S is for Sometimes . . . I Can be a Fuckwit!

The other day when I posted the 100 pipers swizzle-sticks, and said I thought I'd posted them here, but couldn't find them, it was because they hadn't been posted here, they'd always been at the back of my mind to post, but were in storage, and the mention of PW magazine was because I probably did shoot them for that mag, so when they were at hand (2008-11), between storage phases, I didn't post them as they may have appeared in the mag first!

 

Obviously, when interest in the mag' waned, and its future took a back seat, they could be shot for here, but were back in storage, only they ended-up in the garage, and were shot, not in that batch of board games I did out on the lawn, in the autumn of 2020, with a little help from Girly-Girl, shortly before she died, but over that Christmas, while I sat here waiting for mum to pass, all a bit crappy, but with Boysey-Boy dying last week, I've come to realise that getting old is about taking increasing amounts of sadness and dealing with it.

 

Anyway, the shots were down in the boardgame section of Picasa (1962) all along, where there's about a dozen board-games in the long-queue! So here, now adding to the tags they could have created earlier, are they!

 

 Marketed by Marketplan for Seagram's, it's obviously a promotional, but whether it was a commercial exercise (Christmasy gift section of Department Stores?) or a more pub-oriented 'issue', like ashtrays or beer-mats, supplied by the distiller or their agents (Marketplan?) to landlords for customers to play on the premises I don't know, but it's quite common on feebleBay, so it may have been a shop-buyable thing?

 

The .gif! These board games do rather lend themselves to gif-production (not 'Jiff' teeheehee) so long as you set the camera and watch the lighting!

 

Double fuckwittedness lead to me not shooting the figures because even before last week, I thought they HAD been on the blog (I'm pretty sure one figures was in a donation report from Peter or Chris, but I obviously didn't tag it!), so both these have been cropped out of the image above and one of the .gif stills!

 

The figures are flats, about 28/30mm, and tend to break at ankles or neck, which is why the yellow gets cast out in the animation, he's already lost his head! I also thought the errata slip made for amusing reading - that 100 chickens could win or lose Scotland, as The Bruce might have said to a blue-painted Aussie!

The rules, if you want them, clearly it's a card-based system of play, with dice for movement and a few elements you'll recognise from Monopoly?

I00 Pipers are owned by Pernod Ricard India now, while Seagram had become one of those ridiculously over-extended 'conglomerates' so fashionable in the 1970's and which mostly imploded under the Thatcherite-Raganomic free-for all of resent years, a free-for-all which will kill us all, shortly, it's actually incapable of not doing so.

 

They did leave us with a series of notable buildings around the world though, and I used to show all the Segway sales-team people the 'Seagram Building' in London - The Ark - when I gave them my impromptu guide to the London sights!

100 is for Pipers, Four Pipers!

We saw their board game I think, right back at the start of the Blog, so they've been sat there in the Tag-list ever since with a '1' in brackets, let's make it a two with these charmers, which I picked-up on evilBay a while back.

A blended whiskey, originally from the House of Segram (of the whacky buildings), it's now manufactured in Asia/the Far East, where it's one of the best-selling brands.

Added when doing the tags - no, we haven't? Must have been One Inch Warrior or something? Maybe we saw some of the figures in a plunder post, and they weren't tagged? I'll have to blog them at the other end! It was a boardgame anyway!

Flats, but chunky enough to be semi-flats, these cocktail stirrers, or 'swizzle sticks' could be cut to provide figures of around 45mm, and will have been manufactured by some anonymous local fabricator whose name we'll never know.

 

Worth a mention, to explain the previous line, when I worked at Rotamould (97'ish?), we had another plastics factory a few doors away, and when I worked in an office down the road a few years later there was an injection moulder in the unit ('lot' as the Americans would call it) next door, they have all gone now. While when I found Tatra, their website had a list of the 15-odd companies they had bough-out over a period of about 30 years, they've now been bought-out themselves.

 

Many people were responsible for the more ephemeral figures/figurals out there, and one can only hope they have another moniker to be known by, as in here, where 100 Pipers will suffice!

M is for Multiple Manufacturers Mascots

A quick round-up of a few of the smaller corporate mascot stuff on hand, I think one or two have been seen here before in show-reports or such-like, but as a group they make an interesting diversion!

Starting with the all-important beer mascots!

This is a vinyl/PVC key-ring charm of the mascot of Brickwoods Ltd, a brewer from Portsmouth, founded in 1851 by Fanny Brickwood and acquired by Whitbread's in 1971, the last pint left the brewery in 1983.

This is a solid piece of polystyrene, another key-ring and mirrors the larger ceramic one which is quite common on evilBay. As a brand they (Flowers) only date from 1952 and seem to have brewed their last pint in the 1990's, whether that was a pint of Brewmaster brew is your guess, but you can blame Whitbread for the demise . . . again!

As an aside . . . while our (the UK's) much-loved beers all disappeared in the 1980's/1990's being replaced by gassy chilled shite like Fosters, Heineken, Coors &etc . . . the same thing was happening everywhere; back when you could have a decent chat about non-platform stuff, we were chatting about favorite beers on the HäT forum, I mentioned my favorite Phauenbrau from Tüttlingen and someone from Germany said "Disappeared years ago!", it turned out that all the old, little-town, local brands (and even some of the bigger ones - Herforder I think?) had been swallowed up in the same process, and not just in Britain or Germany, but everywhere - it's called globalisation, and has almost certainly lead to Trumpundbrxit, but it is also 'progress' and; like it or not, you can't turn the clock back, for good or bad 'progression' is a one-way trip; we won't get the old brands back by voting for populist reactionaries and disrupters, but we may well get war!

That's enough beer (I think?), and proselytising! But still sticking with beverages; I think this was a soft-drink (although several beers seem to have Lutin in longer titles - or Lutine?), maybe a carbonated thing, or a yogurt thing and while I thought it might be German (I bought it in Germany) a vague attempt to find it on Google resulted in a possibility it may be a Spanish drink? As the little bear supping the Lutin looks like he could have been manufactured by Manurba or Jecsan, it's no clue!

The bear looks a dead-ringer for Mary Plain, a now rather lost and forgotten children's character, one of my favorite books is Mary Plain in Wartime, which takes us neatly to the next entry in 'mascot of the day'! Seems to be a stand-alone figure, and is polyethylene.

I thought this chap was some DIY superstore, hardware or plumbing maskot, because of the tool-box, but a slightly deeper search revealed a darker history involving IG Farben and Courthold's (the Ford Motor Company may have made some army trucks for the Nazi's, but apparently one of our biggest pre-war concerns was making plastics/fabrics for them!), slave labour and all sorts of stuff - which may be a red-herring - but it seems Diolen was a man-made fabric brand of a Vereinigte Glanzstoff-Fabriken AG, in the polyester group, to which the forenamed companies were connected?

As a result I think the 'tool-box' is a US style lunch-box and that hideously patterned set of matching checked-hat and dungarees are in fact his 'mighty, hardwearing, comfy, Diolen' work wear? Another stand-alone figure, it's the sort of PVC thing that might have been contracted from Heimo/Bully?

Sugus is a survivor brand (over all the above?), being now owned by Wrigley's where it is used in several territories, but only Spain in Europe, although when I bought it several German collectors recognised it as having been a brand of their younger days. It's another key-ring, PVC.

Also it only seems to survive as a fruit-flavor brand of wrapped, boiled-sweet (candy), while this mascot pertains to the liquorice variant, which even if it survives as a brand, won't use a mascot which might be misinterpreted in these PC times - look at the trouble they are having in Holland with the innocent Swartz Pete, or what happened to our Robinson's Golly mascot?

Again "It's progress", again problematical [in the moment] for some, but I'd rather lose a few mascots or traditions, than be a part of bullying, whether deliberate or sub-conscious, whether meant or as a bi-product of cultural activity . . . after all we used to have the happy 'cultural tradition' of burning people at the stake, after church on a Sunday; usually for living alone with a few cats!

I don't think even the execrable Mr Mogg hankers back that far - although he's a 'landowner' so he'd probably jump at the chance to add a few empty cottages to his estates, after the owners' have been immolated! 'Vote for my idea, I've got a silly accent!'

We ended-up with more proselytising! Who'd have thought I could find so much rant in five little polymer novelties, but they've all got a history! I haven't measured them but they are all between about 30 and 45mm