E is for Eye Candy - Naval & Marines

This was shot back in November 2020, so five years ago, give or take the odd day and a leap-year! There's about the same again to be added to this, in the still being sorted pile, at the lip of the storage container, and we've added a couple of rack-toy assault-craft over that time, all seen here in various posts, I think, try 'Vessels' or 'Naval - Marines' in the tag list. But what can you spot?

 

Top left is all the larger 60mm'ish stuff from Marx, MPC, Auburn (polymer, not rubber) or Ideal (?) and so on, originals and re-issues, to their right is the Lone Star sample, with some PVC, Timpo-branded, Toyway reissues, while the more historically-uniformed Charbens are in the little bag.

 

In the box, top right, are the more modern (WWI/II'ish) Charbens with four of the ever more brittle Lone Star marines - fighting in No.1 Dress uniforms! I have added one or two I think, but they may be duplicates. Below them is a mixed tub of the smaller Marx and a few others; Reisler, hollow-cast &etc, which we saw in an early post on the subject. There's been a few hollow-cast additions too.

 

Sandwiched between those two tubs is a wooden, hand-carved, tourist chap, who we also saw here over a decade a go, but there are four, similar, and very interesting plastic versions about to hit the blog! To the left of the mixed tub is a newer one, since enlarged, but still not ready for the definitive post, with the Britains Naval gun, now 'guns', but not all versions yet, although we did have a look at them, in part, a while ago.

 

In the corner are the three Greek assault-boats, copied from Britains, which got a post, and then in the top-left quarter of the box, all the iconic novelty floating toys from Britains and Timpo. You can see the Greek crewmen under the US Assault craft . . . I've actually done an 'Assault River-Crossing', in a remarkably similar boat, but ours didn't have engines, so we had to fucking paddle, in the rain!

 

The final tub, outside the box, has all the European types, obvious are Cofalu/Cofalux swivel-heads and the Coma assault marines, but there's some other stuff, a couple of Atlantic, a Hong Kong or two, and, strangely, mu original Frog trio, who are RAF rocket-troops! They've since been moved, as the sample is up to about ten now!

 

You can add a largish sample of the Gem cadets, those Argentine rubber ones which came in a while ago, and more Atlantic, Lone Star and Reisler, along with some Starlux (not sure where they are?), but, there's actually quite a few to sort into this tub at some point, and more take-away tubs will be needed! Then there's all the ABC and other Hong Kong copies, from hollow-cast, taken from Britains, which we have looked at here, on more than one occasion, now.

I is for Ideal Jolly Boat

I've also picked-up this, the Ideal Pirate Ship, recently, a bit sun-faded, but otherwise complete, as far as I know, but I didn't have time to shoot it with figures, so a bit of a box-tick, gets it up here! Hard plastic, probably a polystyrene or polypropylene hybrid of some kind, it has soft polyethylene ratlines and rolled sails.

 

Beached!

 

Fold-out gang-plank!

 

 

Firing cannon.

 

 

It also has a ship's boat, which is similar to the other makers', so there was definitely some homage-copying going on, but who was first?

 

As per the last couple of years, time is of the essence now, I have two more posts to do, but I have to go to work, so whether I get them out before midnight is anyone's guess!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Wild West

Nearing the end of the surprise box from Chris, and we find a Sobre, but more on that at the end of the post! Wild West, large scale, small scale, plastic, metal, cowboys, Native American Indians, horses, premiums and cartoony stuff . . . let's see what was in the box;

 

All interesting; the one on the left seems to be a soft plastic version of an earlier hard polystyrene premium, it's not the first time we seen them, Betterware used some (Mayer-Lippenhausen and Commonwealth) for their little salesman's envelope gifts, the Australian (and others) Nabisco Dinosaurs are another. This chap is from the Siku sculpts/set, supplied in two sizes, painted and unpainted, and various plastic colours to various European premium issuers, so, here, is probably via . . .

 

. . .  the Dutch DS Plastics, they show them in their catalogue - code 455, as some of the moulds they inherited from Siku.

The many Hong Kong copies of Timpo/Britains/Crescent swoppets are common as muck, two-a-penny and usually pretty poorly executed, although there are better ones, and whole ones attributable to their packaging are useful, these two in the middle are unusual for being among the better, and all-polyethylene, where usually some of the parts are PVC, the locating studs/holes have larger diameters too, while the chap on the end is from a US maker; Ideal, and is meant to be a Canadian trapper I think? I bet the trappers of both nations looked pretty similar and paid little heed to a line on the map!

Home-cast casting of an Indian on the left, probably a Schneider mould, what is likely a Lone Star Metallion in the middle (Pat Masterton), but other makers covered them and the paint throws you off, while the chap on the right is similar to others I have, but I don't think I've ever seen an attribution for them either as Western originals (Spain, France?) or as Hong Kong copies.

I know the one in the middle is from the Crazy Clown Circus of Frazer & Glass (F&G) now, but he got shot with his extended family, which included on the left a horse which was marked, but I can't remember if it was LIDO (I think so) or AJAX?, while the metallised 'standard' horse of the family, is new on me?

 

Obviously we have seen metallised foot figures from the 'set', in different sizes, so I guess he went with them, but I haven't found metallised riders yet? I'm guessing it should be Tudor Rose or at a stretch Kleeware, and one of the earlier iterations of them?

To which, we can add four of the polystyrene foot figures! The painted Crescent/Lido chap may be from one of the West germen pencil shapeners, as he has  alayer of glue on his base underside?

 

The chap in the middle is my first, of a set I've been after for years, and have already missed-out on a boxed set of, coincidentally, the only reason I know what he is, which is an Exin Wild West figure. They are cartoon-styled, very-much like the Lucky Luke premiums, and I'm sure that was no accident, as Comansi handled the latter and both are Spanish companies, seeped in Spaghetti Western culture at the time?

Five more of the Lone Star shooting game figures, I think we may have all poses in both colours now, and a lot of them have come from Chris over the last few years, so when I get them all together we will have another, closer look.

A small sample of small scale Blue Box, it's all grist to the mill, with two of the foot figures and a horse from Britians Swoppet sculpts, along with a stockade-fort section, copied from the Marx Miniature Masterpiece fort.

Sub-Giant piracies from Hong Kong - always useful!

A small group of damaged Minimodels 25mm's, they will go in the tub with the rest of the damaged ones against the possibility of me having a conversion session one day, as being polystyrene (the reason so many are found damaged) they are easy to cut, glue, sand and fill!

The figures Brian Berke remembered were in Lucky Bags back in the day, and lucky he did, as no one else had! The colour scheme remains pretty constant, with the Indians in the warm/hot colours and the Cowboys in the cold colours. And I think this sample balances out the bigger sample somewhat, which was getting a bit Indian-heavy!

There are new cowboy poses here, and the pose-count keeps growing, I think we may well end-up with about fifty, five-each mounted and up to 20 foot figure sculpts, per. 'side'? Some of the Euro-premium sets ran to similar numbers.

While this was a lovely surprise, a bagged Sobre, from Sobreplast, a name new to the Blog and the archive, if not the Hobby, an old kiosk toy, of more substance than the Montaplex type envelopes we usually look at here.

 

The figures/horses look to be Comansi copies, but they may be actual Comansi, until I can compare with the real-deal's, I won't know, but the wagon is not the Comansi one, so I suspect copies. A really nice 'sopresa', cheers Chris!

P is for Plastic Toys!

The title of Bill Hanlon's excellent book on Dimestore Dreams of the '40s & '50s, and the core of this blog, no matter how much metal, wood, glass or card sneaks in! Alongside the military vehicles, which Mr Berke sent us the other day, was a plethora of civilian transport delights, most being of the 'dime store' variety, and this post is looking at the larger examples.

Left to right we have here, a 1911 Maxwell Roadster, a 1911 Daimler and a 1911 Renault, all made in Hong Kong, and my initial thought - given the leery colours - was Wilton's cake decorations, but they are different, so these may have just been pocket-money rack toys, like the ones we saw in a bit of a mini season a while back, but lovely additions to that particular oeuvre!

Two of the vehicles had been enhanced with 'ticker-tape' type-written graphics, which had seen better days, but with weathering/discolouring looked like a comercial exercise, until you realised one was a Marx tanker, the other a Dillon-Beck 'Wannatoy' utility/tool-locker truck, so I removed the remnants, which proved easy, as the glue was some water-based animal-stuff, like the old 'Gloy' pots at school!

 

There were actually a fair few Wannatoy or DB marked examples, including the boat and three 'rigid' trucks - we saw the artic's here, years ago! Indeed i think there were five different markings between the seven items. One of the spare cab/tractor-units had a different hitching mechanism/method, and I thought I might be looking for new trailers, but the aforementioned Hanlon book put me right.

 

I had seen the unmarked yellow bit, and decided it must be part of a construction vehicle or earthmover, but it turned out it's the other half of the 'new' Wannatoys cab design, but I'm still looking for the outer-end of the arm, for now it can do service as a tow-truck!

 

A lot of red, in the parcel, it has to be said! Three lovelies here, with a Renwal delivery van, we know it's a delivery van because it has DELIVERY written across the roof for police helicopters!

 

In the middle a Thomas Toys marked sedan, or at least I think it's called a sedan, in the UK it would be a 'family saloon car'! With a soft polyethylene dream to the right! I thought it might be a T-Bird and was googling with image-results by year '51, '52, '53 etc. . . and getting nowhere, before switching to Processed Plastic soft top, and finding it was a '56 Cadillac El Dorado, which I should have recognised, but I only drove the hard-top!

 

Stop me if I've bored you with this already, oh! You can't, it's a Blog . . . Hay-ho! Many years ago, like about 25, I worked for a stretch-limo' firm for a bit, actually ran into a childhood mate, but have since lost touch with him again!

 

Anyway, they were mostly shitty-old Lincoln Towncars from the 90's, ratted, sparking mother-boards you had to hold against the shocks with your spare hand to keep the gizmo's shining for the punters, awful things which had been hammered doing the LA-San Fran-Las Vegas triangle, 100's of thousands of miles. And in various liveries of silver, graphite, grey, white (weddings!) and two-tone.

But, there was one original 1960's 'Beatles & Stones', presidential Cadillac El Dorado ('68 I seem to recall), in black, with all leather, slightly stretched with a little B&W TV, and mahogany veneer bar, it only sat about six (some of those Lincoln's could hold 12 or 14 topless tarts!) in a small broken-U, but compared to the modern shit, it was one classy lady!

 

One summer evening I parked-up in the big Sainsbury's at Hatch Warren in Basingrad, while my fare did their function, and I went in for a snack and when I came out I had a crowd! She was lovely, and this little toy, albeit an earlier model, will remind me of her! She broke down as often as the others, though!

If you need a Limo', go to a reputable firm, with new cars and a landline, stay away from the local-press guys with their old cars, a mobile number and maybe a hosted webpage, you could spend half the night by the side of the motorway, or miss your flight, and you rarely get your money back!

This was funny, I'd literally mentioned it in passing a few days before it dropped on the porch, unannounced! It's the dairy boardgame, which was from Hasbro, and four players go around delivering milk, eggs and butter (I think) which fit over the different studs on the back! There was a green one in the parcel, but Royal Fail did their worst, and I have a bag of green bits waiting for a glueing session.

 

Some more polyethylene, the two to the left are in the style of all that German or Scandinavian vinyl, but in 'ethylene, and probably some similar infant/first/early-learning type thing, 1970's maybe? The tractor is lovely, marked Hong Kong, it is a direct copy of the Jean Höfler one which I have in military and civil types, so it will be nice to compare all three sometime.

While the sports car [muscle car!] is in a similar vein to the first two, I suspect enhanced with aftermarket or old leftover kit transfers, and while I would clean them off if I was sure, I'm not, and I'm even less sure about the blue paint, not obvious in the shot, but which runs around the lower quarter, and might/might not actually be factory-finish, so I wouldn't want to lift that at the same time?

Two of the little Pyro's, an Ideal 'aerodynamic' trailer (very 1950's), which is a fair lump of stable cellulose-acetate, a Banner road-grader, I think I have the military-green one somewhere (?) and a locomotive conductor's caboose from Lido Lines!

 

While this is a mystery, there's a feint USA mark under the right corner of the bonnet/hood, but no other markings, and it clearly had some interactive properties which are now half-missing, a hole in the rear only reveals that which is no longer there, while a sliding piston thing at the front has no obvious stop, trigger or function? I don't think it's dropping low enough to fit in a road-slot?

 

I suspect either a jump toy, with the trigger in another component (ramp or launch-mechanism), or a magnetic novelty with parts/a corresponding magnetic-wand missing? So any help tying this down to a maker or a set would be happily accepted!

 

And many thanks to Brian again, for this pile of brightly-coloured treasures!

O is for Odds & Sods

Probably had that title before, but the hours draw on, and I want to get this up before I go to bed, for an early start, as it's the London Toy Soldier show in a few hours, and a T is for Two would be a bit over the top for a couple of shelfies, so I added a window bag!

Out looking for Chocolate rabbits (ongoing bit of Easter fun) I also found a couple of bits worth a shelfie, these were nearly purchased, however I managed to stop myself, but they will turn-up in mixed lots in the future, so worth a shot for the archive. The history of Ideal's logo over the last few years is very complicated, but here in the UK, I think these are actually Hasbro sell-through.

 

But the two Gormiti character figures are non-articulated solids, around 54mm, albeit sort of sci-fi-fantasy. They were for sale in the Poundland rival, Poundstretcher, and at about 4 & 6-quid, quite affordable, the other figures, were printed-sticker flats though.

While this I shot, again for the fact that the horses will turn-up in odd lots, not because we've been looking at show-jumping, which was coincidental, and there were only four crude horses in the truck, no figures or jumps that I could see.

 

Those horses, I think they may be hollow polyethylene, like some of the BJ Toys or Red Deer stuff, but it wasn't clear and they may well be solids? Branded to Toy Hub and RMS International, they are also around 50/54mm compatible, the truck however, is instantly forgettable.

This was a purchase, the other day somewhere, I can't remember where, but coming after the Schleich blind-bags (I saw in Smyths), and the apparent ex-blind-bag dinosaur I got as clearance somewhere, also 'the other day', it seems they are now using window-bags, so you can see what you're getting, a far more civilised way of doing things.

 

But back to the show tomorrow, Central London/Camden, so plenty of touristy stuff to do before or after the toy-soldier buying, including Camden Market and the Lock! Details are here;

 

http://www.toysoldiershow.co.uk/index.php?CONTENT=23

K is for Kong, The King . . . of The Apes! The Jungle, The Weird, Whacky Island, He Was Just THE King, of Everything, But He Couldn't Sing 'Hounddog'!

This set is new to me, seen in my collection, by Ideal of Hollis, NY (anyone know that town? Answers on a postcard, I don't care) dated 1976, and if I ever saw it anywhere else I must have just clean forgot it, in all the excitement!

Everyone loves a board-game at Christmas! This would have been under people's trees in 1976, the box is printed with some weird ink with is just rubbing-off now, and which also reflects flash inordinately, so I shot it twice to get something useable!

 

The Twin Trade Towers, funny what survives a cataclysm like '9/11', you actually get the one, but shooting it with and without Kong, makes for a poignant juxtaposition of the two images. I have some book-matches from the Restaurant at the Top of the World somewhere, as well, not quite the same as Titanic pillow-cases, but close, in a way?

 

 

Figural playing pieces include four 'special force' players who have to chase The King up the tower and try to kill him without getting knocked of, while Kong just needs to get to the top . . . but a game for 2-4 players, so presumably 'the bank' moves Kong?

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10306/king-kong

The rest of the paraphernalia! That's it, box-ticked, and in the tags, which - I suspect - is what this is all about . . . just be honest!

S is for [Mostly] Seen Elsewhere - Combat Types

So, a quick round-up of WWII'ey or Modernish stuff most of which I've posted elsewhere in the last twelve months or so, but a couple of which are here for the first time.

A couple more Polish figures, I've actually scored three lots, which we will look at in other posts, but this pair were my first two of the 'Four Tankers & a Dog', Polish TV/Movie related set from PZG, so they were posted with pride a while ago!

Flying West we find this chap (pink) as a Portuguese cereal premium, now, I thought I'd posted these here, but I can't find them, neither can I find any group shots in Picasa, or from the Faceplant Group where I posted this shot, so I don't know what happened to them, but there are more to come (four I think?), currently in storage . . . un-photographed?

Heading South on the same continent finds us in Italy where these could be Jumbo, but are more likely to be Dulcop given the lack of paint. I have Jumbo (or Jumbotoys) marked Wild West with paint, these - unpainted - are just marked Italy and were, I suspect, used by both brand-marks.

Staying in Italy, and we're back with Co-Ma (Coma, CO'MA), for their smaller Alpini, also available in a 60mm'ish size and various bright colours (white and red in my case), and a vary diminutive '20mm' closer to HO, these are a smallish 50mm and more realistic in polymer shade.

Returning home to the UK and we have the shooting targets from Kleeware/Ideal, courtesy of Chris Smith, we've seen them before, and on that occasion I also showed the Ideal catalogue image, but now I've found the Kleeware one . . .

. . . which has not been seen elsewhere, so is a 'blog exclusive'! I mean; it's just a scan and I seem to recal it's been seen in Plastic Warrior magazine, but it closes the circle on these, since their first appearance here!

Also not seen before, I shot the full Britains Deetail 'Battle Group' while they were on their way to the storage unit, we saw most of them when I cleaned them up a decade ago, but there are a few additions, and they nicely fill a 4-litre Really Useful Box. I've left the painted Afrika Korps officer with them, but he's a bit shy!

These two only came-in the other day; a quick feeBay snaffle, you may remember (it's on the Airfix Blog) that my existing bazooka man was cobbled together from a kit of parts and a lot of 'superglue', these two are nice, clean and still flexible, so complete. And here compared with the HO-OO figure.

These are just for fun, I don't have a brand, brand-mark or set name yet, probably late 1980's, Hong Kong 'army men', I just love the colours! The same outfit seems to have been responsible for the 25mm clones, where you find the Japanese are commonest, in the same whacky colours.

Found! They were in a different folder!

Portuguese cereal premiums! The radio operator is a smoother/cleaner finished sculpt - so two issues? And maybe Japanese . . . or generic post war 'army men'?

 

Apparently they are by/for Farinha Amparo, a flour-miller?