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!

C is for Chopper

And not a Triumph, Harley Davidson or an Indian 'Iron Horse' anywhere to be seen! Nor a hover-boarding graffiti-hooligan - one for the 2000AD fans there! Although; that might be a duplicate title; there's not many but - they are starting to sneak-in!

We've looked at some other shots from this photo-session in the past (probably when we last used the title!), here's another one . . . a line-up of vaguely 1:76th/72nd scale two or four-seater helicopters from various Far Eastern origins, from the left:

• ·         Modern Chinese generic, basically a Jet-Ranger/OH-58 Kiowa shape in military paint, all plastic (styrene body and bed, propylene rotor-blades) and pretty-much current.

• ·         Zee/Zyll/Zylmex (and others) M.A.S.H. Bell-13/-47/'Sioux' with a die-cast body and plastic detailing in ethylene (coloured pieces/details) and styrene (canopy).

• ·         Classic late-1970's - mid-80's rack-toy inclusion; a very simple moulding of a Bell Huey Cobra gunship, grandmother of all modern attack-helicopters - hence AH-1!

• ·         Die-cast and plastic OH-6 Cayuse type recce/liaison/observation-type, like the first; from 'China' rather than Hong Kong.

L is for Little Livestock

Sorting the stock . . . mooooo!

Yet another of my pet projects is making sense (trying to make sense) of the dozens and dozens of copies - of mostly ex-Merit and Britains - farm animals in - or even consciously aimed-at - HO/OO model railway scales. As pet projects go, it's not going so well and yet, it's not going so badly. But, they are commonly found as rack toys and this is Rack Toy Month!

These are almost certainly Blue Box, a conclusion drawn by the fact that Marx carried them in their 'Majestic Series' which matched their 'Sunshine Series' which was Blue Box Wild West small scale - rebadged! Also the plastic colours match other larger animals and figures from Blue Box, however, without the smoking gun of a Blue Box logo'd set, they stay apart from the main collection, especially if they are overprinted with a WH Cornelius' logo!

The main sculpts of the range, in storage I have a few seated/prone calves and foals (and possibly another item of poultry - single goose or turkey?), but they seem uncommon and must have only been supplied in larger sets.

Likewise the unpainted sets - which have the cows in 'horse' plastic, and the additional ex-Britains lambs and the sheep -  would seem to have been from a later tranche.

The sample here is about a third of the size of the sample in storage; for years various friends like Trevor Rudkin, Gareth Morgan, John Begg and others have saved this stuff for me, from long before anybody knew anything about any of it, or if it had any value (it still doesn't really!), yet without that collective effort, drawing any conclusions would be almost impossible.

Below are two question mark samples, one (on the left) being almost certainly just copies of the Blue Box, but with a newer mould-stamp, that just happens to look like the Blue Box one. On the right though are better painted figures, but with a poorer stamp, again the same design. Until they turn-up in an unsealed rack-toy or boxed 'Home Farm' type set, any conclusion is pure guesswork.

The next most numerous type of these is similar; same ex-Britains figures, same ex-Merit cattle and horse poses, but new pig and [larger] sheep designs and different markings. So far there is no clue as to maker, and both sets are unmarked generics with graphics that might be later 1970's?

You can see the animals are cruder sculpts, but plastic colours are richer, yet chalkier. I'm not going to get too bogged down in markings today, although we will look briefly at all of them in a minute. It will take an in-depth page to do them all justice when I get the rest out of storage.

So with only the above two (the commonest two) ID'd, and then only to small packagings, you can see why I say the project is going not so well, but then this bag turned-up a while ago (Trevor or Gareth!), and helped to ID (as far as you can) one of the minor samples, which means it's going not so badly!

Almost certainly a Christmas cracker insert, it may also have seen service in a larger capsule or a crane-machine, but seems to have been designed to roll-up and stuff in a cracker. These are late, monochromatic versions in a dowdy range of colours, brightened by the orange and yellow of the bagged set.

While we won't look at large scale sets today, this mid-size set might as well shine for probably its only outing on the Blog. Pikit Toys of Birmingham anyone? Thought not! [Apparently - two years in the late 1980's!] It's also trying to look like it's by both Imperial and S for Star (visual shelf-recognition!); when really it's a generic with a local importer's name on it.

Again the numbers in storage tend to be larger, but not always, and I have some single-item samples in storage as I have here (capsule toys and such-like undoubtedly), also I have some samples here I hadn't yet encountered, and more examples in storage than are here overall.

While my handwriting was the reason everyone thought I was dyslexic for 35-odd years, (when in fact I was an Aspergic retard/genius!), all the typo's, reverses and inversions here are deliberate.
There are two types of engineer's stamp; those for stamping ownership or data on the outside of a machine, which, like typewriter-keys; leave an impression which is readable in the normal way. Then there are mirror-reversed stamps for marking the mould-cavity, so that the reverse impression will be readable on the moulding. Then: there are menkind, and menkind, like Brexit voters; can be stupid.

They use the wrong stamps on the wrong thing and it all comes out a bit wonky, like the current affairs of the UK! Sometimes they mix the two sets of stamps, so some letters are inverted, some read normally, or trying too hard, with too few brain-cells (Brexit again) they try to mentally reverse the word when they don't need to and you get 'Kong Hong' or Honk Gong!

These can be clues, tying some of these animals to, say, some of the combat figures, or rubber aliens or whatever, but really they are a starting place for sorting the myriad copies, and copies of copies that turn-up.

The HK and H[dot]K here are joined by H[dot]K[dot] and reversed examples in the storage samples for instance. And while I have a bag with about 7 of the charm-loop tailed cows in storage, I hadn't clocked that that was what they were, these came in with all the other charms, from the December 2015 posts, but escaped the camera then!

The other thing about all these marks is that from time to time, like when you find a carded or bagged example, you often find that a couple of sub-marks actually go together, so you can combine a couple of bags. More of that kind of work will be on the New HK Blog. As we look at sorting all the many non-Giant small scale figures.

The real problem lot - some of these will turn-out to belong to other marked samples, where someone forgot to stamp one cavity in a multiple-cavity mould, all have to be sorted very carefully, using little signature marks.

The green girl with bucket for instance, had a release-pin ridge under her base and I know I have a bunch in storage, so she doesn't belong to the bag with the white farmer, who has a smoother, thinner base and may be the same as the Plasty ones we looked at in 1" Warrior magazine, I won't know until I find another Plasty set, or get mine out of storage! Painting - as in the spray-painted ones - can also be a signifier.

The lower three are Airfix copies and they have been looked at, not here; but on the three relevant entries on the Airfix Blog, with the storage samples (and bagged farm versions) included, these are what's turned-up in the last four years . . .where has it gone; four years!

Nearly ten years ago I was active on HäT Industry's forum for a while, and one of the guys there (known only as 'B') was asking about ancient cattle for a little project of his, I said these might be useful, as their poor sculpting meant they could be from any-old era, sent him a few and about a month later he sent me these images, showing what a bit of paint and some consummate scratch-building can do . . . good; aren’t they? Not mine - Brecht's!

Then China got involved and it all stops being fun! Crap copies-of-copies . . .of copies, several or no 'China' marks, mixed scales, a poor quality copy of the Britains Hen House, a moulding which started life as a lead casting I think; 70, 80-years ago?

Horrid, careless, loveless, flash-ridden, sink-hole ridden, miss-moulded crap, imported by House of Marbles and sold through a local department store in a market town about four Christmases' ago. Nasty.

Three figures for the collection-total though . . . got to look on the bright side!

OD is for Operation Dynamo

Olive Drab and 'Orrible Disaster...I finally got the images from Brian sorted out/downloaded as .jpg's and without further ado present them here for your enjoyment. No 'blurb' as such, the scene depicts the small boats or 'little ships' [ships carry boats, boats can't carry ships...apparently, but...little ships carry the strength of a nation] returning from Dunkirk to the London docks of the East End, and benefits from several viewings, with new little things showing themselves each time!

I like that some units have clearly been rescued in good order and with little trouble, ready to march away for a hot meal at Greenwich Arsenal, while others are looking very shot-up as they await the fleet of ambulances - no doubt hurrying toward them - just out of frame!

Notice also how the diorama can be plugged-in to a larger model railway layout. Brians words...

 "The loco was a clockwork Hornby Percy. Truncated it is on a motor bogie now..."

 "...built in 2010 showing troops returning to the UK from Dunkirk"

"My grandparents were in London's East End through WW2 and visiting my grandmother in the 50's Dad would take me past the Tower of London and we would watch the tugs and sailing barges go by."

 "...some of the infantry are wearing later helmets and equipment. I was going for the chaos ..."

"Rivet counters [might] complain... ...that the landing craft were sunk on their supply ship while on the way to France..."

 "...and [I] wanted to show off the sailing barge which is a childhood image from days watching them below the Pool of London."

 "...the MTB is a later version (I left off the rear torpedo tubes)..."

Some of the .png's, they won't open well, but give an idea of the overall effect...

Thanks again to Brian Berke for sending these to the Blog, all the way from New York! And I bet the odd landing craft was pootling around the lower reaches of Old Father Thames!

New Product Review - Modelleisenbahn-Figuren

An odd one this, I received these figures as promotional samples at no cost to myself, and thought they were nice enough to wax lyrical about, I still do, but the review will contain a few caveats, and my feeling is 'You pays your money and you takes your choice'...caveat emptor and all that.

The first thing is that while they seem to be called Modelleisenbahn-Figuren, (Model Railway Figures) they are also called Modellbahnfiguren (model road figures?)...Modellbaufiguren (Scale Model Figures) and one or two other's to boot! Seemingly differing on each page of the website, presumably for Google search result optimisation (more on this below).

The second thing is that while I seem to have dealt with Germans from Germany (by eMail), the company claims the US of A as it's corporate HQ (Modelleisenbahn-Figuren Limited Liability Company (LLC), 16192 Coastal Highway, Lewes - Delaware, 19958, County of Sussex, USA), yet are clearly a Chinese/HK concern. The website looks like it came out of an early 90's of-the-peg website catalogue, and communication with the 'Germans' was how shall we say...'problematic.

Top and middle; 1:25th scale figures 'Old Design'

Bottom; 1:30th scale 'Indoor'

The company came to my attention through a junk-mail shot, I get a lot of junk mail from toy companies, plastics factories and general casting factories mostly based in China, due to the tags I use and the fact that my eMail in on the page...marketing robots trawl the bloggosphear and catch my eMail with die-cast or poly-something or toy-something and I get junk.

My standard reply to the toy and plastics mails is "Send me some samples and I'll review them on the blog", after a week or so I mark the mail as spam and never hear from them again, but this time some samples were duly dispatched and an eMail conversation ensued in which I tried to get a competition organised as is my wont, to get some freebies for you dear readers!

However this was all over a year ago and the closer we got to a prize deal, the less keen they were to return my eMails. Also; what you see is pretty-much what they sent, very small samples of a few figures for across the range. Read-on this is going somewhere....

Above; 1:87th scale 'Seated' figures

Bottom right; 1:50th scale mix

Bottom left; comparison between 1:50th and 1:25th scale figures - in the same pose

So, while I am happy to show these figures, and do like them and will recommend them for what they are, well sculpted civilians in modern dress, painted to a fair standard for 'toy figures'; I must also warn you that if you purchase some, you are likely to generate spam and or become part of a marketing exercise.

During the email conversation with the chaps, I said "...they seem better-painted than those bulk lots on eBay", in point of fact: They are those bulk lots on eVilbay! Not only that, the website will only allow you to purchase them in frankly huge amounts, not much use for war-gaming or diorama building, but useful if you're equipping a large railway layout, trouble is only the very wealthiest train collectors are likely to be doing so to such a degree?

 

Clockwise from top left; five popular gauges equating to 10, 15, and 20mm/1:87, 25mm/1;72 and 28/30mm RPG gaming sizes.

Recent Hornby US/NATO troops challenge some unauthorised civilians in a goods-rail siding

Merten Arabs compared to the new figures

Comparison with old Hornby styrene and new Hornby Hobbies PVC figures

However - every cloud has its silver-lining, and these are they...modern Muslims in typical North African/Gulf-Arab dress. Easily converted and/or coloured for other Africans, Asians or Afghans to pose a few ideas. A further confusion lies in the fact that while I have labelled them in gauges and compared them to gaming sizes, they are actually sold in architects ratios, so the Arabs in the top left shot above are 1:200, 150, 100, 87, 75 and 50.

So - well worth a look if you need civilians, or Arabs...but; The company is difficult to deal with, you need to buy them in quantity and you may have to put up with junk-mail as a result. They are reasonably priced though. I'm not knocking them, I'm just saying a few alarm-bells have gone off since they came to my attention.

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.

C is for Cold War APC's by Airfix, Diapet & Jean

Well it's a while since I fed the Airfix completists a bit of eye-candy so I thought I'd use the opportunity to do so that was raised by Michael Witt's ( WWII Modelzone ) sending to me of some lovely bits, among which were old Jean readymades in the same mould as the Airfix Attack Force, from his childhood collection - so thanks Micheal, I'll eMail separately!

Well, here are the Airfix offerings, both MG versions, the taller pintle-mount was from the T Cohn originals, then Airfix reduced it to a lower 'clamped' mount, presumable to prevent loss? It was long before Health and Safety started mollycoddling us all! Not really based on any real-life vehicle, it has features of both M75 and M59 struggling to peek through!

Close up of the MG's, both reasonable renditions of the 50 Cal., though given very different treatments, and inset the later 'Readymade' from Airfix which replaced the earlier effort. This too is a bit of a hybrid, having the main lines of a British FV432 Trojan, but the dust guards of a M113. The rear hatch is all 432 though and the MG is just about recognisable as a GPMG 'gun'.

At around the same time Jean in Germany (then - of course - 'West' Germany!) were selling these at pocket money prices on rack-cards of 3 or 4 vehicles. The one on the right could be said to be loosely based on the Spz. 11-2 Kurz from Hotchkiss crossed with the HS.30/12-3 Spz. Lang from Hispano-Suiza! The one on the left was found in a dragons egg - I think?!

Diapet, with Japanese seriousness were - reasonably contemporaneously (mid 70's) - producing a very accurate die-cast and plastic model of their Type 73 AC. Claiming to be 1:75 scale, the figures (in a rubbery PVC) are compatible with Roco, but then the Japanese are smaller overall, so not the best comparison. The model is superb, with two opening cupola's and a main troop compartment, PVC tracks and fully 'running' running-gear.