselves, so 'you pays your money' with them sometimes in trying to attribute origin!

The interesting thing about this is unlike the others mentioned, which usually have a guessable system of construction with a central 'key' that actually does all the work, this has a serious element of puzzle to it, which seems to be based on the common mechanism of the wooden cubes, balls, barrels and pyramids of my childhood. Indeed you can still get them and they make excellent presents for kids at that difficult age, where kid is not yet teenager!

E is for Elephants

Probably had that heading before? Never mind, that's another thing that'll start to be duplicated occasionally! Four completely different elephants, but all rather charming....

Top left is a two-halves, celluloid baby elephant made in Japan in the 1950's, from the lack of decoration and the two holes I suspect it's from one of those strung 'fascination' you get across a pram to keep an infant amused? Trumpeting to his right is a Starlux elephant in styrene, moving clockwise; below him is a blow-moulded ethylene elephant who may have been flocked once? Finally an olin-composition baby elephant from Hausser/Elastolin.

The upper two are 30mm'ish the bottom two 50 and 60mil, except that being elephants age-vs-size means they will fit with most scales at some point - if you know what I mean!

D is for Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future...Past

Shot this a few years ago now; no toy soldier or model figure connection whatsoever...but that hasn't stopped me posting other esoteric things in the past and who can resist Dan Dare?

Various shots of the box, which ends-up giving a better idea of the puzzle as well, due to the vendor covering the actual puzzle in...

...clingfilm! Which just will not be photographed from any angle with flash, but which - due to the light conditions in the hall couldn't be photographed without flash either!

Added; 26th October 2014

Andy B has come to our rescue with a superb scan of the box-top, which gives full credit to the artwork, first as he sent it, and then collaged to show each quarter the 'right way up'!

Thanks Andy, that's improved the post by about 100%!

C is for Cherilea

At the other end of the spectrum (from the proceeding two posts of modern shite) comes this rare and collectable shite!

I've literally just found these two images in the Cherilea file, where they shouldn't be...if they haven't yet been used on the blog..so they may both have so starred already...apologies if that's the case, but now we're over the 1k of posts this will happen occasionally!

These were photographed in a show-and-tell round a mates house a year or so ago, and I know the rest are still in Picasa on the laptop, so; ? Anyway, previously-shown or not...they're the first version [semi-]swoppet knights. Rare as rocking horse do-do and rather crudely executed, but oozing 'toy-charm'. Note - little dagger on the middle figure and what looks like Joan D'Arc's breast-plate (geddit!) on the left-hand figure.

These are always broken (I think I've written that before, so he probably IS on the blog somewhere?), 50mm and there's a similar Arab to make the pair, getting one complete is becoming harder and harder.

B is for Boley

Boley are (or were, I think they recently folded?) another Jobber, this time the right side of the pond to carry the moniker. Importing various China-sourced bits of plastic tat, these are at the bottom end, their HO railway related range of big-rigs and AFV's being quite good...for knock-offs!

Aaahh! The ubiquitous Airfix British Paratroops (with M1 helmets!) make another appearance...aided by the equally commonly pirated Matchbox bazooka-man, German MG-gunner and a couple of Tim-Mee/MPC types to give us a sniper and mortar! Freindlies in green, orange-force in grey...that's how it works in Toyland!

Airfix-wannabe Indians and a mix of Britains and Crescent + Cowboys...the Indians get some nice colours, while the cowboys are a very pallid snot-grey! I think I got these a couple of years ago, they're a bit small at 50mm and probably getting harder to find, but then,; if you weren't feeding a blog...would you want them! B for Boley!

A is for Ackerman

Already in the tag list so must have covered something else by them, Ackerman are a UK importer (what the Americans call a 'Jobber') who get the products (from the Far East) marked-up with their own logo or identity...although sometimes only as a sticker.

I picked these up in a local discount store the other day for one of your English pounds, so about 2 of anything else! I would imaging they are easy to find in party stores, either on the high street or on-line.

Despite being made in China and so cheap, they are well moulded, and while I initially thought they might be the old click-together moulds from 1970's Italy, they are in fact slightly simpler models, but I have a soft spot for motorcycles, so had to have a set!

Close-ups of the not-so-girly vehicles, the three cards the vendor had were all the same, although colours of parts varied, but the mix re. duplications remained the same, yet the blisters are designed to take any of the models, so there may be different combinations out there.

I'm going to try and do the alphabet in a month; that's A out of the way, I'm off to click Ackerman in the tag list and see what else I've covered, as I know the bulk of their stuff hasn't been blogged yet!

H is for Humbrol

Added a new tin of Humbrol to the collection today, well, I say 'new', it's second hand, but seems to be unopened, and, more interestingly, would appear to be a really useful, previously uncatalogued colour best described as 'Track & Chassis Rust'...bargain!

More mud-hopping finds from that strange toy strata in the vegetable garden again!

H is for Homemade Home-casts

Following on from the less than common Krolyn aluminium comes these, common enough to traveller as they are sold primarily as tourist keepsake items, they are sand-cast in back alleys from melted down drinks cans!

A typical 'rural' pair of females collecting maize and bringing back...firewood? Sugar cane? A minimalist paint job in a pallet of muted, almost autumnal colours over a worn undercoat of black which is probably either ink or boot-polish based.

Also from Africa comes this necklace of tiger's eye lumps with clay, stone and other beads, featuring four home-cast animals. In this case they seem to be brass or bronze, presumably recycled from electrical or engine parts? The patina probably gained with a urine bath (yes, pee!), lemon juice or vinegar?

They may - of course - be hideously commercial and just made to look vernacular?

Studies of the animals, the two big cats (a cheetah and a male lion) are a nice 1:76'ish, while the buffalo and rhino are smaller.

K is for Krolyn from København

Garratt (data subject to change and availability!) describes this firm as producing 75mm aluminium Robin Hood figures, among other things, which is lucky as we're looking at some Robin Hood figures here, around 75mm's high and made of aluminium...which are marked Krolyn!

Beautifully animated poses, but the larger size allows for a greater degree of flexibility with sculpting than the 50+mm's of Wend-Al and Quiralu? The bow - obviously - is a wire placed in a drill-hole, but the other weapons are integral to the moulding of each figure.

T is for Two - Boxed Hollow-cast Figure Sets

Not even a box-ticking tonight, just a 'showcase' of a couple of nice boxed sets I photographed on Adrian's table at Sandown the other weekend, what strikes me as a younger, plastics collector, is A) How little you got in some of these sets and B) how unrealistic/inaccurate a lot of it is.

Generic box for modern'ish 'Combat Infantry' from Crescent, is it just me or do they look a bit Scandinavian? The mortar is a nice looking piece I haven't seen before, while the two-tone finish of the tin-plate sentry box is less common than the plain red or green you usually find it in.

The Ranch Set from Timpo, again...not much in the box, two guys surrendering (?) and four fence pieces which together will make a compound large enough for er...a cow (not included!). Still, they were simple times and one hopes little Junior would have enjoyed the sight on Christmas morning...the glossy colours would have been a bit brighter 60-odd years ago, especially against all the dung-brown and pea-green walls of post-war Britain's houses!

But comparing them to the pre-war sets by Britains - for instance - still leaves you wondering...it may be that this was the smallest of a range of sets all titled Ranch Set, that was the case with the garage sets the composition mechanics come in, there were four sizes of set, with the largest having one of everything, the smallest; just enough for a scenario or two, in the days when imagination was everything.

Close-ups of some of the components, the shrub must have been a common piece as it turns up lose, quite often, while the tree is lovely, if needing fettling before it will stand up - I do like a good tree!

T is for Two - Space Tanks!

We like a good space tank here, we even like a pretty poor space tank...and when two join the fleet together...well!

Marked LP LB for Lik Be, this is the tank utilising the - probably Roco Minitanks - Panzer IV chassis. Often found also in Mikephil packaging and having various body-types, this in the 'Engineering' variant! Nicely scaled for gaming in HO or OO-gauge sizes.

While this little chap is closer to 30mm for figure gaming purposes, and while made in China (frowned at by the tin plate collectors as cheap shit), it's quite an early one (1960's - early-70's?) with a few plastic components and three rear-firing missile tubes...missing the missiles.

This appears to have been copied by Marx, in small-scale plastic for some of their play-sets, so must be an early China tank...or 'chinatank'

Since corrected to Lik Be / LB.