I is for In The Works

I picked-up a couple of bits last time I visited The Works, and we're looking at them here. 'Big Head' astronauts, as I've mentioned already, are definitely a thing at the moment, with another design here, and the other item we have looked at before, but I opened this one, as it turned-out it was a duplicate.

 

Pen[cil]-top astronauts. These come with an added novelty gimmick, and can be removed to enhance the feature's usefulness, there were three colourways of figurine, but only two pens, metallic pink or silver.

 

The three 'star-men', love 'em or leave 'em, they are figures, and of a vaguely alien or otherworldly stature, so in the stash they've gone! Orange, blue or grey highlights, but all three backpacks have the same red/blue elements, and the reflections on the visors are white on all three, more over-moulding, too!

 

The novelty gimmick is an LED torch, they get everywhere these days! While it shines through them, it can be made more useful/powerful, by losing the astronaut all together! Might prove an aid to finding dropped items in my dotage, but with Lego figures, Guardsmen, monkeys, tank key-rings (and a bendy alien), I have more LED novelty torches than is reasonably excusable, now!

 

I couldn't remember if we'd seen this when I got the others and Blogged them around Christmastime, so bought it, as it was the last, reduced, and when I got it home, checked the Tag, to find I had one in storage, so opened this one.

 

A count of thirteen seems as unlikely as duplicate Polar Bears, so I suspect a packing failure has left me with an extra bear? Although, "bear" is a very specific term for the skinny, dog-like creature here! Other sculpts in the set are a little better, and it's another box ticked!

P is for Puckator's Polymer Pencil Perchers!

Rather out of sequence, but the next couple of posts will reveal why, I picked these up at a garden centre over Wokingham way, somewhere near Arborfield. Those following the blog for the last few months, will have realised I've discovered garden centres to be a font of many things which have otherwise disappeared from the high-street, but then these huge 'mall' garden centres are why the 'High Street' is disappearing!

 

Pencil tops from Puckator, a name which has gone from near-generic to regular appearances here over the 18-odd years since I found the first dig-your-own-pirate crew! Two more Moomins, not long after the mini-torch, but the author's recently died, so now the money-men can really start making money for themselves rather than her, a phenomenon you often see after the death of a celebrity - capitalism stinks for the rotting carcass it's become. Note that one is an over-moulded semi-flat in relief.

 

And what is my third tree-climbing Panda, I think, and I know I've seen a couple of others? There's a single-issue collection idea there for someone with both limited space and a limited budget; you'd have to scour Alibaba and Amazon regularly!

 

Close-ups - Puckator!

 

Link - https://www.puckator.co.uk/

K is for Kibri

This one's a bit of a box-ticker, compared to some of the others, and I've duplicated an image by scanning something already on the blog, but there you go, it's still quite interesting as Kibri (Kindler und Briel) have had three generations of figures.

Jon Attwood's loose sample is bigger than mine! But are they Kibri or Leyla, if you recall we looked at the Leyla issue here, and while they are always shown in the Kibri catalogues as fully painted, or fully decorated anyway, I don't know if that's how they were sold, as I've never seen the early Kibri packs/cards?

 

So they may well have just bought-in the Leyla figures wholesale? Or even. as the Leyla logo on those late cards is disguised as a station name-plate, just put a Kibri sticker over them? Or, did they obtain the Leyla intellectual property, upon the demise of Leyla?

 

This is from a Walther's catalogue, around the late 1990's I think, and shows what were shipped, or orderable from the 'States, via the Teminial Hobby Shop, being a B&W version of the old Kibri catalogue images.

While this is that Kibri catalogue imagery (the duplicate!), which I dealt with here a while ago, check the Kibri tag to find it and a very interesting petrol station! But it clearly shows two generations, the 'Leyla' sets, three seperate six-figure/item sets and one combining the first two, then three sets which look like the Roco, or Preiser sculpts, along with some animals, ditto - or even Merten for the animals?

More recently, the only animals in the catalogues have been these two sets of the same cows with different decoration. Having not handled them, I can't say much beyond that they are some kind of polymer and look like reasonable sculpts of modern dairy cattle.

 

The more recent Walther's (this one's the 2000 issue) show the final, third generation, which are the strange, slightly over-scale figures, which are more suited to the stylised models of architects or town-planners than a model railroad? Note also, more cow options, but I don't know the difference between the two B&W cow listings?

The 2000 Walther's N-gauge catalogue also has them, they must be so fiddly to glue-together, it could drive you to suicide, as heads smaller than pin's go flying across the workspace for the umpteenth time!

Jon's set, mine are browns rather than blue/yellow, and can be seen in both One Inch Warrior magazine and a more recent Plastic Warrior, which is lucky, if you subscribe . . . http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/. The most interesting thing about them is it's one of only a few examples of over-moulding in small scale, with the heads moulded in one colour and then hats/hair moulded in a contrasting colour, pale-blue and yellow in the above sample.

 

There have been one or two other examples of over-moulding here, the Gem for Culpitt's experiment with footballers springs to mind, but there was another I think?

Also from Kibri catalogues, no figures sadly, although there are some in the studio shot, but lovely buildings for wargaming or role-play. I have three or maybe four of the five, in storage, and one day we'll get them out and have a proper look at them, but they are still mint/sealed, with their distinctive Kibri blue-ends.

 

Eko, from Spain, the great pirates of other-people's figures, lifted some of the sculpts for their civilian set, but whether they were pirating Leyla or Kibri remains lost in the mists of time - I suspect the former?

A is for A Few More Follow-ups

Some things which have come out of recent acquisitions and/or donations or which have been covered here before one way or another, and all PVC, except the resin cats;

 

You may remember when we looked at fishermen a while ago, Chris sent a picture of his complete key-ring guy, equally converted to a stand-alone piece as my - suddenly incomplete - chap, well, I had another damaged one come in (far left), which I kept quiet about! And then a whole one . . . Phew!

Also on key-rings passim, this would appear to be the commonest figural key-ring out there, and I have had these three come in recently, one of which has been fully converted to standing piper, with the removal of his ring-loop and the addition of a base. He also seems to be an earlier one, with better paint?

Those poor cats are still for sale with their holes in their noses, a year after I first saw them in The Range, to be fair I think they are now greatly reduced, but FFS people! No one is going to buy damaged cats, no matter how cheap they are, put them out of their misery.

 

I had a version of the dragon Jon Attwood sent us, with the wings in a totally different pose, and hot-water (or transit) doesn't seem to be the explanation (the wing-root is too thick), so they must have either changed the mould for technical reasons, or had two different mould-tools?

I have, once or twice over the 15 years of the blog, mentioned the over-moulded badges of post-war Italy, and here are three versions of the paramilitary mechanised brigade of the Carabinieri, you can see how the three colours of PVC have been 'wealded' to the cloth underneath. These were obtained, as surplus, in about 1978?

T is for Thunderbirds Are . . . Hung on a Hook with the Car Keys!

The best'est thing EVER! . . . err . . . since the last/'till the next Best'est thing [ever!].

Another Sandown purchase, also from the Belgians, although I've put an American brand to them, they might be Spanish (careful Hugh - you know how excited TJF gets when you mention Spain) in origin; Hong Kong being the other obvious choice.

Scott Tracy doing some plumbing!

The American company being Xandria-Holland of New York, however, they themselves used the tag-line '100 million sold in Europe' on their trade add (itself typical corporate hyperbole; I doubt there were many more than 400-million people in Europe in the 1970's and these weren't distributed on a 1-in-4 ratio), which rather suggests they were carrying something previously popularised elsewhere first, as importers (jobbers) or agents.

Brains with an early design-model for T1

"When it's erect, it'll look like this!"

And while they (Xandria) also state 'Designed and manufactured in our own factories', they don't state where those factories are, so they could be anywhere - US companies tend to sing from the rooftops if their products are made in the USA!

And 'our own' can hide a multitude of corporate contracts - some people think Arco had their 'own' factories in Hong Kong, but there's no actual evidence for more than an office, it's all about the contract, an exclusivity clause for a product (or a sales-territory) with a contract-manufacturer will give you the [technical] right to use 'ours'!

Footnote - Arco were probably using Soma, which may be why Soma is the primary manufacturer of Hot Wheels for Mattel these days?

Paker! He's a bit tasty, he's the 'Daddy' now!

He's got a little black box with his gun in!

Bill (at Moonbase Central) thinks he was told they might have originated in Spain and there are certain pointers to that possibility; both Spain and Portugal (along with Italy) seem to have used PVC more often than the other European figure makers, they had the TV series (and other ThunderBird related products - bubble-gum canisters, Comansi sets, &etc.) and the 'build quality is good, but it's not top-notch, so HK are still in the frame.

Lady Penelope. If the stiletto doesn't get them...

...the pink pearls will!

My brother and I were given two of what Xandria called their 'Pixies' (another reason for eschewing the US as origin, they were non-Disney style fairy-tale and children's story characters) in about 1974 - possibly later, no later than '77 though, I had the mouse on a piece of cheese, my Brother either had the tramp dog in raincoat and straw hat, or a chef dog with a cake? They were clearly bought in Sheffield, Retford or Doncaster, or somewhere around there.

So while the seller thought they were Belgian, the American Xandria state 'our', Bill has been told Spain and I know they were 'British'. I suspect they are in fact a better quality Hong Kong (or Spanish - for the reasons above) product, a 'jobbed' novelty, taken up by various wholesalers and popular for a while just about anywhere in what was then referred to as First World countries, or nations with 'disposable' wealth!

The very large rings (also seen in Xandria's press-add') may be a clue for key-ring experts or collectors?

Virgil Tracy with a ray-gun!

I don't know if all the characters were available, or any of the bad-guys or episodic 'walk-on' characters, but there were 41 Pixies in Xandria's list, with the possibility of ordering corporate logos, so I suspect the rest of the Tracy brothers should be out there as a minimum 8-count for this set?

They are fascinating figures; part swoppet, part over-mould, part 'stackable' by pulling from all three techniques.

The ring-chain loop is at the end of a central core which - whether long or short (as a rod) ends in the bottom [visible] moulding/piece or main body of the figurine. With the exception of Parker where the legs are attached-to/formed-with a longer rod; the boots painted, these are simpler than most of the Pixies, having short rods attached to whole-body (one colour) mouldings, with only head/hair as separate mouldings.

The other components are 'strung' on that rod, like beads, shaped to fit together snugly (like over-moulding, but without being fused together), allowing limited movement where the joint is in one plane, waist and neck (as swoppets) the whole held in place by the loop for the last link of the chain, which is fatter than the diameter of the rod/threading holes (stackables) - all very clever.

Accessories are polyethylene; glued firmly into holes in the PVC, which being a tough and flexible polymer takes a lot of punishment. Brains' little model (has he bought the Rosenthal C21 toy?!!) seems to be polystyrene though? Parker's Gun is PVC (integral to the body-moulding) with his violin case in ethylene, while the two Tracy boy's sashes are die-cut, adhesive-backed, vinyl-sheet stampings which have gone - predictably - sticky over the years, but are over-printed nicely with the Thunderbirds logo.

Although they could take a lot of punishment, my mouse lost his block of cheese (and feet) while I was playing in the big barn's bale-stack (it was an additional PVC component added to the legs with a separate heat-weld), and while not exactly as small as a needle, I was upset enough for my Uncle Bob to mail me the found item about six months later when the last straw-bales went off to stables - it's hard to find a needle in a haystack, but not impossible!

Also discovered - digging for this post;

Thunderbirds' Tracy Family / Staff

Identifying / Sash Colours

Alan - Grey/off-white/cream

Brains - Bronze (Once? In Thunderbird 6)

Gordon - Orange

Jeff - Gold (but only in a commercial for Bernardo's - the Children's charity)

John - Lilac/purple/mauve

Lady Penelope - Always wears pink, or something pink (scarf, hat, pearls etc...)

Scott - Light blue

Virgil - Yellow

Finally - I've taken all these shots with the dying camera, so I've had to stop down shadows and pile on contrast, when the new camera arrives I'll take a second set of images and send them to Moonbase Central - where they really belong!

B is for Britains Balls-up

So to a real rarity, though - not as rare as they were once considered to be? It is a fact that I'm known for my cries of; "They're not rare - it's all mass-produced plastic crap" ...whenever the subject of rarity comes up in conversation at shows, it's the cynic in me! However there are always a few pieces that really are rare, the Lone*Star musketeers for instance, and these guys. But then how rare are they really. I ask because these have quite play-worn bases which would suggest someone thought they were run-of-the-mill figures to be chucked in the toy box with all the others.

They are - of course - the first attempt Deetail paratroopers from Britains, also their first attempt at the over-moulding process making them Super-Deetail! Except they ended-up 'Super-mess'. There is no real mystery to over-moulding, Italian Army badges had been made from layers or panels of different coloured PVC for years (since the last war? - Certainly since the 1950's), which required a high degree of accuracy in placing the different layers or 'panels' of colour next to or inside each other, however it wasn't as complicated as the techniques Timpo were developing at the same time with their figures.

Not that Timpo got it all right, the finer the detail, the more likely they had problems leading to the various sandal types on the Romans or the relative rarity of the last version ACW.

So, Britains; starting to struggle in the charnel-house that was the toy industry of the late 1970's, looking around for a new angle, thought they could do better than Timpo...overnight! They couldn't...these were quickly dropped from the range and replaced with the four poses we are all more familiar with in SAS, Royal Marine and Para schemes.

Looking at them (click on the images for a larger version) it is clear that the problem is the black, which one suspects was the final 'shot' and while whether it was injected from one of the feet or the main weapon will always be a mystery, it's obvious that it had to travel the whole length of an otherwise cold moulding to produce not only the boots and weapons, but very fine detail like rank badges on the arm and a cap badge. They must therefore have had to inject at a high (higher than usual?) temperature, which then allowed the plastic to flow into places it wasn't meant to go to. Similar problems are clear with the face-vail/scarf, webbing & puttee green and the red of the berets, which has given one chap an interesting non-tactical tee-shirt!

The rumour that has grown-up around these figures is that there were 400/500 sets issued to salesman (some sources will tell you 50 sets!) and that they were given to shop/store owners. Well...there are problems with this rumour, as with all rumours given as fact in the hobby! Firstly they turn up far too often to be from a sample that small, secondly, by the late 70's Britains were a massif toy company and the High Street had already started to change under the pressure of supermarkets meaning the likelihood that Britains were still using 'travellers' to market their products is a hard one to swallow.

I would imagine that what happened was they decided to make the best of a bad job (they had already placed the image of these in the catalogue for the forthcoming season), and had a couple of workers sorting-out those that were 'passable' to cover the confirmed orders which would have come from that Winter's toy fairs in Harrogate, London and Nuremberg.

Now - I've had the displeasure of using a hot-polymer injector, albeit in another industry and for another type of product with even more variables, which regularly left me under the - idle - machine spraying lubricant in my eyes while hot-glue dripped on my fingers and I sped-up my male-pattern inherited-baldness with the aid of various sharp protuberances and the edges of the machine! So I can tell you that as the ambient temperature in the room, the running temperature of the machine and the actual thermostatically controlled (by a human) vat of granules all heated up as the day progressed the problem mouldings would have increased to the point where our girls (the sorters - lets imaging three women round a table somewhere in a corner of the factory) were throwing away maybe 9 out of 10 figures, as opposed to the 1-in-4 (or so) they had been rejecting earlier in the production-run.

As the problem had been identified and the pre-publicity was driving the need for the replacements to be rushed through, the truth is - far more boringly than the rumour - likely to be that a few thousand figures were sent out to the bigger clients (a few hundred (?) boxes), and - like the Super-Deetail Ballet Dancers - have suffered from 'separation' over the years leading to few survivors, helping the myth creationists, who can never tell you how they 'know' there were only 50 or whatever number they give you - sets, just that "there WERE that many!".

These four are also quite complicated figures, very well animated and realistic poses, with lots of under-cuts while the final four were altogether more two-dimensional, so there's a possibility that - moulding of the finer detail apart - they (Britains) were also having problems just getting these four out of the machine in one piece, looking like they were supposed to look!

Also these four came from Belgium or at least; via Belgian dealers, there is also a set for sale in the US  and while I don't know if they started their journey to the collectors table from toy shops in those countries (the downside of FeeBay is that it's getting harder to know for sure where anything was originally 'sold exclusively' as it's all gone all over the place without proper records being kept!), it's equally clear that they have got around a fair bit, which they wouldn't have, had they actually been as rare as some would have you believe.

As this is already a long article (with not enough photographs!), I'll waffle a little longer, at a slight tangent...

Take a look at your cordless kettle, grab your mobile (cellphone), check out where over-moulding is in the 21st century. They can seamlessly mould a PVC rubberised-polymer, an ABS or styrol plastic and a ridged ethylene or polypropylene (with metaflec) next to each other, sometimes (on things like 'phones) less than a millimetre thick. creating ergonomic knife handles, laptop cases, tools, toothbrushes or electronic components with tolerances in the thousandths of a mill!

And in 5 to 10 years you will be able to print your own in the corner of your living room as convergence technology makes it possible for you to download the CAD/CAM file or hand-laser scan the object you need to make or replace and then just print it out in three-D.

As a 30mm Erzgebirge wooden figure looks next to an Airfix 20mm Roman with his little plug-in shield, so these Britains rejects look next to modern over-moulding! Sadly, the economies of scale mean it's unlikely we'll see such detailed multi-shot techniques used on toy soldiers in the near future...Nokia, Lenovo or Russel-Hobbs can afford to, as they look to sell between 1 and 30 million+ units within 18 months of the product going live, I don't suppose HaT or BMC think along those lines when it comes to production numbers!!!

So there you go, not as rare as they 'used' to be! But you'll still need a friendly bank-manager to buy a full set!