F is for Follow-up, as Mentioned Earlier!

So, my thoughts, not canon, not necessarily true, but just my thoughts on, specifically, the origins of the Vitacup premium dear/fawn, and more on its ubiquity, which has appeared here before, in various forms, painted and unpainted.

 

Vitacup deer? The one in the middle, is the most likely, if Vitacup only had one (and they had no multiples of their other animals, except the 'Three Wise Monkeys' who were a single moulding), as it's the one most often found with the other Vitacup animals. But the male with small antlers has also come in with them.

 

Then this one came-in a while ago, a larger scale, and painted like others we have seen, a vague attempt at fallow deer spots, and will look at below, slightly more baby-fawn like with big ears and shorter proportioned body.

 

It's marked as a raised relief DEP, which can be short for Depose, a French term meaning 'Registered Design', but equally, can be short for Deponiert,  German, and also 'Registered Design', I suspect the latter, but the former can't ruled-out.

 

Shown next to a tourist figure of a miner (?) I remember a gift-kiosk full of this stuff back in 1969, somewhere on the Rhine, possibly the Niederwald Monument, but it could have been somewhere near Koblenz, or one of several castles in the ENESCO world heritage Middle Rhine section, I was six, and it was very foggy, I can only remember a large car-park/viewing area, and a long stone balustrade. We ended up with two gold-chrome plated plastic dwarf miners, with deer which were - possibly - even smaller versions of some of the deer seen here?

 

We saw a paler one, in a previous post, with similar but unrelated sculpts.

 

While this broken one also came in and was seen previously.

Note the Indigo-inked, rubber stamp 'Foreign', on the tail.

Here we have much larger ones, but with what appear to be painted versions of the Vitacup ones being used as actual babies, to the two juvenile-looking 'adults' who are about half-a magnitude larger, the slight absurdity being they are plastic figures pretending to be wood, on a pretend wood base, on an actual wooden plinth!

 

And I think Chris Smith took this image in a Charity Shop for the Blog, some time ago, knowing these were being collected in one place! So thanks to him for taking the opportunity presented, to add to the subject.

 

Here's another, from the scale of the figures, the same larger size, but now suggesting the 'babies' in the previous image, may themselves be larger than the Vitacup 'Ivorene' models.

 

Of interest here, is than despite now having over a dozen of the barometer figurines, loose, I don't have either of the two in the background here, so I need to look out for them both, and there must have been dozens over the years coming from the workshops of Switzerland, Austria and Germany, since plastic came into use, with many more wooden ones before them!

 

Here’s what looks like the painted version of the Vitacup, from the previous post, with the stamp again, but here on the belly. The Foreign mark was more common on German (and Japanese) stuff between the wars, and Japanese stuff after WWII, but that's a whole 'nother post, in porcelain it applies to a period between 1893 and 1923, while it is found on US workman's tools for the period 1890-93, and that's the tip of an iceberg connected to . . . Tariffs, taxes, recent enemies, new friends, and the hiding of origin, while flagging origin!

 

A painted version of the feeding pose, and a fourth pose/fifth variant, laying on the ground, these also look to be a larger size, and have a surface texture which suggests they may be a different maker, to most of the others, either as copies, or a renovated tooling?

 

While this is just a homage, in glazed china!

Much smoother lines. 

It seems, someone, probably German, who may or may not have been Siku, had a catalogue of these, sculpted as if made of carved wood, in the Erzgebirge style, in two or three sizes, at least four poses, with a head variant on the commonest pose, of which Vitacup took between one or three, in the plain Ivorene, while anyone else who needed them could arrange a supply to suit their tourist trinket, or, kitch tchotchke, in a variety of paint styles (they may have added themselves) with or without the white dots hinting at fallow deer, while other people copied the sculpts!

 

The Vitacup sets, however, are drawn from various parts of the supplier's wider catalogue, and the work of different sculptors, with several other animals having the carved-wood look, but more being realistically sculpted and one or two slightly cartoonish, but still with more realistic fur/hides.

 

Now, I never got round to updating the post which tried to list them all;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/f-is-for-follow-up-vitacup.html 

 . . . following the comments of Jungle Kim, and both (that post and the listing) need to be sorted properly, but suffice to say, all the ones with the pale blueish-white background are soft polyethylene (elastische plastik) and known to be Siku (tools which don't seem to have gone to DS Plastics, of the Netherlands), which suggests that while I might like the Vitacup et al to be Siku, for neatness, they may be by someone else?

 

However, Siku are known for providing may of the margarine/tobacco/coffee/soap-powder premiums of the 1950's, in hard styrene, so it's still an open question?

C is for Cool Car-Booty!

A week or so before the trip that provided the Invicta dinosaurs, but f-all else, I'd had a little more luck wandering about the same Car Boot Sale one Bank-Holiday Monday, and that's what we're looking over, in this post

 

This was a quid! It's the kind of stuff you find a whole shelf of at The Range or TKMaxx, in three colours, and I'd ignored it, until I'd realised how little there is at these sales nowadays - pretty well picked-clean over the years, or ravaged by the 5/6-am 'early birds', so I went back for it at the end, but photographed it first as it was on top of everything else in the plunder bag! It's a hollow ceramic slush-cast, modern, and about 7/8-inches!

 

These were a revelation, Toyway WWI Aeroplanes, new to me, Google's AI Overview came up with another corker;

 

"Toyway WWI aeroplanes" likely refers to model or toy aircraft of World War I vintage, rather than a specific brand called "Toyway"

 

Technically, 'World War I vintage' means manufactured between 1914 and 1919! Dumb, and the highlighting is a mystery, it wasn't a hot-link? AI is dumb, it might be good for specific tasks like finding new drugs, but that's more about programming a good algorithm, rather than free-thought, or compooda learnin'!

 

From the card graphics I'd say an earlier product of theirs, from the 1980's, and probably by someone like Universal (but not their inherited Matchbox stuff, Matchbox never did 'planes like this), but made in China anyway, and a nice pair, adding to the WWI air-wing!

 

I drew a snake a bit like this, many years ago, and thought I'd scanned the image with some other stuff a while ago, but I can't find it, so I can't show it to you! But due to its similarity with my little sketch, I couldn't resist it. Like the ceramic astronaut, it's quite big and may be a companion piece/accessory from a larger action-figure/doll type thing?

 

These are fascinating, from the same seller, who had a lot of 'genuine' domestic/house-clearance stuff, so these probably went together, we have a marked and painted version of the believed to be (or more accurately; 'probably') Siku moulding of a fawn, which ended-up as one of the Vitacup premiums, along with two actual, carved wood Erzgebirge horses, in the same style of scalloped whittling. 

 

This is why I collect, to join the dots, to look for, and hopefully find the bigger picture, and put it up here so other people understand the connections, a fascinating trio, to me at least! And there'll be a follow-up on the 'Vitacup' deer later.

 

Probably home-made, possibly an apprentice piece, or turned for a Lancaster Bomber model-kit, I believe this is a reasonable rendition of an RAF Tall Boy, or more likely Grand Slam free-fall bomb of the WWII era, and in silver-plate brass, a rather unique thing? Except there may be hundreds of them? Who knows! It is (if either of the mentioned bombs) missing its pointy-tail, but it looks like that may have been cut-off for some reason?

 

The seller of the biplanes, had obviously had some good stuff earlier in the day (early hours of the morning!), and was selling her late father's collection, piecemeal, there were a bunch of Micromodel card kits, i was tempted by, but I left them, however at 50p I took these three, which are a - probably - Hong Kong racing driver from a carpet toy, and two home-cast replacements of an old die-cast or lead toy driver.

 

I think these were 10p each, so I wasn't too bothered by them, the space-car seems to be missing half its whole? The Thunderbird 2 pod-vehicle is supposed to be a bulldozer or ladder truck I think, but as it's a modern Carlton effort, I thought it might make a conversion project! And three probably duplicate Bruder, but there's always colourways to find, with them!

H is for Half Moon Bay

One of the trends I noticed at the Spring Gift Fair in Birmingham a fortnight ago, was the Beatles' Yellow Submarine, most of it way outside the scope of this blog, even allowing for the nostalgia element, but at least three stalls had related products on display, and this grouping of stuff from Half Moon Bay, did include a couple of pieces which might tempt some loyal readers into parting with their hard-earned!

 

Specifically the snow-shaker, but the pencil top is close to acceptable as a micro-flat and the ceramic 'thing' could qualify as a super-deform! You can also see the corner of a set of place-mats with all the characters, Blue Meanies, Apple Droppers etc.

 

Website - there's a shaped mug too!

https://www.halfmoonbayshop.co.uk/

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Historicals and Ceremonials

There's no better-or-worse with these groupings, it's just the easiest way to begin the sorting, as most of the large scale collection is archived thematically. The small scale remains mostly alphabetical by company/maker, with only the unknowns thematic, but in the larger scales it seems better to separate them by theme, within which they are all equally valued, and equally useful, in their section of the whole! Today it's the more colourful soldiers from Chris's recent donation parcel!

This was actually a purchase from Chris, which was put in the box to save on postage, and turned-out to be a Reamsa cavalryman, Royal Escort Squadron, I believe, and doesn't seem to have been in the Gormasa-Soldis tranche of reissues? Now he just needs a horse, but as mentioned in related-articles passim, I think I have some somewhere!

 

Novelty Ninjas from Panosh flank a larger unbranded/several branded (generic!) figure, who is a more contemporary (or still recent) capsule-toy type. All three are manufactured in soft PVC style polymers.

 

From the left: a base for the via-Portugal premiums used by several French products, which had here, been paired with one of the smaller Kinder issue figures, which his locating pegs don't fit! A ceramic priest type, from Japan, a slightly damaged Marx Miniature Masterpiece knight - I have more damaged than not, and will have a modelling session with their polystyrene arses one day! Finally, a new sculpt of Welsh lady 'redcoat' to put the fear of god into French marines! She was obviously another (most of the previously-seen were) tourist keepsake, keyring

 

With sizer - a bit blurred, without sizer - a better shot! A home-casting mould Prussian, a naked lead figure around 40mm, he may have had a brand, but with everything that's happened recently that mental note has been lost, and what looks like a French (or Spanish?) copy of a Reisler (?) Band Major, he could be quite recent, he's very clean, and very flashy, almost a test-shot? The sizer is an Airfix clone.

 

Lovely novelty ceramic drummer, about 45mm? He's smaller than the others we looked at a while ago, and we will return to him/them, as more of the others came in a while ago, but have gone off to storage, so a better overview of them - as a genre or trope - is definitely in the pipeline!

 

And a nice bunch of slightly battered Oojah-Cum-Pivvy's, from India, via Shamus Wade, but being terracotta, they will restore quite well, both with superglue and modelling clay, while the powder/poster paint is equally easy to touch-up, so I will get decent samples of each uniform type from this lot. And again, many thanks to Chris for all the above.

B is for Benefaction Bag and Benevolence Boys!

I haven't been doing much Charity Shop stuff for a while, but did have a couple of good plunder purchases, and this was all garnered back at the start of July, a small bag of plastics and a couple of larger figures from the white-elephant shelf.

A ceramic 'fairing' of a clown, probably copied from a better known or more commercially named maker, I thought it had shades of Fontanini's sculpting about it, and it was cheap, so home with me, it came, although home was - at the time - a motel!

 

A resin tourist jobbie, I don't know if it's a local British thing, of something brought back from maybe Canada or even Australia? There is a cap-badge of sorts, on the helmet, which vaguely resembles a Roman numeral III, if that rings any bells?

 

While the princely sum of £1.99 secured this for the stash, although if a Prince only had 1.99 he'd be considered pretty poor, as Prices go! I could see the level of damage, but thought , at that price, it was still worth a punt.

 

All that damage! It would have been nice if one or two more had survived, but I guess little fingers had handled the pack without due care and attention!

 

Relatively common Matchbox, mostly Germans, with Audie Murphy to keep their heads down! Interesting that they still have quite a few of the little 'sprulettes' (my term) on their bases, these are designed to allow the flowing polymer resin to continue-on beyond the limits of the product, ensuring the actual product section of the mould is fully filled, and you don't get short-shotting.

 

A few useful bits survived, although the Hong Kong copy of a Lone Star sailor is missing his foresight/muzzle. The US Cavalry food premium is worth the whole two-quid though, as his pennant is often short-shot, especially in the metallic variants, so he was a good find. I'm not sure if the two horses are Spanish, or copies from Greece, France or Hong Kong?

 

Survivors of the handling, but one has to remember they will be as brittle as the other Lone Star figures, and treat them accordingly? How they come in!

F is for Figural Finery for the Fake Fir

It is a fact, that despite appearing full every year, the artificial tree has an unerring ability to keep taking lade until, one day, presumably, it will just collapse under the weight? To that end, and despite not having the tree up again this year, I have in anticipation of a full-loading at some point in the near future, like next year, with any luck, procured a few figurals/shapes . . . in addition to the three robots, one spaceman and four hedgehogs already Blogged this festive season!

Two more bears, I'm wondering if I've already got the ceramic flat, but I don't think so, there's a similar bird I think? And I'm having second thoughts on the 'gummi bear', he was one of hundreds in baskets all over the garden centre, and was the best one for coverage of the little beads (some had hideous bald-patches, or bald-lines where the glue-boundary dried before the beads were poured), in a decent colour (the flash has made it look whiter than it is), but it's still a plastic, and they never used to be allowed . . . still it's fun, and another bear!

 

The rabbit came in a mixed lot of figures from a Charity Shop, and I was going to take him back with the next lot of donation stuff (I always make a mental note to take them back to a different shop!), when I realised I could get a hook under the scarf/string, so it stayed for the tree, probably home-made and much-loved by someone, once?

 

The gnome is a full, traditional glass-bauble, but mini, so he can go higher up the tree with the other smallies, and get to look-out further, while the soldier-dog, based on the standard nutcracker design, was grabbed in a hurry as Dunelm was closing (for the evening, not bankruptcy, just yet), and I thought he was a bear! But he can stay, he'll be the first dog on the tree though, so a Billy-no-mates!

Speaking of higher-up the tree, these are tiny, sold in threes, one shiny, one frosted and one glitter, they're only 15mm wide, a little bigger than the very small plain baubles everyone uses to 'fill the gaps', so they will be put to the same use, and fir-cones have always been another side-group, with 20-odd now including a really-big, sort of life-size sequoia one in gold!

 

I got this in a funny little independent garden-centre of the type which has almost disappeared round here, and while it's a rather boring fret-cut ply, it IS a soldier, and it's decorated on both sides, was only 99p and came home with me!

C is for Canoes - 1 - Introduction

Voyagers Canoe - image origin unknown

 

So, this has been building for sometime now, and I can't remember if Brian Berke started it or answered a call, but back in the Autumn of 2020 he sent me a shed-load of stuff on Western canoes, which got me digging out and shooting mine.

 

Then something happened and it all went on hold, then Mum passed away, then time, then I posted something else, then I ran out of time again, then I lost my Mojo, then my Brother, then HMRC, then HMCTS, then I posted something else, yada, yada, and, and, and . . . they're here now!

 

This is Brian's 'sizer', we'll be looking at all these and more over a series of, err, about 22 posts? Which with real life and other stuff will get us pretty much to RTM, given I will alternate with other posts, so you don't get Canoe'd out!

Also, because it was a while ago that the notes were taken, Brian may have to correct the odd detail as we go! So, from left running down the column, then the right, we have;

• Don't know! Big, polystyrene.
  
• Hong Kong copy of Britains trapper/2nd type
• Dulcop
• MPC
• Timpo 2-berth
• Hong Kong 
  
• Hong Kong Knick Knack 1-berth 

-

• Post Giant 25mm figures with 6-berth canoe
• Not sure, I think it's the Cherilea/Dorset re-issue?
• Star Toys copy of Timpo 2-berth
• Tim Mee
  
• Hong Kong loosely based on Herald/Briains 1st type
• Hong Kong Knick Knack 3-berth

My storage sample, it has since received all the ones here and gone back to storage (as have the Totem poles been reunited and shipped off again, so we'll look at them again in a year or two!) We did manage to look at the rafts a while ago - they were supposed to be the opener to this season!

The pale one on its side is similar to Brian's dark one, two from the bottom in the right-hand column of his photo, see also below. It's a basic line-up, to which I haven't added that many, a few HK ones and the copy raft seen previously.
 

One of my Sizers;

• Supreme copy of Britains trapper/2nd type
• Copy of Supreme, even down to decoration!
• Hong Kong  copy of Britains trapper/2nd type
• Hong Kong loosely based on Herald/Briains 1st type
• Hong Kong rack-toy rubbish (Rado, Hing Fat, a lesser brand?)

You can see how that pale one is more like a theme-park canoe, with smooth [aluminium] sides, and the trashy one is very loosely based on the Britains trapper/2nd type

Another, from the left and working up to the right;

• Beeju
• Junk one
  
• 'Theme park' one
  
• Herald/Briains 1st type
• Hong Kong copy of Britains trapper/2nd type
• Timpo 4-berth

Two of Brian's with his idyllic little island, which will reappear through these posts and serves as a further sizer/scale guide, here a Hong Kong copy of the Britains 2nd type which I'll be calling the 'Trapper' as I think that's when it first appeared, however by the end it was the only version still in production . . . during the Deetail years. Behind it, the pink Hong Kong one, it's actually quite dinky, but more of a hollowed log . . . for Amazonian Indians!

 

Here we see the 3-berth 'knick-knack', the previous two and a Timpo 2-berth, the Timpo look like they might be on dodgy ground here, he's drawn his knife and the other three boats are rather bearing-down on them!

 

Brian's blue one [is Dulcop] loosely based on Britains 1st version, but with a bowed hull, it has the stars on the prow (or stern here!), a detail Timpo also sort of copied, so the first post will be the Britains family as many of the others come-off them, although there were many metal, wood, US plastic and probably a few Hong Kong novelty ones (like the Knick Knacks) which predate the Herald, but we are looking predominantly at the plastics, and it's a starting point!

Ah, yes . . . if you're really lucky, you might find someone in the Deep South selling their exclusive Terricata canoes! Say it like you heard it dude (or dudess?), Google is obviously for 'woke' pussies! Somebody give them fifty-bucks, they've probably got a jacked pick-up truck to feed!