F is for Follow-ups - Recent Posts

A few 'matters arising', as it were; things to add to recent posts, which have come-in or been found since I posted the original stuff!

 

Power Rangers

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/m-is-for-mighty-morphins.html

 

I had the commercial art/shot in Picasa all along! And this white chap, who would seem to be a knock-off, came in some mixed lot and was shot separately by me, back in 2010, and I'm not sure where he is now, as he wasn't in the over-view post a few years ago?

 

True Legends - Mythical Warriors

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/o-is-for-once-upon-time-in-june-sci-fi.html

 

Brian Berke sent this shot of his 'Goodly Hero' as they tend to be called on the gaming table, all painted-up, and fighting a mini-Godzilla from the Wicked Duels / SCS Direct sets, also painted.

 

White Ghosts

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/10/w-is-for-white-buttons-white-ghosts.html

 

Confirmation of this year's trend for short, fat, funny-faced ghosts, with an odd plate and bottle-stoppers shelfied in TKMaxx, and some 'Illooms' or illuminated-balloons from B&M, and it's not ghosts per se, they've been a feature of Halloween stuff since before I was aware the event, it's this half-opened shroom-head design, which is so strong at the moment!

 

Rado Industries / Ri-Toys Centurion 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/10/b-is-for-back-to-london-july-1-of-2.html

 

Purely a confirmation shot, tying the tank into Ri-Toys sets, where it did stirling service as a British, American and German WWII AFV!

 

Noddy
 

Mentioned in passing a couple of times recently, figures in one's or two's, this is a partial set of what I suspect is over 18, maybe 20-plus figures, and which I think are Marx? But were they a Swansea 'Kins' thing, or contract manufactured for someone else? I have a PC Plod somewhere, and the damaged Skittle, plus a couple of others I think?

 

Marx . . . check, Noddy . . . check!

 

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/10/weve-found-noddy.html 

 

How desperate is he? And he didn't "pick it up", it was relisted on eBay the other day! 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/277455102102

 

So he's lying, to copy me, and scrape doll shite, off of evilBay without any apparent context, why? How threatened is he feeling? It's almost more fun than annoyance now! What an idiot! he also managed to check-off the unknown Power Ranger knock-off above, with some Mexican Luchador he knew nothing about, so when it's not faux ignorance (what do you think readers?), it's actual ignorance! And he did skulls the day after me, it's faintly tragic!

B is for Benevolent Buys - 2 of 3

This first shot was a bunch of things from a charity shop in Cranleigh, same visit as the Post Office and includes the deer we've already seen (I should pop over there again, it was a while ago!), while the others are more recent, but a few interesting things?

 

A ceramic cat fairing, I've picked-up so many of these I wonder if I shouldn't do the 'Shire Album'! In point of fact, the 'proper' ones have been done, and most of the ones I've picked-up over the years, are the cheap, unrated/discounted (by the serious/dedicated collectors) copies, or Japanese imports, so that's not a viable idea! I'll do a page here one day!

 

A resin otter and Phidal Marvel or DC character, a capsule-toy dinosaur, distributor obscured, the glass vitrine deer we saw the other day, two teddy bears, one generic, the other from the Noddy set which is slowly growing, along with an inclusion bouncy-ball.

 

That inclusion; it seems to be a cake decoration, with icing spike!

 

Undersides of the two bears, one in plastic and marked 'Noddy Subsidiary, Empire Made' with code and date (no, I can't read them either!), while the generic, probably also a cake decoration is chalkware, made of a plaster composition.

 

 

This was one of those strange moments of serendipity bordering on synergy, I'd seen the [marked] Peter Fagan (which is why I could 'believe' earlier today!) in Blue Cross, and left it as a bit daft, then went next door to the DEBRA shop and found the 'Sitting Pretty' trio from The Leonardo Collection (real high-street jewellers fare from Lesser & Pavey), so, it seemed dafter to not grab the one, and wizz back next-door for the other! Kittens . . . in satchels . . . on the Internet!

 

1987 for the smaller, 1998 for the larger, and I'm guessing, given some cats' love of bags, that this is a common trope among these ornamental 'collectable' sets of cats, so we may find more!

 

This came with one or other of the above purchases, and I don't think it's Jade, but one of the many false Jades which can be marbles, or quartzes/quartzites, maybe a greenish onyx? There is a sub-collection of reptiles in a half-shell, which we haven't really looked-at yet, but one day!

 

And there is another one or two of this type there, as they are always popular tourist mementos (there are elephants too, and we've seen a lizard here, I think), things made of the local stone, are forever anchored in where they came from, if you know what I mean? Much nicer than a poured-resin, puffin, fridge magnet with Camber Sands marker-penned on it!

W is for What do You Think Readers?

I've been trying to ignore the sniping from across the road, it's mostly low-level and trying to 'tick' my Tags into your Tag list with evilBay scraping's isn't exactly the height of sophistication, when 99% of my stuff is original copy, but it's all getting a bit silly, isn't it! Nor is posting 'LP' every time I post LB (Lik Be), especially if you have to shake-down feeBay to do so!

 

These are mostly internet images, and are the only the ones in Picasa, I haven't looked at the dongles, but we saw most of them as a follow-up to a mini-season on farms, using the set from my own collection, back in April, and there's always more to say!

 

One origin of the guitar-playing turtle!

 

Although the lower set is on a Wilton's catalogue page alongside Lik Be (that's an LB, because it's B for Be), I think the set is actually by Holly although some of the animals are similar to those issued by Colonial Studios, so were probably also supplied by Holly to them.

 

But the zoo-keeper is certainly, like a number of the animals, in the style of Lik 'the LB' Be's products, although here "Created by Jak Pak" ? . . . I don't think so!

A mixed internet lot with some US stuff down the foreground, but with the Lik Be (where we get LB from) tractor in the background, it's a safeish-bet these two more realistic farmers went with the more realistic farm stuff from LB (for Lik Be), which I think I've mentioned before! Perhaps , as I write, Copisey is scraping some off evilBay, or Worthpoint, what do you think, readers?! Certainly the bases are similar to others in the L for Lik, B for Be oeuvre!

 

This farmer with rake/hoe, though, is more likely to be Colonial Studios, Holly, or another maker, being one of the 900-coded mouldings with no 'A' or 'B' prefix, actually just number 943. Note readers, how he's not got a base, like the zookeeper! I wonder if our Forest Friend up there in the Wirral is busy searching Worthpoint for the original image, even as I edit this?

 

"I love these silly little Colonial farmers", he'll say, as if he knew all along! What do you think, readers?

 

The one on the left is Farmer Straw from Noddy 

The one on the right might be a beer or tobacco promotional. 

 

There's tons more of this stuff out there, and there's plenty more in the archive, but I try to post empirical stuff, I've seen and handled, and only really use internet stuff, in context, to enhance a post with my stuff in it, and while 'if you can't beat them, join them' has led to my using more images than I have in the past, some of these have been on several devises without ever being used (this one came-into Picasa in 2014), and that's how I hope to continue.

 

But if Sticky the Woodentop wants a fight, he can have one? I used to get on with him/them, but then about three/four-years ago (?) he just started niggling, and ignoring the drip-drip of his nonsense hasn't been easy; I've had a couple of pops back, but this last few days it's been so obvious, it's getting silly!

 

Bad enough they post 'antipodean' aircraft the day after me (without, apparently, either of them knowing the relationship between Matchbox and Universal, or the logo of the latter), or pretend he's just discovered the Buck Rogers erasers (a couple of months after commenting on my post, on the subject), or try to tick-off Tags missing on their site, but seen here, often with the most spurious post of the thinnest gruel, however Forresty is older than me, and should be wiser?

 

What do you think readers? Should I quickly tick-off the few dozen Space and TV-related Tags he's got which I haven't, either from my archives, or a quick visit to feebleBay? Or should I just carry-on doing what I'm doing, and ignore the petty little phuqtard?

 

Am I a 'founder and administrator', readers? Or just a bloke shouting into the void, what do you think?

 

Comments are not required, Traffic can go up or down, other Blogs' are available. 

T is for Third-Party Theory?

Following on from the previous post this one is of interest, if only for further muddying the waters of Hong Kong's contribution to toy production in the 1960's and '70's, and illustrates how impossible it is to ever fully know the whole history of that former colonies activities, and therefore proof of an eternal hole in the history of toys . . . or novelties!

 

A quick reminder of the latest recruit to the stash, courtesy of Chris Smith, and I'm only reproducing it as - not collaged - it's easier to see that the polystyrene figure has been glued to a polystyrene sheet, so effectively it had to be cut out, or rather I suspect it was broken out, deliberately or in an accident is a moot point, but an accident would have more likely broken him off at the skate.

 

I suspect he was glued to something, probably with his lady friend, which would have looked like this . . . 

. . . pair of ne'er-do-well's from Toytown! These are more often encountered as stand-alone figurines, but were, I think, sold as cake decorations, but I'm not sure, and they are one of three sets of Noddy characters I know of in 'our scales', the other two being the smaller set of polystyrene figures from Marx and the Kellogg's from Crescent polyethylene cereal premiums.

 

You sometimes find these described as Marx too, and they may be, I don't know what licence relationship Swansea had with the Estate of Enid Blyton, but it would have been a Marx UK 'thing'. This set has about eight or ten characters, while the smaller one may extend to ten or twelve (we've seen one or two here, but there's better samples of both in the collection, against a future post or two). I've also seen them credited to Codeg I think?

But here they have been glued to a Happy Birthday decorated plastic plinth, and by whom and where may never be known. However, they are almost certainly a third party, buying-in the figures and the plinths, and marrying them together, with added paper stickers, to create more attractive pieces, which looks more substantial, and can therefore be priced at a higher rate than the cost of the components, when sold separately!

These were on feeBay a couple of years ago, and seem to suggest that the third party, or one of them (?), might have been based in the UK, because the Tom figure is clearly the Gemodels original in soft polyethylene, but if Culpitt were behind these novelty decorations, they could have sent UK produce to Hong Kong to have the work done, again - we'll probably never know?

But here we have artificial foliage, UK and HK figures in two polymers, and a wire/brush-fir in a wooden barrel, all added to the same plinths and given paper labels, one Birthday themed, the other a Christmas piece, neither requiring any creativity on the part of the cake-maker, just plonk the vignette on the icing!

And then I found these, adding to the chapter on KT, with an all-Irish line-up of novelties, where, again, the right-hand Leprechaun has been glued to a thermometer! On a similar base to the above, and obviously from the tourist trade, I have no idea whether these were from the Republic or Ulster, if one, I'd favour the former, but I dare say they were seen/available for purchase on both sides of the boarder?

 

Now firstly, we have two new sculpts to add to the KT listings, which have already enjoyed a bunch of these plinthed ones, mushrooms, a smaller astronaut and the larger Diddyman, but secondly, we can see the Leprechauns here are based with smaller, chunkier bases matching their stature, while the Irish Dancer has the finer steps to her base of the other figurines in the oeuvre?

 

And, in adding a thermometer to the already found pen-holder and pencil sharpeners, it means we may well be looking for sand-timers, letter racks, money-boxes, jewellery stands/music boxes and so on. And it may be that KT were behind the larger copy of their beefeater, even if not named on the HCF set?

 

I've also added the KT tag to a couple of the earlier 'unknown' figure posts, and in doing so, you can see how help from Chris Smith, Brian Wagstaff and Adrian Little has been invaluable in revealing the KT story, with links on the KT posts revealing Brian Berke helped with the old hollow-cast cowboys who also became pencil sharpeners! Many thanks to all of them.

T is for Trains and Boats and Planes

"Trains and boats and planes are passing by, they mean a trip to Paris or Rome, to someone else but not for me. The trains and boats and planes took you away, away from me."

I'm not a great fan of regular 'pop' but some can give you the same nostalgia-hit as old toys, especially at this time of year...cheers Burt!

Again, in storage I have a lot of this stuff, in various sizes, and a whole tub of Kinder railway bits, but this is what's cone-in in the last couple of years. The three little ones at the front are from a Noddy board game and a green one is missing, while the Kinder loco with pantographs is missing a set of horns.

Veering away from thoroughbred cracker and capsule stuff I happen to have these two carded sets kicking about, both The Round House and the Grace Toys brands being made-up-names, I'm guessing; hooks to hang cheap generics on - like Grandmother Stover's, SSCO or Interesting Toy?

Because we've done both micro-vessels and micro-planes to death, there are only a half a handful to look at, and these are they! Kinder airliner, a polyethylene, hollow-underside version of the catapult planes for the dime-store aircraft carrier we looked at a while ago, a micro-ship from mini/decorative tree crackers (maroon), two pleasure cruisers (there are a few in this chaos!) which are cracker toys but were also sold as carded set 'bath toys', along with a modern tug in propylene, similar to the Giodi/Bruder stuff, but unmarked and only two pieces.

T is for Toy House from Toytown

As a main course for the bitty aperitifs posted a few minutes ago (previous post, or immediately below this one on the homepage), this is back to a real favourite of mine...the 'infant' toys of J & L Randell / Merit. The same colour range we saw with previous visits to this make.

The set is supposed to contain a Noddy figure bought-in from Lone*Star (which explains why he's the commonest) but this one actually had two, and I photographed the PC Plod for a sizer.

A rather tatty box, the colours on it and the actual contents suggest that all parts will turn up in all colours? Compare with the other Merit bits...Mr Booby ... Castle Builder/Stacker ... Noah's Ark ... Circus Train.

Thanks to Adrian of Mercator Trading for the photographs.

T is for Toys of Toy People from Toytown

I've got all the pictures in the wrong order, so this will jump back and forwards but it's a post of bits and bobs anyway, so we'll press on. I have mentioned the origins of the 'Golly' moniker before, so to recap, I'll copy the entry from the abbreviations page, which I hope sums it up succinctly without causing offence...

Golliwogg/s - Ghul/s Working on Government Service (led to; 'Wogs', a now extremely derogatory nickname for Egyptian natives employed on British government service in the 1800's, which then gained wider use as a general racist/racially-derived slur word)
Golly / Gollie - See; Golliwogg/s

However, it is the only word we have to work with, and when it comes to Robinson's (Jams and Preserves), a sort of 'pax' was called on it's use due to the fame of the brands logo use, and the fact that Robinson's never used him in a negative context...not that most of the thousands of other 'Golly' products, books and soft toys did...Enid Blighton's (sometimes bad Golly) being the exception rather than the rule!

Adrian had this on his table back in the summer and I shot it when I had the chance, it was empty, but I had an idea I'd seen the HFC label before somewhere, without even noticing the image between the jar and the orange above, but that'll have to wait 'till the end of the post...

...in the meantime, the above shot shows some of the larger Marx (UK) figures (which may or may not have been supplied to Codeg / Cowan de Groot?), the two to the right have been paint-stripped, probably by Ron Good of Good Soldiers who casts them in metal and sells them in sets, in red gift boxes, like old Britians! I'm not even sure they're not from two Marx series, as Big Ears seems a tad too large?

Below them, are some finger-puppets, possibly from Christmas Crackers? But unknown in the provenance department and could just as easily be from a pocket-money craft set. Litho-printed paper faces glued to a felt loop, which on some provides the hat or other detail.

Back to Marx (UK) the upper-shot here is of a figure also from the above set (sets?), but which was languishing in the 'Unknown, probably Blue Box' box for years due to his similarity to other Blue Box (or Blue Box-like!) figures that follow the Marx (US) Disney production. It is actually (I assume) Mr. Bear; husband to the Mrs. Bear finger puppet above.

Below him and we're back to the top...where I'd recognised the HFC from; a bit of a disappointment, but it was illustrated on the lid, and pretending to be a Golly Badge (we think the link with Robinson's - established on the box - is tenuous, if not; non-existent) when it's actually a pencil sharpener! These were sold in newsagents and corner-shops back in the early 1980's although; note no date on the (C), a sure sign of everything being not as it seems in the licensing department?

This image was in my files, I suspect evilBay, but I'm not sure, so if you're the owner of the image, recognise it and want it removed, that's not a problem, eMail me...I rarely use downloaded images, and it's presented here for research purposes.

As a footnote; in 2001 Robinson's ceased to produce Golly memorabilia and he was dropped in 2002 with this press-release;

"We are retiring Golly because we found families with kids no longer necessarily knew about him. We are not bowing to political correctness, but like with any great make we have to move with the times"

L is for a Little Lone*Star

One of which may not be...a sort of bitty post, but like the rest of this weeks A-Z push, designed to empty the Laptop of all the stuff I've been squirreling away!

Starting with the probably-not-lone-star figure; This is a Lone*Star pose, from the 'Harvey Series', but is believed to be a Harvey original. Like Britains taking Herald in-house, so LS (a mazac die-caster) took Harvey in-house for the production of their plastics (although they got the Bakelite type wheels and nylon linkage for the Treble-O Trains made elsewhere), or - at least - that's how I understand it, this figure is therefore thought to be one of the very early Harvey originals.

Lone*Star also made a very small range of 'swoppet' farm animals, the trick being to collect them with the original tag intact, seen here on the rear left leg. Both the above were photographed in that show-and-tell a while ago, and don't belong to me!

We looked at these a few months ago, I shot them on Adrain's stall at the Plastic Warrior show in May (new PW to revue, will do soon!), but he had them out again the other day, and although some have since been snapped-up, I had more time to sort them out and take new images of the various colour variations. Both of paint and plastic - it seems each figure has a reverse-colour plastics version, while paint variations are confined to the evil elves or pixies...or whatever they were; see older post!

W is for Watch with Mother

Photographed at the recent Plastic Warrior (I only have Mrs. Bear and a couple of lose arms and legs and they're in storage!), these are among Lone Star's more esoteric output.

Once TV had got going children's programming followed the pattern of 'Listen with Mother' on the old home service (by my childhood; renamed Radio 4) with a midday section of programmes which started with simple things for infants and got progressively more sophisticated to cater for the the elder children. There was a limited number of programmes, which were endlessly repeated over the years (1950's to 1970's), meaning the characters all became very well known and there was much merchandise produced.

One each of the main characters; PC Plod (top right), Mrs. Bear, Big Ears, Noddy and Golly (left to right - bottom row) along with three paint variations of the evil (well...'naughty'!) Goblin. The figures are about 50mm and polyethylene with Lone Star's usual flaky paint and a 'swoppet' style of plug-on arms, legs and heads.

These days the Gollies have been whitewashed out of both new TV productions and the reprints of Enid Blyton's books, but when I was a kid he was just 'Golly'...not 'Gollywog' and a lot of kids had soft toy gollies, with no racist intent. There was however a believed racist history behind the term and a definite racist history behind the character in general culture, and modern mores demand he slip from the public conscience. Also, while Mr Golly was a good character, I seem to remember the other gollies tended to be the wicked characters if the goblins weren't around?

T is for Toothbrush!

A bit unusual - tonight's offering! Both my Brother and I had these when we were kids, it would have been about 1968/'70 and I can't remember who had the pink or who had the blue! What I do remember is that they came with a yellowish-pink toothpaste that was supposed to be strawberry flavour and in fact tasted of a mixture between banana baby-food and colonic worm-powder!...hey, we ate a lot of raw veg in the '60's!!

Manufactured by Halex, who still seem to be manufacturing a wide range of sports and domestic/household products, there's little else to add, they are about 40mm, figural flats if you remove them from the rest of the handle and a little nostalgia hit for people of a certain age!

B is for Box

If you click on 'Noddy' in the tags list at the bottom of the post, you'll get this up with the original post. Sent in by blog visitor Allen Parkes, it is both sides of the original box for the Kellogg's Noddy promotion, thank you Allen.

Front of the box with one side and a little red Noddy, who is also filling most of the cover, was he the Ricicles mascot for some time or just the length of the promotion? I can't remember despite recognising the box!

The reverse of the box with the other side/edge, showing the full set, as far as I know they were never issued in brown, but it was a standard Crescent colour (suppliers of the figures) and the Kellogg's American Indians were issued in brown.

The missing panel is one of the various little scenes you got to cut-out to use as a stage for your figures adventures, sadly Allen lost it years ago.

N is for Nostalgia, Noddy and NOT rare!

Over at Moonbase Central they have just posted a nice nostalgia piece on TV related sweets, so I quickly dug these out before I bugger-off for the weekend!

These are Crescent for Kellogg's and depict Noddy, Big Ears, PC Plod, Golly (who in these PC times has been airbrushed out of the re-issued books!), Mr Tubby Bear and Miss Fluffy Cat (who was actually 'Pink Cat'in the books, but Crescent weren't set up for a small production run of pink!).

Issued with Ricicles twice; in 1962 and 1967 the PC plod and Big ears are the later colours. Mr Bear is from the earlier set as is Noddy while Miss Cat (orange) could be from either issue. These used to catalogue at around £5 each, but these days there are some on eBay nearly every day and you can pick them up for 99p.

Equally easy to obtain now are the Sooty set which came with Cocco Crispies or Puffa Puffa Rice, and were a set of 5 - I haven't tracked down a Sue yet. The 1973 issue my Brother and I collected were issued in red, orange, yellow or blue, however other colours point to either a second issue, or other commercial availability, most likely - Tom Smith Christmas crackers. These are unlikely to be Crescent, the colours and plastic type are slightly different from anything Crescent did.

Characters are L-R; Sooty, Butch, Kipper and Sweep. Be aware when buying - Sooty needs a wand, if that's missing he's just a stuffed bear with a man's hand up his....errr....trouser-leg!