M is for Mixed Magnanimity Mound

I know! But after nearly 20-years, even the thesaurus starts to fail you! It's a charity lot; soon after the last posting in this vein, I popped into a couple of the charity shops in Fleet and managed to come away with five things of vague interest, and these are they!

 

Another duck! It wasn't until a guest post back in 2012, that I had fully appreciated the whole sub-branch of ducks, since when I've probably added as many ducks to my own stash as were in that post, with a similar range of sizes and materials, they are - in the most part - real tourist kiosk/gift-shop/overpriced 'boutique' type stock, but they are fun, and one day we'll look at them all together!

 

A teeny-tiny hedgehog, which is so small it can keep the [believed to be] Playmobil one company! And a gape-mouthed, Chinasaur, rubber-jiggler, who may well be from the same set as the one Chris sent, which we saw here a few days ago? There were several sets of these sculpts, back in the day, and they occasionally still turn-up, so, hard to age.

 

A slipware porcelain cat, probably a fairing, or cheap, corner-shop/local hardware store ornamental, I thought the colouring of the glaze was quite good, even if it has a rather daft face with anthropomorphised eyes!

 

I think these would have been called Empathy Counters, and while you don't seem to be able to get this exact set any more, there are several other similar sets, and these five mouldings are still found in a larger early learning/maths/coordination set, in a yellower yellow!

 

From Edx Education, they fill the same role as that old set I was pleased to track-down a few years ago, or the Houghton Mifflin stuff in the 'States, and gets five more animals in six colours into the stash! Made of 'eraser' rubber, they would be mistaken for such, if not known.

D is for Dastardly Duckies!

Haahaa! I've found the missing Halloween post, so there will be one more sometime this afternoon or this evening, I got the images sorted in the early hours, but still have to do the blurb, however I have important stuff to do first! In the meantime this was the last of the pre-loaded posts . . .

A quickie, but fun, I had a Girlfriend/Lover about 20-years ago, who had a thing for Rubber Ducks and I managed to buy a shed-load for her one Christmas or Birthday which got me brownie-points! Colour Change, Glow-in-the-Dark, some character ones, possibly Hawkin's Bazaar (Tobar) as I seem to recall starting with a/the 'basic' net of five and then adding one-each from pick-bins?

Brian Berke shot these in a store a few weeks ago, and took a picture for us . . .

. . . then decided Grandson might like them in his bath so went back and purchased a few, taking more shots for the Blog!

What can I add? Supplied by FLP (Frontline Products) of Arizona, the Ghoul Essentials line of Halloween Rubber Ducks and they look to be about 60-mil by 70-mil, with paint variations - the 'Frankie' on a hook has different paint from the close-upped Frankie.

I know some people love these, they have dedicated collectors, they've been tracked across the oceans of Planet Earth, they are figural, they are Halloween related and one of the best, quirkiest Blogs I used to link to was 'Duck a Day' which showed - over time - thousands of these, and a few other non- 'rubber duckie' ducks, sadly it ran out of steam and disappeared down the link-list, before vanishing altogether, but we've got four different ones here today, so a big thanks to Brian and enjoy!

P is for Postponed Posts, Poultry and Pottering About!

Right, real life is going to make increasing in-roads for a while, it won't stop me posting, but some of the stuff penciled in for December will probably slide into the new year, other stuff won't happen and I'll pick at what's hanging around here half-done!

It's a pain, yet I can hardly claim 2020's been a vintage year, but I was hoping after a slow late-summer/autumn to pull a few stops out at the end; that probably won't happen now. A joint 'season' with Brain B has almost certainly gone for a Burton's, but I'll try to work at it for January, a space mini-season with another contributor will probably now be a single follow-up and plans for Santa's & Snowmen will wait for next year, but I have some Nativity in the can, which I'll try to get finished in the moments available!

I think I've mentioned before that increasingly I'm going for thematic/subject matter sorting of the collection, rather than maker/scale, and to that end one of the early subjects was the whole bird-world and poultry sector!

These are all the recent acquisitions (last 9-months or so), and some will have been seen before in H is for . . . 's, but getting them together to take to the relevant boxes in the loft was an excuse for another picture!

Clockwise in a spiral from the top left we have; a terracotta owl ornament, a probably French key-ring (wine and cockerels? It's not Barnsley!), a modern China goose in PVC, crappy HK turkey, British duck (Britains or Hillco? Another day!), Kinder flamingo, Crescent family group, a very-solid piece of - possibly cast iron - metal duck (modern), then a blow-moulded swan (probably from a Hong Kong doll's set), larger blow-moulded novelty duck, a green bird which could be an Indian Runner duck or a stretching goose, but is - I think - supposed to be a penguin and finally a novelty 'rubber ducky' in blue, probably a cracker or gum-ball capsule machine prise, also blow-moulded.

I'm actually building quite a group of those miniaturised bath-ducks! They were/are - along with swan sets -  a popular novelty and I've seen carded 'families' in different sizes.

With them were these wooden flats (from Peter Evans I think?) which I left in the bag for a reason, as I was pretty sure I'd another one!

As I was taking them up, I found another, a rather nice cockerel who could be that French/Portuguese family of PVC products being the same stiff material, but from the eyes I think he is a newer cartoon character by someone like Phidal?

When I took them up, I found the similar pickings from last year/early this year were sat on top of the stack waiting the 'full-sort', which was probably when I got the idea for this thematic post! And there was the other wooden flat!

Snaking down we have a pair of modern Chinese ducks, one large one small; we've seen these before, both from my collection and a contributor and they are always well painted - like owls, there is a sub-hobby who only collect these ornamental ducks.

The standing mallard-type is ceramic and probably a fair-ground prize or 'fairing', below him another well painted model of a goose (or non-UK-native swan?), another ceramic owl, a chewed 'chook', two more duckies, one a pink blow-mould, the other a 'proper' rubber duck with squeaker and key-chain hook and finally a moulten-glass sculpture which may be a duck with a broken upper beak, or some kind of tropical toucan thing? Always listed by hopeful evilBayers as Murano, they rarely are and I tend to pick them up in Charity shops for 50p

"Revenge of the Giant Chickens! Opens Bank-Holiday Monday, in a theatre near you! Be amazed, be shocked, and be sure to buy a choc-ice during the intermission!"

Quickly brought together, these are from larger Erzgebirge-style sets, and similar stuff exists in most countries, but from her garb I suspect some Eastern import, probably between the wars . . . Poland or Czechoslovakia?

I think I may have other animals (pigs/sheep) from the same set somewhere, and you do see them in rummage-trays at the 'London'  toy soldier shows in among the ratted hollow-cast, we imported a lot of Christmas decorations from both countries in that period, and we seem to have shipped-in a few of these!

E is for Eggtastic Eggstravaganda of Erzatz Easter Eggs

After the conservative nature of stone eggs, we're looking at all sorts in this post, as faux eggs or decorative eggs like other collectable miniature 'favourites'; frogs, bears, rabbits, owls, cats & dogs, barrels, pigs, elephants, turtles & tortoises, hedgehogs, gnomes, and - these days - bloody meerkats (seemples!), they come in all sorts of materials and sizes, and various things can be disguised as 'them'.

So we'll start with the oddest, an egg timer, perhaps not so odd but rather obvious! I bought this in Lidl years ago as a present for my mother (who's just celebrated her 80th!), while I bough myself a cow (to match my - free from Argos with my works van petrol points card - mookie sandwich-maker!), but they had several other designs, once you have a standard mechanism for a decorative but practical item, it's a matter of imagination and its limits as to how many versions you chuck-out . . . note to self; must look out for soldier (probably guardsman) egg-timer! Or robot?

Shot with it is the original 'Faux Egg'; a basic ceramic (in this case bisque) egg, used on the farm to keep a broody-hen sitting until you can get some fertilised eggs under her. This one is hollow, but I've seen solid clay or earthenware ones, and even glazed ceramics.

These wooden ones ('Treen') probably served the same purpose as the ceramic one in the previous shot, but could just as easily be 'apprentice pieces', showing skill with the turning or carving and sanding of wood. I feel that an apprentice piece would probably have a better grain with contrasting colours or some interesting feature or something and these are just for hen's nests?

As they are painted it's hard to tell if these are wood or papier mâché underneath? What is clear however is that three of them follow a trope, in that while they came from different places at different times, and are painted by different artists on slightly different-shaped eggs; they all have a song-bird on one side and a crested hoopoe (or something!!) on the other.

I think they are oriental, and there will be more to them; culturally speaking, some tradition with an attached story or something? The floral/geometric, salmon-pink one is about half the size (bantam egg) in real life, but was cropped to fit!

Equally colourful, but a cheaper technology (who says progress has to mean better? 'Progress' is only inevitable, directional but not necessarily an improvement!), these litho-printed tin ones would have had a small toy or confectionary in them in the same vein as Christmas crackers, and pre-date Kinder by decades!

By my childhood they were being replaced by decorative paper-veneered, 'stock-card' eggs (there's a larger one which would have held a full-size chocolate egg - as a card 'box' - in storage so we will return to these again one day) and now - as we know - have been replaced completely by plastic gift eggs, available all year round.

I think the cat's probably slightly earlier (overall quality) and I like that the rabbit is painting a giant egg, on a tin egg that might have contained mini chocolate or sugar-candy eggs!

These might actually be trying to be acorns, but they were with the other eggs, so I shot them all together! The larger one is for a pot, the smaller one for a single-cup serving and they are charged with tea-leaves and used to infuse the hot water to make tea! Both are plated brass.

Coming back to ceramic for a full circle on this post, we have a stenciled 'Blue & White' pattern china egg sitting in a 'Red & White' pattern china egg-cup which is transfer-printed - the reason model kits have transfers not 'decals' (whatever they are - some Franco-American, Cajun-Quebecois, I wouldn't be surprised to learn!), the water-slide transfer being historically much older than the model-kit!

The china egg may even be from China, but it's a modern one (you can tell by the less defined or fuzzy edges of the colour) and there is an attempt at a crackle glaze - created by flicking damp sawdust at the items while they are in the oven.

Y is for Yee-Hah!

I mentioned the Ertl Farm Country range the other day, so we may as well look at my small sample. Like the die-casts I shot them with on that post, they are sculpted to the relatively unique (some modern Japanese and 'China' stuff is to the same size) American 'large' HO of/or 1:64th scale.

This is what I have of the Rodeo, the full set was quite nice with stalls, arena and bleachers (what they call temporary stands or scaffold & plank seating in the States), this is a fair sample, the bucking base for the bull went the way of all flesh, and the seated figures aren't represented...but I might have sorted them into the 'Unknown Seated Civilians' box before I knew what they were?

There were also lots of more standard farm sets, and here are a few animals from them, along with studies of the Rodeo bulls and horse. The vagaries of scale, mean that the calves would actually make nice dairy cattle on a European (or any!) true HO model railway layout, the Rodeo animals, long-horns and adult dairy cows are far to big, but could be used with 28mm role play set-ups. Also a close-up of the bases for this range - where present.

A couple of the cards, these being with pigs on the left; a very disappointing set of eight identical animals with identical paint, and the other much better value with a figure, six piglets, some poultry and a really nice dog; is it a coon hound? I think it's meant to be.

Q is for Quack, Quack-quack...Quack-quack-quack!

I call Ducks Quack-quacks, so this little lot had to be 'Q', only taken into the collection today, I was going to cop-out with something quadrupedal! I found them in a local charity shop (Shelter, if you're wondering), no price and I can't tell you what they cost as they had whatever was in my pocket as shrapnel, over four quid, because the shopkeeper counted the four and threw the rest in the counter tub for another charity!

The lot included a porcelain goose which might be Wade but is a bit small, and too well painted (for Wade) and a resin chick for a tit-bird (non-native, so I can't give more, like a colourful long-tailed or grey-tit!) both of which have gone in the TBS (to be sorted) box, where they will be joined by these as soon as this is up. But I'd like to ID these if anyone has a clue.

All ducks, the large one (top right) is terracotta, hollow (slip-cast?) and not so needful for putting a name to, but the others aught to be identifiable, and are within the scope of the collection, being a clay or composition duck (bottom left) and a set (or part-set) of dark brown or black plastic ducks, not much bigger than 1:32, and usable with Britains farm figures.

I say part-set with a question mark as there are three pairs as far as mouldings go and two singles, I suspect there should be ten - 5 pairs. I thought they might be Marx, but they are unmarked, I'm assuming Hong Kong, and the sort of thing Marx would have sourced over there and sold on a card as an adult collectable for cabinets or mantle-shelves. Google is no help, nor is STS on this one, so if anybody knows these; let the rest of us know.

The composition duck also failed the STS search, being too small for Elastolin or the other obvious candidates, and as I say, I'm not sure what it's made out of, and with total paint coverage I can't do my usual exploratory scrape-test! Again; if you recognise it, please comment.

V is for Vitacup

Those animals I was asking for help with the other week...Vitacup! Someone else asked the same question on an animal forum the other day, and they already knew something about them and had a name for them, so after a quick Google enough of the bare-bones fell into place to stick them up here and drop them in a 'finished' file!

Vitacup was the second attempt by Rowntree's of York (later Rowntree-Macintosh to grab a slice of the fortified cocoa-drinks (beverage) market between the wars. The previous attempt - called Fortak - had failed against Bornville's Bornvita and Fry's Malted Milk around 1933 and was withdrawn. Rowntree came back with Vita-Cup (quickly losing the hyphen) to fight a new battle with Ovaltine and Horlicks in the mid-to-late 30's.

This must have had some success as it seems to have hung around until fairly recently as the Australian arm; Robinson's (of the Barley Water), applied for a new trademark in 1985 (application no. 423440 R & C Products - Ricket & Coleman?) although it was never taken-up and has now lapsed.

In the UK it was marketed under the Coleman's (mustard)/Wincarnis label as Rowntree were advised they should retain their affiliation to gums and jellies, and not hot beverages by their advertising/marketing advisor; J. Walter Thompson. There is one more name involved...Bryden & Evelyn were the agents, who organised the day to day adverts in newspapers and magazines and handled distribution.

Thomson are now JWT, one of the biggest branding firms in the business, Bryden & Evelyn have disappeared (along with the Wincarnis works) and Unilever seem to own everything else!

They seem to have been issued in two sets, woodland and domestic animals, in blue and white matchbox type boxes titled 'Vitacup Ivorene Animals' - presumably found in the jar or tin of Vitacup - of which the above are all samples.

They are not Ivorene, they are a polystyrene in an ivory shade of white which can look pink, cream or grey depending on the light as can be seen above. Ivorene was actually trademarked to someone else and was a thermo-set plastic along the lines of Bakelite, although like Hoover, it became a generic noun which is still in use by the costume jewellery trade to this day for various polymers.

A second series was issued; the new 'Wildlife' series, again examples are above, the pelican below was from this series as well as an Impala with vicious looking horns which I have yet to track down.

Several of these animals bear a striking resemblance to Siku animal premiums, but others are completely different, I used to think they were Siku supplied but know I'm wondering if they weren't a UK produced product?

 

The rest of my sample, there is a 3rd much larger horse still to find, a prone sheep and another lamb. Whether the dogs were part of a third series I don't know, and I think I've seen a hen/chicken type. And while I've photographed all the birds together the Pelican was from the Wildlife series and I suspect the stork is too.

Google also seemed to suggest that a second issue of both series came at some point with airbrushed brown as a sort of 'antiqued' effect/staining. The bulldog always seems to have a collar painted in that pale cream yellow, being the only one to get paint otherwise.

When you Google vitacup animals as an image search , something funny happens; as you scroll down the page you keep seeing...

...the three wise monkeys, now I couldn't find out any more than I've covered above, which was - admittedly - less than an hours work! But I wonder if the myriad algorithms of Google know something I don't. namely; that the monkeys were some sort of brand logo at some point, and maybe after these 'Ivorene' sets, they issued more 3-monkey items as premiums? The three moneys above were definitely part of the blue and white boxed series, yet don't really fir in with the domestic and woodland animals that made-up that series, so...? It may - of course - just be that Google's algorithms are confusing threewise for vitacup?

Finally a scaler, some of them must have rattled around in the box a bit! There are two distinct sculpting styles; a realistic look, which is most of them, and a stylised 'carved' effect, most noticeable on the two fawns/deer, the two elephants and the missing lamb, also - to a lesser extent - on the lioness, cat and rhino. It's also showing on the flanks of the bison which was described as a wisent or European bison.

Then there is the flat in legs as oposed to fully-round legs, it would seem that at least two or possibly three sculptors were employed on this small range (33 known items, one too big for the boxes; missing horse). Does anyone know who they were?

We also need to know when Vitacup was available, or at least when these promotions ran? What other animals were there in these series'? What other premiums were there? Were they available in Europe? Did they ever get to Australia? Are they Siku's? How have we lost so much in the 'information' age?!...Doh!

D is for Ducks! Flying Ducks

There was a funny little facsista from the North of Italy (where else!) who used to knock-about on the small scale forums, who once - while losing yet another point/argument with the more sensible members of the forum - suggested I was A) less than heterosexual and B) blogged toy ducks for a hobby! Well at the time he was wrong on both counts, and while I do re-post the odd bit of pro-gay stuff on 'the' Facebook (tolerance - it's just common sense isn't it?) he is still wrong about the first point.

On the second point however he's been right for a while, I seem to remember a duck sneaking in to a post some time ago...well, you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb...

Three of 'em! These are painted metal 'Flying Ducks' from Barratt and Sons (or; the Barretts of Sonderburg Road N7, to be accurate), designed for dolls houses in about 1:12 scale, or the 6-inch figure size, that's it really ducks, flying...or 'Ducks in Flight' to be accurate!

But to people from a certain age (or area?) they will always be Flying Ducks, my grandparents up on the North Notts/Yorks boarder had a set scooting across the living-room wall, along with the matching marshland wallpaper (with mallards) in the bathroom and a clothes brush disguised as an Indian Runner. Note the similarity to the Britains 'B'.

They've gone; the ducks and the grandparents, but this little set reminded me of them, unfortunately it also reminded me of 'folgor', but that's life...sweet and sour!

D is for Duck! - It's all-right; they're stationary.

Giving my mate Shane a lift home this weekend, we dropped into a friend of his to check out something he's waiting on (his blog; Diary), he's on the same CAD course as me, and his friend Paula had more than two of something and as we all know - more than two of something is a collection!

The puffin and turkey are clearly interlopers, and most of them have some sentimental value or carry the associative memory of a visit somewhere while the small terracotta one was made by one of the daughters of the family - I well remember making a rabbit at Heckfield Village/Primary School before it was converted into yuppie-flats by Thatcher! I've kept them relativity the same size and clicking on the image will enlarge them.

The largest is no more than about 5cm, with the smallest one (inset - carved malachite) about 10mm. What intrigued me about them was that there is clearly a market for people all over the place to make small ducks, one sort of expects bears, pigs, hedgehogs, rabbits and the like and I know of several owl collectors and a couple of frog people, but it seems ducks have a fan base also! What do you collect on that spare shelf...send us a picture and I'll put it/them up here.

W is for Wooden Wildlife

From time to time the odd piece come into the collection which either defies labelling or is so exquisite you feel it should be in a museum cabinet not one of my little plastic bags, here are on or two, the largest item is probably the snake, with the Airfix 'control' a near match, so all very small.

The two images top left show little animals of an Asian look, probably Indian or Burmese? I suspect some sort of votive or other little religious ornament, but they may have enough 'age' to be export items from the days of the Raj? Maybe from a little zoo set, Noah's ark or for use as dolls-house ornamentals? Although in support of the religious possibility - some are slightly fantastical looking or mythic.

The Bear is typical Black Forest craft work, but about as small as they come and of very fine work, as is the cow. Given that it is probably another craft piece, it shows an incredible knowledge of anatomy, even a 'love' of the animal form, it seems to have lost two - probably paper - ears and two horns, which will need to be replaced with steam-bent cocktail-stick tips.