F is for Follow-up - Sticky Stretchy Space Men, Unguent Unicorns and Zlimy Zombies!

We've seen these a few times now, in recent years, from at least three makers, here's another trio, from two additional brands! Courtesy of Peter Evans, these would seem to confirm a quiet trend in younger kids toys, but really a re-hash of the old gum-ball capsule machine toys from the 1970's, when they tended to be monsters, insects or lizards, rather than actual figurals!

 

These are both from Huggables, who I think have a couple of show-reports in the queue, I'll try to dig them out and get them up tomorrow, it's always nice to clear a few of them in RTM! And we have the titular zombies and unicorns, one pose each, four colours, three of each colour.

 

I seem to recall from my own misspent youth, that they are best coupled with a catapult, so they hit the window with such a whack, they stick for a minute or two, before gravity starts to drag them down the window, like slowly dying slugs. All good, clean fun, except for the person who polishes the windows!

 

Kandytoys are doing astronauts, or 'Star Voyagers' (!?), who look very similar to those previously seen here at Small Scale World by Scrunchems, although these have different backpacks, and sharper detail, so the usual sub-piracy from China, as we used to get from Hong Kong!

 

Card backs were an afterthought, as I was putting them away, and don't add much, or list other sets, but it seems there's a dozen or so of the 25/30mm figures types out there under at least six brands. Try smaller or independent/small-chain toy shops or garden centres, and convenience store's revolving rack-toy trees.

R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #3

Brian's third visit this year, was to Hobby Lobby (similar to our Hobbycraft, but ours carries less of the kind of stuff we're about to look at here), where he found some useful sets of classic rack-toys, which seem to tick all the boxes!

 

 

Cold-blooded critters; the amphibians hidden among the lizards again, and we now suspect some Dinosaurs were warm-blooded, because birds are, and they are the direct descendents!

 

Fantasy; and there are more poses here than with the set we saw the other day, including a prone one, I never know if it's lying down, or the equivalent of sitting? Also there's five colourways, not four, but perhaps a more assorted assortment, in fact it looks like each colour is a different pose, with about three in each colour/pose?

 

Farm . . .

 

 

. . . and Zoo!
 

With sets dedicated to temperate/woodland animals and arctic fauna. Sculpt-count is good with these sets as well, but, as Brian pointed out in the eMail, climbing, price-wise. Still cheaper than the European equivalents though (those Peterkins are closer to a tenner, with the cheaper ones £7.99), and I dare say a mix of new sculpts, older sculpts and the odd rip-off of Schleich, Papo, or similar modern brands.

 

The others; insects and marine/sea-life. As with all the above, some look familiar, some look all new, but the suspicion is that where similar, they will be copies, so are 'variants', as far as collecting goes? All the above seem to contain duplicates, possibly pairs of everything?

 

What some of you have been waiting for, the combat troops, sculpts we've seen before, but they appear to be clean, new sculpts, rather than pantographed sub-piracies, of 'Fritz' helmeted generic US/NATO types, with the daft ATGW firer! Vehicles are simple moulding we've also seen before, as are the interlocking wall sections.

 

But these are probably more interesting, ACW types, and I don't think they are the Billy-V/Americana ones from BMC, nor the Hing Fat chaps, so new sculpts? I don't know enough about them, but if they tickle the fancy, I suspect they'll need a purchase over there, to get them over here! In fact, they look like copies of Accurate/Revell? And there's some useful artillery in there, with metal axles?

 

Many thanks to Brian for his visits to Dollar General, Daiso and Hobby Lobby, this year, highlighting the inevitable inflation (resulting from Trumps tariffs), and covering current production in/for the US. I did manage a trip to B&M a couple of days ago and found little, and will also check the rest before the end of the holidays.

P is for Peterkin's Packs of Plastic Pets

Actually, we've looked at the cats and dogs previously, but there's no good synonym for 'animals' beginning with p? I grabbed most of the outstanding Peterkin sets, when they appeared in one of the local garden centre's as post Christmas re-stock, then Peter Evans gave me another the other day, leaving two duplicates to be shot close-up, and a box-ticking check-list of the others, adding to the Peterkin Tag!

 

We saw the Birds, bagged, a while ago, so here they are 'in the flesh', pretty standard selection, unnamed on the packaging but I'm guessing here, from the lop left - Goose, Swan, Vulture, the Ashamed Eagle (currently looking for a new home, Canada; it's got more gravitas than a Beaver?), another Goose, the Guinness Toucan, an Owl, a Parrot and a Parakeet?

 

Giant Insects and small Unicorns, there seems to be two poses, each in four colours, and we may have seen them undecorated from another rack-toy issuer?

 

A mix of Cetaceans and Sharks, again, pretty standard, and pack-scale, rather than 'in scale', and some reptiles, which includes amphibians and a living dinosaur!

 

Scale here is all over the place, but it makes the Komodo Dragon perfect for 54mm figures, while a giant Chamaeleon dwarves a Frilled Lizard.

 

Possibly the poorest sculpt is the crocodile/alligator thing, which harks back to the gape-mouth dino's of the 1970's (which you can still find occasionally!), while a couple of snakes in the background are vaguely a Cobra and a more generic green Mamba/Tree Python.

 

Presumably a 'Giant Galápagos Tortoise', but not one of the more distinctive breeds, so rather a large normal tortoise! And two tree frogs, neither of which species am I going to try and guess!

 

I didn't get a good shot of the Dinosaurs, but I have a feeling this will prove to be a duplicate set too, so I'll open it and shoot them properly another day, maybe for next year's Rack Toy Month?

  

 

 Farm set

 

 

 'Zoo' set (wild animals)

 

Both pretty standard, both eight-counts on the mouldings, and I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of these are based on other peoples previous stuff, their (Peterkin's) combat infantry set are clones of earlier mouldings by other people.

SS is for Shelfie Session

Try saying that when you're drunk! I had a quick whizz round all the usual suspects the other day, and managed to shoot a few shelfies of stuff which may be of some interest to some loyal readers, or not, as the case may be!

 

Shot this pair in Hobbycraft, and I may go back for the Sherman, if only to compare it with the CTS and Airfix ones? It's the Lego-compatible range of clip-together 'kits', but differing from Lego and Cobi, in not having any studs showing on the finished article, the top layer is all 'site specific' and fully-moulded/sculpted on the final, visible faces. These were new, about two years ago, and I venture to say, at 20-quid-a-pop, all the money!

 

Off to The Range for these, I think we've seen the Harry Potter one previously, but no matter, a reminder is as good as . . . something witty I can't come up with? Hard to pin down, but I'll try - branded to RMS, brand-marked to Project Craft and imported by CDS Group "...a third party logistics (3PL) and supply chain solutions provider!", so there!

 

While these were shot in B&M the other day, Magic Box have clearly moved-on from Crazy Bones, but there's still a blind-bag element to collecting the line, they are too unpiratey (spellcheck says I invented that word!) to save for ITLAPD, so here they are.

 

It's funny, because Bushy the Twig over at planetcamp has started going to B&M, and The Range, he'd better get himself to Smyths and Hobbycraft if he really wants to copy me! And a few garden centres, and Flying Tiger, and the other one! And he needs to stop showing us the stuff he leaves in the charity shops, which he also now visits, because that’s the shite nobody's buying!

Still, he does live castles now, as well, and he's finally added a Blog archive, after nearly 20 years! He added a link-list too, a couple of years ago, but managed to avoid this Blog, and has already cut it down and placed it where nobody can find it - doesn't like sharing, see!

 

But then it took him several years to start tagging, and only after one of his readers (guess who!) kept pointing out the lack of a tag-list! And then never did it that systematically, so it's still hard to find anything, nor did he retro-Tag the first few years' stuff, so that's lost!

Don't get me wrong, there's no exclusivity to any of this stuff, I can't expect to be the only person doing this, that, or the other, and a good idea, nicked, is the purest form of plagiarism, therefore - the sincerest form of flattery!

And so soon after the 'ossuary' thing, he managed to squeeze in a Shogun reference, the day after me (literally the next day!), but I was talking about the MB Games game with the five armies of different-coloured miniature figures, not some nerdy, cerebral time-waster, for a rained-out caravan holiday!

 

It's tragic how threatened or envious he seems to be of what was originally, a completely different Blog, but they increasingly look the same, because he keeps doing what I've already done! In a few years, the only discernable differential between our two Blogs will be that all the eBay scrapings will still be over there, and all the original copy and images (mostly of a [vaguely organised] collection) will still be here!

Anyway, I promise you, you'll never find me making dollies accessories out of hot glue and toothbrush handles, ever, he can keep that! What do you think readers!

BMSS is for More Plunder, 1 of 2

And so to Reading, what was only about five weeks ago, but already seems like ages ago, where I managed to fill my boots with bits and bobs, despite there only really being three vinatge sellers present, Adrian, Paul and Steve, and it's to Mr Vickers' overburdened table we go to, first . . .

 

. . . as he gave me this! It's a bit of Hong Kong tat (Tim-Mee copies?), probably from no earlier than the 1980's, and to Steve, rather bringing down the quality of his whole table, more used - as it is - to a better class of commodity all together, but to me; another brick in the knowledge wall! Cheers Steve!

 

And the sort of thing I used to give to charity shops regularly when I was a small-scale only collector, and they'd come-in with mixed a lot. Indeed, more modern stuff like this, 20-odd years ago might have gone straight in the brand-new, shiny, Rushmoor Borough Council recycling bin! The horror, the horror!

 

30 and 40mm policemen from Starlux with a tin-plate sentry-box, of generic nature, only because I don't know the maker, I imagine, either a German or Austrian producer, and probably an accessory in a set of painted flats, or maybe lead solids around 30-50mm? But - equally - it could have been an accessory with a wooden fort set?

 

Speaking of sentries, these are Greek, Athena, and real box-tickers, I may already have a few, but there do seem to be a number of variations in uniform, and red or blue versions of most, so I grabbed one-each while they were going cheap. The cymbalist is to replace a damaged one, which I shot to hide the damage, last time we looked at them.

Likewise, the mounted, I need a better horse for the trumpeter, or a base at least, to balance him on, but he's lost a couple of the studs, so it would only, ever, be balancing! And all these, rather like their UK equivalent (the Hong Kong Herald guards), will benefit from the hot water treatment at some point!

 

A trio of Pilots, the chap on the right seems to be a modern, probably home-painted figure, in the middle is a bisque chap, who may be a World War sweetheart keepsake thing, or maybe a cake decoration, it's certainly in the style of bisque cake-decorations, and there would have been many marriages, as men went off to war, the bride would have been in the inventory already?

 

The big guy on the left is more of a mystery, as he's pretty huge, and not really 'toy soldier' compatible, so, maybe a character piece, Charles Lindburgh wears similar kit in some of his photographs? Jumper isn't lumpy enough for Amelia Earhart, and Cody was earlier, but there must have been other popular aviators back in the day?

 

A couple of home-made sci-fi figures in around 35mm, they seem to have been modelled in Plasticine, with brass and brass-wire detailing, on brass-wire armatures, do you know who made them and why? Was this your work? They seem to be exploratory rather than belligerent?

 

A bit of fantasy, I've mentioned the Crossbows & Catapults stuff a couple of times recently, and their main post is well overdue, but probably still a few years away, there's plenty on t'ut Internet for those who need it, and a few of the 1980's big-box fantasy figures, which are still waiting for their big sort-out!

 

A nice Crescent cowboy I couldn't remember if I have or not, and a couple clowns from Charbens, which are probably both duplicates now, like Pirates, I've been concentrating on a subsection of circus stuff, so there's quite a bit of it somewhere!

 

Some gash (repainted) metal from Adrian's rummage trays, I think he said one of them (chap on the far left?) is an arm swap and wasn't actually issued by Britains in that 'at the trail' configuration? And very much box-ticking, my knowledge of this stuff is minimal. I split 18 images into two posts, to help with Tagging, so more later!

D is for Donation - Chris - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

There was some equally interesting stuff in Chris's latest parcel, some of it ID'd thanks to Shaun's excellent Fantasy Toy Soldier Blog (link below), my go-to for a lot of this stuff, although I probably don't consult it as often as I ought to!

 

My second Crackerjack space figure, there were ten, not twelve, which I know because soon after showing my first here, all ten were posted elsewhere by three different authors, well, fancy that, as Private Eye would say!

 

These were the chaps ID'd on Shaun's Blog, here;

 

https://fantasytoysoldiers.blogspot.com/p/name-brand-sci-fi-toy-soldiers-after.html

 

About 2/3rds of the way down the page, as Trendmasters' 'Rumble Wars', and there are many more on that page, but it's nice to have a reference sample, for future comparisons.

 

One of them however, the one on the right here, would appear to be a copy or second tranche figure, he's smaller, unmarked and a slightly different pose, to the figure he appears to be aping, on the left in each shot?

 

I don't know if the larger figure is a King Kong knock-off, or more of a monster-monkey-man, but standard 'zoo' fare, he isn't, and more of a Halloween-targeted 'rubber jiggler' item I suspect.

 

The cat might be from a board-game, while the two googlie-eyed critters might be from the same maker, despite being quite different subjects? The eyes are the same size, they are both the same dense PVC, they are both pencil-tops. Although one also has a charm loop, which could be for a tassel, and it could just be coincidence!

 

More anthropomorphic animals here, with a flocked bear, blow-moulded cat, and several of those 'small animal family' types, which predate Kinder's hard plastics by a decade or so. Particularly interesting are the two Tony-Tiger charms, as they are umpteenth-generation, much size-reduced, copies of the original sculpt also seen here as a larger key-ring.

 

The three-wise monkeys are teeny-tiny, and may be from a kit of some kind, they are 'styrene, and possibly too small for Christmas crackers? While the large black cat must be a Halloween thing?

 

Trolls! Two cracker/gum-ball charms, and what I think must be one of the Wheetos premiums, there have been several sets over the years, having the coiffure'able hair of earlier trolls, the Wheetos ones also have distinctive faces and props/costuming like this guy's fiddle and shorts.

 

A pair of Sugar Puff's aliens, I used to think they were 'cutesy', as you might expect of kid's breakfast cereal premiums, but increasingly, they now seem to look a bit sinister?!

 

Barbarians ('Doomlords of Gulch' if Tomy version) from Crossbows and Catapults, I have mentioned in the past that there are different versions of these, and it's a future post to try and sort them all out, here you can see a clear size difference between two issuers' figures, with a probable Tomy original on the left.

 

Blind-bag Star Wars deform, a couple of novelty cracker/Halloween skeletons, and a damaged Hilco spaceman, with two new to pile figures; a large (60mm'ish?) manga/anime type ninja superhero and a smaller figure who may be a Robocop clone?

 

A large robot, who has a mechanism underneath, which resembles that of a bayblade, and may indicate he was some kind of launched, spinning novelty? A pair of Manta Force from Bluebird/Tomy, and another Buck Rogers 'C3P0' pencil-top eraser to be colour checked against the master sample, and that bloody beebly-beeble from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!

 

He's damaged, but fully marked, so gratefully received, as a sample, but I hate the little twat! I have a bagful of the Corgi ones and I hate them too - in fact, checking the Buck Rogers Tag, I've never had a good word to say about him, and always manage to insult him anew! He ruined an otherwise good TV serial!

 

Classic, big-box, TV-advertised, this-year's-big-Christmas-hit toy! I'd gone off to be grown-up, or as grown-up as I could manage, and missed most of them, but remember "Tee-Cee-Arh . . . totalcontrolracing!", the Star Bird one, "Em-Be-Games!!!!", Chutes Away, another with a helicopter and the exploding-bridge one!

 

This, originally from Tomy, was one of them, a bit big for me, and it will probably be offered-up as a swap (for other toys), but Chris explained it was only included as a space-saver/packaging. It ran up and down a track while two players fired ball-bearings at it, loser saw his bunker go airborne when the Terrible Tank reached it!

 

British Palitoy TV Ad; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMSfzxSy2FY

 

Finishing off with a few more of the Christmas cracker putti, it will be fun returning to them all one day and finding there's a whole, multicoloured orchestra, even if they have a limited number of intruments!