B is for Back to Hyperspeed!

So, these are the other three issues in the set we looked at the other day, and these have not been de-boxed, as they're in storage and have been there since these shots were taken in 2023. They were remaindered in The Entertainer, I would never have bought them new, far too pricey!

 

And I suppose it's worth mentioning, for overseas loyal readers, the Brits probably all know, that The Entertainer is a slightly weird chain of otherwise standard mid-range, mostly 'big-brand', toy shops, and only weird because it's owned by a god-botherer, so they won't stock any Harry Potter toys (it's the Devil's work!), although they seem happy with the equally numerous lines of Tolkien stuff, and they don't open on Sunday, an important day in modern retail, as it's one of the few days the modern family can be found together, with a bit of spare time!

 

I don't know why I didn't twig I was missing two ships, but the card back may have been different to the two I got the other day, but I don't think so, I think I just wasn't paying attention!

 

XL-01, the ship which started it all (whatever it is, I haven't seen the movie (I may have the DVD in the watching queue somewhere?)), and upon the return from the flight of, Buzz discovers his crew-mates are all four years older.

 

XL-15, the final ship, the one that finds the full hyperspeed. Buzz is now wearing a spacesuit close to the one we all know and love, although at this size, there's no clear dome over his head!

 

Note how the tripod landing gear on all these, follows the pattern of the Galoob Micromachine's 'Action Fleet' ships, particularly the X-Wing and Y-Wing fighters, and these will all be going in my Action Fleet tub, as background/freelancer ships!

 

Zyclops Pods, appearing it the third act of the movie, the dénouement, the showdown, the final battle of good verses evil, as - presumably - Buzz defeats anti-matter Buzz, or whatever the excuse for his giant purpleness's existence is, in the script?

 

You get two Zyclops robots (I think they are robots?) and two pods, the pods differ, with one having a push button trigger, to open it upon dropping, with red paint 'landing lights', the other has signs of damage, both moulded in and painted on, no red tips, and needs to be opened manually, I'm guessing there is some reference to a scene in the movie, represented by the distinction between the two versions?

 

Wave Two contained models of XL-03, 09, 12, and XL-14, along with a re-issue of this pod-set, hitting stores in 2022, I suspect only the US got them, as over here Wave One was still on clearance a year later? And we still have two to look at!

Y is for "You Have Twenty Seconds To Comply!"

Nine, Eight, Seven . . . 

 

It's a black, white-button toy, which is yellow and red! Which reminds me of a joke about a well read newspaper, carried by a Zebra killed on a pedestrian crossing!

 

 

 

That's it, an unknown maker, pocket-money toy robot/mech/power-loader, unmarked, with extending arms, although they are of fixed length and extend by rotation at two points of articulation, per limb. Dead cool!

T is for Tattle Tale

Mentioned at the time, but not included in the post, the third Tattle Tale from Phidal I bought back in 2023, it still needs to be cleared out and ticked-off, so here it is;

 

As with the others, it contains four figures from one of the larger sets, and we'd only just seen the 10-figure 'Lightyear' set at the time, hence it's being held-over for a bit (three-and-a-half years!), and again, I don't know if some of the other figures are in another Tattle Tale, and would advise not buying any of these if you already have the larger sets.

F is for Follow-up - Jumping Aliens

I think the last time we looked at these, I both mused they were different to previous ones, vis-a-vis colour schemes, and that I'd found more on Amazon (and left them there!). But, without postage, and at pocket money prices, I picked these up earlier in the week, and while they're not strictly rack-toys, they are in the cheap, novelty bracket!

 

To be honest, I can't remember where I got them, but I think it might have been the party section of Asda, Sainsbury's or Tesco? There are certain differences, and while full size, not the smaller ones from Hobbycraft, we saw last time, the blue 'Cyclops' has smaller horns than previous versions, and the purple chap has changed his hair-do!

 

But they're going to go so well with the vintage jumpers taken from the LB poses (yes, I saw, it's like clockwork, but both logo's were quite clean, and clearly showed a B, so the stupidity emanating from that corner is now pretty awesome!), in a shelf display, one day! Fun Hub, by RMS.

H is for Hyperspeed!

This is an odd one; basically, it's clearance of clearance, of clearance! I mentioned the other day (well, sometime in the last few months?), when we saw a figure lose, in one of the donation/plunder/mixed lots, that there was a post on these in the long queue, and there still is, but this isn't it!

 

This is a couple I didn't know I didn't have, and which I picked up in Home Bargains for £1.99, a couple of days ago! I'd been in there looking for something else, saw these and thought "Do I have all five?", so checked the other folder when I got home, realised I still needed two, forgot to go back the next day, but managed to get over on Thursday, and grabbed the two miscreants, which are now the subject of this post.

 

XL-02

 

XL-07

 

The five sets in the series, there are two larger vessels in other series, a huge vessel in a third, and some wave two stuff, which may not have got to the UK, along with a twin set, containing two of the above. 

 

Now, I never watched the movie, but, with the exception of the Zyclops pods (purple 'eggs'), each of the four 'fighters' are experimental aircraft piloted by different iterations of Buzz Lightyear, who is about four years older in each vessel! The premise of the movie, being Buzz's attempts to develop a fuel cell for 'Hyperspeed'!

 

So, this is the second experimental ship in a series, I don't know if [in the movie] it is armed, although there is a node on the underside, to attach the missile-firer from the larger/twin sets, so it can be (for play), and once the XL-15 enters the picture, conflict does occur with 'Zurg' (an alternate Buzz)

 

And this is one of those occasions where, if you've followed the story or are a fan, you know far more than me, but which also comes down to Disney tearing the arse out of a franchise, and tying themselves in knots, some of which remain unresolved to this day!

 

 

Aaaaannd, this is the seventh! Each time Buzz takes a test flight, four years go by (presumably until the XL-15, but I restate - I haven't watched the movie), back on the planet where his friends are, so by XL-14 (not modelled in either wave - there is a second) at least 56-years have gone by (?), so most of the original crew have died (?), or got old, and their children/grandchildren are running the show.

 

And because he's only a toy in the Toy Story movies, we can sort of assume (whatever Disney says), that all this is in his head anyway! So it's all a bit daft! However, I've been bumped, by this purchase, into bringing the other post to the fore, and will get more into it there, in a day or two.

 

Buzz Lightyear Hyperspeed Starships, in Home Bargains, now, today, for a couple of quid each. But, the fifteen-odd cards on the self, Monday, were four by Thursday, so they are selling fast.

H is for Hasbro's Air Raiders

We saw one of these back at the beginning of the Blog, but sometime in 2021 I picked up another one, the trouble is, it's the same one, I still need to find the purple 'enemy' or other side, although we've seen some loose! But we can have a quick box-tick of this card, as it's been sitting in Picasa for five years waiting!

 

And, of course, with reference to an exchange of comments the other day, another example of some sub-scale (50mm/2-inch) action figures I seem to be collecting, despite not collecting action figures . . . Doh! Issued in 1987, they are nearly 40-years old!

T is for Tyo Typical Types

Well? A sort of theme was the space-sets I managed to pick-up over the weekend, and the matching loose figures, from two genres we've covered here recently, so a quick post on them, and the bonus was getting two-more brands associated with them both.

 

Haglon taking the Lik Be clones, and Trafalgar the MPC copies, Trafalgar Toys (better known for their tie-ins with LJN, Mego and the Hong Kong subsidiary Lion Rock) would have been a rival to WHC, Grossman and the like, and, indeed, this card may be in the archive as LJN?

 

But Haglon (Hagemayer) were more of a shipping operation, as far as I understand it, like with container ships, port space and warehouses in Holland, shipping all over Europe, and apparently adding their moniker to some of the stuff they shipped-in, that would have extended far beyond toys, which were probably a minor concern among all the household and garden goods, haberdashery, pet supplies and the like? And I'm sure I've seen this card as a generic. We also saw them as Woolbro a while back;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/07/lb-is-for-lanky-bods.html 

 

As supplied by Haglon! The 50mm knock-offs of LB's finaest, apparently limited to four poses (did they pantograph one of the Clifford sets?!) are not hard to find, although it took me a while to garner a decent sample, I'm now going for one of each colour! These came from four sources over the weekend.

 

MPC originals, in two slightly different shades of red, we looked at their oeuvre here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/04/mpc-is-for-many-plastic-cosmonauts.html

 

and these are grist to the mill, but again, there comes a point when you are just looking for individual 'better' figures, or a specific pose-colour combination, and these are clean!

 

Seen in the link in an unreadable, but probably generic set (next to the Payton bag), the Trafalgar ones are the better versions, very close to the MPC, solidly formed and with thicker bases than the other three or so variants.

 

While these are the Henbrandt/Hing Fat third-generation (like Payton's, but worse) sub-piracies, and again, of limited use, but they'll all be sorted into the master collection, before any are passed on, probably to charity, but that's all a few years away, still.

 

Tim-Mee, so keen to cash-in on Star Wars (AND Battlestar Galactica, everyone forgets that was a year later), grabbed one of the MPC sculpts, with the barest of modification, and there was one in the plunder, last weekend, which was lucky for the completeness of this post!

 

Which gives us, from the left:

• Haglon-Hagemayer/Woolbro (and others?)
• Tim-Mee
• MPC
• Trafalgar Toys (et al)
• Hing Fat/Henbrandt (et al)

Making more and more sense, every time we visit them, and thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for their input on the day or over the weekend.

G is for Group of Galactic Gewgaws!

In addition to the stuff we've seen, there were few other sci-fi/spacey things acquired at the recent Sandown Park toy fair, and we're looking at them now!

 

Just a bit of fun! There was an astronaut too, but he was too silly, this at least has the saving grace of being an alien, and they might actually look silly . . . except, Fermi says they probably don't exist! Rocket USA  'Big Key', made in "Chy'nah, very-very bad, biggly bad!".

 

TV related, so they ended-up here (see Power Rangers below!), and probably my favourite cartoon as a kid, having Tom sliced into twenty sheets by a ham-prep' machine, only to pop-back whole a second later, priceless, when you are six! These are from the '92 movie, rather than the more recent one.

 

I had a feeling I'd already got one of these, when I found two on a stall, but grabbed the better one anyway, and in point of fact I'd actually blogged a previous purchase, over a decade ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2014/10/r-is-for-rocketry.html

 

And, it's a minter, so this one can be fired at some future date, in the interests of science, and original video-copy production!

Five Days Later - Fuck me, it's getting boring now Bushy! It took him both over ten years, AND five days to find!

 

On Etsy now;

 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4472409517/vintage-lionel-porter-chemical-rocket?

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2026/06/seltzer-science-using-chemicals-found.html - How sad, how tragic, what a pathetic little man he's presenting as, what a twat?. The answer to his question ("I never had anything like this. You?"), is, of course - yes, I got one ten years ago, and grabbed another the other day, and you know it!

 

Nice carded set which ID's one of the sets which were still needing ID'ing,

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/09/mmpr-is-for-mighty-morphin-power-rangers.html

 

Kidz Biz (double-zed, edgy, urban!), they are the ones also issued in capsule key-rings, and the cards are also tieing-in some of the accessories which were confusing me, re. the Micro Machine sets!

 

On the left a larger skeletal monster/alien type (imp/devil?) of unknown origin, on the right a figure sold as MUSCLE but which is part of the Franco-Italian knock-off line, Cosmix, doing smaller-scale copies of figures from Panosh and Mattel, well covered here;

 

https://www.littleweirdos.net/2016/04/cosmix-french-muscle-ninja-mites.html

 

Altogether, an odd assortment, we'll have to see what turns up at Twickenham, in two weeks time?

BMSS is for More Plunder, 1 of 2

And so to Reading, what was only about five weeks ago, but already seems like ages ago, where I managed to fill my boots with bits and bobs, despite there only really being three vinatge sellers present, Adrian, Paul and Steve, and it's to Mr Vickers' overburdened table we go to, first . . .

 

. . . as he gave me this! It's a bit of Hong Kong tat (Tim-Mee copies?), probably from no earlier than the 1980's, and to Steve, rather bringing down the quality of his whole table, more used - as it is - to a better class of commodity all together, but to me; another brick in the knowledge wall! Cheers Steve!

 

And the sort of thing I used to give to charity shops regularly when I was a small-scale only collector, and they'd come-in with mixed a lot. Indeed, more modern stuff like this, 20-odd years ago might have gone straight in the brand-new, shiny, Rushmoor Borough Council recycling bin! The horror, the horror!

 

30 and 40mm policemen from Starlux with a tin-plate sentry-box, of generic nature, only because I don't know the maker, I imagine, either a German or Austrian producer, and probably an accessory in a set of painted flats, or maybe lead solids around 30-50mm? But - equally - it could have been an accessory with a wooden fort set?

 

Speaking of sentries, these are Greek, Athena, and real box-tickers, I may already have a few, but there do seem to be a number of variations in uniform, and red or blue versions of most, so I grabbed one-each while they were going cheap. The cymbalist is to replace a damaged one, which I shot to hide the damage, last time we looked at them.

Likewise, the mounted, I need a better horse for the trumpeter, or a base at least, to balance him on, but he's lost a couple of the studs, so it would only, ever, be balancing! And all these, rather like their UK equivalent (the Hong Kong Herald guards), will benefit from the hot water treatment at some point!

 

A trio of Pilots, the chap on the right seems to be a modern, probably home-painted figure, in the middle is a bisque chap, who may be a World War sweetheart keepsake thing, or maybe a cake decoration, it's certainly in the style of bisque cake-decorations, and there would have been many marriages, as men went off to war, the bride would have been in the inventory already?

 

The big guy on the left is more of a mystery, as he's pretty huge, and not really 'toy soldier' compatible, so, maybe a character piece, Charles Lindburgh wears similar kit in some of his photographs? Jumper isn't lumpy enough for Amelia Earhart, and Cody was earlier, but there must have been other popular aviators back in the day?

 

A couple of home-made sci-fi figures in around 35mm, they seem to have been modelled in Plasticine, with brass and brass-wire detailing, on brass-wire armatures, do you know who made them and why? Was this your work? They seem to be exploratory rather than belligerent?

 

A bit of fantasy, I've mentioned the Crossbows & Catapults stuff a couple of times recently, and their main post is well overdue, but probably still a few years away, there's plenty on t'ut Internet for those who need it, and a few of the 1980's big-box fantasy figures, which are still waiting for their big sort-out!

 

A nice Crescent cowboy I couldn't remember if I have or not, and a couple clowns from Charbens, which are probably both duplicates now, like Pirates, I've been concentrating on a subsection of circus stuff, so there's quite a bit of it somewhere!

 

Some gash (repainted) metal from Adrian's rummage trays, I think he said one of them (chap on the far left?) is an arm swap and wasn't actually issued by Britains in that 'at the trail' configuration? And very much box-ticking, my knowledge of this stuff is minimal. I split 18 images into two posts, to help with Tagging, so more later!