T is for Tattle Tale

Mentioned at the time, but not included in the post, the third Tattle Tale from Phidal I bought back in 2023, it still needs to be cleared out and ticked-off, so here it is;

 

As with the others, it contains four figures from one of the larger sets, and we'd only just seen the 10-figure 'Lightyear' set at the time, hence it's being held-over for a bit (three-and-a-half years!), and again, I don't know if some of the other figures are in another Tattle Tale, and would advise not buying any of these if you already have the larger sets.

T is for Two - D-Day Dudes

Just a quickie, these are probably one of the last packaging changes/variations from Starlux, and were produced in 1994, for the commemoration of D-Day, and the 50th anniversary of the worlds largest ever, pretty much everything!

 

Largest preliminary air-assault, parachute drop, glider invasion, amphibious assault, air-cover on the day, troops landed in a day, countries taking part, naval armada, vehicles present, stores delivered; it really was the most amazing undertaking, an extraordinary feat of human endeavour, and must have been a hell of a sight, as the dawn gloom cleared, and the battleships opened fire, while thousands of landing craft bobbed through a heavy swell toward the continent of Europe.

 

The figures are slightly anachronistic, as while they produced Germans for both wars, and Pilous in their blue serge uniforms, Starlux never made decent sets of Brits' or Americans, relying on these, who while equipped as Americans, always carried post-war stuff, like French SMG's and, so, which I always equate with the loss of Indo-China or the North African adventures.

 

Ten items per bag, with  nine figures and a piece of equipment, an MG in one, a stretcher in the other, and it's the late/2nd versions of both sets of figures.

 

"Le jour J" translates to 'D-Day' in English. It literally means J-Day (where J stands for jour, meaning day) . . . so 'day-day'! And, while some people like to think the D is for 'decision', I think D-Day is also day-day? Although technically they can both be 'The day, day', which is a bit easier on an autistic brain!

 

Footnote - apparently, one of our Nazi's was killed today, fighting for Russia against Ukraine? Oh dear, never mind, worse things happen at sea, what’s on the telly later?

T is for Two - Tanks!

Hard to believe, but we don't seem to have had that title before! I managed to pick up two rather nice tanks at Sandown Park's last show, nice for different reasons, and a possible 'sublime to ridiculous' scenario, but which is which, depends upon the personal loyalties of the viewer!

 

This would be an antique toy enthusiast's ridiculous, but the sublime of a 'plastic warrior', being the large scale donor for a whole generation of pretty inaccurate US 'Patton' tanks (sometimes wearing German stickers), in various scales, materials and finishes. We looked at its own little brother here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/07/b-is-for-back-to-blue-box.html

 

Where it's found with three different muzzle-breaks, I don't know if the same will prove true for the larger one, but it's a nice box-ticking of a near-mint, boxed example, with friction motor!

 

While the antique guy thinks this is sublime, while a plastic warrior thinks it's a ridiculous novelty 'what tank IS that?' I think they both have their merits, and the beauty of this is it still has both tracks! A bit saggy and perished, and there is one break, out of sight, but getting these with tracks is hard, you see many examples of both Japanese and German tanks with their shiny, or surface-rusty wheels, but tracks are rarer, and while you do find modern replacement tracks, they are too new!

 

I guess it wants to be a Renault F17 or similar, and Japan took various early tank designs to China, before the World War was a 'world' war, so given the yellow-dun shade, I'm also guessing that's where this particular "Foreign" import came from, rather than Germany, where grey or 3-colour camouflage were the norm.

T is for Two - Diver Sets

I picked these two up from a friend of Isaac's, over the phone, I won't bore you with the details, but as soon as I saw them I knew I needed them, if the price was right, which it was, as they are one of those things which brings several threads of the whole Rack Toy oeuvre together, while half-ID'ing some bits.

 

We've seen this card before, and most of the contents, one suspects they all shared pegs in little independent newsagents and corner-shop/convenience stores for a few years, in the mid-late 1960's, and sold well enough, despite the poor quality of the contents, as there's still a lot of play value in a relatively cheap set, for the era?

 

The ships are really quite common, but here we have mid-quality copies of the Lone Star divers, instead of the Monogram figures we saw last time;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/m-is-for-monograms-men-made-much_10.html

 

Trucks have been associated in previous posts, but now I can find the correct mini-subs and rubber boats from the larger, unknown Hong Kong samples, and, possibly of more interest is the hard polystyrene plastic submarine, which I would never have assumed went with the soft plastic surface vessels.

 

Although, thinking about it, they have come together in mixed lots, or donations of the sort Chris Smith, and particularly Trevor Rudkin have given me over the years, confirming patterns that were already hidden in the background wallpaper!

 

Fewer total contents in this slightly smaller card, which is a new addition to the series, and which may also include some of these;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/b-is-for-beachead-hong-kong-style-part_01.html

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/b-is-for-beachead-hong-kong-style-part.html

 

They don't solve many questions, but they do thin-out the various other bags and tubs of unknowns, with the Lone Star clone divers now associated with the commonest of the 14-odd different copies of Monogram GI, the ships and Humber 1-ton mini-trucks brought together with the smaller vessels and submarine, and one version of equally common aeroplane type added to the whole.

 

These both need a careful opening, and re-threading with rubber-bands, at which time I'll dampen and iron the cards to stiffen them up, and restore them to something like how they looked sixty-odd years ago. A task which will be easier on the second set, it's pretty obvious what went where, there will be more guesswork involved in getting the upper set shipshape!

T is for Toys-to-Life

A bit of a lazy post today (although it's involved a lot of editing!), and very much a joint enterprise, which has been in the queue since 2017, from whence all the images date, after early submissions from the Blog's roving reporter in New York, Brian Berke, in that February, through summer shelfies (from both of us, I think), to some scans of that years' Argos Christmas Catalogue. A situation not helped by both the passage of time and the fact we were, at the time, both using cameras with a default prefix on image titles of DSCN!

 

Also, everything here has already been replaced by NFC (Near Field [digital] Communication) games, lines and ranges, so it's all, already obsolete. And while the tardiness in publishing has been explained before (a lot has happened here at Small Scale World Towers in the last few years - and is ongoing), the subject is very peripheral to figure collection, and this is a mostly Wikipedia-worded box-ticker, overview or primer, covering the three main ranges, back in 2017.

 

And, no, I don't know where that eight-years went!

 

Fistley, the opening paragraph from this Wikipedia page;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys-to-life

 

"Toys-to-life is a video game feature using physical figurines or action figures to interact within the game. There are several technologies used to make physical figurines appear in game such as image recognition, quick response (QR) codes, Bluetooth and near field communication (NFC). Depending on the technology, the game can determine the individual figurine's proximity, and save a player's progress data to a storage medium located within that piece. It was one of the most lucrative branches of the video game industry especially during the late 1990s and 2010s, with the Skylanders franchise alone selling more than $3 billion worth over the course of four years."

 

While this Wikipedia page informs us of the above Skylanders game;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylanders

 

"Skylanders is a toys-to-life action-adventure video game franchise developed by American video game developer Toys for Bob and published by Activision. 

Skylanders games are played using NFC-enabled collectible figurines of playable characters, alongside a specially themed NFC reader dubbed the "Portal of Power", which reads and writes data stored on a microchip within the base of the figure. This includes the corresponding character to use during gameplay, as well as ingame [sic] upgrades and statistics, allowing figures to retain their game data across different games in the series.

Each Skylander is associated with one of ten elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Magic, Tech, Life, Undead, Light, and Dark. Skylanders of different elements are stronger in certain areas of the game, and can unlock areas of the game hidden behind "Elemental Gates"." 

 

The next biggest was the Disney Infinity franchise;

 

Again from Wikipedia

 

"Disney Infinity (2013) was a toys-to-life series based on Disney characters and franchises. Since the initial game's release in 2013, there had been three installments [sic]. Disney Infinity was the first game, focusing on Disney and Pixar characters. In 2014, Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes was released as the second game, which focused on Marvel characters and properties. The third game, 2015's Disney Infinity 3.0, centered [sic] on the Star Wars franchise. All Disney Infinity figurines could interact with various games in the series. The line concluded in 2016, when Disney announced that production of the series had officially ceased, and that there would be no more future titles. "Gold Editions" of each game have since been released on Steam, containing a majority of the original content with the toys integrated into the games."

 

The other big seller back then was the planet destroying polymer plagiarists . . .

 

. . . Lego, and their Dimensions.

 

Wikipedia again;

 

"Lego Dimensions (2015) was a toys-to-life game developed by Traveller's Tales that used physical Lego figures, featuring characters from various Warner Brothers and Lego franchises, as well as other third-party intellectual properties such as Back to the Future, The Simpsons, and many more. Some franchises, such as Adventure Time and Sonic the Hedgehog, had never seen releases in Lego format prior. The game involves a heavier emphasis on the physicality of the genre, with characters having vehicles that could be rebuilt into new forms, as well as mechanics that involved moving characters on the Toy Pad. No sequels were released, with new content being added through a series of "Year 2" updates. On October 23, 2017, Warner Bros. officially announced that they would not be developing further content for Lego Dimensions" 

 

and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Dimensions;

 

"Lego Dimensions is a 2015 toys-to-life platform video game developed by Traveller's Tales and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U. It is a crossover between Lego and over thirty different franchises, from which levels can be played through a USB toy pad peripheral. The Starter Pack, containing the game, the USB toy pad, three minifigures and one vehicle, was released in September 2015, while additional level packs and characters were released over the following two years."

 

Obviously, Brian bought a Donald Duck for purely ornamental purposes, and why wouldn't you?! I know I hate Mickey and Mini, but I don't have trouble with the rest of them, although the whole Pluto/Goofy thing is a bit odd, and Donald having turkey for Christmas is downright disturbing!

 

These are starting to turn-up in mixed lots, at Car Boot Sales, or in small Charity Shop bags, but I actually try to avoid them as the rigid bases (where all the electronics are) mean even loose, they take up a lot of space, and there may be a future session of debasing those I have picked up, as the figures are often very good examples of the art. Also, the electronic exchange shops (like CeX, geddit: these kids are soooo edgy!) still tend to have cabinets full of them, as many people still play with them, even if they're now discontinued.

 

Many thanks as always to Brian for his help with these, at some point we will return to them, I'm sure, but not a great priority, they are electronic gaming pieces, not strictly toy figures!

T is for TAG

Which may or may not have stood for something longer like 'Toby and Garry' or 'Turner and Griswold' but nobody seems to know? The general acceptance being that it just refers to the tags they came with, but I feel it may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum, especially with the capitalisation of the TAG, on the tags!?

 

RAF Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps, Infantry (with a camouflaged beret!), and the Parachute Regiment, done in what is almost a Belgian (Durso) style, the same sculpt being used with different paint on the berets to represent several of the main protagonists of the British Army in the then, just finished, World War.

 

The reverse of the tags have a small thumbnail sketch or written vignette of the unit/figure represented. Their post-war issue being revealed in the text - 'served', and 'earned', in the past tense.

 

 

 

The officer corps were also represented, and here we see a standard Army officer, and RAF 'wallah' and their corresponding tags, the arms of the flyboy are uncomfortably wrong, in that the left arm should be slightly forwards, in time with the right foot.

Our Allies were also modelled, and here we see two GI's, and it's nice to see them in both 'white' and African American skin-tone paint-jobs, because we appreciated everyone who helped. Although without the tags, the black soldier may have been representing Brazil, who sent troops to the Italian campaign?

 

This seems to be a better rendition of an Infantry beret, but again, might be representing Canada or something like that, I don't know how large the series was, or how many nations were represented?
 

A comparison between the two shows a marked size discrepancy between the different mouldings, and is that a fledgling (at the time) UN flash on the GI's shoulder, maybe he's the Brazilian?

Ceremonial uniforms of both our own and allied armies, with a 'Highlander' (no specific regiment given) and a Cossack. I have one in another colourway somewhere (seen on the blog years ago) and have seen others, there may be as may as four different treatments of the decoration on this sculpt, even six - black, red, and white coats, with reverse versions?

 

A difficult subject, the Cossacks, as they fought in large numbers on both sides, mounted troops being very useful in winter snow, and for covering distance over the steppes in summer. Those fighting with us, were of Russian descent, those fighting agin' us, were fighting for Ukrainian Independence rather than in support of Nazism, while atrocities were committed by both sides.

 

The Women's Royal Army Corps weren't forgotten . . .

 

. . . and both the Monkeys and Snowdrops got a look-in!

Quality of finish varies, my Cossack is so tough or dense, and so smooth I thought he was resin, for years! While the figure on the left is a much rougher moulding, almost as lumpy as the worst examples of wood/linseed composition figures.

 

The first four again, showing the berets a bit better, the Para's is far too dark, as well as the odd Infantryman's two-tone headdress! Also showing the identical obverse of the tags through this sample, I don't know how many series' there were, or even if they ever got round to a Series 2?