D is for Donation - Peter - Odds and Sods

Isn't it typical? Last week I probably lost a few pounds working a six-day'er in that heat, with gardening at both ends, tonight I got rained on! Anybody would think the weather's trying to get rid of us . . . oh! Still, before we slip of this planet, there's still a lot to do, and this is the penultimate post of Peter Evans and Chris Smith's recent donations to the Blog, being all the stuff which didn't get put in the previous posts, and haven't been sent to RTM!

 

An assortment of novelty bits, parts, and what I suspect are the rubber caps from a clothes-horse or drainer? The pea-shooter brings back memories, and you can see from the damage where it was bent against the missing mouthpiece, the downfall of many such weapons!

 

Kinder horse, farm trailer, barbed wire and other scenics, this stuff all has a place, they all have a tub or box where they are sorted by type, annotated when ID'd or otherwise wait for more info' to turn-up, often in eBay lots or old catalogue shots, Argos and Index are useful, but so are the earlier home-shopping ones from Freemans, Grattan, Littlewooods and the like.

 

'Made in Hong Kong'

 

'Hong Kong'

 

'Blue Box'

 

'Superior'

(T. Cohn) 

 

I don't really want to be accruing this stuff, as I have no interest in doll's house accessories, except - of course - that they are part of the history of early plastic toys, and the companies behind them, and I was well aware that one or two members of the Higher Council of the Old Guard had a few shoe-boxes of this stuff, purely for research purposes, and now it seems I am fated to have some too! A car-boot job lot, if nothing else, it's a clear sample of the Superior mark, and Blue Box colours!

 

All brittle polystyrene, except the Superior items which are in the polyethylene soft plastic.

 

Various items of Britains Garden, and the original lead stuff, not the plastic, of which I also have quite a sample, more by accident than design, but it was almost the Lego of its day, fiddly, construction toy with endless configurations, and I think I'm right in saying it was a wider range than the later plastic set?

 

A lovely sheep with lamb, and a home-cast or penny-toy battleship, which has seen better days, but if it's the only sample, it's very welcome!

 

A cake-decoration Robin, needing foot surgery, but fascinating in painted plaster and lead, and more dolls house accessories, but with the sort of age which makes them ornamental, or decorative 'white elephant' bric-a-brac, rather than tacky-placky!

 

The two jugs (or jug and vase) are lovely, they are bisque, and probably German, although they could be Japanese, but very fine work, compared to the white glazed earthenware of British doll's china of the time (which you often find while gardening in older locations), while the smoothing-iron's stand seems to be die-cast?

 

This is fun, and an amazing survivor, from the 1950's or 60's? It actually works as a bell, is clearly a tree-decoration, but is also figural, with a Santa Claus handle, If I wasn't giving these things a home, they'd be lost!

 

We would have never been allowed something like this, our parents had a dim-view of plastic, and all things Hong Kong, and it's a bit kitch, but sixty-years later, it's pretty extraordinary!

 

These really should have been in the TV/Movie post, except the guardsman belongs in the Ceremonial and Historical post, so they ended-up here, they are all Phidal, and I can only assume the Guardsman is from some London/London Sights-related book?

 

This is also amazing, and I don't know if it's Hong Kong, something French, or even more local, it's marked on the sidecar R C I, of which I can find nothing, and in conversation with Peter when he showed it to me I said "I can shoot it in a comparison with the Airfix and the other one", but I can't remember who the 'other one' was by (Fairylite? Co-Ma?), and I was thinking of the ice-cream carts, while this is actually a motorcycle and sidecar, so I was talking nonsense!

 

Mostly Airfix, but mixed so they ended-up here, the yellow chap at the back is from a board game called Fortress America, which I haven't covered yet, despite having them in the stash, from MB Games, and a cross between Risk, Shogun and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (which all play for zones or chunks of territory), it has recently been reissued in an updated form, from Ink Voltage.

 

Cones! There is a whole tub of them waiting a proper sort and ID session!

D is for Donations - Peter & Chris - AFV's

On the Military hardware section of these posts, and both Peter and Chris have included a few AFV's in the stuff they've saved for the blog, which, being not figures, tend to be more incidental, so I've shoved them into one post;

 

Micro armour odds-and-sods, I think the hull is a challenger, and that these are probably GHQ, the quality is better than the Skytrex I had as a kid, and the lack of cut-wire gun-barrels also precludes them?

 

Largish jeep, from the wheels I'd say pretty modern, so kind of grist-to-the-mill, but still a useful sample, especially if I don't already have one!

 

Ideal board-game pieces, these are rather piling up in a tub somewhere, and I'll have to think of something to do with them, they are fictional, and fun, and there are a few variants to be sorted out, reverse colourways etc.

 

One of the mini-tanks we looked at some time ago, but will return to, there's more on them in a download folder somewhere, and a couple of trees which escaped the 'odds' folder, the one on the left, a copy of a Cherilea-Phoenix window-box accessory, the other a current'ish Poplar, and a very new re-sculpt/evolution of the old Lego Lombardy Poplar, whose evolution we looked at in a previous post once.

This was a superb find by Chris, as I have a pair of these bobbing-commander tanks, unmarked, and possibly in a darker green, which is how you can find them across the pond too, so this one with its clear Peter Pan marking adds a whole 'nother paragraph to the story, which includes a different tank and those easter-bunny trucks! Presumably - a mould-swap?

 

Three micro-armoured cars, which we will return to one day, as there are three types of these Daimlers, two types of the little gun which often accompanies them, and only one version of the 'carrier', but with sets to look at and different wheel-axle types, worth a proper dive, one day.

 

Behind them is a probable Kleeware, or Pyro original on the right, and one of the metal axle trucks from the river-ferry sets, I call Type 5 or 5/6/hybrids;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2011/10/m-is-for-mini-trucks-part-6-types-5-6.html

 

Click on the 1-ton Humber Tag, for more on them! And many-thanks again, to both collectors, for finding/saving/getting this stuff to the blog, for me to share with you.

J is for Jährliche Osterhasenparade

Did you anticipate this post? I'd totally forgotten . . . again! But Brian Berke has done one of his regular photo-essays for us, by heading down to Scully & Scully, at 54 Park Avenue, an address, to Americophiles, as prestigious or exciting, as something on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées would be to a Francophile, or Park Lane to an Anglophile! And why has it taken me nearly a decade to look that up?

 

Brian had real problems with reflection this time, hence two visits were called for, and he even tried different cameras, and while I've done what I can with cropping and contrast, you can see a camera in three or four of them, and I cropped the mice out of a larger image, so that one is a bit fuzzy, because they were background!

 

As always, the sculpts, and their painting are exquisite, and while we've seen some of them before, it's all new painting, and/or some new vignettes, along with new trees, I think. I didn't reject any of the images, so there's a bit of duplication.

 

Nothing else to add, as they are a perennial here, now, so please enjoy a bit of Easter magic from the Big Apple.

 

Many thanks to Brian for these, they are a real treat!

M is for Medieval Plunder

Back last May, I shot back over to Basingstoke House to shoot a few things I didn't shoot when I was there previously (2014, published here 2017 - ACW Tag), and I thought I'd check out the gift shop at the same time - here's m'plunder!

 

Poured resin suit-of-armour pen/biro, he'll get the same treatment as that regency lady a few years ago, and be cut flat and based, one day! While the medieval princess is from Papo, and actually a Queen!

 

Modern Westair, they've pretty-much phased-out the old Peltro sculpts now, and issue their own figures in a softer whitemetal, I grabbed Willy Wavelance and Queen Bess, and what I thought was one of the others, in poor light, only to find it was a duplicate playwright! But from the card we can see I'm looking for a Damien Lewis and Sir Francis of the Duck Pond!

 

A fun little activity sheet for the kids gives me two card flats, for that side-bar. You obviously bend the lances after cutting and glueing, and charge them at each other, down the tilts!