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.
Showing posts with label Beatrix Potter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beatrix Potter. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

B is for Beatrix Potter's Sniper's Nest!

Now there's a title you wouldn't have expected to see on Small Scale World if someone had asked you yesterday!

So I've had a few days off - Crimbo stuff to do - and the world doesn't seem to have changed greatly, Mark-of-men-of-tin' seems to have invented a new country, which is fun! And I've got a few bits to schedule today for the next few days, but I'm easing off for Christmas, now I can see I won't manage 600+ on the posting total!

Picked this up the other day for reasons that will become obvious and it may still be findable if you fancy one, however - I can't remember what the title of the publication was?


Avon Bristol Road Bath; Beatrix Potter; CBBC; CeeBeebies; Film Characters; Kennedy Enterprises; Magazine Freebies; Magazine Giveaways; Movie Characters; Movie Promotionals; Movie Tie In; Mr. Todd; Peter Rabbit; Sandy-Whiskered Gentleman; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Toy Fox; Toy Peter Rabbit; Toy Rabbit; TV And Film-Related; TV Characters; TV Related; TV Tie Ins;
One of those carded novelty sets taped to a kid's magazine, you get an Iwako style ladybird, two of the two-part polystyrene figures common on these mag's and a hiding tree, all credited to Kennedy Enterprises of Avon. I think it was a CeeBeebies mag, but it went in a bin so quickly I didn't register it!

Avon Bristol Road Bath; Beatrix Potter; CBBC; CeeBeebies; Film Characters; Kennedy Enterprises; Magazine Freebies; Magazine Giveaways; Movie Characters; Movie Promotionals; Movie Tie In; Mr. Todd; Peter Rabbit; Sandy-Whiskered Gentleman; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Toy Fox; Toy Peter Rabbit; Toy Rabbit; TV And Film-Related; TV Characters; TV Related; TV Tie Ins;
Peter Rabbit and Mr. Todd, the Sandy-Whiskered Gentleman! If nothing else they will join the Phidal and Timpo figures in a future Beatrix Potter figures' round-up.

Avon Bristol Road Bath; Beatrix Potter; CBBC; CeeBeebies; Film Characters; Kennedy Enterprises; Magazine Freebies; Magazine Giveaways; Movie Characters; Movie Promotionals; Movie Tie In; Mr. Todd; Peter Rabbit; Sandy-Whiskered Gentleman; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Toy Fox; Toy Peter Rabbit; Toy Rabbit; TV And Film-Related; TV Characters; TV Related; TV Tie Ins;
But this is what decided me on an impulse purchase which had me buying a five-year-old's publication on the way back from town the other day and dumping it unread in the bin outside McColl's . . . a 'hiding tree', which while being an amusing novelty plaything for five-year olds, also looks like . . .

Avon Bristol Road Bath; Beatrix Potter; CBBC; CeeBeebies; Film Characters; Kennedy Enterprises; Magazine Freebies; Magazine Giveaways; Movie Characters; Movie Promotionals; Movie Tie In; Mr. Todd; Peter Rabbit; Sandy-Whiskered Gentleman; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Toy Fox; Toy Peter Rabbit; Toy Rabbit; TV And Film-Related; TV Characters; TV Related; TV Tie Ins;
. . . the sort of thing both sides would hide near their trenches under cover of artillery barrages in World War One. Here posed with a South American copy of an Elastolin composition figure, you can see it would look better - or just as good - with a 54m figure!

Friday, September 9, 2016

N is for New Arrivals Part II - Animals

Having had a dinosaur post a while ago, then another in Rack Toy Month, I can't believe we're having a third so soon, but that's how the stuff comes in!

Monochromatic erasers from WH Smith, 2-quid isn't going to break the bank and they are bigger than the Paperchase ones although the 'kerthunkersaurus' is a poor sculpt.

These are also Smith's, at 3 for 2 and seven or eight sculpts, I chose three contrasting ones including a much better kerthunkersaurus - I must get the proper name of the poor thing! Here credited to Keycraft, these have been in boxed-sets of several animals in The Works for a year or so now under HGL (Grossman)'s moniker I think? But in such presentation - well outside my budget.

[Note - loading this just know (last Wednesday morning) I'm also downloading Target set images from Brian Berke which look like they might contain the same sculpts, will check at home!]

The Toysuarus was offering these at 79p each, well it would have been rude not to, so I got one of each! The Beetles are the ones we've already seen in two packagings at the beginning of Rack Toy Month (or even a few days before?), the Dinosaurs are yet another set of smallies, and I'm going to get them all back-out and compare soon, just for the hell of it, so they stayed in the bag for now, which left the frogs.

I was going to Blog them with the MTC set the other day, but they are in fact different sculpts, being three poses in various colours while the MTC's are all the same [four-ridged back] design.

The reason I went to the Toysaurus was to get these (also 79p), as I'd said they were the ones above when we looked at them last time, but they weren't! A nice lesson in false memory - hours after the event, because I'd forgotten the other set and conflated the two when posting the others, and mentioning I'd seen them in glow-in-the-Dark plastic in Toys R Us!

In fact, the Toysaurus had the normal ones in the party bags, and these from Grossman are actually new sculpts. This is why one should try to use maybe, probably or possibly if the stuff isn't actually on the table in front of you...I think?!

The ladybird is very similar, and while I'm sure standard painted versions exist somewhere, the spots on this one are textured within the sculpt, rather than reliant on paint.

Look! Charity Shop! 50p! Invicta Plastics megasaurus for the British Museum. Herein lies a funny story, well; it might only be ironic?

When I was a small-scale only collector (and a limo-driver), I used to have early-morning runs out to Gatwick or Heathrow on a Sunday; exec's going off to the 'States or wherever for Monday meetings, and I would do the car Boot sales on the way back*, sometimes hitting them as the traders were setting-up - still had to pick up the crumbs left by earlier early-birds like Collectakit's Pat Lewarne though!

Anyway, if there was large-scale stuff, cheap enough, I'd drop it round a mates house and he was always giving me small-scale lots so fair was fair (and he's given me far more over the years - JB for those who know), one day I got the Invicta set in full, in a BM box (lovely set, lovely sculpts, lovely colours), about 15? Maybe 16 in the set, there might have been one missing, but I remember making it up from spares on JB's lawn in the sun.

Fast forward 20 years, finds I'm buying them one at a time...and I had the whole lot in my hands! Still; it's more fun this way and I have got a couple of the smaller ones already in storage!

*It was a Mercedes V-Class, not a stretch - try parking one of those at a car-boot sale! Although I did drive Stretched-limos for a while too, horrible things, horrible customers - except the couple on a Wedding Anniversary who got me stage-side at Robby Williams and gave me £20 for a fish-supper and coke!


These were also a charity shop buy, 50p the lot, they're very small and each has its name on the belly, a definite irony as there is a kerthunkersurus here, but I didn't take note of it and they're in the attic now . . . what am I like!

It was a toss-up between ' I - Figures' or 'II - Animals' for this one, but 'figures' already had 8 images so Peter goes here! Paul Lamond Games, Charity Shop, 99p and it's been a while since we had some paper/card flats on the Blog, I must remedy that properly - he says cryptically!

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Apropos the date: Don't forget its Sandown Park toy fair tomorrow - if you're at a loose-end? 400-odd tables of other people's old playthings . . . I'm on the lookout for a motor for an HO-gauge Tri-Ang LT tube train!