About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Friday, February 27, 2009

W is for more Wagons

Following on from the W&T post, and the realisation they copied the Britains Lilliput horse (itself a scale down of a hollow-cast 54mm horse, latter produced in plastic!), I thought it was time for some more wagons.

Here the Britains Lilliput are the green hay (Tumbrel) cart and blue dairy cart/milk float in the centre, the two - also metal - copies are probably someone like Morestone or Budgie, while the log-wagon is - I think - Benbros. The chariot is probably the French penny-toy make of 'SR' and the little Handsome-Cab at the front was probably from an early Christmas cracker.

The larger of these coronation coaches is by Hill / Johillco, the broken thread was originally threaded through the rings in the horses flanks as a rein arrangement. The whole thing is sort of 28/31mm or around the 1:48/1:56 mark. The smaller coach is totally unmarked and could be by any one of several dozen companies, as this coach has been mass produced in various scale/sizes for three coronations and a trillion tourists, not to mention one cancelled coronation, all in the period when lead/die-casting was the predominant technology! A lot of that production actually taking place in Hong Kong or Japan.

What can I add? Coach, check; Hong Kong, check; No. 505 in a probable range of one!...er that's it!

Ultra modern production, head for the pinky/mauve area of your local toy shop or Toys'r'us and you will find dozens of these fairy tale, Cinderella, pumpkin type things, trouble is they're always attached to a massive grate pile of heliotrope castle with blue towers! Still they turn up at car-boot sales a few years later, very cheap!

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