T is for Two - Taffy & Thomas!

Except it's only the one gun, and it's a Poplar Plastic Product, but we're returning for a third/fourth (?) time to the Poplar-Taffy-Thomas 5.5" gun, and hopefully sorting out the difference between them, which I highlighted here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/05/t-is-for-two-taffy-toy-and-twin.html

. . . a while-ago now! And worth a quick revision, so you can see what's being said here!

 

I actually shot this at PW's show I think, and had the opportunity to look at it more closely at Sandown Park the other week, and while it's a nice set on any level, it's also an explanation of the two types we looked at back in 2017, where a piece or two were missing, compounding the mystery then!

The [now] obvious screw-thread on the end of the barrel of the Thomas (?)/Poplar gun actually takes a pretty substantial moulding; the 'Flash Eliminator', which needs to be substantial, as it houses a firing cap, and needs to hold and direct the mini-explosion into the back of a 'shell'.

 

  

As per the instructions!

We sorted the Thomas (et al) Jeep/Jeep-driver out with the help of Chris Smith, around the same time, and here's another, pulling the under-scale (for the Jeep) artillery piece, note the hole for the plug-in's, one of which we saw in that post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/p-is-for-problem-solved.html

Not terribly clear, but we have seen them in a plunder-post, I think, and I know I have some in the 'unknown ammo' zone, so we'll return to this subject again, just to cross the final t's and dot the i's! They look like micro' space-ships, little squat domes with four shallow fins toward the 'skirt' end, they obviously go over the heavy flash eliminator, and are propelled by the small charge of the cap.

Sometimes as kids, when you were firing-off a roll of 200 caps at your brother/mate, from behind cover with your little die-cast six-shooter near your face, you would get the odd bit hit you in the face, and - whether bits of powder or bits of paper - they stung, as they were/are coming off a mini explosion, and the power was/is there, if only in miniature!

Box end; and thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.

"Carefull, or you'll have somebodies eye out with that"

Is probably, now, the true reason for the second, simplified Taffy version!

R is for Renwal . . . or not?

Further to the earlier post, and in part an answer to Andy B's comment on that earlier post, I already had one of the tanks Brian sent, but mine was marked Renwall and is silver and green. Brief research (a google images results page!) reveals that they come in reversed colours as well - green body/silver turret &ect . . . missile, gun, whatever. A rule which breaks-down on the single mouldings, as seen on Ed's Blog with the Army Ambulance, where you get one or the other!

 

Brian's donation on the left and my sample on the right, it's possible they are trying to depict the M103, a heavy tank designed to face-up the JS/T10 series of Soviet biggies during the early Cold War, which, unlike the Stalin's or Britain's Conqueror (that all looked 'heavy'), was more of a scale-up on the M46/7/8 series, and looks quite normal in some photo's?

You can see clearly, that where mine is marked 'Renwal' the new addition has a clear remnant of mechanical scrubbing on the tool to remove the maker's mark. I think Plasticraft bought some Renwal tooling, could the all-green (more realistic) one be a Plasticraft issue? It's also a different shade of green, but I've seen other colours/shades so that proves nothing!

Another silver/green marked Renwall combo', they all have other markings including a title block, normally on an upper (normally visible) surface, and a stock-code/tool-number, along with the branding, usually underneath.

 

And another, this being a sort of giant Sparrow Missile, doing service as a Nike/Ajax anti-Nuke' SAM. Sadly, it's not a working "You'll 'ave yer' eye out..." toy, but a useful item for space bases and the like.

 

Comparison with the Norada we saw the other day (back), possibly also trying to be an M103? The Airfix 'Pershing' (front, nominally an M26?) and a diminutive, carded Marx cap-firing die-cast to the right!

I is for In Space No One Can Hear You Blow Out Your Candles!

Cake decorations, not rack-toys, but the price-points and ephemeral nature of the products are pretty similar, and as I say most years, a few days in, RTM isn't just for RT's! Wilton today, and their quite eclectic output of Space Toys over the years, and probably not all of them but the ones I've been made aware of.

 

These are all generics, in that the rocket also comes as a stand-alone cap-bomb, and while I think I have one now (might be on the Blog?), it wasn't here when this post started to take shape.

 

Likewise the MPC copies are pretty common, these seem to be not the best copies, but not the worst, and from the colours (which I like) may be the same ones issued in rack-toy bags by . . . errr . . . Payton? Someone like that!

While the Ajax-Archer copies seem to be the soft-plastic with paint, Hong Kong figures also issued as both rack toys and bagged parachute-toys, in which guise the later, unpainted mouldings, are quite common. But the helmets would seem to be unique to the Wilton issue copies?

I can't find these in the catalogues I have, so they must have been a short-lived item, if they were Wilton, I was told they were but can't find anything definitive, I believe there's a second pose, I only have the one at the moment, but note, on his back; the same KT in an oval cartouche, as the firm which issued all those statuettes and pencil sharpeners, stationary stands etc . . . we've been looking at here at Small Scale World in the last few years !

 

He (previous shots) may even (with his mate) have been the production versions of the two in this catalogue image, with the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) or lander, as I don't think I've seen these either? Revell scale-ups? Behind them is the Gemini craft with two larger scale astronauts.

 

Here's the three of them, what do you think, could he be contemporary with the other two, having replaced the 'mock-up' press figures, or am I still looking for three other astronauts? And the bigger guys served to ID others in the 'unknown seated pilots' zone! the KT is about 45mm (50 with the domed stand), the other two 60+mm

We have also looked at the loose candle-holder figures here, not that long ago, but there was a second set with a UFO and one each of the two figures, so Junior could have space-cakes until he was eight, on two purchases! Then, if he makes it, the nursing-home staff could get them out for his eightieth!

 

The collection, as it stands, minus my loose UFO figures. The catalogue image above seems to show a transparent red-nose, mine is a totally opaque, flat red. And I'm not sure if the figures are even in the bag? I think they're stuffed into the ship, but I can't check as it's gone to storage.

 

 

I think I nicked this off evilBay to remind us of the figures without opening (or having to find) my bagged set!

D is for Die-Cast Desperadoes

Off to Spain now, where poor old Play Me churned out a family of reasonably classy, novelty, antiqued-finish, pencil-sharpeners for the tourist and stationary industries, unwittingly launching a thousand Hong Kong (now China) copies, clones and piracies . . . but not - as far as I know - actual pirates, however Play Me had given us two!

The standard seller was a small box with cannon only, but a larger window-box existed, rather in the style of Britains naval Gun, for which these two zamak/mazac figures were designed, at approximately 50mm, they are a tad small, but I'd imagine being small was a bonus on the cramped gun-decks of mid-millennia sailing vessels?

Here compared with one of those Hong Kong copies, the HK one is particularly clean and rather shiny! there's not much in it to be honest and I thought I'd shot more HK ones, I thought I'd shot the Britains ones and I know I have a scan I now just can't find [see below!], so we'll turn to these again at some point!

I have only the one Spanish cannon-ball (no HK's), but I imagine there were five-to-ten or even twelve in a mint set? Oh, how this stuff used to rattle-round a Hoover until the steel-curved brush-roots caught it, jammed, and the drive-band made that funny-smell and melted!

A comparison with two Lone Star 'Metallion' pirates (Long John [silver] and Captain Blood, issued by Hubley and others elsewhere, some as copies), which were in the same box, also die-casts, they have a silver-finish rather than the copper-effect of the Play Me chaps.

It was on the desktop - Doh! So all my searches in Picasa and the 'finished' & 'waiting' folders were a waste of time!

This is - I believe - the same Spencer we saw here; Spencer Gifts - and still going(Northern 'States and Canada), although someone affiliated to the PSTSM took my image (without asking - ten for one, that's the rule, m'K!) and has been telling everyone it's an 'English' company (not British mind, so I'd like to see his 'empirical' evidence!) for the last two or three years . . . despite the dollar prices! You can't make this stuff up, but I have other plans for him, another day.

Note - it's closer to the Britains cannon, but with a more complicated ratchet affair on the right-hand side of the body. Also, from the description, although as useless as the Britains ones at sharpening pencils, it fires percussion caps, which - back in the day - were hardened brass-alloy and made a real bang. Now you would use those red, yellow or gold plastic ones.

And speaking of the Britains cannon, I hadn't got round to shooting the loose examples (so a return is guaranteed), but this was in the folder with the Spencer scan, so we'll stick it here for the fun of it! I think I'm right in saying this is the less common of three variants, the ones with a white-block carriage being more common, but having two different barrels? Like I say we'll return to them with all the answers another day.

F is for Follow-up - Toy Truck-Mounted Rocket Launchers

So, managed to find both the rocket launchers mentioned in the previous article (making this a follow-up to a follow-up!), so without further ado - 'cos we don't want much of an ado about nothing! - let's have a closer look . . .

Both the vehicles I'd previously said I had 'somewhere', I knew where the paint-stripped one was, but Brian's shots were of two painted versions, so there was no point digging it out, the plastic one I knew I'd got, and recently, so it should have been findable, but a cursory look - the first time - failed to locate it, it (the Hong Kong copy - lower image) then appeared - as if by magic, a few days later! Hence digging-out the Crescent one (upper image) for a full follow-up!

The Hong Kong one is a copy, with simplifications like the 'torsion-bar' wheel attachments instead of the through-axles clipped in, as on the Crescent original, but there may have been some pantographing to get the basic moulding as one or two quirky details have been retained, albeit at about a 10% reduction in overall scale/size - I've cropped them to reflect their relative sizes.

More comparisons, the Hong Kong rocket is basically a Thunderbird (Army) or Bloodhound (RAF) missile, probably copied from Corgi, sans booster rockets, with colour-bleed from an unstable red polymer-colourant in the nose gravitating toward the 'rear' through the white plastic of the body it's plugged into.

The 'trap-door' of the Crescent cap-bomb 'missile', you can see how many caps could be stacked in the 're-entry capsule', and the substantial free-moving hammer would detonate them all against an equally substantial anvil-nose.

The trouble was you then got (in a Norwegian accent) a helllll-of-a-bang, which tended (in a cockney accent) to blow the bloody door off . . . which then got lost in the garden!

My rubber-band has perished in storage, but has retained its shape. It will need replacing with a dental-brace band - coincidently - the same item required by the little N-gauge vehicles in the Lone Star 'Treble-O Trains' rage!

Completely stripped of paint, there is a slight remnant of gloss red inside the elevation-lock wheel, suggesting this was the 'civilian version, and I'm quite sure someone was planning on repainting it as one of the two military versions, weather for home use or a fraudulent sale is anyone's guess! If I ever find the time I'll repaint it in an urban camouflage of blue-mauve-grey-purple, so there's no doubt as to its origins!

It actually looks quite sleek in its bare, weathered (or oxidised) Mazac/Zamak-alloy finish and is here posed at maximum elevation for lobbing onto enemy trenches a few yards away, or getting the best 're-entry angle' for a big-bang!

As with the other photographs above, where possible I've cropped to reflect the size difference as shooting them together proved awkward due to their length; taking the camera back to get the nearer machine in, tended to blur-out the one behind.

Not for completisms' sake, as there are plenty-more rocket launchers, but because it happened to present itself during the search, this is the smaller example from Kwong Shing-KS-Kamley-Kositoys, with the later design of truck and no card insert with printed 'flat' crew. It's the standard cab-unit with a twin-axle trailer utilising the body-mounting plug to create an articulated 'train'.

F is for Follow-up - Cap-Bombs & Rocketry

So, we looked at cap-bombs the other day and I said there were a few still in the attic, but the brown one with a yellow spaceman seems to have been totally lost being in none of the places it might have been? And apart from the missing one there was only one other and a buckshee tail-section, but the whole one is different to the others so worth a shot or two.

It has an internal anvil, and exhaust venturi, which as they face forward would/could be seen as retro-rockets on an interspatial vessel! It needed a good clean and I used cotton-buds to remove the rusty gunk from the interior and an old flossing-brush to clean the venturi!

There's nothing to hold a cap or a section of cap 'tape' in place, so I suspect it was designed and/or issued with the plastic-drum caps in strips to place over the end of the hammer-bar. The anvil-plate seems to be set into the plastic, but it's very rusty so I'm not about to shove it around or pick at it to prove or disprove the suspicion!

And, if you're one of the older loyal readers of this blog it may look familiar to you; because it's a copy of the Merit (J&L Randall) one we saw here.

Before it was cleaned up (crap shot - sorry!), it's somewhere between the two common'ish sizes we looked at last time, and has a screw-cap where they had pop-on ones. In the comparison below we see the odd part in dark-olive, they all go in the tub together, and as bits which fit come-in they get put with each-other.

The two on the left are not cap-firers, but rubber-tipped projectiles. The smaller red one being from the rail-mounted 'Battle Space' launcher from Rovex Tri-Ang/Hornby-Triang, it replaced a short-lived die-cast alloy version (also with a rubber nose, but in oxide red).

The yellow one is annoying me as I'm sure I know (or should know) its origin or have ID'd its brand/maker in the past - possibly on this Blog - but I can't find it on the Blog, can't find it in the archives and can't find it on-line, so if you can tell me - kudos to you! Is it ammunition from a 'One Man Army' type thing?

An old internet image (possibly Vectis?) it's a bit fuzzy but you get the idea and we looked at mine years ago (over a decade ago! And I now know the yellow one in that post!), the real aim here is to use the connection of this and the 'unknown' yellow one to get us to this . . .

. . . sent to the Blog by Mr Berke, it's mintier than a minty-mint 'minter' from the Royal Mint! Crescent's rocket launcher; which carries a cap-bomb of epic dimensions, with a fully die-cast nose/firing mechanism on a polyethylene body. This baby would take six or eight caps and detonate with quite a flash, having a much heavier rod that the other's we've looked at.

Unfortunately, because we abused them with large charges, the tiny elastic-band which kept the 'breech block' in place quickly failed and the little piece of mazac is often missing. We looked at the rarer desert variant here a while back, but a temperate/tropical unit was also available . . .

. . . and Brian sent one of those too! Although obviously a cap-bomb, it was originally sold as the Mobile Space Rocket in the red/green combo', with this version normally having a white plastic body for its Corporal Rocket & Lorry (the real corporal was longer and thinner) and the 'civil' coloured truck carrying the yellow bodied rocket.

I thought we'd seen my paint stripped one on the blog, but I can't find it either, not can I find the HK copy's post, but I did re-show it (if I'd shown it at all? Maybe a show-report?) in this post, it's all plastic with a no-cap missile copied from another (Corgi) toy.

Going back a post (from the earlier link) Mr. B also sent this to compliment the spring-loaded rocket launchers of that post, it's the MPC rocket launcher, which is supposed to be rubber-band operated.

Although when I say rubber-band operated, Brian couldn't get it to work so I turned to Ed Berg (who has just Blogged the whole MPC space range) and asked him for help (or the instruction sheet), but he explained he had just as much trouble trying to get them to work, but told us how it should be done and Brian had another stab at it.

But - basically - it seems the rocket gets a little too comfortable in its mounting slot/groove and sticks fast, clearly the rocket designer and/or the launch-pad designer and the tool's 'pattern maker' weren't talking to each other with the clarity necessary? Or the  rubber-band 'interactivity' was a late addition to the toy's features? But it looks the part!

The gang at Moonbase have been running a Money Box Season through lockdown (among all their other stuff!) and I sent my German BAC Spaarraket's over there, so follow the jump for more on them or this link for loads of money boxes (banks), including at least four other rocket types, a spaceman, several globes &etc.

 

It seems BAC Spaarbank is actually a Belgian entity, part of the [now] Dexia combine, previously; Gemeentekrediet van België / Crédit Communal de Belgique

 

Three months later - and it's nice to see Collectors Gazette were paying attention!

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On another matter altogether, the Police Commissioner for Durham has just accused Grant Chapps (Transport Secretary) of "Making it up as he goes along" with regard to Dominic Cumming's shenanigans over the Covid-19 Lock-down . . . well, fancy that, fancy populist fuckwitts on the right making it up as they go along! History will reflect more kindly on my whitterings that mine 'eemies'! Have you injected your dose of loo-cleaner today?!

A is for Amorces - I Need'em for Mah'Forces!

The other (see yesterday's post) great "Take it outside before one of you blinds the other" toy was the cap-firing rocket-bomb, and while I don't have as many as I'd like; or as many as I'd like if money were no object, I have a few, and that's what we're looking at now.

The metal ones - were a common pocket-money thing; on the way home from school, pop-in to the village for milk and Chelsea-buns, receive a quick issue of pocket-money (6d) and grab a cap-bomb from Webb's the Newsagents! The commonest design was the one second from the left. I vaguely recall they came in some of the less reverent Christmas crackers as well?

The one on the far left is a modern one, sourced in Taiwan, which I grabbed with a newspaper (at the same time as-, not a freebie from the publisher!) a few years ago - Henbrandt, Play Write, someone like that?

Reading to the right, the middle one is a more ornate version of the common design (unfortunately with broken tail fins) which I suspect is earlier (1950's), while above them is an alternate head for which I have no body, so I don't know how it differed from the other two? Another variation is the little cockpit sculpted on one side (of the second one) to make it a 'plane rather than a rocket/bomb

12th May - Duh! Missed the actual bomb! Some of you will have known it as the cap-firing cargo from the Dinky Toys die-cast Junker's 87 'Stuka', dive-bomber! If you didn't recognise it . . . that's what it is, utilising the mechanism of the Britains shell . . . I had meant to say as I segued seamlessly to the next paragraph!

Second from the right is the Britains shell from the big howitzer, which uses the same low-tech, to provide a satisfying crack upon landing among the enemy lines. The final item seems to be some kind of anvil for similar ammunition; it came with a load of plastic and metal shells and bombs, but I don't know anything else about it and it could as easily be a crude milk-churn or a washing-machine component!

The plastic ones - I've only ever seen one of the ornate ones on the left so it was lucky I was there to see it and buy it, or did someone donate it? But somewhere, sometime, there were shop-stock boxes full of them, probably in three or four colors!

The blue one is a common-ish design, still around, but not so common with the brass (or more likely phospher-bronze) anvil on the nose. The yellow chap with an orange nose is South American, and clearly comes with the instruction to evacuate capsule before detonation!

The final pair are the common 'pocket-money' bombs of my childhood, they came in various sizes, and vaguely equate to WWI (blue nose) and WWII (red nose) 'standard' bomb shapes.

The carded ones - The Argentine version comes with an atmospheric card, suggesting it's about to land next to the 'Spacex' equipment in the crater (strangely - or; ironically - the old sci-fi landing system is now being employed by Musk's reusable launch-vehicles!), while to its right a card with both common designs in two sizes.

In the right hand image three littlies in a small header-carded bag; they're not 'triple-shot', but rather a trio (or triplet!) of single-shots; pedantry - I know!

They sit next to a very different beast - if you really want to "have an eye out", a good way to go about it is with a projectile of high-impact polyethylene, fired under a jet of air-pressure!

It's basically a hand-held pop-gun in the shape of a rocket-bomb! A wooden piston is pulled-back and thrust forward, forcing the red-end to fly off, at speed, with a pop-sound! I have a couple of khaki-plastic nose-cones in one of the 'odds bags', similar but not quite the same, which may be off an 'army' version of this toy.

This one is a bit of a mystery - clearly it's styled in a rocket-bomb fashion, but the firing pin is at the 'blunt' back and has no spring, plate or anvil, while the hole in the blue plastic cap suggests that this was somehow fired from a larger object (space gun?).

The paper cap being placed between the flat-end of the pin and the hole in the cap, fired by a trigger-pin in the missing object, through the hole? At the same time it was - presumably - shot-off, as a rocket, to land quietly? Anyone recognise it?

Ammo - The early ones were the 'Standard' caps as mentioned on the carded set above, pretty-much predating my childhood, there were still a few around, but with the coming of realistic feed-mechanisms in the die-cast output of people like the UK's Lone Star or Crescent , Rendondo 'pam-pam's from Spain and Italy's Edison the caps were placed on reels, and you had to carefully tare one off to place it in an older weapon, or single-shot toy such as these rockets/bombs.

By the 1980's it was mostly the plastic caps either in daisy-wheels as above or in strips as here, both of which are still around, although they could be used with some of the older bombs, by placing them over the tips of the firing-pins, the pin needing to be of a gauge which fitted tightly-enough to hold the cap in 'flight'!

You can also stack the paper ones for a bigger bang, but even as kids we quickly learnt that too many and they cushioned each-other and failed to go off (or flew, unburnt, out the side like confetti), while more than three tended to do damage to the more delicate bits (the two posts between nose and neck of the head-piece), ruining your new toy!

This post shows one of the other cap-bombs in the collection, I think there may be a couple of others with that one, but I haven't got round to combining them with the garage lot (this post) yet, so - another visit in a year or two? It also shows a Hong Kong version of yesterday's rocket launchers.

B is for Best Toy Ever? Working Machinegun

It's time for another Best Toy Ever post, and like the last one, thanks are due to Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) who took this along to a show where I was able to get a few shots off. Not 100% sure to the maker, but some of the ammunition resupplies are marked Märklin which is probably a good clue to the original maker too.

The contents were less than pristine having obviously been played with, well; you'd want to play with a best toy ever wouldn't you! Basically, it's a firing machine-gun, and I don't mean it makes a noise like a machinegun, I mean you feed it a belt of pre-loaded ammunition and it bangs . . .  as it fires rubber-bullets; it's too damn cool for the SF-Cadre!

A scaled-down feed mechanism and cap-firing hammer are operated by the turning of the handle, which is not far removed from the handle found on a Gatling Gun. Painting is similar to pre- or inter-war toys, but the two instruction sheets are cruder than you might expect from a 1930's toy, also at least one (the pink sheet above) seems to be that purpleish thing which I think we used to call  a 'roneo' (spell?) copy.

So I suspect it is just post-war? But using a pre-war tool, and painting style, just to get a product up and running in a blasted economy, and apart for the unconvincing clues to a post war sale, there's nothing in it.

This was the best bit! An exquisite chain of small brass turnings each of which can take a cap-gun charge at one end (top), and a rubber bullet at the other end (bottom), all tied together in a series of sort-of Morbius-loops or - more accurately - figure-of-eights, which allow for flexibility and a 'belt' feel, but which arrangement keeps the strings tight to the 'rounds' so they don't foul the mechanism, it's very clever!

The original bullets were small vulcanised rubber (tyre rubber) shells, but seem to have been replaced - due to loss - with small wooden splints which could be jammed in the blast hole between the cap-charge and the barrel, which must have worked because there were enough for the whole belt (with signs of jamming-in) which you wouldn't bother with if it all didn't work.

I couldn't try it as we had no caps on site, and you wouldn't want to break something like this if you hadn't paid for it, not to mention the cotton 'belt' arrangement looked like it might need replacing with some newer threads! But I can imagine what it must have been like spurting rubber death at ranks of composition or hollow-cast toy soldiers - best toy ever . . .

. . . 'till next time!