Rogerpgvg's Britains collection: a beautiful lot of early farm animals

Wonderful!!!It's the one set that I never had when I was younger and I have been searching for it ever since!

Thanks, Taylor, hopefully you'll find the set too. I'll keep an eye out for it.

It turns out that for many years, I got the sexes of the Britains pigs wrong. After 1971, the pig looking down was female and the pig looking up was male. I thought it was the same for the earlier (1955-1970) pigs, but it is in fact the other way around: Mr. Oink is looking down and Mrs. Oink is looking up. These pigs are very common and I’ve seen their underside many times, but it never dawned on me that their sexes are different from the later pigs.

Here we have, from left to right: Late boar, early SOW, late sow, early BOAR:


It’s clear even from the side, but the underside makes very clear which one is male and which one is female.

Maybe the features of the Oink family members are not the most attractive things to you.
I understand why you assumed that but I find Britains idea somewhat clever.

How something small can make me happy! I found the last rabbit to complete my Britains (plastic) rabbit collection, the brown scratching rabbit:


As you can see from the Lego block, it’s tiny, as it should be for 1:32 scale.


Still too large for a wild rabbit, but possible for a larger domestic rabbit. Here is the new addition with all the other brown Britains bunnies:


All models were also made in white (usually with a black spot). Here are both the brown and white scratching rabbits:


Very interesting pose! All the Britains plastic rabbits were made between 1958 and 1968.

Cute rabbits

That's the joy of collecting for sure!
It is not easy to find rabbit figures at such a small scale so I believe it is much more fun to find a rabbit than an elephant, at least for you. Actually, when I joined the forum, @Rio, an avid rabbit collector was very active on STS. Now you also have cat fleas in your collection, we have indirect evidences of it. They measure 1.5 to 3.3 mm, apr. 0,0469 to 0,103 mm at 1:32 scale.

Thanks, Andreas!

Yes, I am happier with a new 1:32 scale rabbit than another elephant. I'll check my cats for fleas!

beautiful rabbit collection at this scale!

Thanks, Alain!

Wonderful rabbits.The large brown scratching rabbit could pass for a Belgian Hare rabbit as they are a large lean rabbit.

rogerpgvg wrote:

Collecting Britains animals is quite different from collecting almost any other animal figures, at least in the UK, where they are very common. They are rarely sold individually and if they are, they are much more expensive than when you buy them in lots. The problem with lots is that you get many duplicates of the most common animals. Fortunately, there are many variations to keep it interesting.

One of the most common Britains animals is the later version of the Friesian bull, which was first released in 1970 and is still in production. I wonder whether it is the oldest animal figure in continuous production still for sale. (The 1970 Britains lying cow is also still in production. Some late 1960s VEB Plaho models can still be bought new under the name Marolin, but I understand that Marolin only occasionally produces a batch.)

I have lots of these bulls and the more I study them, the more I discover. Here is a selection that is in my “core” collection, which I find sufficiently different to keep:


They succeeded an earlier bull, produced between 1959 and 1969:


The newer bull’s pose is not quite as dynamic, but it has a very realistic appearance that captures the bulky nature of a bull very well. I owned one as a child and it was one of my favourite farm animals. Initially, the bull’s head was painted on the left side, while the white plastic was unpainted on the right side:




The bull was made both in black-and-white and in brown-and-white. They were both simply called “bull”. They were sold under the same catalogue number (2131) and the Britains catalogues only showed one colour version (usually the black-and-white one). All were marked “Britains Ltd 1970 England”.



Bulls with a half-painted/half white head were shown in catalogues until 1975. From 1976, catalogues showed bulls with a black head on both sides and a white patch on its forehead. The photos in the catalogues weren’t always updated, so it is possible that the painting style changed earlier.



My black-and-white bull has a triangular shape white patch on its forehead whereas my brown-and-white bull has a smaller “star”. It is possible that the bulls had a “star” in the second half of the 1970s and a “triangle” in the 1980s or it may just have depended on the whim of the painter.



Britains used several moulds for their most popular animals. I am usually not so interested in mould differences because they are often very subtle. Sometimes, I keep them, like this bull, which is fatter than the others (not so clear from the photo):


From 1981, Britains called them “Friesian bulls”. The last catalogue with brown-and-white cattle is from 1982, so I assume they were no longer made after that. (The last time a brown-and-white bull appeared was in 1980.) It even is possible that they were already discontinued in 1981 and that this may be why Britains started referring to them as Friesian cattle. Only one brown-and-white Friesian (the heifer calf) is shown in the identical 1981 and 1982 catalogues, so it is possible that an earlier calf was accidentally used for the photos. Here is the photo from the 1982 catalogue with the brown-and-white heifer calf:


Britains removed the nose ring sometime in the second half of the 1980s. The 1986 catalogue is the first that shows the Friesian bull without a nose ring, but the Jersey bull (the same sculpt in a different colour) and the Hereford bull still had a ring, so the Friesian may have accidentally lost his ring in the photo. None of the bulls had rings from 1989 onwards.

In 1992, there was a major change in how and where the Britains farm animals were produced. From then onwards, they would be made in China instead of Walthamstow, London (manufacturing of the wildlife animals transferred to Nottingham). The “England” mark was literally scratched off the mould; you can still see where it used to be. The farm animals were now no longer hand painted. As we can see from the slight overspray, Britains now used moulds that they put on the sculpts and then spray-painted them. Whether the spray was applied manually or by a machine, I don’t know.

Britains named their updated farm animals, sold from 1993 onwards, the “Rosette Range”. In my opinion, the animals from this range are the best painted that Britains ever produced. The previous hand-painting was often done in quite a messy way, perhaps because there was not much quality control or because the workers (who usually did the painting at home) were underpaid. In the Rosette Range, they used a more matte paint, which gave the animals a more realistic appearance. They also used a different, matte, plastic but this was less of a success, because the plastic yellowed easily. The bull now looked like this:



The bulls now had a “blaze”:


From this time onward, the bulls (and cows) were marked with a number, either “1” or “2” on the underside. This may just have been to identify the different moulds.

The Rosette Range did not last long. In 1997, Britains ended the Rosette Range and went back to hand painting. This may be related to an accident in their Chinese factory. Referring to the sheep in the Rosette Range, the “Model Farmer” magazine from 2011, issue 8, mentions that “Sadly, these new Sheep had a short life, ending in 1996 with the unfortunate destruction of the moulds in the Far East.” Although the Friesian cattle moulds do not seem to have been affected, the fact that the production of the whole farm animal range was changed suggests that there was a serious problem with the factory. Here we have an example of a bull after this:



As I mentioned, its belly was either marked “1” or “2” (apologies for the indecent images ):



All my bulls marked “2” have the usual straight nose, whereas all my “1” bulls have an up-turned nose. As far as I know, the latter nose-type did not exist pre-Rosette Range. Here we have a bull with a regular straight nose (2) on the left and one with an up-turned nose (1) on the right:


From 2004, the bulls and other farm animals were no longer sold individually but packaged together in boxes such as these:


“CHINA” was added to the underside (Britains Ltd 1970 CHINA) and they were machine painted again, something that probably started when they started selling their animals in boxes. The Friesian cattle have quite a glossy paint:



In 2018, the packaging changed again. I don’t have any bulls from this packaging, but I suspect that they are the same as the other post-2004 bulls.

If anyone else has other versions of the Britains bulls or has found out more about their history, it would be very interesting to know.

More white one…I don’t know much about his history…

Another one with both sides of face painted but big white patch and white ears!

And here is my version with a very narrow white belt!

Beautiful moderls and display!

Thanks for showing these versions, Morek and Taylor. For a long time, the Britains models were hand painted, so there are almost infinitely many variations in how the black and brown spots were painted. Some are quite striking, like your examples with the narrow and wide “belts”.

Taylor’s brown-and-white bull is probably from around 1976-1982. It would originally have had a ring.

Morek’s bull with a very wide “belt” is interesting for two reasons. First, it looks to me as if it has a slightly different plastic from the earlier bulls. A bit hard to see in the photos, but it seems a bit glossier, slightly more translucent. Britains changed the plastic of their farm animals sometime between 1984 and 1992, probably closer to 1984 than 1992. It looks like it is a bull from this period. Probably not from the period after the Rosette Range because it has green-grey horns, whereas as far as I know, they were solid grey after 1996. Second, it seems to have an upturned nose (do I see that right?) I thought this mould variant first appeared in the Rosette Range, but Morek’s bull suggests that it was earlier. Does it have number “1” on its underside? Does it say where it was made?

Britains painted the bulls either with a wide white patch on their head or with a much narrower blaze. From the Rosette period onwards, they had a blaze. Before that, I don’t know for sure whether the painters had some freedom to choose between a wider patch and a blaze, or whether perhaps the bulls with the wider patch were earlier (perhaps around 1976-1980). The catalogues suggest that the latter may have been the case, but because they were hand painted, a blaze could easily turn into a wider patch and vice versa.

Taos wrote:

Wonderful rabbits. The large brown scratching rabbit could pass for a Belgian Hare rabbit as they are a large lean rabbit.

Thanks, yes that is a possibility. I wondered whether they could be Flemish giant rabbits, but the Britains rabbits are probably too small for that!

Thanks for the info Roger-I will check and see if my bull has a ring.I have a few bulls with rings still in including the older white Charolais.
Flemish Giant could also be a possibility but they only come in one colour-steel grey in the UK,other colours are found in Europe and the USA.

Nice cattles

Another Friesian bull version! I just got it.


It was made during the Rosette Range period (1993-1996). The jagged patches make it different from my other bull from this period:



During this period, the bulls were no longer hand painted. Instead, the different style of the patches is due to different moulds being used for spray painting. The 1993 catalogue shows Friesian cattle with jagged patches, so I assume the “jagged” bull was earlier than the “not jagged” bull. The 1994-1996 catalogues used the same photos; Britains did not update them when the painting style changed.


The two Rosette Range bulls are also made of a different plastic. The “jagged” bull has a slightly more rubbery plastic than the “not jagged” bull. The latter plastic yellowed easily. During the Rosette Range period, Britains seems to have experimented a lot with different plastics and with different painting styles.

Very nice!! Interesting the different paint pattern!

Thank you both!

Nice bull-I will need to keep an eye out for this model and the cows that go with it.I only have the Jersey calf,some of the horses,the sheep and the pigs for this series.

Very interesting about the way those figures were painted. Your collecting hobby is not exclusively about scale for sure.