R is for Recent Events

Had a mare of a day yesterday (Thursday), although it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I managed to get back to Waterloo OK, despite the impending strike by tube workers, and some bus staff! The main event being the picking-up of a lovely lot of loot from Peter Evans.

 

I had a better Saturday last, attending the BMSS show in Reading, where among other things I picked up the above ephemera, all relatively useful, especially the colour facsimile of a Lineol catalogue. I may already have some of it, particularly the Corgi checklist/customer leaflet, but if so, it'll make a useful spare to swap for something!

 

The Hausser farm and zoo flyer is an original, and there's some German language stuff which seems to be either a dealers lists, or trade orders of some kind, and which may or may not have future use. The V&A monograph is a bit of fun for the library, and a picture of a diner from Route 66 heralds a parcel from Brian, which I'll hopefully post in the next few days, while Steve Vickers gave me both his cards!

 

Two Elastolin facsimiles got left out of the other shot, and I won two items on the raffle this year, the Land Rover kit has no figures (shock horror!), so I may just make them up 'as is', and photograph them against future Land Rover posts, in their neutral . . . gray - I just (a while ago) remembered I had to go to the bank, so shot off, forgetting I'd been doing this, then thought I'd go for a walk, it's a nice day, or it was, it's dark now! And actually wrote 'neutral' about ten hours ago!

 

As well as show plunder, which needs photographing, and the box from Mr Burke, which has been shot, I also picked up a big lot from Chris, which also needs photographing, but I have sorted it, and there are some interesting bits winging their way to these pages!

 

When I was on Faceplant, I'd thank Chris when a parcel arrived, with the Collected Paratroopers image, a few days or a week or so before they got posted here, but, as I'm not on Faceplant at the moment, here it is! The red one is actually a stand-alone figure from Processed Plastics, but he made the line-up neater, and was needed in the flyboy zone!

 

And while I'd happily draw a veil over yesterday's shenanigans, as I said, I did manage to get to Peter's and pick up a collected bunch of donations and car-booty, which is also in the queue to be photographed, along with some charity shop stuff I picked-up this afternoon, next to the bank!

 

Given that I haven't cleared any of the stuff I was intending to clear, back in January, because I've had a month off, like a lazy fuck, there's no shortage of stuff to post, and I fear the capsule-toy mini-season may join the HO railway outstanding's in the never-never section of the short queue! We'll see, what will be, will be!

 

The next event will be the London Toy Soldier Show, on the 9th of May, with a Sandown the next weekend (16th of May), so it's lucky PW has moved to June really!

P is for Plastic Toys!

The title of Bill Hanlon's excellent book on Dimestore Dreams of the '40s & '50s, and the core of this blog, no matter how much metal, wood, glass or card sneaks in! Alongside the military vehicles, which Mr Berke sent us the other day, was a plethora of civilian transport delights, most being of the 'dime store' variety, and this post is looking at the larger examples.

Left to right we have here, a 1911 Maxwell Roadster, a 1911 Daimler and a 1911 Renault, all made in Hong Kong, and my initial thought - given the leery colours - was Wilton's cake decorations, but they are different, so these may have just been pocket-money rack toys, like the ones we saw in a bit of a mini season a while back, but lovely additions to that particular oeuvre!

Two of the vehicles had been enhanced with 'ticker-tape' type-written graphics, which had seen better days, but with weathering/discolouring looked like a comercial exercise, until you realised one was a Marx tanker, the other a Dillon-Beck 'Wannatoy' utility/tool-locker truck, so I removed the remnants, which proved easy, as the glue was some water-based animal-stuff, like the old 'Gloy' pots at school!

 

There were actually a fair few Wannatoy or DB marked examples, including the boat and three 'rigid' trucks - we saw the artic's here, years ago! Indeed i think there were five different markings between the seven items. One of the spare cab/tractor-units had a different hitching mechanism/method, and I thought I might be looking for new trailers, but the aforementioned Hanlon book put me right.

 

I had seen the unmarked yellow bit, and decided it must be part of a construction vehicle or earthmover, but it turned out it's the other half of the 'new' Wannatoys cab design, but I'm still looking for the outer-end of the arm, for now it can do service as a tow-truck!

 

A lot of red, in the parcel, it has to be said! Three lovelies here, with a Renwal delivery van, we know it's a delivery van because it has DELIVERY written across the roof for police helicopters!

 

In the middle a Thomas Toys marked sedan, or at least I think it's called a sedan, in the UK it would be a 'family saloon car'! With a soft polyethylene dream to the right! I thought it might be a T-Bird and was googling with image-results by year '51, '52, '53 etc. . . and getting nowhere, before switching to Processed Plastic soft top, and finding it was a '56 Cadillac El Dorado, which I should have recognised, but I only drove the hard-top!

 

Stop me if I've bored you with this already, oh! You can't, it's a Blog . . . Hay-ho! Many years ago, like about 25, I worked for a stretch-limo' firm for a bit, actually ran into a childhood mate, but have since lost touch with him again!

 

Anyway, they were mostly shitty-old Lincoln Towncars from the 90's, ratted, sparking mother-boards you had to hold against the shocks with your spare hand to keep the gizmo's shining for the punters, awful things which had been hammered doing the LA-San Fran-Las Vegas triangle, 100's of thousands of miles. And in various liveries of silver, graphite, grey, white (weddings!) and two-tone.

But, there was one original 1960's 'Beatles & Stones', presidential Cadillac El Dorado ('68 I seem to recall), in black, with all leather, slightly stretched with a little B&W TV, and mahogany veneer bar, it only sat about six (some of those Lincoln's could hold 12 or 14 topless tarts!) in a small broken-U, but compared to the modern shit, it was one classy lady!

 

One summer evening I parked-up in the big Sainsbury's at Hatch Warren in Basingrad, while my fare did their function, and I went in for a snack and when I came out I had a crowd! She was lovely, and this little toy, albeit an earlier model, will remind me of her! She broke down as often as the others, though!

If you need a Limo', go to a reputable firm, with new cars and a landline, stay away from the local-press guys with their old cars, a mobile number and maybe a hosted webpage, you could spend half the night by the side of the motorway, or miss your flight, and you rarely get your money back!

This was funny, I'd literally mentioned it in passing a few days before it dropped on the porch, unannounced! It's the dairy boardgame, which was from Hasbro, and four players go around delivering milk, eggs and butter (I think) which fit over the different studs on the back! There was a green one in the parcel, but Royal Fail did their worst, and I have a bag of green bits waiting for a glueing session.

 

Some more polyethylene, the two to the left are in the style of all that German or Scandinavian vinyl, but in 'ethylene, and probably some similar infant/first/early-learning type thing, 1970's maybe? The tractor is lovely, marked Hong Kong, it is a direct copy of the Jean Höfler one which I have in military and civil types, so it will be nice to compare all three sometime.

While the sports car [muscle car!] is in a similar vein to the first two, I suspect enhanced with aftermarket or old leftover kit transfers, and while I would clean them off if I was sure, I'm not, and I'm even less sure about the blue paint, not obvious in the shot, but which runs around the lower quarter, and might/might not actually be factory-finish, so I wouldn't want to lift that at the same time?

Two of the little Pyro's, an Ideal 'aerodynamic' trailer (very 1950's), which is a fair lump of stable cellulose-acetate, a Banner road-grader, I think I have the military-green one somewhere (?) and a locomotive conductor's caboose from Lido Lines!

 

While this is a mystery, there's a feint USA mark under the right corner of the bonnet/hood, but no other markings, and it clearly had some interactive properties which are now half-missing, a hole in the rear only reveals that which is no longer there, while a sliding piston thing at the front has no obvious stop, trigger or function? I don't think it's dropping low enough to fit in a road-slot?

 

I suspect either a jump toy, with the trigger in another component (ramp or launch-mechanism), or a magnetic novelty with parts/a corresponding magnetic-wand missing? So any help tying this down to a maker or a set would be happily accepted!

 

And many thanks to Brian again, for this pile of brightly-coloured treasures!

N is for No Spanish Horses!

But more odds-&- sods of a ceremonial or 'on-parade' nature, indeed the first quartet started life a week or so ago in the same tub as two of the mounted reamsa's and the Argentine Lifeguard look-a-like, so may also be from the collection of Barry 'the legend' Blood, from that 2010 sell-off?

These being they! Two Danish guards from Reisler, in the everyday uniform, the red is the ceremonial, the black for day-in/day-out wear. To their left are two Mignalu plastic Monaco police (Carabineers de Monaco) in their summer dress uniform (they also have a dark version for winter), these are taken from a short experiment by Minot (CGB, not Barry) in Aluminium production back in the 1950's.

My three Athena's, I couldn't begin to explain anything else about them as there seem to be so many variations; red and blue, white and blue, kilts, bloused trousers, pom-poms - large, small and no, single or double 'deputy dog' ears, 'wing-boards' . . . and I must conclude that every regiment has its own uniform, or that several guards have summer and winter versions, there is an excellent book or two on them by Markos Plytos and they should make it clearer, in the meantime - my three are a good mix!

The first four were going to be with the Cavalry, before they expanded and I decided they must go seperately as a 'foot ceremonials' post, off to find the Evzones above, I checked Brian B's folders and found this 80'mil-odd chap, who's from Processed Plastic (thanks to Kent's site)'s US Air Force set.

Which in turn reminded me I had this chap (on the left) in with the unknown navy (or navy-like) figures, looking at him anew I suspect he's actually a chauffeur or doorman from a 1:35th scale car kit - Monogram, MPC/AMT-Ertl, Pyro or Revell? He's in hard polystyrene plastic anyway and someone's tried to glue him down by melting his base!

He - in turn - reminded me there was the other black plastic figure hanging around, seen on the right; he's soft polyethylene and I know nothing about him, I thought he must be Marx or MPC but doesn't seem to be either, has some features in common with the Remco Romans, but is lacking the fine detail seen on their shields, he's close to Marx's 60mm naval cadet marching, but of poorer quality and without the shoulder flap on the Marx figure's greatcoat, and, if it wasn't for the base, you might mistake him for an early experiment by Pater Cole's Replicants!

Anyone know, he seems to be a modern re-issue so I guess somewhere someone has a bucket-full of 'um? To be honest he looks like a neighbouring dictator's guard from the Trigan Empire and seems to be carrying an Elephant Brontosaurus-gun! The gun actually looks to be damaged at the tip, but inspection under a magnifying-glass suggests it's all there? Steam-punk Nazi!??!

ABC, Hong Kong rip-off's of Britains hollow-cast marching troops, they look better en-masse than they do individually!

A mix of French troops marching, seen recently here, but again looking better as a group, and also HK copies, this time cloned from Starlux.

A Salvation Army chap I shot on Adrian's stand years ago and which has been sat in Picasa ever since! I may actually have one myself, but either a different pose or a different flag, and I'm not sure where I put it? He's aluminium and Wend-Al.

A scaler on the left, while on the right - they are all ensconced in their new tub! the HK stuff (ABC/Starlux-copies) have their own tubs!

The cavalry grew to fill two tubs, Reamsa and 'others', and the foot got one of their own. The red plastic Reisler's (which we've seen; Blog passim) will stay with the British guards for now, but as this sample grows and fills a deeper tub, they may migrate across (with the correct paperwork - no illegal's here!), while you can see the lovely RHA chap Chris Smith sent the blog a while back has joined them.

Because PVC can melt polystyrene, the three Greeks and the artilleryman get PE bags, which prevents that kind of damage occurring and provides padding for all the figures in the tub.

M is for Magnificent Men! Processed, Tim-mee et al.

Influenced by Scott's blog, tonight's title is a straight lift from his the other night and it was following the link on his that got me digging these out. These are slightly larger than 1:72 at around 1:65? The Hong Kong copies below are a bit smaller and fit well with 1:72.

A quick search on Google reveals that both these and a Spad were available in red, yellow or green, and probably other colours and aircraft types as well. On the left in each view we have a Fokker D-VII while on the right a Camel in French roundels.

Made at about the time the Tim-mee brand was being changed to Processed Plastics, both cards are PP, Montgomery, Illinois, however the Camel is marked Tim-mee Toys, Mont.Ill., while the Fokker is marked Processed Plastics, Aurora Ill. where they still produce toys to this day under the J.Lloyd umbrella, including the 'Tim Mee' vehicle range.

A Hong Kong copy of the Fokker, also marked 'Fokker D-VII' and possibly marketed by Giant in the US, here in Europe they would have been on more generic packaging.

An accurate copy but seemingly hand-done rather than pantographed, as the loss of size is greater than one might expect from pantographing.

My 'Flying Circus', the red one is marked JN4 Jenny as are the green one with missing tail-planes & pink wheels, and the solid nosed yellow one, the green one with a red propeller is marked DeHaviland DH-4 and the blue-nose is a Nieuport 17C.

Very much a side-bar to the main figure collection and only sought out because they have little pilots and gunners, I have some smaller ones (about 1:87 - Giant (?), 1:90 generic copies) which I'll post another day.

Finally, one can't really write on Great War string-bags without mentioning THAT circus, and its leader, The Red Barron - Von Richthofen - with his Fokker Dr.I Dreideker (shhhh....a copy of the Sopwith Tri-plane!), here closer to 1:60 and packaged for Marks & Spencer about 4 Christmases ago, probably someone like Carama/Hongwell produced it?

Closing from 9 o'clock is another Nieuport 17, this one still on its card from Jean Hoefler, while it's about the same size as the HK ones, the body is wider and the pilot is creeping toward 1:65'ish.