O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Army Men and Combat Infantry

The meat and two veg' of Toy Soldier collecting . . . toy soldiers! I had quite a good run at the show this year on the khaki-front, in fact, I've just split the folder into two; troops and AFV's, as it was 27 images! So, this post is that plunder, less all the vehicles! And we seem to be starting with pretty-much the last thing I bought at the show, probably because it was on top of a bag, and got shot first!

 

One of the American dealers was over for the day, was it Matt from Hobby Bunker? And he had these, in most colours, I went for the pink! BMC's GI Janes! I've not got them out of the pack, as Brian Berke sent us a nice khaki sample when they first came out, so they can wait for another day, but it was a definite box ticked!

 

Two blow-moulds which I think we've seen before, but here they are again, and they'll be back soon, as Peter Evans gave me a pair not a week ago! He remembers them being part of a shooting game with [I think he said;] four each of these two and one officer?

 

A Marx six-inch British infantryman, and Blue Box (or BB-clone) five-inch GI, complete the larger figures found in June.

 

Not my finest moment, but we all make mistakes at shows, hurrying, poor lighting, trying to hold-down two conversations, but whatever, I bought a lemon - the lewis gunner team are mucked about with, I thought they were a pair, but actually the No.2 is a conversion . . . heay-ho! Some Chinese made Matchbox clones (Shin Hing maybe?) and an earlier Rado or similar Russian.

 

French, very early Starlux (ovoid bases), or Quiralu, I think, possibly from aluminium moulds? I should know, and if I spent longer going through the folders I would know, but nice anyway!

 

Bagged small-scale and a couple of loose figures.

 

The right-hand bag had some interesting mould-purge figures in green/blue.

 

I actually went to the show with only one thing on the absolute wants-list; Hilco Anzacs, and managed to get all three with a colour variation, from one stall, and a seller on the opposite side of the aisle had the Trojan 14th Army types, so I grabbed them at the same time! The Hilco's are cut-n-shut 'conversions' (in the loosest, just-escaping-a-plagiarism-charge, meaning of the word) of the Timpo 'solid' 8th Army poses.

 

Also picked-up two of the Airfix 1st version Para's neither of which seem brittle, a problem with them now, a Thomas/Poplar 'ubiquityman' (driver, gunner and stretcher bearer), Blue Box GI in 50mm and three Lido-clones.

 

More small-scale, with Corgi 'chocolate bars' from the gift-set, Blue Box Germans in 'styrene, a similar Hornby-Triang 'Battle Space' radio-operator and a few other bits.

 

To be sorted, mostly Hong Kong, mostly Britains clones, and mostly to appear on the Khaki Infantry page at some point, I haven't done as much on there as I'd have wanted to, due to circumstance, this last few years, but I did add a few bits there, the other day, and there is more in the queue.

 

More Hong Kong, copies of Airfix 8th Army and Monogram GI's, all very much grist to the mill, but all having a place in the oeuvre, and will all need to be sorted into the correct tubs and samples, to build the bigger picture.

 

For instance the two colours of 8th Army clones, are from two sources, one marked Hong Kong the other just HK, and a difference in quality between the two. The aim being to eventually get them all tied into the correct sets/packaging, and hopefully get the odd brand-ID on them, I happen to know the HK's are probably Ri-Toys (Rado)!

 

More thanks to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, who I have forgotten to add.

H is for How They Come In - Charity Shop Backlog - 2022, 2 of 2

All the two's! Clearing the backlog of stuff down in Picasa's 1960, except for 2023! Slightly more interesting stuff for the purists than the last post, but it all has its place, and I make no apologies for any of it, unless I apologise first!

A rather nice two-headed dragon, I don't know who it's by, and it went to storage ages ago, but I think it's the same line as the black one we saw recently with the two different wing arrangements, so someone like Toy major maybe?

 

Another of the Jada die-casts, again I'm not sure of the franchise (so far all their offerings have been licensed) but it could be Roblox or Blockworld or whatever they are called, I liked it, despite its chipped nose, as it reminds me of the morphing-cubes robot in the water world scenes of Interstellar, the movie!

 

Seen before I think, some things do tend to get more than one outing now I'm shooting stuff for other platforms, my latest Fontanini on his chunk of Carrara Marble, and a bigger one at about 100/120-mil.

 

 

Nappies in various sizes, the one on the right is the fun one, it's a well [home-] painted slush-cast tourist statuette! The other small one is a 'figure painters' whitemetal figure, I don't know the maker while the ceramic is a fairing type, which was going for a couple of quid rather than some Meissen/Worcester type, but a fun addition to the growing side-collection of naughty Mediterranean (remember the rules of French Warfare) corporals!

This was a 50p jobbie, and worth the read, probably collected articles from a history magazine or periodical or something, not exactly in-depth, and not revealing anything which isn't in AJP Taylor or Liddle Heart, but maybe a tad-less jingoistic.

 

This wasn't that hard to pin down, the artist being revealed as Eija Seras, a Canada-based Finnish artist of the 1960-70's, but the base mark with the 'H' seems wrong (the 'E' is as she did it), so it may be a maiden or married name from one end of her period of productivity? If you google her, you find lots of chess-set pieces, this doesn't seem to be one of them, so just a touristy piece.

"Seras produced a range of Inuit figurines, hand sculpted from terracotta clay, in the late 1960s through the 1970s based on her four years living at the U.S. Air Force base in Goose Bay, Labrador in the mid 60s . The artist was awarded the Canadian Design of Merit citation in 1974 by the National Design Council of Canada for her native figures"

 

'How they came in'! I forgot to load this picture in order, and if I slot it in now I'll have to rewrite the blurbs on the other two, and I'm intrinsically idle, so that's a big, fat no! I seem to recall they were a couple of quid each, from the BHF in Farnborough. Really showing the superiority of plastic in certain situations, as seen by those, back then, who couldn't foresee the pollution problem careering down the tracks.

P is for Pikit Toys

Have we had that title before? Many, many moons, and a fair-few new-moons ago, I posted some of the Tank Transporters here, and the unknown Hong Kong one, bottom left image in the collage (second picture down, in that post), is now known!

 

Or at least one of its importers is! Pikit Toys, a short-lived but quite prolific while it was going, outfit from Birmingham, and for those fatuous gits who keep posting stupidly ignorant questions on quora.com; no, not the new one in Alabama, the old, original one in the Midlands, England, Britain, the UK!

 

Some Pikit sets were also imported by Gordy in the US with a different overprint, I don't think this set was one of them, but someone else may well have done so - Laramie or Ja-Ru would be main likelihoods?

My loose one was (still is!) missing its rear ramp, I thought I'd mentioned it at the time, but I'd carefully hidden the loss with an Imperial staff car! What? Misleading journalism? In the 'Free West'? Surely not! Next, someone will be trying to convince you the Daily Mail and Sun are full of shit and everything that comes out of Trump's press-office is a lie! It's shocking, we're all going to the dogs!

Clearly cobbled together by a middle-man from the products of more than one of the smaller toy makers in the colony (there were 2000-odd registered there at the time), the transporter is a multimedia model with working metal axles, polyethylene tyres and a well detailed, roughly 1:76th in-scale, polystyrene main-body, while the two little tanks are common HK fodder, found in various sets from various makers and or under various brands/brand-marks, so, not much to learn there.

 

But the figures (Airfix 8th Army clones) do seem to be married to the Jeeps in origin (plastic colour), so a small clue against future research, they are similar to the Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) ones, but with solid bases against the slightly hollow ones of Rado, a bit bigger too, I think, in a year or two I will nail all this down on the But Is It Giant Blog, indeed I probably should have posted this there? Another day, new images!

Aaaaannnnnd . . . that's Rack Toy Month, off and running! You can all sod-off on holiday, and hope, maybe, I'll have something more worthy and meaningful for you in September! Those travelling incognito can find something similar to post on Faceplant!

B is for Battle Dressed Combat Soldiers!

When this post was in the queue for Rack Toy Month last year, it consisted of about 20 appallingly bad shots of the contents of the bag, with tons of reflection, in which I was trying to shoot at least one good shot of each pose, for collaging into groups, but I ran-out of time to crop and edit them.

There weren't all the poses in the bag which was another spoiler of the project and then, when getting toward the end of the garage emptying, I found their box, and managed a whole new shoot with loose figures and a few silver 'plated' ones!

The oddity with this set (and the reason I had them stored separately in two 'zones'), is that the ANZAC clones are, generally, a tad bigger than the 8th Army clones (both from the Airfix 1:32nd/54mm figures), so, for years, I thought I was seeking two sources! I still am of course, but now it's to find the chromium-guys set, rather than two nationalities of set!

 

How many officers? You can see here that the ANZAC Officer with pistol (converted from the Airfix Commando) is heading for 45mm, the other ANZAC's being around 40mm, with some of the 8th Army no more than 35-mil! And they go very well with the Rado Industries/Ri-Toys, definitely not Blue Box ANZAC's! Which means they could be used with the actual Blue Box too!

The mark shows up better on the metallic-sprayed set, and err, that's it for now, currently an unknown originator's 'generics', I'll return to them when more comes to light! I aught to add that I think the two chromium ones here were from Chris or Peter, as the officer wasn't in the storage lot and these images were from the old folder, so thanks - as always - to both.

F is for Follow-up - Fresh Fellows from B&M Stores

These arrived in my inbox within the hour (at time of writing] this evening, but as I was clearing follow-ups today, they can go up right away! Cheers to Chris Smith for sending these, which are a follow up to this shelfie post of last Christmas. Chris's blub will more than suffice, after the shots;

"... you had these as a shelfie Dec 21st in a tub from B&M. Already appearing in mixed lots! 8 poses in two colours, yes some based on Matchbox, the crawling figure the most obvious and then 3 based on German and Afrika Korps that retain the cylindrical gas mask canister. One officer in my lot has a sticker  on the underside of the base. Possibly useful as military Junta or mercenaries? Better quality than a lot of cheapo stuff but weapons a bit cartoonish."

And it just remains for me to thank Chris for the update and close-ups - out there now and already cheaper than the not-much B&M Stores were charging three months ago (£5) . . . and probably still are!

P is for Postscript on Plasticom and Their Polish Pals!

Return or follow-up wouldn't compute once I'd decided on an alliterative heading and 'Pandect' would have flummoxed most I fear! Anyway, Plasticom were first seen here a long time ago now, and we have re-visited them several times AND looked at Polish versions, so this is another view, with more Polish figures (courtesy of Chris Smith) and, and . . .

I took a lot of pictures, and Chris sent a fair few, so we're starting with line-ups of his new Polish takes on the Plasticom 'Soldabar' sugar-candy/lolly-handle WWII figures above and below from two different angles, and  - the middle - the current rainbow of polymer colours from my Plasticom sample.

Note also slight variations; offset holes, smaller base and deeper reinforcing round some of the holes, also the orange-red 'short-shot/miss-mould' at the back left.

Chris's Polish knock-off's compared with the Plasticom, these would appear - from below - to be from two makers, but I think they are all of the same origin and although we've looked at similar figures here from Konrad Lesiak, and Wojciech Gudaczewski recently covered them on a Faceplant group, the maker/s remain anonymous! Wojciech did say they were mostly produced around Warsaw though, and would be what have been described here before as Kioskowce - cheap 'tobacco kiosk' novelties.

The standing firer is quite an original pose, with a serious attempt to replicate the Plasticom base; a shallower rim to the lolly-socket giving him away, while the 8th Army officer is a straight lift from Airfix's set. We've seen the two Plasticom's before, they are a Crescent (firer) and Britains (officer) clone respectively.

These are Chris's Matchbox clones, to whom belongs the firing figure from the previous image, we have 8th Army and Afrika Korps. Polish troops fought with the Eighth Army, but in Italy when they had gone into long trousers I think (and there weren't many Highland Bren-gunners in the Polish formations!), but still the affinity is there, and it gets round making hated Russians?

While Airfix are plundered for more 8th Army poses and - unusually - Ghurkhas, with both these and the previous, the colours are very hard to photograph under any conditions, and more worryingly - in the case of the center four - made to look almost as edible as the candy-lolly they were holding!

I wasn't thinking when I did this collage, so we have Wild West above (US Cavalry) and WWII below! The bazooka-man is taken from the late Britains Hong Kong output while the advancing pair in the middle are Crescent again with another Britains (damaged) on the left. The cavalry which I didn't recognise last time were ID'd by someone a while back (Vichy?) as Jecsan I think, but it's a fleeting similarity, with the Plasticom's far more naturally stance'd.

Image on the left here is from Theo van der Weerden, with two of the Cofalu clones (one each beret and helmet) of French infantry, more Britains and another US cavalryman, while I have the same pair (lower right) of Frechies, with another, stabbing pose, in various colours - above.

My four together, we've seen this shot on the Khaki Infantry page, but for the sake of completeness it might as well be here too!

Chris kindly sent me three duplicates from his collection, and I will eventually use them in comparisons on the Airfix Blog, but for now, one of each; Ghurkha, 8th Army and DAK above, order reversed below.

And to the wild Wild West! Top left (they too, came from Theo) and bottom are the Platicom from Belgium. The other two shots are all Polish figures from Chris (oops, I've only just realised one of them is WWII British!). Note the higher collar on the two top-right, which may be another maker's work?

There seems to be a bit of mix-and-match with these, but I'm not so au fait with Wild West figures . . . Theo's red figure is taken from Britains Herald Hong Kong, the green chap from the same maker's Swoppet range, the high tube pair might be based on ex-Jean or Manurba poses, the two six-gun chaps (bottom left) Herald (similar) again? The standing riflemen are quite nice poses/sculpts, albeit a bit flat; like most the Polish figures.

All Plasticom and a mix of Britains and continental sculpts being lifted here, I think we've seen them all before, I recognise the four interesting poses but can't place them (French?), while the standing firing and kneeling archer are both Herald HK. The standing bowman looks a bit like Rambo!

Two Polish Indians, again courtesy of Mr. Smith, and clearly a new manufacture for the blue figure, who might be mistaken for 'just' a Kioskowce but that base is hollow and too large to not be for a lollypop to sit in! I don't recognise either pose and the green one is missing a hand.

This chap came in the other day and I thought I'd better add him here for the full overview! He's similar to the Herald Hong Kong one, but the legs are slightly different, I think.

Plasticom's scenics, with a Britains original to the far right, you can see the Plasticom tree is greatly simplified. I think we have Chris to thank for one or two of these as well, but some time-ago now!

The Plasticom 'Czech hedgehog' tank-trap, compared with the Britains Herald Hong Kong accessory, and it's an early marbled one on the left (matching the previously seen tree), with a later plain-brown one to the right.

You may have noticed that the ex-Matchbox advancing pose has what looks like a sign on his base, and I asked Chris about it, as a 'supplemental'! He studied it in depth and took tons of shots to try and get a few good ones (which was all 'a call above' for the blog) and sent me the best results. Stopping the shadow setting down 200% (that's the same figure in both shots) made it clear the 'HQ', 'Tobruk >>' or 'Achtung Minen' I had hoped for is not there!

Moreover, it's not that clearly a sign at all, and Chris wondered if it might actually be doing the job of what I call 'sprulettes', allowing material to pass beyond the products original cavity design, so the figure itself gets fully formed. Chris noted most of the other figures are more balanced with a leg either-side of the lollypop hole, while this was a one-sided sculpt, and it seems to me he might be spot-on? Although the bayonet has still short-shotted!

The last time I mentioned Plasticom online someone stated they were available in Germany from Trawigo, Bloomberg list Trawigo GmbH & Co KG (founded 1953) as an importer and wholesaler of confectionery & related products, not a manufacturer, so they didn't make them, they imported Plasticom's Soldabars, and repackaged them.

As I've mentioned them (Trawigo) now, I'll tag them and anyone searching in the future can come here and read > click here or on the Plasticom tag below this post or the tag down the right-hand side of the page for the - currently- seven other posts on these and the previous looks at Polish production/similar figures < !

And it gets them in the tag-list! Indeed, as we now know they got as far as Poland, and seem to turn-up most in mixed lots from France, Belgium, Holland and even the UK (occasionally), they must have had/carried several brand-marks, do you know your local one?

Many thanks to Chris Smith for help, images and figures, thanks to Theo for images, to Konrad for past images and help and acknowledging Wojciech's input, that's them, again, for now!

ABC is for Another Batch of Copies!

Why I haven't come-up with that heading before, given the number of times we've covered ABC here is one of those mysteries only the gods will have an answer to! Most of these are from Chris Smith who seems to have had a good lock-down as far as finding esoteric Hong Kong output goes, as he adds more poses/images to the ABC story and another (earlier?) chapter!

So, that new chapter first; Chris has found some unmarked figures, of higher production value/quality than ABC, but of the same poses ABC use. The conclusion has to be that these copies of UK figures must pre-date the ABC's and make the ABC figures, the poor 2nd generation copies they are.

Lower shot shows two of them with their Crescent 8th Army donors, while the sample also contains a Britains 'Khaki Infantry' pose, standing firing, which we haven't seen from ABC yet. You can see the bases are more substantial than ABC's and have a flat edge.

Here we see three of them compared to the green ABC (middle) and sand figures, at this point Chris didn't have a direct comparison, so they were a 'stand alone' set of 'new' Hong Kong Piracies, but . . .

. . . Chris then found some more sand ABC's, with two cross-over's, the Tommy-gunner seen here in the left-hand comparison shot and the running with bayonnet fitted, along with a grenade thrower - right-hand shot, although these don't have the ABC mark which could confuse, but those ABC US Marines in dress uniform, with the three versions, have some unreadable examples, so I think they all are ABC?

Which gives a [running?] total of six poses in the ABC set, seven with the Britains shooter and up-to nine (or more) if the missing Crescent poses ever turns up in either set, or more conversions/Britains sculpts?

Meanwhile, my only contribution is these two which I found while looking for the 'Zulu' versions a few weeks ago; two marked-ABC copies of Britains running swoppet in solid, but with the feathers (unlike the Africanised version), both of these are rather-poor short-shots, the brown one particularly, but I've never claimed these to be Hi-Fi, just high-interest!

I also had these Britains Herald-clone Union troops come in, they are unmarked versions of those issued within the ABC / HK / CMV 'family', a family to which we can probably add Past the Post, they may all have been independent but they seem to have shared ideas, production values or source material . . . packers, shippers or import agents!

Trees in the background are also courtesy of Chris I think, from one of the lots he's sent over the last year or so, the contents of which are languishing in a group of future 'H is for . . . ' posts, but they happened to be at-hand when I shot the ACW.

So many thanks to Chris for the images, donations and all round support - he found an absolute blinder earlier this evening (25th Aug) which I promptly paid a little too much for, but, well, they're for another day! Cheers again Chris.