D is for Brucey Bonus!

Didn't get the text done in time yesterday!

This is the regular return or regular roundup - if you like, they haven't been in the queue, but rather collecting in a TBS (to be sorted) bag as they come in until there's enough for a quick phot-shoot. Mostly generic-enough Chinasaur shite, but there's a gem or two among them.

Start with a pair of classic, rubbery, proper-common, cheepo' Chinasaurs, these turn-up all the time and always remind me of baby birds, with their gaping mouths, soft PVC and their eyes painted like gum-ball machine rubber-jigglers or Imperial Poopatroopers. The carnivore won't stand up, so he's punching Dimetrodon in the face! Nature, even bug-eyed nature; raw in tooth and claw!

Having let a whole set through my hands a few years ago, I'm now building the Invicta/Natural History Museum set again, one dino' at a time; this is number three I think! Described as 'Scelidosaurus - about 4 meters'.

A collection of mostly old-school (or old tool) Chinasaurs from the HK days, the one on the right (looks like a mole-rat!) is definitely an earlier issue, with the middle pair of very poor quality, one marked with a bit of Hong... the other not marked at all, while the one on the far left may be a more recent 'China' re-issue.

The per'terra-thingy has been seen here under both Home Collection and Perfect Moments branding, and while the Steggie' looks likewise familiar from those monochromatic sets, it's actually a different sculpt with opposite plates rather than the off-set ones of the other brands, and a very poorly sculpted head on an otherwise reasonable body.

The little yellow one is tiny; about the same height as an Airfix HO/OO guardsman, but a relatively original sculpt, so he may be a baby from a larger parent in a more commercial play-set?

Two ceratopsian's from the current crop of toob sets, which one - I haven't a clue, but there are dozens of them and one day we'll have a proper look at them and make some sense of them all.

These are utter shite, but I love them! Reason being, they are modern shots taken from the old 1970's rubber dino' moulds from which my childhood Dimetrodon comes! They have been moulded in a pale fawn or sand rubber and painted likewise with over-brushing in oxide red or grey for a dusty, desert-dwelling look.

The Dimetrodon on the right is the one I remember with a sharper-tipped sail, the one in the middle has had his sail-tips smoothed-off. The one on the right also ended-up with some flash, pulled away from the gate-mark as he was taken from the mould, and now looks as if he's god and is using a gecko-like tongue!

Anyone who had these in the heyday of their semi-translucent, silicon-rubber, 1970's glory will recognise the smooth scalloped bellies of the other three sculpts, and the rather flat 'fence-panel' of the Dimetrodons!

♥ is for Home Collection ★ is for Six Dinosaurs

This was going to be a quick box-ticker, a small set, still in blister, but they looked familiar and a quick search revealed that we have seen them before, under another brand.

Packing on the left, one of many in the bags from Peter Evans at PW back in May, on the right the contents, in the upper two rows, below them a comparison with some similar dinosaurs, the purple one we saw here a while ago, but three more turned-up and they are similar (unpainted, finely wrought, polyethylene), but seem to be another maker/brand.

The six - although brand-marked Home Collection - are marked Anker Group on the reverse of the card.

While I will often keep a header-carded bag intact, I usually carefully remove blisters as they take up too much room, the cards can then be filed - flat - separately. I seem to have reused the lower image for no good reason!

On the right in the upper shot is the larger sample we saw, under 'Perfect Moments' branding from Poundland with Henbrant's 'Oker' packaging, a year-and-a-half ago; they are also the right-hand of each pair below, with the lefties the 'new' Home Collection's from Anker - they are slightly less translucent or 'flatter' matter-finished than the newies, but the same palette and the same six colours.

D is for Dogs

I'm not particularly a 'dog person', I'm a cat person, I find dogs to be a bit simplistic, slavishly sycophantic and/or bad without the character of cats, I was fond of our Red Setter when I was a kid, but that's the thing, the brainless befriending the brainless! Nevertheless, when dogs come-in to small scale world we will show dogs, and two lots of doggie-doo came in last Tuesday, so; let's revisit dogs!

Peter Evans donated these to the Blog last Tuesday morning, and life being what it is; I then found another canine candidate later in the day!

Perfect Moments (who we have looked at recently) have marked their moniker on the package, they look a bit like the Henbrandt dog, but seem to be a different set, although painted like the Henbrandt set of wild animals (in the above-linked post), so possibly the same factory, however there are several sets of these small animals doing the rounds at the moment.

These are also smaller than most of the dogs in previously canine-themed posts, and would - with a bit of a re-paint - go well with 54mm figures; maybe better with 60 or 70mm figures?

But to argue for the other side; you may remember that both Perfect Moments and Henbrandt use the Oker cellulose-bag packaging?

As you can see they are all reasonably recognisable breeds, under the poor, glossy paint-job and even the poodle is bearable (I hate poodles with a vengeance - horrid little cotton-balls of flouncy ponce!).

Then (Tuesday) on the way 'back to the sticks' I popped-off the travel network at Clapham Junction to check the cheapie-discount stores I remembered being there in the 1990's, and while they had all gone (as I suspected) there was a larger 3-unit party-shop roughly where a couple of them used to be sited, and I managed to get a small bag of novelty stuff, which we will be looking at over the coming days.

Among those novelties were these capsules, none of which had any clue as to their contents, and after I'd opened a few I realised they all had the same thing (which I have in storage - green with a blue collar . . .maybe, red collar?), so I grabbed one, not knowing I already had the Perfect Moments dogs in the bag I was carrying!

Marajà are one of several brands connected to the capsule toy company LZ - Zàini from Italy, which is how I came by the first one, about 15/20 years ago! I think he/it was in a hollow-chocolate bear with a Christmas style foil wrapper, but clearly someone (there's no branding on the toy) had a warehouse stillage full of the things, and here they are, many years later, the other end of Europe, being sold at 20p a-pop, no chocolate!

So; thanks to Peter's gift, a bit of synergy and a global glut in polymer novelties, and we have a dog-post . . . and we all know what dogs do to their posts - another reason to distrust them!

H is for Henbrandt

Which could also have been News, Views etc...my camera's fucked!

But we'll run with H is for Henbrandt (a pretty bog-standard importer who crop up from time to time!), and deal with the news in passing.

You may recall that last year we looked at a few key-rings (fobs, chains....) I'd got in a clearance lot for 50p or something and I suggested they would be available as sets somewhere at some point . . .

" . . . three of them were unmarked and as I said earlier in the year - may turn-out to be from a more recognised range of toys, just 'converted' to key-rings with a screw-eye. . ."

Well, the monkey had already seemed likely to be from the MTC sets, and now we have the water snail (for that is what it is!) turning up in a full set . . .

. . . the original posted one to the left, the new one to the right, even the brown areas are the same, but this chap is imported by Henbrandt as a little pocket-money bin-toy, among a set of other sea-life (mostly reef creatures) as seen below . . .

. . . a rather nice set of figurines and of unusual subjects, of which there may be more than these 8, in a 'full set'. You may however have noticed that the new image - cropped from the above - is pretty poor? Well I have a problem . . .

. . . see that black smudge to the right of the centre, that's a bit of crap on one of the internal lenses on my little Nicon L29  pocket camera (which is the 'News, Views' bit!), which has done sterling service for over two years now, making it the longest running of the five this Blog has killed!

As I can't afford to pop-out and get a new camera willy-nilly, it's a question of working round the problem for as long as I can, but it will result in a lessening of the quality of images for a a while. it's also about light-levels and flash, and I probably could have re-taken the shots, but for a passing post on sea-life it's not worth the effort!

And that 'working round' means either shooting from further away, or moving the camera after the green light has flashed, so the focus gets fucked-up!

These are a bit better, so it will be 'OK' for a while, but just be aware that that's why some sots will be a bit crap going forward in the short term . . . I'm saving for the PW show, I can't go dumping sixty-quid on a camera!

These wild/zoo animals were also Henbrandt, but their little bags were thinner affairs with Oker Brand screen-printed across the seal-strip. You may see the similarity between some of them and the horse key-ring, so wherever these came from (and it's unlikely to be either Henbrandt or Oker or  Perfect - see below), there is a consistency that points to the key-rings coming from the same place as the little bagged sets

These on the other hand are Poundland via Perfect Moments, twelve dinosaurs for a pound, that's less than 10p each! In fact, I think - with the current exchange rate - it's less than 10-cents each! It's only about 120 to the pound now?

Except they too have Oker Brand on their slightly larger bag, given the number of sources and brands for all these sets (there are metallic rubber dino's, seals/sea-Lions, fish and dogs that I know off, plus the hinted-at monkeys and horses, and probably cats and insects too?), I began wondering if the Oker Brand wasn't in fact the sometimes supplier of the little resealable bags?

Google said; "Yes, good call!" Packaging, sealing-tapes and such-like. So Oker are nothing to do with the little sets, other than supplying the bags - and maybe the key-rings?!

Now that's two assumptions, presumptions or guesses followed through to fact.

Remember - I never deliberately make it up as I go along, and never will, but if Erwin's attempt to rehabilitate himself is to re-write everything he's already written, but without mentioning hard plastic or trying to stuff a Japanese gun in a too-small Blue Box box, then it's going to be a long cold summer over at that blog!

What he should be doing instead of repeating stuff we already know, is get on with writing his 'Part Three', you know as well as I do - people don't want to read about the same Russians for a third time, they want hints and allegations, they want war . . . and train wreaks!

On the subject of cameras, when the Blog started - back in 2009 - I originally had a Fuji Finepix but it's brain failed and it was the second Finepix to go bang, so I tried a Samsung, which gave us good results here, but wasn't so hot on my outdoor insect macro-photography, the last two have been these Nicon Coolpix, and they've both done well, the first (an L27) was never quite right in the mechanics, and when it failed 12-days inside the warranty, I got an upgrade-replacement with no questions asked, while Fuji had 'failed' to find the poor images I posted of it's failing piece-of-shit, so 'Buy Nicon' seems to be the [un-]scientific message!