Q is for Question Time - Fire Chief

Can anyone help Theo's brother ID his Fire Chief with a little more definitiveness than 'British'?

The car is clearly marked on the box 'Made in Great Britain' and I believe the underside of the model has 'No. 909-2L (GB)', but other than those, there are no clues. The usual suspects are Thomas/Taffy, Kleeware/Tudor Rose or Raphael Lipkin, but there were others; Tri-ang/Mettoy experimented with plastics in the latter Minic's? I feel the wheels will be the best clue, does any toy car/vehicle collector recognise them from other - branded - toy vehicles?

I'm guessing it's a generic made for someone like Littlewoods or Kays' Christmas catalogues and hoping that someone will recognise it from a branded example in their collection, maybe as a taxi rather than a fire chief, or a police car . . . military vehicle?

Friction-drive with working headlights and siren; it's a lovely thing, box looks 1950's, and the end-closure follows a pattern you see with early Randall's (Merit) - among others? About 1:24th scale?

A is for 'Alfa'!

Civilian/domestic cars rather leave me cold, and even though I pay attention to these plastic vehicles in order to build the bigger picture of the 15 or 20 brands and brand-marks involved, I can't get excited about them, especially this one which has no branding to speak of.

Box with car - there is no branding on the box other than an 'Empire Made'

Car with box, the only marking on the base plate is a 'No. R445 Made in Hong Kong' which is not related to Lucky's numbering system, so it'll be one of the others, which as they aren't linked with figures or military 'stuff'; can go hang!

Did I say it was an Alfa?

There may be more at Planet Die-cast, links for which were in the older posts, but my coldness toward cars means I can't even be bothered to go and look for likely targets to link to now! Also this is the forth post I've written in the last few hours and . . . blearh . . . whatever . . . you know the score; bruum-bruum-car; boxed; plastic; Hong Kong!

Better stuff tomorrow...

D is for Dennis

Although this has no moniker, it has the look of the Dennis Fire Appliance's I remember from my later childhood? Also I'm not that sure of scale (about 1:24th?) as there's none given and there never is with these Hong Kong vehicles; even when issued in 'sets', they were meant as stand-alone toys and scale wasn't an issue - it's one of the things that makes following them so hard, with three sizes of Jaguar (for instance) you're not always sure what you're looking at on-line!

Clifford carried a fair bit of Lucky's stuff, but they carried other stuff as well, so nothing definitive, but it all adds to the whole. The artwork shows the back door opening along with one of the side-shutters, and that's what you get, the other doors are all integral to the moulding except the crew door, which is absent on both the models below, although there are signs of it having been there.

The real reason for photographing it! Two figure sculpts, driver and sit-arounder! They are the best gauge of scale, being 70/80 mil, which gives a size between 1:22 and 1:25th scales. Made out of the same colour plastic as some of the smaller Lucky firemen, it's another clue both to this being lucky and to Clifford's relationship with Lucky being a further clue to the LP link.

Branded to neither Lucky nor Clifford though, it carries a base-plate for WS Toys! I'd like to think it's a made-up brand, but as I said above: nothing's definitive with these plastic vehicles, and has we've seen with both the figures and the London Bus, and base mark can change or dissapear!

T is for Telecoms-Truck with Telegraph-Poles for Telephone-Line

Marx, dime-store style, hard polystyrene truck with two clip-in telegraph poles on the roof!

That's it . . . it's a Marx, dime-store style, hard polystyrene truck with two clip-in telegraph poles on the roof!

You want more? . . . I was saving this to compare with the Merit telegraph poles, but they're different, the ones I think might be copies are the Lone Star Trebble-O Trains ones in sub-N-gauge, but they're in storage, so the comparison can wait a year or two and these images can sod-off out of Picasa and go to the Marx dongle! Also - what's with the hole in the roof? Almost like it's been designed for action figures!

S is for Schäferei, Schafe, Shepherd, Sheepdog and Sheep!

No, not Brexiteers, real sheep, with a natural right to behave like sheep! Baaaarrrrr! Trumpton for El Pres'! If he does win, we will at least know we're in the end game, and the death of hope can really gather pace as the fascist sharks circle the tank that has you, me and a crack in it! Still . . . I digress, back to toys . . .

The Preiser 'season' has become alternating wagons/people/wagons posts because of these chaps. I was just going to do the long overdue wagon posts and thank Gary Worsfold for them, but though, "Ooh, I could use the on-line catalogue images to show some of the wagons missing from the photograph-able line-up?", only to find that Preiser had added a dinky little shepherd's hut on wheels to the range recently. So; a shepherds post became inevitable, and lead - through the contents of both boxes and the catalogue - to the full season!

Starting with a comparison shot we've got the standard Merten 'six figure' box on the left and all sorts on the right. The Hong Kong stuff (copied from Marx) is best suited to 28mm role play/gaming than HO/OO railway layouts

Preiser painted their three sheep poses while Merten just gave you 18 poses and changed the plastic colour occasionally! Airfix delivered three slightly larger (OO - 1:76th'ish) sculpts; quite a flock, and they would all go together in a sheep market or show setting as different breeds, the Airfix passing for Merinos.

You can add Merit (OO and N gauge compatible) and Britains Lilliput (the same two poses, the former plastic copies of the latter), Bachmann and/or Revell (?) and possibly a Crescent pose (?), they did a goat! Additionally; Preiser are starting to introduce new sculpts based on the old Elastolin moulds they inherited - although they're supposed to have the Merten moulds somewhere, too?

Box/catalogue art and the current budget-paint catalogue image for Preiser, they are phasing-in a third (of three) shepherd, slightly different from the ex-Elastolin sculpt.

I used to think the above shot shows the new sculpts, there's not much in it, the surface detail is a little better and some configurations are issued with a ram, missing for the last 40/50-odd years, but I think it's a reversed image of the old ones!

Below is a big question mark we'll be looking at fully in a separate post in a day or two, but some sets of what used to be 327 have a single set of sheep, but the dogs and shepherds from two 'six-figure' sets as shown here, however I have two sets without the extra's and . . . well, we'll look at it later!

I'm missing a prone painted eepie-deep, but these are loose scraping from more than one set anyway! Merten above: they're not such good sheep, sculpt-wise, but there's so many poses and I think they're better-animated!

To the right is the new shepherd's van, which comes - here - as a kit, but is also available as a made-up model in more than one set. I think it's looking ripe for conversion to a WWII Soviet cooks trailer/field kitchen? Or a junior staff-officer's towed office? Now that the Eastern Europeans are issuing all those fantasy sets in 1:76/72, it could be all sorts of things - Halfling's caravan, Dwarves' mobile-forge, Wizard's spell-lab . . . all sorts

Three of the sets with the new sculpts, there seem to be about 5 poses of sheep, a (new?) dog and the third shepherd moulding. In the budget-paint range's bulk set you aren't given any prone animals!

Merten had two sculpts and the one from the woodsmen set is the better both having more detail under the splodges of paint Merten can suffer from and also the slightly more generic clothing allowing him to herd his sheep pretty-much anywhere in Europe, with any genre of locomotive running in the foreground.

The TT-gauge figure here is the other (second issued?) sculpt from Preiser, with N and Z gauges getting the older one from the HO range. Not the TT set has a ram and the new sculpts, N gets the old sculpts, Z has simplified micro-blobs.

The larger-scales show clearly both newer sculpts, the one (left, broader hat-brim) ex-Elastolin, the other (right, narrower brim) all new?

Two unpainted sets, one from the bulk sets issued by Preiser (on the right) in the same 'pure' white polystyrene of Airfix's 'multipose' which glues so easily and cleanly with liquid-poly, the more translucent or 'wishy-washy' set on the left was part of the multi-coloured batch of unknown destination/use we looked at in the long post the other day.

Known Listing (incomplete):

Merten

? - O Gauge (different sculpts?)
891 - Woodsmen, Forester and Shepherd - HO Gauge
2403 - Shepherd and 18 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403a-d - 4 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403e-i - 5 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403j-m - 4 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403n-r - 5 Sheep - HO Gauge
T891 - Woodsmen, Forester and Shepherd, TT Gauge
N2403 - Shepherd and Sheep, N Gauge
Z891 - Foresters and Shepherd, Z Gauge

Preiser
45116 - Shepherd and farmer lighting pipe (new sculpt) - 1:22.5th Scale
47056 - Ram bleating (new sculpt) - 1:24th Scale
47057 - 3 Sheep (1x3 poses, new sculpts) - 1:24th Scale
47062 - Shepherd's dog (new sculpt) - 1:24th Scale
47100 - Shepherd (new sculpt) - 1:24th Scale
65325 - Sheppard with Sheep (new sculpts with ram), 7 standing, 1 lying plus dog - 1:43rd Scale
160 - Sheppard with flock of 6 - 2 each (old sculpt) and dog - HO Gauge
161 - 15 Sheep, 5 each (old sculpt) of 3 poses - HO Gauge
327 - Larger set of unpainted figures and accessories also containing the contents of a 160 - HO Gauge
4160 - Sheppard with flock of 6 - 2 each (old sculpt, basic paint) and dog - HO Gauge
4161 - 15 Sheep, 5 each (old sculpt, basic paint) of 3 poses - HO Gauge
13003 - Shepherd with Flock, shepherd‘s van, rack wagon and 24 fence elements, each 44 mm long, approximately 80 (new sculpt) pieces - HO Gauge
14160 - As 160 - HO Gauge
14161 - As 161, but 9 each of two (new sculpt) standing poses - HO Gauge
14411 - 60 sheep, 30 each of two (old sculpt) standing poses - HO Gauge
16327 - As 327 - HO Gauge
17601 - Sheppard's van - HO Gauge
75020 - Sheppard with Sheep (new sculpt), 7 standing, 1 lying plus dog - TT gauge
79000 - Railway personnel, passengers, passers-by, workers, animals - bulk unpainted set includes shepherd, dog and double-count of standing sheep (old sculpt) - N Gauge
79160 - Shepherd with flock - including dog and double count of standing sheep (old sculpt) - N Gauge
79252 - Flock of 60 sheep, 10 lying (old sculpt) - N Gauge
88577 - Sheppard with flock of 6 - 2 each of three poses (old sculpt) and dog - Z Gauge (also included in bulk unpainted figures set 88500)

This is how common TT-gauge is in the land of Microsoft...

 

Where's the offensive TET-gauge or the Pharaohs TUT-gauge?