O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Historical & Ceremonial

This post gets off to a good start, with the third boxed set I got from Adrian, and then goes downhill! No, I'm joking, there are several interesting bits here, but originality of text for the opening blurb-o-graph of repeat posts, like these, is not always obvious, to an amateur author!

 

It would be lazy to assume that these too, are Torgano, like the two Western sets in the previous post of this series, they are A) thinner flats, altogether less robust, B) they have thin, oblong bases, C) decoration is, if anything more leery than the previously-seen, already pretty-colourful samples D) the generic gift-wrap 'foil' covering on the box, is nothing like the set-specific artwork of those other sets E) they are slightly smaller, and F) the subject-matter is altogether more fanciful!

 

Definitely Italians though! Shades of Captain Nemo?

 

Also shades of Captain Video with the American-football/1930's tank-crew helmets!

 

Three figures duplicated, in different colours, everything else is a one-off, and there’s a lot going on, paratroopers, artillery, flying-boat, early rubber boat, spacey guys, a Tom of Finland sailor (everyone loves a sailor!), yacht, battleship and a sinking (?) liner, this set would have been a fantastic exercise of the imagination muscles! And there's a man fighting a giant octopus!

 

The Noris Ivanhoe game has similar unpainted flats, however Torgano's own mini's (space and 'dolls') do have oblong bases, while people like Tibadabo and Co-Ma must have started somewhere? What were PRB or Sam doing in the 1950's? I have the two earlier Italian toy soldier books, and a couple of maker specific things, but I don't have the most recent one, are they in there, can anyone give us a branding on these? 

 

American Civil War, a right old mix here, with 'China' copies of Hong Kong 'solid' clones of Timpo Swoppets, actual Swoppet clones, enough Blue Box for a skirmish and a Waddington's game-playing piece - all grist to the mill!

 

Back to Italy and a nice sample of the Nardi Union/US Cavalry types, you look at these and wonder if they didn't borrow one of Cherilea's sculptors! But their charm is the stronger for the dancing-loon look!

 

The Confederate sample is smaller and lacking more hats, as well as 'kerchiefs and heads, which explains the outcome of that war! Lack of logistical support and fighting men!

 

Ceremonial assortment here, with one of the just mentioned (BMSS post) Monaco guards, sans plug-on base, a broken metal figure, three HK copies of lone Star, a trio of Sacul musicians, four Café Storme Imperials, a Hong Kong highlander, and two Hilco, who rather confirm the Band-Major in that previous BMSS post! And a sucker-guard!

 

Three pirates, too early for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, these are the Fontanini smallest version, but in an usual colour of plastic, and polyethylene, rather than the PVC resin of my other samples?

 

More Café Storm.

 

Two early British-made Arabs, I can't remember who's these are (BMS?), we have looked at them all previously, in dribs and drabs, and I intend to do them all together one day, when they are all in one place!

 

Two probably Fraser & Glass, and one early Herald - polystyrene horses.

 

From the left, a kit figure, Pyro or Revell maybe, another of the growing sample of Spanish terracotta caricature figurines, a French (?) Santon, and a very French-looking sailor, from the novelty stacking sets, we've seen clowns and policemen here, and there are US versions of the same stacking figures.

 

There’s more on this in a follow-up, but here sold as Walco Products Inc., a similar outfit to Grandmother Stover's or SSCO, dealing with both craft items, novelty tat, and cake decoration stuff!

 

Small-scale bits bring the post to a close, with a few Risk board-game pieces and three of my favourite Christmas Cracker prize guardsmen!

 

And again; thanks are due to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Many thanks.

P is for Perfect Polymer Propine - Military

Apparently it's Scottish for 'sacrifice'! Theo, long-time friend of the Blog, has had personal tragedies recently, putting my own firmly into context, as a result of which he divested himself of his collection, but saved a few items of interest for the Blog, which arrived a while ago and have been sat on the laptop waiting for me to get a grip and post them, and, while I'd describe my grip as only tenuous, with many thanks to Theo, I'll try to get them posted over the next few days, interspersing them with a few new-purchase rack toys, to mix it up!

 

These were a real surprise, as they often turn up, but scruffy and weaponless, and usually only two poses, so to get three poses, with weapons and good-to-new paint was a real treat, and they were on top of the parcel, so got shot first!

 

And, these were with them, four different mounted figures in a similar state of near-new! Again, I may have seen the bowman, tatty, a few times but not the others, and like the foot figures, all are based on the Britains Swoppets, but you feel, probably hand-copied rather than anything as accurate as a pantograph?

 

9th Aug. - Peter Evan has suggested ABC for these, they are unmarked but could be, and I've posted a marked one on foot, ages ago, he also pointed out that the mounted legs are from the Herald Agamemnon, and you can see the sandals and greaves!

 

This may be the horse for the above, the other likely candidate would be the Timpo-copy with caparison (as found in the 'States in Ideal playsets), but I think they only have Timpo-copy riders. This one is a scale-down of the big Thomas/Poplar sculpt.

 

These are a useful addition to the Crescent Roman piracies, especially the chap far left and far right, who is one of the three Gladiator poses, and was missing when we looked at them last time, although I have an all-blue HK copy of the pose. It struck me that he would go well with the Charbens ancient set!

 

Marx 'swoppet' GI's, a real treat! I do have one somewhere, and a bag of bits, but there are three complete, here, sans one weapon, a B.A.R. I think, but at some point in the future it's going to enable a single photo of all the possible combinations!

 

An actual Crescent Roman! A damaged Cherilea knight, who may be the basis of a future conversion, he only needs a weapon to replace the missing lance, and one of many French 'bazaar' figures, or at least I think he's French (Koho, thanks to Theo - https://www.lastdodo.nl/nl/areas/4866119-koch-hofmockel-koho), and a bazaar issue, and he'll be sorted into the rest when they all come together, soon I hope, but I've been saying that since 2021!

Nardi and Lone Star, paint is good on both of them, and finding the Lone Star figure with complete spear is getting rarer, one of mine broke after the last photo-shoot, so being sent one and having him survive the postal services of Europe is another treat!

 

Three Cherilea; 54mm, 60mm and, err, gi'huge!

 

Two Tim Mee European issue, a nice Cherilea 60mm swoppet, first version with the separate boots, and four more of the smaller Monogram copies from Hong Kong, which will be filtered into a larger sample of them, for a definitive article one day, we had an interim look at them here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

with another set looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/08/t-is-for-two-khaki-infantry-rack-toys.html

 

And, it's the large number of variants of these Hong Kong knock-off figures, which makes all samples so useful, toward finding the full story of them, one day!

 

I can never remember who these are by (and I've been told often enough!), with scabards and base markings they are Timpo 1st version, but with plain belts and smooth bases they are . . . Charbens, Speedwell . . . someone like that?

 

Finishing off with a lovely, clean sample of the CMV-marked Hong Kong copies of 'khaki infantry' from old Britains Herald, Lone Star and Crescent sculpts, so clean they look like they were made this morning! Thank you, Theo, sorry it's taken so long to get them posted!

L is for Lots of Lovely Loot!

Actually it's not much, but there are some interesting bits in amongst the box-tickers, and almost more metal than plastic, which is not a measure of how far I'm veering from the true path, but just the fact that the London show is the sort of show where some cheap metal is to be had!

Not sure if these are colonial French or British 'native' infantry, nor whether they are Indian or Arabic, or ancient/medieval, but I like to grab these semi-flats when I see them going cheap, and these were better than cheap, they were free! Adrian Little gave them to me, after I asked for a price, as they were in with something . . . err . . . much better!

 

Café Storm Coffee premium of Don Luis de Requesens (1520-1576, Wikipedia states b.1528, but admits problems with the page?) on the left, a mounted Arab from Britains 'Second Rate' subscale, pocket-money lines on the right.

 

Machine-gunners, a growing side-collection! Hollow-cast to the fore, a solid, commercial effort from home-casting mould behind him, the larger composition one is also unknown, but may be Belgian or Dutch and a Crescent gunner is behind them all.

Two shrubs, the left-hand one, more composite than composition, may be an early Faller, I've a couple of Faller trees somewhere with similar bases and construction, but with identifying stickers, or - to be accurate - glued labels. On the right is an aluminium one which could be Wend Al, but is probably Quiralu, as it was with a bunch of other Quiralu that Wend Al never covered themselves.

 

Five more metals, and most are Britians Second Rate's again (note the very different treatments of the two marching (US?) sailors), but the pilot is Crescent, and the running sailor is from B&T I think, from a Woolworth's exclusive set, post war.

 

A couple of ceremonials, one plastic and another of those Crescent sub-scale piracies from Hong Kong, [27th - probably an equally interesting Hilco plastic-from-hollow-cast - thanks Peter Evans] the other a hollow-cast and actually Crescent as far as I can tell, detail seems crisper on Crescent's figures than Britains.

 

I owe Peter Evans a small apology, I was holding two conversations at once, when he came over and gave me the red figure (another freebie!), and I glanced at it and said something along the lines of 'Thanks, I think it's from a firefighter board game like the milkman/dairy delivery one?', later I found the yellow one in a rummage tray (possibly the same seller?), and after getting them home, they are clearly spies or secret-agents of some kind, probably still board game pieces, but not firemen! I think I have the game's details somewhere in the archive, so one day the A-Z entry will have them corrected!

Between them is a rather nice 70-millimetre Nardi nativity Wise Man, from a crèche/crib set, or Presepe, he's got a swivel waist, but is otherwise not very swoppet'y!

The rest of what was only a cupped-hands'full, but all good stuff, especially with the large set we looked at yesterday. Clockwise from the top left, we have another of the soft-polyethylene versions of the Hardy (et al) G.I. flats, which I suspect are 'Euro-premiums' of some kind? A dug out canoe from Safari's Powhatan Indians set, a pack of eight Lilliput hurdles, and two of the maybe Charbens cake decoration plastic copies of the Britains' hunters, another Airfix fox-hound/beagle type and a Quiralu (?) black panther in aluminium.

S is for Seen Elswhere - The Italians are Coming!

I almost can't write for excitement, someone made my day earlier this evening, in fact he made my fucking year, it's like Christmas just came early, so a quick post on a few bits I've already posted elsewhere. Mostly Fontanini, but a bit of Garibaldi, all from the Roman Boot!

 

The Knights; We've actually looked at a pair of the larger ones and their Hong Kong blow-moulded clones before here at Small Scale World (which nobody follows - except everybody), but this bunch is, I think (I could put 'we believe' and then you'd really think I know what I'm talking about, huh?) a complete set of eight poses in the 75/80mm line with the same plug-in bases and silver wash over matt black.

Couple of close-ups showing the standard base and . . . errr. . . that's about it! They do all have date-captions, but I didn't think to write them down, so - another day! Lazy research, that'll be the problem!

Then, also from Fontanini we have Brain Blessed and his daughter, singing the Siegmund & Sieglinde duet, from Die Walküre at Bayreuth a few years ago! God knows, the fevered mind of Simonetti as he tried to finish a Commission while hallucinating with a particularly severe bout of gastroenteritis?

But Peter Evans, roving reporter for Plastic Warrior, reports either seeing or buying them from Hastings in the past, so they were a real thing! Aren't they charming? My piss-taking aside, Fontanini did a set of the Italian Commedia dell'arte, so a little theatricalise on their Normans (or Anglo-Saxons; it's not clear!) is to be excused, if not actually expected! I Really need to find the rest of this set!

The two Vikings are in the same size as the Knights, but with integrated bases, so you can see our Sieglinde (well, if she's not a 'she', he's a very pretty boy; no reading stories to kiddies in Florida, in that getup, mate!) is around 100mm in comparison.

Finally, a quintet of Garibaldini from Nardi, another Italian maker. I think they may be supposed to have red kepis, which, if they are, are obviously missing - I may have some spare Kinder ones I can force-on with a bit of horse-gum!

 

The same sculpts were used for Confederate and Union types and RCMP (as these, but no neckerchiefs and wearing lemon-squeezer hats), and possibly US Cavalry? These are a near 54mm. There were larger sizes of these as well, and compared to some of the dancing loons which came from that stable, these are quite reasonable figures.

M is for Minor Swivels & Swoppets

Bit of a mix here, some 'seen elsewhere', some old Picasa clearance and one recently 'in' who's gone out, and he isn't really a swivel or a swoppet, but he is an over-mould, so he's here!

A 54/60mm motorcycle dispatch-rider from Manuel Sotorres of Spain, from their sort of post-war/contemporary range back whenever. They seem to have been quite common in Spain at the time, but don't turn-up so much over here, which meant I grabbed this when I saw it!

 

Nardi of Italy provide this swoppet cowboy in the style of Britains' own Swoppets, or at least his belt is modelled after theirs, otherwise he's more like early-Timpo or Charbens; all polyethylene, some paint and none of the PVC accessories Britains gave theirs.

 

Torres Maltas, 45mm figures, also from Spain, and yes, I get both (these and Sotorres) mixed up, and if I'm being particularly dimwitted I can confuse either with the Miguel Torres winery and their plastic bull seal-tags - seen here in the past!

 

I have a bit of a mental block on these for another reason too, I keep thinking I have a bunch 'somewhere' in the pile, but actually I think this is all I have, and I saw some others, somewhere else, and just think they may be hiding in the stash! So three mounted, helmeted troops and a sailor - they have swivel arms.

While this chap could be Nardi, but I suspect he will turn out to be Xandria from Holland, when the dust settles. He is part PVC and part PE, but the two over-moulded or heat-welded in 'layers' for a 'solid' figure, unlike the movability of some of the key-ring 'stacks' from Xandria.

And in conversation with Peter Evans and the recipient of it (I liked it, but I knew someone who's need was greater) we agreed it's probably depicting St. Nicholas, rather than some random bishop or archbish' handing out magic gloves, paired amulets and anointed rods-to-god to any old Tom, Dick or Charlie!?

N is probably Not for Nardi

I bought these off a well known dealer, who said he'd been told they were Nardi, but with a face and a tone of voice which said "If you want to believe it too?", and it has to be said there is nothing in the Nardi oeuvre that matches it. It doesn't match the plug-together figures, nor the earlier composition

Therefore - and pending any hysterical updates from TJF or his PSTSM mates - this is an unknown, Italian nativity or 'Precepe' set.

It's beautifully made, and if I had to pin it on anyone I'd choose the Esci/Italiari/Ital-Hobby/Polistil/Supermodel group or chain, as the colours of the plastic have something in common with some of their kits, as has the material - polystyrene - and the kit-like construction, although that construction has, for the most part, been done at source.

The camera's flashes (and the age of the set) have rather led to some unrealistic colour-reproduction, but the components come in a light- and mid-tan and a chocolate-brown, along with some marbling on a few of the animals.

In the shot above we have three wise men, while the below image shows the family doing their 'thang'!

The shepherds in this set have come mob-handed with no less than four individuals, although you could employ three of them as camel-herds, but you'd need to source the camels from elsewhere first!

The upper image is my mock up of a smaller vignette I've seen, made of these, on t'Internet. In the case of that 'budget purchase' (?), the sheep has no base and all four elements are glued to a large'ish steep-sided base moulding in the same dark-brown found in this set and probably from the same tool as the other brown components.

The vignette on the left here, gives some idea of the one I was describing above, although the sides of this one are geometric and much taller. Marked ® and Made In Italy these are the only real clues, there is nothing on the box; probably reflecting an international issue/release; I've seen them on evilBay often-enough, before now.

The angel is made to be attached to something . . .

. . . with two long, locating studs as can be seen here (bottom left). I suspect it's the stable building seen on the box, which presumably was available in the same sales-displays, or perhaps packed together with this set in a larger liner?

The animals have been marbled from the two tan-plastics (sheep) or all three colours (the donkey and cow), both the latter also having a slot-in ear/horn section; which is missing on my donkey.

Whether there are two sculpts/cavities of/for the walking sheep, or if its base was cut off for use with the other vignette - I can't say.

A really nice set; does anyone know anything else about it or who made it?