P is for Plastic Glass!

Sort of a 'part three', but not really connected to the previous two, which dealt with the 1950/60's stuff, these are the more common stuff from the 1970/80's, and will be quite recognisable to most of you, and really no more than an overview of the other plastic 'vitrines' out there.

 

I sorted the Tags out last night, and 'Glassware' covers everything made of glass from marbles up, but not these, 'Vitrines' covers the real glass versions of these, and they will also have the Glassware tag, while 'Glass Animals' will cover both these plastic ones and the glass ones, so these will have the latter Tag only, marbles will get Glassware only, and real glass animals will have all three Tags, which will hopefully help someone in the future, get the right search-results up?

 

A nice set of six from Hans Postler over the Channel, they are better known, to us, from their many sets of rack-toy soldiers, more in keeping with the main thrust of the Blog, but that this is here, reminds us most of these guys were general 'Toy & Novelty' importers/wholesalers, and would turn their hands to anything they thought they could make a small profit on, and, these are probably 1980's, or later?

 

These have more the look of the '70's about them, and they have tree-hanger rings in them, so there you go, get a daft-looking mouse hung for the festive season! But, you know, if you can't afford the glass ones, because you have some shitty, underpaid job, and live on a trailer-park, and you see these going cheap in the local gas station, or drug store, why not, if only for the kids?

 

Kids aren't snobs, now, I am a bit of a snob, specifically on Christmas decorations, but I was raised to be so, by my late, and much missed mother, who had her own reasons for being like that; Nuns, an even stricter mother and an Edwardian upbringing!

 

'The sins of the Fathers . . .', 'The child is the father of the man'  and all that! There is always a truism in old sayings, wives tales and aphorisms. The tragedy is that somehow, 70-years of progressive democrats, totally failed to educate enough idiots, as to what they were trying to do, and we now have enough Morlocks and Yahoos, who don't get 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel', and they are giving justification to the Trumps, Farages and Le Penns of intolerance?

 

Just as we need the World to come together like never before, the warmongers, climate-deniers, the superstitious, and the anti-science brigades, rise, like muddy, Ork scum from Isengard, to wreak the planet with their ignorance, and singularly selfish stupidity.

 

A knock off Snoopy, an elephant who's also a key-ring, two more of the cocktail glass donkeys, we saw in brown, last time, and a variation on the Hans Postler elephant. The HP set is basically the six commonest types (from experience; that may not be strictly true!).

 

Another elephant, slightly better (slightly earlier?), another mouse, and the deer we saw in one of the comparison shots a few weeks ago. The elephant, if cleaned would have that faux uranium-glass look to him, but I don't know if it's a transparent marker (like most of them) or dyed plastic, and fear if I cleaned him, he might lose all his original colour!

 

A swan and yet another mouse!

 

Two of the mieces, back to back, but not yet in pieces!

 

Two of the elephants, with a small rhinoceros, he's probably from a Christmas cracker, but could equally be a gum-ball, capsule-machine prize, or something from a Lucky-bag, this stuff tended to get around!

 

The Rhino', it's missing one of those crappy plastic key-rings, you press both ends of, to hook onto the plastic oblong which he has retained. Is it meant to be a woolly-rhino'?

 

Only came in recently, and a charm-loop suggests gum-ball or Christmas crackers again?

 

These are interesting, Bam Bam and Pebbles, from the Flintstones, both larger sculpts to, they seem to have been taken from the sort of PVC stuff Bully and Comics Spain might have been issueing, he's holding a club behind his back!

 

While these are equally interesting for having been taken from a set of dogs, which we may have seen here in more realistic colours, as polyethylene toys, but here in the same clear 'canopy' 'styrene, enhanced with transparent coloured marker-pen! We'll look at proper glass ones next!

P is for Perfect Polymer Propine - Everything Else!

So to the rest of Theo's donation to the Blog, and it's quite an eclectic mix of civilian subjects, vehicular stuff, and bits & bobs, including several rarities and some quirkier things, alongside items which will definitely contribute to future posts.

 

Hong Kong copies of the old Triang Minic naval models, most useful, as these are often found in a pretty play-worn condition, so having things like masts included increases the chances of completing models from the tub of examples one day! Although I have lots of the relatively indestructible tug-boats, they keep turning-up with paint variations, or as 2nd generation copies in different plastic colours or with different funnel arrangements, so it's a sample which continues to grow and evolve!

 

This was a lovely surprise, these are TV Tinykins from Marx, of the Yabba-Dabba Flintstones! And, I think I'm right in saying, among the harder to find Tinykins, also used as Miniature Masterpiece set pieces?

 

Now, I'm sure this is Thomas, and a baby . . . Obviously! But, is it one of the more generic rubber babies, they issued with various pieces of playground equipment, dolls stuff, prams, and other novelties, with a randomly tied terry-towel nappy, or is it a certain Super Baby, namely Kal-El, from the planet Krypton? There seems to be something formal, or designed about that scallop at the front of his nappy (diaper)? Does anyone know?

 

This chap would appear to be an advertising premium for Alia (?), possibly a beer (or Bier!), and maybe Dutch or Belgian? But I couldn't find anything on Google, and while it looks like they had a keyring screw & eye'd through the hat, even that isn't clear, so any help with this chap?

 

Do you remember the Spanish Guisval motorcycle rider we saw, with the help of Chris Smith a few years ago? Well here's two more Guisval die-cast accessory figures, both probably missing tools for their ring-hands, and probably motor mechanics (right, is he hitting an alternator with a hammer?!) or Farmers (left?), but very nice finds, and lovely gifts from Theo. Both have basic 'swoppet' tropes, with swivel waist and neck and separate hair, but the legs/bases of both are metal die-castings

 

As they become increasingly brittle, due to age, you can never have too many 'Eye's Right' bits from Britains, so these will go in the parts tub, while the headless Weeble lookie-likey is a much earlier, probably 1950's, novelty.

 

Bits of a Goldilocks set, similar to that Emenee-Transogram-generic set, but not the same sculpts, with Goldilocks possibly being from a different set. Indeed, all the components may be from three or four sources, but they go together well!

 

The 'modern' polystyrene girl, possibly polypropylene bears, unstable phenolic table & chair and early brittle 'styrene bowl, will however, furnish useful imagery, with other stuff already in the Odds & Sods zones, in a future post, as these are part of a much larger narrative.

 

The chair with heart-shaped cut-out in the back, was in the Emenee et el., sets, it's also found in Marx Miniature Masterpiece sets, Hong Kong sets of Goldilocks and other sources of miniature Fairy Tail or dolls accessories/novelties, and I have been collecting imagery for years on them, and samples (we've seen several versions of the chair here, over the years), so a future post is a certainty!

 

Having already mentioned Marx twice - these were an amazing thing to find in a donation, the Rolykins of Batman and Robin 'The Boy Wonder', small steel ball-bearings underneath cause them to fly around on flat surfaces with the appearance of frictionless motion! We have also seen World Cup Willie and Daleks from the same line.

 

Blue Box et al., mini-farm pieces.

 

Odds! A near complete piece of corner flower-bed, from Hong Kong after Britains, a nice (European make?) pig to be ID'd, a Hong Kong Highlander and hollow-horsed, small-scale Wild West.

 

What looks like a pair of 'walker' ducks feet, a rubber-band launched glider, parts for a cap-bomb or two (or is the blue nose a babies bottle top?), a Manurba (or Bonux) Sherman Tank barrel, parts of a Jig Toy ocean liner (but it would have been a more generic novelty in Europe, maybe De Gryter?), a mini pipe, and other novelties which will all be sorted into the correct places, for building wholes from parts!

 

The Chinese tangram puzzle pieces will join a load more from Christmas crackers &etc, but is here branded to Vitella (powdered puddings?), as - presumably - a premium/free-gift. The four discs may be from some sort of firing toy, UFO launcher or 'ray-gun' (anyone recognise them?), while the composite seems to be the winding mechanism of a small kite?

 

Many, many thanks to Mr Van de Weerden for everything he sent to the Blog, I am incredibly grateful for his generosity, he was going through the mill himself, and that he thought of me and put all this to one side, was an act of some selflessness . . . Thank you, very much, Theo!

Y is for Yabba Dabba Doo!

Who knew, who knew it had double-B's, who even thought to think of knowing you might have to spell-check yaba-daba-do? But there you go, the World's favourite allegory of the 1950's,  middle-class, suburban, American 'nuclear-family'? Actually the world's ONLY allegory of the 1950's,  middle-class, suburban, American 'nuclear-family', but I'm not splitting hairs!

Imperial Toys, these are a hard polystyrene, and hugormous, as we will see in a mo'. A ridiculously sublime exemplar of everything weird about my life alongside the rest of humanity in the late 20th/early 2st centuries. It makes absolutely no sense, is full of plot holes, anachronisms and plain idiocy, yet, it is absolutely perfect, and I don't know many people who actively dislike its daftness!

 

Marked Hong Kong and possibly cake-decorations, these are smaller and polyethylene. Fred and Wilma Flinstone and their neighbours Barney and Betty Rubble, live life as many american families were, or aspired to in the late 1950's, even to having cars, pets and salery-jobs . . . in a rock quarry, of course!

 

These are vinyl, and unmarked, so maybe knock-offs, or more recent playset stuff? Clearly based on the next lot down, but I've loaded them as I shot them. What would they make of the world we've created since, and I mean the people who watched as well as the characters!

Polyethylene copies (probably from the same tools) of the old Marx Minature Masterpiece set, these will almost certainly be from Rado Industries / Ri-Toys, but were not offered to the likes of Marksmen. Both Rabbit Angstrom and Willy Loman were, in their own ways the epitomes of Fred Flintstone, they both lived in and afforded (with troubles) the newish houses in suburbia, which they confidently hoped their kids' would, too.

 

Eraser to the left, Marx original to the right, as a sizer. Now, their kids can't get on the property ladder, and the longevity so sought 60-years ago, is the new millstone round the necks of people who have to sell those houses to afford healthcare over the pond, or 'downsize' for the cost of living, here?

 

Newer stuff from the eminently forgettable 'live-action' remake, along with a Bullyland Dino the Dinosaur - Wilma's been cut-off her base. But elsewhere in Europe, where they understand liberal-socialism, or social-responsibility, things are a little better, CEO's do not earn the same ridiculous amounts they do in the English-speaking world, healthcare is now usually better than Britain's, wages are higher and disparity is lower, while their old and infirm are cared-for, looked after.

 

Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, these are Imperial too. Done in a faux-vitrine style. All that promise, all that promise of a brave-new-world and a bright-tomorrow, built on the '"white heat of technology", and it's come to nothing for most, and the poverty index is climbing into the middle-class, even as we create more billionaires who've never done a day's hard work in their lives, either as aluminum-siding salesmen or rock-quarriers.

 

It's no coincidence that the Simpsons, knocked the Flintstones off their perch as the most financially successful and longest-running, network television, animated series ever, the gentle parody holding the hope of the former, replaced by the cynical, near-hopeless, satire of the latter.

F is for the Flintstone's Flyer!

I could have spent the last couple of hours chucking a few posts up here to blow the record, but I'm going to that anyway before the month is out (I think this post equals the record?), but I was sent a bunch of card buses earlier and said I'd go through P-Z looking for the last of mine, which I've just done, only, one of them wasn't a bus, by any stretch of the imagination!

Somebody called Cleo (the printers?) for a Thornycroft of Gerrards Cross (not the HGV manufacturer!), for a chocolate egg! Well, Cream Eggs and Cadbury's Mini-Eggs will be in the shops by next Tuesday, you know it and I know it!

 

Scale is all over the place, but realism doesn't have to come first when you have prehistoric men using dinosaurs as earthmovers! Also, the artwork on the three sides doesn't tie-in, as it has on the buses, so just a bit of fun!

Y is for Yabba-Dabba-Doo!

Here’s something nice for the festive season which doesn't include guns and stuff! Not that I don't post military stuff over Christmas but I like to try and keep it light, and it's a good excuse to Blog some of the more esoteric novelty stuff, and this is pretty esoteric and definitely a novelty!

Kohner's window (and door!) tray of the Flintstone Circus; they have grabby hands and feet giving them the stack-ability of Kleeware (and other)'s clownsand policemen, but with a circular grip allowing for stunts!

Nine main characters and a policeman in three colours of a pretty bog-standard, softish, polyethylene and while being semi-round/semi-flat caricatures, or at least accurate renditions of their cartoon personas, are also about 54/60mm, although with the kids and pets all the same size, it's really 'no scale'!

There also a bunch of chocolate-brown 'circus equipment' being half gymnasium stuff and half tricks with two drum plinths of the type you might have expected a man with a whip to be trying to get lions, tigers or elephants to stand on! The weightlifters barbell is made - appropriately - with rocks on either end, while the stool and a trapeze frame are in clip-together parts.

I only took one shot and it clearly looked better to the naked eye! It's a single pile of everything and everyone! So a bit of a box ticker and as they are now in storage; I will try to remember we need to return to them; in a year or two!

T is for Tatra, not the trucks from Czechoslovakia and not Rubinstein!

So a mystery solved, not by diligent research in the British Library, or months poring over old toy trade magazines, nor buy the serendipitous matching of a Littlewood's catalogue image with an old order form from Woolworth's or something like that, but by a simple comment I almost missed, written months after the original post had been published, and received with thanks from Gareth Callan;

Original Soldiers of the World Post

As soon as I had read Gareth's comment I Googled the firm - just to see if there was anything - and found that they are not only still going but have a website, a blog (with images of the original mouldings) and a fascinating history page which seems to involve them taking over most of the firms within a hundred miles of them in every direction over a number of years (decades!) and then moving the whole thing North!

Upper shot shows the footballers, these have bases like the Timpo ones but are a little smaller, they also seem to be the hardest to find of the main football types (Airfix, gold named-base, Timpo and pop-on based cake decorations) and when found are usually in the same cream as Airfix or the pinky-cream colour above.

Below are the Soldiers of the World in blue with two poses missing.

I contacted the company and received a kind reply from one of the staff, he has declined to enter detailed correspondence on the subject, a position I can understand as the company now is an extrusions company, very different from the injection moulding they were engaged in when they made these and so have little interest in what was probably a 'pin-money' earner for them more then 40 years ago. Consequently I won't name the individual but thank him for the images.

Also there may be very few people left in the factory who remember the fine details of what was happening "down south" all those years ago, but if Gareth could remember and comment, maybe someone else will...do you know anyone who worked at Tatra in the 1970's?, get them to drop a comment here and share their memories with the rest of us!

Some old shots left over from the previous post, showing the marking that clinches the British angle to these figures, they weren't supplied by Rubinstein, but to them!

The most interesting thing I learnt from the company spokesperson was that the moulds were finally sold only a few years ago (when the original owners retired?) to a plastics firm in South Africa, they couldn't remember the name of the firm, but anyone in SA, or with friends or family there might try to look out for them in the smaller shops or kiosks?

Tatra PR shot above and a few of mine - below - for the Magic Roundabout set, this was one of three sets of premiums issued for the iconic children's TV series of drug-infused madness; "Hey...anybody got a carrot maaaaannn..."

The other two were the bigger set (16 poses?) of very small ones issued all over Europe with gum, ice-cream or soap-powder and the larger based set probably made by Crescent - and like these; destined for Kellogg's Ricicles.

Finally the Robin Hood set complete, these appeared in large numbers a few years ago all in the same clean pale blue polyethylene, whether they were old stock or a quick run before the moulds were sold is not clear.

Obviously the original post has a few red-herrings now, as they weren't made in, for or by a pulping-mill on the North or South banks of the Thames or the Medway for starters!! But I'll leave it as it is with a link forward to this one - it is still one of the most popular posts with 40-odd visits today alone. And they may have been for a pulping-mill as the other connections hold vis-a-vis box supply, games etc...?

A couple of links;

Company History
Tatra Blog
More Tatra on this Blog

Known Listing;
 
Magic Roundabout Characters (c.1968) - Kellogg's Ricicles
- Brian the Neurotic Snail 
- Dougal Dog - The Sugar-rushed Worrier
- Dylan the Rabbit...the very, very spaced-out rabbit, man!
- Ermentrude the Cow, nice but dim.
- Florence
- Mr Rusty
- Old Mr McHenry
- Zebedee...that was all wrong...a talking bed-spring with a Mexican-mustachioed tumour for a head?

The Aristocats (c.1970) - Nabisco - Different set to the European gum-premiums, being larger, less poses and similar in execution to the Robin Hood figures.
 
Robin Hood (c.1970) - Nabisco
 
The Flintstones (c.1970) - Nabisco - See above link, were reissued in a soft vinyl.

Football Players (World Cup 1974) - ?

Warriors Through the Ages (c. 1975) - Various - See the original post for a fuller (but probably still not complete!) listing of the various 'to market' titles and dates for these.

S is for Stationery

This is the last of the pencil top stuff for a while - promise (you don't want to see the recent Weetabix football shirts and shite like that, do you!?), and as we were looking at the TV related stuff last time, some more of them first;

From left, top row; Skelator and She-ra (I think - Teela see; Comments) from the Masters of the Universe franchise, I was busy playing big soldiers in Germany (providing real-time OpFor for a couple of Soviet Shock Armies!) at the time MotU was popular so know little about it, I think it involved a grey skull or something! Then a soft vinyl Flintstone figure and a Hello Kitty cat differing from Miffi only in the shape and size of the ears...and the marketing budget! Strange how not only is Hello Kitty so like Miffi and the boys of South Park resemble the earlier Mainzelmännchen?

The flying Snowman of Raymond Briggs, and figure I think is Lucy (or the other one!) from Peanuts and a knock-off stupid kid wizard like Harry Potter.

Two characters from Rupert the Bear but I think the old git is from Popeye? A non-stationery frog (in love with a pig...since when was that sort of thing to be encouraged on kids TV?) trying to work out how he too can get a pencil up his arse and two of the dreaded Trolls that were literally everywhere in the mid-1970's...and still come around on a regular basis, these days Russ Berrie exploit the franchise, the two here are - like most of these toppers - Hong Kong.

Not Toppers; 'Clingers' and 'Holders', all Kinder with K-numbers from 2000 and 2004, I had to use the lids to show-off the 'holder action' as anything more than about a third of a wooden pencil is too heavy!

Finally the old and the new, both figural; The pencil sharpener is marked 'GERMANY' and dates from the 1950's (if it's a day) while the Sports Relief chap is currently in Ryman's. The Cowboy is that much copied pose originally by Lido and the like, both the sharpener and the Harry Potter lookie-like'ee above are polystyrene.

M is for Miscellaneous

A bit of a follow-up on previous posts and some new stuff, which came about after a follower; 'Gerhard' from Germany - sent me a few pictures the other day...

These are both from him, in the upper shot a handful of the Mundi/Dunkin type animals we looked at, ooh....over a year ago now? New colours and they apparently came 3 to a bag from Tito, who seem to have generated a lot of these 'premiums'.

Below is a near full-set with the various Deer/Antelope that were missing from the original post so we can now compare them with the bag-art shown then.

The blue Bear (third from right - bottom row) and the brown Kangaroo seem to be from other sets/sources.

The Photographs have loaded the wrong way, but I can't be arsed to sort it out or re-load them, so this was going to be the last image (a bit of a 'round-up') but is here instead!

Three Bonitos tube tops, there were 5 in total I believe, and the full set can be seen in one of the Konrad books. Above them are some larger (nominally 54mm) Tom & Jerry character models, the First Tom from the left and the Jerry from the far Right are the common versions, made by Marx probably in Hong Kong for the Swansea works. The Jerry on a block of cheese, is not marked with a makers logo, but has the license info clearly displayed, he also looks as if he was designed to be standing on a pencil sharpener but there is neither a sharpener in situ or the hole for one, so I suspect he's more the sort of thing you'd find in a card shop like Hallmark or 'Birthdays'. The other Tom I used to think was a shrinkage variation but closer inspection reveals he's quite different, and may be a re-sculpt following damage to the original mould? Probably all Marx, just different sources, some may be for Swansea?

Below them is a Jecsan Yogi Bear from Spain and a Boo-boo from - I don't know where! He is clearly supposed to be holding an umbrella which is missing the parasol and looks like he could be Blue Box or Lucky? Might be Marx Swansea again!

The last shot is a Hong Kong Christmas Cracker toy using pirates of the Marx Fairykins Jack and Jill to produce a see-saw 'action' toy! The originals are the painted ones.

Apparently these are mostly Nabisco Foods cereal premiums, the four Flintstones characters to the right are from a more modern set, maybe a pocket-toy fold-away diorama/play set thing? The Disney Robin Hood set is factory over-production and a shed-load were doing the rounds of shows a few years ago.

One of the reasons I'm always saying this stuff is not rare is that once you've made the machine-tool/mould it's easy to churn them out until you're blue in the face, they then pile up at various stages of their life cycle...producer factory, packer, distributor, outworkers (if they are painted) etc...and depending on when or why they are withdrawn, you can guarantee someone will find a box-full 15 years later!

07-01-2013 - Both the above are now identified as Tatra mouldings.

More Tatra for Nabisco - I think (input on all the last four sets appreciated) with two Tito marked characters from the same movie at the bottom right. I though they were from 'The Lady and The Tramp' but apparently is something called 'Aristocats'...showing my age again!!

So there are a few curiosities from the land of food premiums, mostly 1970's or early 1980's, and thanks again to Gerhard for the images.