S is for Shark Transporter!

Because you need to transport your sharks, of course! I've been umming-and-areing on this, for most of the summer, whilst waiting fruitlessly for weeks, to see the helicopter set arrive in local stores, which it did, briefly, over a month after being announced, only to sell-out before I could get a second one, to average out the poses*. But, I kept seeing this, is the same line of '2-for-£20' sets, and I kept not investing, but equally, kept forgetting to take a shelfie!

 

B&M website, Shark Transporter corporate shot!

 

Getting very pissed-off with this quite expensive, especially when compared with the old cheapo' Fuji Finepix and Nikon Coopix's I've been using since the start of the Blog, Olympus OM System camera. Too big to shoot in my bedsit, I couldn't get the flash to trigger, under any setting!

 

The case is already in the recycling system!

 

One item of road transport, and in the end I forced the fixed 'tank' off, to get a half-descent shot of the baby shark being transported, although, when I say 'baby', it fills a lorry, it's just smaller than the loose ones in the set!

 

Two deep-sea submersable exploration types.

 

A pair of more conventional tourist/sightseeing submarines.

 

A couple of surface vessels, including a quite chunky hovercraft.

 

It's not Stingray, it doesn't want to look like Stingray, it's never seen Stingray, it has no idea what Stingray's fins look like, or the configuration of Stingray's rear-engine vent, it's not called Stingray, doesn't want to be called Stingray, and look - it has a blunt-nose! It's the bootleg Stingray!

 

Four vinyl-like sharks, from the left a Hammerhead, Basking, Swordfish and Great White . . . in scale with the one on the truck, these are about 30-feet long!

 

The reason I gave-in and bought it, apart from getting a Blog-post based on actual 'stuff', was in part for the five animals, but also because everything here's plastic, so the vehicles will go very well with the Bruder and Kinder types, in future overviews.

 

This Dinosaur Transporter, is also in the line, and has four of the smaller-size dinosaurs, I think this has been shelfied here before, as a future 'mixed-lot' animal ID aid, and we've seen and shelfied similar dino-trucks from/in B&M, Smyths and TKMaxx.

 

* The fact that the only decent set of small soldiers seen in any of the big stores this year, sold out so quickly, is possibly a message the stores have failed to recognise. More toy soldiers please!

R is for Retro Moon Man

If you have a theme - stick to it! This is actually the last one in the queue for now, but that's not to say I won't find another in the next few weeks, or certainly over the next few months. We're back to Legami, with another retro/deform/NASA astronaut, and this one is a pencil sharpener, with a shavings-collecting back-pack/life-support unit!

 

 

  

He also has one of those movement-triggered LED lights, hidden behind his opaque visor, so when you pick him up or shake/move him, he lights up, like some near-critical loon, about to go nuclear!

N is for New Recruits - Seasonal Soldiery

A couple more additions to the bauble purchases, although I think tree-hangers is the correct term for these two non-glass additions!

 

I though, after I'd got him home, that I'd already bought one of these a year or two ago, but in fact, that was a different moulding altogether, and had green trousers or something, so there are now two of these glazed ceramic, slip-cast chaps!

 

Meanwhile, this chap is mostly wood, but with a resin head and accessories, glued on, it's another bear as well, so ticks two boxes, but do I place him on the tree with the bears, and end-up with another soldier nearby, or place him with the soldiers and end up with another bear nearby? What a quandary . . . doh!

 

Highlighting exactly why we will go extinct, possibly within the lifetimes of people already born - they highlight their creditable working with FSC sustainable forestry, then using a polymer-wax glue, place resin blobs all over him, give him a metallised polymer string hanger, and then use one of those annoying, and ephemeral clip-ties to hold ALL the 'paperwork' on, nothing remotely sustainable or eco' here!
 

He came from Haskin's on the Wrecclesham-Borden road, and they also had a family of non-military resins, and blown-glass baubles of bears in pajamas! I was tempted, but if you don't limit yourself to a few a year, you'll drown in them!

J is for Jurassic Busy Book

A return to Phidal, there's been a big restocking in TKMaxx for Christmas, and while most of them are sets we've seen already, or sets I'm not interested in, this seems to be new, except it's dated 2022, but isn't the one we looked at here, which was dated 2021 anyway! Although with the same 'Phidal' bases, they will go together well.

 

 Cover.

 

Contents.

 

Tyrannosaurus Rex - Giganotosaurus 

Velociraptor - Atrociraptor (best dinosaur name ever!)

 

Allosaurus - Dilophosaurus

Dimetrodon - Parasaurolophus

Therizinosaurus - Pyroraptor 

All from the other side.

Two of these play-mat scenes (top right and bottom left) might make useful background sheets for future photography, but due to the polymer lamination of these sheets, it'll require careful ironing at low temperatures to get all the folds out, but I have hung on to them for now.

F is for The Franchise Continues!

Not much new in the way of Phidal for a while now, but TKMaxx gets regular updates, usually of sets we've seen before, or stuff which I don't need or want here, but this was just about within the wider reach of the Blog, so I grabbed one.

 

There's a certain irony, that a set of films in which the various movie-kids have quite eclectic collections of toys, unlike our thematic boxes/tubs of wooden bricks, Action Man / Lego / Meccano / Airfix / chemistry set or model railway stuff, has given rise to a range of toys which now means millions of real kids have models of those self same eclectic mixes! All very Warhol's pop, eating itself.

 

I haven't seen Toy Story 4, nor any of the others, for that matter, but I've seen enough clips, and read enough to know that '4 is a slightly darker work, with the toys meeting new toys, falling out, getting back together, saying goodbye to each-other and generally, reflecting more on the fragmented life of an adult? 

 

There's supposed to be a Toy Story 5 in the works, and it's said to be darker still - Toys meet Tech; will TS10 have the toys suffering sun-fading and plastic disease, while their human owners, all grown-up, lose their homes to unemployment, or die of cancer in childbirth?

 

Cover.

 

Contents - the play-mat looks naff.

 

From the top left; Ducky, Officer Giggle McDimples (supposedly based on Polly Pocket toys, with a bit of Paw Patrol, she bears a remarkable resemblance to Lucy from  Peanuts?), a Combat Carl Junior, Duke Kaboom (who has since survived a law-suit from the estate of Evel Knievel), Forky the Spork, Woody, Bo Peep, Buzz,  Gabby Gabby and Bunny - Ducky and Bunny are carnival prizes, sewn-together at one point!

M is for More Stationary

Picked these up the other day, planets in The Range, and the cacti in TKMaxx, actually looking for Halloween or Christmas stuff, drew a bit of a blank on those, but these were worth a punt, given previous things seen here!

 

Tinc again, on the small ones, the larger are an unbranded generic, and I'm beginning to think the originals of these must have been Iwako, just because of the number of other items pirated from them, and the number of these cacti I've seen, we saw two lots a few years ago, one lot I cut-up and 'painted' with marker pens, to make Wild West scenery, the other set I may have only shelfied, but these two sets, in different sizes, were in TKMaxx on red-tickets the other day, so it was a no-brainer, as the expression is, these days!

 

While The Range was carrying these (CDS Group), and they were nearly out, in two stores, so I must have just missed them on previous visits, they are in remarkably subdued or nondescript packaging, so that's plausible, and because the carrying cartons were nearly empty, I don't know if there were more than the two designs seen here, an Earth-like planet and a Saturn like ringed-world.

 

But it's what's at the core of these planets that got me purchasing them, not giant diamonds, boring! But, a shuttle-craft and an astronaut! Which, judging by the wooden-pick in the shots (which looks slightly longer than the one supplied on the packs?) are about 25/35mm, and eminently suitable for joining the stash!

P is for Papo's Pot of 40mm Plastics

Picked this up, reduced, at a garden centre a while back, I visited a couple this afternoon and picked-up some useful tree decorations, but nothing Halloween, nor any new toys, or novelties, but I like to keep an eye on them!

 

I think we saw these when they were first released at the London Toy Fair at Kensington Olympia, but that particular lot of shots may still be in the long queue . . . Doh! Anyway, we've seen the 40mm Pirates, probably not all of them yet, but most now? These are the farm!

 

Horse rider and horse, I think we've had her come-in with a mixed lot at some point, so she can go in the swaps pile, once I've everything together and sorted, the poultry, however are a tad big in my opinion, they could chase that calf 'till its heart gives out!

 

Heavy horses.

 

Everybody else! That's it box, or Toob, ticked!

W is for Wax Wildlife!

Wax novelty-shaped crayons, a staple of Kinder for many years, but other people do do them, from time to time, and these were picked-up in The Range and TKMaxx, months apart, but they were figural, so . . . Small Scale World's latest wax wildlife!

 

Not very gummi-bear'ish, their arms and legs are too 'formed', and they have proper faces! Pretty sure these NPW were in The Range, back in April, but I'm not as sure now, as I was a few minutes ago, and they may have been TKMaxx clearance?

 

These (Rex London) were definitely in TKMaxx, last weekend!

Gotta' get your ducks in a row!

L is for Lazy Lizard Lounges in Lucky Bag!

So, I said in the shelfie-post the other day, that I'd bought a test one, and I dare say those of you who know me well enough, might guess which one it would be, farm? Unicorn? Noooooowh! Dinosaurs, of course! But it turned out to be doubly disappointing!

 

The first disappointment, it was mostly flat, paper product, and yes, I know kids love colouring, kids love stickers, kids love puzzles, but in my day it would have been a plastic or rubber dinosaur, some sweets, and something which made a noise! We buy this shit so you don't have to!

 

One small surprise was that the stated eight items, were in fact nine; they clearly think coloured-pencils and a colouring sheet count as one item? And it was also interesting to see some of the contents branded to both Playwrite (WH Cornelius, ex-WHC / Success) and Henbrandt, who are rivals in the same pocket-money, novelty field.

 

The second disappointment though, was that the otherwise, kitsch, but cool-looking inflatable dinosaur, was so cheaply made, it leaked air from a half-welded seam, and I had to try and carefully close the cap (no valve) without pushing so much air out, it wouldn't stand up! You win some, you lose some, and now we have half-an-idea what all the bags contain . . . no figures, no sweets, no whistles, rattles or blowers, except a blown blow-up!