K is for Khaki Infantry Page - Update

I've added some well overdue updates to the Khaki Infantry Page; a complete set of Benbros in near factory-fresh condition, another complete run of poses to the CMV section (courtesy of Brian Berke) and a new entry - ABC - courtesy of Chris Smith.

 

But as you can see from the screen-cap, there's plenty more to come, with new sections in the works for Kamley/KS et al., and  Dorset/Marlborugh/Weston. You can also see Airfix page updates gathering in the background and a mini-season on Lik Be-Holly-Jaru in the pipeline!

ABC is for Another Batch of Copies!

Why I haven't come-up with that heading before, given the number of times we've covered ABC here is one of those mysteries only the gods will have an answer to! Most of these are from Chris Smith who seems to have had a good lock-down as far as finding esoteric Hong Kong output goes, as he adds more poses/images to the ABC story and another (earlier?) chapter!

So, that new chapter first; Chris has found some unmarked figures, of higher production value/quality than ABC, but of the same poses ABC use. The conclusion has to be that these copies of UK figures must pre-date the ABC's and make the ABC figures, the poor 2nd generation copies they are.

Lower shot shows two of them with their Crescent 8th Army donors, while the sample also contains a Britains 'Khaki Infantry' pose, standing firing, which we haven't seen from ABC yet. You can see the bases are more substantial than ABC's and have a flat edge.

Here we see three of them compared to the green ABC (middle) and sand figures, at this point Chris didn't have a direct comparison, so they were a 'stand alone' set of 'new' Hong Kong Piracies, but . . .

. . . Chris then found some more sand ABC's, with two cross-over's, the Tommy-gunner seen here in the left-hand comparison shot and the running with bayonnet fitted, along with a grenade thrower - right-hand shot, although these don't have the ABC mark which could confuse, but those ABC US Marines in dress uniform, with the three versions, have some unreadable examples, so I think they all are ABC?

Which gives a [running?] total of six poses in the ABC set, seven with the Britains shooter and up-to nine (or more) if the missing Crescent poses ever turns up in either set, or more conversions/Britains sculpts?

Meanwhile, my only contribution is these two which I found while looking for the 'Zulu' versions a few weeks ago; two marked-ABC copies of Britains running swoppet in solid, but with the feathers (unlike the Africanised version), both of these are rather-poor short-shots, the brown one particularly, but I've never claimed these to be Hi-Fi, just high-interest!

I also had these Britains Herald-clone Union troops come in, they are unmarked versions of those issued within the ABC / HK / CMV 'family', a family to which we can probably add Past the Post, they may all have been independent but they seem to have shared ideas, production values or source material . . . packers, shippers or import agents!

Trees in the background are also courtesy of Chris I think, from one of the lots he's sent over the last year or so, the contents of which are languishing in a group of future 'H is for . . . ' posts, but they happened to be at-hand when I shot the ACW.

So many thanks to Chris for the images, donations and all round support - he found an absolute blinder earlier this evening (25th Aug) which I promptly paid a little too much for, but, well, they're for another day! Cheers again Chris.

CMV is for Coincidental Miniature Victory!

Yesterday's post (on possible Zulu Warriors) was cobbled together at quite short notice, but ties in nicely with this post, as it's more American Indians, also Britains' copies, also a make we've spent time and treasure on here at Small Scale World, and when I say 'we', both Chris and Brain have contributed to the growing canon of CMV here.

Picked this up a while ago, it's a CMV-marked, header-carded, bottle-bagged, rack-toy, the best thing to kick-off Rack Toy Month proper! It is also marked-up to GiG, who I have mentioned before, but only recently learned were a co-operative importer for a group of smaller Italian retailers, presumably in competition with the larger wholesaler, Baravelli - Barrelbelly to followers of the Pennsylvania branch of the hobby, I think!

You get a the whole Britains Herald camp set, but . . . in hard, glueable styrene! I use the exclamation mark not in my usual jocular or over-excited fashion, but because, not only have previous CMV finds here been in soft polyethylene, but styrene doesn't often last in one piece for the time these have been around (late 1960's/early 1970's?), which may explain why I've not even got broken samples in the collection?

Marking varies with the figures marked either CMV or MV with what looks to be the same 1005 code and a Hong Kong (the seated Chief is further-marked 'D'), the fire marked Hong Kong only and the Totem Pole marked CMV, 1187 and with a remnant of Kong, which ties-in with the lackadaisical marking of the khaki infantry seen here previously!

The Teepee/Tipi is the best, as it's an improvement on the semi-flat squished original being an all-round, more realistic design, with a very common 'made in Hong Kong' marking inside the tent. Another point of interest is that the totem-pole is a hollow 'straw' moulding.

So, a nice find but it raises all sorts of queries about the greater output of CMV, how much might have been in brittle 'styrene, are there 'ethylene versions of these and so on? Questions, questions! But one clue to the answers is the totem pole Chris Smith donated to the Blog a while ago, which IS soft 'ethylene, but, has had the top closed-up.

C is for Carved Cedars and Cathay's Colonial Clones

I know; it's a clumsy title, but we've had Totem's before and in more than one configuration, so I tried to play it safe! Looking at the carved boughs of Reverence found in the Northern woodlands of North America and specifically the Britains Herald model and its may copies.

On the left are two early Britains Herald Totem Poles, the rust-brown one being the better 'full paint' version, the greyish one being the later 'reduced-paint' variant. Next to them on the right is the newest member of the family (as far as joining goes), the CMV copy, which came from Chris Smith earlier this year and may be among the earlier of the Hong Kong copies, being closest in size and colouring.

Britains themselves procured the dark arts of the toymen of aitchkay for the Herald 'Hong Kong' Totem, which was more of a hollow-backed relief statuette, glued to a separate base, with minimal paint and the whole in polystyrene. By the time it came-out (1970's) tastes had changed somewhat, and it's there more as a box-display scenic accessory, that an integral part of the play environment - I mean they could have glued a flat-back on it?

The CMV pole is second in this line-up with an equally decorated one (equally early?) to its left and two undecorated ones to the right. One of the undecorated ones has the later, more stable Britains base in its clone-DNA!

The painted one introduces gold, for the de'Luxe look! I think it's the same maker, and probably slightly earlier than the right-hand one in the previous line-up. Likewise the two shield-shaped based ones are colour variations of the previous example.

The last two are similar, but both have differences from each-other.

PSTSM look away now - as we will see in a minute; these are all smallies or 'Plastic Smalls' and therefore of no interest to you, even though none of you read this Blog because it's so crap . . . heeheehee; Hi guys!

The dark purple-brown one is a modern one marked China and as you can see although all to a similar size, they are three different mouldings, with the pale brown one the best - quality wise - the red one the worst.

I actually had one of these first, decades ago, but quickly realised large-scale Totem Poles were more in scale with HO or OO sized figures than the 54/60mm peeps they came with, so started collecting all totems as a side-collection, despite a dearth of Woodland Indians in the toy world back in the day!

♪ Twelve Wooden Totems, Standing in the Woods ♫

♪ Twelve Wooden Totems, Standing in the Woods ♫

♪ And if one Wooden Totem, Should get Dropped by a Lumber-Jack ♫

♪ There'd be Eleven Wooden Totems, Standing in the Woods ♫

Except they are polymerised-ethylene!

H is for How They Come In - Often from America!

The same day Peter's parcel arrived, another hitched a ride with it on Postie's trolley, in fact with both of them sent regular-mail and the postmen working under cut-hours (or under-cut hours!), he didn't even knock, just tucked one on the other, behind the wood-stack in the porch and I found them both returning from the station with the daily Metro!

It was from Brian in New York, and had all sort of goodies in it!

He sent three bags of the Flixstars from Mattel we looked at last time he sent some! I'm going to have to keep one mint, but don't know yet which of them will be the two to open, but I must say I think they're fun, and from the front they all make nice figures.

I opened this one straight-away, because the packaging is a huge thing, and I can scan the card sometime for the archive, which will stack flat 'for posterity'! He's a bigg'un, about 80mm if we assume they grew to human size, and from Monogram 'the new'.

Funnily-enough I found the old Playmate's 54mm'ish TMNT's while putting that Plume Brisse (or whatever it was) Indian premium away the other day and I thought that with the ones we've seen in the last few years and others including the Yolanda Sobre ones we might have a round-up of turtle ninja, mutant-teenager figuress in the spring!

This year's packaging colour-way from Dollar General/Dolgen, I would save it for October, but thought I'd clear the decks now, as we can compare all three - to date - next year, they being; black, orange and purple cards. Still unfair that the Mummy's get ten poses and the Skeletons only eight!

Brian also sent three bags of some of his finds on the secondary market; the top bag has a mix of MPC 54mm (which I know I'm short of) and Hong Kong Monogram clones, the middle bag are the Payton (? I'll check before I blog them again) copies of the Marx hard plastic polystyrene figures. We did look at them, but it was ages ago, so they will prove really useful when I return to them here.

The last bag was particularly kind of Brian as we've already had the images - indeed it leaves me with a quandary as I'd like to shoot them again (now they're here!), but with some more CMV shots (for that is what they are) from Chris Smith added to the mix, they were/are fully covered on the khaki infantry page, so I'll have to be patient, or get a grip on an A-Z entry!

A return to Mattel with these two 65/70-mil'ish figures, a nice Batman and The Rock - who's pretty-much escaped me but I know of him from my Brother's enthusiastic gabbling on the Fast & Furious franchise!

I shot the card backs to illustrate a point previously highlighted - the mass of consumer information you find on these things, these days - they must be as 'safe' as a lungful of mountain-air!

Mr. B also sent three more of these large stretchy 100mm combat types from Greenbrier/DTSC for Imperial with a new colour and a new pose - the bazooka firer. Thanks as always to Brian and wishing him and the rest of you a Happy Christmas . . . I know - but it's not far off; any-day-soon and it'll be in the past already!

News, Views Etc . . . Khaki Infantry Page - CMV

I've added the CMV stuff previously seen here to the above mentioned page, but as I don't think I did anything with the images in the end and only tweaked the blurb, this'll only be of interest to you if you didn't download it last time! But now it's there too, and thanks to Brian berke and Chris again for the images.

M is for Military Stuff

So we turn to the more warlike contents of Chris's donation, and it had a lot of interesting stuff; not in this post were a number of Hong Kong copies of Airfix Japanese I recognised from smaller scale versions (flat sheet bases, primary colours) and I will put them on the Airfix blog in time.

A large bag of Tylers/Mundi Toys bubble-gum premium figures were also included; we looked at them briefly early in the Blog's life, but I will return to them when I have all of them, at the moment I'm a GI and several Jap's short! In the meantime, I posted a link to a very good post on them on Akela's kiosk Blog a while ago, here it is again.

Among the pile of plenty from Chris were a large number of parachute toys from 30mm Christmas cracker novelties to 90mm blow-moulds which will all prove useful on the forthcoming 'Poopatroopa' page! The guy adjacent to the two arrows is the same guy - for scale/continuity.

One was a different pose/type altogether, a bootleg Toy Story figure I suspect, so he got shot separately, while the yellow one (who isn't glow-in-the-dark) is made of a very odd plastic which is semi-transparent and seems to diffuse light, the photographs don't do justice to how he glows with the pen-torch in his cavity!

The Poopatroopa page is in preparation, but now I'll have to re-sort and re-shoot a bunch of the images (I'm not complaining!), but seeing how I seem to have ended-up with a rainbow theme of backgrounds through the running-order, I'll re-shoot with other backgrounds to mix-it-up a bit!

Fantastic! A new Hong Kong tat'm'cycle . . . with rider! AND stabilisers! Look at it, it's too cool for TT school and it's the stuff like this which sets the Blog apart from others! What you can't tell from the image is that one of the wheels keeps coming out, but hot water will sort that, and what would you expect from something which back in the day probably cost an old sixpence!

The shot below is various figures of merit or interest, from the back left we have a 1:16th/18th German tank commander, two New Ray copies (or late production, their current catalogue has figures equally poor and unpainted compared to their early production), an Airfix Commando piracy, head-swapped to the ANZACs, I vaguely recognise him and may have some others somewhere, but they may just be similar based (kidney/figure-eight) Airfix 8th Army copies?

Next is one of two (the other crawling in front) original sculpt, modern made in China 'Army Men', he's a bit comical (like those zombies we were looking at a year ago - same sculptor?) but his mate is a very nice figure in an unusual pose. I wondered if the grey one goes with them but I don't think so.

Finally a nice Airfix Russian/GI hybrid knock-off, there were a couple but I selected this one for the line-up as it's the most obvious.

We've dealt with two of the front row, the other is very odd, and just the sort of thing I like to add to the collection - he looks like he's been taken out of the mould too early and received a burst-tumor of his own hot polymer at the waist-line, but closer inspection reveals helmet-netting and while I can't imagine quite how it happened, it would seem something went wrong either during moulding or at the point of mould-release leading to a second runner, or the other end of this figures runner got welded to this chap and by the time the operator had sorted it, he was in the for-retail product-stillage with his mate's head still firmly part of him, and his own legs now making him a contender for Pontin's knobbly-knees competition!! Underneath the mess is the common'ish copy of Lido's first version GI's, we looked at them here.

The Wild West threw-up some treats too, with two Plasticom premium/lolly-sticks, a CMV totem-pole, an ABC Indian (front right) and interesting HK copy in 40mm (red), a brown Wing Lung Indian - Airfix copy, two premiums and a huge Mohican Indian (back right) who's like nothing I've seen since the Peco's Unbreakable Toy Figures and is hard to date, it's a two-part swivel-waist toy, with separate arms, head and rifle, all glued in-place (bar the waist which pops-off) and may be modern'ish? He has no marking beyond a double-imprinted 2 on his foot, probably a mould-cavity marker.

The two premiums are from Collonil (red cowboy) and the other is marked Plume Brisee (marbled-pink Indian) but I'm not sure if that is a brand or - more likely - his name (Broken Feather)? According to Ludo's premium site he was made by Alkastap in France and (/or also) issued by Café Legal, Codec, Bonux, and others. I particularly like the Indian, I think he's pointing at a red-necked white Texan, possibly in El Paso and saying "You; illegal, go back where you came from!" Both are polyethylene.

The overall winner was the Britains-copy sucker-Guardsman on the right, I think I have one (standing firing) which has been on the blog, but if memory serves he's grubby and a darker red, this one is a bright-scarlet minter!

The two weights are a bit of a quandary? Are they joke weights for a comedy/clown weight-lifter in a circus set, or are they test-weight or counter-weight wagon-loads from a model railway or heavy-haulage lorry? Maybe from a crane model? If anyone knows, put us right! They are a dense PVC, which is stable and the integral lifting-loops are quite firm and unbroken which could point to good quality or recent production?

The other two figures are from the same franchise (Walden?), presumably a movie, but I can't think what? The dwarf looks like Gimli, but the armour is wrong I think, while the centaur wasn't in Lord of the Rings, nor was Disney involved, so I thought maybe the Lion/Witch/Wardrobe series but I don't think they started filming until much later; 2012'ish?

Anyway, one (the centaur) seems to be a Nēstlē premium in hard polystyrene plastic, the other from a set of Hasbro PVC-like toy or action figures? They are marked as follows and I will do a little research when I post, to see if I can ID the film, which I will add below.

Nēstlē

CЄ

© Disney/Walden

China TAG

18M+

(Centaur - Hard styrene, single piece)

© Disney / Walden

© Hasbro

2005 China

(Dwarf - PVC three points of articulation, ring-hands, separate axe)

Both about 50mm

It IS The Chronical's of Narnia - the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - I must say I thought they were later films, show's how quickly I'm getting how old?!

Many-many thanks to Chris Smith for all these, and everything else in the parcel, which will prove very useful on the blog going forwards, and has already added to the sheepdog story and enhanced the recent sentry-box post - cheers Chris, much appreciated!

CMV is for Curious Multiple Verisimilitudes

I suggested, perhaps a tad facetiously, at the start of the month that the gods were smiling on Small Scale World as the year began, and that was before a certain parcel arrived from Hobbiton! Not only did the arrival of that parcel confirm the largess of the amassed deities, but at the same time what had been one of the 'co-incidences' became a weird triple!

Normally this would go on the Khaki Infantry page, but as there's more of a story to tell and as it's a while since we touched on CMV here, I thought I'd blog this here and tweak the images for the KI page another day.

The string of connections began when Chris Smith sent me these shots, ostensibly for the KI page, as 'just' three more CMV's, early in the New Year and while I was yet to catch-up with all the emails and such like. One-each taken from Britains Herald, Crescent and Lone Star sculpts with a nice background made from plastic flat or semi-flat trees from three, four; maybe five companies.

Less than 48-hours later, Brian Berke sent me another CMV shot of his sample of four ex-Britains Herald, three ex-Crescent and the same Lone Star sculpt, unpainted (there were paint remains on two of Chris's) and in (or 'photographing in'; see close-ups - below - for truer colours) a bright apple-green - above with the Crescent original 'Berserker' for size.

Brian also sent a couple of marking shots, one of which seemed to show a clear CNV, now my original manuscript notes describe them as 'CM/CMV, see also ABC and HK' which was how we looked at them in three adjacent posts ten-odd years ago, so I asked Brian if he could shoot the bases of a couple of others to confirm it wasn't just a squashed 'M', which he kindly did.

The upshot of which was that we got an MV as well as a clear shot of several CMV's leading to the conclusion that the N is an N! Now it's obvious that the M has been lost under the rough-machining round the edge of the base and a look at some CM's will probably reveal similar marks where the V should be (not the M-in-a-C's of the original posts though - they may be someone else!), while the M and N punches sit together in the little metal box the engineer carries them around in so it's easy to see how the other 'mistake' could have been made.

Note how these have photographed in a range of shades not hinted at in the group shot, this happens sometimes with plastics, there are different colours of Airfix 1:32nd scale US Infantry (to the eye) but trying to show it with flash-photography is bloody hard!

Close-up's; we've looked at similar errors here, Kong Hong is another, along with mirrored letters when the wrong set of punches is used; inverted or back-to-front letters are another fault you often find with these cheapies, and there's nothing terribly exciting about it all, but if you only find one and it's a first for your collection; the thing to bear in mind is that the manuscript note now reads 'CM/CMV/CNV/MV....'!

By this time I had let both contributors know of the synergy of their two submissions, and Chris (correctly guessing the make-up of Brian's sample) sent this as a follow-up - the same eight poses (upper shot) in a similar green but these are unmarked, the lower shot compares the three CMV's with their pose-counterparts, and it's a pretty sure bet they are pantographed sub-piracies being both slightly smaller, and slightly 'blobbier'.

Thanks to both Chris and Brian for what morphed into an interesting look at some Hong Kong rack-toy stuff, which I could have saved for RT Month; but with the collection here now, there shouldn't be a problem filling August!

And today's title? I not sure it actually makes sense, but it looked good, sounds 'clever' and sort of gets the point across!!

B is for Blame Chris Smith!

And thank him . . . he adds quickly! Because I tend to load these a day or two ahead, there should be some posts pre-loaded here, but there aren't, because I got a great big pile of plunder parcel from Chris Smith yesterday (Monday) and spent the evening sorting it after I got home, sooo . . . no editing anything else!

Therefore the final part of the Khaki Infantry series is on hold until Wednesday (to publish Thursday), it's weird but things are piling-up at the moment and stuff scheduled for the next day is getting bumped-back, and things which should have published ages ago are still in the ever lengthening queue - I still have three Toy Fair reports; I think!

Not only that but I have several eMails to answer so I can't even do a couple of rush jobs now! However . . .

. . . as I mentioned the other day, Chris had already eMailed some stuff for the Khaki Infantry page, I added some comparisons as I went along, over the last few days, and there was a nice, damaged white plastic FG Taylor figure in the box of treasures, so I'll throw them up (yesterday) on the Khaki Infantry Page, and your mission for today - should you chose to accept it - is to bomb-up, suit-up, fly to Schwienf... . . . no, sorry, different reality, is to reacquaint yourselves with that page, very much a team effort now with contributions from six at least eight or nine, maybe ten people.

Hopefully, there will be Cherilea's 54mm dancing loons and 60-mil bean-poles here tomorrow, probably with the show dates for the next week, and I may post something here later today, if I have time. I was hoping to make this the first 90-post month, that won't happen now, Friday may be a bit sparse as well - I'm not around Thursday - but 80's just doable? Won't beat January!!

H is for Hong Kong, Part 1 - Overview and 'Past the Post'

Note; In the next three posts making this set of articles HK (italisised) refers to a specific company and not my usuall short-form for 'Hong Kong'.

Following on from posts above and the prolific riff-offery of Hong Kong, particularly in the late 1960's and 1070's, here is a quick three-part'er on the sort of products resulting from a bit of piracy of the British producers of larger-scale figures.

Top is a comparison between the ACW figures of CMV and HK (see part three - below). The main image shows from top left to bottom right; two colour variants of the Britains Herald, one UK (black with brown base) ethylene figure the other a Hong Kong vinyl (grey with green base), a Paramount with hollow base and a marked 'HONG KONG' figure (see below).

The second row starts with a HK copy, then three unknown British copies (could be either/or all or none of; Kentoys/Speedwell/Trojan/VP) while the last row is all CMV.

Note that one of the British rip-offs has no hat, while the Paramount is a very different sculpt.

The unknown Hong Kong figure marked neatly on the edge of a quite deep base, with the number '634' on the opposite rim.

Past the Post went with copies of the Monograme GI's (another of the most copied/pirated/licenced sets of figures ever) and an assortment of Indians/Native Americans, all just over 50mm. There were double-decked boxed sets as well and I have eBay pictures of Cowboy sets in the archive.

H is for Hong Kong, Part 3 - CM, CMV, HK

Again in this last group there are similarities and differences that may or may not indicate links?

Three cowboys from 'CM' which I suspect is the same company as CMV, with a close-up of the base marking; an M contained withing a larger C.

CMV copies of the Britains Herald American Civil War figures, Marx Pirates and more Britains Cowboys, again with a base-mark close-up. The pirates don't have the release-pin holes the other two examples do.

HK copies of Timpo 8th Army along with Britains American Civil War figures and Cowboys. A comparison with a Timpo original radio operator reveals how much smaller these copies of copies ended up!

The way the HK is placed within the circle could link it to CM, but the use of a circle in trademarks is so common that it isn't much of a link.