M is for Mixed Magnanimity Mound

I know! But after nearly 20-years, even the thesaurus starts to fail you! It's a charity lot; soon after the last posting in this vein, I popped into a couple of the charity shops in Fleet and managed to come away with five things of vague interest, and these are they!

 

Another duck! It wasn't until a guest post back in 2012, that I had fully appreciated the whole sub-branch of ducks, since when I've probably added as many ducks to my own stash as were in that post, with a similar range of sizes and materials, they are - in the most part - real tourist kiosk/gift-shop/overpriced 'boutique' type stock, but they are fun, and one day we'll look at them all together!

 

A teeny-tiny hedgehog, which is so small it can keep the [believed to be] Playmobil one company! And a gape-mouthed, Chinasaur, rubber-jiggler, who may well be from the same set as the one Chris sent, which we saw here a few days ago? There were several sets of these sculpts, back in the day, and they occasionally still turn-up, so, hard to age.

 

A slipware porcelain cat, probably a fairing, or cheap, corner-shop/local hardware store ornamental, I thought the colouring of the glaze was quite good, even if it has a rather daft face with anthropomorphised eyes!

 

I think these would have been called Empathy Counters, and while you don't seem to be able to get this exact set any more, there are several other similar sets, and these five mouldings are still found in a larger early learning/maths/coordination set, in a yellower yellow!

 

From Edx Education, they fill the same role as that old set I was pleased to track-down a few years ago, or the Houghton Mifflin stuff in the 'States, and gets five more animals in six colours into the stash! Made of 'eraser' rubber, they would be mistaken for such, if not known.

B is for Beetlemania!

No, it's not a typo, these were a bit of a present, or payment in kind, for a favour I did, and, as I owed the favour, an unnecessary kindness really, but I'm not complaining, although they are mostly outside the parameters of the collection, or, would have been, a few years ago!

 

It's a plethora of Beetles in the 1:30-1:48th scale range, who also manage to break down into pairs, which makes them are easier to compare or look at, as those pairs, but we have two from Scandinavia, two from Hong Kong and two from the UK.

 

The British pair are to be looked at quickly, as they are after-market lumps of poured resin, in a scale somewhere near 1:48th, but a tad bigger I suspect (1:45th?), and despite Google being hopeless these days, or because if it, I've been unable to find out anything about the maker, A.J. Baldock, beyond the label pointing to the late-1980's/early 1990's as a likely date, I well remember those mail-order add's; "Buy now and get your first 200 free", or "Your reorder code is here", with choices of about four colours of text and six colours of label!

 

Two lumps of poly-vinyl, on the left of each shot, the Tomte Laerdal Police car version from Norway (around 1:40th/1:35th), I can remember these, a few were still around Southern Germany in the late 70's (have I just shoehorned my time in Southern Germany into a post, to box tick someone else's recent stuff? I think I have, it's an easy game!), in white and puke-green, with Polizei down both sides!

 

On the right, the Galenite (1:43rd) from neighbouring Sweden, in the standard saloon (? . . . bubble) configuration, you can see the Galenite is the far-better finished model, while the Tomte is quite lumpy or 'melty', but the Tomte's always have the better wheels!

 

Two (of 1:32nd compatibility) from Hong Kong, and quite similar. From the 'emergency' green driver, one is tempted to suggest Blue Box or Tai Sang for one, and the body-shells are so similar, you wonder if they aren't two versions/tranches of the same toy?

 

But I suspect one (possibly the blue one; cruder wheels) is just a close copy of the other, that they are both based on a Western (or South American?) die-cast model, and Tai Sang may not have had anything to do with either? The white one is hollow, the blue has an interior moulding and steering wheel, in addition to the driver.

 

They (Blue Box) did have a driver for their small-scale Jeeps and Austin Champs, in the same colour, but may have bought them in, so it's not empirical enough to draw those kinds of conclusions. Belly-pans both rule out A-OK, lack of a pull-back motor rules-out Lucky (who tended to a roof light for Fire Chief or Police vehicles) and FE, bumper rules-out Larami, lack of paint rules out most of the rest I can find, so right now, your guess is as good as mine, your knowledge, better!

 

Wheels!

 

♫♪♪♫ Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind ♪♫♪♪

 

By length! It's not the size, it's what you do with it!

D is for Donations - Peter & Chris - Dinosaurs

As with the military and Sci-Fi, there was a fair amount of carded and bagged in the folders, particularly in the stuff from Peter, which has been sent down to 1971 in Picasa, where lay the RTM folders!

 

Consequently, I've combined what's left into one folder, and we'll have two blind-bag/capsule toy posts before the final pair of donation posts - Odds and Sods. Then we've got the recent BMSS and Sandown show stuff in the queue!

 

These should have been kept for Rack Toy Month too, but I happened to find them myself elsewhere, just before Christmas, so the whole set, and various sister sets are already in that queue! But these are currently to be found in more independent corner shops/hardware stores, and they are quite well executed sculpts, each identified as a specific species with a potted 'thumbnail' history on the back of a collector card.

 

Apparently generics, they carry product/re-order codes very similar to those of both Henbrandt's catalogues, or -  more closely - D&D Distribution? 

 

Interesting mix of car-booty or charity shop stuff here, I'd like to know the origin of the bright orange and blue Kerthunkersaur! And the Triceratops . . . 

 

. . . glows in the dark!

(and needs a clean!) 

 

These look to be from one or two sets, and are similar to the carded ones above, well executed, realistic sculpting and paint-jobs, it's only when you get all the odds together and sort by size, marks, plastic and even paint-colours, or, if you're lucky, against sets, or set images, that it all starts to make sense!

 

White button! I had no white button toys (excepts, unknown, the old childhood Christmas stocking yellow robot in Mum's attic), when this blog started, there's very little in the HO/OO oeuvre which calls for or necessitates white button toys, but since the expansion in scale, and extension into various realms of 'novelty', there's quite a sub-genre of them in the stash now!

 

Chris doesn't send so many Dino's, as he's not buying in that area, but nevertheless, the odd one gets through in a mixed lot, and he always saves the more interesting ones for the donation parcel, here we have the Holly 'Gygax' in red, which we previously saw, in the recent mini-season, as catalogue scans, and a nice very 'Chinasaur' [1] or gape-mouthed [2], rubber jiggler [3] - how does a crude rubber lump end up with three recognised, hobby-wide, terms of endearment? Childhood nostalgia is a powerful force!

D is for Donations - Peter - Animals

The sorting of the animals is going to be one of the bigger tasks, one day, the hobby is probably bigger than Toy Soldiers, certainly, it supports several vigorous forums, and there are as many makers, if not more, while mine are rather in an anonymised heap within the bigger stash, but they keep coming in, and here's some more!

 

A nice cat, which looks like it might be an accessory from a non-animal set of some kind, the lizard is from the little small-scale, rack-toy play sets from Toy Major/Ackerman, while the bear is both a bit crude and a bit unusual!

 

A whole sub-genre are this smallish scale, softish vinyl sets from toobs, tubs or bags, which are sort of 35/40mm compatible, but really 'bag-scale' or unit scale, and while some are marked, other's easy to ID, many sets are to be found on FeeBay-Amazon-Alibaba, as generics or under obviously phantom brands. These seem to go together, but a couple of them are questionable. Nice, different, cactus!

 

Two generic rack toys, over-stickered to Toys As Fun, which I could have saved for Rack Toy Month, but I think there's plenty for then, and this is the next size up, again, a bit unit-scale (elephant undersized, pig oversized), but mid-sized animals are coming out as 54mm-compatible, which is useful for dioramas and vignettes . . . big cat stalking a patrol, that kind of thing!

 

A couple of proper antiques, I love these! The pressed-wood farmer seems to match the common girl feeding chickens we've seen here before, in point of fact, she or her chickens, turn up so often she must have been from a popular set, for several years, but this chap I've not seen before. Although the blue paint has suffered badly, the other colours remain in sufficient quantity to give a good idea of what he looked like new!

 

While the horse in tin-plate might be a cigarette premium, while we, here in the UK, had cards and silks, as giveaways, some brands on the continent had tin-plate flats, prior to replacing them with the numerous plastic flats used as premiums with other products too. You fold the base out, after the item has been slid out of the packet of cigarettes.

 

From a more recent pick-up in London is another Toy Major lizard (used as a dragon/monster/dinosaur in both the cavemen and medieval sets), two tree frogs and a very daft-looking sauropod!

 

Some larger animals, I think a couple were Triple-A marked, and the green pony is from the Tupperware interactive building blocks, we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/11/g-is-for-great-grey-green-greasy.html

 

Where they were used as, removable, playable rattles, in opaque blocks, unlike the transparent ones from Airfix and others.

 

A large lump of dense vinyl, makes a rather nice Hippo', and these are starting to grow as a side collection, purely by accident, and we did look at a load in a lazy post a while ago!

 

This is from PMS, and I ummed-and-arrred over whether or not to open it, in the end I though I had to, or I wouldn't know what I was dealing with, and was quite suprised to find a gold mokey!

 

I don't know wheather it's a 'chase' figure, or if the whole range is finished in a similar fashion, nor do I know how many there are as there;s no flyer/leaflette . . . probably a £1-shop thing, and therefore stripped to the minimum on unit-price!

 

Another group of - probably - related small vinyls - wild!

 

And another - domestic!

 

Mentioned the other day I think, and seen with a few others a while back, oh yeah, it was the post on mixed shots, a week or so ago. Anyway, here's the farm one, courtesy of Peter, and these sets annoy me, nice animals in a vague scale, so why add huge dogs and ginormous poultry! They haven't even got the excuse of box-scale, because there's plenty of room occupied by the plastic end-filler!? I know, it's a cost thing!

 

Again, many thanks to Peter for all these, they're not just grist to the mill, but also 'bricks in the wall', gaps filled in the archive.

L is for Lost . . . Kitties!

I'm going to try and tackle the backlog of capsule toy and bland-bag stuff, popping one between each pair of donation posts, and it seems fitting to start with another contribution! Brian Berke found these back in the autumn of last year, and from the date given and the price, we can assume clearance of an unsuccessful line, so good luck finding any, but someone will be selling full sets on evilBay at some point, almost certainly for a premium they don't merit!

 

But, it's cats! And we like cats here, even daft, multicoloured, cartoon cats, and this is how they come, a quite substantial 'blind box', like a small milk-carton of the 1980's. Not Lost Kitties, just hidden, by Hasbro!

 

The material seems to be a wheat-chaff sand, titled "moulding compound", so a bit like Play-Doh maybe, but with more texture on the fingers? It looks like peanut butter, and one suspects the warning on the packaging wasn't enough to prevent some juveniles helping themselves to a portion!

 

Obverse of the flyer, should enlarge to the point where you can get a good idea of the whole set, which probably never went to a second wave, despite the urging to buy before early 2019, suggesting a limited shelf-life, as things like Shopkins and Lego minifig sets have, to make way for the next tranche/issue?

 

It's looking even more like peanut butter, once Brian started digging in it, I'm actually going to have a soft roll with PB, as soon as I finish editing this, as it's making me hungry, just looking at it!

 

Well, I didn't make it to the end of the editing, I finished the line and made myself a quick Warburton's soft white with Sunpat smooth . . . Much better now!

 

It says three items, but I suspect that's a sticker in the bag, for a four count, emergency-green, contortionist 'Cubbie' cat, basket, calculator (as '80's as a folded, waxed, milk carton!) and sticker. For the right age-group/target market, I can see these being a lot of fun, but with the wrong marketing, or the wrong promotional budget, many of these concepts fail within months, remember the Horrible Histories figures?

 

We don't see him so often these days, only due to circumstance, but the very useful Crescent sniper, size comparison shot, says these are quite large compared to some of the other blind-bag toys out there. Many thanks to Brian for spotting this, and sending us so many images.

F is for Fishy Business!

Do you remember the B&M shark carry-case we looked at, not that long ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/12/s-is-for-shark-transporter.html 

 

Well, here's another one, this time courtesy of TKMaxx, apparently clearance from Code Red Novelties of New York, they've clearly seen the B&M effort somewhere in the pipeline, and thought "We could do that, cheaper!"

 

Cheaper means no little boats or submersibles, but in order to address the lack of vehicular action, the whole carry-case is a truck! And, just like the B&M one, it has inhabited compartments on one side, and empty compartments on the other, to be filled by the owner. The truck and packaging have already gone to charity and recycling, respectively!

 

I guess you always get one of the paired palm trees, along with a random selection of five from twelve of the sea life sculpts, I would have liked the octopus, as they are growing as a side-issue, but so are star fish and turtles, so I'm not complaining!

 

That's it, we buy this shit so you don't have to! Box ticking some new production - a couple of years ago it was all dinosaur-head truck carry-cases, now it's sharks!

L is for Local Loot - 2 of 2

It looks like I might be picking-up two lots of donated loot at the BMSS show this Saturday, if I can swing my carcass out of bed, early enough, something I have been struggling with recently! So at some point I'll have to get back to a more regular posting, but with over a million hits since Christmas, the Blog seems to have reached a self-supporting momentum, based around it's existing content, which is nice, but may be one of the [subconscious] factors contributing to my lack of motivation? Never thought I'd accuse myself of sitting on my laurels! Anyway, in continuing the plan of some weeks ago - there was a second successful trip to charity shops at the start of the year . . .

 

A bag of bits, a bag of animals and a couple of Stegosaurii . . . Stegosauruses?

Before and after cleaning - three Galanite infant-toy vinyls from Sweden, the poorer brother of Tomte, Both in accuracy (although the BMC 1100/Mini is quite good), and the wheels, which are no way as nice as Tomte's, or even the cheap 'W.Germany' (Stelco, Vinylline) and Hong Kong (Miniflex?) clones which were around at the same time. But collectable nevertheless, and there's a tub of them all somewhere!

 

There was also these . . . they went to 'Recyche'!

 

I'm pretty sure these are from the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus sets, and will need to be compared to the others, there's a bigfull somewhere, to get the best samples in the 'master collection', then the others can be disposed off, probably to charity! They all suffer from paint loss due to play-handling.

 

I suspect these are Corgi too, I don't remember a Zebra, but the same Hong Kong identifiers, and lack of marking, suggest they go with the giraffes? Close to the Britains sculpt, they are also very close to the various Blue Box, Redbox, Holly and New Maries zebras, which I'm one day going to have to try and sort out!

Likewise, note-wise, these two yellow tigers, the white one being marked and probably Holly? Again, someone, someday is going to have to sit down with all the boxed, carded and bagged sets, any catalogue images and all the loose examples, and try and sort them all out and get them annotated correctly by plastic colour, paint, markings etc . . .

 

Britains Llama, Corgi Rhino; a later vinyl moulding, and the bear, which again, may be Corgi, it's quite common in mixed lots, and has a lot in common with both the Rhino and the Corgi Bull from the Lamborghini, so it may be another Corgi, but I'm not sure I have it listed?

 

Modern, Chinasaurs, two makes, both unknown, but we may have seen them in show-reports, or carded acquisitions/donations, all to be sorted another day!

 

 

 

I also picked up this for next-to-nothing, a couple of the figures are damaged, but they just join a growing sub-branch of the collection . . . Box in the recycling bin, and I kept a couple of the accessories, as a sample!

 

Popular movies or other licensed productions, TV, Comics &etc, produce a plethora of crap over a shortish period (unless they really take off like Star Wars or TMNT), and while there's a lot of Minions stuff around at the moment, in 30-years, they'll be more like Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite or Richard Scarry animals are now - half-forgotten, and "What was all the hype about?"!