F is for Follow-up to Plunder Posts - Animals (Prehistoric)

Confirmation of the 30mm rubber cavemen being issued by Harett-Gilmar (HG Toys), and some of the rather fat dinosaurs they lived alongside, in the well-known prehistoric continent of Gondneverwhen!

 

Sometimes it's those mid-era (of one's life) toys which pass one by, those issued while you're busy doing other things, but which have disappeared from the retail market by the time you return to collecting, full-time, and I only discovered these, looking for something else, in 2023!

 

The dinosaurs are fat, I mean there's something wrong with their metabolism, which may be a clue as to their demise, if the meteor theory proves false . . . they ate themselves extinct by getting too fat to mate, or move! The shrub, being like everything else, a softish PVC, could easily be mistaken for a Bata accessory, with its semi-flatness?

At least four poses, although I've also seen the guy with stripey loin-cloth ascribed to another toy line (Mighty Max, I think?), but that was almost certainly a false identification, and I'm guessing the string on the bow is a home addition (in fact I think the whole bow is a replacement), and the club is missing from stripey-pants, but you get the idea!

B is for Big Box of Bounty - Animals

The penultimate post of plastic plunder from Chris, and it's the animals, the least documented of the collection, simply because there are thousands upon thousands of them, and they've just never been a priority, and as the pile of unknowns grows, it gets, like any dark secret, too big to face!

 

But one day soon I hope to tackle it (there's realistic-sculpt Lik Be hidden in there, among other things), and when I do, it will fall into place, or at least some of it will!

 

A Dino-skeleton, a modern phenomenon which is contributing to that pile, although we have ID'd a few over the years, but they keep coming, and this one, one of those 'berry-heads' (Pachycephalosaurus) by the look of it, is larger than most and new to me, it's creeping-up on two arguing cave-men, who are now known (by me, other people knew all along!) to be HG Toys.

 

Small PVC jobbies, and a big job too, with many ID'd and many still to be, here I think we have examples of two modern/current'ish sets, a good [detail] and a not so good set, and one of more vintage, the green one with a splash of pink paint?

 

Not Dinosaurs in my Pocket (Matchbox and cereal premiums), but 'Dino Brites' by Happyness Express of New York (1991), originally Panosh, there's plenty on the Internet about them, this is a good précis on the subject;

 

https://www.littleweirdos.net/2012/02/dino-mites-dino-brites.html

 

 

Larger chaps, with an erasersaur, and one from my favourite rubber set, front right, in a bit of a state, but that state is interesting - it looks upon first glance to be a string, tied by a young owner, which has cut into the foot, but actually, upon trying to remove it, it became clear it was actually an inclusion, running through the leg, and exiting at two points, a piece of cleaning cloth, or hessian sack used to transfer batches of product around the factory floor, which got flicked into the tool? Amazing how it's survived!

 

Two recognisable Holly's (now we've had half a look at them here, as part of the Gygax posts), and the silver one is a nice, but unknown, moulding? Which leaves a softer, more 'Chinasaur' Stegosaurus, who may belong with the Protoceratops and red chap in the second image above?

 

I've seen this chap in mixed lots on evilBay and wondered if it was a copy of one of the Wild West charging/fighting bears, but I think it's a copy of an Elastolin (or Lineol?) composition model, perhaps for Roggatz's ZZ-brand, although not with those green eyes . . . a copy of a copy? Still a nice sculpt, though!

 

Two Airfix piracies, getting a good sample of these now, with and without painted eyes, two larger Hong Kong/China pieces, being a mouse/rat and copy of the Corgi farm dog, a Matchbox boxer-dog from the pick-up truck, and a Berlin-marked bear, with MAMPE, on the other side, a logo-premium for the 'Berlin Mule' kicker-spirit!?

 

A flocked kangaroo, believed to be a Hong Kong-supplied tourist keepsake, three Safari animals, another weakness in the collection, as I've concentrated on the figural sets, and a collectable-series monkey from Topps, who need a better post, along with those Yowies, still in the long queue!

 

Tupperware zebra on the left, chalkware lion from the Naturecraft Christmas crackers in the middle, and one of the two, or four, I'm still looking for! And another bath-toy swan (there was a blue one in the last lot from Peter Evans, and I think I have a pinkish-red one?), which is almost certainly an early post-war novelty, brightening the Christmases, and bath-time's, of the nation's baby-boom.

 

Farm stuff, the composition cow looks particularly interesting (Brent?), while piggy-wiggies and eeeps will need their own ID pages eventually, as there are many of them, and so many copies of known sculpts, it's a collection field in itself . . . Indeed I know a cow collector, who comes round the shows, and from just what I've seen him buy, his collection must be amazing.

 

Two modern horses, and a rather knackered, but still interesting (a sample is always better than no sample) wagon or cart horse, in a solid plastic, which may be Bakelite, or a similar phenol-formaldehyde resin / thermo-set?

 

A bit of fun on the left (but it's a sample!), probably from a modern kid's magazine freebies, and a more conventional beetle on the right, I have half an idea, one day, if I get the time, to mount them all in thematic, glass-fronted, deep frames, as if they are real entomologists exhibits, and ladybirds will be first, as I have a dozen, or more, already!

 

 

Vitacup premiums, mostly damaged, but 'styrene, so usefully glueable, and kept apart, against a future mending session! The baby elephant is more robust, and has survived intact.

 

Lego (?) fish, a Hammerhead, who is damaged, he's missing his lower 'gape mouth' jaw, but it actually, ironically, takes him from the realm of rubber-juggler, to something more realistic looking! A Safari White Shark, and a more generic . . . Mako? Marked China and 'Shark'!

 

Two stretchy 'rubber-jiggler' lizards, probably from two sources, the one unmarked, and flattish with fine sculpting detail, the other fully-round, with fuzzier surface detail (marked China), despite both being metallics, common on these stretchy toys.

 

The turtle is amusing, to me, as I have a blue one which I think is a childhood survivor, despite my not remembering the set, or occasion of its acquisition, it seems to have been in the toy drawer for forever, and nice to find his mate, in another fantastic parcel from Chris Smith.

D is for Dinorasers - 2 of 3

The second part, which is really of two pairs, or a T is for Four! Looking at the full sculpt/more realistic ones first, as a carry-over from part one, then a pair of 'flats' although 'slabs' is a better description!

Loving these anonymous types; two obvious dinosaurs and two, clearly Kaiju monsters! These are large for Erasersaurs, about the same size as the Strawberry ones, but I'll sort the sizes out in the final part.

 

While after the Taiwanese set in the last post, we are off to South Korea to find the Popcorn Fancy factory these left, however long-ago! They have a lot of surface detailing, but it's a bit odd, and was either early CAD-CAM machining, or the masters were 3D-printed when that tech' was, itself, still new, as the texture consists of lots of little rod-like structures, arranged in what appear to be similar to Fibonacci 'spreads'?

Flats, in that they are flat! Waterslide transfers applied to shaped cartouches? Blobs? Clouds! Barely figural, but look below, at least these are trimmed to a vaguely figural-shape! And we've got a couple of mammals, but as the oldest sets of Dinorasers have Woolly Mammoths in their line-up - that's practically tradition!

 

And yeah! These are just blocks with dinosaurs on them, but once you have established a 'side collection', completist'ism clicks-in, and any dinosaur eraser is a good eraser. It's the same with robots and spacemen, where 'flats' and blocks now feature!

T is for Two-Dimensional Terrasaurs!

I think we've looked at these before and I explained my lack of a decent sample, but I've picked-up a few interesting bits on them, or related to them, in the last few years, so time for a better overview despite the lack of samples! Nabisco's Dinosaur Flats.

 

Except they aren't Nabisco, and there are only twelve of the 20, and I don't think they are even the Aussie issue, in fact, I think they are quite recent manufacture, (possibly from older tools), and came in this red and a mid-blue (below), and in the slightly chalky polyethylene of some really cheap rack-toy 'Army Men'.

As we can see from this comparison they are slightly smaller copies of the original set, but are otherwise quite good, sculpturally, with minimal loss of etched detailing, and no more than a millimetre smaller, overall, with thicker bases.

 

Most notable is the loss of depth to the mouldings, making them even flatter flats! The UK issue came in various shades from almost pure white to an 'ivorene' shade of clotted-cream!

 

Wagner in Germany also carried these - possibly first? And I'm pretty sure some of the base-names were Germanised, so they are something to look out for, but those with the same spelling can't be told apart, unless they have a Wagner sticker, which you don't usually get on the cavity-based issues.

 

Another comparison shot.

 

I am slowly picking up the set, but at my current rate I'll need at least another 30-years! The red polyethylene one on the right, is a modern copy, possibly from the same source as the animals I got from The Swagman's Daughter (and which were used as window-missile prizes, on feast-days in Malta), a few years ago, of a second, nicer set of Euro-flat premiums, where each animal comes with a little bit of prehistoric landscaping! Here, it's probably from a Christmas cracker?

From Cluck 1, and I can't find Cluck 2 right now, which had a better image of one of the kids-comic advertisements for the series, but, it's a checklist, and Cereal Offers have the whole set and more here;

http://cerealoffers.com/Cereal_Partners/Shreddies/1950s/1/1.html

Those data rings from the end-of-promotion mail-away, are very hard to find!

H is for How They Come In - Brian, Two of Two

Which is really post number three of the lovely things Mr. Berke sent to the Blog for me to share. And we will start with the other mystery suprise, and again we need an ID on these new to hobby-collection-Blog figures!

Who are these lovely ladies? Approximately 54mm, and two being more realistic (on the left), two a little cartoony (right-hand pair), really loud colour, but from whence and whom have they come?

 

If they were found here, I would assume a kids comic/magazine, they all have something on them these days (forthcoming posts, but I don't watch them like I used to when Dr. Who Adventures was giving away figures regularly!), but they've come from America, and I don't know if they have the same type of kids magazine freebies . . . Interesting figures though, and totally new to me?

 

Basically we've got: Dancer Babe, Royal Babe (fairy-tales for the use of), Superbabe and Rock-Chick Babe!

 

Equally, loud colours for these MTC carded rack-toy party favours, and probably quite recent production as they are sub-copies of common sculpts doing the rounds and probably seen here before in more 'normal' greens and khakis, but I prefer these dudes!

 

In with the micro-smallies we looked at the other day, were a whole bunch of other kit figures and these are they, I won't say much as they are all going to need a major session at some point in the future, but I think the two astronauts (top right) are Revell (1:48th kit?), while the six dark greenies are old-school from the 1950's.

The sandy-coloured panzermann and girl might be Heller or Italeri, they both included interesting figures, suitable for dioramas in their kits? While the two white pilots (bottom right) might be Cylons or Earthmen from 1980's Sci-Fi kits?

I know, I should save them for Pirate day, but I feel donations should be fully covered, I used to do highlights but when everything is this good? And these are all interesting, the lower - black - figures (poor shot I'm afraid) are the Toy Major originals, and they look bigger that the various copies we seen so far (we may have seen one or two of these?), so a decent comparison article of the three or four sets will be a definite feature here one day, but they are all in storage at the moment, so it may be a while.

 

While the yellow line-up are the Imperial ones I've been after for ages now, reduced-size copies of the larger Hing Fat figures, these are from the two-adversary sets, we have seen here as shelfies before, possibly from Brian, and I've now tracked down the Police & Skeletons, Zombies & GI's (ex-Tim Mee GI's) and these Pirates fought red Ninjas which I may still be looking for?

 

The base mark.

Now . . . MPC armaturtoise! Clearly marked, and I will have to go back and check those blue & green ones I picked up at the last London show, as I carefully avoided calling them MPC, and just said probably premiums, as I wasn't sure, and they didn't seem to be marked, but I'll check, and a new colour anyway!

Speaking of colours, there are nice, common-enough copies of Airfix Indians, but in an unusual colour way, and like a lot of the rack-toy figures in the stash, overdue for a sorting, I have ID'd several sets and makers for them, but it's a question of tying colours and base types to downloaded and catalogue images of sets!

Marked Hong Kong, and another genre needing a better sort one day, these may be the ones issued by Payton, but I think they went with other colours, copies of MPC's figures and seem to be limited to 5 poses only?

This is what Brian sent all the micro-figures in, and it's a carry case for C-in-C micro-amour, which was fitting for all those diminutive figures, but my first example of packaging, or C-in-C anything, so cleaned and saved!

And to wrap-up, some proper rack-toy army men, not some people's cup of tea I know, but they will all get sorted one day, and a lot of them will get some kind of definitive attribution, so the more, the merrier!

 

Again, I can't thank Brian enough for all this, there are some real treasures here, as well as in the two previous lots, and I'm very grateful. I hope you've enjoyed them too, and if anyone ID's those heliotrope-pink figures in the first shot, they'll be doing better than the 'group experts' elsewhere!

H is for How They come In - Even at Christmas!

I had an emergency Christmas parcel from Peter Evan arrive out of the blue the other day, small but perfectly formed with several items of interest, so let's have a look at it . . .

Two Disney figures (centre) and two Disneyalikes (outsides), from three sources, I think the Jasmine is Kinder; she's a polypropylene kit in three parts, I don't know where the Wasabi comes from, he's a bit Phidal-like, but on the small side and a softer PVC as are the two 'princesses', but they are not actually Disney, being Papo's 40mm fantasy models.

I love these! I think they are probably cavemen, but Peter wondered if they might be South Sea islanders (she certainly looks the part!), which would be nice, as there might be palm-huts or a dug-out canoe somewhere, they are also interesting for being two-part hollow mouldings like those dinosaurs we looked at a while ago. I guess a rack-toy thing and large'ish at 80mm

Wing Lung's copies of Matchbox US Infantry in 30mm, the MG gunner was missing from the end of the runner last time we looked at them (also courtesy of Peter!), and I think the other missing pose is probably the shooting officer as seen here, oversized and marked 'China', and also in the lot sent a couple of days ago.

These are some kind of rack-toy Transformer knock-off, there are no instructions, but trail-and-error will probably suffice, and I will build one, one day, just for fun! I have a yellow one somewhere, which probably also came from Mr. Evans, and the red one has a short-short component, otherwise they are the same tooling.

Cheers Peter - fun post for Christmas, and "Happy Christmas" to all Loyal Readers, let's hope 2022 is an improvement on the previous two!

Which also means that at some point in February we will have 22:22hrs 2nd of February 2022 which could be shortened (at twenty-two seconds past the minute) to 22:22:22-2/2/'22 . . . if that's not an invitation to one of Beelzebub's underlings - I don't know what is! Look out Yellowstone - your time may be at hand!

TM is for Tactical Missile, Technical Manual, Threat Manager, Trade Mark, Trench Mortar . . .

. . . or Toy Major! In this case it's also for Ackerman, Hornby Hobbies and Dollar Tree, among others, I'm sure!

Bit of a toe-treading on this one, as EY posted these the other day (Mini Carry Case Playsets), but in my defence I had already photographed the six (or five-and-a-half; one's been opened) sealed sets as I sorted them out to storage, but was waiting for the lose stuff to turn-up and a couple of Hornby AFV's I knew I had in the TBS pile to tell the whole story.

Agency on these was the aforementioned Toy Major, with further branding to end user Ackerman here in the UK, in the US the packaging remained generic but the sets were an exclusively Dollar Tree thing? Modern combat, medieval-fantasy and a prehistoric mash-up - Homo's and Dino's together - were the three choices.

The US sets also have limited quantities per case in a little bag, the UK sets (retailing at two-quid in the late-nineties/early-noughties) got a larger sample in separate blister with more play value, which still fit easily-enough in the case; the crinkly-bag was the logistical constraint with the US issues!

Artwork is shared, but photoshopped about a bit to fit the different packaging options, so it was all a question of which format you ordered back in Hong Kong from the TM agents!

Some of the lose stuff, they don't seem too uncommon here, with the odd few in several of the donations from Chris, Peter and Trevor over the years, while I suspect the palm-trees (included in every set) also got a cake-decorating/crafting issue, possibly still extant on Alibaba or something similar, in bulk?

They are quite small, but fill out a war game's scenic jungle well enough and can make good thick secondary jungle in the larger scales. I donn't know why I wrote Toy Masters on the tree-tub, they are a retail toy-chain here in the UK, so I might have bought some of them there?

You can see the constraint placed on content-count by the little bag very well here, with only six monsters ('Dragons') and six figures, each split equally between two colours, you aren't going to get everything in a set, with the British issue that is less of a lottery, although you may still drop one or two poses in one or the other colour-way?

The 'cave men' are copies of late Tim Mee/Processed Plastic's larger figures, although the stone-axe man has been converted to a dagger-man!, the prehistoric hominids are also the exception proving the rule of the others in having only one colour iteration.

The knights are copied from the Supreme 2nd (of three) types, as seen here at Small Scale World before, from several brands and in several sizes, and - this time - you get six poses in silver or black. They fight each other and/or a bunch of whacky creatures which are barely dragons, and not that monstrous, indeed; the unicorn is more of a unicornet and a bit of a sweetie!

Dinosaurs have a five count; relatively crude Dimetrodon, Diplodocus, Stegasaurus, T-Rex'y meat-eater and Triceratops, although its bi-cera's are so small it almost qualifies as a proto-cera'! You can see that despite a tub-full, I've yet to get a loose 'Dipy' in yellow, so all set-contents are clearly random.

As you may have noticed the animals come in/as two paired colourways - green-yellow (which appears commoner) and a mauve'ish purple-orange combo'.

Less than an hour later - there is a fourth caveman pose with club, I thought he was an artwork/pre-publicity thing, but there is one in my sealed set, you can just make out his back! So EY's right and I just don't have  a lose one.

The combat infantry are rather nice, six poses in tan or olive-drab fatigues, reminiscent of similar figures from Revell, Silvercorn/LP or Galoob's 'Micro machines', and original sculpts of some quality. Also reminiscent of Tim Mee/PP's GI's in colour offering, but unsurprising as they - Toy Major - are responsible for a set of Tim Mee knock-offs in the 54mm range.

They are clearly in that time period between the current era and the back-end of the Cold War (sort of 1971-91'ish), vague 'fritz' helmets on a couple can be painted-out, so they will still go well in a Vietnam setting.

None of the sets are currently listed on Toy Major's site, but they are still carrying the larger GI's and one of the many 50mm iterations of Supreme's knights.

The combat figures were also issued in a theHornby train set 'Battle Zone' back in the noughties, and while I thought the cave-men might have been in its sister set; the Jurrassic Park knock-off 'Dino Safari', they weren't . . . the set got a handful of PVC Chinasaurs, but is linked through the AFV's.

Probably a Hornby Hobbies thing, rather than Toy Major, so a tenuous link, but it ties all the loose-ends together, we have seen them before here I think, more than once, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometime.

An M1 Abrams tank lookie-likey with running-gear and hull shape closer to the variable geometry of the predeceased MBT70 program's prototypes (they could drop their noses to enhance the 'hull-down' low-profile aspect) and a rather nice Hummer, which can be found in both sand and drab to match the troops. The Hummer has a removable tilt with very delicate locating-studs which tend to be found snapped-off.

And that heading . . . it also means or has meant in the past - Tape Mark, Target Material, Tasking Memorandum, Task Memory, TeaM (as Tm. or tm), Team Materials, Team Member, Technical Maintenance, Technical Management, TeleMetering, TeleMetry, Temperature Meter, Temperature Monitor, Terrain Masking, Test Manager, "Thanks Man" (or "Mate"), Theater Missile, ['Landsat'] Thematic Mapper, Tone Modulation, [to receive] TeleMetry, TradeMark, Training Manual, Transmission Matrix, Transverse Magnetic [field], 'TROPO' Modem, Type Model, and Too Many [bloody abbreviations!].