T is for Thunderbirds' 2, 4, 6, FAB 1, and a Whole Bunch They Didn't Bother to Number . . . are GO!!

Funny story behind this one, the guy wanted (and I don't normally deal with the grubby stuff, but it's central to the story) 55-quid for this, a bit steep I thought, but I know this imported stuff commands a premium, so I thought "Fuck it, I'm playing catch-up with bushy the twig, I might as well?", and got sixty out, "Have you got a fiver?", I asked the dealer, at the start of the day . . . bear in mind, the dealer I was with, had a wad of fivers, and a bag of £1 and £2 coins, because he's prepared his float!

 

"Err, no" he says, so I asked him what we were going to do, and he half-heartedly muttered 'the wife' or something, and with no further words, exchanged a glance with her, and said "No". "Well, I'm not going to give you sixty?" says I, and he leaps back indignantly "I never asked you to!", "No" said I, "But that's the other logical solution?" To which he hummed an acceptance of that logic, and after a laboured silence, I said "Well, I'll leave it than, maybe later?" handed it back and walked away.

 

And I would have left it at that, indeed I went back past the stall a couple more times, gave it the once over, and studiously ignored the set, and would have left it. If you're setting yourself up as retailer for the day, no matter what your 'day job', you either go to the bank and get a wad of fivers and a bag of coins, or, if you don't do that many shows, save your one's, two's and five's in the two-to-four months between shows? It's common-sense as much as anything else.

 

However . . . on the other side of the hall, another chap had the exact-same contents of this set, in two window boxes, one with T2, T4, Pod 4 and - I think - Fab 1, the other having all the other vehicles, and the spare Pod 3, he wanted £60 or £65 for the first, and £40 or £45 for the second, I can't remember the exact amounts, but it was going to be over a hundred-quid for the pair, so in the end, I went back to the first stall, and I bought it after all, while he wasn't there, as it happens.

 

But, that was only half the story, as when I first spotted it, it had no price on, and I asked the lady (who would transpire to be the dealer's wife), how much it was, and she said she didn't know, but that 'he' was coming back, so I hung-on for a minute or two, then she said she didn't know what had happened to him, so I left it with her, assuming she would keep it behind until I returned.

 

The standard approach at shows, when someone shows interest in something, and the helper, for whatever reason, doesn't know what's going on. However, when I returned to the stall, it was back on display, for any Tom, Dick or Harry passing-by, to purchase, with it's newly added pink £55 label!

 

It takes the shine off the day, dealing with these fuckwits, you know? It's not rocket science, there are rules to the art of pretending to be a retailer for a day, and this stall literally failed all of them! Fackin' ell, G'want! An ironic cultural reference, as they went through a phase of wearing Thunderbirds Are Go T-shirts!

 

Anyway, I am now the pround'ish, owner, of a maybe cheaper than I thought it aught to be, Thunderbird Two from Bandai, with most of the more memorable pod-vehicles, to add to the already growing collection of micro-mini's we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/01/f-is-for-five-four-three-two-one.html

 

To which I've already added a vinyl tree-hanger, the dug-out 'Colourform' ones, a board-game foursome, and a couple more, in plunder-posts which didn't get the T-bird Tag!
 

 

Mole, Firefly and the Excavator, which should be red, and which I saw in an episode the other night, there's one of these 24-hour live streams on YouTube, which seems to be connected to the remastered Blu-ray, and I'm dipping into it from time to time, but you never know where in the loop you're going to drop-in, so you then have to fast-forward through a few, to get to where you were, after which the episode cursor stops progressing, all very confusing, but great-fun seeing them all again!

 

Fab 1, and the two blueys, the ray turns on the Transmitter Truck, and the grabs (I don't know this vehicle's name? Another Excavator?) are articulated, the only other interactive one is the Excavator above, where the bucket is clip-on and can be configured for travelling in the Pod, or as shown.

 

I'm minded, if I ever get the time, to scratch-build a few more to go with these, the last episode I watched was 'The Uninvited', about the mysterious pyramid of Khamandides, with the half-tracked 'Jeep', it would be fun to do that in this scale!

 

Three more, I don't know what the first one is, a laser-cutter - should it also be red? The second is one of two Recovery Vehicles, the other would need to be scratch-built, and it can be red or yellow? While I remember a trio of the Elevator Cars (which should also be red, or white with a red cab?) trying to save the huge (and rather silly) Firefly, I can't remember the whole story, and will catch up with it soon, hopefully, but I think they sort of succeeded?

 

Thunderbird Six . . . it's not a Pod-vehicle! My late father's Tiger Moth, which was an ex-WWII trainer, had a very similar paint-job, but blue, not red, and I wonder if the MOD-approved sellers painted them like this, to hide the military markings, prior-to-sale, but, like so many things (you realise, after they have gone), I never asked him?

One of the great continuity errors of Thunderbirds, which niggled me, even as a kid, was the fact that Thunderbird Four, was named thus, and got its own Pod, while none of the others got either a number or a dedicated Pod, I don't even know how many Pods there were, was it six? The two Pods in this set are only numbered on the front, they should be numbered at both ends, and the registering of the sticker here, leaves a lot to be desired!

E is for Eye Candy - Accoutrements, et al, 'Colorform' Aliens

Here's a daft thing . . . I posted these about a year and a half ago, while living in the previous flat, and it was cobbled together from Internet images and a couple of catalogue scans, when I had this image in Picasa all along, of my set, which I took in 2021!

So, to be viewed in context, here's the post to which they should have been included;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/04/c-is-for-colorforms-not.html

L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Vehicles

Before I can get on to the very late Plastic Warrior show reports, I need to get the previous, and even later, Sandown Park's loot out of the way, which was purloined a few weeks before the PW show, so let's get them out of the way sharpish! Although I don't think you can say sharpish, when the posts are three months overdue!

 

A small Gescha/Gama style tin-plate tank, bearing more resemblance to some early post-war APC's, with a small turret, and high superstructure. I can't remember if it had branding, or if someone gave me a brand? Space Tank!

 

Two mystery (when I saw them) die-cast military vehicles. a nice inter-war armoured car, actually Charbens, it is die-cast alloy, but has lead wheels, and a British tanker-truck, which was marked Britain or England I think, the trouble with doing these posts so long after the event, is you forget stuff! But while in the style of Dinky, it's not, and is probably a re-painted Benbros Esso tanker - note the red on the paint-chips! Interestingly, a re-issue of an old Timpo mould.

 

Vintage Tootsie-Toys AFV's, one marked the other anonymous (can't remember which was/is which), I think the lorry may be pre-war (1930's), while the Armoured-car might be just post-war? But that's going on the wheels/tyres (or 'tires', they're American after all!), which could, just as easily, be replacements? You won't believe the trouble I had, getting the two MG's to look right, they are suspended, free-floating or hanging, between small bumps in the moulding, and loose with age, and were a bugger to get right!

 

Another Charbens, this all die-cast, wheels and body, and darker green than some I've seen, and while not the most accurate version of Humber out there, it's a darn-sight better than the plastic one they did later!

 

Two more French 'readymades', one each Noreda (front, Jeep-like) and Injectaplastic (behind, DKW with Jeep trailer), we've seen them both before, but they were clean, and cheap, so I took them home with me!

Banner 'row-crop' tractor in military green, possibly depicting an Oliver tractor (US Readers?), and two copies, the copies are slightly smaller all-round, and have a few detail differences, unmarked, I hope they are in Bill Hanlon's book!

 

Again, newish to me, similar to some Archer space cars from the 'States, I was told these were actually British so Kleeware or Tudor Rose, but the larger one is a Marx future car, the smaller however is a Pyro/Kleeware moulding, so could the Marx also be a mould-swap with Kleeware?

 

Two teeny-tiny battleships, probably from a late-Edwardian board game, and a larger lead yacht, which could also be a board-game piece, or a smaller component of something more decorative? It's covered in what appears to be black paint, but which could just be severe oxidation?

 

Because they came with a T4, these two reprobates have got themselves into the vehicle post! In the style of MUSCLE or Kinnukiman, these two Thunderbirds Keshi are new to the collection, along with the little Thunderbird Four.

 

A damaged Manurba coach and spare helmet crest for a Lone Star knight are snuck in at the end, just to get them off the laptop!

R is for Radiobird is No-Go!

I know, I'll get me coat, but not before I've blurbed this up! These have - with the exception of the evilBay image - been in Picasa since 2011, when I ran out of steam halfway through a project which hasn't gone any further, but they need to go, so they may give someone else an idea, and we can always return to it of I ever have the time and space to finish it off!

 

The KY-branded novelty USAF Rocket Radio out of Hong Kong is not actually particularly rare (there are about four on feeBay today, including two, boxed and working), and would have been the sort of thing piled high in the old electrical shops or Woolworth's when I were't lad!

I picked up a non-working, severely sun-discoloured one at Sandown Park in the March of 2011, and set out to 'do something' with it, and I wasn't sure (still 'aint!) whether that would be scratch-build a more accurate Thunderbird 1, it being the basis of the knock-off, or produce something less like the original, and, perhaps, more sci-fi/pulp'y.

 

To which end I stripped out the dead radio, wiring, battery componants and et cetera, removed all the stickers and filed-off all the paint with a very-fine, flat-profile, steel, rat-tailed file.

I then glued everything together, filled the screw-holes, and sanded, fettled, filled, de-seamed and smoothed everything until it was a single piece. The two dial/button holes hadn't been done when these shots were taken and would have been part of the next phases shots!

 

The swing-wings being non-functional, there was no need for a continued gap between the two fuselage halves, while once the battery compartment had been emptied the nose-cone could be glued-on, and filled clean and neat!

 

I also still had to remove the two raised chevron lines on the wings. And the chrome was lifted with neat TFR (traffic film remover). At which point it all ground to a halt for reasons which never got explained here, by order of the tribunal judge, such are the nature of NDA's, but I won, sort of!

 

However, it's still around, somewhere in the stash, and the question remains, do I try to reproduce the eight winglets, by making a single moulding (jet fighter tail plane or wing tip from the spares zone?), casting eight identical copies and trying to line them all up nicely to get a half-decent T1, or do I somehow remove the four silly boxes and fill in the holes (not so easy to match all that moulding), try to fair them into the fuselage, or extend them down as four pulp-era 'flying buttress' landing legs? They - the last option, usually being depicted as tripods, not four-ways.

 

Shot on the old swivel-chair by the computer, I recognise the fabric! I rather miss it as it was quite comfortable, but it did fall apart in the end, and even nostalgia has to be let go eventually; nothing lasts forever. And the glare off the chrome engine reminds me, that camera (the second Fuji Finepix - never had another) was failing around March 2011, I got through the year borrowing Giles's little pocket thing!

T is for Thunderbirds are Tiny!

And need glue! Continuing the British Sci-Fi theme of the last few posts; I bought this Imai model-kit of the Thunderbird pilots, at the last Sandown Park toy show, it was going for a song, and while the figures will probably stay on the runners, I have every intention of making up the five micro-Thunderbirds in the nearish future!

From the Amerang sticker it looks to have some age now, but is still what I consider a modern kit, dating from 1992, however, it's a bit of fun and will add to the growing micro-Thunderbird fleet!

 

It's also interesting to be reminded of how the Anderson's gave the lads very American-styled hats (think American veterans or 1960's fast-food/restaurant staff), to appeal to the overseas market for TV rights licensing.

 

Five (or ten!) mini-kits in one box, each a separately-bagged, sub-kit of two models; a Tracy brother figurine and the relevant piloted mini-Thunderbird is in three colours, blue, flesh and the dominant colour of the pilot-specific Thunderbird, with some parts of each vessel on the other two runners. It's a bit of fun!

I is for International Rescue

Shot these on Mercator Trading's stall at Sandown the other day, purely as eye-candy. we looked at them years ago, but they were sitting there, so why not? The character figures from Thunderbirds, who were added to the existing Ovni ('UFO') line from Comansi at some point.

 

Bones and the Boss are obvious, but as far as the brothers go, it's a case of what colour you paint the sash, I think! There may be some clues for the more dedicated aficionados, but I'm only a casual, childhood-nostalgia type fan!

Seen with a couple of the smaller cereal premiums from Kellogg's, which also got issued by Tom Smith in a set of Thunderbirds Christmas crackers. You can find them in a more stable polyethylene, but these are more of the soft PVC ones, which were kicking about in large numbers a few years ago, and tend to get squished in the pack.

Home painted, we have Bones and Lady Penelope, although different sizes, both sets get across the woodenness of puppets quite well I think? That's it, just box-ticking some eye-candy!

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Sci-Fi, TV & Movie

So, we reach the end of Chris Smith's latest donation, and while, obviously, toy soldiers/ceremonial, ancient/medieval, civilian and Wild West are the core of a collectors' stash, I always like this group for having some of the quirkier stuff, rarities and smaller production-run figures (even 'non-toy soldier'), and this lot was no exception!

 

A selection of Bluebird's Manta Force/Viper Squad and Exin Lines' Lego-likey astronauts, some arms missing, but the master sample will provide, or these chaps (and/or chapesses, they're all in suits) will donate!

A larger troll, a hard plastic, probably polystyrene, but could be a propylene polymer, robot type space warrior, who l;ooks quite recent/contemoray, but might not be, just clean! And a large PVC robot, who could be a specific character, I have a feeling I might have a smaller version in the plastic-pile somewhere?

A GLJ-Toyway astronaut, a Galoob Putty (?) from the Power Rangers franchise, a nice whitemetal Genie from some fantasy gaming range, an alien from Toy Story and a skeleton pencil-top guarding a keg of rum!

I think the Birdman is from Thunder Cats or He Man, while we saw the Star Wars Episode I/4 board game figures a while back, the daft lizard is from a recent Disney kid's thing, I believe, but is also a bendy and they have their own tub these days!

Have we seen these before? It's like all the cereal premiums, but in a soft PVC-type polymer. A mini Thunderbird 2, done here as a desk-toy hanger/fidget toy I think, but it could be flown in a Christmas tree, I wouldn't, I like my trees traditional, but many would, witness those Disney tree-hangers we looked at back in December, last year.
 

Speaking of Disney, one of the 7 Dwarfs, but not the usual set of generic cake-decoration/garden ornament ones (gardeners and musicians), although in the same two-polystyrene-halves, glued-together design, but a rather more obvious Disney character, I think Bashful, but could be Sleepy?

But back to the opening paragraph, and this was lovely, quirky as they come, and while I don't know how many pieces it left East Anglia in, Chris had put it in its own bag, so I'm assuming more than one, it arrived in five, one piece, being no more that a speck of dust, was ignored!

So, having had some success with the baking-powder/super-glue technique, recently, I prepared a station with a pad to soak up excess glue, a puddle of the same, some baking powder, a toothpick for applying glue and manipulating the white-mud, with a nail-file, filling-in for a snuff spoon! Once I'd begun, I remembered the applicator pen for Superglue Plastix, which helps speed everything up!

 

And a half-decent result was achieved! From the back it's a bit of a mess, as you would expect, but from the front it looks factory-fresh and ready to blast across the room from a sprung-loaded sucker-pad, although if I were to try, it'd disintegrate!

 

And, while cruder in the mirror-imaging than the previously found examples, it is another of the LB (Lik Be - it's so obvious when you give it some thought) knock-off's, given a less-robot, more-alien look, and raises the question of how many sculpts did they copy for the set, four, six, maybe three spacemen and three robots . . . only time can tell?

 

Many, many thanks to Chris for another fantastic parcel of odds, sods and unwanted's, those of you who know me, or who have followed the Blog for any length of time will know, I don't often wax lyrical about Britains or Timpo, Starlux or Elastolin, Marx or MPC, but rather tend to get excited by the ephemeral, quirky, oddities on the periphery of model-figure production, and it's all the stuff people save for me, give to me or donate to the blog which helps fill-in all the many missing links, such as the jumper-toy above. Thanks, Chris, much appreciated!

C is for Colorforms, Not!

Or; C is for Correcting Myths! A lot has been written about these around the Web over the last few years, and a fair bit of what has been written has given a certain type of evilBayer the idea that these are worth, three, five, ten-times what these recent, probably still current somewhere, 99p rummage-tray figures are actually worth!

Generic Space Attack set of all twelve, date unknown, but these have been around for a while, you get six spacemen/aliens/robot types and six space vessels, which happen to be six Colorforms knock-off's, and Thunderbird 1-5 clones with a space shuttle, it's the Colorforms connection which leads to the exciting pricing, but they are probably, actually knock-off's of the 1980's play-set knock-off's from Toyco's set, Alien Attack, where they were polyethylene mouldings, approximately 60mm against these 54mm PVC wobblers.

 

Brian Heiler's Video on the Canadian set

We then find them in the Archie McFee (Accoutrements) catalogue, circa 1996, I think, and they may have had a fancy box, or been sent-out in a plain carton or header-carded bag? Now called Alien & Spaceship Invasion, you are still getting all twelve, despite the caveats in the description, I suspect you got one of each moulding.

 

But in 1998, the six spaceships are issued in a boardgame, sans figures, Aristoplay's futuristic Mars 2020 (how far away 2020 must have seemed to them in 1998!) which must - if it was a single tool - have left a lot of extra figures kicking around in some Chinese warehouse, looking for a buyer . . . 

 

 

. . . which was found, with Ruestes in Argentina,  and their Star Attack line, which consisted of lager boxed sets, which had the figures and a larger toy, not the spaceships, although the spaceships were included in smaller sets and carded blisters, some with other toys, some with a five 'Colorforms'/'Thunderbirds' assortment.

 

Spanish language video of the Ruestes sets

So, we've been attacked, invaded and explored by Aliens, Stars, Space, Spaceships and Mars, and I suspect, somewhere, in some wholesaler's or toy-chain's territory we are still being attacked by these cheapo' knock-off's, I know there's a French seller, who seems to be selling a lot of them, lose, which he appears to have got as a job-lot and broken-down . . . cake decorations? Bazaar figures? Wait 'till you see them cheap in a 99p rummage-tray, is my advice!