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?

R is for Rake of Rack Toys!

I mentioned, after the mad rush to collect and post the horror sets in time for Halloween, that David DeSoto had sent other figures too, and while I shot them at the time, I've only just got round to posting them, here, now! A bit more 'khaki' sneaking into the festive season!

An Imperial set, which, interestingly has those copies of New Ray, which I got quite excited about a few years ago, dating the set, as David writes; "The Imperial set with the New Ray knock-offs came out right before or shortly after Imperial Toys filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 here in the U.S.  [2020, ed.] As you may know, Ja-Ru, Inc. bought Imperial's assets and entered into a separate arrangement to purchase their operations in Mexico", David adds; "The two places where Imperial soldiers were once abundant, Wal-Mart and Dollar Tree, have not had soldiers on their pegs with any regularity since the transition."

Another, slightly older (?) Imperial set with a mix of the old, much pirated Tim Mee GI's, which I've always liked as they are 100% depicting the Vietnam era, along with some mof the more modern-looking GI types, straight outta' China! Colours are donor-specific, so it's Vietnam v's Gulf!

This is one of the more current generics, which we've seen a few of, in recent years here, however these are interesting for being the ones I've only shown as an online image, courtesy of Amazon or Ali Baba, and are the figures where each comes with his own larger-based scenic vignette of street-furniture or defence work! I will get them out and look at them properly once I'm settled.

Another generic, but this time a 1970/80's original, useful for being the copies of Britains/Lone Star swoppet Wild West, another long term project is to try and ascribe as many of these as possible, and while they are dead-common in lose lots, they are always mixed-up by the juvenile original owners, and sets like this help you work out which is which, as far as base-type, ethylene or PVC body parts or accessories, or even poses are concerned. Credited to a Triple D importer/Jobber.

 

These look to be the current (ish) copies/homages of Supremes hearald'esque Wild West, now credited to DL / Du Liang Toys (previousl;y Maxxi Toys, Stobok, Funtastic, Aliki, Liberty Imports and PMS-McColls), and consist of just the foot figures with a play-mat in that strangely metallic, slightly crinkley plastic.

 

I've also left this in the bag for now, as I've never seen one over here, and I don't think Steve Weston has them either, so I'm guessing these are a US 'show exclusive' whereby AIP (Armies in Plastic) get to shift end of line, over production or test-shots in mixed bags at an affordable price?

There's Colonial/Boxer rebellion, some ACW, WWI and a few Marlburian/AWI types I think, and a nice introductory sample to AIP's stuff, of which I don't have a lot, and what I do have is mostly WWI, I think.

There were also these lose AIP figures, which I know I didn't have, sold variously as Gulf War Infantry, Marines and US Peacekeepers, depending on the plastic colour, each in a set A and set B, of six poses each. I think these are the former two, and between them seem to be all the poses*, which some other-colour duplicates, so again a nice sample, and they are - undeniably - very nice sculpts, well animated.

 

It's not that I ignore this new stuff out of some misguided principle, but simply that A) there's so much else to find of either a vintage or more ephemeral (rack toy) nature, B) it's priced to sell-to, and does sell to adult collectors, so will probably always be around, in quantity, and C) as new production, it does get covered-well, elsewhere, not least Plastic Warrior magazine, but all samples are gratefully received nevertheless.

 

And many thanks to David for all the above, and the previously-seen Halloween bits, that's two additions to the Tag list . . . and archive too; DL and Triple D!

P is for Peterkin - 4 of 4 - New Purchases

OK, so, probably the best post of the four, as we get a bit closer to them, and they are three new sets! These were a few quid each, so I grabbed the three different ones I saw, and they are not carrying the contents of the sets we've looked at earlier this morning!

The My Farm (possibly the least original title for a set of rack toy farm animals ever!) seems to contain a set of totally different sculpts from the bucket, the Dog World hints at a Cat World, which I would have bought in preference if it had been there, but it wasn't, and it may just be wishful thinking on my part? While we have a set of soldiers, looked at properly, below!

 

The dogs are nicely executed, but let down by a rather nondescript colour scheme, with the dogs moulded in either a white or mid-tan polymer, but then decorated in black or a brown of the same shade? But they seem to be new sculpts, although - famous lasts words - they may well turn-out to be copies of Schleich or Papo or someone like that.

It's one of the big jobs in my future, sorting all this farm-zoo-bird-sea life-insect-dinosaur stuff out, and attributing it all properly, but hopefully when I get stuck into the A-Z blogs properly, it will all come together better, for now, we look at this stuff just to help ID some of it!

The horse has a rather daft face (the bucket horse is much better) but the rest of the set is reasonably good, and well decorated for the price-point/rack-toy type, while a smaller bag is stapled into the larger carrier, with the poultry in it, clearly they are a separate tool and get passed across the factory-floor after decoration/sorting!

 

The military set contains 16 figures around 54/60mm (depending on the pose), and they seem to be copies of the New Ray figures (which must be 20+years old now), but the quality of them suggests they may be from the New Ray tool, I won't be able to say until I've compared them all . . . 'them' being several other sets of clones, along with the originals!

 

They are numbered on the underside of the base (or the belly of the prone figure), which will also help with the tool comparison, and are that 'first' Gulf War (liberation of Kuwait) uniform style, US GI's. As you can see, cavity 5 is closer to 70mm if he stands up!

 

So that's Peterkin given more coverage that they probably deserve in one day, but nice to see someone importing that amount of cheap pocket-money stuff these days!

P is for Peterkin - 3 of 4 - Shelfies

If you happen to be within comfortable driving distance of Borden in Hampshire, there is a Peterkin motherlode to be mined in the big Farm Shop there (Malthouse and Osborne Farms, Country Market, Garden Centre, Farm Shop & Shopping Village), along with a lot of Siku and Maisto farm stuff! It's only ten-minutes up the road from Bird World too, or five minutes from the Monkey thing at Alice Holt!

The farm sets take up a fair bit of the shelf space, as farm is the main theme with all the stocked toys, at a Farm Shop! I did purchase some Peterkin (next post) but the bagged farm had very different contents/sculpts from the big tub (which was only £8.99, but I was feeling tight, and don't have the room right now), so they are obviously using different sources in China, for these sets.

Wild/zoo animals and dinosaurs again.

 

Both the farm and wild animals sets in these tubs share the quirk of the dinosaur sets in having the bulky, paint-decorated animals filled-out with smaller-scale 'monobloks' in bright colours of polymer, and all the animals seem to be PVC-types, but the scenic accessories are polyethylene or polypropylene?

And the medieval set was there.

These are the sets which have managed four previous mentions in the Tag List, not something for me, I think I called them Juvenilia last time! And when they have come in, in mixed lots, they have gone back to charity soon-enough, but someone may be interested (some of our fellow collectors chase Lego or Playmobil after all?), and they are figural, if a bit daft, so I shot them, and they are here now!

P is for Peterkin - 2 of 4 - Spring Fair '23

A few weeks after the London Toy Fair in January, I went to the Spring Gift Fair in Birmingham, at Peter Evans' advising, and - for rack toys - it was probably better than the Olympia show, certainly Peterkin had a much better stand, and I shot more there. I should add, I've not managed any of the Trade Fairs this year!

A bit blurred!

Those dragons!

The tower

 

Only more of the same, and I nearly posted them altogether, but as I'm likely to do the Gift Fair more regularly, thought I'd tag it separately, so two posts were the result, and while only the two tubs were out on display at both shows, a year-and-a-half ago, there were a farm and zoo set in tubs, and the next post will show how the line has expanded since.

P is for Peterkin - 1 of 4 - Toy Fair '23

Seems to have been all the 'P's this month, sometimes that how the cookie crumbles! A quick look at Peterkin, who were founded in the 1950's as W.J.Brown (Toys) Ltd., and changed their name to Peterkin in 1995, probably at the changing of the generations (?), and who have managed to get their Tag in the list four times so far, mostly for younger kid's toys.

 

 

We actually looked at these in the Supreme mini-season, back in '22 where they were generics off of that Amazon, after previously being under the Toy Major label, currently here in Peterkin packaging, and the best way to get them if you haven't yet, as you get both foot and mounted with siege engines, along with two dragons and a tower.

 

While there was also a dinosaur set on display with a mix of larger, decorated models, and smaller 'monobloc' types in brighter-coloured plastics. I know where you can get these in the Central Southeast (forthcoming post), but they should be findable on-line, as everything is on-line . . . Somewhere!

R is for Real Rack Toys!

Possibly concerned by the lack of rack-toys in Rack Toy Month here at Small Scale World, Peter Evans and Brian Berke both sent me rack toy images on the same day, earlier in the week just gone, and here they are! There are some more in the queue, and I'll try to get them out this week, by holding the PW show-report stuff 'till September; welp - better late than never!

This was the one from Peter, and he's kept one for me, so we'll have a closer look at it another day, for now, suffice to say they are Britains Deetail copies, in the same vein as those from 'H', Webb's Supertoy, or Kwong Wah, and something we will have to properly sort-out one day! The accessories are cloned from the much-licenced Crossbow & Catapults game.

20-11-2024 - Now here and in the queue, issuer is Arty & Mell S.L., of Madrid.

 

This is probably the most useful one from Brian, imported by JMC Allstar, and the picture on the back shows even more in the range, not least a very useful-looking HO-compatible building of the lineside/railway type (top left of the lower picture), some useful scenics and a towed artillery piece in a very 1:32nd-compatable size, taken from New Ray I think?

 

More aimed at infants, but construction vehicle collectors may be interested?

An oddity;  from a Xinleyang it says 'Fruit Cash Register', but contains an assortment of doll's furniture and a small, lilac, fantasy fort, with a Funko-style/headed doll! Artwork is all a bit retro with a Strawberry Shortcake vibe!

There's a fish, crab and lobster!

Novelty figural, magnetic puzzle.

The rest are from Hunson (and JPW/OKK), who haven't had a new entry in the tag list for a while now; Brian pointed out that it's been a while since he's found new Rack Toys to show us (but in fact ha has sent a few in recent donations).

 

The farm and wild animals, along with the unicorn (a My Little Pony rip-off?) are quite juvenile/cutesie sculpts, although the muntjac (?) and baby elephant both look passable, however, the sea life set appears to have more realistic mouldings overall, which, if that genre is your 'thing' should be a must for the wants list, if you haven't found them yet.

 

Many thanks to both contributors for these, and they are all out there, now, somewhere, it's just a matter of tracking them down, in a market that seems to have little place for them these days. I will try and get a sea-side visit in, over the next few weeks to see what can still be found there, as Brian had some success in that direction a few years ago?