E is for Elgate - Spring Gift Fair 2025

As last, another image dump, but many more figural items on display, this year. With Scotland and Wales having a bigger presence in the various lines, and Paddington putting in an appearance!

 

Poured resin

 

Those non-sharpening pencil sharpeners again!

Not for the collection, but could interest someone? Christmas trees?

 

I've seen a boxing Kangaroo in the last few days, don't know if it was Elgate (didn't look), but they are a bit naff, fun for kids though, which is the main function of novelties!

 

 

 

Nothing of the 'piper' about them, just Guardsman on decorated pens!

 

Roman big 'ed!

 

Keyrings, might be one of the new soft/foamed rubbers? Rather in the style of the old Xandria keyrings from the Netherlands, but modern and made in China.

 

Metal keyrings, if I see the guardsman, I'll grab one for that novelty stash, but the rest can stay on the peg, being more bottle-opener than figural!

 

Egg-cups!

 

The resin parade again, and more egg-cups.

 

A 'Photoclip', what the novelty industry calls a place-name holder, when everybody likely to buy place-name holders have bought a set (or two!) of place-name holders! Also, selling them singly, results in a higher profit-margin per unit . . . and more packaging for a planet which just hasn't seen enough packaging yet.

 

The resin bears!

 

All, also seen before!

 

The big-heads have been replaced with rubber Leprechaun keyrings.

 

Nessie - die-cast Mazak/Zamak

 

Scottie-dogs and a bear!

Close-ups of the snow 'eggs', I think the thinner one is manufactured from poured-resin, the chubby chap may be plastic or a synthetic rubber compound?

 

Various Welsh Dragons in die-cast alloy or resin, mostly smallish, baby 'Game of Thrones' dragons (the die-casts), the larger poured-resin examples could be useful for Role Play, or fans of the Nottingham Mafia system.

 

Paddington!

 

Mostly novelty stuff and pretty ephemeral, but, that's given Elgate a decent presence in the Tag list, and covered most of what they have, which may be of interest, currently, but they're not the only purveyors of this kind of stuff, and we'll look at another soon.

P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Historical & Ceremonial

Arguably my favourite 'grouping' in these mixed-lot sort-out's, as the breadth of the subject and vast quantities of tourist keepsakes issued over the years, means there's so much to find, and there are some real pearls in this latest lot from Chris Smith.

Starting at the beginning; early city-state dwellers from the Fertile Crescent! These 60mm'ish, PVC, biblical figures are similar to those BibleToys Inc., sets Brian sent to the blog a few years ago, but not quite as cartoony, but still styled for infant play, they will be from some kind of bible-related play-set I guess?

 

Perfectly illustrating my 'tourist' comment above, despite seeing over half a dozen on the blog, and possibly having more in the stash, both these Welsh national dress ladies are new to me. The one on the left probably 1960's and hard polystyrene, while the PVC one is likely 1970/80's and was a key-ring ornament.

 

I love finding these with their loops cut, not because I still cut them myself; I used to when I was more of a Philistine. But because they tell me other people were finding and converting esoteric figures to join their Toy Solders & Model Figures (where key-rings have always been a source of unusual subjects), as I was, way back when I was a silent, solo/lone collector!

A tad damaged, his horse will need a hoof and a tail, but I think this is one of those French MDM figures, and they are so nice, even a damaged one is a joy . . . And a sample!

 

And on the subject of damaged samples, these two are both a bit on the battle-casualty side of things, but both useful additions. If you've been following the development of the KT story here, you'll have worked out/seen that there are more damaged than whole Beefeaters and Guardsmen (similar story with the HK Cavendish!), but, they are polystyrene so easy to glue, mend, convert etc, therefore maybe a future project, while the more samples, the easier to see paint variation between batches or over time.

 

The resin Highlander with be a gift-shop special! Unfortunate that he looks a bit like Prince Andrew! Similar to the Sculptures UK figures we've seen previously, but a different maker and tartan treatment, which I think is very effective. Until a better one turns-up, he's very welcome here!

RP issue of the old CoMa Roman signifier, we may have seen him here before, more than once or twice, I can't possibly recall how or why, but people like to see them from time to time!

 

This is brilliant because it's a second sample of the 4M knights, clearly these were/are a heritage-site gift-shop thing, and I'm tempted to take myself to Windsor and see what's available there, but something which was free (as a national asset and educational destination) when I was a kid is now 25-quid or more, plus parking! So I may just hope Chris and charity shops continue to send them my way, occasionally - current rhythm is one every eight years!

 

A few pirates which aren't worth hiding until September, a PVC generic in the ELC style, a Soma, the Black Chine mascot and a Poplar pirate in a new colour for that pose!

 

These two are resin, and while I suspect the one on the left is another gift-shop/touristy piece (very ECW), the one on the right looks like he;'s from a Christmas village, and I couldn't tell you which range, as there are many, I recently acquired/inherited a Hong Kong/Netherlands Edelman B.V. 'Luville' catalogue, and there is tons of this kind of stuff out there, although, very little in the collection!

The small scale is a gang of Shreddies/Tom Smith gladiators putting the jump on a smaller squad of non-Giant 'Romans', from two or even three sources! They'll be sorted into their rightful samples at a later date.

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these, some lovely additions to the collection, and they will all enhance future posts on all sorts of things.

M is for Merched Cymru

Or 'Welsh Ladies' to the occupying English, while - "Formidable infanterie de ligne" to French invaders! And yes, we sort of had that gag before! Really an F is for Follow-up, as these keep coming-in, and of course they do, they were (are?) in one form or another, a standard tourist trope/souvenir, and there will be many around, some commoner than others. 

Indeed, it's one of the big gaps in the hobby's knowledge, these localised figurines/figurals, I do have a couple of Christ The Redeemer's from Rio, a few Virgin Mary's from the Vatican, Italy, Lourdes or wherever, the Tzar Gun from Moscow, and the Russo-Ottoman war gun from Bulgaria (Or Hungary?), but there are hundreds of these sites, statues, famous guns &etc., from all over the world, and the bulk of the touristy 'toys' from them, are missing from the bulk of collectors' collections!

For instance, I know I'm short of Irish Ladies/Irish Dancers, and Leprechauns, although some of the latter are repurposed gnomes, which I do have in the collection, sans the extra green decoration!

So, not strictly to scale; a new keyring, the previously-seen keyring, un-drilled in the hat, but with a hole in her back (for mounting to an egg-timer or something?), the old styrene one we have seen before and the one believed to be Cherilea (or Charbens)? I think someone was questioning it's attribution the other day, so 'believed to be' is the way for me to go!

 

It's funny, I have my critics, many of them, all waiting to pounce on the slightest error (or even just flat omissions), even as they ignore their own, or each-other's howlers, so I've learnt to be as careful as I can be, while still passing as much as I can on, to you, as accurately and comprehensively as possible!

 

The facts here, are that the figure has a base unlike those of other figure production from either Charbens or Cherilea, and as a commission from a tourist whole-seller in Wales, or serving Welsh retailers, could have been made by any one of several dozen other British figure producers, or several hundred, even thousand plastic injectors, not known for their figures. And - so far - I don't think it's turned-up in any of the reissues from either firms' mould-banks.

As I mentioned only the other day, at a point in around 1998, there were 3 injection-moulders within yards of each-other in the commercial belt between Frimley and Camberley, that they have all gone now, is a moot point, they were there, and they were only the ones I knew of, there may have been more - there are three or four still listed on Google Maps, none being the ones I knew back then, and in the 1950/60's there would have been twice as many.

And with those musings in mind, returning to the 'Hong Kong' not her usual keyring self; these items are used not only as key-rings and egg-timers (why I suspect she has a hole in her back), but also as/for attaching to pincushions, barometers/thermometers, note or calendar holders, key-cups, egg-cups, hooks, knife-racks, cruet sets, anything you can think of as maybe being sellable, to people from elsewhere, looking for a small, travel-friendly keepsake or memento of their trip to your neighbourhood, your attraction!

Now, I also think the vinyl one may have been in Chris Smith's last parcel, but in looking at that folder to ID it, I can't find it, so either I shot the pic's for this post (which has been growing in Picasa for a while) and forgot to include it in the plunder-post shots, or I ended up combining it with the key-ring I picked-up in a mixed lot a while ago, while putting-away Chris's stuff, but in any event Chris has sent some, and he definitely sent the reconstituted slate one we also looked-at here, so many thanks for everything he does for the Blog.

S is for Scourge of the French!

It's one of those lovely facts which you think may be an urban myth but which turn out to be - at least in part - absolute fact! When Welsh ladies turned a whole invading French army into little defeat-eating, runaway surrender-monkeys! Indeed one unarmed lady of the 'Valleys' - 'Jemima the Great' - forced the surrender of several (a dozen or so), heavily armed invaders - all by herself!

Recent acquisitions either side of an older key-ring from storage, the resin one on the left is quite well done, with a subtle facial paint in a porcelain doll style and probably pretty contemporary if not actually still on sale back in 'The Valleys'!

The bell is only there because it was cheap, I won't be building a collection of them; there are thousands! My Granny (Walter) had a collection of them on her Mousy-Thompson sideboard, fifteen or so, which she used to buy one per year on their annual holiday to Blackpool (I guess they took day trips over the border!) and when we were kids we would ring them all and line them up by tone, next morning they would all be back where they started - poor Granny!

Anyway I don't know what happened to them when she passed away, so I thought I should have one for sentimental reasons and when I saw one in a charity shop for 50p, it had my name on it.

The key-ring is a Hong Kong sourced, and marked, piece of PVC Vinyl-rubber for the tourist kiosk/gift-shop trade of the 1970's and is a not too shabby 54mm sculpt. I need to give her a pitchfork and a dozen half-starved, sea-sick, revolutionary French, for her to frog-march down to the town square . . . pun? What pun!

We've looked at another Welsh lady here in the past and I meant to add the Charbens one to this post, but forgot to, so we can look at her another day!

Links

Popular mythical version!

Slightly more accurate and therefore slightly boring version!

W is for Weird Welsh Lady

No - Not Morgana le Fay! This is one of the oddest figures in my collection, being a solid lump of early polystyrene or one of the later - stable - cellulose acetates and made to look like a composition piece, thereby ignoring all the benefits of the plastics technology...lightweight moulding, transfer of detail etc...

She is around 50mm, but with the heavy base looks OK next to 54mm/1:32 scale figures and her five-colour paint scheme includes the pink cheeks so redolent of old style hollow-cast toy soldiers.

Clearly a tourist piece of the sort sold in all sorts of outlets throughout Wales, from coffee shops to castle gift shops and depicting a Welsh Girl in the traditional dress that sent an invading French Army running for their ships in 1797, after Jemima Nichols managed to round-up 15 invaders with a pitchfork!

As there is no real sign of a sprue (there are one or two paint chips, but the plastic looks smoothly finished underneath) I can only conclude that someone poured hot plastic into an old composition or plaster-figure mould, then used his/her bare thumb to swipe the excess from the open-end - see the marks on the base? Has anyone got an identical figure in plaster or a composition material in their collection?