R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #4

Some of you may have had a weird alert for a post you can't find, this is due to my being an Aspergic idiot, and wanting to have four posts between each of Brian's posts, forgetting I'd done four because of the 'help wanted' post, which now isn't wanted (don't know, don't care), so, yeah, 'Hyperspeed' will post again in a few hours!

 

In the meantime, Brian sent a last minute set of shelfies from Dollar General in the 'States, and it's about half stuff not generally found on the Blog (but you never know who's visiting, or why), and half, some useful stuff, and here it is;

 

Wot? No caps!

 

Above is the stuff of less ineterst to the Blog, although the Mickey is a solid, and Spiderman has a solid fan-base, whatever size or figure type, and it's always nice to see figures who aren't WASP's, if you know what I mean, and it's a growing trend, to be encouraged.

 

Looks like fun, although some passing little scrote has squidged his head-in!

 

Both solids, and with existing, even 'vintage' figures of both Sesame Street and The Muppets, from Schleich, Comics Spain (and others), and a couple of breakfast cereal producers, a whole sub-genre of figure collecting, and/or TV/Movie related stuff.

 

Lego-likey, and always like Lego-likey as it's not plagiarist, lying, expencive Lego! And it's always interesting to see how 'other bricks are available' producers design their mini-figures, here we have real waists/hips and ripped shoulders! These officers could easily arrest any Lego mini!

 

I've seen similar in B&M and elsewhere, but not something that's lighting-up my universe! Although I 'get it', and they are the collectables of the future.

 

This looks nice, and a 'solid'?

 

I've also seen these, we may have had shelfies in the past, these here are possibly more colourful than the ones I've seen in UK stores, and like those minis we saw the other day, are window-walkers, in that sticky, cold, very-soft, silicon type polymer.

 

Many thanks to Brian Berke as always, rack-toys to be found in Dollar General, now. The four post thing was accidental, but after two, it made sense (to someone on the spectrum!), to continue it for [self-imposed] compliance sake!

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Three is Supernumerary

More rack toy shelfies from Brian Berke, he found all these in Dollar Tree I think, and all figural, with 'Action', stretchy and 'Solid' types to suit most tastes!

 

Wall Walkers, unusual, in being solid, swivel-waist figures, with the sticky 'walking' compound attached as blobs to hands and feet, rather than the more usual form of an all-sticky figurine!

 

Although not a bendy, this guy looks like a perfect foil for the stretchy astronaut we saw a couple of months ago from Keycraft!

 

Generics? Their names all begin with 'M'!

 

Another of the Power Ranger's we saw the black one of, in a previous post from Brian.

 

Disney!

 

I'm not sure how this would work as a Yo-Yo, and I've tried to avoid PJ Masks and Paw Patrol here, but the longer they remain popular characters, the more likely they are to creep into the content from time to time! And I don't know anything about them - are they some male version of Power-Puff Girls?

 

This would find a place in the collection; appears to be a sculptural solid? There's a lot of adults buying toys these days, more for lifestyle signalling/decoration, than pure collecting, and this sort of thing is very much aimed at them, for a mantle or windowsill, or a display cabinet in the hall Monster High!

 

Three-inch, four-inch? Look out GI Joe's, Barbie is looking for a husband and she has expensive tastes!

 

Peppa . . . removed from Douyin (China) due to her association with 'gangster' subcultures and the creation of subversive memes!

 

Many thanks to Brian for all these, there's more to come, probably two more posts, so nicely inside Rack Toy Month, while I think the Gygax Monsters will slide into September! 

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Two of . . . a Few!

Continuing to look at the stuff Brian B has sent to the blog in the last few weeks, these were all shot in a Target Store in Connecticut I believe, and mostly TV/Movie related licensed characters.

 

My Little Fawn?

 

There is, somewhere in Picasa, a multipart 'miniseries' which never got published (it will, one day!), which Brian contributed to, on the subject of those figurines you see in the windows of game-swap shops, which are interactive, electronic playing pieces, for/from several modern gaming systems, these seem to be similar, but are more music oriented I think? Can't knock The Muppets!

 

Superstuff!

 

Also a bit big for my parameters, but I know from the Plaid Stallions crew, that there's a massive fan-base for GI Joe, Stateside, with the guys telling each other where certain figures have popped-up! Same with the 'new' Mego's!

 

Even dog-food is promoting the new movie! It launched with much hype as the summer's big movie, and a sort of reset for the brand, but it's gone quiet now, so I don't know if it's good, OK, or a bit duff . . . Has anyone seen it?

 

The two boats are halfway between the rockets and the rubber-boats we saw yesterday from B&M, and it looks like the two boats are wind-up workers.

 

Plastic flat, gravity floaters?

Thanks again to Mr Berke for going out and finding these.

Ph is for Phidal Phalls Phlat!

It's been fun following Phidal since whenever, and they are mostly fun figures, so hopefully I will continue to do so, but in the best traditions of We Buy This Shit So You Don't Have To, I purchased a couple of the Tattle Tales (see previous post), even though I had a certain sense of foreboding, but not being able to get the Blog up in store to check the previous posts, I had to take a punt . . . for you, Loyal Readers!

My suspicion was that the contents were existing figures from the standard My Busy Book range, and in that I was correct! I can't tell you if another box has another four poses, as the original set they're taken from - which we saw here - had twelve poses?

But yeah, if you've got the older sets, don't get these small ones, they're duplicates, I've checked the Princesses too, and I also bought the Lightyear one, which I haven't even included in this post as we only saw the ten-figure version recently, and you may have worked out the duplication from the box-shot in the previous post . . . So, disappointing, but if they become the norm and start to get new sculpts - I'll let you know!

A is for an Army of Arachnids!

A year ago I was still getting excited about these Phidal's as a discovery (by Spectrum), but now they've become a bit of a box-ticker, also, they are coming out with a frequency that Airfix would have envied back in the 1970's and - as such - prove there's nothing wrong with the market, just that tastes (and brands!) have changed.

Picked-these up back at the beginning of August and - Spidey fans excepted - who knew? Who knew there were at least half-a-dozen of the little serum-contaminated blighters! There's girl ones, future ones, kid ones . . . they're everywhere! ♪♫♪♫ Spider-Man, Spider-Man . . . how many of you in the Clan? ♫♫♪

Boo! Shout the panto' crowd! It's the Phidal bad-guys, and they're in front of you! How come all these spider-things don't have eight legs or eight eyes? Just sayin'! Rhino looks more like a Blood Bowl player, although I think that particular piece of Nottingham's real-estate was nicked from something published earlier in 2000AD, or am I thinking of Rollerball?!

The best of a bad-assed bunch! I wrote the names on these as I guide for myself, 'cos I don't follow any of this, There are two movies out this Christmas, I think, I won't watch either of them, even when they come on DVD!

I've recently been catching-up on stuff I did half-intend to see, but was pretty disappointed; Will Smith's After Earth was unadulterated, self-indulgent, shite, with Cruise's Oblivion a better movie but so full of plot-holes and continuity/logic errors it was a poor excuse for Sci-Fi.

District 9 was actually better, but all three had week endings with the first two very 'Hollywood-mawkish' in the last minutes! I also watched Elysium, the sort of [not-a-]follow-up to District 9, and while it shared the earlier films gritty realism and production values, along with a CGI budget to match Oblivion, it also shared the Elysium plot . . . man with X-hours/days to live puts on armoured body-suit to [successfully] defeat baddies!

What was new with this set was a 'blind-bag' element which may be to prevent pilfering? I've seen a couple like this now (with the figure compartment covered), but most are still viewable, there's a nice set of Transformers out there at the moment with robots that look just like 1980's gum-ball capsule prizes, or pencil-tops - without the hole!

M is for More Monopoly 'Movers' - Miniature Metal Marvel Mocherettes

Yeah! Formulaic take on the story of Achilles; Spider-Men, as die-cast statuettes around 28mm for yet another version of Monopoly, I didn't even shoot the box!

That's it, three Spidey's, three enemy (?), the inventor died the other day you know, if you missed the 1000's of column-inches in the press, the hours of TV and Radio coverage, the hundreds of blog posts and the sudden plethora of faceplant memes!

Remember, Judge Dredd didn't fall-in-, get caught in the ray of-, eat, drink, sniff, suffer a spill of-, get shot, bitten- or injected by anything radio-active, diseased, secret or alien - just about everyone in the Marvel and DC universes did!

And they all have an Achillies' heel, kryptonite, "You won't like me when I'm angry" and err, Spider-Man's got fifteen! Dredd just knows he's right!

N is for Never Mind! Better Luck Next Year!

If you haven't made it to Twicker's for more pressing reasons, but want a consolation nearer home there is a Comic Convention in Cardiff today and there are toy shows in Nelson Treeharris (I can't believe that's a 'place'!); Llancaiach Fawr Mansion (model railways, Contact Martyn Parry - 07990 752102) or Oxford; Exeter Hall (general toy fair, Richard Atkins Toy fairs - 01869 347489) that you may be able to sneak away to for an hour or so!

No news on any new PW 'Specials' this year? If there are any I'll let you know ASAP!

Stop Press

As I was loading this (in a rush on Friday), I got an eMail from Terranova with the best plastic-warrior ever - for Plastic Warrior Day - of course!

Marvel and DC on the same packaging, with a light-sabre and no license! Knock-off's don't come much more sublime than this, cheers Brian!

Details / Links

Richard Atkins Toy Fair
12/05/2018 - 12/05/2018
10.30am - 3pm Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, OX5 1AB, United Kingdom
01869 347489

Welsh Toy Show

Cardiff Film and Comic-Con