B is for Benevolent Buys - 3 of 3

Along with the cats and turtle/tortoise (you'll agree it wasn't clear, but flatter = turtle?), came this bag of shrapnel at the start of October, nothing special, but all fun!

 

A Fiver's the top-end for this kind of thing, but it'd been a few days since anything joined the stash, and withdrawal was starting to itch, so what choice did I have?!!

 

A near-complete set of the 'Nabisco' Magic Roundabout, and in a follow-up I'll explain way I haven't italicised the Nabisco, and have placed it in single-quotes, but for now, strange that it's all in red, with no sign of the other colours normally associated with the 'cereal premium'?

 

Standard Erzgebirge houses and church, but larger than previous ones we've seen here, with an extra window each, The Church/Public building with Zwiebelturm (onion tower, one of the first German words I learnt, the dreaded Umleitung came second, Bummelzug third!) is one from our childhood, I've been after for years, so really pleased to add this to the pile!

 

 

Other wooden stuff of the Erzgebirge type, with the train possibly a later Kinder one, and the car probably from a board game. Some of it may go with the cottages in the previous shot, but it's not obvious, while styling, paint, varnish &etc. . . suggests several sources, and many years between oldest and youngest samples.

 

Mostly 1970/80's rack-toy scenic stuff, but the greenhouse is from the New Ray HO civil/model railway accessory range, and the two Poplar trees are new to the collection, and - with those huge bases - probably from something more infant-oriented, and also, probably more modern.

 

Odds & sods; the barrow looks like it should have a pencil-sharpener attached, but there's no sign of such an accoutrement having ever been attached, and I don't know what the blue-cap is from, or if it's even anything to do with toys whatsoever? 

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Everything Else

So, we reach the last of the plunder, bought or donated, from the sort-of-fortieth PW show, at Whitton, in SW London, this June, just gone, and it's the bits & bobs, trees/plants, vessels, and remaining vehicular stuff!

A bunch of the Cereal Premium ships from Quaker Oats, we've seen the whole set before, here, and a previous lot of additional colours, but here's a few more!

Somebody gave me this at some point in the course of the day's proceedings, he came over and asked me about it, I said I didn't know, but that it looked both modern and really nice, and he said "Keep it" and left me holding it, I hope his name is in the footer acknowledgement, below, but if it isn't, eMail me! Sitting at it, is a larger scale Blue Box doll house kid, and smaller Britains Garden adult!

A fine rack-toy of the 6d/5p variety, a set of tools, which, had I seen it in the 70's, would have been purchased for Action Man! I reckon they would have fitted nicely in one of those silver Arctic Explorer crates, and could have been stowed in my Spartan personnel carrier!

 

Barrels from a die-cast Waggon , one of those Benbros-Charbens-Kemlows minor die-casters? A couple of road signs, one damaged, but it might be an only sample, and a badge probably from Brian, who keeps giving me his old badges, as I think he knew I'd kept all mine, and one day I'll have to sort them all out and throw them up here as a fun-post, on all the shows over the years! I've even got most of my Sandown stickers somewhere!

Scenics; including a small moon, or large cannon-ball, probably from a rack-toy bag, a Hong Kong hay-rick/stack clone, and what I suspect is a rabbit-hutch or poultry pen from Taylor, missing its front-door/mesh, but interestingly inscribed with the full For Good Toys slogan. It's probably taken from the lead original.

FG Taylor's 'squirrel-tree', a Lego Chestnut tree, a couple of Britains window-box scenics, and three smaller Barratt trees.

Largo's hydrofoil motor vessel Disco Volante (somewhat simplified!), from Gilbert, I have the carded one, so it's nice to now have a loose one, complete, if slightly discoloured by age (smoking or UV?), although I think an ultrasonic bath with diluted bleach can bring it back white, without taking the red off?

Mixed vessels, nothing too exciting, the smaller rubber-boat is Corgi I think, and the tug may be Springwell, a reissue of the Tudor Rose vessel, or one of the TR vessels (reader-driven post in the pipeworks, on that one!), several baking powder premiums and an odd colour of the usually silver/grey copies of Minic waterline ships 

Aircraft include a damaged and stripped Messerschmitt, a second Inter Cities Services Rota-Ship from Injection Moulders, a small spacy thing, probably from a board game and another Blue Box 'chopper', "I lurve the smell of vintage plastic in the mornin's!".

Another race-car, also Quaker, standard colour and number, but until it's checked against the master collection, I won't trust it! A large egg, from the discount-store rival to Kinder; Wow Eggs, an infant toy which will end-up going to charity, but is at least 'in the archive' now!

 

While the truck is - I think - the New Maries copy of the Holly copy of Blue Box's livestock truck from the Andy's/Home Farm sets, in all cases a sub-scale vehicle from those sets, but they were all mixed scale, with the Merit knock-off horses. probably fitting this nicely!

F is for Farm Friends - Smaller Set

So this is the other set I have, it's a smaller set, and has the boy again, although the girl does exist, I think we've probably seen her here, in a donation or show-plunder post in the past, but of interest is the reverse sculpt cow, flat tree and Dutch barn.

 

The flat tree is in the style of, but not a copy of the Lego trees of the era, while the Dutch barn, with a stain/wash and dry-brush, would make an excellent war gaming scenic piece, albeit with a rather 1950's silo, but still, you could hide an anti-tank gun in the doorway, behind some straw, or a strategically-placed wood-pile!

 

The window-box and liner, I bought two by accident, so unboxed one set, after I realised I had two! As with the 'funimal' band and critters in the Animal Fun Fair set (previous but one post), these are glued in with Hong Kong's take on what was called Evo-Stik in the UK and over time it dries right-out and becomes brittle.

 

If, or when I'm replacing/restoring sets with remnants of this glue I use small spots of a modern clear contact adhesive like Bostik (yeah, they all drop the 'c'!) or UHU, which dries near invisible with the chocolate brown underneath.

 

One of the better B's, clearly a heavier whiteness on the right, and while it's a shit logo, I went into all that while we were still trying to promote the 'LP' red-herring, and wean people off 'ID' or 'IDL' which are both still being used on feebleBay! Now we know it's Lik Be, we know it's an LB!

A is for All Sorts for All Hallows

There is a 'comedy of errors' ongoing in the background, in which a parcel from the 'States which should have been here a couple of weeks ago, has now been delivered back to the sender twice, due to perceived erroneous data on various postal and tax stickers, resulting in the sender reporting that the third time he took it to the USPS, they had to cover all the previous stickers with blank stickers, before starting again with a new set! It now has more layers of fossilised history than a shale-bed! The hope is that they will still be here to photograph before (or on?) Thursday, however, the sender indicated that some non-Halloween figures had smuggled themselves aboard the parcel, so there will be a post, even if we miss the day!

In the meantime, Brian Berke has sent me two lots of seasonal shots, two of which may represent the absent, much-travelled figures, so let's have a shufftie at 'em . . . 

 

. . . by going firstly to Scully & Scully, where Brian was a little disapointed to find only two flats, but to be fair, the Blog is testement to the fact they've never done as much on Halloween as they have at Christmas of Easter, which my be a sign that it's not big in Germany or Europe? And, while it may be growing - purley as a consumer affair - here in the UK, even here, the trick-or-treat'ing is confined to social housing areas, with the emphasis being on fancy-dress parties, for adults as often as children? Often combined with the 5th November fireworks.

Earlier Brian had found this, it's a garland, but can be broken down into skeletons which look like they could give Action Man (GI Joe) a fright, scale-wise, I've seen similar stuff over here, possibly in Asda or Morrisons, who seem to have had the better stock/displays this year?

 

Both shot at a Family Dollar store in Waterloo, New York (aquired by Dolgen in 2015), he also found these, which may be the 'this year's packaging' of the missing parcel's figure sets, but the pricing leads Brian to wonder if they are old stock. We have seen them before, as the parent's Dollar General, always courtesy of Brian, and watched the additions come, and go, and the packaging change every year!

 

Brian also sent a couple of Autumn colour shots he took on the journey 'upstate', and as it my favourite time of year, I thought I'd share them with the rest of you!

To which I'll add this one, which I shot the other day, it's actually not doing the subject justice, as it had a weirdly metallic-pink sheen to many of the leaves, which has been washed-out by the camera? I thought I'd shot more trees, but I must have just admired them?

Many thanks to Brian for the shots, and I have a couple more to get out before the day, whether the parcel gets here in time or not!

L is for London Loot - 2 The Toy Project

Another feature of my annual/occasional visits to London on toy business [It's not a business, it's a game!] is the visit to The Toy Project charity's shop in Archway, and while it's not actually that cheap, it is for charity and if you're having a 'day out' in London, you should budget accordingly, and I always limit myself to what I like the look of, rather than what it's going to come to at the till!

This lot is just for fun, I'm not going to try ascribing everything, it's all get better sorting another day, but I think I ended-up with 37 items, most civilian or TV/Movie related, and here we have three Phidal or Phidal-likes, a catapult-novelty superhero and a large chap who may prove to be a Ben Ten thing?

 

Two pine/fir trees, one wooden, one hollow polystyrene, both shot on the radiator, as the - freshly laundered - T-shit I shot the rest on wouldn't allow the wooden one to stand up long enough to focus the camera, but they looked daft lying down!

 

Another Ben Ten, different make/line, one from one of the Insect movies from a while ago now, and an Avatar figure from Kinder I think?

 

Hermione, Hasbro and Haddock!

And probably; a capsule toy, GI Joe and Plastoy respectively.

Pokemon? Unknown? Minion and Spongebob Squarepants?

Three renditions of Snow White, one of which is bound to be a Phidal!

A right-old mix!

Nice pirate lady, the bear might be a corporate mascot,

the bloke could be another Ben Ten figurine?

Dragon, Leprechaun and creepy-Crawley!

Hasbro Napoleon from the Night at the Museums franchise, a nice sea-horse, Tomy era Britains farm-hand, capsule Ninja, sky-diver and a BMC (?) redcoat! Which was 37 items! All grist to the mill.

A is for A'h Done Did Me a New Poem!

 

P is for Partially Seen Elsewhere - Acédo African Scene

I posted my small sample of these elsewhere, the same day, I think, but I shot a better sample on Mercator Trading's stall at the show (last London show of last year?), so we can have a better look at this French production now.

Acédo, the plastics 'arm'  of Domage et Cie (Domage and Co.), the company also behind Aludo (aluminium production), are responsible for this little set-up! Obviously made in polymerised cellulose acetate, and apparently depicting a peaceful, or civilian take on African life in a rural village, sans modernism!

 

I wondered about the trees and huts, as they looked a bit homemade (huts) and converted from something like Playmobil (trees), but a quick Google that evening revealed similar huts and some similar, but very different-shaped trees, so I think the pieces were made as flat sections, or bare boughs, and then assembled, with heat, glue and hand-held pyro-gravure work - to hide the joins. Portable hairdryers were invented in the 1920's, and can be set 'too hot' (for scalps!), so all very doable.

 

The running boy and drummer being not warlike, although the full set does include a warrior with spear and shield and a white hunter in pale safari-suit, the warrior is sort of waving his spear & shield as if 'beating' the game toward the hunter.

Close-up of my previously seen sample, other colours of loin-cloth turn-up including dark blue and white, but I don't know what other animals might be considered part of the set, a rhino, hippo, ostrich and more monkeys were in the 'zoo' sets, so there was a species-bank to pick from!

 

Usually found decorated, and the only one seen, on the day, I don't know if it's a late production thing, unpainted, or if it has been stripped, due to poor wear of the original decoration?

R is for Rubbed Out

I know, but I'm in a hurry and they did all go extinct! Back to the Iwako 'Dinorasers' or Erasersaurs, and I did manage to get one of the new 2020-launch sets back in 2021, so as a bit of a box-tick, here they are, and the backing cloth really seems to be that colour, I can't remember what it was, but the erasers are all relatively colour-true!

 

Packaging

 

Parts count

Assemblies;

Spinosaurus (poor man's Dimetrodon!), Sauropod and a Kerthunkasaurus!

 

I think this means I have all the known Iwako dinosaurs now, but not knowing if the Dimetrodon I found, or these above, will have other colourways, while knowing I still have two colour variations of the Paralophosaurs to find, means the search goes on!

B is for Battling Micro Tank . . . No 'S'

Because to get the advertised/titled Battling Micro Tanks, you need to get at least two sets, although there are three tanks to find! I found this in 2021, although it's copyrighted 2000, to a Teamforce Co. of the UK, and the contents will be all-Chinese.

 

A Sherman and Tiger still to be found, all sharing the same running-gear, but the Sherman having outer flats to represent the distinctive suspension system of the M4, but with only two per side it looks like a Stuart/Honey with ideas above its station!

The Mk. V Panther of this set. It's a tad deformed too, but holds the look of the real one reasonably well, just a little too wide for its length. They could have hidden the power button a little better, by placing it in the cupola?

 

The figures, around 28mm, are Airfix copies and resemble the ones being issued with Majorette military sets around the same time, with heavy bases, but new poses I think, however they could both be from the same subcontractor? Similar figures were issued by Skylark a few years ago, but they were very poor quality copies-of-copies.

The trees are also a bit Airfix'y - from the Zoo play set?

The batteries have all gone 'acid burst' and should probably be discarded, but they are pretty safe in their tray and I think I left them for the time being? Quite unusual to find 'Batteries Included'!

The radio-control unit is disguised as a grenade, which brings memories of Galoob's line of Secret Army Supplies!