H is for Hot-metal Hexing Heroes - Harry and Hermione

These were sent to the Blog in the late autumn by Brian B, and rather got left to one side by other things, but they will now fit here rather nicely; as today's Toy Show '18 report is also on Jada, who are the company behind these die-cast alloy figurines.

Harry Potter, who's not a potter but a wizard, and his classmate Hermione - did they ever get together? I've not read any of the books nor watched any of the movies, so apart from a couple of hours of part-one read by Stephen Fry (?) on Radio 4 at Easter many years ago - everything I know of the whole phenomena has come from the cultural affairs 'background' on everyday life and newspaper stories! Indeed the only bit I remember is the school-joining letters coming down the chimney by the sack-full and something called Quiddich!

Close-ups, they are rather nice and although bigger, call to mind the short lived series of 25mm Pocket Force die-casts from Monogram, if only because apart from them and a set of Micro-Machine types there haven't been many painted die-cast figures, and they all have a similar appearance, paint-wise.

A scaler, with Mr. Berke's trusted, practically adopted by the Blog (when I get mine out of storage I'll start using him too!), Crescent 'Berserker' making his first appearance for a while, not because he isn't doing his duty in various posts or material sent by Brian, but because there's been so much else on, and I lost the best part of a week to flu!

You can see that as an adult, Harry would scale-out at around 60/65mm, maybe even as much as 70mm, but that's not the whole story, and - as the berserker shows us - the kids are perfect for 54mm.

The back of the card, giving a listing of figures to look out for if you're tempted, 31 so far, will the line be extended - is the question?

To which the answer would appear to be yes - there's an extra [to the above list] Haggrid to start with - Disney, Marvel & DC and some Wwrestler thing also, already signed-in! With play-sets! I think from the description the play-sets are in plastics, but although they are in the catalogue, they weren't on show at the Toy Fair, so I couldn't see them . . . and everything in the above image has to treated with caution until it actually appears - retail.

However the answer to the scale questions is - 'Box Scale', all figures being about 48mm (50'ish with the base); all figures - whether adults, children, Haggrids or squeeky-voiced meeces - being the same height.

I don't know why they are calling them 'nano' either, that's got to be a degree or two below micro, itself below mini, so just the toy industry not following its own 'rules'! In my book these are barely, but closest to: mini-figures!

H is for Hot Wheel's Halo Hog

First purchase of the New Year (actually the second, I grabbed an evilBay lot before this, but it's still in the post!), a pound from Poundworld-Plus and a neat little thing, sadly lacking figures, and I'm struggling to think of some which will suit, I suspect Galoob's Starship Trooper bug-hunters will be closest!

On the card and I didn't even notice the Halo logo, thinking it was another of the current crop of special-force 'dune buggy' type support-weapon platforms that are around and about.

Truth is, it looks like the Lamborghini Cheetah of the 1970's, resembles several of the aforementioned SF fast-strike vehicles and looks nothing like anything we'll actually end up using in deep space ten-thousand years from now!

And that assumes we will ever get off this planet in a fit state to engage advanced civilisations in warfare! Funny little pink monkeys; if it ever happens it will last five minutes and we'll be someone else's breakfast, the common cold helping us . . . nought!

The weapon is a fixed-mount which I thought was disappointing, but I guess now these Hot Wheels and their equivalent Matchbox 1-75 and Jonny Lightning smallies are aimed at the one-$/£/€ mark, extra playability will be kept to the minimum?

 I love the smell of a burning alien sky in the morning!

M is for Magnificent Men! Processed, Tim-mee et al.

Influenced by Scott's blog, tonight's title is a straight lift from his the other night and it was following the link on his that got me digging these out. These are slightly larger than 1:72 at around 1:65? The Hong Kong copies below are a bit smaller and fit well with 1:72.

A quick search on Google reveals that both these and a Spad were available in red, yellow or green, and probably other colours and aircraft types as well. On the left in each view we have a Fokker D-VII while on the right a Camel in French roundels.

Made at about the time the Tim-mee brand was being changed to Processed Plastics, both cards are PP, Montgomery, Illinois, however the Camel is marked Tim-mee Toys, Mont.Ill., while the Fokker is marked Processed Plastics, Aurora Ill. where they still produce toys to this day under the J.Lloyd umbrella, including the 'Tim Mee' vehicle range.

A Hong Kong copy of the Fokker, also marked 'Fokker D-VII' and possibly marketed by Giant in the US, here in Europe they would have been on more generic packaging.

An accurate copy but seemingly hand-done rather than pantographed, as the loss of size is greater than one might expect from pantographing.

My 'Flying Circus', the red one is marked JN4 Jenny as are the green one with missing tail-planes & pink wheels, and the solid nosed yellow one, the green one with a red propeller is marked DeHaviland DH-4 and the blue-nose is a Nieuport 17C.

Very much a side-bar to the main figure collection and only sought out because they have little pilots and gunners, I have some smaller ones (about 1:87 - Giant (?), 1:90 generic copies) which I'll post another day.

Finally, one can't really write on Great War string-bags without mentioning THAT circus, and its leader, The Red Barron - Von Richthofen - with his Fokker Dr.I Dreideker (shhhh....a copy of the Sopwith Tri-plane!), here closer to 1:60 and packaged for Marks & Spencer about 4 Christmases ago, probably someone like Carama/Hongwell produced it?

Closing from 9 o'clock is another Nieuport 17, this one still on its card from Jean Hoefler, while it's about the same size as the HK ones, the body is wider and the pilot is creeping toward 1:65'ish.

H is for Hummer, Humvee, HMMWV, HumBug

The Hummer, which for some reason turned into Humvee (a slightly longer abbreviation?!) was based on the Lamborghini Cheeta, which Tamiya made a motorized kit of many years ago.

It has now been in use for 20+ years, and has had time to become a common plaything, with various accurate and not so accurate versions available. I posted the Supreme/SP Toys examples here a while ago, so lets look at some of the others...

Top to bottom, left to right;

Simply marked 'China' this hard topped troop carrier version is covered in markings, and looks like the sort of thing you'd find in a military parade somewhere in the Far-East. Next we have the Johnny Lightning/Playing Mantis open pick-up 'GS' version and was issued with a nice GMC pick-up in the same colour scheme. Another 'China' model finishes this row, an M966 TOW launcher.

These three are all by the same Chinese company, are much smaller than the others at around 1:87/1:90 scale, they are also quite crude models.

The bottom row starts with another Chinese model, a soft-topped GS, again covered in markings, most imaginary! Finally the two variations of the Hornby Railways Hummer as issued in the Battle Zone play-set. They are the only all-plastic ones in this line-up. [They are to be re-issued this year (2010) in the same play-set but with a new name; 'CODENAME STRIKEFORCE']

Finally - a few versions of the modern - made in HK/China - Matchbox Hummers, one civilianized as an H1 Hummer (not called a Humvee? even though Mattel have called it so on the box!), although using the same moulding as the military versions, along with three paint variants of the M966 TOW vehicle. Two with quite good US desert camouflage, and one in a sort of Giraffe pattern! These all came from Tesco over a couple of years for about 99p each.

The figure used for scale, is a new Chinese piracy of recent Revell production, being a 30mm copy of a 23mm American soldier.

B is for Bluebird Toys - An Overview

So - Bluebird Toys (UK) Ltd Huh? They came, they made, they went! And contributed more to the small scale world in their short time than much bigger, longer lived companies...or did they really?

The 1997 Argos catalogue page annoncing the launch/availability of Havok.

Bluebird were formed in 1980 by Torquil Norman who was an old Model Toys man ( Berwick-Timpo owned), and one has to assume he had ideas about how to do things differently in a new decade with new mores. He started well with a 'Big Yellow Teapot' pre-school toy and other 'activity' toys for tots, and the company got off to a flying start.

Zero Hour catalogue pages from 1990 & 1992

However, all was not rosy in the garden and the company seems to have grown too fast, cash flow tightened and within ten years it was struggling. The answer was Polly Pocket, which quickly became very successful and refilled the companies coffers, she was then joined by Mighty Max, who sadly only lasted about 4 years. However Polly wasn't necessarily a Bluebird invention, she was licenced from a company called Origin Products Limited, possibly a wholly owned subsidiary?. Google gives about three 'Origins', one making trouser-presses in the Far East, a group of engineers in London and a dead homepage, so no clarity there!

Manta Force and Viper Squad pages from the 1990 catalogue.

A look at the acknowledgements 'small print' on the back of a late catalogue shows that - in fact - all the products being issued by Bluebird have dues to another source. The Manta Force, for instance was in the Tomy stable.

The fact that Hasbro have bought Mattel (a long time partner and eventual purchaser of Bluebird) while Takara and Tomy have married doesn't help with the research, this was all happening at the start of the 'modern' period of toy production where Tomy will re-use Starriors as RATS and use the cockpits on some Zoids while issuing separate licences to Hasbro and Kenner! It's all about quick profit, quick turnaround, making moulds pay and shovelling the residue to clearance houses for repackaging in Spain, Mexico or the souks of Istanbul.

If you go to the London Toy Fair regularly you'll know that companies come and go so fast, seem to grow and then disappear, or turn out to be no more than a brand or trade mark with a separate stand, it's hard to know who's what, and they're not that interested in the customer either. "The Customers Always Right" has become the customer will buy what we present to them or what we present to the kids until they pester the customer to see things our way!

So we find that Kenner/Parker, Fredrick Warne, BBC Enterprises, Tomy, DC Comics, Disney, Lewis Galoob and others were all getting a slice of the Bluebird pie.

Clockwise from top right; Polly pocket Catalogue page; 40mm Prince Charmings (?); and a Batman card.

In the end - which came at the end of 1997 - Mattel won a bidding war and bought their old trading partner and moved production to the US, swallowing Galoob as well...just before Hasbro swallowed the lot!

Mr Norman? Well, 'Sir' Norman went off to spend a lot of money on a theatre, which might help the more cynical among us (Me Sir! Me!) understand who was behind Origin Products? Note; Mattel are still crediting an Origin on the PP website...

Z is for Zero Hour by Bluebird Toy (Code Zero in the US)

So let's look at the most useful series for small scale enthusiasts, the Zero Hour range of futuristic/post apocalyptic rubber men! Good guys, bad guys and big tanks, what more could you want. And some of the figures/accessories are really quite useful for fantasy/sci-fi war gaming.

A shot of various figures from various sets, unlike the Havok range below (tied-in to Argos), these had a wider release and were available in Toy-R-Us, where I passed on the chance of a complete set as they were hideously expensive!

The Green row are a colour variation only available in the Supreme Headquarters Super Monorail Set (Groundhog Marine commandos), the figures more usually in shades of brown as Army Wolf Pack.

Group shot of the Bad Brigade set with a tatty old UAV Tour Bus also available in the big monorail play set. Most sets not only cost a lot, but contained an inordinate number of seated figures!

The big tank!

Some other stuff, you get the picture, lots of play value, not much imagination needed, everything has a back story, real 'modern' toys. The two grey figures are as yet unidentified, being from neither the figure sets nor the big play-set.

These were issued/carried in the US by Mattel where they were known as Code Zero, so assume re-packaging? These seem to have been Bluebird originals, and I don't know if the ranges differed, however V. Rudick's One Inch Army book is short four figure sets and a number of accessories so I guess Mattel didn't market the full range across the pond?