B is for Battle Figures

We've seen them before, but it was eight or so years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/01/s-is-for-shelfies-2-imperial-walmart.html 

 

And they are both carded, and several pages down the Tag results, so we'll look at these from Peter Evans, as an overview, Imperial's twin-set Battle Figures - proper rack toys!

 

Zombie Responders Vs Zombies, the zombies being unique sculpts only seen in the Imperial sets, while the responders are clones of those old favourites, Tim Mee's later 54mm Vietnam era GI sculpts. In their separate bags, the GI's look bigger, but it's because they are copied from more animated and gangly figures, and as you can see they are all the same height.

 

Ninjas Vs Pirates! I guess they could have met, on the high seas at some point? Again we have unique sculpts in the Ninjas (possibly a pose missing?), while the pirates are taken from the Hing Fat set, but reduced slightly in size. When we saw these as shelfies from Brian Berke in New York, way back when, I tagged them 54mm, but they are closer to 50mm.

 

Army Men Vs Cavemen, again did they only get five poses, or is one missing? Their foe were more Tim Mee knock-offs, but they were in Khaki, and almost certainly seen in one or two posts here at Small Scale World, back in the twenty-teens. Worth noting that while the new sculpts are all marked Imperial China, the GI's only have the China mark.

 

Not from these sets, and not Imperial, but in the same lot from Peter, so I'll chuck them up here as a possible complete pose count! I think we saw them recently, from Chris Smith, also as a 9-count, so that would seem confirmatory, and as I said then, I think they may be ID'd elsewhere on the Blog?

 

That's it, rack toys in Rack Toy Month! Thanks to Peter for these, and Brian and Chris for previous help with the same subjects.

H is for Huggables!

A new name on the import/jobber horizon, but Huggables' website claims they've 30-years experience, so they must have been around under another name, or just been passing generics through to end users, anonymously, and like A-to-Z(Padgett Brothers), and others, are still, also carrying some stock in the original branding. These were shot at the Gift Fair last year, at Birmingham's NEC, and it's mostly run-of-the-mill stuff.

 

The first two shots show models similar to the set of six which have made so many appearances here over the years,under at least six brand-marks and seven or eight packagings, while the third shot seems to show another iteration of that set of six poses! All credited to Chinese brand Jinfenglong (JFL).

 

These are bi-branded Huggables on a sticker and Weinida on the card-art, with that artwork suggesting wild animals, and sea life as well as these dinosaurs being available, somewhere!

 

Some from the previous shots, with a larger set of single animals (right, close ups below), hugeormous insects and reptiles, and smaller dinosaurs in blisters and carded bottle-bags.

 

Those larger models, Lexiang Toys (LX), these are well beyond the pocket-money bracket, think dentist visit treats, distractions for Rover 'going to live on the farm' or half-term shut'em ups!

 

'Zhongjeming'

 

Fantasy dragons and mythological/heraldic beasts in several sizes, and, in the case of the last set, two packing variants, the small blisters, and the last lot having a non-Huggables brand, but it seems to have been obliterated at the printing stage?

 

Many companies are carrying these, which probably come from a central source, and you can find them in petrol stations and corner shops the length and breadth of the land! 3D-printed from a colour-change, metallic polymer, any problem is likely to prove to be the polymer - so far, most 3D printing polymers I've encountered seem to be frangible (and probably short lived) plastics?

 

Novelty animals.

 

Again, the hint of a dinosaur line/bag.

 

Poor shot, sorry, brand-mark might be IPC or IPL?

 

These last four (Jisam Toys - who's going to tell them!?) are either the same as, or aping sets which are detailed in the long queue, but I'll try to get them upgraded and posted before the end of the month. All the above seven shots, are showing more traditional farm and zoo stuff, and in various configurations/sizes.

 

These shiny, semi-metallic, printed on the crinkly plastic 'header card' bags, are common, in various scales, and we’ve seen toy soldiers in them, novelty parachute toys, and etcetera, but never with a firm brand, so they may be a collective/co-op, of smaller Chinese producers, and are usually carrying stuff at the cheaper end of production, material and/or price points.

 

Likewise (cheapness), these carry-case sets, which were hard to photograph, as far as contents are concerned, but were monochromatic, polyethylene types, or one-colour-spray over PVC, with the usual accessories of farm fence sections, and generic plants/shrubs.

 

Novelty key-rings.

 

 

Novelty squishies are a more modern thing, a fine soft, memory foam, possibly a tech' coming across from the bedding sector, and here we have astronauts and a bunch of those dunny-bunny-bear things, with their whacky artwork.

 

A complete irony really, that 'art toys', which were a big thing back in the 2010's when this Blog started, and which could be 50-100+ of your currency units ($-£-Euro), and which would often, quickly resell on evilBay or at auction for many times that, are now being churned out by novelty manufacturers for 50p or a pound!

 

More of the generics in their shiny not-card cards! A half decent T54/55, if you need a Cold War unit in a hurry and have a can of matt-green, sand or brown aerosol to-hand! And a rather dodgy thing, which is a Panzer IV turret, on the same Soviet chassis!

 

Way outside the remit of the Blog (Yile Toys), but figural, so I shot it!

I can't now remember if these were resin, or more of that lightweight 3D-printer stuff (PLA or PETG), but they are big, ornamental and the sort of thing someone like TKMaxx might get in, not as 'clearance', but as shelf-filler, at Christmas! And, look . . . we seem to have the source of our diminutive, enthusiastically signalling NASA'stronaut, as seen a few posts ago, in two smaller iterations!

 

Also, by accident, as I wasn’t trying to shoot them, the equally shiny and metallic, flying foil to the tanks, both would seem to be pull-back-and-go novelty carpet toys. So that's an overview of Huggables, nothing urgent or exciting, and the sticky, stretchy window-walkers (previous post) weren't in the line-up, 18-months ago, so seem to have hit the market since.

H is for Have Screwdriver, Will Travel, Interstellar!

This is all courtesy of Peter Evans, with the carded set coming last year around Christmastime, and the figure being in the latest donation, which I picked-up the other day!

 

Apropos the construction sets we saw in the shelfies from Brian the other day, and credited to a Huan Le Play of china, it's sub-branded, on the reverse, to 'Toys' and imported by Yelsa of Luton?

 

It's the figure we're interested here at the Command Centre, the shuttle's a bit naff, and he's a fully round, slightly juvenile sculpt, but, a useful, and cheerful looking, addition to the pile!

 

However, this almost identical chap has finer detail and a better finish, both in paint and overall sculpt (although the first guy's star-spangled visor is pretty neat!), so the suspicion has to be that the Huan Le set is a knock-off of whatever toy the second geezer came from? Cheers Peter!

S is for a Surfeit of BJ's

Well, it's been going begging since they first appeared around 2015, and as they are now widespread in convenience store/corner shops and a lot of petrol/service stations/garages, I'm sure more puerile title puns will be forthcoming! These are mostly from Peter Evans, I think, although I have picked-up a few myself, and there may be some un-posted mini's somewhere, I definitely bought, back last autumn?

 

Larger six/seven-inch models.

 

Smaller four/five-inch models. 

 

Jurrassic park knock-off graphics.

I haven't looked too closely at this, but I think it's both a skeleton and a skin which clips over it for a fuller model?

 

All this stuff is out there now if you like dinosaurs. There's a lot more Dino-stuff to come in Rack Toy Month, and with duplicates of both these and previously seen ones, it's getting a bit crowded in their corner of the storage unit, so some Charity Shop donating and de-bagging/carding to come!

 

Added an hour or two later - I knew these had to be somewhere! Bought in three different shops/garages earlier this year, the sculpts are all from the same tool-set, but with differences between the coloured set and the white set, and another sculpt in the magic-sand set, we could be looking at a cavity-count of 2 or more, and they may be the same mini's issued by those Andy's Adventures magazines?