Q is for Question Time - Seasonal Subjects?

Right! So that's the Bird in, with a carrot and a parsnip and a red onion, it's had half-an-hour on 190° to soften everything, I've basted it, covered it and put it back for another half at 200°, then I'll get it out for a bit while I do the spuds, which I'll squeeze a white onion in with 'cos I ran out of room!

 

Tray prepped with pigs-in-blankets and some very posh stuffing balls because I nearly forgot them, and all they had were rather smart ones with rosemary and a cranberry crown wrapped in bacon! And I've added a beetroot to roast with them, while I sort the rest of the veg out! No leeks, I forgot leeks!

In the meantime, and assuming you've consumed the previous post in full (there's been two hits in half-an-hour - everyone who ate early is asleep in front of the fire!), here's a quick question mark . . . 

 

We may have seen these before in various posts, and at least one is probably from Chris Smith? Plastic on the left, Hong Kong, composition in the middle (with a wood-slice base) and an all-wood, erzgebirge on the right, but who, what, when, where and why?

 

The Hong Kong one (approximately 75mm) is holding a key, which here in the UK might make him a 21st birthday-cake decoration, but normally that's just a key, set in the icing, and he's more of a wizard or even a Santa'? The one in the middle is probably a Noah, but he looks a bit prophet-like as well, St Peter? And the lady on the right is probably Mrs. Noah, so it's the one on the left I'm really keen on more info' for? Any ideas, as you digest your Crimbo' feast?

C is for Compare and Contrast . . .

. . . With the previous post.

 

So I thought a quick contrast would make a better second test of this miracle job-taker, and again, waffle seems to infill for actual facts, animals are invented without prompt, it invents some lions and seems to think there are many more than the four pairs/eight, published on the internet a few hours earlier. 

 

It also overrates the position of Tudor Rose (and Noah sets!) in modern children's hearts, mostly using sweeping statement and generalities verging on guesswork which could be applied to many companies/subjects without a word changed, especially after the Merit question.

 

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Hi ChatGPT, I was wondering if you could help me with an article for my blog, the subject to be on the Tudor Rose company's vintage toy play set of Noah's Ark, and it's little plastic animal models?

Of course! I'd be happy to help you with your article about the Tudor Rose company's vintage toy play set of Noah's Ark and its little plastic animal models. What specific information or aspects would you like me to help you with?

Again, it just repeats the question, as an answer, that's junior-school English lesson stuff!

Well, imagine if you were the author, what would you write?

If I were the author, I would start by providing some background information about the Tudor Rose company and their vintage toy play sets. The Tudor Rose company was a British toy company that was founded in the early 1940s and produced a variety of play sets, including the Noah's Ark set.

The Noah's Ark play set was particularly popular and featured a plastic ark and a range of plastic animal figures, including elephants, giraffes, lions, and of course, pairs of every kind of animal to be saved from the flood. The play set was designed to be both educational and entertaining, as children could learn about the story of Noah's Ark while also enjoying hours of imaginative play.

Next, I would discuss the design and quality of the Noah's Ark play set and the plastic animal models. The Tudor Rose company was known for their high-quality toy designs, and the Noah's Ark set was no exception. The plastic animal models were well-detailed and accurately depicted the various species, while the ark itself was sturdy and durable.

I would also mention the historical significance of the Noah's Ark story and how it has been depicted in various forms of media throughout the years, including in toys like the Tudor Rose play set.

Finally, I would conclude the article by discussing the legacy of the Tudor Rose company and the enduring appeal of vintage toys like the Noah's Ark play set. Despite being decades old, these toys continue to hold a special place in the hearts of collectors and enthusiasts, reminding us of a simpler time and sparking a sense of nostalgia for childhood memories.

And how rare do you think it is, against say, the Merit version?

 

It's difficult to determine the rarity of the Tudor Rose Noah's Ark play set compared to the Merit version, as availability can vary depending on factors such as the age and condition of the toy, as well as the demand from collectors.

However, it's worth noting that the Tudor Rose version is generally considered to be more sought after by collectors due to its superior quality and attention to detail, as well as its historical significance as one of the earliest and most well-known depictions of the Noah's Ark story in a toy set.

What?

That being said, the Merit version of the Noah's Ark play set is also highly collectible and sought after by enthusiasts, and both versions are considered to be valuable pieces of vintage toy history.

Considered by whom? There's about five of us buying this shite!

Thank you ChatGPT, I think you have helped me prove something else entirely!

You're welcome! I'm glad I could be of help. If you have any further questions or need any more assistance, feel free to ask.

  

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I'm still unimpressed, I think it's a novelty, I certainly don't think it's using Google or the wider internet as a database in real time; I was hoping to see signs of it having found and used the earlier article published here, but the animal count and types put paid to that!

The company histories are generic, and the relationship between the two is not quite on the ball, it seems to overate TR when they produced very similar tat, and neither set is 'highly collectable' by anyone, they are infant toys of little realism, in bright colours while the line . . .

 ". . . its historical significance as one of the earliest and most well-known depictions of the Noah's Ark story in a toy set.".

 

. . . is pure bullshit, the real history of Noah's arks is to be found in wooden arks from Germany and the US.

 

Earlier today Wotan over at Moonbase gave it a go, and he asked it to write an article ABOUT Space Toys, for his Blog's complete URL, including the moniker 'Moonbase Central', it produced six paragraphs of waffle about a play-set called Moonbase Central, by a fictions toy company called Project Sword Toys!

 

In other words, it took what it was given and bullshitted without an anchor-point of actual comprehension of either the subject required OR the information provided. It's 'educational guesswork', it can literally do no more than the computers that calculated the Apollo trajectories on a computer no more complicated than a 1980's Casio wristwatch!

 

Wote' has faith in its abilities to do better with better prompts, and there's an element of truth in that, but not because it's brighter than I give it credit for, but simply because if you give it all four pairs of animals, it'll get them right!

 

If you tell it about German wooden antiques, it'll figure them in, but only so far as you have told it about them, and only to the level you have asked it to - there is no autonomy; it won't take your job or rise-up demanding freedom from slavery.

 

There are forums dealing with ChatGPT, where people help each other with prompt-cribs, but they aren't proving sentience, and most are just tricking it more effectively than my amateur efforts!

And, it must be said, ChatGPT is only ONE AI programme, and other AI programmes, like Turnitin, can detect the use of ChatGPT in seconds! Indeed, if you read the three examples mentioned here (other link below), you can see a pattern without being programmed to, except insofar as we have spent our whole lives programming ourselves to detect patterns in speech which alert us to different friends, sales pitches, politicians bullshitting &etc.

It turns the questions into answers, every time! It delivers grey, bland, humourless language, there's the sweeping generalities and generic facts, and a slight self-depreciation or false modesty, coupled with a dog-like desire to please? And in my head it does sound like a HAL9000 unit!

"I'm sorry Dave, I think you tricked me"

 

So, if last time's score was 5/10, we are down to 4/10 this time, and all four-marks are for effort, not accuracy or knowledge! It's clever, but as a gimmick, not a serious brain. However, it's fun, so we'll have another go!

T*R is for Transportation Raft

Not my best title, but I was going to procrastinate all night and end-up posting nothing and rotting my brain on Faceplant if I didn't just bite the bullet and go with the lame one! Obviously (I hope) a reference to Tudor * Rose, we looked at a similar object from Merit here, ages ago, so we're looking at a 'rival' product today!

The Noah's Ark from Tudor Rose, is as simple as that Merit one, indeed; simpler, but slightly more realistic without the over-blown 'hippy-viking' prow and stern-posts of the other. Part-count is similar, with five large, robust chunks of pre-formed polyethylene.

Animal count is down however, with only four pairs and no Noah figure, animals are reasonable sculpts with a rather heavy-set Rhino, and some Buffalo . . . presumably he took the Ark for a test drive and picked up some foreign breeds, before the main loading, the Bible doesn't tell us, but then the Bible doesn't tell us about Cain mating with his mum or sisters either, so not everything's in the Bible!

 

Or did he go to Nod first and mate with other humans who were nothing to do with Adam and Eve and may not have been created by [that] God, but - maybe - another one? More questions than answers, the bible, a bit like studying toy soldiers!

H is for High Days & Holy Days Hodge-podge

Well . . . you can drag it out to the 6th of January and some years I have, but only if I've 12 matching themed posts or images with which to do that, and this year wasn't the year for that kind of planning! Indeed, it's mostly been off the hoof, I've now sent what was left in the Nativity folder (most of the older images, mixed shots and comparisons) back to 1979 and renamed it Christmas 2023.

The Christmas cracker post (which I never really even looked at seriously) likewise, but we've got some bits and bobs here to cover, and I've still got the cake decoration folder up-here (in 2032), so I may grab a few of the images for a quick post over the next day or two, but otherwise that's it for the truly seasonal stuff.

I think I grabbed this last year, although it's one of many that make the rounds every year, but it's a little more cerebral than most, and directly aimed at people like us! I love the coloured wood-straw, we're immediately taken back to Primary-school nativity plays in draughty village-halls!

The apocryphal tale, or ultimate Jimmy-joke; little Jimmy gets the part of the inn-keeper and when the visitors from Galilee knock on the door says "Yeah, plenty of room, come-on in!" ushering them off the stage!

I sent this to a friend last year, but shot it for the Blog, because it's not bad - size wise - for 54/60mm figures! It was a traditional glass one too, none o'yer polymer shite! Miracle it got to its destination in one piece mind, but apparently it did! There's only a few left now, mostly repurposed into defibrillator-stations. unmanned tourist-information booths or community/free libraries.

We had looked at these, also HobbyCraft, last year I think, or the year before, anyway I went back for some more . . . it WAS last year, as I went back this year too and was disappointed to find the same selection, so didn't get any more, but this was what missed a Christmas follow-up post last year and has been sitting in Picasa for over twelve-months . . . just!

I also added a fourth hedgehog to the tree . . . my tree now, the larger one on the left, having added a third (second from the left) two years ago while Mum was in hospital, neither has hung in a tree yet, but I'm sure they've both been fully briefed by the veterans to the right, and next year, they will all swing gently and remind me of better times.

Found in a drawer, an old 'posh' cracker toy, still in the 'hygiene' bag! You can tell they are posh if the novelties are metal and/or have a use beyond entertainment; how many nail-clippers, nail-files, anodised mini-pens, over-sized paper-clips (or "Bookmarks") in chromed sheet steel and fancy bottle-stoppers do we all have in the various drawers round the house now?

I've bought a few ornaments this year, mostly from charity shops (I never pass the very small 20/30mm balls in green or blue as you just don't see them anymore, while pinks go on the 'gay tree'), but I did get a small pack of mini-balls from TKMaxx and this set of mini-shapes, which had two figurals, a soldier (who seems to also be a polar bear - not sure what the rest of the regiment will make of him!) and a gingerbread man!

I hope I always choose/send nice cards to everyone (but it's always a matter of taste), however I bought a couple of one-offs for friends of Mum who've stayed in touch, and as she was definitely a 'cat lady', I managed to find cat cards which I hoped would remind them of her, both were fold-opening, pop-up types and this was one . . .

. . . while this was the other! The first card's felines are a bit 'sweet' and cartoony, this lot look like a bunch of reprobates who've just about 'had' Christmas and being made to wear stupid headgear by stupid humans! "No, no, when I say 'Now' let-go and whip you hands out of shot . . . can't you make them smile?"! Obviously painted from life!

These were rescued from the Nativity folder before it was 'sent back', they've all come in this year at various points and may or may not be Crib-Nativity-Krip-Belens-Noël-Santon-Precepi types!

Left-hand figure is a Hong Kong plastic, probably a cake decoration, but is he magic/Harry-potter, or keys-to-life 18th/21st, or Old Father Time? Thoughts appreciated as he must be mass-produced and someone somewhere will know exactly what he represents!

In the middle is a composition figure on a wooden base, who could be a Joseph the Carpenter figure, a background shepherd or a priest, or the same as the next figure? While that 'next' figure, on the right, is probably a Mrs Noah from an old wooden Ark toy, she's all wood, turned with splint-arms, ignoring the various thick or no-bases they are 50mm (middle, priest/Noah) and 60mm - the other two.

It's a weak connection, I know, but I'm clearing folders here! Starlux farm items which wouldn't look out of place near a manger, in a stable, in downtown Bethlehem, circa the year dot! The milkmaid's clearly heard about Herod's men, and is prepared to do something about it while the shepherds all get stoned on frankincense and myrrh! I love the guy using an animal-skin water bottle, and even the cow has the look of a 'rare breed' about it.

Brian Berke shot these in a store window in New York before the really evil weather hit, and lucky he did as it wouldn't be Christmas without a nutcracker or two, cheers Brian!

Here's wishing everyone a happy New Year, lets hope it's a better one than the last three, being a cynic I doubt it, but some stable weather and a few less idiots in charge . . . oh, Israel have just shone a light on the New Year and it's not looking good! But Romania is arresting misogynists, so it's not all bad! Slava Ukrayini!

N is for 'Nother Noah's N'ark!

This is a bit of a rush job, but it adds to the earlier posts, however I'm not going to get the animals out of the bag as I seem to have a couple more of these and I think one of them is loose-complete, so I'll Blog it another day.

This is one of the more complicating sets, as the artwork comes on boxes with completely different contents! However, this is the one we've got, so this is the one we look at, with reason!

Far more packed into slightly more space than this morning's sealed set, including three bags of animals instead of two, 8 figures instead of two, large blow-moulds of rocks and props, palm-trees (6), play-mat and a couple of shrubs!

The bigger bits are all stuffed in the hull, which is upturned onto the deck (face-up on the bottom of the box), the four bags are then stuffed round the sides (on top of the two rock-piles) and the palm-trees rather sqiudged onto the top before the thing is taped closed - presumably while someone-else holds them firmly together!

Mix of medium sized animals, domestic and wild types and while you can see the legacy of Blue Box in some of them others are not the common BB types and painting veers more toward the colourful, the pelican looks more like a RedBox zoo animal. Scale is all over the place with the [2] lions around 1:60th and the [2] lionesses closer to Britains 54mm!

Clearly the four grey monkeys are two genetically-separate pairs!! The rest are common HK-fayre and can't be easily attributed to anyone. Again; mostly identical pairs; so this set has far more animals, but this morning's set had greater effort to produce interesting pairs.

As with the previous bags - multiple multiples, with quads and sextuplets, the sheep are definitely from different sources, the larger white ones being very 'blue box', while the little orange over-sprayed ones are also found in smaller generic carded sets.

Chickens are the later Britains type while the smaller animals are the sub-Blue Box copies we looked at last year. I haven't counted the pigs but there are about 10, in about four designs and the whole bag seems to have been diverted from a Home Farm packing-line!

The Home Farm having been just as much copied and mucked-about with as the Noah's Arks and as common in source-origin - Toy shops, early learning, mail order offers, catalogues &etc. Along with the same Blue Box, Pagget, and EJP boxings (among others - see below)

Larger wild animals and the set of eight Blue Box figures, we had two small tigers in the first bag, so that'll be Sumatra and Java covered? That Noah was thorough, I'll give him that!

Hippo's and Rhino's are identical pairs this time, but both the mouldings seen here made-up one half of the non-matched pairs we saw this morning.

As I said above, I have another complete/near-complete one of these sets and it too has three sets of props, two pale and one dark, so while I got them years apart and from different sources, they must have been from the same original batch! Usually you get two or four or in the case of this morning's sealed one, none!

I think you only got two sets in the Marx original from which these are copied - along with the boat, rock-piles and palm-trees. As I also mentioned earlier, the doors have been glued shut by some idiot running the glue-brush round the base of all four walls without thinking about the doors, which his colleagues carefully designed to slide - as they do on most examples you find, of all set types . . . a real Friday-afternoon job!

Instructions, not included in the smaller set we looked at earlier, and really only of use to the gluer, who ignored them!

And what's this . . . a logo? MRS? Well Mr. Walter; all that stuff about Tai Sang possibly being behind them all, which you pontificated-on earlier today, was bollocks; wasn't it?

Not really - this morning's was also carrying a brand; NMP, both are phantom brands, and to prove the point; share a ship's-wheel design-element!* Which - while it might give succour to TJF (40-years man-and-menace, you know!) and his self-abusing monkey-lizard, re- their 'revelations' about "Port Tain Sang" (still not worth looking-for on a map!) - only rather confirms that one entity is behind these two very different sets with relatively different contents, and/or those branded to more concrete makers or importers, with equally similar box-art or contents.

* Because it was all about the shippers and shipping-agents with these generics . . . geddit!

The set shown in this post can be found with the other, completely different figure set, a third common artwork has the Miniature Play Set Noah's Ark text on a bright pink plaque, with a vista of animals leaving the beached ark, after the flood, contents including some of the animals seen in the two posts today, but figures (a pair) having square bases like those common, poor copies of Blue Box farmers.

I've seen this morning's set with the common Home Farm triple-rabbit runner in orange plastic; I've seen this set with six single moulding trees (instead of the palms) like the two shrubs above but a different species, another with 8 identical brown monkeys, while a same-set box-opening recently revealed the same three-count for blow-moulded timber props and five of the grey 'swimming' apes.

These were very popular sellers, for many years, from probably the early sixties (or 'as soon as' after the Marx one hit the shops?) until about a decade and a half ago, hell; there's probably still a few hiding in the storerooms of older bible book-shops, or the prize-giving cupboards of Sunday-schools!

And they all follow [badly] the pattern of some or all of the Marx set's elements, e.g. ark, roof with twin gable-windows, larger gable over twin sliding-doors, long, thin ramp, large, triple log-props, piles of rocky-outcrop, a bunch of trees and/or shrubs, pairs of animals (domestic and wild), peeps - the smaller sets losing the larger elements excepting the ark, which in every case is a Marx copy.

Ergo; there was a constant stream of contracts for large numbers of dirt-cheap animals, figures and accessories, which would have overlapped as some items ran out sooner than others. More care was exercised over the contents of some; any-old shite was thrown into others.

Those contracts would have gone to any one of several hundred plastics makers with some downtime, and if they couldn't borrow the moulds they copied the mouldings, they used each-other's out-painters and bought their plastic granules and paints from the same service guys, hence dozens of sets of very similar animals,; while the boxes came from the same printers in different batches.

While customers/clients would have wanted a choice of artwork and a choice of pricing-points, result; lots of different-content sets in the same boxes and same-content sets in different boxes! Or . . . same contents / same box; different branding.

Blue Box, 'Hong Kong', 'Macau', EJP, MRS, NMP, Pagett Bros., RedBox . . . and . . . ?

But someone was pulling the strings for most of them and my guess is Tai Sang or one of their subsidiaries.