F is for Follow-up - Wild West Plunder

A couple of things in the archive pertaining to this morning's post;

 

On the subject of pencil sharpeners, I caught this on feeBay last year sometime, very 1950's, so quite a quick cloning! The die-cast mazac/zamak tourist trinket, a copy of Britains Herald's campfire chap in full war bonnet, probably came from Hong Kong, and the headdress looks sharp-enough to open a finger while you're honing your pencil - these days you'd get a recall notice from 'Health & Safety!

 

From 2023, is this colour-sample of the Torgano archer, not really clear if it's a boy or a girl, and all of them missing their bow, I don't know if they were always a short-shot, or if they just snapped off? Below them is a yellow chap, who looks to be a Tyrolean in lederhosen, along with four of the Lucky Bag pod-foot Indians and, bottom left, an unknown flat of similar ilk, but on a more standard base.

E is for Eye Candy - Naval & Marines

This was shot back in November 2020, so five years ago, give or take the odd day and a leap-year! There's about the same again to be added to this, in the still being sorted pile, at the lip of the storage container, and we've added a couple of rack-toy assault-craft over that time, all seen here in various posts, I think, try 'Vessels' or 'Naval - Marines' in the tag list. But what can you spot?

 

Top left is all the larger 60mm'ish stuff from Marx, MPC, Auburn (polymer, not rubber) or Ideal (?) and so on, originals and re-issues, to their right is the Lone Star sample, with some PVC, Timpo-branded, Toyway reissues, while the more historically-uniformed Charbens are in the little bag.

 

In the box, top right, are the more modern (WWI/II'ish) Charbens with four of the ever more brittle Lone Star marines - fighting in No.1 Dress uniforms! I have added one or two I think, but they may be duplicates. Below them is a mixed tub of the smaller Marx and a few others; Reisler, hollow-cast &etc, which we saw in an early post on the subject. There's been a few hollow-cast additions too.

 

Sandwiched between those two tubs is a wooden, hand-carved, tourist chap, who we also saw here over a decade a go, but there are four, similar, and very interesting plastic versions about to hit the blog! To the left of the mixed tub is a newer one, since enlarged, but still not ready for the definitive post, with the Britains Naval gun, now 'guns', but not all versions yet, although we did have a look at them, in part, a while ago.

 

In the corner are the three Greek assault-boats, copied from Britains, which got a post, and then in the top-left quarter of the box, all the iconic novelty floating toys from Britains and Timpo. You can see the Greek crewmen under the US Assault craft . . . I've actually done an 'Assault River-Crossing', in a remarkably similar boat, but ours didn't have engines, so we had to fucking paddle, in the rain!

 

The final tub, outside the box, has all the European types, obvious are Cofalu/Cofalux swivel-heads and the Coma assault marines, but there's some other stuff, a couple of Atlantic, a Hong Kong or two, and, strangely, mu original Frog trio, who are RAF rocket-troops! They've since been moved, as the sample is up to about ten now!

 

You can add a largish sample of the Gem cadets, those Argentine rubber ones which came in a while ago, and more Atlantic, Lone Star and Reisler, along with some Starlux (not sure where they are?), but, there's actually quite a few to sort into this tub at some point, and more take-away tubs will be needed! Then there's all the ABC and other Hong Kong copies, from hollow-cast, taken from Britains, which we have looked at here, on more than one occasion, now.

C is for Concord, Cloned

We use 'clone' in the hobby as a shorthand for copied, pirated or knocked-off, but given as how a clone is supposed to as good as or hard to tell from the original, it's never better used than for this quite amazing model, which a mate kindly bought for me the other day when I spotted it going cheap, on that there evilBay.

The plain shipping box, and that's you, shipping it home in your car, revealing it's really being aimed at cake decorators, not aimed at retailed-toy customers! And one supposes a bigger stockist/store may have had six or eight in a larger carton? Wilton also ran a mail-order facility through their annual 'yearbook' catalogues.

Recognised it straight-away! And this is possibly Wilton's finest! A millimetre-by-millimetre copy of the Britains model of the Concord Overland Stagecoach model, with only two items seemingly not reproduced, and graphics/stickers switched-out (to use the US expression!) for Overland Stage Express Co., but in the same red & gold livery.

Three smaller bags contain all the little add-ons, a third, out of shot, took the seat seen here with the riders/crew, and even the luggage has been faithfully reproduced, or blatantly stolen, depending on your viewpoint, and a 1970's kid's viewpoint was very different from a Britains executive's!

Some of the colours have been changed, but otherwise, the whole thing is remarkably similar, upon first look you think it must have used the same tools (maybe after they'd been shipped to Hong Kong with everything else circa 1971), but there is a slight drop-off in quality, most noticeable on the horses.

An unusual detail of this copy over the more typical output of Wilton, or the Hong Kong pirates, is that different polymers have been used, as they were on the Britains original, so finer details are in flexible polyethylene, as are the horses.

Clearly marked Wilton on the underside of the base (which I neglected to photograph), one obvious difference is that they've only cloned one of the two horse poses, although the manes are different, so all four are roughly the same, where Britains gave you one each of two quite different horses, in opposite colours.

The other obvious difference/omission is that the passengers weren't cloned, but both crew are faithfully reproduced, even down to the long strip of PVC sheet/strip used for the driver's whip.

While the colours of the coach are matched quite closely, in fact the paler tan for the yellow on the bodywork is almost a better choice, and the crew, loosely followed, the luggage is a little more leery.

And the whole gives a lie to Donald Trump's "Chiiinah stole from us!" crap, actually, the Americans stole from Britains, running-off to Hong Kong and giving it "Here, make us a copy of this, and keep it cheap, we're going to sell it as a cake decoration"!

As a bit of a Brucey Bonus/'Question Time', the seller included these, for free, they weren't listed in the sales-spiel or images. And I'd love to know who made them, presumably a more craft-oriented US maker, possibly two, the wooden barrel and drinking 'spoon' being one, the printed cotton-sacks from another, can anyone help with a name/names? Doll's house accessories? 50lbs of 'Old Mill' sugar and Idaho potatoes!

B is for Box-ticking Bountiful Bags from the Boot!

I picked these up at the last BP toy fair at Sandown Park  . . .

 

. . . Dulcop bagged Wild West sets from Italy, and I think this might be how Plastic Warrior magazine imported them, way back when, but I could be wrong about that, they may have got them all loose, hence the melty ones Brian Carrick gave the Blog a few years ago?

 

The tall slim one is the Indians, with totem-pole and wigwam, the cowboys (to the right) get a tent and the short bag is American Civil War, with a small selection of cavalry from both sides.

 

The ACW set, I think it's two mounted from each of the Union 'Blues' and Confederate 'Grays', a pretty basic set compared to the other two? I have a cross-section of the loose figures, which we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2015/09/d-is-for-dulcop.html 

 

Not clear what's in the tent, but I think it's four foot and two mounted (same as the ACW), but it might be three mounted and five or six foot? You also get a camp-fire to cook your beans on, outside your tent!

 

While with the Indians you get a full set of foot figures, I think, six, eight? A mounted figure, the same camp-fire and a totem pole. There's also something which looks like it might be the sticks for the Tipi, and there's a sort of weapon-stand thing, which is plug-in decoration for the Tipi, other accessories may be hidden under the figures/inside the Tipi, which could be a selection from a stretched skin, carpet, sack, cactus, tree with vulture,  &etc.

C is for Carded Combat Crew

More minters from Sandwon, or, at least near minters, nothing 60+years old is ever that 'mint', bags fog with a million invisible folds, cards fade or discolour from sunlight or bleaches in the paper itself, but these two have held up pretty well;

 

No brand and a blank back to the card, so no clue to producer/issuer, and 43p (maybe around 50¢ US, at the time?), if only such things were still 43p! It looks like it might be the same quality as the Rosebud one seen here before, but I couldn't manipulate it enough to see whether there was anything in the parachute cavity? But still a nice item to add to the collection

 

I think these might be by Hugonnet/Féral, but it is by no means certain, they come in several different generic header-cards, but always unmarked/unbranded, so they could be another operation?

 

A site crediting them to Hugonnet pointed out that they are Starlux copies with the heads turned, usually through around 90º, and you can see for yourselves, they have been given oblong bases.

T is for Two - Far West Frenchies!

The last Sandown Park show was quite good for Wild West stuff, and in addition to the sets in the opener, and some Dulcop in a future post, I managed to pick this French production up, with established sellers Steve Vickers and John Begg , both stalled-out in the main/first hall, extracting not-many of my shekels, for this pair.

 

Starlux boxed stage coach; the trouble with boxed items like these, is that they are only ever box-tickers, by which I mean they sit there looking pretty, but can't be played with either in a child-like fashion, or something more formal and war-gamey! They can't be handled like loose figures, or compared closely with others, or not without getting them out of their packaging which can often lead to damage to the inserts, mounting cards, trays etc.

 

I believe I read somewhere that the coach itself was bought in from someone else, Manurba (?), or someone like that, and given Starlux horses and outrider, but I, or the person who said it, may be making that up, because the slip-in trays for the horses, are similar to other makers systems, like my own Cofalu set?

 

I also picked up this bag of 'bazaar' figures from France, as close to a generic as you can get, with graphics only for some child-safety outfit, which may or may not be official, and the contents, cowboys only, so assume bags of Indians too somewhere, being copies of Elastolin 70mm stuff from Germany.

 

 Some close-ups.

Hugonnet, Feral, LSP, 'PIH'? . . . Someone else?

 

1980 catalogue page.

 

The guy running with loot bag, shooting behind him, seems to be not only a late addition to the Elastolin line-up, but to bear a remarkable resemblance to the pre-existing Britians swoppet and/or Herald Hong Kong bank-robbers, not that it matters when the French rack-toy guys were copying everyone, including the other French producers, by the mid-80's!

B is for Blow Job!

No! You can't even begin to pretend, you don't think it wasn't going to happen one day, because you know it was, Blow Job has been inevitable, from the founding of the blog! I found this rather interesting item at Sandown Park a month ago, and here it is for Loyal Readers to enjoy!

 

House Martin's eponymous blow-football game, 'Blow Football', our draughs set was by House Martin, when we were kids, and I seem to recall them providing games for newsagents or corner-shops, more than the dedicated toys shops or department stores (who's toy departments were always small, outside the 4th quarter), but that might be a personal memory/conclusion, rather than the truth of the situation.

 

 

The interest being these two, not only are they better-quality sculpts of the commonly Hong Kong sports set, with the 'five-ring' circus logo of the Olympic movement, but the better quality suggests a better quality set of all of them, somewhere, were they premiums at one point, before Hong Kong got their hands on them?

 

There's a tube missing if each player is to have one, and it won't be easy to replace, exactly, without a second set of the same game, but you never know, and maybe it's already in the loose odd's Blow Football section, of the stash?

 

The obvious difference between this set and others with figures (not all Blow Football games have figures), is that there is no handle or means /instructions for affixing them to such, so either you hold and move 'the goalkeepers' with the other hand, or just place them in from of the goal, and hope they stop some shots? 

My memories are that after a while, saliva tended to come out of the end of the tubes, and I'd imagine Blow Football has become a bit persona non grata, in these post-covid times? I should add, that I thought I'd posted more of these, back in the early days of the Blog, I certainly have several, so we will have to have a better look another day, as I can't find them on the blog now? There should be a couple of Merit versions, a Gibson and/or Spears, and a couple of more modern/generic ones?

T is for Two - Green Machines

Dropped into Blue Cross, the animal charity the other day, to drop-off some stuff for them, and managed to walk away with some stuff for me! Neither is that exciting, but we'll have a look at them anyway!

 

Timpo Bren-gun Carrier, nice and clean, with two, apparently unbrittle, crew, but needing a Bren and a set of wheels, I'm pretty sure the former is in a bag of spares somewhere, the latter may be found under a tatty one, at some later date!

 

Not so clean, but otherwise complete, a generic (for now?) Hong Kong tank, in the style of those which are usually die-cast (Zee), with the black-plastic plug-ins, for aerial and MG, but is, in fact, actually all-plastic, and recognisably a Panzer IV, albeit, 'only just! The barrel looks damaged, but in the flesh, seems fine, just a little loose. And it's not far of HO-OO 'readymade' carpet-toy scale!

B is for Box-ticking Boy's Toys in Bottle Bags!

At the PW show, John Begg had a whole bunch of ex-shop, or out-painters stock (there were loose figures) from Charbens, and Colesmith Plastics (the moulds have a convoluted history which can be read in Plastic Warrior's Charbens Specialist Publication), to which I availed myself of what you might call a cross-sample, certainly not everything they produced, either figure or packaging wise, but a nice example for box-ticking their latter production, which I remember being in the shelves, when I was a kid.

 

Charbens own-branded packaging.

Unpainted Wild West.

 

A generic branding as 'Pic-a-Pack'.

Guards Band and Beefeaters. 

 

American civil war, an odd mix of plastic colours with the Union outnumbering the Confederates more than two-to-one, in both sets, with an apparently measured content count of one sky-blue figure, four dark blue, and two grey

 

More mixed ceremonials, here branded to Colesmith.

A Highland piper, and Lifeguards join the mix.

 

Mixed paratroopers (green bases) and Tommies (sand).

 

Comparison of the cards, I don't know why Colesmith got to brand some-up to themselves, maybe to pay off a debt, or just for a cheaper quote to Charbens? or did they inherit/hang-on to the moulds? I haven't got the Charbens Special to hand!

 

Note, also; the Artist's palette painting sign, used - rightly - on the unpainted Wild West set, but rather spurious on the pre-painted sets? I'm sure I remember the Colesmith sets in WHSmith around 1978/79?

 

"Jenny? What colour are Native Americans, really?"

 

"Dunno' love, try one of each!"

 

The 'Blues & Royals'.

 

Mixed, painted and unpainted.

Highlanders, Nelson, Lifeguard trumpeter and mounted cowboy.

 

Guards band in various treatments.