S is for Shelfies - B&M, July

I was over in Basingrad for something the other week, which it seems was actually a couple of months ago (I don't know, but it goes somewhere?), and I popped into B&M for a five-pack of Ruffle Bars (nom-nom-nomnivore!), and managed to shoot a bunch of figural shelfies, and, I think, made a further purchase for the Blog's future, but anyway, here are the shelfies with a few notes.

An egg-full of dinosaurs, one or two larger and several medium-sized critters, with the usual assortment of scenic accessories, consisting in the main of palm trees, but there may have been some 'rocks' in there too? Basically a generic, it's branded-up to B&M themselves.

Also branded to them, but sourced from someone/somewhere else, it this which we may have seen before, but I think the design of 'carry case' has changed from dino' to truck, to this robo-dino' over the years? And helps ID a couple of the mini dinosaur models. Found not in the toy section, but as part of the big-box Christmas gift shelf above the food aisles!

 

Paint your own vinyl Harry Potter figureines and locomotive

 

Stumble Guys from Diramix . . . I had to google it; "Stumble Guys is a multiplayer battle royal obstacle course game where players race to become the last one standing", so that's them then, vinyl solids though, so while I'm not buying them, they will come-in via future bags of shite from Charity Shops!

 

I can't say I know much about this Stich chap either, indeed for a while I got Lilo & Stich confused with Itchy & Scratchy (cartoon characters within a cartoon), my following the developments of neither! I now know the difference, but if you don't, you're probably better-off remaining in ignorance, this stuff goes around and comes around, there's nothing new under the sun, and they, too, are vinyl solids.

 

More of the same from Bandai, and I think we all know who Sonic is now? Mixed assortments, with duplicates between sets, is almost as annoying as blind-bags! But you obviously need to buy both sets to get the four hidden figures to complete the sixteen!

The Sonic figures also come in smaller assortments, and I left the Joker figure in the crop, as while he's not the sort of thing I 'do', I know a lot of the guys & gals on Brian Heiler's platforms will be interested.

 

"100 Years of Furry Friendships", it says, well, if you've looked into 'furry's', you'll know how disturbing that sentence could be seen to be? Not only that, but more disturbing is the fact that these mostly recognisable Disney characters, have been remodelled in a Japanese anime style . . . why? Just why? Horrid!

We may have seen Lady Bug and Cat Noir, or they may be in the queue, Peter Evans gave some to the Blog I think, but anyway, their French TV series is called Miraculous, and these blind-box sets are from Playmates, but obviously in the style of super-deforms or the dreaded Funko-pops, it's not good, unless it's your thing! All of which is a lot more than I knew about them in August when we saw them in a B&M shelfie post!

 

All currently sat in B&M for Christmas shoppers!

S is for Slimy Slime From Slimesville, Slimesylvania!

I bought this back in the autumn, can't remember where, possibly B&M or even Smyths, but, I know it was inexpensive?

 

The turtle is not what I was expecting at all! It's an actual turtle, and I assume the other three would be similarly rendered, each is his own shade of green? But I'm not intending to try finding-out, as the slime is like fortified washing-up liquid, it's the vilest stuff you ever encountered, woe-betide any carpet or clothing this come into contact with! Co-branded to Playmates and Nickelodeon, it's pure weirdness on several levels, out there now.

B is for back to B&M

Except these were shot months before the ones we saw this morning (yesterday), being the other, larger half of the stuff in the lost folder! It's mostly this modern trend for blind-bag collectables and nothing for toy-soldier purists, but it is what it is, and we shoot this stuff so you don't . . . err . . . you know what I mean!

Rainbow unicorns . . . "Rainbowcorns"! Two types of packaging, a starter set with multiple blind egg capsules and top-up bags in a counter-display carton. Zuru, they're 'up there' with Moose on this stuff!

"Bunnycorn" . . . yeap, you guessed it! Really; it's nasty stuff, in fact, it looks like it's been designed by Douggy Pledger or Dr. Knorkles [Artistic Oddities] in AI!

 

Playmates are chucking-out these Miraculous'ly like Pokémon figures, I know nothing else about them, and probably don't need to!

 

I can see these having more mileage than the above trio, and with larger play sets, there's the whole dolls-house thing going on here, but they will turn-up in mixed lots soon, especially those colourful Charity shop bags, so, if nothing else, it will help list them accurately on evilBay!

 

Not even close to the parameters of this Blog, action figures from the pink/purple end of the spectrum, but I shot them, so they're here! Licensed to Character Options.

 

I've seen these around a few times, and they are squidgy-stretchy types, but not something I'm tripping over myself to seek out! Branded to Jakks Pacific, who I thought had folded a few years ago, Google says I was probably confusing the death of the founder with the death of the company!

 

Another Playmates product, quite a nice set of totally out of scale (with each other) figurines from one of the recent movies, but was it a Godzilla movie or was it a King Kong movie, and does anyone except a hard-core fan give a shit?

 

These 'franchises' are being thrashed to death now, aren't they? Planet of the Apes, Alien-v-Predators, there's supposed to be a new/third Bladerunner on the way . . . sigh! I want new visions, not hackneyed old ones with their arses torn-out of them.

 

Poppy Playtime figures from Phat Mojo, some sort of happy-horror-anime? Wiki' says "Poppy Playtime is a horror video game where the player plays as a former employee of Playtime Co. who returns to the abandoned toy factory of said company . . ." So now I know!

 

These Among Us are of interest both as being boarderline useable space-aliens, and because we saw the same figures without the keychains, as similar blind-bags from Poundland recently? While . . . 

 

. . . these have just been seen WITH keychains (and no bases), in Poundland? The suspicion is, both were poor sellers in whatever was the earlier guise, and are now being cleared any way the wholesaler's can come-up with, and that subsequently the 'Series 1' they both march under will prove to be the only series for either? Both are on-line, multi-player, 'party' games.

 

And it was needing to make/highlight the twin-format point (keychains/no keychains) which led me to realise there was a missing post somewhere, and find it earlier today/yesterday, now. Both from Toikido, the Gang Beasts further branded PMI as manufacturer.

 

And three more, all from the above companies, the Goo Jit Zu from Moose having a window bag rather than being blind, a far more civilised way of doing these things, while both Brawl Stars (PMI) and Pet Simulator X (Phat Mojo)are kids video-games, although why they are still called video-games now technology has moved so far from VHS/Betamax is anyone's guess!

TMHT is for There's More Hero Turtles!

Like Ninja Turtles but safer for poor little British kids who might otherwise be corrupted into whacking each-other over the head with broom-handles or something . . . humm . . . that worked huh!

A quick follow-up from a post last January, and I don't need to subject you to a back-link as they're all here; they are Ninja's. not heroes!

Brian managed to find the missing pose/character from the Playmates set he shared with us back then, and it is the above 'Mikey' Michelangelo to be precise, complete with nun-chucks! That's two broom-handles-worth of mayhem! Perfect 54mm as well!

Complete line-up, you may recall I'd had one come-in from Chris, and at some point I'll get the others myself, just to box-tick, but as far as the Blog's concerned and thank to Mr Berke, the box is already and well and truly ticked here now! Cheers Brian!

R is for Renaissance Reptiles

Another quickie, this one covering a few TMNT bits which came in over Christmas from Brain, Chris and Peter, but; working in reverse . . .

. . . with this 'shelfie' which came in the other day from Mr. Berke, who managed to find three of four (no Michelangelo) of these Playmates figurines, imported into his part of the world by Greenbrier; DTSC - their normal 'partner in crime' seem to have passed on this one?

The missing pose's the problem with here-today-gone-tomorrow, rack-toy sets that happen to have multiple characters; that you sometimes miss one! I never found the missing turtle in the remaindered set a few years ago!

Pack-back and a sizer - you can see from the Lone Star shooter (Berserker on his Christmas break?) that these are an almost perfect 54mm, and they are an un-articulated 'solid' figure in a dense'ish PVC or modern equivalent polymer, and I know that because a few days earlier . . .

. . . Chris Smith had included one in his latest parcel! Here posed next to the key-ring giant Mr. Evans had sent a month or two previously (seen before here at Small Scale World) and which I have now removed from his seriously large (and limiting) base. Indeed, after this shot was taken I removed the key-chain and ring too.

Cheers to all three for the contributions, and while there is no official Talk Like a Teenage Turtle Day (maybe there ought to be!), we will have to have a full TMNT post one day as I have quite a few of them now.

V is for Vinyl, Polyvinyl Chloride

Looking at the World Of Warcraft figurines the other day caused me to take these at the same time, and I then didn't get round to posting them, so here they are, as a comparison re. modern PVC/Vinyl, factory-painted production.

Following on from Hero-clicks (see below) came Horror-clicks, and these were shifted at the end of their run via Poundstretcher here in the UK. All this stuff ends up in clearance, sometimes posh (TK Maxx) sometimes not (your local pound shop/dollar store), but those who pay for them at retail, are subsidizing those of us who take advantage of the clearance,

Getting on my socialist horse here for a second; If the manufacturers priced them slightly cheaper, they'd sell more first time around and have less clearance!! Capitalism - it's an illness and a madness.

HELP!

Occasionally a film will produce themed sets, Indiana Jones is a good example with 20 and 30mm sets from Galoob and Disney respectively [to be covered another day]. Another was the third remake of King Kong, Playmates took-up the franchise and produced a couple of play-sets with various figures and monsters and these are some of them!

Heroclix, born out of Mage Knight and from Wizkids the same Wizards of the Coast stable as the Star Wars Miniatures game [See comments! Mea Culpa]. Originally Marvel Characters for use in a role-playing board game, these have now morphed into a multi-comic/graphic novel character game with a card element.

Like the [otherwise totally unrelated!] Star Wars Miniatures game, this collection contains so many figures in so many issues that it's impossible to follow if your head is already full of 1950/60's plastic toy soldiers, so I tend to buy them by the half-handful at car-boot sales, also they were issued in 2000, the year I consider the cut-off for serious collecting/documenting.