FMC is for Water Buffalo!

A lot of the purchases at Sandown Park, earlier this month, were suited to stand-alone posts, and this is a classic - in World War II, while we, in the UK, were melting down railings to make bombs, and German housewives were being told not to whine about a lack of bananas, the Americans could afford to make corporate desk-toy freebies, in bronze!

 

I'm not 100% sure which model this is actually representing, but I think it's the 'Amtank' (LVT (A)-1) (37mm main gun), or something similar like the LVT(A)-4 (75mm main gun), both built on LVT-2 chassis (there were lots of marks and body-types!), also known variously as an Amtrac, Buffalo or Water Buffalo, and this model appears to be a braised bronze model, of the desk-ornament/advertising variety, with a fixed turret.

 

And while the origins date back to 1935 and the civilian design 'Alligator', this is definitely a wartime, USMC procurement-driven version, so such a model is as conspicuous a sign of wealth/consumption, as you're likely to find! And, from the heft, a very useful paperweight!

 

The barrel of the gun is a steel rod, embedded in the mantlet and blacked-down to match the patina of the vehicle/model, which may have had a chemical dip, to get this antiqued look?

 

FMC is really for Food Machinery Corporation! A 'toolmaker' in common parlance, you can see the welts of the braising where the maker's plate has been added last. It could be welded steel, but it's too heavy, equally, it's not soft-enough to be a base-metal, so bronze is the obvious material, although it appears to have been slush-cast (bronze is more commonly sand-cast?), and then tidied-up with both the baseplate, and possibly an oval plate on the rear face of the hull? From the polishing on the left side, a copper-rich bronze!

 

 After a clean!

 

An oddity, a probable rarity, and over 80-years old, it's possibly not far off the same size as the Airfix Buffalo II, an open-topped troop-delivery vehicle, for which this is the fire-support variant, usually found on either wing/end of the landing line, to suppress enemy fire and engage bunkers. But it might be a bit bigger, people who know me, know how bad my 'scale eye' is, it might be closer to 1:48th or a round 1:50th?

 

If anyone with better maths than me would like to try working it out, the tape measure says it's 125mm long, 50mm wide and approximately 65mm high?

L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown February - Space & Pop Culture

So, I would seem to be catching up with the stuff that's come in over the last ten months or so, and the Sandown Park show, just gone, produced quite a collection of bits and bobs across scales, types and genres for the stash, this post is what I'd normally call the Space and TV, but they weren't TV first, being corporate mascot and comic characters!

 

I have quite a few Bibendums, and we have seen him here before, but this is far more animated than the usual standing types. Quite large and a modern PVC-substitute, I'm sure it's a pretty contemporary promotional piece?

 

Slightly futuristic lines to these dime-store pieces, the car and caravan being more conventional, and marked ACME, one of the trading names of Thomas Toys in the US, I think the truck is unmarked, but I'm sure it'll be in Bill Hanlon's book? Looks like a simplified copy of Archer's 'Future Cars' sculpt?

 

Adrian had saved these two Cherilea / Hilco's for me, the standing guy has a damaged weapon, but they both have their correct helmets and put my squad, much enhanced with superglue up to about ten, with most complete, but all short on helmets!

 

Bully Lucky Luke figures, the eponymous hero, his horse Jolly Jumper and his dog, Ratanplan, these are soft PVC and scale well with the Comansi/bubble-gum premium ones seen here before.

 

The Dalton Brothers, from the left; Averell, Jack, William and Joe, also Lucky Luke characters, these are in a hard, possibly phenolic plastic, or early 'styrene, from JIM in France, and are in a larger scale.

 

Brabo bendy toy! Larger again, and manufactured in that slightly sweaty PVC, some Hong Kong makers used/favoured at times, but only to a slight shininess, not the full-on weeping stickiness of some old toys from the colony!

 

Mixed, larger-scale space figures with two of the Marx metallic blue ones, a Tudor Rose (marked) licensed copy/mould swap of Premier's pulp spaceman waving pistol and a - probably - 1970's PVC gum-ball, capsule-machine robot.

 

Three of the LB (for Lik Be) copies, I couldn't remember which ones I already had, so just grabbed all three against the possibility I might still need some poses, which may be among this trio, and because paint was quite good, except the bases!

 

We've seen them before, and now attributed them to two names, Toyway and the original GLJ, with packaging, so I thought we should see them from the back! I got excited as I thought I'd 'found' a fourth pose, but we've actually seen them all before!

 

These have been a steady stream-in, over the last few years, Italy's sub-scale copies, titled Space Legion (Legione Epaziale), from little pocket-money cards, again copied, but from Archer as well as the Premier biggies. I like the marbling, it gives each figure a certain character or uniqueness!

 

These are the Giant sub-copies I called 'Copy 2' here, and while the most common of the four types so far found, this particular batch is a late-production run, with a lot of heat-shrinkage dwarfism! They are also, mostly, in a darker gunmetal than the usual samples? You can spot the three more common silvery ones among them, and they are guarding two valuable dome-helmets (Archer / Glenco and Britains?) for the spares box!

P is for Promotional

You don't see real premiums these days, most people now buy own-brand products which owe some of their cheapness to a lack of promotional gimmicks, and while I know people like Topps do the odd set of animals, or Smarties occasionally add figurals to their tube tops, it's not something which is common or everyday, and while I guess Blind Bags, have filled that niche (at a cost), it was interesting to find these . . . 

 

. . . in an Italian flyer type thing. My Italian being poor it seemed they are plain figures (rather than stampers or something), and you have to visit the store on or after the given dates to get the specific figure, and from the way the flyer was laid-out, I suspect the Italian equivalent of Aldi or Lidl? Anyway it appeared to be called Eurospin, and now we're all on the Internet, it didn't take long to find a set of six, with a previous or future set of another six?

https://www.eurospin.it/kung-fu-panda/

And at €3.99, hardly a 'premium', rather a promotional! Thanks to Jan & Istfan for fetching the flyer back from Italy! And . . . Kung Fu Panda 4? I seem to have missed King Fu Panda 3 all together!

H is for a Handful More!

Back with key-rings, keychains, key fobs, they are different things to different people! I think this lot was a charity shop lot a year or two ago, I can't honestly remember, and I made the mistake - a mistake I regularly make - of trying to shoot them on a red background!

 

Several catering firms had similar dough-men mascots, this one - Turkstra - is Dutch, and appears to have awarded itself 1st and 2nd place in something, at the same time, their biscuits must be bloody good!

And I thought this was fun, as you could remove the chain-ring and have a perfect egg-box for a dolls house! I'm guessing, from the lack of a mark, that it's missing a sticker, and if it had a sticker, may have been offered to several egg-producers, so could be missing any one of a number of stickers?

Common 'Jig Toy' design of the family saloon, made key-ring, my experiance of this kind of key ring is that if you actually wore in on your trouser loop, you quickly found pieces missing, so it's nice to find it in one piece!

 

Not really my thing, but it will join the other novelty key-rings, alongside the other novelties and next to the figural key-rings, paperwork-wise! Quite a survivor too, as it's quite delicate, especially the visor, which has two little ethylene pins, and there is plenty of opportunity for loss, breakage or cracking, not to mention the sticker going missing, so a bit of a find I guess!

 

Relief-flat - a cockerel and grapes, is it a French regional mascot/logo thing? A winery? Or just a generic? Again, outside the main collection, but early plastic ephemeral, novelty/plaything, it has its place.

 

Another automotive subject here, with a small base-metal old-fashioned racing-car, might be based on an Edwardian board-game moulding? Not Monopoly, a lesser thing? But fun anyway!

 

Looking at the pre-'publish' close-ups, I think it's actually plastic, not base metal, and while possibly still from a board-game piece, is more likely to be taken from a charm-bracelet thing? Could even be homemade from a Christmas Cracker prize!

 

Another relief-flat of a cat and kitten, a bit bitter-sweet right now, I still miss Boysey-Boy every day, but these are black, and it's many years since we've had black cats, although once Dad brought six home in the staff-car, in a catering-sized cornflakes box, after rescuing them from the bin-stores at Browning Barracks!

 

Little Topo-Gigio, the Italian kids TV puppet, I wonder if some of the several similar small versions I have may also be ex-key-rings? I'll have to investigate them for loop-removal. This one was so hard to shoot on the red I gave-up and pulled up the winter cover, complete with cat hairs, only to find one of the red shots was actually useable!

F is for the Flintstone's Flyer!

I could have spent the last couple of hours chucking a few posts up here to blow the record, but I'm going to that anyway before the month is out (I think this post equals the record?), but I was sent a bunch of card buses earlier and said I'd go through P-Z looking for the last of mine, which I've just done, only, one of them wasn't a bus, by any stretch of the imagination!

Somebody called Cleo (the printers?) for a Thornycroft of Gerrards Cross (not the HGV manufacturer!), for a chocolate egg! Well, Cream Eggs and Cadbury's Mini-Eggs will be in the shops by next Tuesday, you know it and I know it!

 

Scale is all over the place, but realism doesn't have to come first when you have prehistoric men using dinosaurs as earthmovers! Also, the artwork on the three sides doesn't tie-in, as it has on the buses, so just a bit of fun!

X is for Xandria - Part Two

So a closer view of the little pile of Xandria (or related) loveliness from Theo, a while back now, and you can see a couple of the Thunderbirds one, Tracy was missing his gun, but Lady Penelope just needs a clean, her shoes have that gold paint made from brass-filings which goes green if it gets too damp, so they may need a re-paint!

The rest we are going to look at now, and apart from the two Gerry Anderson characters they were mostly quite clean . . . PVC does have a tendency to collect dirt in a way no other plastics do, Yogi needed a clean, but didn't get one until I'd shot them and there appear to be two grey boots or paws sticking out of the pile, belonging to someone who is in neither post?

I do remember one figure having a  loose component at buckle/belly level which I had to de-gunge and re-glue, it must have been put to one side and not shot, but it will re-appear at the other end, and can star when we return to these, which I know we will.

We've seen the policeman/dog yesterday; the comedy policemant Bromsnor  from TV series Swiebertje and the De Betuwe jam premium's Agent Bulderen  while the other two seem to both be from the Pixie line, the thin guy on the left might be advertising a local Dutch tailors, or just wearing a sticker to explain his Grimm's fairy tale character; Het dappere snijdertje (The brave cutter) ['Zeven in één klap'] (Seven at one strike); the tale of the tailor who kills seven flies in one go and gets dicked into tackling Giants by a dodgy King!

The fatter chap has lost a sticker (you can see some glue remains), so I don't know if he was advertising something, explaining his own character or just had some fancy paper undershirts, like one or two in yesterday's post! Indeed the sticker on Bromsnor's hat has mostly had it's detail rubbed off and is loose, some of the stickers are 'vehicle-vinyl' and the glue turns to a sticky liquid under the onslaught of the substrate PVC's free radicals, a problem with the Thunderbirds set too.

The Indian, I have a feeling Theo did explain him to me, and that he might be connected to the similar non key-ring ones from the donation posts the other day, but I can't remember or find the relevant eMail, so we may return to him at some point.

And while I said the clown probably wasn't Xandria, forgetting it was in yesterday's post (and below!) I then said I hadn't seen any Hanna Barbera ones, forgetting Yogi was here! As I said; I could forget something if it was glued to the end of my nose!

And; like the Disney Pete yesterday, fully marked but on his back not his foot, so the chances are other franchises got the Xandria, multi-part PVC treatment?

Not that he's necessarily Xandria, even if the rest are; his ring, chain and loop are all different, and his collar & tie are polyethylene, but so are Lady P's pearls, as other accessories on other figures also utilise the harder polymer!

These are all from the jam maker's Flipje Betuwe set, and from the left are; Klaas Ram (Claus/Klaus?), Sjoerd de visboer (Sjoerd the fishmonger) and Schoorsteenveger (chimney sweep), and again we see Klaas wearing a sticker to represent his nautical-themed jumper, while the sweep has a PE ladder.

These two are damaged, but interesting nevertheless, the clown is in the style of Xandria's output, but not configured as a key-ring, therefore without a central core and so all glued together rather than stacked like most of the others, while the Santa Clause is all polyethylene, and over-moulded just like Timpo figures. Again a very different loop/ring arrangement, and no chain, suggests a copy-cat/rival, maybe even in Hong Kong? Perhaps he was sold as a tree-decoration?

On the over-moulding; it would be interesting to know who did it first, now we know George Musgrave at Gemodels was wrestling with the technology, and swoppets came before over-moulding at Shotts (the cavalry/ACW were the first with true hot-polymer over-moulding I think), while some of these Xandria's are from the 1960's, it's more questions without answers!

These are lovely figures, rather opening-up a whole 'new' field to study (four winging their way here in the post as I write), and many thanks to Theo van de Werden who sent me to the Flipje Betuwe site (which has gone now, but I copied the two relevant pages), and for sending the Blog these for us to look at - Thank you, Theo - job done!

X is for Xandria - Part One

I can't believe I hadn't used that title before given the paucity of X's to choose from, but I hadn't, so now I have. In the US, we know they were credited to a Xandria - Holland, and have to assume in Holland it was just plain Xandria, or at least, I think it was, there being nothing solid in the archive.

And I don't have to eat a terribly large slice of humble pie, as I corrected myself at the time on Moonbase several years ago, and have since established them as [Dutch] Xandria here too, although it is conjecture as that confirmatory evidence is still missing.

I have nicked the previously linked-to image from Kirk's site, purely for research purposes (http://secretfunspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/vintage-ad-sheets_28.html) in getting it all here at the same time, but have sent people there in the past and would recommend that you visit, it's a long post with tons of fascinating stuff; a Britains point-of-sale Ad', Monogram Luminators, toy filled promotionals, Lindburg.  (sadly no Verity or Una pens though!), somewhere I'm sure I have a non-promotional/un-branded version of the ice-scraper in the second image! And his farewell post (click on the header image to 'go' home) has cool stuff too.

Anyway, these (above) are mostly the Pixies, and I've told the tale of Auntie Ruth or Margaret giving us four younger cousins one each, one summer, and we will look at a few in this and the next post, but Xandria also did specific promotionals, Disney characters, TV related figures and other stuff. And it seems that - in the US at least - they were sold in little blister-cards.

Now on the day, way back when, I remember the dog tramp/hobo and the gopher/rabbit chef, one of which must have been my brother's, but I can't remember what the fourth was? The pig looks a lot like Podgy, from the Rupert Bear strip in the Daily Express (ad the lovely annuals, with their self-colouring pages), but is actually a named character from one of Xandria's promotional series.

You can also see fairy-tale characters like Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Jack of the beanstalk, stealing the Golden Goose, Hansel & Gretel a frog-Prince, witch,  the Pied Piper and a naked emperor!

My Xavier mouse, his tale was told in a previous post, but there were images left; when you find a elusive childhood memory's item, you tend to take a few shots more than you might actually need!

These three are from Theo, via eMail and his clever depth-of-field scanner, and are of a Policeman from a comedy TV series called Swiebertje (Swiper (or nicker? as in arrester?)), and the character is called Bromsnor (hum moustache), he's one of four in the key-ring line/set.

In the middle is one which Theo though might be from Hong Kong, whether because I originally though they were from there, or because it's a summer uiform, or a different material/style I don't know and Theo's too busy with Real Life to ask right now. Note the ring is a different - push/press - design too.

The third is a police-dog, obviously! He's from the large range of premiums Xandria did for the Tiel-based De Betuwe jam factory, they had a mascot (Flipje) who was actually a red fruit, although I'm not sure what friut, he may be a raspberry, or a more generic thing representing all the fruits in the local orchards (plums, cherries, apples?), he has a statue AND museum in Tiel town!

But the promotion had thirty-nine other anthropomorphic characters to collect, each with a different name and this policeman is called Agent Bulderen, he's dressed quite like a British beat-bobby, but as we've been a vague extension of Holland since 1689, that sort of makes sense! I think a meaningful translation is 'Agent Blunder'?

Two I picked up in a mixed lot, the damaged one is a Disney character (I've previously mused they may not have touched that franchise, but they obviously did!) of Pete, Bad/Black/Peg-leg/Pistol Pete! I think? He's lost his head and is packing a pistol, and you can see how the core (here snapped at the neck) of these figures runs up through the body and head to the ring-loop!

The other is a bit of a regency fop, and I suspect from the expanse of smooth front clothing/bib, that he is missing an advertising or branded promotional sticker, as several of those we will look at have.

Here they are again (upper shot) with the inset pixy from the advertising trade Ad., a grumpy looking fellow! Below them are three more which I think Theo sent me, but I may have taken it off of feeBay; a chap in a top hat, an Indian (is he the same character as those non-key-rings the other day?) we'll look at again in the text post and a clown, the clown I thought might not be Xandria the other day, I can forget something on the end of my nose, believe me! And a circus ringmaster, we'll look at in a minute, without his waistcoat & cravat sticker.

The big guy is also in the US image (with Puss in Boots) and you can see with his t-shirt/under-vest sticker how it could be easily replaced with a different sticker for a corporate logo or event, and - as stock items - even for something small like a local retailer or a village fête, maybe needing only a few hundred units?

Another gopher/rabbit type in a bell-hop's (urrrr . . . rabbit, hop, geddit!) uniform, which could be me over reading it as he's another Flipje Betuwe character, known as Trein Konijn (train rabbit), so I'm not over-reading it; he's a station hopping, bell-hop! It could get worse . . . no, he's actually a driver I think! He's missing a sticker round his hat.

The third is that ring-master and you can see, again, from the missing sticker, he could be used as an advertising hording for something else. Which [promotionals or premiums] seems to have been the driving concept behind Xandria's whole product range.

A close up of Pete's foot with the full licensing message, I have yet to find Hanna Barbera or MGM stuff in Xandria's styleing? And three more Flipje Betuwe characters, from the left in the smaller, face-on image; Juffrouw Geit van Geitenstein (Miss Goat van Geitenstein), Kapitein Rob (a walrus with a corn-cob pipe!) and Mol (mole).

Theo thinks the jam premium range appeared in the late 1960's which would tie-in with the Thunderbirds set  we looked at here also (some time after 1965/6'ish), while the US 'Branch' Xandria-Holland were registered in New York in 1971, with the 'Pixies' which would tie-in with when I was losing Xavier's cheese around 1970-72, clambering around in the hay-stack!

And they are mostly 55-60mm and PVC. We'll look at a equally eclectic selection from Theo in the next post.