P is for Plastic Glass!

Sort of a 'part three', but not really connected to the previous two, which dealt with the 1950/60's stuff, these are the more common stuff from the 1970/80's, and will be quite recognisable to most of you, and really no more than an overview of the other plastic 'vitrines' out there.

 

I sorted the Tags out last night, and 'Glassware' covers everything made of glass from marbles up, but not these, 'Vitrines' covers the real glass versions of these, and they will also have the Glassware tag, while 'Glass Animals' will cover both these plastic ones and the glass ones, so these will have the latter Tag only, marbles will get Glassware only, and real glass animals will have all three Tags, which will hopefully help someone in the future, get the right search-results up?

 

A nice set of six from Hans Postler over the Channel, they are better known, to us, from their many sets of rack-toy soldiers, more in keeping with the main thrust of the Blog, but that this is here, reminds us most of these guys were general 'Toy & Novelty' importers/wholesalers, and would turn their hands to anything they thought they could make a small profit on, and, these are probably 1980's, or later?

 

These have more the look of the '70's about them, and they have tree-hanger rings in them, so there you go, get a daft-looking mouse hung for the festive season! But, you know, if you can't afford the glass ones, because you have some shitty, underpaid job, and live on a trailer-park, and you see these going cheap in the local gas station, or drug store, why not, if only for the kids?

 

Kids aren't snobs, now, I am a bit of a snob, specifically on Christmas decorations, but I was raised to be so, by my late, and much missed mother, who had her own reasons for being like that; Nuns, an even stricter mother and an Edwardian upbringing!

 

'The sins of the Fathers . . .', 'The child is the father of the man'  and all that! There is always a truism in old sayings, wives tales and aphorisms. The tragedy is that somehow, 70-years of progressive democrats, totally failed to educate enough idiots, as to what they were trying to do, and we now have enough Morlocks and Yahoos, who don't get 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel', and they are giving justification to the Trumps, Farages and Le Penns of intolerance?

 

Just as we need the World to come together like never before, the warmongers, climate-deniers, the superstitious, and the anti-science brigades, rise, like muddy, Ork scum from Isengard, to wreak the planet with their ignorance, and singularly selfish stupidity.

 

A knock off Snoopy, an elephant who's also a key-ring, two more of the cocktail glass donkeys, we saw in brown, last time, and a variation on the Hans Postler elephant. The HP set is basically the six commonest types (from experience; that may not be strictly true!).

 

Another elephant, slightly better (slightly earlier?), another mouse, and the deer we saw in one of the comparison shots a few weeks ago. The elephant, if cleaned would have that faux uranium-glass look to him, but I don't know if it's a transparent marker (like most of them) or dyed plastic, and fear if I cleaned him, he might lose all his original colour!

 

A swan and yet another mouse!

 

Two of the mieces, back to back, but not yet in pieces!

 

Two of the elephants, with a small rhinoceros, he's probably from a Christmas cracker, but could equally be a gum-ball, capsule-machine prize, or something from a Lucky-bag, this stuff tended to get around!

 

The Rhino', it's missing one of those crappy plastic key-rings, you press both ends of, to hook onto the plastic oblong which he has retained. Is it meant to be a woolly-rhino'?

 

Only came in recently, and a charm-loop suggests gum-ball or Christmas crackers again?

 

These are interesting, Bam Bam and Pebbles, from the Flintstones, both larger sculpts to, they seem to have been taken from the sort of PVC stuff Bully and Comics Spain might have been issueing, he's holding a club behind his back!

 

While these are equally interesting for having been taken from a set of dogs, which we may have seen here in more realistic colours, as polyethylene toys, but here in the same clear 'canopy' 'styrene, enhanced with transparent coloured marker-pen! We'll look at proper glass ones next!

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!

C is for Canoes - 10 - Non Wild West

 A very eclectic mix in this post, and by no means all, or even most of those I could have found, but more of a taster of what's out there, if you're tempted by these posts into specialising in canoes!

 

I think this was a Charity Shop purchase about a year ago, i.e., some time after these posts had begun their journey to publishing! But it helps fit the next one into the oeuvre, and who doesn't have a soft spot for Snoopy! Marked as if licensed and made in Hong Kong, it's probably been manufactured for someone like Applause?

This was also a latecomer to fill this posts folder! Included in a previous donation from Chris Smith it was a mystery for a time, I thought maybe an eraser, but after finding Snoopy and noticing the Bully mark I have tied it into a similar Smurf toy!

 

We've seen these before I think, probably more than once as they are part of a bigger line which incudes or crosses-over into sports, beach and divers! Cheap Hong Kong rack toy copies of a Corgi original, they are in storage! The oars are always missing or broken!

Also not appearing in these posts, is a similar 1:70th'ish canoe, as a roof-load pair from Hobby Dax, which I got in Lidl about 20-years ago, in fact, there is a whole family of them from Majorette and Matchbox (both also paired), Guisval, Spot-On et al!

 

This is the now out of production - Canoe, MkII, 'Ard Bastards, For the Use Of - kayak, courtesy of Ronara Store, a Chinese outfit, via Brian Berke, who was wanting to reproduce the infiltration device of choice of the 'Cockleshell Heroes', it's manufactured in resin and is nominally suitable for 54mm figures!

 

Brian's finished model, I'll let him set you right on the model . . .  

 

"Recently on eBay out of China came what I hoped was the long-awaited canoe of my dreams. Listed as 1/32 it falls far short. Moulded in resin, it was difficult to glue and getting the arms to stay in the correct position to take the hands with paddles proved to be beyond my patience. So here it is. The real Mk II canoe was 16' long, 28.5" beam, the model is 4 5/8" long"

 

I thought I might have saved these from evilBay, but in following-up on the eMails for these posts I find Brian sent them, but he saved them from evilBay! It's the Renwal 'dime store' civilian pleasure boat, and the figures are about 30/40mm and look like they might have been sculpted by whoever sculpted the figures for Pyro's military vehicle sets? It also seems to be missing a clip-in oar?

Many Thanks to Brian for his input, lots more to come!

News, Views Etc . . . Forthcoming Events Saturday 10th - Friday 16th

Lets congratulate Israel this week (otherwise it's Trump/guns/Right Wing racism or Boris/Brwreakshit/Ireland - great!) for invading the Moon with a colony of Moss Pigs! Not content with their trading of arms to and from South Africa during the height of the apartheid sanctions or helping Saddam's Iraq obtain long-range artillery and 'Supergun' technology/parts during the UN sanctions, Israel has managed to break the one rule, the only rule you are supposed to keep . . .

. . . let me explain, Ladies and Gentlemen; because it was considered a list would be too complicated; plastic - no, banana-skins - no, little bits of explosive bolt and Lander legs - yes &etc; all the nations of the world signed up to a simple clause . . .

. . . 'Don't contaminate the Moon'! But no, oh no . . . the Israelis - not perhaps your initial choice for space-faring superpower - managed to fill their very FIRST, very experimental Moon-shot with microscopic life, and then fuck-it-up, crashing the whole caboodle into the cheesy-fizog!

I've read the books, I know what happens now, in low gravity the indestructible tardigrades will evolve rapidly to fill all ecological niches, realise we are an existential threat to their future and start catapulting bulk-rubbish bins and mining-containers the size of lorries at us like interplanetary ballistic meteors!

Buy toys but look to the skies . . . Saturday's a wash-out (but with the current forecast it was going to be!) but there's a few on Sunday.

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Toy Fairs

Sunday 11th August 2019

Barry Island (not 'Barry' CF63) - Chris Dyer Fairs

Barry Island Railway Station, Station Approach, Barry Island, South Wales, CF62 5TH

Web. - www.chrisdyerfairs.co.uk

Tel. - 01643 702 757

Mob. - 07966 694 579

Admission £2

10:30 - 15:00hrs

Ditton - SRP Toyfairs

Ditton Community Centre, Kiln Barn Road, Ditton, Kent, ME20 6AH

Web. - www.srptoyfairs1.co.uk

eMail: srptoys1@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 07739 998 012 (Paula or Gerry)

10:00 - 14:00hrs

Admission charge unknown

Exeter - Bulldog Fairs - 'Westpoint'

Westpoint Arena, Clyst St. Mary, Exeter, EX5 1DJ

Web. - www.bulldogfairs.com

eMail - bulldogfairs@aol.com

Tel. - 01373 452 857

Mob. - 07917 125 641

10:30 - 14:30hrs

Admission £4, each under-16 free with adult, 'Early Bird' £10 from 08:30hrs

Southampton - Ron Lines - Southampton Toy Fair

Blighmont Barracks, Millbrook Road West, Southampton, Hampshire, SO15 0AJ

eMail - r.lines@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 02380 772 681

10:00-14:30hrs (doors close to buyers 14:00hrs)

Admission £1, children under-12 free

(combine with Southsea's kite-flying event - see below?)

Stafford - Barry Potter / BP Fairs - 'Stafford Showground'

The Preston & Argyle Suites, Stafford County Showground, Weston Road, Stafford, ST18 0BD

Web. - www.bpfairs.com

Tel. - 01604 846 688

Mob. - 07966 527 177

10.30 - 15.00hrs

Admission £4.00 (early-bird £8), OAP's £3.50, Children £1,

Free parking

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Tuesday 13th August 2019

Hook - Steven Clements Fairs - Hook Evening Fair

Hook Community Centre, Hook, Hampshire, RG27 9NN

eMail: clementfairs@aol.com

Tel. - 01380 725 322

Mob. - 07958 101 891

18:30 - 21:30hrs

Admission £1

Free parking

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Auctions

Saturday 10th August 2019

[Runcorn] On-line Auction - British Toy Auctions

The Auction Centre, 9 Berkeley Court, Runcorn, Cheshire, WA7 1TQ

Web. - www.britishtoyauctions.co.uk

eMail - enquiries@britishtoyauctions.co.uk

Tel. - 01928 579 032

Spalding - M&M Auctions

Unit 4, Plover Court, Stephenson Avenue, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 3SW

Web. - www.mm-auctions.com

eMail - info@mm-auctions.com

On-line (www.the-saleroom.com)

Tel. - 01406 422 848

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Thursday 15th August 2019

Sheffield - Shefield Auction Gallery

Windsor Road, Heeley, Sheffield, S8 8UB

Web. - www.sheffieldauctiongallery.com

eMail - jmorgan@sheffieldauctiongallery.com

Tel. - 0114 281 6161

Viewing - Wednesday 14th 09:00 - 16:45, from 08:30 on sale day

10:00hrs - Finish

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Other Events (it's nearly all bloody Lego; the end of the world will be Lego themed!)

From Thursday 8th (yesterday) until Monday 2nd September 2019

Knowsley - Knowsley Safari Park - Ultimate Brick Safari

Knowsley Safari Park, Knowsley, Prescot, Merseyside

Web. - www.knowsleysafariexperiance..co.uk

Lego lifesize wild animals

From Thursday 8th (yesterday) until Sunday 3rd November 2019

Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Discovery Museum - Brilliant Bricks

Discovery Museum, Blanford Square, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Web. - www.discoverymuseum.org

Famous inventions from history recreated in Lego bricks

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Saturday 10th August 2019

Basingstoke - Dai Lawrence, RAF - The Battle of Britain

Basingstoke Discovery Centre/Public Library, Festival place Shopping Centre, Basingstoke, Hampshire

Web. - www.hants.gov.uk/library

Tel. - 01256 478 670

14:00-finnish

Admission £4

Presentation lecture/readings from a serving RAF SNCO on the Battle of Britain and what it still means to the RAF today.

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Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th August 2019

Southsea - Portsmouth International Kite festival

Southsea Common, Southsea, Hampshire

Web. - www.portsmouthkitefestival.org.uk

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Overseas Events

Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th August 2019

Dublin (Rep. of Ireland) - - Dublin Comic Con

All other details here (very confusing dynamic website I couldn't be arsed to wrestle with!);

Web. - https://www.dublincomiccon.com/

Edison (USA) - Trainshow - Greenberg’s Great Train & Toy Show

New Jersey Expo Center, 97 Sunfield Avenue, Edison, NJ 08837, New Jersey, USA

Web. - http://trainshow.com/edison/

10:00-16:00hrs

Admission $10 both days, $9 Sunday only, under-11's free

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If you are an event promoter/show curator/auctioneer and you want your toy, model, collectable or popular-/youth-culture type sale/exhibition/event listed here -  FOR FREE  - or linked to; please eMail me -

maverickatlarge[at]hotmail[dot]com

- stating the date/s of the event, address of event, contact details, opening/viewing times, admission pricing and any other relevant facts/details or features - parking, travel notes, disability access, availability of refreshments, event subject matter &etc.

And please mention any flyer-art or poster-/leaflet-scans but send by separate eMail, in case they go to the 'junk' folder, from where they can be recovered and marked safe, but only if I know they're there!

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Received with Thanks

A parcel of polymer loveliness for the Blog wung* its way from N5 on Monday, courtesy of Peter Evans, new colour of Chap Mai figures, a set of Wing Lung complete runners, two 'pop-trolls', Thelma from Scoobie-Doo and a rudie-nudie swizzle-stick were among the goodies which will feature here in the months and years ahead, thank you Peter.

Previously; a parcel from Chris Smith was received the other day, which has already been mentioned, and posts are in the queue (posting Sunday), but this 'Received with Thanks' is a new (occasional) feature of the Friday-dates  post, so a second thanks to Chris.

Imagery from Chris and Brian Berke has also popped into the in-tray in the last fortnight.

*Birds are winged, parcels are wung, I'm sure of it!

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Other News

Charity Shops

A small piece in the Evening Standard mentioned the fact that Charity Shops are currently doing well and seem to be contributing to a pick-up in high-street footfall, and overall sales.

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Theme Parks / Attractions

As mentioned briefly last week, but in all the papers over the weekend; even as Lego was buying them, Merlin were reporting poor performance of their attractions and a profit warning as visitor numbers failed to meet expectations and forecast profits fell by a fifth.

By the middle of this week Disney were reporting similar problems with their US operation; Likewise, Cineworld (the cinema chain) have also [today] posted disappointing results. Are we falling out of love with trash-culture? It's helped destroy the planet!

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H is for How They Come In

Better cover the ones I've flagged-up already, first . . .

. . . nothing terribly exciting; another Chap Mai Hummer and a K&M moon-buggy both of which I think we've had here before, I've also comparison'ed the K&M on the Airfix astronauts post (the accompanying K&M stand-alone figures are much bigger), but won't trouble you with a link for the one shot when you've just seen the thing here!

I also picked this up last Friday an hour before posting the dates for this week-gone, he's got no holes in him so not a Christmas-tree thing, probably from a set of building blocks or a 'my first castle' type thing? Or . . . he may be a piece from a shape-puzzle, or one of those shape-filler trays?

This toob was found on Sunday, I almost never go to town on Sunday's but this week I did and found an Aspro (Spanish jobber) branded toob of PVC-alike fishy fellows (actually more than half of them are mammals or crustaceans, not fish!), which will be looked at when the long-in-the-queue sea-creature round-up publishes.

Pound each for 12, it's pure, unmitigated tat-shite, but it will prove useful at some point! We have one of the independent or small/local chain pound-shops recently opened in an empty unit, you know the type of establishment; vinyl-banner shop sign, minimal shop fittings, tons of stuff you wouldn't give house room to, going for a quid straight out of the plain outer cartons, or wire baskets - they have very little of use, but these were worth a punt! Bootleg Snoopy, Miffy and that Japanese cat . . . Hello Kitty look-a-likes!

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Heads-Up - BP Fairs

I wouldn't normally issue a warning-order for a regular show in a week or two (as you know), but Sandown Park which is normally well into September is actually the middle of August this year? Whether this will be the normal 'new' time (it regularises the gaps between the four shows) or is just a one-off due to something 'horsey' happening on the usual weekend I don't know, but if you're thinking it's still a month or so away; think again - it's next Saturday; 17th August 2019

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Links

Good question? . . . . 

. . . . Gathering momentum!

One company's response to the above!

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Fighting over Toy Soldiers! They've both had so much 'work done' they're starting to look like each other!

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Other Stuff This Week

Shot this wasp, outside an office block near the train station! It's like a normal wasp, but with fewer, thicker-banded stripes, I don't know if it's a summer visitor (or climate change migrant!) over from France or the low countries, or one of our lesser parasitic wasps, but it's pretty and often turns up in late summer, they hover over the lawn but are hard to shoot - possibly looking for little 'lawn ants'?

I also found a very drunk 'normal' wasp in my Victoria plum, so I dispatched it with a knife (kind to the wasp) and fed it to the Venus Fly Trap - kind to the Venus Fly Trap!

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