B is for Big Box of Bounty - Ancient, Medieval, Historical & Ceremonial

Another interesting assortment of figures from Chris Smith's latest parcel, and it's all the other 'Toy Soldier' periods. I keep meaning to do a post on the classification of these things, as it's never an exact science, do you put Huns with ancient, or medieval periods, what about Aztecs, or Ninja/Samurai, when are ceremonials also soldiers (1850's say), or further afield; the whole sorting of civilians, is a nightmare!

 

So, I'll put the Asians first! The Budda votive statuette is a nice piece of scenery for HO/OO type figures, it can even be an objective for your ANZAC's on the war games table! The large figure is actually marked Marx, with the full Hong Kong disc-mark, and is from a set of tea premiums.

 

The guy carrying the straw bundles is from a Hong Kong rack toy called 'Villagers', which we have looked at here, and another of the Kinder Samurai archers, this one complete, will get the base off one of the damaged/painted ones, in my determination to have one of each, in all three (?) colours!

 

Three Ninja's, two from Hasbro, one painted, one in a clear, blue polymer, and the other, smaller one in the middle, from the Panosh set of Lucky Bag giveaways, and other sources? I have tried finding the Hasbro's, but with little success, and suspect they aren't actually Ninja or Samurai, but from something else entirely, Star Wars semi-deforms? Anyone know?

 

Two Crong medieval horses, sans riders, and there's a post in the queue on developments there, courtesy of a Loyal Reader, a Kinder musketeer, Hong Kong copy of Britain's Robin Hood, probably sold as a cake decoration, colours tie-in with things like the Britains arctic explorer piracies, and a contender for 'best in box'. A Hong Kong clone of the MPC small scale medieval knights, and one of the little Blue Box 'Hidden Adventures' castle figures.

 

The little blob in front, is the jester-puppet, from the tip of a jester's wand, as there are very few such figures in the entire canon of toy figures, I guess it must be Starlux, Mokarex or Café Storm? As they often break-off, it may prove to be a very useful spare, one day?

 

Two lead chaps who've lost their armies, on the right looks like he's probably Minifigs, the one on the left looks to be 'a cut above', and might be someone like Stadden or Suren? But I may just be being over-enamoured of his helmet! Equally, he has an interesting detail in the tin-can sword-fist thing, is he a known character from history?

 

Giant-like but no Giant, the reason I didn't attach two of the towers to the wall ends, is because the wall is from a different issuer and the locating studs don't match up with the holes in the towers! We looked at the different types here (https://butisitgiant.blogspot.com/2021/08/golden-trojans-non-giant-gold-plastic.html), but I didn't think to measure the holes/studs; next Time!

 

Three Euro-chaps, the one on the left, I think, is by the maker located in Monaco, and is a Crescent knock-off, the other two probably premiums, and possibly in JC Peiffret's book on the subject - Les Figurines Publicitaires.

 

The Imperial Guardsman has a furry plume, caused by the fraying of a layer of plastic, which cooled quicker than the core (cold tool?), and has lifted and frayed! I could probably restore it with a pass though a lighter flame, but think I'll leave it as it is, as a fortuity?

 

In a similar vein, these plug-ins are part of a series of similar French and Italian types, from the better known Texas, through to several premium issues, each with different bases, but many figures in common, one day I'll cover them properly, but I haven't the time to try and tie-down these, or the previous ones, right now!

 

A lovely Napoleon, possibly made of casein, and a real treat, as I know Chris has a sub-collection of such things, so this must be a duplicate he's kindly sent us, it did feature here in a question-time, and I think Chris is still looking for a formal ID on the figure.

 

The larger figure I think we've seen before and is a . . . no, it's gone, I'm sure he's been ID'd here, or had his ID told to me, by someone, at some point, but it's escaped me now! I thought he might be Tringa, but he's not in my flyer?

 

The big one is almost certainly missing a sand-timer, off the right-hand spigot, and utilises a Deetail figure, unusual as it's more often seen with Hong Kong Herald figures, but he's meant to be in there, he has a large hole in his posterior for the plastic spigot seen in the second image, which is pushed through from the back of the chalkware sentry-box.

 

To the left, one of the sucker blokes, he's in a bit of a state, but rather a sample, than no sample! The little chap looks like he was made yesterday, and is polystyrene, so he may be, as he's absolutely mint, possibly an accessory for a tourist die-cast vehicle set which has avoided me, or is he a doll's house toy, as in from the playroom of a doll's house? A lovely little chap in any event, but ID needed!

 

Uncivil war, with a marked ABC figure fighting slavery, and a small lead figure (Hinchliffe?) fighting the Norman landed-class for a smidgen of democracy - they went a bit over the top on protestant dourness though, they sort of banned Christmas for several years!

Crescent conversion OBE, and a figure which could be home-made, or one of those 'Oojah-Cum-Pivvy' figures imported by Shamus Wade from India, between them is what I believe is an ocean-washed, sand-ground, or smoothed, Deetail Arab horse rider!

 

Many thanks again to Chris, some interesting stuff here, and still at least three posts to come. 

K is for Kanhȗ's Kung-Fu Killers!

Picked these up the other day, more erasers! These Kanhȗ erasers though, are pretty good 54mm human figures, an excellent addition to the collection, and will make a fine foil to the larger Power Ranger capsule and cereal premium toys, we've looked at previously here.

 

Two per pack, so you can get them fighting from the off! Something seems to have been lost in translation with 'Yosoken' probably being Yoseikan budō, a form of combined martial art, and 'Shorinken' probably meaning Shuriken, or fighting stars, those two being on the fronts of the cards, I didn't pursue the exercise with the five on the back! Equally, with the seven black & white sketches not resembling the four figures, it could be a set in excess of 12 sculpts?

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Historicals and Ceremonials

There's no better-or-worse with these groupings, it's just the easiest way to begin the sorting, as most of the large scale collection is archived thematically. The small scale remains mostly alphabetical by company/maker, with only the unknowns thematic, but in the larger scales it seems better to separate them by theme, within which they are all equally valued, and equally useful, in their section of the whole! Today it's the more colourful soldiers from Chris's recent donation parcel!

This was actually a purchase from Chris, which was put in the box to save on postage, and turned-out to be a Reamsa cavalryman, Royal Escort Squadron, I believe, and doesn't seem to have been in the Gormasa-Soldis tranche of reissues? Now he just needs a horse, but as mentioned in related-articles passim, I think I have some somewhere!

 

Novelty Ninjas from Panosh flank a larger unbranded/several branded (generic!) figure, who is a more contemporary (or still recent) capsule-toy type. All three are manufactured in soft PVC style polymers.

 

From the left: a base for the via-Portugal premiums used by several French products, which had here, been paired with one of the smaller Kinder issue figures, which his locating pegs don't fit! A ceramic priest type, from Japan, a slightly damaged Marx Miniature Masterpiece knight - I have more damaged than not, and will have a modelling session with their polystyrene arses one day! Finally, a new sculpt of Welsh lady 'redcoat' to put the fear of god into French marines! She was obviously another (most of the previously-seen were) tourist keepsake, keyring

 

With sizer - a bit blurred, without sizer - a better shot! A home-casting mould Prussian, a naked lead figure around 40mm, he may have had a brand, but with everything that's happened recently that mental note has been lost, and what looks like a French (or Spanish?) copy of a Reisler (?) Band Major, he could be quite recent, he's very clean, and very flashy, almost a test-shot? The sizer is an Airfix clone.

 

Lovely novelty ceramic drummer, about 45mm? He's smaller than the others we looked at a while ago, and we will return to him/them, as more of the others came in a while ago, but have gone off to storage, so a better overview of them - as a genre or trope - is definitely in the pipeline!

 

And a nice bunch of slightly battered Oojah-Cum-Pivvy's, from India, via Shamus Wade, but being terracotta, they will restore quite well, both with superglue and modelling clay, while the powder/poster paint is equally easy to touch-up, so I will get decent samples of each uniform type from this lot. And again, many thanks to Chris for all the above.

H is for How They Come In - January - Mixed Lots

This is a few shots of several small lots I took together as they all came in the same post, and got unwrapped (I think of them as presents even if I've paid for them!) together . . . actually they may have been four little lots from one seller?

Two large vinyl animals from PG Tips (tea-bag premiums, taped to a box of tea-bags - for loyal readers overseas!), with their boxes in the background, two nifty ninja's, a Hong Kong for Cavendish (and others) tourist keepsake guardsman and a lovely HO-gauge compatible composition barn . . . and me' morning-coffee! Self-seal bags are ready to receive their new tenants.

Posed with Britains Lilliput farm figures and accessories, to give some idea of the scale, could be Brent or Zang or someone, but has the colour of European linseed oil-mixed composition, so may be German, Belgian or even Italian?

That design of barn is, or was; 100-years ago, pretty universal across northern/central Europe, the 17 original States of the Union and western Russia, so no guide to origin in the architecture, indeed, it could be home-made or what we now call 'garage production'? But, nevertheless; one of my favorite additions to the collection in the last 12 months.

Because Chris's lot had only come in a few weeks before, it was still half-sorted and to-hand, so I grabbed the similar figure from his donation and they had a reunion fight! I have a bunch of them somewhere and we'll look at them properly one day.

You can see in the background I also unified the three 60mm 'Cavendish's, and saw a pair of ginger cats migrate to the table between shoots!

The fact that two of the guards are damaged is no problem as this is a hard to find figure with the bayonet intact, but all three are different plastic colours (red, smoky salmon and greyish-white), so when we next look at the 60mm's in detail (I need to find more household cavalry!) the three will produce an excellent base-underside shot!

And I took a very similar shot to the one the other day - in fact I probably took them at the same time! The swoppet ninja is from the purchase, the other four were from Chris Smith - Kinder, vintage Japanese celluloid, Award International, MTC and a European premium after Fontanini.

H is for How They Come In - December 2020 - II Chris - Ceremonial, Historical & Wild West

On to 'Toy Soldiers' proper, except most of these are technically civilians, but civilians with guns! Although some ceremonials at the end of the post get us back on military ground.

The sitting figure here is an odd one, I have him in two sizes (I may even have a missing drum somewhere, but I don't know which sized figure it goes with) and I think the larger (here) may be RP (Res Plastics) from Italy although unmarked, and if not; any one of several others, while the smaller version is probably the Kinder variant, the knees having to fit in the egg-capsule? if the missing drum is right, it's a thin disc more like a tambourine! 

July 2022 - A similar but glossy, yellow one is now known to be by Locati from Italy; similar capsule toys.

The cowboy with lasso is one of several I have now, both cowboys and Indians, all smallish (45mm), all glossy brown (different shades) and only a few poses (two of each?), so probably Christmas crackers or something like that? I love the yellow flat in soft plastic, probably a copy of a Euro-premium! We've seen the cake-figure before and the damaged Herald Copy is a lovely plastic colour, so definitely worth keeping.

There should be a totem-pole with this, but it was shown earlier in the year and them went away with the others! Comansi, late production in semi-indestructible PVC vinyl rubber from Spain, it was previously issued in polyethylene and there are small scale versions I really should have Blogged by now, but they have actually gone away into storage . . . again!

We've seen these before more than once and another contributor - Brain Berke - managed to ID them as Lucky Bag gifts over here, but you can never have too many I suspect, due to the number of poses and colours coupled with the frangibility of them making whole ones that much harder to obtain!

Ah yes! Winners of the worst figures ever, in my book (after some editor nicked the obvious Cherilea first spot when he launched the 'competition . . . no, not bitter at all, press corruption is what Brwreakshit was all about, wasn't it!); the MTC Ninjas, although space-ice-hockey-jockey-Ninjas does them more justice!

A Kinder push-together, two-part Samurai archer in the middle, I'd like to think I'm building a set of these (there are only two poses in two or three colours I think?) but the bows are always broken, so I have a full set of legs with one good body!

Bottom row is a Japanese-made 1950's celluloid peasant, he should be walking next to a cart with a rake or broom over his shoulder I suspect, then another Euro-premium copy of a Fontanini oriental statuette and finally a swoppet practitioner of Kung-fu from Hong Kong via Ward International and others.

This was a real surprise, we've seen the Texan/Alamo cowboys (and cannon) and the dancers, but this is another set of European margarine flats, taken by Betterwear and reproduced in soft polyethylene, clearly a nativity set, it was new on me - and as far as I know the rest if the hobby? There's gonna' be at least ten to find? Lovely.

A lovely bisque cake decoration with drum and another Guardsman key-ring! The latter is in rubber and to stand him up I had to prop him against the cake dec', so you can't see his rifle well, but it is all there!

Three military musicians on the left; a very nice copy of a Crescent/Kellogg's drummer, reduced in size a tad, the Highlander now credited to Scottish International Gift and a European figure, which I think might come from Layla, or one of the other 'minor' German makers?

We saw the Pirates on ITLAPD, but here they are again, Lone Star 'Metallions', or copies thereof, or licensed production, there are about five-names associated with these sculpts in die cast and a few plastic knock-offs. Quite a few!

******     *****    ****   ***  ** * **   ***    ****     *****      ******

This should have published at 9.30 this morning, but the laptop went phutt last night with one line to do! I spent all day running round Berkshire and Hampshire trying to get it fixed, and then after a nice chap in a techie-shop showed me a cheat while he orders a part, it righted itself! Don't know how long-for though, so, fix will go ahead, and new laptop seems to be my Christmas present to myself . . . they are all Win.10 or II and none of them have a disc-drive - WTF!

Ah-soh! is for Grasshopper!

I always try to sneak some of  the former-Soviet Union's equivalent of Rack Toys into RTM, however, this time it's a current set, but one of the more affordable sets from Biplant, as opposed to some of the incredibly expensive (for no real reason) sets emanating from the former Bloc.

Unlike the combat sets we saw, which come in a standard header-carded 'bottle bag', these historical sets come in wonderful display 'cabinets', which here gives us a lovely Imperial Chinese style building/roof reflecting the original Shaolin Monastery in Dengfeng,Henan Province, China.

Six of the floatiest flying Ninja David Carradines' you'll ever see! The plastic colour makes photography hard, but they are nicely done figures, all clean shaven heads and lethal weaponry! You can see also how they seem to pair-up if you were to be minded to paint and base them as mini-vignettes or a single larger diorama.

While this guy has the air of a master about him, maybe a trainer/instructor or older monk, with a heavier sword (for whacking students with the flat-side of?), bulky shield and substantial cloak. He also lacks the dynamism of the other six, but is still a nice figure. He'd also paint-up nicely as any 'biblical' era man-at-arms, albeit a bald one!

Packaging scans; the others sets get variations of a castle/fortress look which is not quite as ornate as this one, so this one might be the one to go for first! They're currently available from several dealers on evilBay (which is getting very evil these days!).

S is for Squat Squidgy Squadies and Safe Samurai 'Sassins

You may remember a while ago, Brian Berke sent some shelfies to the Blog of these delightful little weirdoes, well; he only went and sent the Blog some in his autumn parcel - didn't he!

 

Imported into the 'States by those new-old favourites Greenbriar/DTSC, but apparently on behalf of Imperial to whom the figures are also branded, and they are a soft, hollow silicon rubber, a bit like squeaky-toys but sans squeak, or; sans squeaker!

Ninjas; too cool for martial-arts school and the colours are lovely; the camera's flash has reddened one, who - to the eye - is a pinky-heliotrope sort of colour, while the purple one has reproduced quite accurately. Style is slightly 'deform', or cartoonish with big heads, hands and feet.

The cool colours extend to the generic (but vaguely 'Fritz' helmeted) combat infantry, with butterscotch, mint and blueberry, fairy-cake, icing hues! I have no idea how many colours there are in ether line, nor - indeed - whether the rich colours of the Ninjas carry over to the soldiers or the pastels vise-versa?

Equally I don't know how many poses there are in either line, although they are numbered sequentially; so this may be 'it'. While the packaging carries the details of Greenbrier and DTSC (for Canada) it carries the logo of Imperial, however the figures are all marked Greenbrier International.

You can also see here just how squidgy they are and - courtesy of the 'Berserker' that they are around the 100mm mark. Many thanks to Brian for sending them.

N is for Ninjamites!

Giveaway premiums across Europe, blind-bagged in Italy I think (ours are in a soft PVC polymer), they were also available in the US in a rigid-plastic as boxed-tray and blister-card sets (see link at end) with glow-in-the-dark paint-highlights.

A small sample, but they are near-deforms, with scale a bit 'loose' (30/35mm) so it's as many as I need, given that the box is now ticked and a few-more will come in with mixed lots in the years to come!

Originating in 1985; I think most of mine were from Mr. Lucky bags in the mid-late 1990's?

Soupie nailed the pose-count and US-side of things here, he also has more links to various other relevant sites.

And no! I have no idea why one of them has six arms! I'll have a guess that it's a bed-bug 'mite' in-joke!

N is for Ninja Fighters

These came in the day after the start of Rack-toy month, courtesy of Peter Evans, made by Tai Sang's RedBox and brought to the UK via those consummate rack-toy importers Grossman - or HGL as they are now branded - and I photographed them the next day; since when they have been stuck in the queue!

A 12th figure is out there somewhere; eleven is an odd set-count! Diminutive at around the 40mm mark, they match a set of similar pirates we looked at last year on TLAPD in silver, which helps ID them in the question-mark department. As RedBox they came originally in a lovely little play-set with atmospheric scenery pieces you can see here about halfway down the post.

Simple, clear China mark; the detail is there under/behind the difficult to discern glossy-black or red plastic and they would paint-up well, if  a little child-like, which is more due to the loose, baggy clothing than any fault with the anatomy . . . arms a bit short; maybe?

Generic card suggests they should be available elsewhere - look for them near you if your 'thing' is ninja fighters!

N is also for Nippon and Nunchuck!

So to a few other Ninja types; most sent to the blog by Mr Burke, many thanks to him and the first lot are the interesting set vis-à-vis this morning's post . . .

. . . as they are 'not quite' copies of the small gum-ball capsule ninjas we saw earlier, only in a larger scale and with adjusted or new poses and as they're being imported by Amscan - a similar company to A&A Global - might possibly be from the same source as the diminutive ones.

It's not terribly clear but they are definitely larger and not quite the same, although colours are similar, material looks to be the same (PVC or its modern equivalent) and the childlike, slightly 'deform' sculpting is in the same style as the small ones in the preceding post.

'Terranova' also sent these shots back in February, of resin Kung Fu practitioners, for sale in a gift shop and clearly based on the inimitable Brice Lee and in three sizes - the larger as 'paint-your owns' (like Bendy Toys; another new but recurring trope here on Small Scale World!); the smaller two sizes seeming to be 54- and around 60mm's?

The smallest - titled 'Kung Fu Man' - also appearing to have a wider range of poses and to be the better painted, although the painted version of the large figures (hiding behind the two unpainted ones) is a second pose in that scale, so there should be more?

Mr B also took a couple of close-ups of the nicer figures and you can't complain at three-dollars-fifty can you? These resin figures need to be purchased (or shelfied!) as soon as you see them as they are nearly always limited quantity production runs, due to the rapid degradation of the air-setting rubber, silicon or latex moulds, and with no obvious maker (WCP?) on the price label; they're off for a - probably - long stay on the 'Unknown' dongle!

Brian also sent these - carried by the 'usual suspects'; Greenbrier/DTSC - they would appear to be a continuation of the large Firefighters and GI's I bought a couple of years ago from - the now defunct - 99p Stores under - I think - PMS International's label? Brian's sent shelfies of those giant soldiers too - in new packaging - but they're for another day. These will be 4-inch, polyethylene figures, and one expects all four to turn-up in both colours.

We've seen firefighters, GI's and superhero types of these before too; mostly also from the Blog's New York agent and like those, these are that odd thing; Action Figure types which aren't really action figures due to the limited number of points of articulation, more like the old knock-off Action Men/GI Joes'.

These are also from Terranova, but have been sat in the older folder for a while now (over a year!) waiting for a suitable post; such as this one! But they ARE Ninjas! They will be in a dense polystyrene or polypropylene and come with rather over-decorated Ninja-type weapons/accessories.

Rounding-off the day with a dice-rattling lump of styrene; I've had two more lots of those Gogo Crazy Bones come in recently and so two posts are in the pipeline, but one of them is Ninja-like enough to close today's look at Ninjas! He may be more 'Kamikaze' than true 'Ninja' though?

And that's covered most of the main scales, several figure-types and all the major polymers in one post - Thanks Brain/Terra!

N is for Ninja and New Game

Brian B (Terranova) sent me a bunch of images the other day and I thought; "Ooh, I know what they are, I'll dig mine out and put them together in a post", however, when I dug mine out . . . they were different! Hey Ho! So we will see Terra's later today, after first looking at what would appear to be the donor-sculpts!

These are they. This commercial image is from an old Amazon sales site which I tried to take advantage of, only to find they didn't ship outside the 'States; which makes you wonder A) what's the point of an 'Internet' if it's not actually integrated? And B) what's the point of all these clever algorithms if they can't tell when not to show an ad' or search-result in a zone where it's invalid?

Anyway; as I remember it - it was a year or three ago now - they were basically selling a gum-ball restock bag of them (about 25/30 or maybe 50/60 I can't recall?) or shop-stock box (the packaging wasn't shown) as 'party favours', bulk, for less than the price of a coffee at Starbucks! Lesson - if it's too good to be true - it usually is!

They are more commonly found associated with importer's A&A Global International who import rack toys and supply vendors with gum-ball machine refills.

My 'current sample' (as at January 2016) is not the largest, I'm missing the guy with the short sword and have a limited colour-set - I hope I have a few more in storage (I think, or I should have - they may be too modern?) with some of the other colours &etc.

There are six poses in total and they come in a wide range of colours, in what seems to have been at least two major production tranches, the above two images are the most recent issue and may still be current in a party or joke shop near you . . . or your local gum-ball capsule machine!

Quick comparison shot - Redbox on the left and an unknown probably also a capsule/gum-ball 'thingy' in the middle (similar to but not Panosh; possibly carried - undecorated - by Toy Smith?), with one of the A&A Global's on the right.

These - heavily cropped images from feebleBay - are from gum-ball machine insert/window cards and are all marked A&A Global. In the middle you can see the earlier tranche was in more 'girly' or pastel colour-ways. However - recently, they have been copied in a size better suited to large scale collectors, and it is those Brian sent to the Blog and which I will post this afternoon, with other Ninja-related stuff.

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I have a new time-wasting game! Two of the above images were loaded on the blog two years ago (in the big January 'up-at-the-library' posting I mentioned at the time) and I never got round to editing the text, needing to find them on the dongles to sort this post out I searched for them and it turns out the camera recycles the four figures codes; well, it would have to with a four-digit limit, wouldn't it! But it's not something I'd ever needed to give any thought to! And it appears I have taken (or 'kept' - around 2/3rds of every photo-shoot get deleted) no less than four 7012's!

And - random as they are - they manage to cover almost everything plastic;

Large and small scale; ethylene, polystyrene and PVC; civilian and military; figures and vehicles; historical, modern, and sports; big toys, rack toys, capsule toys and cake decorations; friction-motorised; painted, unpainted and transfers; branded and unbranded, there's even a hint of accessory/scenery with the goal posts . . . but weirdly - they are all Hong Kong/China!

A Number picked at random - New Game!