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!

E is for Eggcellent Effigies!

I had this figure, can't now remember if it was from Chris, Peter or one of my own purchases (I suspect Chris, but thank all) but I posted it in the other place, asking for help, and Peter rememeberd it was part of a set of Hong Kong cake decorations from way back when . . . 

. . . so what I thought was a squib and powder-pot on some unknown Nappy, was actually a limp brush and glue-pot on one of the 'King's Men'! He's a perfect 54mm though and, like most HK cake decorations; a hard polystyrene plastic.

 

So, I was off to evilBay to see if I could find the rest of the set, the figure on the left was the first candidate, and a cheaper one was procured, and a second soon followed from SSCO, seen in the right-hand image with some figures that were hanging around . . . and they were from Chris, so the soldier must be too? Another Spanish National Guardsman and an Oklahoma standard-bearer from Argentina.

 

It seems Peter Evans was by now on the case and the two, top-right, arrived a day or two before my next purchase on the subject (another from SSCO), they have a wire-twist, heat-sunk into their backs for use as - rather diminutive - Christmas tree hanging ornaments, the wires having been carefully removed from the backs of Peter's.

 

Which, as I kept photographing them as they came in, got us to this point, and I don't think I've found any of the ones that might go with the guy on pasting-duty, but certainly the two Humpty's can sit easily with him and these are all 'styrene.

 

In the meantime, I couldn't resist the bisque chap on the left here, seen with Marx 'Fairykin', who was no-money, BIN, I collected the next as an Internet image, being a larger ceramic ornament, while the candle-holder one on the right seemingly matches these? Even to the point of putting them together at the other end, as they probably belong together?

 

By now, I was getting a little out of control on the subject of Humpties and ended-up bidding on this hugormous PVC-rubber Palitoy squeaky-toy, who's squeak has died without ever leaving the bag! :-(

Both sides, scale comparison coming below, it's as good as the day it left the factory, apart from the dead squeak, and while nowadays these are all sold as dog-toys, they used to be popular with kids too, in a simpler age!

 

Oh, it's not Poly Vinyl-Cloride, it's 'Cascathene'! And four-shillings and ten pence was a lot of money back when we last used a stupid currency based on twelfths and sixteenths! In today's money; about four quid?

 

The line-up around the time I was Blogging the Fairykins, I keep searching, about once a week, but so far haven't really found anything to match the chap with the floppy glue-brush, so a future post for sure! And I have the larger Marx one somewhere!

 

For now, I leave you with the fact that he has never been described as an egg, just shown as one, all people ever publish is the rhyme, which makes no mention of his material make-up?

F is for Follow-up - C is for Carrier Convoy!

Well, computer problems seem ongoing; “Unexpected black-screen in the new laptop area”! Hotmail is kicking-off with a data limit they made no previous mention of and which seems connected to my rejecting and uninstalling of 'Teams', '365' and other online/cloud stuff, which will be another battle. A quick notification of a change in the terms and conditions actual or implied with some penalty charges usually results in a change of corporate mind!

But, suffice to say the mojo is well off-track and the Blog is probably the last/least of my worries. However I have cobbled this together, although it's mostly appeared briefly elsewhere in the last month or two - easier to post minimal text stuff on a Faceplant group!

I had the luck to receive 'first dibs' on this from a mate the other week, we have seen the TAT Bren-gun carrier before, but now I have one with box, which is nice! And it's a clean one with the RAF-roundel sticker still in place.

Just a quick reminder of the light-tank version which turned-up under EM branding and which we also looked at last time;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/07/c-is-for-cool-colonial-carriers.html

In the meantime I had grabbed this in passing, larger and the later 'Universal Carrier' mark with full amour-plate down both sides, it is a Marx battery-operated toy with more similarities to the Timpo or Dinky 'boxes', both in size and - with the former - unrealistic wheel arrangement!

 

The Marx Hong Kong mark, I haven't seen the packaging, but presumably it was a late addition to the B/O Patton Tank which ran for years under Marx and other brand-marks, and as various copies.

 

Various views; the battery has actually been disabled and the gear-box removed, allowing full carpet-wheel, hand-action! It doesn't seem to have had a Bren-gun, but I'm pretty sure I have a spare of the Bren which clips to the frame of the old Britains long-wheel-base Land Rover, which will fit nicely on the lip of this carrier's firing -hole?

 

And then, my life was forced to accept an on-going theme situation, when this came in last week, a French composition Renault UE Chenilette carrier, although when I say 'composition' it seems to be a bisque like china/porcelain.

 

Above are before and after cleaning . . .

 

. . . which from the yellowish shade of brown was a few decades of Gitanes or Gauloises!

 

I use clean, cold water and wipes, with a gentle action on something like this, no rubbing or scrubbing. And no, I haven't been buying plastic-shafted Q-tips for several years, but there are a few kicking about and I happened upon some the other day; so thought I'd better get them off to landfill before someone else flushed them illegally - well; you never know!

Maker is unknown, but could be Domage et Cie (who became Aludo (aluminium) or Acedo (plastic)), or SFJB who are known for Bisque items includeing dolls heads? But Elie Tarroux is also known as an issuer of 'general figures and novelties' in composition, from around 1900 to the 1930's (A connection with Starlux is fleshed out in the Thomas/Guillot books); could he/they have survived the war and knocked this out with its Free French flag?

 

Boysie-Boy has no interest in this junk, unlike his late mother, but is looking very pleased with himself for having baggsied my fleece-jacket in the seconds it took to fetch the camera! While I'm very pleased to have picked this up.

 

All three recent additions, off to search for fanatical Hitler-Youth stragglers in the Tory Front Bench! First you demonize them as migrants, when most are subsequently found to be genuine asylum seekers, or refugees, then you call them names (“illegalls”, when they aren't, until they've been found to be, which over 70% aren't), then you switch to calling them “Boats” rather than people, then you deport them (or those who haven't drowned) without judicial process . . . sounds like fascism to me? Go Gary Liniker!

Returning to the TAT's as a final point, I remembered this post, which has a whole TAT gunner who can replace the broken one which I seem to recall one of my (three now I think?) Bren-gun carriers has.

F is for Friedel

Mentioned in passing here at Small Scale World once or twice, always - as sharper-eyed Loyal readers may have noticed - in connection with the sheep, as someone on one of the animal forums ID'd the sheep years ago, so I knew them as being the droopy-eared ones!

This set probably dates from the 1950's, it's missing a thin, crinkly type, cellulose-film window, there were a few fluttering-tags left, but it looked better with them removed! 13-piece, 12-item count, is par for the course and it's what you might call a composite set, being a mixture of wooden, plastic and slip-cast bisque components, all on a bed of dyed wood-straw.

The Holy family on the left and the three wise men or Magi on the right (another poor shot, sorry!), you can see how the figures are slip-cast from a pourable ceramic solution, like fairings (or slush-cast lead).

Like the Art Plastics stuff out of Hong Kong, they (or some of them; the 'Kings' and shepherd) had paper labels covering the holes, but they were a thin tissue or newsprint (UK readers think; chip-paper!) and have long since been pierced, probably by the very small-peoples' fingers they were trying to protect from the sharp edges of the casting!

Two droopy-eared sheep, a grazing one, and rather nice cow & donkey sculpts (in a composition style) join the polymer Little Baby Jesus who gets a hand-made wooden crib which does actually look like a manger (first in five posts!). The Shepherd is another ceramic 'fairing'.

The manger was lined with moss, which has dried and worn-off, just like the moss on the floors of the wooden stables they would have gone with, indeed some may even have been boxed next to them on the self and marked Friedel?

Q is for Quintet of Queerish Questors

Yeah, I dun'know, it sort of started with Quartet and just grew! At one point it was diving divers di . . . it got samey! Just a quicky; it's been a long day! We're looking at a group of pretty diverse divers - oh, could have run with that?!! - I picked-up in the autumn and spring.

It's the five on the left we'll inspect in a minute, but I shot them with a few commoner plastics (trio to the right) to give some idea of size/scale and bulk/sculpt. From the left we have Manoil's hollow-cast US lump, a fully painted/matt-glazed bisque from Japan, Argentinian plastic cake-decoration (seen before) and Britain's own ceramic classic from Wade, the last is a Murano style, hand-made/blown vitreous example of the glass-carftsmann's art.

So Manoil's lump, and I don't call it a lump in a derogatory fashion, just that it's a heavy chunk of post-war lead-rich solidity! For it's time, it's a surprisingly modern suit with no cage-windows; although he seems to be carrying his air-hose, so deck or dock-side?

Also carrying his hose, this chap makes a quite good alien, being unrealistically short with a huge head, and fanciful suit-design . . . pressurised rubber? Slip-cast hollow-bisque and marked 'JAPAN'.

Wade's is similarly as fine a material as bisque, but a solid cast with a full, translucent glaze which settles after firing like a heavy wash. Not a Whimsy, but a larger, stand-alone piece aimed at the tourist keepsake/seaside market I guess . . . I shouldn't have to guess, I have the Wade book somewhere, but currently in a storage unit!

The fourth of the new additions and what a peach! Probably not as difficult to produce as some of the little animals, but still, it's all very clever . . . one of my secret pleasures at the moment is watching glass-blowing and twist-marble manufacturing videos on YouTube! So I have some idea how he's been rolled out and split, the colours added as hotter blobs, the fins squished down with steel pinchers, and so on!

We did see this chap, not long ago, but he was still around, so he gets a second outing! A polyethylene cake-decoration, with icing-spikes, under his feet and simple paint; that silver again, the Argentines like their silver paint! But a unique sculpt, as far as I know?

A second group shot, the number of photographs is due to the fact that I shot 'an article' . . . twice! Only a few days apart, I totally forgot the first photo-shoot - when I uploaded the SD-Card, there they all were; a few hedgehogs apart! Doh!

B is for Bisque Basket-Bearing Bounty-Bringers from Bari

One of the towns associated with Saint Nicholas, who I think may be the central figure in these shots! Held over from last year, this is a quickie, the lights are up in town now, the crimbo stories are starting to creep into the news, and, heay, what the hell; let's get festive.

Bisque figures around 4½ inches, so a bit big for cake decoration, but also not the thing for a nativity, so I guess fairground fairings with a seasonal twist. Charity shop purchase and they had a whole box of them, the sort of box traveling showmen might have under the hoopla counter to replace those won, or damaged in the trying to win!

As I said, the chap in the middle has more the look of a Bishop, and while not a medieval one, certainly a historical one, so I guess it's meant to be St. Nick the Real, rather than the four minion santa's he's flanked by, each of whom has a basket full of gifts and are obviously St. Nick the Sintered Fictional!

They're nice, mint (I went through the whole box to make sure I had one of each available and that they were good) and were not many pennies!

M is for More on WHW's

A few points on Wintershilfswerk figures, either confirming previous observations or not previously covered.

I picked these falschrimjager up at Sandown last Saturday, from Adrian's rummage tray of WHW's and because I couldn't remember which one I had at home, hollow or flat base (upper pair), I selected both, only to find on Sunday that mine was completely different (right hand figure in lower two images) with a 'penny' base!

This confirms what we saw with the grenade thrower - three distinct issues. And the differences are greater here than they were with the grenadier; with my solid being joined (as a moulding) down the shins, while the two half-and-half glued-figures have a gap between the legs.

The one with a hollowed-out base is slightly miss-aligned, so the photo's had to be shot at weird angles to get him to stand up and make them all the correct height which - as you can see - differs too.

Meanwhile, Adrian had found these and put them to one side for me, they are unused factory 'blanks' from a set of bisque service personnel; a set I'm currently unfamiliar with. You can see how they are each numbered under the place where the pin-badge is affixed, while you can also see how they are hollow slip-cast figures.

I have two from a set I do know - Industrious Germany - which was issued in March 1939 as a set of 20 different professions and trades, of which I have above the fisherman (new acquisition) and the miner (we may have seen before here?). And you can see how the pin-badge is attached with a blob of chemical-fixer which may be an early two-part epoxy type polymer?

These too, seem to have had different issues (one being matt-finished, the other glazed), so take the date with a pinch of salt - look what happened to the accepted date of the Armed Forces plastic series!

PW6 is for Best of Show - Space, Civilian and Other Stuff

So this is the rest, not of the PW show's plunder pile, but of those items I think you may be interested in, or which I - in my arrogance (all Blogs are by their nature at least slightly narcissistic!) - just want to show you! Seriously though, I hope they are all of interest!

These were in the bag from Brian Carrick, and are all new to the collection. The most interesting is the GI type at the back; he could a be Gum-ball/Sobre/Lucky-bag/Capsule-toy of some type, but equally he may be from a board-game? LP astronaut-copy is a new colour addition to the existing sample while the girl with skis and Bergan-rucksack may turn-out to be Kibri or Kibri supplied, but I need to dig on that one . . .

. . . she's like similar flesh-coloured ones I have which resemble artists renditions in a Kibri catalogue, and also seem to be the donors of the semi-flats from Hong Kong we've seen here a couple of times (with cartoony faces), but the same catalogue has renditions of two other types of figures, over two pages, some of which are definitely the Roco-Minitrains ones, the others Noch (?) so Kibri - while being manufacturers - may also have done a bit of jobbing other people's stuff?

An excellent trio of curiosities here! The bear is a cake-decoration in bisque, but it's given 'fur' by being rolled in bisque crumbs before firing, while the little soldier (in a fairing style but only 45/50mm) is also bisque and I suspect a wartime piece, either a wedding-cake figurine (so many were getting married in uniform) or maybe more of a 'sweetheart' piece, left with a girlfriend by a beau, off to war? Equally - it could be a fundraiser like the German and US ones we've already seen here?

Between them is a rubber jiggler, with his/her/its tongue out! And why not?

Not 100% sure if the outer two are French Rex or British Christmas cracker novelties, but they are early, I suspect British, the Rex I've seen are slimmer figures. Between them are four LB derivatives; a chromium-plated polystyrene Tri-ang Spacex/MPC Golden Astronaut and three generations of copy/sub-piracy in polyethylene - the smallest on his second-outing in five minutes, what's that all about?!!

These were saved for me by Mike's friend Kevin (?), and they really are lovely, I know they can come in an ultramarine blue, and I know there is at least a fourth pose, so obviously I'm going to be looking for that other pose in the other colour, but this is a good start! Based on MPC sculpts, these are Hong Kong's finest, with faces in 'helioscopic'* print, behind clear visors.

* There's another word for them, but I can't remember it! Not 'fractal' but similar? Polyfractual, visirand, goottlefetchling? 2025 - lenticular!

Farm copies in HO/OO-gauge compatible Hong Kong polymer! They will be put on the Airfix Blog as a comparison, I think these are just a green run of the oxide-brown ones already seen over there, and, err . . . that's it!

Alan Shearer! Who knew? Probably lots of you, but he's new to me, some recent cereal premium, there's a set of them and I'll look out for them as they are nice figures, Weetabix or Wheetos I think (?) . . . because of everything else going on recently I've put some of this stuff away without taking proper notes and the attic's too hot to faff-about in 'till September now! Peter Evans had put the above to one side for me . . .

. . . while Adrian Little had saved this for me. Initial thought was that it's an NZ tourist trinket, but memory serves it may be from a European premium (Vitho of France?) set of native/aboriginal cultural art/iconography and masks (which might be in Jean Piffret's excellent book?), but it's very timely, for as we shall see have seen; 2019 is turning into 'New Zealand Year' here at Small Scale World, with forthcoming the recent posts from Brian Berke and the Jan/Feb stuff from Glenn.

Which closes 'my PW show' for this year, plenty-else still to come from the 'best show in the world' yet though,, but thanks to Adrain, Peter, Kevin, Nicolas, Brian for now, and . . .  it's only 9-months to the next one!