V is for Valkyries, The Ride of the Valkyries

Or, if you haven't got loudspeaker-equipped Huey 'Slicks' to hand, Colonel Bogey on the two-tone 'dixie horns' might suffice! It's the Jimson Land Rover, much bigger than the transporter we looked at last, at about 1:24/25th, and a rather nice Series III, except it's ruined by the white cab-roof, and what I'm guessing might have been circus horns on another version of the toy; model number 115.

 

That's it, it's clean, it needs the surgical removal of the sir horns, and a repaint wouldn't go amiss, but would obviously ruin its resale value, there's not a lot else to add, so I won't, and it's a Jimson, push-and-go, carpet-toy 'Lanny'! ♫♪♪♫ Paar-paar-paar-paaaarp-parp ♪♫♪♪!!

W is for Well Now! That's Interesting!

It's nice to put a question to bed, even when it was more of a mystery than a full question-mark, but in this case it probably should have been flagged-up as more of a full question-mark to begin with!

We looked at the - technically - Air Force, cold-war figures from Deluxe Reading/Topper Toys just over two years ago here, at which time I mused that the orange ones might be Politoys output in Italy (who apparently handled the sculpts), but it turns out . . .

. . . they were Thomas Toys! I'm not getting it out of the bag until I find a second one, but I can assure you it's the same figures, with a Jeep which is also not the well-known Thomas-Taffy-Poplar design, but neither do I believe it's Deluxe Reading? If nothing else it's a better sculpt than the hiddeosity which accompanies the Deluxe Reading GI's!

There are no visible marks on the Jeep (which is way over-scale at about 1:24th) to help ID the supplier, or to suggest it might have been a late design of Thomas themselves - which nevertheless remains a possibility?

The suspicion is that Deluxe Reading here in the UK ran the tool in orange polymer as the contract manufacturer for the figures, while - possibly - a third party provided the Jeep, the whole being a typical beach toy; sandcastles; for the use of, as marketed by Thomas?

The card looks old, but the figures - as Deluxe - soldiered-on into the 1970's long after Alden Industries took over Thomas's US operation (if they [the figures] were even available when Thomas were around?), meaning either that Thomas UK carried on for a while (I don't have the relevant Plastic Warrior guide in front of me!) or Poplar (who did a lot of this sea-side stuff) continued to use the brand-mark?

Note that the TNT mark reads;

NTT

While I've had the Deluxe Reading's out, it struck me that the Blue Box 'Secret Missiles Base' figures are also copies of or based on the Deluxe' figures, but being (above) more like the navy guys from the smaller scale range, although this set on Moonbase Central had closer copies of the Air Force ones, also with the flesh painted-in.

The Singapore mark would tie them into one of at least two Blue Box factories in the island nation, but a lot of the Redbox farm and zoo sets tend to carry a Singapore mark, so using the Tai Sang parent for attribution might be safer . . . now we know they all shared the same chairman for over fifty years despite the best efforts of the PSTSM to say otherwise by inventing a whole port/facility!

F is for Fairy Snow

Not the preferred 'powder of relaxation' and social-intercourse employed by - it seems - most Tory leadership campaigners (which is most Tories!) but rather a domestic washing/laundry powder; I thought probably from the Lever Brothers/Unilever combine, but it turns out Fairy Liquid and the earlier Fairy Snow are Procter & Gamble brands, 'non-bio' and originally produced in their factories at West Thurrock and the [now] Republic of Ireland.

I had no idea these existed, although I think I may have a baksheesh axle and tyres combo' in the spares box somewhere, so when Adrian Little sent me images I was very interested and managed to grab some more shots at a subsequent Toy Show.

Jaguar MkII 3.4 litre

We had a maroon one of these when we were kids (it even gets a mention in Charlie Beckwith's Delta Force memoirs!)* and Dad used to screech the tyres on every roundabout between the North Circular and Retford on the old A1 'Great North Road'! Back in the day - there were a lot of roundabouts!

It ended its life as a glider-tug at Farnborough, sans roof. I don't know if it was cut off as a safety measure or ripped-off by the slipstream on the runway after rust set in, but I like to imagine the latter - the roof skidding away into the mown-grass like a demented umbrella!

You could still see it down the back of the water treatment works, behind the old hangers' until only a few years ago, where - if visual-memory serves - it had a Scammell wreaker and an old AEC tanker as companions!

Kit is simple, with white rubber (not plastic-melting PVC) tyres to be fitted over the wheel-stubs of two clip-in axles which are placed in a belly-pan already attached to the upper-bodywork. All found in a heat-sealed polyethylene bag.

* "...Major Walter jumped into his flashy maroon Jaguar and took off for London..."

https://www.scribd.com/book/163581917/Delta-Force-A-Memoir-by-the-Founder-of-the-U-S-Military-s-Most-Secretive-Special-Operations-Unit

Citroen DS

Scale is largish; around 1:24/25th or 1:30th which would make them compatible with a lot of figures? And presumably it was a range of sporty types, or 'sports-saloons'?

That Jaguar had plenty of room in the back for two small boys, but the polished leather seats combined with those corduroy shorts which were de rigueur for small boys back in the 1960's meant that as Dad screeched the tyres, my brother and I would slid about like corks in a storm, the fold-down arm-rest saving us from each-other! We - of course - would over-emphasis the movements until giggling set-in and we were shouted-at to "Behave yourselves!" by some miserable 'grown-up' in the front!

So, there you go; plastic car premiums from Fairy Snow, blurb rather replaced by reminiscing, as the pictures tell you as much as I can, and thanks to Adrian for sharing them with the rest of us.

T is for Toy Fair 2019 Reports - Amerang - Jada (+?)

I think these are all Jada, but I'm not so sure about the last two shots! The trouble with the Toy Fair is you have several hundred stands to scope-out, several dozen to cover and only limited time and you're making lots of mental notes which might as well be written on the beach as the tide comes in for all the use they are weeks later, or even the next day!

However Amerang are a wholesaler, so whether Jada or not, they are here, in the UK, now'ish and to be looked out for if you fancy them.

Batmobiles, Bat-tanks, Bat-beasts, bat-bollocks! But they all come with a really nice die-cast and plastic 70mm-odd (1:24th scale) figure!

More of the same - in closer!

To cool for Bat School! This will be issued later in the year and it's lovely - look at it; I think it's nicer than the old Corgi one, but; at around 1:18th for this, miles off the 'original' and plenty of room for all the extra detailing.

Some other dude in a spandex body-suit, I wasn't pay any attention to who this chap was, but if you're a fan you'll know instantly, 'Livepond' . . . is he? Beyond him is a Transformers franchise in two sizes, I'm not sure on Jada for these but I think they were all the same section of the Amerang stand? Except . . . the flyer is for Transformers, the vehicles are from a Japanese anime series called Initial D!

Again two sizes; 1:24th and 1:32nd, how can you not like these. They perfectly illustrate how accuracy falls with scale-reduction; note the window bars/roll-cage uprights get larger (in scale) as the vehicle gets smaller - the limitations of die-casting alloys! Sadly the 54mm-compatable one doesn't have figures, well, actually - neither of them do - "Who yer gonna call?"!

The other one I'm not sure was Jada; and can't remember where (culturally) it came from - Halo, or some Vin Diesel thing? Nice-looking little hunter-killer APC, runabout thing anyway, although the road-wheels look a bit girly!

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?

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Jada

Another company being handled in the UK by Amerang is Jada, a Hong Kong based Chinese toy manufacturer, clearly with some clout as they are in the business of buying into licenses for franchises like Harry Potter and . . . The Bat Man!

A set of 1:24th scale Batmobiles, from the original TV series and running through the movies of recent years. Each model comes with a figure which technically should be around 75mm for 1:24th, but they didn't look that tall to me, closer to 60mm maybe (1:30th), but I'm very bad a judging size away from a measuring stick. Still, the catalogue states 2.75-inches, which is about 71-and-a-bit millimeters by my measuring stick, when I'm near it.

The TV Batmobile is a nice little model, and - unlike the NJCroce one, does run, as a freewheeler. The boy wonder who is fixed in a sitting position seems to be on the [orange] Batphone!

There is also, as can be seen; a smaller version, as there seem to be for all (five?) of them. I can't remember if a scale was given but it looks to be half-size, so around the 1:48th mark and there don't seem to be figures with the diminutive models.

The back of the box suggests five man-bats to collect at the moment, and note that while they don't have the bases of the Harry Potter figures we looked at earlier; there does appear to be one on the pre-production figure used for the box-art!

'Hollywood Rides' suggests that if not Batman's enemies, there will be further extensions of the range into other film franchise characters. I think it's about time we had Clint Eastwood and 'pal'with a Confederate Wagon-team! "Three-cheers for the Confederacy!" . . . Pat . . . pat . . . pat .

Or . . . how about "The Laaast of the vee-ate inn'tercep'tuz", now - that's a toy I'd like to see!

Meanwhile, the catalogue has photographed them better than I did, but their snappers are probably paid well for the task, so they should be better! And it's another version of Batman.

Jada are also marketing these . . . sort of super deforms; in die-cast? Let's be honest here, this stuff is purely for kidult's man-caves, I mean; who wouldn't want 4-inches (that's half a small foot!) of deformed Halo Space Marine die-cast metal falling on their glass-topped coffee-table, during cleaning or because they caught the sideboard with an elbow in passing! If you drop that Hulkbuster on your foot; you're off to A&E!

However - my cynicism aside, any move away from polymers is a good thing, no matter how much we might like our vintage plastic figures . . . let's get them all to that position - vintage.

And that's four-more licenses! If there was one stand-out point being made at the Toy Fair it was that licensing is everything and everything can be licensed. For instance Monopoly (as we will see in a future post) is no longer just a board game from Hasbro-Parker (or even Parker-Hasbro!), it's a licensable brand-mark to be hired, with conditions, for specific periods, to third parties, hence the literally hundreds of versions out there, some of which don't even use the original play-mechanisms . . . but many of which have nice figures!

A is for Abenteuer in Afrika . . . Mit dem Landrover auf Safari

Spidec Spielzeug provide us with today's post, and it's a real curates egg (he says; not for the first time, there are a lot of curates eggs in the toy basket, and a lot of them came from Hong Kong!), being at the same time both a copy of the Blue Box Land Rover AND at least one, possibly two Corgi Land Rovers! Spidec - presumably - being a German importer/jobber (?), I have a nice copy of the Britains-Herald totem pole marked to Spidec somewhere.

Nice boxed set with a reasonable afternoons-worth of play value which is all you would have been looking for in 1970-something having paid very little for this off the cheapie rack! Not sure about the artwork . . . He's got two live ones in the back but then gets a sudden urge to blow another away!

Unlike the Blue Box vehicle it's aping, this one doesn't have a trailer, but because it has copied the 'giraffe hole' in the cage (the Corgi Lions of Longleat one had it); both the big cats can escape - I hope they jump out and eat the driver before he gets a shot-off, although - the way he's holding that rifle he's going to hurt himself more than the fleeing lion anyway!

The door stickers are also falling back on the Corgi Gift Set 8 Lions of Longleat (but the Corgi cab had a hole for the guard) with further references to Corgi gift sets 31 (Safari Land Rover with Animal Trailer) and 36 (Tarzan' Rover was hard-top LWB in both sets), while I think the roof-horns are from a late Dinky breakdown truck? There are also shades of the Daktari set (GS14) in the mix.

The model differs from the Blue Box one in the 'ally rims' which although just as leery with their chromium-plated finish are to a different pattern and the radio-aerial which is found further forward on Blue Box models.

A more major difference between the two is that while the Blue Box version (quite common)* is a simple model with clip-in axles allowing for hand-powered motivation, the Spidec Lanny has a push-and-go 'friction motor' for more independent carpet safaris!

* Turns up at shows as ex-shop stock and on evilBay; found with two, one or no trailer/s in recent years; it's as if there's a warehouse full somewhere, they turn-up with French and German language consumer information panels and I think I've seen Spanish ones, so a 'Euro-importer' seems to have lost a batch at some point, or maybe it was just a popular and therefore numerous line at the time?

The lion and tiger . . . "A Tiger! In Africa?"! . . . are pretty common as generics from larger bagged/carded sets or early toobs (they were called tubs back then I think!); polyethylene sub-scale copies of Blue Box copies of Britains sculpts.

Thanks to Mercator Trading for the opportunity to shoot this.

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 Two - Taffy Toy and Twin

When I said on Thursday (Friday's post) that I'd post the gun I thought I'd posted, I wasn't considering there might be a reason for my having not posted it in the first place! Anyway, we'll look at them as I said I'd post them and it adds to the on-blog Taffy archive!

Taken on the 24th February 2007 (just over a decade ago!) in poor light with my nearly-new, first-ever, digital camera (the first shot is DSFC0220), I still hadn't worked out how to set Macro, didn't remember the flash and seem to have lost any pictures I took of the whole of the other gun!

This is cropped out of the original on the old Taffy post and turned to give a vague idea of what the Taffy 5.5 Inch Howitzer looks like, a staple of the late war and used through to the 1970's by the British Army before being replaced by the 105 of Falkland's fame.

But there is another one out there and I can't call it a copy or clone, pirate or usurper; as it may have come first, indeed the fact that the Taffy one is non-firing would suggest it's the interloper? The 'twin' is the field-grey'ish one in each shot.

The muzzle is obviously different, the wheels are a little smaller (only a mm or so, all-round) with a deeper tread pattern, there are changes to the breech between them and the loading-tray. Otherwise there is little to tell the two apart. Given the similarities between the two AFV's - Taffy's Patton/Pershing and Kleeware's M55 SPG - which I mentioned the other day (and which ended-up with Tudor Rose in primary colours), one wonders if there is a connection between the two manufacturers and whether the firing-gun is a Kleeware piece?

To be honest, the wheels (of both) bear more relationship to Poplar's oeuvre, but while that makes sense - location/name wise - it takes u away from the similar firing mechanisms the other day! There was a lot of cross-pollination back then, and some interbreeding?

T is for Two Coaches

A couple more bits photographed at the recent PW show, both wheeled, both on the large size for what they are, one a British rendition of an American vehicle, the other, hummmm.....

As far as I know this is the largest size of Stagecoach Tudor Rose made, like yesterday's SPG, it's 'beach-toy' scale and exactly the sort of thing you'd find in the seaside kiosks when I was a kid; in a poly-bag or net, with a cardboard header and a couple of the larger mounted figures from the same maker.

It is marked Tudor Rose but it doesn't show in the photograph and I assume the bar has been taped-in to strengthen the draw-bar/centre-pole manufactured in TR's usual soft ethylene polymer.

This is from Wilton in the 'States, clearly a cake decoration (as that's what Wilton does do in'nit!), it was lacking a team, but I suspect it never had one (there's no obvious way of attaching one anyway), or if it did they were probably unicorns or something daft like that; Pegasus's (Pegasii?)!

I guess (that's like an assumption but less firm!) it's aimed at wedding cakes, but 'trailer-park' rather than 'society'! Anyway it's about the largest thing I've seen in the cake decoration stakes at around 1:30th. You might be able to read the marks - Wilton - Chicago - Made in Hong Kong - on the hard styrene body.

H is for 'Howitzer Tank'

Yeah! Kids just don't feel the same about 'self-propelled' artillery; might as well just call it artillery and watch sales tank . . . heh-heh-heh! "Better add 'Tank' to the box Dave"

I shot this at the PW show on Adrian's stall, what a peach; and an interesting choice for a model as this M55 was part of a relatively short-lived family of post-WWII SPG's with common parts, quite quickly replaced by the M108/9 family.

The model's big too, around 1:24th, maybe 1:18th? - It's about a foot-long anyway, and all in a dense silver polyethylene, what I call beach-toy scale!

The more interesting aspect than it's age (as a toy) or good condition is the shell-rack over the engine compartment, just like the Taffy Toys 'Pershing/Patton' tank we looked at back at the beginnings of the blog which was of a similar size. There are differences, the Taffy has no moulded track-link detail on the inward-facing 'walls' of the moulding and its shells are blunter-ended, but the firing mechanism is near identical, even to the flat blade trigger.

It raises the question as to whether Taffy were part of the Thomas group (as previously suggested - by me, on advise) or part of the Tudor Rose group of equally interconnected companies/entities as evidenced by the similarities with this SPG?

We looked at the two very similar yet different 5.5-inch guns last time too [Just checked, looking for the above link - no we didn't but I have the photographs, so I'll do a follow-up in a day or two! Tuesday!], it's as if there were two parallel lines, possibly designed to be sold side-by-side or at least - to complement each other?

F is for Follow-up, to Lucky Toys; Flat-screen Beetle - Fire Chief!

We're going to look at a few of the vehicles I photographed at Sandown Park last month which may (or may not!) be from the Lucky Toy (or LP!) stable/s over the next few days, and we’re starting with a little peach!

It's a VW Beetle (raaayy!), flat screen (double-raaayy!) but not split (boooooh!), it's a fire vehicle (raaayy!), with push-and-go motor (raaayy!) and blue windows (cool!) hiding a lack of figures (boooooh!) and it's fitted with racing-slicks . . . on a Fire Chief !!!?

I used to be a big fan of VW Beetles and some of my friends still are, but I saw the light . . . here's the news; all vehicles even back in the 1950's have/had a built-in obsolescence, and while a 15 or even 20 year-old vehicle can be a cool conversation piece, a 30 or 40 year old bubble-car with a propensity to catch-fire on the motorway, is just an old piece of shit - isn't it?!

Same with old-series Land Rovers (aluminium rot), 1950's Harley Davidson's (noisy, gas-guzzling, rust-buckets), any pretty Citroens (hydraulic nightmare), Morris Traveller's and Mini-traveller's; they get woodworm in their bodywork FFS! Old vehicles look best (and last longer) in museums, period.

Clear base mark with the full Lucky horseshoe. Points to note are that the motor housing has bend-down tin flaps, and while there are two screw stations, only one is being used, suggesting other variations, probably for other/different customers with different wheel or bodywork arrangements or even different motor-types/configurations?