F is for the Flintstone's Flyer!

I could have spent the last couple of hours chucking a few posts up here to blow the record, but I'm going to that anyway before the month is out (I think this post equals the record?), but I was sent a bunch of card buses earlier and said I'd go through P-Z looking for the last of mine, which I've just done, only, one of them wasn't a bus, by any stretch of the imagination!

Somebody called Cleo (the printers?) for a Thornycroft of Gerrards Cross (not the HGV manufacturer!), for a chocolate egg! Well, Cream Eggs and Cadbury's Mini-Eggs will be in the shops by next Tuesday, you know it and I know it!

 

Scale is all over the place, but realism doesn't have to come first when you have prehistoric men using dinosaurs as earthmovers! Also, the artwork on the three sides doesn't tie-in, as it has on the buses, so just a bit of fun!

W is for Walking Wounded!

A quick seasonal return to the Dutch, DS Plastics egg-animals from Theo, following the mending of the legs so cruelly snapped in transit!

A reminder of the catalogue image, the dog belongs to another set/catalogue item, but 437 is the 'egg animals' and while the concept, as a joke, works well for the birds, I'm not so sure if you can associate the hare with eggs, beyond the obvious Easter reference, hence this seasonal post!

It was the red duck and the green chicken which lost their legs in transit, and speaking as someone who has little bags and trays of mending or finishing-off 'projects' all over the estate, it does help if you do any mending when the breaks/damage are fresh, as clean breaks glue better!

The chicken, cockerel and hare are illustrated in the catalogue, but the presence of the duck-sculpt, suggests there may be others, I suspect not, only because I can't think of another obviously Easter'y one . . . goose, hedgehog, so maybe this is it, but you never know?

Other seasonal items offered in the wholesale catalogue include 014, a large egg which will be half opaque, coloured plastic and half transparent, it would have contained mini, chocolate eggs or a selection of small novelties, such as those also supplied by DS Plastics to De Gruyter 'lucky bags'.

Items 010 and 026 seem to be similar smaller 'capsule toy' eggs, but are found on different pages, so may have size differences in the accompanying price-list, missing here? It should also be mentioned that research by Dutch collectors has revealed some (but not all) of DS's catalogue were ex-Siku tools.

Invisible mend! I wasn't happy with the size of the ducks in the collage, but collaging three items is never as easy as two or four! Many thanks to Theo van der Werden for both the animals and the catalogue scans.

B is for Bunnies - 3 - Chocolate Bunnies and Bits!

As I was replying to Brain's eMails last night it crossed my mind I hadn't checked Picasa for any 'Easter' tagged folder/s waiting patiently for their day, so I did and found one with two images, to which I added a third later, this is the crumbs of Easter, at the end of a nusy weekend on the Blog!

A Cadbury's mini 'super-bunny' compared with two sizes of the famous Lindt gold bunny, I think this was my edible haul at Easter 2019, when the world was still sane'ish! And - to be honest - I think most of them are supposed to be hares (Osterhase), but we ran with a Bunny trope this year!

Brian sent these last May and while the aim was a Wind in the Willows post, I felt they were eggy enough for an Esater post, I think they are Ceramic gift-shop ware, but they could be chalkware and I don't know who the maker/branding is?

Downloaded these from an eBay lot a while back, couldn't resist them! They are by Goula (who's wooden station with plastic flats (nice book-ending to the days posts!) we saw on the Blog here - fourth image down), and they too are all wood . . . and wire.

That's about it for today, Happy what's left of Easter!

L is for The Loyal Subjects

Odd name, crazy product, and it was actually a Walmart exclusive for Easter last year, marketed by Wave 2 LLC as The Loyal Subjects, but  not really available to me at the time, in fact I only re-discovered them by accident the other day! And it's been a bit of a merry-go-round getting them here in time, but we managed by the skin of the hairs on our chinny-chin-chins!

Not knowing how things were going to pan-out I helped myself to all last years promotional images, which as they differ from those on the packaging must be from Walmart's own PR department, a campaign which must have been successful, because dozens of blogs, websites, 'zines and so on, covered them in full, at the time!

I actually managed to locate some reasonably-priced mint ones; there are a fair few sellers around and about, but one is considerably cheaper than the others, so I grabbed two sets in the hope of finding a few glow-in-the-dark or rarer ones, but that's now for another day.

The Loyal Subjects' packaging artwork, There are ten basic sculpts with the glowing variants, and metallic rarities to find . . . there's a silver one on evilBay at the moment for silly money, but they will have sold in vast numbers a year ago (why there are still so many on feebleBay) and even the rare ones will still be turning-up, in mixed junk lots, years from now!

Pleased to see that Walmart put three aliens in their egg (you should get two and one 'other stage'), as I had done the same thing while I still had only a few! I refound them by accident, when some chap was selling a few of the same colour (with Lanard space marines as enemy!), and as soon as the first lot arrived, he listed another lot in a different colour, so I bought those, only for the cycle to repeat a third time!

The cavern! And my three tumbling out of their egg - after careful posing! I've missed out on one variant of blue wrap, and there may be a second green design, but it's not clear from the promotional shots. But all packs have two yellow eggs, so they are commoner than the blue or green.

Not knowing if the eggs would have the right mix, I then found a seller who was offering a set of all ten for a decent price, but when they arrived there was two blue and no purple! So I shot them against the hope a rabbit would be pulled from a hat . . . it was!

It was an honest mistake; he's obviously opened loads to make up the sets, and with four of the poses being very similar (red, green, blue and purple), had accidently sent me two alike, however he then fired-off the purple one in the mail (with a spare egg!) and it arrived earlier in the week, so I could get them finished in time for today! Happy Xenomorphic Easter!

[I'm sending him a UK food parcel (Marmite, Gold Bars, Tunnock's and Jaffa cakes) by way of a 'thank-you'!]

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And this bears a digression - The originals, like most evilBay stuff these days (which really should be called EVILbay) were sent via the 'Global Shipping Program', which 1) isn't global, there's only a few countries signed up to it. 2) Makes everything 8-14 days slower than if they are sent through the normal mail channels, and 3) seems to be a revenue generating scam for eBay, Pitney Bowes and Hermes (UK) while 4) possibly defrauding HMRC (?) as well as hideously overcharging the buyer (and short-changing the seller?), so all three 'agencies' can have a slice of purely invented pie!

Literally everything through the program is taking 10-14 days or longer, with an endless wait at "Global Shipping Center, Erlanger, Kentucky", while everything sent through normal, national, mail systems takes about 5 or 6 days. And while they sit in Erlanger, spurious and nonsensical 'tracking' notes are added every other day or so, dated to a day or two earlier; when there was no note on that date!

Now - I have been told that there's a way of opting out of the Global Shipping Program, but I can't find the button, so any help/thoughts on the subject would be appreciated by me and probably a lot of other readers?

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Facehuggers and Chest Bursters! There are two of each, so a decent set of four eggs should, could, might contain all four! Like the adult Aliens, both Facehuggers are similar, it's really only the tails that differ, These are not in scale with the fully-grown Xenomorphs, but - following the [fictional] 'science' - if the donor/infected . . . inseminated is an elephant or a rhino . . . !

I can't ever get the Spaceballs tap-dancing Burster out of my mind, despite having seen the Alien one may more times! The fact that John Hurt reprises his role "OH no, not again" might have something to do with it!

I was hoping to use the eggs to do an 'opening' video, and might have if the glitch with the purple one hadn't been sorted out, but it was, and I really am pushed for time at the moment (real life stuff), so I'll hold them sealed for now and get it sorted in a year or two, probably for Easter Day again. But; here's promo' shots with both the glowers and a silver Alien.

As I mentioned, the initial seller was including random Lanard troops (also a Walmart exclusive - in the 'States!) and they do make for the best enemy, although Previews Exclusive (PX) / DST (Diamond Select Toys) carried similar sized Colonial Marine troopers from EMCE's 'Nanotoys' design range. For the Facehuggers you'll need an Action Man/G.I.Joe!

Initial shot up at the gravel works a few weeks ago, and a full Xenomorph line-up, taken in the garden this week! The yellow one is a nice sculpt, but hard to get to stand up, while the Orange one is the most menacing, the others all look more curious, or surprised!

Oh! That's me on the radar, I'd better scoot . . . now where's the damn cat gone?!!

O is for Ovoid, Ovid 'Old Friends'!

Having posted the small-scale ones several times and seen them also posted elsewhere on the Internet (or in my eMail's inbox) as 'unknown' before remembering they were Tombola, only for Paul Morehead to then remind me that they had been large-scale and branded to Party Pig in Plastic Warrior magazine's issue 82, they've only gawn and turned up again in't they! And they're in Easter eggs - double-bloody-bargain and the yolks on us!

As found on the Internet (left hand shot), there are two outlets on eBay.com that I know of, but there are other sources out there. I had to get a set straight away and what came is the bag on the right, 12 eggs with three each of four designs of egg-wrap, and two colours of polyethylene egg.

The bag has a header card that I think we've seen before (possibly from Brian Berke, but I can't remember if it was as a shelfie or donation) and which is trying to be the current card from  . . . err . . . Amscan - I think (Another Brian B contribution). On posting - Yes; the football erasers (among others).

As we shall see in October, rack toys with these cards can be sourced in the UK with an over-printed branding to Fun Express, here it's a sticker for the Oriental Trading Co. of Omaha, Nebraska (whispers . . . they share their postal code with Fun Express!). There's also a possibility of a Chahai being the actual manufacturer?

Ten poses have gone missing (all nine 'Blues' or 'Imperial Pilots' and the 'Greys' or 'Vaders' standing firing chap), but you get eight different figures and four [different] duplicates so it looks deliberate, and the missing poses don't feature in any of the publicity shots I found, so that seems to be it? I would further venture that from set to set the four duplicates will differ by thirds - thus a fourth tool-shot is split between three 'sets'?

The decoration is nothing to write home (or a blog article) about, but they will be a post-PVC substitute and should take PVA paints with no ill effects, although give them a good wash first, they are quite 'shiny' and that may be a leaching or a mould-release agent.

The guy pointing with his sidearm (bottom right) needs a bit of a hot-water treatment to straighten his weapon, and a few could use a flattening of the base with the same trick - I run near-boiled water over them then slide them across a cold, stone/marble cutting-board.

Sadly - even in the larger scale; their wellington-boots and gauntlets leave them looking as if their next task is masturbating a prize-bull into a jam-jar! Still they have face-mask/respirators so they've got nothing to complain about on the 'protective gear in the workplace' front.

With its usual brilliance for surrealism; Hong Kong/China use completely different figures on one of the shrink-wrapped egg-bands, being those hoary old favourites - a mix of three Matchbox US Infantry and two of the original 1990's Jaru 'fritz helmet' GI's, all five rendered in outline!

Happy Space-War'tastic Easter loyal readers!