E is for Ephemera - Plastic Warrior Show 2024

I really shouldn't be blogging right now, far too much going on in real life, of far more importances, or worry! And I will apologise to Jon Attwood now for putting the remaining railway figure posts on hold, when we were quite near the end, equally I've got to put Peter and Chris's donation-plunder posts on hold too (although I have taken the images, they aren't sorted/cropped/collaged yet), and the show reports might be a month or two away right now (I haven't even started shooting the thematic stuff), but I will pick at low hanging-fruit when I get the chance/time, and this is a few bits from the show, which have been shot, of a more ephemeral nature!

 

I picked-up a few pieces of ephemera at the show, in the 'paper' rather than 'semi-lost' meaning of the word! With three new 'special publications' from the show's organisers, Plastic Warrior, a useful guide to Leyla farm models, covering both the hard and soft plastic, painted and unpainted with packaging and other bits, and another set of the card figures, I know I've posted - but can't now find - before.

 

The important detail of the last one being, that on the previous occasion, I think I showed them without a maker, as they had already gone-off to storage, this time I can tell you they are by, and called - Kardsmen by Mackenzie, that is John Mackenzie Models Ltd., of London, and dated to 1979.

Now, last time it was two ceremonial sets, if memory serves, and in storage from a fair-while ago, I think I may have two or three more sets which came from the second-hand booksellers' in Wantage, which were also ceremonial subjects (and may, or may not be/include duplicates of those seen here last time?), but these are clearly more belligerent in depiction, being the battle of Culloden, and on the reverse of the card is a hint at a more esoteric output;

• Nelson & Trafalgar
• The Royal Family
• Willian Shaspeear
• Black Watch Pipe Band (seen here?)
• King Henry VIII
• Queen's Guards (see here?)
• Royal Marine Band (possibly in storage?)
• Guards Band (seen here?)
• Yeoman Warders (possibly in storage?)

Which is quite a touristy/museum gift-shop type listing, I think you'll agree? As I say, I can't find the previous mention, which I think was a show report, possibly Sandown, or the London show, but when I find them, probably while looking for something else, I'll tag them to join these. The plastic bases always seem to be the same bright mid-green.

So, to the three specials, they are quite different from each other, being a technical treatise on the vagaries of engraving moulds and cutting detail into the tool halves and such-like (specifically, working 'in reverse' on the tools, not the masters), a more conversational piece on the early figurative Herald artwork and artists, both slim volumes, and a more substantial run through the Britains catalogues from 1965 to 1971, with reminisces of the author's thoughts at the time, and opinions now!

 

All penned by Peter Cole, with Chris Hawkins co-authoring the work on engraving, and both Barney Brown and John Rafferty helping with the artwork volume. While two are Britains specific, the third, technical work, is a wider look at how certain things might have been done to various early British-made figures.

They are available separately or as a package from Plastic Warrior (details below), and all proceeds will go to putting-on the next show (as I am reliably informed "I suppose we'll have to do another next year" due to the success of this year's!), because, let's face it, the subscription to the quarterly mag' is pretty-much 'at cost' given the prices of printing and post these days, so dig-deep, to support the hobby.

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Finally less ephemeral, yet more so, and possibly needing a new entry/folder in whatever information storage and retrieval system you possess, if you haven't already done so from the back pages of Philip Dean's book on Wend-Al, is this, from when they wound-up the aluminium production and took to flocking in a big way, a Timpo ape with ball (as supplied by Prindus (Prison Industries) ?), beautifully flocked by a flocking flocker (well, you can't resist the opportunity when it arises!) and in Wendan packaging - presumably; Wend Animals as opposed to Wend Aluminium?

K is for Kibri

This one's a bit of a box-ticker, compared to some of the others, and I've duplicated an image by scanning something already on the blog, but there you go, it's still quite interesting as Kibri (Kindler und Briel) have had three generations of figures.

Jon Attwood's loose sample is bigger than mine! But are they Kibri or Leyla, if you recall we looked at the Leyla issue here, and while they are always shown in the Kibri catalogues as fully painted, or fully decorated anyway, I don't know if that's how they were sold, as I've never seen the early Kibri packs/cards?

 

So they may well have just bought-in the Leyla figures wholesale? Or even. as the Leyla logo on those late cards is disguised as a station name-plate, just put a Kibri sticker over them? Or, did they obtain the Leyla intellectual property, upon the demise of Leyla?

 

This is from a Walther's catalogue, around the late 1990's I think, and shows what were shipped, or orderable from the 'States, via the Teminial Hobby Shop, being a B&W version of the old Kibri catalogue images.

While this is that Kibri catalogue imagery (the duplicate!), which I dealt with here a while ago, check the Kibri tag to find it and a very interesting petrol station! But it clearly shows two generations, the 'Leyla' sets, three seperate six-figure/item sets and one combining the first two, then three sets which look like the Roco, or Preiser sculpts, along with some animals, ditto - or even Merten for the animals?

More recently, the only animals in the catalogues have been these two sets of the same cows with different decoration. Having not handled them, I can't say much beyond that they are some kind of polymer and look like reasonable sculpts of modern dairy cattle.

 

The more recent Walther's (this one's the 2000 issue) show the final, third generation, which are the strange, slightly over-scale figures, which are more suited to the stylised models of architects or town-planners than a model railroad? Note also, more cow options, but I don't know the difference between the two B&W cow listings?

The 2000 Walther's N-gauge catalogue also has them, they must be so fiddly to glue-together, it could drive you to suicide, as heads smaller than pin's go flying across the workspace for the umpteenth time!

Jon's set, mine are browns rather than blue/yellow, and can be seen in both One Inch Warrior magazine and a more recent Plastic Warrior, which is lucky, if you subscribe . . . http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/. The most interesting thing about them is it's one of only a few examples of over-moulding in small scale, with the heads moulded in one colour and then hats/hair moulded in a contrasting colour, pale-blue and yellow in the above sample.

 

There have been one or two other examples of over-moulding here, the Gem for Culpitt's experiment with footballers springs to mind, but there was another I think?

Also from Kibri catalogues, no figures sadly, although there are some in the studio shot, but lovely buildings for wargaming or role-play. I have three or maybe four of the five, in storage, and one day we'll get them out and have a proper look at them, but they are still mint/sealed, with their distinctive Kibri blue-ends.

 

Eko, from Spain, the great pirates of other-people's figures, lifted some of the sculpts for their civilian set, but whether they were pirating Leyla or Kibri remains lost in the mists of time - I suspect the former?

G is for German Rack Toys

We looked at bigger than HO/OO railway figures from Leyla right back at the start of the Blog; just shy of nine-years ago, now we're going to look at smaller than HO/OO from the same maker! I can only presume they are aimed at TT-gauge layouts, which were always more popular on the continent than here in the UK, and particularly so on the other side of the wire.

Sharing poses with the larger set we looked at back when, the newspaper-seller is also harking back to Leyla's 45mm pre-war O-gauge composition range

 

Heavily copied (I have three or four types of these as piracies in storage) by Hong Kong and - possibly - somewhere like Spain; there are good quality copies with neater bases, here we see some HK copies along with a set of three full flats (the Leyla are semi-flat) heading toward N-gauge, which look like margarine premiums but are I expect from a set of railway accessories or even a kit, given the plain white styrene?

The railway staffer/postal worker with trolley also looks like the sort of thing you find in some margarine, laundry-powder or coffee-premium sets, but again seems not to be; having a factory-looking paint-job, but him and the three white ones are still in the unknown 'pile'.

 

With the older (to the collection and judging by the packaging) set in storage I had to do this by eye/memory, so it's an approximation only, but it's about right! An Airfix platform figure would come between the two, but that only gives me a reason to return to them for better comparisons one day, we will return to them!

L is for Leyla

Layla is one of the older German makers, they were producing rail figures long before the war, and while these are post war, they are quite early, probably 1950's or the first half of the 1960's.

Slightly big for the continental HO scale, and as far as I know a complete set of DB (Deutsche Bahn) Rail platform and train dispatch staff, along with a refreshment seller.

The container with slide-off lid is original, however I had to replace the foam with a new piece, which fortunately I managed to match both by density of 'bubbles'/texture and depth of material. When I found these the original foam (a sort of fleshy yellow colour) had both melted and crumbled and everything was a rather sticky mess, however the mixture had not adhered to either the figures or the box and a few minutes in the sink with a bit of Fairy Liquid did the job.