M is for Moon Scout

That's Moon Scout, Google, it might be Moonscout or Moon-Scout, what do the bot's think? Moon. Scout. There's quite a few Moon Scout's out there, this one is from the New Bright Industrial Co., Ltd., of Kowloon City Road, Hong Kong, purveyors of the finest Moon Scouts, and the latest addition to Operation Wind-up Russet Twig!

 

I bought it without really looking at it, as it was obviously in excellent condition, however, there was one disappointment; the driver, so obvious in the artwork, and who would have rendered the whole thing a Jeep sized 1:32nd'ish vehicle, was not actually there, the clear-red cab hiding the mechanism of the walkers! Boo!

 

Which means you can drop the scale, to a four or six-man mobile office/command centre or 'people-carrier', around the 30-40mm mark, something which is reinforced by the scale of the safari-ladder on the rear of the vehicle, which also makes it around the same scale as the Soviet walker we looked at here

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/04/p-is-for-popovs-patented-plastic.html

 

Which, obviously calls for a fuller comparison when they are brought together, but which makes the Soviet toy the reconnaissance 'Scout' to this follow-up bruiser! I've seen white-bodied versions of this, as per the box-art, on evilBay, but frankly, the silver-chrome effect is 'spacier'!

 

Unlike the clockwork of the referenced one above, this one is packing batteries, and with more 'up and down' movement in the legs, I'm confident it will outperform the Russian effort, as our tanks are outperforming theirs, in Ukraine, right now!

 

Both are quite common, I've passed-up two of the Soviet offerings in the last few years, unless I see one in the box, I don't need another, while I've been passing these, usually somewhere down the back-wall, at Sandown Park for over 30-years! Now I've a boxed one, box-ticked!

F is for Follow-up to Plunder Posts - Animals (Prehistoric)

Confirmation of the 30mm rubber cavemen being issued by Harett-Gilmar (HG Toys), and some of the rather fat dinosaurs they lived alongside, in the well-known prehistoric continent of Gondneverwhen!

 

Sometimes it's those mid-era (of one's life) toys which pass one by, those issued while you're busy doing other things, but which have disappeared from the retail market by the time you return to collecting, full-time, and I only discovered these, looking for something else, in 2023!

 

The dinosaurs are fat, I mean there's something wrong with their metabolism, which may be a clue as to their demise, if the meteor theory proves false . . . they ate themselves extinct by getting too fat to mate, or move! The shrub, being like everything else, a softish PVC, could easily be mistaken for a Bata accessory, with its semi-flatness?

At least four poses, although I've also seen the guy with stripey loin-cloth ascribed to another toy line (Mighty Max, I think?), but that was almost certainly a false identification, and I'm guessing the string on the bow is a home addition (in fact I think the whole bow is a replacement), and the club is missing from stripey-pants, but you get the idea!

N is for Not a Follow-up!

As a sort of [pretty tenuous] follow-up to the last post, and the mention of Crong, I'm posting something which was already in the queue, but isn't coming in the order I'd like it to, and doesn't tell all the story, but hopefully still of some use to some Loyal Readers!

 

Donated by a friend of the blog who prefers not to be named, but occasionally comes up with little treasures, Battle Knights by Feva UK, is one of the more recent iterations of a carpet 'wargame', commonly known as Crossbows and Catapults (Tomy, Base Toys, Action GT, Zatu, et al), but also having iterations as Weapons & Warriors (Pressman), and Battground (Moose), which has been around since the 1980's.

 

The originals have produced several generations of two figures, a small squat fantasy figure (Doomlords of Gulch) in a putty-coloured polymer, and a sort of Hollywood Viking/Barbarian type (the Impalers of the Clannic Shelf), in various shades of brown or ginger, which we have seen, in various mixed/plunder/donation posts over the years, but which I haven't posted-on, formally, yet as my main sample has always been in storage.

 

The Pressman version changed the dynamic slightly, with press-pads instead of loose walls, and other innovations have tried to make it more fun or keep it relevant to new generations of electronically-distracted kids, here it's spring-loading. Pressman also changed the figures, to medieval types (Castle Storm), along with a pirate version (Pirate Clash), both also seen here, in past mixed-lots/shots. 

 

This Feva version adds mounted figures, and they are the unknown figures from the Crong post (the tentative link being used here!), although this set has green bases. The foot figures are scale-downs of the Pressman set, and I now think they are all Games Workshop knock-offs?

 

 Other useful bits!

A couple of banner-flags (or pennants?) missing 

 

Could be useful, but would need work to hide the nature of the balls or discs all these sets fire at each other, the oversized culverin for instance has quite an Elastolin look to it . . . fill in the hole and give it an antiquing, with washes and dry-brushing?

These turn-up in every junk-lot on evilBay, the Supreme medieval knock-off's from several brands have versions of them, and there have been large bow-like ballistas and larger cannon, but they'd all need a lot of effort to get realistic-looking.

 

As a Brucey Bonus, these are the Moose Toys figures from the other more recent iteration, Battleground Crossbows & Catapults, and were also a donation, I think from Graham Apperley, but hidden in a PW plunder-post a few years ago.

 

Smaller at around 25mm (the Feva are 30'ish, the older sets closer to 35 (C&C) or 40mm (W&W)) and a soft PVC, against Crossbows' polyethylene/propylenes and Weapons' polystyrene. It's quite a franchise, with many US and foreign-language/foreign-market sets, and worth a proper study, which will appear here one day!

F is for Follow-up - Wild West Plunder

A couple of things in the archive pertaining to this morning's post;

 

On the subject of pencil sharpeners, I caught this on feeBay last year sometime, very 1950's, so quite a quick cloning! The die-cast mazac/zamak tourist trinket, a copy of Britains Herald's campfire chap in full war bonnet, probably came from Hong Kong, and the headdress looks sharp-enough to open a finger while you're honing your pencil - these days you'd get a recall notice from 'Health & Safety!

 

From 2023, is this colour-sample of the Torgano archer, not really clear if it's a boy or a girl, and all of them missing their bow, I don't know if they were always a short-shot, or if they just snapped off? Below them is a yellow chap, who looks to be a Tyrolean in lederhosen, along with four of the Lucky Bag pod-foot Indians and, bottom left, an unknown flat of similar ilk, but on a more standard base.

E is for Eye Candy - Blue Box French Resistance

As far as I know, Blue Box never gave these a title or name, so we don't know if they were resistance, revolutionaries, militia or for that matter, even French! But they are pretty unique, and having never been produced in the 50mm, a bit of a grail for some small-scale collectors, despite being a tad big at 28/30mm.

 

I'm really only using this as an excuse for a News, Views . . . as I have finally started updating the Parachute page, with shooting-sets added a few months ago, Imperial Poopa-Troopa's and similar cartoonish ones, a few weeks later, the Trojan Red Devil and others tonight, and a subsection of the Airfix clones. I've also added a lot of images throughout, and tweaked a few things, but there are still about nine-sections to do! And I think I need to spell-check it properly!

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html

M is for May's Visit - Historical Bits

We reach the penultimate post in this series, but there's still July and September's lots to go through, so there will be plenty more of these mixed posts, which do seem to get the traffic, even if it fell off a cliff on the 1st October, and probably ain't coming back, something called the 'The &num=100 Parameter Change', which, as I've never chased traffic, doesn't concern me, I post stuff even AI isn't interested in!

 

Two 70mm's from Papo, both women who lived and died [young] in a man's world run by men who didn't like 'uppity' (that's 'successful') women! Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc), and Cleopatra, and I can imagine her, wandering about her palaces, with a cat in her arms, a mini-God for a God-Queen!

 

Nice pose sample of Spencer Smith Miniatures 30mm Wellingtonians, with a colour/mould-purge gun-carriage. It's funny, but when you encounter a sample like this, you know he saved-up his pocket-money, and bought a few of each, just to see what they were like! We all did it!

 

Lido on the left, Hong Kong on the right. The Hong Kong goes with those copies of European wagons and coaches, while the Lido are usually found bi-coloured, but with a clean and dirty yellow, I suspect these halves were unioned years after they left the factory!

 

At last! Loyal Readers who've been with the Blog for a while may remember several posts on these a few years ago, as both Chris Smith and me, kept finding another, then another, then another pose, and it ended-up with Chris having one more pose, the tied explorer above!

 

Which raises the question of the nature of the - as yet - unfound set, one of the Great White Hunter's is free to wander about with a gun, the other is tied up? Shades of H. Rider Haggard or Burroughs about the whole thing! And he looks like a 'Bad Guy'!

 

Papo 40mm pirate and the painted version of the lady we saw, bagged, as a generic, in Rack Toy Month, and whom we had seen before, unpainted in the Webbs' sets, it took me a while to work out she hadn't got her hands tied behind her back too, but is hiding a pistol, to either defend her honour from a pirate, or slot a Revenue Man, if she is a pirate!

 

Three 15mm war games figures, may be one for Gisby? They look to be a command group, with officer, standard barer and bugler, all mounted, for the English Civil War? Thanks again to Peter Evans for all these.

N is for Not Christmas Odds & Sods!

These were sort of pencilled-in for the Christmas season, but aren't really Christmas stuff, with the possible exception of the Carol Singers, however it seems easier to post them now as civilian stuff (despite the connection some of them have with Nazi Germany!), over the festive season, than shove them down in Picasa's 1968 with the other eight folders of pending Christmas stuff, or elsewhere, or just leave them choking-up 2025 in the short queue, before the year's even properly started!

 

Vaguely nutcracker'y, but not really; no bushy beards, proper muskets, lack of overemphasized uniform elements, but they do have the huge epaulettes, this would appear to be a belt-buckle of some kind.

 

But it doesn't seem to have the robustness to survive on my trousers, where I've broken heavy die-cast buckles over the years, yet seems a little too whimsical to be part of a genuine military panoply, not even the historically-dressed 'old guard' many British regiments still have a few of, for ceremonials or KAPE - Keep the Army in the Public Eye.

 

So, my guess is some sort of costume jewellery or actual theatrical costume?  The clasp clearly hooks to a bar or rod similar to the belt loop, and the whole has been cast from three repeats of a single figure moulding, with the joins between them barely hidden, possibly using the lost-wax method - I'd add that the paint's probably been added by the/a later, hobbyist owner.

And while it looks brass, it doesn't really weight 'brass', so it may be a brass-coloured (alloy) base metal type material with brass clasp and copper or copper-bronze wire loop, which could be brazed, but are more-likely soft-soldered, suggesting it wasn't meant/designed to take any great strain, or long-term work-load . . . any ideas greatly appreciated?

These are a mystery also, they are composition, rather than bisque, and painted in a similar style to some of the Zang 30-40mm's we've seen here before, but with more effort on the faces. You can see from the damaged blue figure that the composite material is similar to Zang's too, however they came with some WHW figures (next section below) and may be Winterhilfswerk?

 

If they are WHW I'd love to know the set, if not, festive cake decorations from Zang are a possibility, or someone like them, of 17/18th century garbed carol singers or street musicians seems to be as likely? Equally, some French/Low Countries composition uses that plaster/pumice base? A real question mark?

While these ARE Winterhilfswerk, nine of a ten-set of Grimm's fairy-tale characters, with - from the left - Snow White and five dwarves, a lovely Puss-in-boots, a frog-kissing princess, a goose-girl, a generic witch, a very small 'giant' or hunter, a girl with blue birds (I remember some story about the bluetits sewing a dress or something?), whatever the Grimm version of Tom the piper's son is called (Tomas?) and Red Riding Hood on the right.

The box is probably not original, but I will keep them in it, it's a nice little fake snake-skin embossed paper from the 1940/50's (probably a gift box, from a watch or pen), and will keep them together until they inevitably have to be handed on, one day.

 

They are the typical bisque of such sets, looking quite like French fèves (which are traditionally hidden in tarts at this time of year), with a firing hole, that doubled as a receptor for the chemical fixer/glue blob we've seen on these before, for when badge-pins are added (two issues?), and the tenth turned up hiding under the faux-wool when I put them away - Sleeping Beauty, still holding her bobbin of spun thread!

Also, please note Dwarves six and seven are moulded on the rear of Snow White, albeit undecorated! And I don't know the set's issuer or issue date/s.

 

Finally came this witch-like, rather troglodyte, femme-sinister, who you can see from the chip at the baseline, is in a red terracotta, again reminiscent of other WHW sets/subjects, but would appear to be a beer (or Bier!) promotional, the monogram is not clear, but could be HB (Herforder Bier?) or RB, and whatever that answer, she may well be contemporary with the other pieces above, excluding the brass number!

 

Clearly she's holding the moniker'ed Stein, but what is in the crook of the other arm? A swaddled baby, some kind of brötchen or pretzel, or a sheaf of brewer's barley?

 

You can see she's barely 30mm to the more standard 40-mil of the other two, and more questions than answers with all four here, once I'd sat down and typed the blurb! So any help with these, sets, dates, issuers, origins, gratefully received!

G is for Go Space Trucking!

Really - 'futuristic' trucks!

 

Panhard 1951Titan IE 45 HL Pathe Marconi

 

This existed as one of several futuristic/novelty builds, used for advertising, or as crew-vehicles for teams or media outlets in the Tour de france or Grand Prix circuits of the 1940-50's, sometimes, like the Weiner mobile in the US.

General Motors 1964 Bison concept truck

Chevrolet 1965 Turbo Titan II concept truck

Ford 1966 Big Red Turbo concept truck

 

It's funny, but my childhood was quite liberally sprinkled with iconography related to 'space trucking'? From early articles in World of Wonder magazine on futuristic trucks, through the various multi-wheeled, articulated beasts in the backgrounds of strips or TV series like Dan Dare or Thunderbirds, through Deep Purple's hit, also Space Trucking, and my first Def Leppard album, bought from scrimped pocket-money; On Through the Night, which had a bog-standard 'big rig' rocking through space with a giant, tarpaulin'ed guitar on the flat bed, issued around the time of the most famous space trucker, no, not Han Solo (although - of course - he counts!), but Lone Starr, the mercenary in a Winnebago, from Space Balls!

 

There were a few images in the many sci-fi art books I had, the daft strip in 2000AD; Ace Trucking Co., and the equally interesting vehicles on the elevated freeways of Megacity One and the badlands of the Cursed Zone, and then, Mad Max (and a Plethora of straight to VHS knock-offs - the iconic Herkimer Battle Jitney being notable), while the above four were among many, swirling about in the background of the public conscience.

 

Latterly, we have had Fry and Leela, in Futurama, but they had a more 'conventional' spaceship! All the while, Matchbox, Corgi and Mattel (Hot Wheels) had been producing ever more whacky die-cast spacey trucks in an attempt to hold market share . . . but the dime-store guys had already been there, in the 1950's, before I was born!

 

I can't find this on Google, I'm sure it's been through the Internet at some point, probably various points, but apart from a slightly streamlined Ford saloon (sedan) car, also by Palitoy (for this is theirs), I couldn't find anything about it.

 

The front wheels are a little low, due to the ageing of the thin celluloid (?) belly-pan, which holds a crude steering system, and from, the warping of the plastic, not severe, but there, it must be contemporaneous with the aircraft, we've been working through since the early days of the blog, so the hope must be that more will be out there to find

Gilmark's fire engine (missing a ladder, I suspect, but so is every example I can find on Google!), is probably more accidentally futuristic, being 'just' a toy? The chassis designed - like Beeju's - to take different bodies/loads, and having a tip-back cab, so you can 'work' on the engine!

 

The beauty of all these dime-store types, whether military, civilian or space/futuristic, is that they go quite well with the smaller scales, and both these would suit 23-28mm figures, so your Giant, LB (Lik Be) or Airfix astronaut/space figures, through to role-playing stuff?

A couple of comparison shots, I have a few more dime-store type, rigid-bodied 'space trucks' in the collection, and we may have seen one or two over the years, and a bus (?), but this is my first 'Artic' (articulated/tractor-trailer) type wagon, and hopefully we'll return to them when they all come together, or I find more Palitoy efforts, or even a Gilmark ladder?

 

These both came in at the weekend, last, but I'm not doing a show-report, or, I might do one on the loose figures and bits, but most of what I bought on Saturday, was specifically for posts, given everything else is in storage now! "Go Space Trucking"!