C is for Comedy Candy

As mentioned elsewhere in the last few days, Halloween was just not a thing in the UK, when I was a kid, we didn't 'celebrate' it, we weren't [culturally] aware of its connection with South/Latin America and The Day of the Dead, we didn't import any Halloween 'stuff'.

 

It is, entirely, here at least, a commercial invention (like Father's day) to sell us stuff, and we keep buying it! Ephemeral stuff, piles of polymer stuff, which goes straight to landfill, unnecessary stuff, stuff we don't need, stuff we didn't know we don't need, and . . . amusing, edible stuff!

 

This missed last year's Halloween posts, as it was given to me by a customer I was delivering to, in Frimley Green, on the 31! Under the wrapper it was a smooth, milk-chocolate oval, and very nice!

 

These are in Lidl at the moment.

 

Candy Container.

 

Anything container!

 

I succumbed to some of the polymer shite, myself! There were several colours and I nearly selected the purple one, but decided the clear one would look most like a crystal skull, once emptied, and took that instead, and I think it was a good decision, looking at it empty? I'll find something to keep in it, and it can sit somewhere, looking vaguely sinister! I think it was also Lidl?

 

Not nice! Not-chocolate-mice! Chocolate 'flavour' (not 'flavoured') sugar candy, they taste fatty, and aren't quite as realistic looking as the artwork on the B&M box would suggest. As kids, I remember us being disappointed by mini-eggs at Easter, which were made out of this devil's faux-chocolate!

 

The missing pumpkin from a previous post . . . I bought another pack, they were so cheap! B&M stores, and they did have the more colourful ones, from a couple of years ago, I just didn't see them last time!

 

Also Lidl, these are better chocolate, with some actual chocolate in!

Well - once you've unwrapped it, to photograph . . . ! 

 

The Aldi catalogue shows similar Lollies.

H is for Hodgepodge Hash of Halloween Horrors

I'm hoping to get another post out before midnight tonight, and it should publish before the witching-hour in the US, as I get another five or six hours, after my shift, to facilitate the aim, but in case the UK readers miss it, before bed, here's a few other bits and bobs which have a seasonal element, and have mostly crossed my door in the last five or six weeks!

Remembering I found a set last year, when I saw these in B&M (Morrison's last year) I had to have them, and like last year's, they were lovely, in the same generic tutti-fruity sort of supposedly 'strawberry' way! Indeed, I would say they came from the same source, and I didn't see any others, not even in Morrison's?

 

I seem to recall these were Aldi, but they might have been Lidl? More edibles, best kind of seasonal stuff is edible stuff! Fondant-centred, [not very] monster mice, one a sort of truffle-cream with rice crispies, the other white-chocolate fondant, nom-nom-nomnivore! Obviously a shit-shot of the white one, but you can't re-shoot something, if you've eaten it!

 

Having grabbed two walkers, as the only thing worth buying in a garden centre last year, I felt I also had to grab these, while muttering darkly to myself about 'another side-collection', but you can blame that yellow Christmas stocking robot who survived for several decades in the attic! These are pull-overs, in that cold, clammy silicon type mega-soft, stretchy rubber, which a generic white-button body underneath, and while two are the same design under the paint, the other had no second version, and all three were equally distributed? Asda for the win!

 

I would add - having mentioned them - that the Garden Centres had very poor Halloween displays this year, and seemed to clear them quickly, like over a week ago, they are too desperate to get their Christmas 'markets' up and running!

I'd found these online, and don't know the maker/brand, but if I see them out and about, they will find home-room in that slowly growing 'walker' sub-collection, I actually found a bunch of the other white-button walker soldiers a while back, but forgot to shoot them before they went to storage, so there's a future post!

 

Finally, these came from Lidl about two weeks ago, ghost tea-lights! I think I might paint-in the eyes and mouths of the other two to match the white one, black paint for the orange one and white for the black candle?

Apologies for spelling but Mozilla ad-ons don't seem to be working properly tonight, and I have no spellchecker!

R is for Rocket Science!

Seen in Lidl this week, so still there if you need another bed-side, occasional, ambient or mood light! Sadly I have too many to my name already! And it's only eight-quid!

It's rocket science!

E is for Easter Bunnies - The Half-Sensible Bit!

Well, it was a bit of fun, and not as expensive as I thought it might be, some of them were only a quid or two, but I have got about 20-quids worth of chocolate rabbits to eat, just as I was sliming-down down that middle-age spread, having gone back to work, at something semi-physical!

 

But I didn't purchase every bunny I found, just a cross-section of the more normal ones, I regret the grinning Kinder Bunny, as it's really in the class I avoided, but I console myself with the fact that at least I know what it will taste like!

 

Aldi's had a plethora of Bunnies, including a colour variant of the one I obtained (left), which was the 'specially selected' hazelnut one, and a more colourful range of both upright and squatting milk-chocolate ones . . . maybe next year! The Aldi Rabbit also won several of the online taste-tests, so I'm saving it till last!

 

I seem to recall touching on the Rabbit Wars, a few years ago, when Lindt finally had to admit the basic shape predated their Rabbit by decades, allowing Aldi, Lidl and others to turn-on the taps which have led to today's choice. Since when there has been the Caterpillar Cake War, and regular flare-ups!

 

The Lindt, though, remains a nicely smooth 'European' chocolate, and comes in about six sizes, of which the larger ones tend to have more limited availability, and I only got the smallest three, having half a mind how the posts would develop!

 

I didn't see Lidl's Lindt clone, but they got too confident after the previous round of Rabbit Wars, and made one so similar (in packaging) they had to destroy tons of them a couple of years ago! But their upright did run to two colours, of which I took the blue, naturally, but pink was there!

 

Rejected uprights included the three licensed or 'product placed' Rabbits from Smarties, Milkybar and M&M's, all stupid looking, and while OK for kids, a further example of how a few corporations have literally turned us into consumer-sheep in a few decades, nasty!

 

And don't get me wrong, many years ago I asked for a Smarties egg, and still have the mug, it's one of my favourite mugs, but firstly, that was when A) an egg in a mug was as good as it got, and B) Smarties still tasted nice, and of chocolate, the last few times I've bought smarties I've regretted it, they're flowery-chalky pap now!

 

The three uprights I did end-up with included the Cadbury's Peter, because it was Peter, not because I like their chocolate, I don't! The Lidl Favorina and the Kinder, if I'd been thinking straighter, I'd have got the Thornton's and shot the Kinder, but given the amount of Kinder on the blog, and the fact there may be a toy worth a post in its belly, means it happened the way it happened!

 

Bare chocolate Rabbits were around, and while the Thornton's was expensive for what is now no more than another shelf-brand, I think most of their shops have gone now, just a few dozen franchise 'boutiques' mostly shared with other brands, like Ferrero (Kinder), while the Favorina (Lidl) was too daft-looking, another one for the kids!

 

While this one wasn't as big as its message gives the impression it was, to the casual observer, rejected for being daft-looking! I think I shot it in Aldi?

 

These three all seem to have used the same contractor, or the same commercially available 'off the shelf' mould-tool? From the left we have Tesco's, Morrisons' and Asda's, with only the wrapping being different, I will eat these in sequence, to see if the taste differs? Follow-up in twelve-months? Possibly!

 

The Tesco came in four different pastel wraps, I chose the green, while the Asda also came as a white-chocolate Bunny with a suitably pale artwork and polka-dots! Interestingly though, the online artwork for 'my' Asda Bunny shows a much darker-brown colourway, which may be last year's version, still being used for publicity shots?

 

Another upright and more animated, smaller, filled Rabbits from Nomo, these were in Morrison's, but I think I did see them elsewhere, and I was tempted by the upright, he would have improved the group-shot above, but my several experiences of gluten-free pies have not been good (the pastry is like cardboard), so I stopped myself, and will never know how good or bad they might have been!

 

I can't remember if I shot these in Morrison's or Sainsbury's, the latter, I think, but again too cartoony for me, and more eggy than Rabbity, so pretty much off the parameter list, before I saw them, but Belgian chocolate is never bad?

 

Speaking of Sainsbury's, theirs was by far the prettiest of the wrappings, with a rich greenish-gold that gave Lindt a run for their money, without aping the Swiss one so close as to risk a court-case, design was the closest too, but it wouldn't stand-up, having a bowed base, and needs to be propped!

A comparison with the Aldi and one of the similar trio, to compare with the previous shot.

 

If you go ordering Chocolate Bunnies online, you find lots of smaller, regional or bespoke brands offering similar fayre, of which I was rather taken by the semi-realistic wrap on this one from the Candy Store, but I wouldn't trust chocolate hollow-Rabbits or eggs ordered online to arrive in one piece! And with those ears it might be a Hare!

 

With the many types out there, the alternate wraps, and the regular changes in artwork, one hopes somebody, somewhere, is annotating them all, as I'm too busy with toy figures to disappear down a Chocolate Rabbit hole!

E is for Easter Bunnies - Breaking! Murder in Rabbit Town!

 

"They've killed Kenny!"

 

E is for Easter Bundesbunny!

 

 

Lady Favorina Lidl has joined the Family gathering!

D is for Damn Shelfies!

I swear to God (with something more believable as my witness) these shelfies are hiding in Picasa, and every time I think I've rounded them all up, three more pop out of the woodwork! These are from October, December and the other day!

We looked at these infant-like Teamster trucks in a previous shelfie post, but I had shot another of the 'water tank' version with sharks in, really just a box ticker, as these animals will turn-up in mixed lots years from now, and need ID'ing!

 

A rather poor shot, like the previous taken in B&M, this one at Christmas, and these were in those bog-box stacks above the groceries in the 'entrance' isle you are forced to go down the full length of before you can navigate to where you really want to be! But it means they may have cleared after Christmas? If they haven't, I'll try to get a better shot next time I'm over there!

 

The brown Polar bear looks like the cream ones in the common charity-shop group, so they may be new colours of those existing, so-far generic, sculpts.

 

Seen in Lidl a few weeks ago, it looks like an Ariane or similar Euro-satellite launch-vehicle? Siku, and a long-box - twice the price, of so, of their little Matchbox types.

News, Views Etc . . . Bit of a Round-Up

I had an unexpected day-off today, so having had a lazy night last night and not popped-out the two posts I had planned, I'll try to get them out later tonight! But I did faff-about until the early hours, going through a stack of catalogues and ephemera, scanned a few things and archived some stuff from Bluebird, Comansi and Klienbahn, so it wasn't a wasted time!

In the meantime, someone eMailed me to ask if the article in January's Collectors Gazette was plagiarising the Blog, and the honest answer is, probably! A while ago I noted, here, at Small Scale World, that several articles in that publication bore a more than slight resemblance to articles posted here, a few weeks, or months before they appeared there, and while I thought they'd knocked that silliness on the head, you can't have missed their coverage of military trains, so soon after we had several visits to them here?

 

When the author (who knows me, and is known to me) waxes lyrical "...these little harbingers of the plastic revolution are often overlooked - but I'm about to rectify that situation", he seems to be ignoring all the work done here by me and contributors, or elsewhere as mentioned in six posts, over eleven years! And his total number of models is out by at least two, maybe more! [I think there may be a little helicopter of the 'grasshopper' type]

 

Let's not forget he/they published two articles on me in their November 2005 edition! And, I probably get more traffic in a week, than they sell issues in a month! He seems to have nicked the image of the Armstrong Whitworth 'flying wing' and added the data from this Blog's article, I don't know, and his 1930's date . . . where does he get that from? None of them were flying then!

 

It's actually a bit tragic, you have the two Paul's pretending they haven't seen the blog (one of them's regularly commented on), so they can post the same stuff a few weeks later, as 'never seen before', Ramses the 5th pretending he doesn't get his few facts from here, TJF and his cock-wacking monkey-lizard and their shite, the Vichy wholesale downloading my stuff, and the AFD, one of whom still pretends to be my 'mate', but only after Stad's has left the building! In point of fact - one of the Brit's does that as well, but usually before Stad's has entered the building!! And people making shit-up, all over the place!

 

Onwards and upwards . . . it's still the 6th! One of my neighbours down the corridor made a lovely little Christmas display on the door of his flat, and taking the lead from him, I managed to buy the last door-hanger in the hardware store a few days before Christmas!

So I made this, with some of the stuff in the 'Gay Tree' top-up box, which happens to be here! It was the sum-total of my decorations this year, but I had three shiny robots and an astronaut on the windowsill behind the laptop, which were joined by two large gold bows from my Crimbo' prezzies, so some effort to celebrate was made!

 

I used my surprise day-off to pop into town and obtain the offending CG, and while in WHSmiths, who I normally try to give as little money as possible to (I try to always use the much-cheaper Rymans after watching Staples fold), I found this Schleich boxed-set, at half-price! Shit shots, but I rushed them a moment ago! Well worth the seven-quid-something, for four, given they start at a fiver for the small ones in the toy shop, a few doors up!

 

I'll leave them in the bags for now! I wonder if this isn't just clearing the 'blind bag' stuff, I've seen them (the blind-bags) in Smyths, but who's going to shell out six or seven pounds for something they can't see, a pound maybe, even two or more now for the Lego minifigs? But more than a fiver?

 

I'm on the last of Lidl's Favorina bears, and gave the After Eight's away as a late gift, but I haven't started the chocolate orange, and still have most of the Belgian truffles and three Lindt mini-bears, so edible-Christmas will extend 'till at least Valentines Day! Shops are already full of it! So a proper Happy New Year to loyal readers, and to the plagiarists, copycats and annoying little tick-turd golems, may I wish only, my recent luck, on you!