F is for Follow-up - Novelty Toppers & Sharpeners

Last time we looked at these I titled the post "M is for More to Come . . .", so confident was I that we were only going to scratch the surface, and further predicted a return, and while this isn't perhaps as full as I had visioned that future follow-up, it does widen the field and reveal some new poses . . . although it also clears a few duplicates out of Picasa, so apologies for that!

The first duplicate shot is - I think - the original Shackman set's listing shot, which I'd downloaded before winning the lot we looked at last time! But it reminds us of what we looked at then!

I'd also shot the comparisons and the 'new' policeman several times shoving the images in different folders, only to re-take them for that previous post!

This arrived this morning; I haven't even done the feed-back yet - next thing on the list, it's the man for the lady dancer in the boxed set, no branding, and very different packaging to the stock-box from Shackman, and never/hardly ever been out from the looks of him.

Clearly not a Spanish-anything, he's sort of Tyrolean, but more accurately a Slovakian Folk Dancer (Czech's tend to red or white trousers, while the true Tyrolean's wear short lederhosen or longer, black velvet trousers with high white stockings), not that the blue seems terribly Slovakian, but A) it's a cheap toy, B) it was a very brief Googling, in image results and C) I don't really care, but he's not a Spanish Dancer, whatever the HONG KONG box says!

These were (are?) both still being offered by an Argentine seller on feeBay, and seem to be an earlier iteration, loosely channeling the Disney cartoon of Peter Pan, base is flat (no step/plinth), but sharpener looks to be the same design as the others. L-in-a-triangle brand-mark means nothing to me, yet?

While these chaps are from the 1965 (or '68?) catalogue from Wilton in the 'States, we're looking at a full license here, I think, from Hanna-Barbera Productions, but the same bases as the Peter Pans', and definitely the same sharpener-units, it may be that they were all coming from a smaller factory among the many in HK, who only specialised in these and jobbed to everyone?

A new colour for the sharpener in the Policeman's pale blue, and a new pose in the Native American lady - another Commonwealth knock-off - both from feebleBay.

Returning to the new figure, a bag of what I suspect are wholesaled Christmas cracker inserts and a cat! The inserts include a green plastic copy of the standard die-cast alloy sharpener of our youth, two hexagonal ones, a hippo-outline (or at least I think it's a hippo, it's not terribly clear!), a heart-shape and a round one pretty similar to the one basing many of these figurative novelty sharpeners, but quite modern/current.

The new one is marked Hong Kong on the underside of the sharpener, has an unmarked plinth, and a box code which is in sequence with some of those we saw last time, but not the Wilton or Shackman codes, I guess it depended who the end user was and whether they chose to adopt the manufacturers code, or re-number in line with their own 'in-house' cataloguing system/s.

All of which brings us to three plinth types; flat, flanged single-step or edged double-step, coming with or without a pencil sharpener which itself can or cannot be a separate piece in crackers, gum-balls etc . . . and a selection of subjects from the Wild West, through dancers to civic & ceremonials, some of which are ex-Commonwealth, some based of Commonwealth-Van Brode sculpts and some quite original, with - now - Disney knock-offs and HBP characters . . . what next?

Because we're looking at mostly sharpeners;this is a follow-up to this post and suggests there were two each, cowboys and Indians in the 'West Germany'-marked set of pencil sharpeners utilising the Crescent/Lido poses? There may - of course - be more, but four as two-pairs seems sensible, and only those four keep turning-up? Another evilBay image.

M is for Matchboxes and Some Die Cast . . .

. . . but no Matchbox's!

Just a quickie, I really don't have time at the moment, maybe in the summer there'll be more time to sit-about blathering on the Internet! But not right now.

I mentioned the other day/in another post that I was collecting the Shackman novelty matchboxes, this was a bit of highfalutin hyperbole, as I only have the one, don't know how many there might be or what the other subjects are (I hope it's the rest of the band!), but I do occasionally search for them on that there interwebby-thingy.

But I happened, in all the sorting, moving and scrabbling about which occupies my time at the moment, to find the one I had been thinking of when I mentioned them the other day (on the left with the guardsman label), and another, simpler, novelty matchbox (behind, rocking a sort of faux Ship versus Bryant & May look) which is also a pencil sharpener (the original subject at hand), so quickly fired off a few shots for this post!

From another angle it's more obvious they ain't gonna' be lighting a fire in a hurry, although they can quickly produce the best kindling for a boy-scout's carbonisation badge! And they both have blue (or blue'ish) drawers, which a lot of matchboxes had back in the paper-lined days . . . when we were young! Who remembers making a small-component cabinet from matchboxes and masking tape, sellotape or glue!

But the Shackman box also contains the surprise of a small - 40mm - mocherette (or what I call a 'mosherette' for reasons I will explain - eventually!), being what I believe is a die-cast rendering of the plastic mini 'swoppet' guards we've seen here before in WHC (Cornelius)/Success branding and as generics, so I hope the rest will turn-up, or a further variation of legs/torso combinations - here seen in one piece.

He's in the same antiqued-bronze look of other similar figures of the time from Peltro, Westair and other extra-to or pre-Kinder issuers of these figures, and may have similar age.

As the label mimics the collectable labels some real match brands would issue (both sides of the Iron Curtain interestingly) and given that the figure is the same pose as the one illustrated on that label, it's reasonable to assume there may be more in a 'set'. Are they in one of O'Brian's books?

M is for More to Come . . .

. . . but we've sort of sorted some of it out, for now!

This wasn't in the queue a few days ago! I bought a nice (well; tatty!) set of Shackman novelty pencil sharpeners from New York a few weeks a ago, which were going on the back burner, but Chris Smith posted some nice thematic shots on the Friend's of Plastic Warrior Facebook group earlier this week, which lead to a flurry of activity there and here at SSW Towers, leading to this post!

First a quick look at that Shackman set; it's been mucked about with - I suspect end-of-line/ex-shop stock, put back in a box and sold as a set when it's meant to be broken down in a small stores? There's an extra Beefeater and the Indian is a suspect inclusion, but a nice sculpt in a civilian role as hunter rather than war-path warrior.

Quick confirmation of the empirical evidence for the doubting Thomas's and make-it-up-as-you-go-along-brigade, Shackman were a jobber specialising in the novelty/tourist trinket end of the market (a bit like HCF here in the UK), I'm also collecting their novelty-matchbox pencil sharpeners with 'Mocherette' in them (I know, I know, I'll get round to it, but probably next year now - most of the photo's are done!), although, further back (1950's), they also imported some of the Erikson/Authenticast copy sets from Japan as more mainstream playthings.

If the boxes were sold as sets, I suspect the chap here would have been one (?) of the missing figures, the pair in the two central shots are Chris's, the sharpener on the left is mine now and the other pair on the end are an Internet couple! Tyrolean dancers who could be German or North Italian . . . Austrian or Eastern/Alpine Swiss!

Back to the set, and they all (including the Indian) have plug-feet and separate bases, which are glued to a standard pencil sharpener which I remember being included in cheap Christmas crackers, and have seen on gum-ball vending machine cards. The Indian however plugs straight into a flimsier pencil-honeing device.

Chris's however are integrally moulded with base and figure as single moulding, not two pieces. Now I already knew - and you may remember - we had seen the Beefeater before here, when by coincidence Chris and Adrian both gave me examples a few days apart, neither of them are marked, but a policeman we will look at in a minute has a small KT on his base in an oval cartouche reminiscent of the aforementioned HCF's little gold stickers?

My dancer has a fuller set of marking (as do the 'Internet pair' in the second image) and a stock/cavity number/code; 315, while Chris's lady (who's base has been home-painted/re-painted white over the original balck) is coded 673, her partner 674 and lacking her ® mark? The sharpeners, meanwhile, can be found with or without a pretty bog-standard HONG KONG.

The earlier Beefeaters, along with the stationary policeman from the boxed set have a disc-shaped blemish which people (including me) would more normally, and erroneously describe or assume (never assume huh?!!! Heeheehee!) as/to be mould-release pin-marks, but which are clearly blanking plates or pins to hide the smaller mark of the policeman.

In the conversation at FoPW, Chris had managed to find another figure on-line, which reminded me that Brain Wagstaff had sent two to this Blog ages ago, as they were clearly influenced by the Commonwealth/Van Brode/Codec 'dancing doll' sets. The 'Brain pair' having no mark on either side of the integral base, while the Internet one - also having an integral base - on a pencil sharpener; neatly tying all the above (bar the Indian?) to the same series.

Meanwhile, or actually closer to the Beefeaters and the start of this little odyssey, Chris had spotted a policeman on feebleBay ages ago, back near the start of Lockdown One, and I thanked him for the heads up and watched it half-heartedly for several months (it was really too pricey), now . . . I can't remember if the price came down or the seller listed something else to combine . . . but in the end I did get it in the autumn/recently.

Here we see pencil-sharpener and non-pencil sharpener versions of both Beefeater and policeman together, along with another Internet shot of a new sharpener colour - new to this article mind; many colours dropped out of Christmas crackers!

By this time ( a couple of days ago)n it had dawned on me that the Highlander was also rather familiar, as we saw him here at Small Scale World not that long ago - green sharpener! Now, a point of note; it would appear one is attempting Black Watch (left, 'new' one) and the other the Gordon's (right, 'old' one). It may be the out-painter was just running out of yellow on the brush, but it seems to be a deliberately different shade of green and has not been applied to the haggis-bag or the lower reaches of the pipe's webbing?

Which leaves us with the Indian from the boxed set and a conclusion to formulate!

The Indian, is lovely, I don't know if he's based on a donor, most of these seem pretty unique - only one of Brian's is a direct copy - as sculpts, and the hunting with raptor is quite a German/East German pose (if you know what I mean), however, he is plugged into a thin-walled base which has a different sharpener, glued in, and it - the sharpener - has a different blade design.

The differences outweigh the similarities; plug-in feet, gloss-paint in a stab-and-hope style, so for now he must remain a question-mark, there are other sources of figural, novelty, pencil-sharpener as we saw not that long ago here.

But I suspect he is from the same source, but the thin-walled case for the sharpener was easily damaged, and the extra glue-step of a separate sharpener was more expensive, so he's likely an earlier variant.

The conclusion is that with the possible exception of the Indian, these are all from one, evolving series, from the same source, and differing either for reasons of increasing the ease of production, over time, or to comply with caveats from different clients, such as Shackman, from contract to contract.

They can be plug-in, or moulded with a base, which may or may not subsequently end-up glued to a pencil sharpener which is also available separately elsewhere. A variety of marks or no-marking can be found on the separate bases, the integral bases and/or the sharpener-units.

There must be more 'world dancers', possibly another Indian or two, and matching quantities of cowboy, still to be found, maybe a Welsh lady and etcetera. I would also put a fiver, at least a fiver, on HCF being found to have shipped some of them into UK, and dare to say Tom Smith was in-there as well?

The only likely "KT" I can come up with is Kitoys Traders Co., who were making/marketing mini-deform, pull-back-and-go, 'hot hatch' novelty cars in the late 1980's from Connaught Road, West, Hong Kong and may have been responsible for something like these figures a decade or two earlier, if they were around then?

Despite the question-mark I will put them in the tags, as I have one of the little cars to Blog - one day! And many thanks to Chris Smith for several involvements in this 'Discovery', plus the photos, Bill B for the Kitoys reference and to Brian Wagstaff for the other images.

Small Scale World - weaving magic, with lots of help . . . and more to come!

M is for Micro-Mush; Shackman's Slush-cast Smallies

To wit, the 'smallest' ever made? Are they? I think not, but they are pretty small! And they are among the smallest made commercially, with running wheels, although plenty of Edwardian and early post-war board games had smaller vehicles as playing pieces, some of which were hollow- or slush-cast.

The contents match the artwork in configuration (two each of three designs) but not in colour mix, where there is a less random mix than suggested by the artwork! A tad bigger than N-gauge (so Lone Star's Treble-o beat them for 'smallest' for starters!) and representing no actual vehicles?

Maybe a US taxi-cab or police 'Paddy-Wagon' (the green ones?), Ford Model-T (the red open-tops) and something French (yellow/blue)? Copyrighted to Shackman, they are actually sourced-in and marked Japan.

Some vicious flash on the upper-pair and finish - on all - is what you'd call un-fettled!

I've seen these in an O-Ei-A catalogue as being credited to Kinder, but they pre-date Kinder by fifteen or twenty years at least, the trouble with those catalogues is that if it fits in a Kinder-egg it tends to end up in an O-Ei-A 'Preisfuhrer' whether it was actually Kinder or not! Although - to be fair to the authors - over the years Kinder have sourced all sorts of stuff from half-a-hundred manufacturers!

They (Shackman) also did a train; Toot-Toot! You only get the four in this box and with only three different items of rolling stock, but I love the passenger-cars which look like someone took a Wells Fargo overland stage-coach and plonked it on some railway wheels - which is probably close to what actually happened!

My driver lost his head to a low bridge long before he came into my possession, but continues to serve his locomotive with diligence . . . and integral, semi-flat moulding! The pen-top is to give a further sense of scale, but again these aren't the smallest.

 

DeWitt Clinton train (1831) exhibited on latter-era flat cars.

 

Indeed with the exception of the tatty pencil-sharpener engine (top left) these are all smaller, apart from the grey car which is about the same size. I have more of this shite somewhere, but we looked at a few in the novelty posts a few Christmases ago, and I just happened to have these in front of me, so when I've got them all together we'll have a better look!

Gum-ball machine capsule prizes, gift-eggs, Christmas crackers, crafting sets/items, a pencil sharpener 'statue' and the grey car may be from an N-gauge scenics line?

S is for Shackman's Sonsco Soldier Set

A nice set of American dime-store 'pod-foot' knock-offs from Sonsco in Japan, imported into the US via New York jobbing-firm Shackman who have imported just about every kind of toy and plaything over the years.

While British firms were developing Hong Kong's toy trade (with Lois Marx's help!), most of the US import firms, Cragstan, Azrak Hamway International (AHI) Shackman (along with Marx) et.al., were taking advantage of the cheap labour, broken economy and Marshall Plan's need for a resurgent Japan to buttress the West against bolshevism and the Chinese Communists by using Japan for the same thing Britain, the Europeans and Marx were using Hong Kong for - a good supply of cheap toys, but tending to lead, tin-plate and composition rather than the colony's polymers.

Japanese firm Sonsco are known to have supplied Shackman and this set's internal divider seems to have a section of Sonsco logo on, so I've called-it for Sonsco, I wanted the iteration anyway! TJF will - I'm sure - indicate if he disagrees in his usual dulcet fashion!

Although the quality was often poorer than the Western firms whose custom they were taking, they knew how to market and this colourful label beats the boring monochrome labelling of 1950's Britains or Comet into a cocked-hat - there might be a tank or charging cavalry in the box! The fact that these figures are a good as any Barclay (or the other lot . . . Manoil Manufacturing) to the eye, only seals the deal.

The code's probably 2450 or something similar, one of the hollow-cast sites used to have a set of Anti Aircraft figures with the same code (listed as 2450), containing 3xAA guns, 1 radioman and 1 charging soldier; it sounds like it was half the size of this set, so maybe the missing bit of the label is a ..51 or ..60, or even 2470, is that the tail of a seven coming down in the corner?

T is for Two - Hollow-cast Wild West

Picasa clearer - shot at Sandown Park toy fair - I think - in 2014 and both interesting in the own way, they also illustrate how far we've come in toy soldier [figure] design.

Cowboys, no arguing with that, Made in Occupied Japan so probably aiming at the US market and possibly AHI or Shackman or someone like that? Copies of a Johillco foot cowboy - four of them! - and a mounted figure which bears a passing resemblance to a Hill figure too.

The contents of this set are arguably poorer, with more scenic accessories than figures and two guys surrendering! It's called Timpo Ranch Set . . . who do you need to surrender to on a ranch . . . big, bad, beef barons!

The set however has a thin veneer of fame, having previously been seen in Norman Joplin's Big Book of Hollow Cast - pp.241, fig.475. In which it is explained that the contents are a mixture of Stoddart and Timpo items although the mounted and armed poses also bear a marked resemblance to Hill's output.

Apologies are due - as I think we've seen it before here at Small Scale World; clearly I was so impressed by its provenance I photographed it both times I saw it!