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.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

M is for "♫ Motor'bikin'! ♫ . . ♫ . . ♫ Motor'bikin'!! ♫ . . .



. . . Moving on the Queens High'way; Lookin' Like'a Streak-a'Lightning "

It is a mystery to me how this stuff comes in, it only seems a few weeks since I did a round-up of motorcycles thinking "That's it for a while", and damn-me if I haven't got a whole lot more to share with you! And to show it isn't really a mystery, but rather synergy; these all piled-up in the last couple of weeks!

This was first, an email from Brian Berke with a few 'shelfies' and a note to the effect he knew I liked motorbikes on the Blog and thought this was worthy of my attention. It is! And it's also the 'other' FunTastic, so I'll have to be careful with the tags!

It says 'three styles' and what looks to be an identical one is seen below, with a different colour-way, whether that's it, or whether there are different models and colour-ways leading to the necessity to collect a whole fleet is something the Atlantic will prevent me investing in a search of the definitive answer to - no bad thing - but thanks for the shot Brian!

At the other end of the spectrum in every sense is this Holgar Eriksson designed generic 'combat troops' machine in 30mm lead. . . weird for having an obvious sticky-out, kick-stand (both sides) but no sticky-out handle-bars? Unmarked by dint of its design, I'm assuming Comet/Authenticast, but it is just a likely to be SAE?

We've seen the silver chap (recently I fear?) but the gold one with blue wheels turned-up at Sandown the other day, so a fleet of these seems to be in my future . . . oh lordy!

While below them two more [purported to be] Airfix bikes to add to the - currently in storage - bag, sans riders (but that made them cheap!), they normally have a chap in a sort of field-cap/service hat, but there may be other riders.

Because by Monday just-gone, I could see a bike post building; when I saw these I nearly bought them on the spot . . . but went back and got them first-thing Tuesday! From a larger set of Iwaco-type erasers (a pound for 6) we will look at separately; they're too cool for driving-school!

The gods of space-saving: Crammy and Pylitup, decided I couldn't add these to the stack, so I photographed them on Adrian's Mercator Trading stall at Sandown Park - French, look like Cofalux (?), it's very similar to the damaged black one we saw here a while ago (separate handlebars are even closer) and the pointy-hands of the riders suggest I have a spare military rider somewhere!

And as the Belgians were stalled-out behind us - with some nice modernist melamine shelving - I took the opportunity to shoot them on a contemporaneous, '50's-feeling, patterned-background! But I forgot the jiggit on the camera-lens, Doh!

The interest element here is that you have polystyrene bikes, polyethylene handlebars and vinyl-rubber figures! The comedy element here is that they are motorcycles? Presumably the ladder folds into the side-car and the hoses are micro-bore, everyone's using micro-bore now!

It was the best way of getting more desirable toy subjects (police, fire and even ambulances) into a budget for every pocket, like all those family-saloons and estate-cars/shooting-brakes sold as Fire Chief's. I think we had more fire chiefs in our toy box than all other fire vehicles put together . . .

"Hey Chief!"

"Hey yer'self Chief! Oh, look here's the Chief coming..."

"You Chiefs over there, can you grab the County Fire Chief when he gets here; and go and blow on that fire, see if you can put it out?"

"Who made you Chief?"
"Who made you Chief?"
"Who made you Chief?"
"Who made you Chief?"

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