M is for Mammals, Mostly Horseflesh!

In Brian's parcel were a couple of bags of useful animals, which happen to be mostly horses, although one or two other animals were present, including one of my all-time favourites - “Ruh-roh–RAGGY!!!”!

Four horses, the one at the back left is probably an Empire Toys Grand Champion, with brushable hair, they came with such accessories (brushes, curry-combs, bows, rosettes etc....), while the white foal is a common enough Hong Kong sculpt, originally copied from Britains Herald by Blue Box, but subsequently copied by many others. Blue Box also used it as a Zebra foal, with the necessary stripes! As a horse; less common in white, usually brown, tan or black plastic.

 

The other two are more interesting, for being unknown to me, but A) good quality models, and B) the probably domestic American product which gave rise to other Hong Kong copies, even though one looks to be a copy of the Cherilea grazing horse, any info on either/both gratefully received.

Scooby-dooby-Doo! He's a pencil top, how cool is that, it's a pencil-topper of Scooby-Doo! The black dog is looking quite menacing and a hard polystyrene plastic, so may well be from a model-kit by Pyro or Aurora or someone like that, the Hound of the Baskerville's, something prehistoric, or a monster's companion? [the next day: GI Joe's 'Junkyard', see comments]  

 

While the cow is a generic cartoonish 'funimal' aiming for the same market as the Lik Be (LB) Farm Friends or Holly Toy's similar Funny Animals, both hawked to many other brands/jobbers.

 

These are definitely Grand Champions from Empire, but from the Micro-Mini's line, a nearer 40/45mm range, and you can see the GC 'brands' in silver or gold on the rumps. They tended to re-use the sculpts with different sets, so the horse's title depends upon the horse's decoration, but I think we have an Arab in the white one, and two quarter-horses from an earlier wave . . . However, don't quote me!

 

The History of Grand Champions took a very odd turn in 2000'ish, when they were bought by Alpha International, an outfit best summed-up by this US bankruptcy judge's summing-up of an interim hearing, of a battle-royal, with Super Wings, one of three rulings I found, spread over half a decade!

 

The whole thing is rather hilarious, with wives, ex-wives and sisters in Grand Rapids, Hong Kong and mainland China, holding each other's shares, companies, moulds and tooling (specified and unspecified), internal loans, subsidiaries, serial bankruptcies, past histories of wrongdoing and the IRS apparently far too busy on another planet to pay any attention, while none of the judges seem to care a jot for neither the word nor case-validity of either party!

 

I don't know what happened in the end but J.Lloyd now seems to be connected to Tim Mee (also claimed by BMC ? Some more digging to be done there?) and Alpha International's websites are dead from 2013, and only to be found on the Waybackmachine! That Mr. Keener sounds like a charmer, he should run for President!

 

Finally, some lovely old hollow-polyethylene farm animals from one of the early US makers, Lido I think, and among a few of this hollow-type from over there, I have. All useful stuff, and thanks again to Brian for sending them.

Z is for Zàini

First post of 2024, let's hope it's a better year than the last four, because people have literally given-up on the funny-how-awful-this-year-is memes, as they get steadily worse, you don't want to tempt fate!

So, I bought these in Lidl while purchasing mini-stollen before Christmas, and thought to eat them and photograph them while I listened to the few fireworks, if New Year's 'Moment' said anything about the coming year, it's that poverty will bite, as hardly anyone bought fireworks this year . . . no bad thing for pets and the environment, but, Tory-sponsored hunger and evictions hover.

They had two choices, I can't remember what the other one was, but it was 1-in-3 of something 'girly', so I chose the Scoobie-Doo one as I've always been a fan of Scoobie, although you have my permission to turn Scrappy into lion-meat.

It's the same with Tom & Jerry; who's the stupid kitten, who's the idiot different-coloured mouse in a nappy? Phuq-em off, out of it, we want the old characters doing what they do, to each-other, over and over, and over again, we don't want mawkish juveniles intervening after some focus group's been talked round to liking some new characters!

 

I was on a focus group once . . . not only did they try to convince us to 'choose A', but went with A after we'd explained why it was a bad idea, and then disappeared without a trace. A toy soldier thing, I'll have all the bumf in the archive somewhere, they paid attendance for the day, London-parking and mileage, coffee and biscuits, there may even have been a buffet lunch, I can't remember, but, still, it was a good breeze!

So, we've got the cam-snail, an old novelty, which Kinder have done a bigger version of, over the years, an over-moulded pencil-clinger and a figure in 40mm polystyrene from the Train Your Dragon franchise, which was (with the exception of the figure) a bit disappointing!

 

The guide says not all surprises are shown, so while there are more figures, there are also more lame pencil decorations, but the Zàini (apparently founded in 1919) are less than half the price of Kinder, so luck dictates that if you buy enough, you should get what you are looking for.

It's the same with the Scooby-Doo stuff, the inner sheet has two 'Mr. Saunders' dressed-up as haunting monsters, so the range is worth the collecting, if you've got kids, I'll look for complete sets on evilBay in a year or two!

H is for How They Come In - Eclectic Lot!

I haven't managed (read; wasn't bothered-) to get up to town for a couple of weeks so these are from about three weeks ago? And only a few pieces from three different shops, to make an eclectic group of odds!

The lightweight foamed-resin flamenco dancer and the china fairing of a Wellintonian officer were from British Heart Foundation in Farnborough I think, she being similar to the Reamsa one, he needing a plume-repair, the three little ones were from a rummage-tray in Scope while the ELC knight (another one!) was a shelf-jobbie in BHF Fleet.

From the other side! It's all grist to the mill, literally, the amount of stuff out there means that no one can have everything, but the wider the net is cast the bigger the picture that can be drawn-in!

All marked Hasbro, the hound doing a Ghostbusters impersonation came in only the other day - hence my grabbing the two boys when I saw them - either from Charity or from Peter or Chris, I can't remember now, but it means I've probably only got the two girls to find . . . maybe some 'monsters'? That is; evil, humourless, money-grubbing, local conservative types dressed as monsters!

I love the magnified eye painted on the glass!

Later the same day - err . . . no! The Hound is doing a Sherlock Holmes impersonation, it's Shaggy who's channeling the Ghostbusters!

H is for How They Come In - Another Box From Peter

Mr. Evans, co-founder of Plastic Warrior magazine, has kindly sent the Blog another box of goodies, this time with no warning, and my assistant didn't allow time for full opening of the treasure-chest either; before she downed-tools and went to sleep in the lid!

It comes before I've had time to fully sort-away the last lots from Peter, Chris and Jim, and a frantic photo-session left another bunch of fledgling articles in the queue and a host of mental notes to dig-out this or that for more expansive posts at some point.

The trouble is - and it's a nice trouble to be in - I'm adding lots of nascent articles to the queue, photographing loads, bringing the two collections together and such like, but . . . time moves on with hideous rapidity, it's only a few months to RTM, ie; a year since I got everything out of storage, it's already four months since Christmas!

Yet I've barely begun to get on top of the consolidation task (I've been sorting Hong Kong AFV's this week, alongside the Peter parcel, an eBay lot and several charity-shop finds) while those who have contributed stuff will know how much of it has yet to appear - I can only say what I've said before - it all will, eventually!

What I finally recovered from under the nose of my sleeping assistant! You will recognise the vehicles as having previously been 99p Store or Poundland (about three or four years ago), now in new packaging/brand marks, the animals in the other blister-card seemed - from a cursory glance - to be from the old unpainted Rado Industries mouldings, but they are actually different, just similar, especially the big cat with spots.

In a plain-white polymer with some whacky paint (the elephant and lion are over-sprayed silver and gold respectively!); we will look at them closely along with the contents of the pack underneath in RTM - if I remember!

The Simpson's character set (some capsule toy/blind-bag thing?) is lovely; they are 'unit-scale' so Marge ends up smaller than her baby, due to her large beehive bouffant! And as Simpson sets go, a good selection of characters with 24 of the most common here in 25-35mm.

The two 'detective' rabbit babes (the one on the left is holding a magnifying glass) seem to go with the Sherlock Homes type in orange with the gun - all three are PVC and marked Yolanda. The 'mouseketeer' is a crumbly-rubber and unmarked, he's lost an arm and his sword, but goes with another - already sorted - in blue or green somewhere, so a growing 'sample' nevertheless!

Some other highlights include a couple of Phidal princesses we may or may not have seen here. It's a fact that those who worry about the state of the 'hobby' need to understand the hobby is a collective of 600-2000 individual ideas about what 'The Hobby' actually is, while the toy industry is quite healthy and full of figures - Phidal are producing more new sculpts per year than Airfix ever did, that they aren't WWII combat troops is of no interest to today's kids, who want TV/movie related stuff!

Three Crocco for Wheetabix figures are next to the Phidal's and a blob of Fischer PVC is on the end of the upper row - Paulinchen from Fix und Foxi's Pauli family.

The lower row consists of mostly older characters, including another of those French (maybe Pif Gadget) figurines, two Kinder Smurfs, a Miss Piggy from The Muppets a couple of unknown (to me)'s and the annoyingly sensible one from Scooby Doo as a pencil top. The key ring is from one of several anthropomorphic insect movies (Bug Life, Antz, or the other one!) from the rush of them awhile-back.

These are interesting in that I have a London Toy Fair report in the queue for a Totaku, which shows another healthy aspect of the 'industry', with the Schleich/Papo/ELC (et all) action-figure sized, synthetic-rubber solids, and here are two others, obviously based on the worst franchise ever (I saw the first and they can't have got better!) - Alien V's Predator.

Further - on the subject of 'hobby' health - consider the vast ranges of incredibly accurate and beautifully decorated animals (wild, domestic and prehistoric) from Schleich, Papo, Safari, Plastoy, Wild Republic, and so on, and measure them against the staid and eventually stale offering from Britains? Or the simplistic sculpts of Charbens, Starlux or Reisler . . . nothing wrong with the Britains range - for or in its time - or any of the others, but the picture is vastly improved and far more dynamic now.

Cheers Peter, another eclectic collection of things to entertain loyal readers going forwards!

P is for Pressman's Pooch and 'Pesky Kids'

A quick box-ticker; it's  been a while since we looked at a board-game (although - we looked at one the other day without knowing it! More on that monkey-business later) so here's one from the archive.

US Company Pressman Toy Corp's board game 'Scoobie-Doo Cyber Chase'; as there are only five main characters (or at least; there were before the execrable 'Scrappy' turned-up to mawkishly lower the tone of the thing!) I'm assuming there are only five main players for these five plastic figurines, but there may have been a sixth 'banker' in charge of a bad guy or several bad-guys, who - if they existed - may have been card flats with slot-on bases, or just head-cards? I don't know . . . and I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for you pesky kids!

Velma Dinkley - now it's a fine post!

B is for Brucey Bonus - More Phidal!

A few recent shelfies of Phidal stuff in TKMaxx I wouldn't bother with if I found them in a charity shop or at a car boot sale, and a few odds I think are also Phidal.

We saw a quite nice My Little Pony set as a shelfie from Brian, which appeared to have stuff likely to prove useful to fantasy war-gamers or role-players, I suspect this set's contents are more chunky, cartoony figurines.

The other three are run-of-the-mill licensed stuff, likely to be larger animals, small trains and a mix of figures and sub-scale vehicles, I didn't study the backs of the tomes; where those clues lye!

Other probable Fidal's, the Disney Infinity character I'm now sur of (haven't confirmed the Minions though), likewise the superhero, who is tatty and damaged, but I think the two girls (big hands?) from Scooby Doo are early Phidal, their markings are right and I have seen a more recent Scooby set in TKMaxx, so Phidal obviously carry the licence?