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!

===========================================

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.

L is for Late again - Show Report; Sandown Park

Missing both December shows (London Toy Soldier and the NEC's general toys) my last show of last year was the other big general toy fair at Sandown Park racecourse in November, and in complete contrast to the post below, I only bought 10 items and none of them that exciting...

These all came from Adrian at Mercator Trading (who has more should you fancy some - link to right of page [all gone - sorry]), I have a side collection in all ammunition, whether inert 'real world' rounds, Drill or Practice or toy and model rounds, shells, suckers etc...and these three are a welcome addition to that collection.

The Lone*Star ones were late production and I well remember as a kid being a bit miffed that they wouldn't go in all our existing cap-guns which took either the round loads (usually red plastic) or the paper strips. The Devil Bangers are those paper-wraps little boys still annoy people at bus-stops with to this day...and may even be current? The Italian set is totally new to me.

First purchase of the day was the bag of micro-vehicles during the car-park trading before the doors opened, simply marked 'MADE IN WESTERN GERMANY' twice and 'ASST 18' (presumably meaning; Assortment 18 - of how many?). I adore the polythene truck marked err...'POLYTHENE TRUCK' a title that covers both the subject matter and material very succinctly!

The Chariot is a Hong Kong copy of the Thomas/Polar Plastics one with the old Bergan/Beton horses, while the tractor (also from Adrian) is a fair copy of the Britains [not Dinky!] number, and they've even copied the lifting mechanism on the hay-rake, but in plastic. This was surplus to requirements vis-a-vis a forthcoming book on farm vehicles, which I will plug until it's published in the hope of a cheep signed copy!

Finally; wandering around the halls during lulls, or on the way to get coffee I picked up a decent Britains Beefeater, I'm trying to get one of every version made - not hard; but it gives you a little goal within the world of "never collect it all". The flame-thrower in 50mm looks Spanish, but is made of PVC and I would love to know more about him [see; 'comments' on this one].

The Skybrids figure I picked-up as I couldn't remember if I had him already or not...I think I have and had blogged him, but he's clean, so nothing lost. While the Action Man spanner came off the floor when we were clearing-up; Thanks Mr. Don'tcheckyourpitch Guy!