D is for Donation - Chris - [Not] Paratroops!

The exception which proves the rule! As we saw Chris's most recent parachute toy finds/donation in a post at the end of April, I thought we'd look at the civilian vehicular portion of the last parcel, and there haven't been any in the three recent tranches from Peter, so it all sort of balances out!

 

Vessels, and we have an all new - to me - sailing ship, possibly a game-playing piece, or just a novelty? A variation of Hong Kong mini bath-toy to its right, both versions of cereal premium baking soda submarine, and  Marx Miniature Masterpiece rubber boat, all good stuff!

 

Five of the Quaker cereal premiums at the back, two of the commoner Hong Kong Minic knock-offs. but in the less common blueish-sea green, and another of the forward sloping prow vessels, which were new to me, when we saw a silver one recently (probably also from Chris), this pink suggesting the bottom-end of rack toys, such as those parachutists who would come in a bag with a couple of aeroplanes and a cyclist or something . . . something like this ship?!

 

Another pair of cereal premiums, this time the R&L plastic-kit types of US locomotives, from different sets I think, and a similar Hong Kong effort in black, all three are in polystyrene.

 

A couple of Kinder or Kinder-like racers in the foreground, with something more interesting behind, it's in the style of a blow-mould, but is actually PE mouldings, plugged-together, however, what Chris would like to know (as I would), is . . . 

 

. . . who made it? It's clearly marked 'Made in Finland', and there can't be that many Finnish toy makers; we've heard of one or two, in the Space Toy business, courtesy of a loyal reader, on the Blog passim, but does anyone know who made this?

 

Micro-stuff included a Star Wars Micro-Machine, and one of the MPC 'minis' copies, out of Hong Kong, all useful grist-to-the-mill, and one day we will look at all the Micro-Machine stuff in better detail.

 

Vehicular jalopies aplenty! Game-playing piece, back left, I think (one of those car-park/traffic jam puzzle-games?), bits of some Kinder or similar model railway vehicles, a soft-plastic copy of the old dime store 'Morris Mini-Minor', the die-cast is a Hong Kong take on a Marx or Tootsie Toys mini, I suspect, while the charm-looped actual 'jalopy' is probably a cracker toy.

 

It's funny ironic too, as it's probably taken from those Japanese slush-cast minis carried by Shackman and others, while it is also aping the actual silver, or plate charm objects, of the sort well-to-do young ladies collected on a bracelet?

 

Back, centre is an interesting, all-plastic American muscle-car type (or Japanese sports type?), marked 280 ZX Fairlady, which Google revealed is a Japanese model - the eponymous Datsun-Nissan to be accurate, I don't know anything about the maker of the toy version though, do you?

 

Interesting, but very large, and will probably end-up on the swaps page, this is a Play Craft [sic - usually Playcraft] large-scale ('Big', G-gauge or LGB) hopper-car, for an all plastic floor/garden railway, the wheel-base however seems to match the soft ethylene infant railway, which shared the gauge of Brio wooden sets!

Heading to the card and paper tub (a Really Useful Box 35lt job), these are a pleasant mystery! Not apparently configured for slotted-wooden stands, but having clearly had the home-cut fragments of magnetised rubber sheet added by an owner, I don't recognise the characters, but they would seem to be recognisable comic creations? Can anyone add anything that might serve as a further clue? Batman?

 

A 1968 Japanese anime; Speed Racer, with Chim-Chim the monkey, see comments. 

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these, the highlights, for me, are probably the pink vessel and the card bits, it's always nice to see things you've never seen before! Although a racing car from Finland is pretty special!

M is for Minor 'Euro-Makes'!

Actually I'm going to tack a major on at the end, whom we've already revisited once in this occasional series, entering it's third month with at least 12 posts still to come, plus a combined comparison/round-up post at the end. And today, some of the European makers we haven't yet looked at.

From a 1970's Vollmer catalogue, are these wagons, which I think missed the wagon posts a few years ago, they look to be Preiser, but the horses are the smoother, simpler ones more commonly associated with the Roscopf wagons or some Hong Kong copies. Indeed, I think I've mentioned before, that I'm not sure what the relationship is between the three or four (Noch seem to have carried other people's product before they embarked on their own, now Preiser-equalling, range), so I can't add much beyond that the similarities are obvious?

 

While this is the 2000 Walther's (Terminal Hobby Shop) catalogue, and we see what are clearly Preiser, in a 'simple paint', we actually saw this earlier in the post series, but I scanned it again!

 

Not sure if these are from Merten or Preiser, (they have the arm'y/leg'y look of Merten?) but again a rolling-stock and trackway manufacturer, getting 'simple-paint' samples from another maker, to enhance their catalogue with a basic set, it's all part of the 'brand-loyalty' work, isn't it? Add a couple of Pola buildings, a level-crossing, some track plans, Heki trees . . . and 'Fleischmann' people!

 

This - the Jouef figures - is a personal embarrassment, as I think it's their third mention on the Blog, over the sixteen years, with the Mettoy Playcraft scans appearing at one point, and yet, despite seeing them go to storage, I still haven't photographed them, but they did appear in One Inch Warrior magazine, I think, in black & white, which doesn't do justice to the loud and leery paint job, of the Playcraft - ironically a Tri-Ang rival from the same Line's empire!

 

I have since found slightly better painted ones (in shade, not the two-colour stab-and-hope scheme), which may be Jouef origianls, from whose catalogue these scans are added to the previous shots! And playcraft sold them from the Jouef bags, so they were only ever nominally Playcraft! Also, didn't Hornby experiment with passengers pre-glued to platform sections at one point? Instant Stations!

From the same Walther's catalogue, this was, I think, the beginning of what has in recent years become a line to rival Preiser, and we have seen one or two here, a Bierfest stand springs to mind, and I will one day do the rude sets, of which I have several and they should have been in the 'Adult' naughty-post before Christmas, but they are in storage.

 

Noch were originally another prefabricated building/scenic's firm, like Pola, Vollmer or Wiad, and like them had a couple of simple figures kicking around the pages of their catalogues, in boats or something, from time to time, but in the last quarter-century have developed a range to rival Preiser, even as Priser swallowed-up Elastolin and Merten to stay ahead!

I don't know much about these, except that they are probably lead or whitemetal, possibly composition, and as listed in this old catalogue? Klinebahn (literally 'small way'), and in sets of six matching the lead of early Märklin, or the sets of Preiser, Merten and those above.

 

And, having just mentioned them, our third visit to Märklin in this railway-figure 'season', and no, we are not going to start investigating O, G, S, 1, BIG or any other gauge, that can be for another day, or for the A-Z pages! But I wanted to post this set of composition figures and - specifically - the interactive or 'working' guard, as it's just so cool! All in O-gauge.

 

The catalogue mentions the 1937 Grand Prix of Paris, on the cover, but seems to be actually the 1949 issue, as they started to recover from the national madness of national socialism.

F is for Follow-up - Khaki Runnings!

I managed to grab the Battle Space, at the weekend after all, so managed a quick shoot of the closest Model Power  'twins' and took one of the military locomotive pool while I was at it!

Mobile missiles; both utilising their maker's flat-car, both spring-loaded and both having the large elevation tap-wheels, but otherwise quite different, the Model Power is err . . . underpowered, but as it's a polystyrene model, it would break quickly under the power of the Tri-Ang launcher which packs a serious, pre-H&S punch!

To which end, the Triang-Hornby missile is a rubber-tipped affair in softer polyethylene to take the strain, it also looks more like a Tallboy or Grand Slam (aerial bombs) than the Model Power's Honest John lines. "It'll 'av someone's eye out"!

Tank transporters; the earlier British one being a bogie well-wagon (that is a lower cargo 'well' between the raised twin-bogie (truck)-mountings) which reduces the height of the center of gravity, while Model Power utilise a clip-on set of chocks with a standard flat-car.

In fact, in the West, tanks are chained down with between four and eight chains which are screw-tightened, you only have to watch a few 'funny' tank-fail videos to understand the current Russian failings in Ukraine; while we winch-on and tie down, they rev-up and mount like dogs on heat and drive off, losing the thing at the next roundabout if it didn't fall-off on loading, or crush its own lorry!

Exploding cars; mechanisms were actually quite different (I didn't have time or space for more detailed shots this time, and while both have the look of North American 'reefer' wagons, Model Power go with a 50ft one, we Brits matched our road wagon limit with a  40-footer! Rememeber also HO is also scaled smaller (1:86/90) than OO (1:76/72), so the British model looks a bit 'chunkier'!

I have an old 1970's Walther's or two, and among the pages and pages of transfers for home-builders, mostly for reefers or passenger stock, are quite a few military ones, so you could with the two Q-Cars, this pair and a few kits, build a long, but visually rather boring (if more realistic) logistics train, but you'd need to glue these two shut first!

The loco's; we've seen the two main brands before, but of interest is the one down the front left, which is a clockwork 'cheapie' from Playcraft via Jouef of France. not specifically military, it happens to be the right colour, and adds variety to my fleet!

We loved our 'starter set' clockwork's when we were kids, and used to run them on a figure-eight inside our electrified double-oval, if we were quick we could get four trains moving at once without a crash . . . we weren't always lucky - figure-8's have a crossroad!

It's one of those quirks of toy history that at one point you had OO-guage train sets/lines from/branded-to Tri-Ang, Rovex and Mettoy Playcraft . . . all ultimately Lines Brothers! I should also mention the track, which happens to still be around despite having long lost its usefulness.

It's a sort of resinated or 'Bakelite' treated card (like the ties in old plugs which hold the cable tight), obviously for power-insulation, with the shiny (non-ferrous) rail fasteners (chairs or tie-plates) riveted through the card every forth sleeper (tie), I did have a brand name for it, well . . . it's somewhere in the archive, Hammant & Morgan maybe (our transformer was theirs), Hamblings, or early Hannants? One of the mail-order catalogues in the archive has/lists something which fits the description anyway!

It was the home-fitted rail on our train-set which was bought 2nd hand by Mum at Persons Auctions here in Fleet (long-gone, along with County Tractors and First Inertia), and somehow she managed to hide it (about 6ft x 8ft) from us until Christmas morning, I'm hoping, when I lift the boards in the loft, in the next few weeks, that I may find it's still there with its household gloss 'landscaping', but it may have gone years ago? It was old, crumbly, early (1960's) chipboard.

N is for New Novelties - Chris's Parcel II

It's really only by collecting everything that you can get the 'bigger (or best) picture' and to that end I have all sorts of junk, crud and novelty crap in the pile, and some not so crap novelties, thus I am always happy when other people send the Blog junk, crud or novelties, and whether of crap or quality! Here's some of the more esoteric stuff in Chris's most recent parcel.

I can't for the life of me remember who these are attributed to, but I know I've posted their A-Z entry, so I'll look them up when I'm up the Library to post this and put the brand in these brackets; here (Ace Acme - same poses but colour variations and a new green)!

They were capsule toys and tend to turn-up in ones or two's, although I think one of the US dealers was selling them by the handful back in the 1990's, and I hope I have both new colour variants and a new pose in this trio.

These were also a welcome addition to the vaults, I have a few already, and I know they are Christmas Cracker inserts, but there are three new poses here (there's a whole post coming) and a matching, larger-scaled Chinasaur who is new to me, and extends the 'story' of these otherwise unremarkable, unattributed mini'mals.

This is fun despite not being a figure at all really, rather a graphic representation of a . . . err . . . penguin? But he comes after this post (yes- the title was diabolical!) the other day and is probably the 1970's grandparent of the newer, all polyethylene ones, having a steel-bar axle for ethylene wheels with a styrene body.

I vaguely remember posting a link to these a few years ago, some memories of a mail-order catalogue's scans . . . or screen-caps from a .pdf? Anyway, here they are in all their flat, floppy glory . . . fridge magnets!

AND - continuing the running trope in Plastic Warrior magazine recently - the 'orange force' are all left-handed, left-hooking, left paws! Due to their all having being mirror-flipped vertically at the printers! Brilliant!

Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub!

How cool are these? Cool enough for firefighting school; that's how! Pencil tops of Trumpton firemen (they were definitely firemen, not firefighters in those days!) and I'm not sure they are among the six named in the ditty, being the station commander and his boss? I'll check with Youtube, there's bound to be a clip there? Later . . . Captain Flack on the left and Barney McGrew on the right!

I recognised the way the trees were attached to their bases as being the same as the trackside accessories from the old Mettoy Playcraft plastic-railways of our childhood, and knowing there were Hong Kong copies of it (our childhood track (all village-fête buys) was more HK silver than Playcraft red!) I looked them up in Bill B's catalogue, and sure enough, here they are; from Rays Ltd., (Wah Hing Industrial Mansion) of Kowloon - another one nailed!

The scale is more G-gauge ('Big') than anything else, which is, the Rays' stuff; the Playcraft rolling-stock was all smaller, aping Brio. And looking at the inner set's track (black), this would appear to be more compatible with Big Train or Timpo's Wild West trains than the Playcraft stuff? But the outer track (blue) does seem to have the Playcraft wheel-channel system/design. I think Tomy had a similar system?

Cheers to Chris, all found a happy home here now! Coming next - some other highlights.

W is for Wheelimals!

A real Box-ticker today, you may well have seen these on evilBay and wondered at their parentage, unless you already know what they are in which case there may be something more interesting here tomorrow!

Tri-ang. That's the box-ticking element done! Seriously; it's just to get them in the tag-list, I think they were also associated with Minic and Mettoy and possibly later under the Playcraft label, so they're all going on the bottom. I call them 'wheelimals' for want of a better title as they follow a tradition going right back to early hand-crafted wooden toys; of being attached to 'carpet' wheels.

Images:
Left; Vectis I think (link)
Right; old low-res feeBay image

The toys they accompany are 'big box' type 'Christmas & Birthday' toys, the ark being nearly three feet long and solidly built of ply-wood with metal door hinges, the roof opens to get the animals out for play and to store them in the meantime or inbetweentimes!

The lorry being more of a garden toy, in tin-plate with large solid-rubber tyres, and a hinged rear-door/ramp.

I believe there was a Farm Lorry version of the truck toy, coming with a five or six-inch figure of a farmer which looks exactly like a Marx cowboy; a sort of reversed Seth Adams pose, striding with a double-barrelled shotgun instead of the rifle, and a distinctly US style 'cowboy' hat! But he may have come with the smaller (two-axle?) horse-box toy that included the two giant Britains horses?

Elephants and Rhinos, one of which has been got-at by poachers! Although; the sad truth is that both animals are at risk of extinction, not just in our lifetimes, but within a decade or so at the current rate of predation.

Sheep.

Lions and Tigers, two lions in Noah's Ark may have raised a few small 'c' conservative eyebrows in the past, but hey, if they loved each other and considered themselves a couple, why not!

Camel

Considering their core purpose is for use as hard-wearing playthings for younger children or older infants; they are surprisingly well sculpted toys, they lose a bit in the leg department, but even then the outsides of the feet, hooves or toes are well executed.

Sets - known or suspected;

Tri-ang Circus Van (Tin Plate)
Tri-ang Noah's Ark (Ply-wood)

Horse Box?
Farm Truck?

Wheelimals - known or suspected;
Donkey
Dromedary
Camel
Elephant
Giraffe
Hippopotamus
Lion
Panda
Bear
Rhinoceros
Sheep Tiger

Cow?
Pig?

S is for Surgical Solids . . . Euwe!

or...W is for Ward 10

When we looked at the tin-plate ambulance the other day I mentioned that it would fit well with the Hospital, forgetting that I had this languishing in 'edit' from the bulk upload in January (there's still 23 posts back there/then!), and following a spike in traffic the other day realised that the other two are vaguely get-at'able (see last image) so let's have a shuftie . . .

This was described as the 'surgical set', and came from PW's show in 2012, I've seen the hospital (Emergency Ward 10) a few times on feebleBay, in various states, and I suppose the instructions divide the contents into 'groups' as the accessories are different colours, but it may just be how the seller sold them to me?

As befitting a surgery, everything is sanitised in white; with a surgeon and several nursing staff, a patient and various pieces of equipment. I don't think it's complete, as there should- presumably - be stands or trolleys of some kind for the gas/air tanks, and I've previously seen a drip-line and bottle hanging-off the stand, that is present.

The operating table/autopsy slab is fully adjustable in three planes; tipping back-to-front, revolving and capable of raising and lowering, here shown at full extent.

A close-up with the winding mechanism closed-down.

The figures: the surgeon is baseless and I think he's meant to lean over the patient but I can't seem to get him to stand up; he look's as if he's falling backwards out of the window!

None of these are named, but there was a small boxed set (also by Mettoy) of painted figures from Emergency Ward 10 with names on each plinth-like base for four characters, a stethoscope and a bed with patient; covered in Plastic Warrior a while ago now, it also turns-up on feeBay occasionally

The accessories: the light-fitting has a sucker to be attached to the tin-plate roof of the surgery, the bucket has a moving handle. Note the trolley-table is marked Hong Kong as are some other pieces, which helps explain the difference in sculpting between this set and the not shown characters who are visibly 'early British' in the platicity!

 

I'd bought two other 'sets' at the previous autumn's Birmingham show (2011) from the same seller, but they went straight into storage, so we'll have to look at them properly another time, but you can see the ward set comes with red accessories, the maternity set having pale blue pieces, but both also have white things and the wheelchair is pink, hence my suspicion that they aren't necessarily specific (or complete) sets.

Other accessories were in green and there were red nylon scraps for blankets, while more pink items exist - sinks/wash basins.

T is for Two Toy Ambulances

Shot these two up at Sandown just over a week ago, I guess one's about 1:48th scale, the other about 1:55?

Mettoy Playcraft . . . sorry; Mettoy Playthings (!) produced this, which although not part of the large hospital play set, would nonetheless look good delivering casualties to the main entrance. A tin-plate floor holds the fly-wheel motor, which is set forward in the cab in the manner of Wells' and Brimtoy's little lorries.

If it was part of the big hospital range, it would have the same stretcher, but it doesn't, having instead a chunky thing which seems to be designed with robustness in play, rather than realism, as its starting-point.

The box cleverly allows for the selling of a police van as well, by the simple expedient of folding the ambulance flaps in first to lay the police ones over the top. As kids we were often threatened with the 'Black Maria' (pronounced Mer-Rye-Er) if proving a tad over-exuberant or disobedient, and I always wondered what it meant, a throwback to a different age - I think!

Marked HP, this is a pretty standard piece of generic push-&-go Hong Kong tat (and TAT may be the operative word!), being a VW camper-van, given ambulance stickers on white polymer, the yellow 'council' beacon-light suggests the likely nature of other versions in the range!

Cheers to Mercator Trading for letting me photograph them. Fancy new banner Adrain?!

R is for Return...to Corgi

Quick follow-up post with a few bits that have either come in, been added to or been identified since I did my Corgi round-up a year or two ago. The chap who posted the negativity about those posts elsewhere on the Wibbly Wobbly Way ( (c) JGW, 1990-something!) was offered the chance to prove his point/contribute but has not taken up the offer, hey-ho, plenty of gobshites in the hobby; I'm probably considered one myself!

This nondescript Hong Kong looking thing has been in the 'Unknown' box for the longest time and is a Corgi issue, from the Chevrolet 'Impala' Kennel Wagon (No, 486), and came with a copy of the Poodle from the circus, a duplicate of the policeman's Alsatian and the little seated grey and white thing we looked at last time.

I mentioned when we looked at the Circus animals that the vinyl elephant was also issued as a styrene kit, and here (on the left/above in all shots) is the factory assembled version, issued with those vehicles that had previously contained the vinyl one.

You can see from the bird's eye view that he is thinner but otherwise pretty much the same, it would seem that in order to prepare a new tool for the polystyrene moulding, they simply cut the old vinyl one down the centre-line, leaving him with a dieted girth and the requirement of new/re-cut trunk and tail! The hollow one also has a loss of detail to skin-folds etc...another sign of copying.

Speaking of kits: George Nixon kindly identified these for us in Plastic Warrior magazine's Issue 159. They come from Set 610; Police and GPO Telephone Boxes (yes - another 'Tardis' to find!), and have been bugging me for years - I thought they were from car kits, but apart from Airfix's 1:32 scale kits, I couldn't think who might have included a British Bobby!

P is for Playcraft

I looked at one of the two sets of figures from Playcraft/Jouef right back ta the start of the blog, intending to show the other a few weeks later...and never did! They are now in storage, but I got a couple of catalogues from Jan Komarome who used to be a sales rep. for Tri-ang-Pedigree in South Afrika the other day, so to help anyone ID them until I get the figures up here (year or two?) these are the scans...

I can say that the painting on my samples is as poor as the ones in the link, but the colours aren't quite as lairy. Supplied by Jouef for Mettoy, the Rail Staff aren't in these catalogues and I notice a code change (simplification) as the range grows. Thanks Jan.

M is for Mini-trucks, Part 1 - Cab designs and overview

This set of 7 posts (following) was born out of the catalogue page the the boys over at Moonbase let me use the other week (month?!), and the fact that some time ago (over a year and a half) I said I'd do a thing on the mini-trucks from Hong Kong that were born out of the Kleeware trucks that were themselves apparently copies of the Dinky original of the post-war Humber.

Along the way it ties up a couple of other loose-ends...

Bottom right shows the two larger scale Banner trucks, I've looked at before, they were also produced in the UK by Kleeware (from borrowed moulds), next to them is the small scale Pyro/Kleeware lorry.

At the top are a Pyro cab unit (or 'Semi', or...see 'comments' the other day!!) in army green next to a Wannatoys red one.

Sandwiched between them all are a Cheerio pick-up truck apparently from the UK and the Wannatoys cab again to compare.

These mostly generic 1950's Lorry Cab Designs all have some features in common, such as the divider down the bonnet (hood) or the cab-roof lights, or the military 6x6 truck type wheel-arch headlights.

Alongside them ran metal vehicles of similar design and these are all from a Mettoy Playcraft (later; Corgi) catalogue of unknown age. The lower engines look very 'Denis' in execution, my local Lorry builder, they used to test-drive the chassis round Fleet when we were kids.

One of the loose ends; the upper shot shows the Triang Mettoy Breakdown Lorry, it is as you can tell the same vehicle as the two military ones in the original Littlewoods ad. Below it is the Lone*Star Cab Design.

The Matchbox take on the Humber lacked the sentry-holes and detail of the Dinky version and was not a copy, while the Dinky Lorry begot all the others!! I think?

The Humber was the Post-war (WWII) replacement for the plethora of 15cwt (UK) and 3/4-ton (US) trucks in service by the end of it. It would also provide the chassis for the wheeled APC immortalised in Northern Ireland as the PIG.

Kleeware (top left) to modern Christmas cracker toy (bottom right), these are the little beasts we look at in the 6 posts below this one.