M is for Micro Fidgetz

I can't believe he managed to squeeze Ossuary into something so quickly, manner from Heaven, that must have been! And so soon after name checking Gygax monsters, after a fashion! So fragile, yet so pleased with his own idea of himself, but seeming to know so little?

 

Continuing the intermittent clearing of blind-bag and novelty capsule stuff from the folders, and these are in the shops now, from HGL, an old pocket-money importer, whose corporate structure and business model has suffered, endured, maybe enjoyed (?) several changes, in the few years this Blog has been going.

 

Very much a knock-off of the Toy Box miniature versions of other toys from Hasbro, Mattel and co., which we saw, just over a year ago, but here with the hook that they are all fidget toys, or cheapo-novelties, rather than the licensed properties and TV advertised stuff of our childhood memories, in that earlier set.

 

There's the one you can see in the mirror-backed clear dome, sealed against filching, by a shrink-wrapped film, like a soft-drink! Inside are four foil packets with the other toys [of toys] inside. Other items include a fidget-spinner, Jacob's ladders, a squish-ball, slinky and the like.

 

Series one missed me completely, and series two claims to have 25 to collect, but lists various colour variations within that count, which is further complicated by some pairs, counting as one, like the dinosaurs here, giving more than 31 items to find if you are minded to? But with two dinosaurs and a balloon-animal, I'll stick at five . . . it’s a full house! No, I don't know the significance of the switch, but guess it's a fidget 'thing'!

M is for Maruzem Beretta 92SB

Yeah! Don't tell the Rozzers, they shoot you for owning shit like this! Fortunately, it's buried in a storage container, and is only a lighter! But it's made to resemble the real thing, and is unusual for being a lighter, these Japanese-licensed toy guns are usually air-soft BB pellet firers, not lighters.

It's actually scaled-down a bit too, maybe 30%'ish? But you wouldn't carry this around now, it really could get you shot! All the rage at a leisure-pit, keys in the fruit-bowl, bright, patterned skirts, long hair and flares, freak-off, in the early 1970's, how times change!

 

When we were kids, we loved stuff like this, we'd spend our pocket-money on it, on a day-trip to France with the school, but you don't even see it for sale over there now . . . my brother bought a flick-knife, a proper one!

 

It's a gas-burner, filled via a nozzle hidden in a small recess in the pistol grip, and a small flame-adjuster is hidden in a recessed slot near the trigger. 

 

There is a more obviously novelty one, petrol/lighter-fluid fired, but it needs work, the Bakelite handle has come loose with warping, and the mechanism is jammed solid, so, I thought, maybe, if I ever get the time, and manage to settle down, I'd do it as a project for YouTube, I've seen people work wonders with solid lumps of rust, this just needs a bit of TLC; disassemble, clean, straiten, lubricate and reassemble!

E is for Eye Candy - Sort Of!

I think we've seen this before, in passing, but I took it apart and cleaned it of a lifetime's kitchen grime, a while ago and seem to have taken far too many photographs, which need to be out of Picasa and on the Wibbly Wobbly Way!

 

 

Obviously you need a kettle with the right kind/diameter of spout, and when the water starts to boil, the inner sliding component moves and the bird starts whistling! Before modern automatic cut-offs (which work the same way - pressure, try getting one to work if you haven't closed the lid properly, it'll boil dry!), this was an ingenious solution, to a minor problem!

U is for Unknown Salesman's Samples

A bit of a find here, and not mine, Adrian found them, and thinking I'd like them, saved them for the blog, and posterity! There's no clue as to their origins, and the message on the slips of paper pasted into the inner edge of the boxes (suggesting they were placed rather as the shots below, upright in a cabinet of some kind), which reads "Specimen contents as used if boxed to retail at 5/6d" [five shillings and six pence].

 

The mix of metal and plastic novelty 'prizes' places this very much in the 1950's, as do, strangely, the hats, rather squidged into one of the boxes, which are about three times the size of the hats I've known all my life, but which I remember from old TV shows (think 'Love thy neighbour,' Hancock, the soaps), where people often had the taller ones? Hard to unfold now, but they all have crude 'jewels' made from silver-foil, diamond (parallelogram) offcuts glued to them, which I also remember.

 

Both boxes have similar contents, indeed, very similar to the Old World Series we looked at years ago, with wooden whistles, steel wire-puzzles, paper logic puzzles and the novelties, which include stand-alone flats, broach-badges, the inevitable thimble (Christmas was almost a disappointment, if somebody didn't get an impractical, plastic thimble!), and rings. Many thanks to Adrian for grabbing these.

N is for Nuts!

While sorting out the house over the last few years, various things came to light which had long been forgotten, among which was this childhood stash of paperback-format bound volumes of Peanuts cartoons by Charles M. Schulz.

 

And then I found another one!

 

We were early fans of Snoopy and Co., and it was always Snoopy, it was Adults who thought of Charlie Brown first, because he represented the trails, tribulations and failures of adulthood, Snoopy was just a funny dog who thought he was a WWI fighter pilot and talked to yellow chicks, who coded back in scratch marks!

 

My brother and I had a shared bedroom until I was sixteen, and when we were little, there were loads of snoopy posters on the walls, similar to these book covers, a single image and some pithy aphorism about not liking Mondays (a decade before the Boomtown Rats), or something. Except they weren't actually glossy coated posters, they were matted wrapping paper!

 

I can't remember where we got them, but I guess it was WHSmith, in Fleet, or maybe Webb's, in Hartley Wintney, folded-over their wooden bars, you'd keep an eye out for a new colour, as like the book-covers they were single-colour sheets with a black-on-white snoopy, the paper an off-white, and about the same paper grade of brown parcel-paper, which they were near. I guess the idea was you used a whole sheet on a big-box gift, and the unwrapper got a cartoon! And, or course, they were much cheaper than the posters from the wire racks!

 

I seem to recall, Coronet, the publishers, also supplied a fair-few of my sci-fi novels a few years later! 

 

I also found these! Because we spent all our holidays running about on Hazeley Heath, climbing trees, shooting at each other with airguns (nope, we've still both got two working eyes!), from the tree-house or similar shenanigans, we tended to wreak havoc on our trousers (jeans or cords), and Mum would cover the holes (knees or bums!) with these patches, to give them a little more life. There were others, some more 'hippy' and I found a bunch of them too, they'll be a future post!

A is for ♪♫♪♪♫ All-in-All, Theyyyyy're All Just Bricks in the Wall ♪♫♪♪♫

Definitely ticking the 'other collectables' Tag, these are a fun novelty which seem to have been with us forever, or at least the mid-1970's, when I got my first, but, being a magpie, I now have four! Fake sponge bricks!

 

The collection,

"More than two of anything . . . "!

 

My original Christmas stocking brick, one of the 'practical' gifts which were always included; novelty soap, toothbrushes, combs, wiggly straws, things which, however-much fun they were, were also meant to be used daily! It's a soft bath-sponge material.

 

This was my second, it's a harsher foamed polyethylene, still a batheable foam, but more like garden-game balls, or pet-toys, and was given away at corporate newspaper events, or even with a daily-paper? I can't remember the promotion now, but I dare say, given it's The Sun, that they were for throwing at 'Lefty' politicians, or foreigners?

 

Once I had two, the track was inevitable, and over a few years I picked up two of these, more modern brick design, and made of recycled foam-rubber granules, much heavier, and not so good for washing!

 

In the US, they remain a strong, current phenomena, with corporate logo's to the fore, I think they are for throwing at referees' in disgust at their decisions, although I've never seen a clowud of them hitting the pitch, so I guess, once you've paid money for one, your desire to retain your investment in bricks & mortar, mean you hang on to it and just shake it threateningly toward the Man In Black?

 

While this is Art! A design by Alexander May, for a concrete-block sponge!

 

There was a trend for mattresses made out of the same heavy, granulated-foam, of my third brick, but often in greys or neutral colours, and they were a favourite of early fly-tipping when they started to break up, and you'd see this stuff in the rubbish pile, odd-shaped lumps, which looked exactly like concrete!

 

A very commercial one here, from Milton Bradley (MB Games - that's almost like LB for Lik Be!), and hitching a ride on the trend . . . nay, 'craze' for all things Karate, back in the 1970's - "Ah, Soh, Grasshopper!".
 

Contemporary one, available, new on the Internet as I write, this is expanded-polystyrene, and looks to be pre-coloured, so a few chips or a knocked corner would only add to its aura of realism!

 

Also current, but a bit naff, and more of a face-cloth? There's a sponge-foam core, but it's covered in a printed-pattern fabric 'pillow', sewn-flush, and over-printed with crude holes, I'd leave this on the self, as the point of the collection is that they look vaguely like bricks, and this doesn't! Although, I guess it does, if you don't display the 'holes'!

P is for Public Presentation of Pure Nostalgia

I can't remember why I was in the Fleet Library back in April, probably looking for someone, but I happened to see what was in the 'Christmas Toy Display' cabinets, and found this. I also noticed Fleet and Crookham Historical Society, seem to have been renamed Fleet and Croockham Local History Group?

 

 [They've loaded back to front again, and I can't be arsed to switch them all round, it's only NTS imagery, and it leaves the chocolate wrappers down the bottom, near the Internet image of similar stuff, so it's sort of sorted itself out]

 

Definitely remember the Monarch seed packets!

 

It's funny how many of them I recognise, I'm only sixty-one, but a good half my life is 'ancient history' to almost everyone under thirty! Rudolf Hess, I met him twice, in my duties, yet, he's history, proper history to every single person born after about 1985, and many born in the years immediately before.

 

This went through Facebook the other day, it's frightening how many have gone, and how bland the choice actually is these days, I tried to buy a Topic the other day, and couldn't find one, Googled them, and they've gone! Just like that, partly my fault for not buying enough, "Use them or lose them", under Capitalism, the customer's never been right!