P is for . . . No! Absolutely Not! W is for Wenno!

I shot all these in Smyths and wondered if Wenno was an in-house or phantom brand for Smyths, but a quick Google revealed they are a 2014-founded anglicised subsidiary of Shing Hing who's SH marked Matchbox copy 'Army man' tub we saw here a few years ago, also found in Smyths, so there's that! And we've seen two of them before, in another store.

These are not the same as the ones in the tub (next, below), and may have been around for a while, as I know I've had some come in, in mixed lots/donations, the larger pigs for certain, and it's a traditional cheapie in sense that there's quite a bot of duplication in the bag, but not many sculpts; 5 or 6, 6 or seven 7? But reasonably decorated compared to the old rack-toy farm stuff of yesteryear!

 

These are larger, and more like the Peterkin's we looked at the other day, with the larger scale poultry and rabbits etc. Of interest, and another similarity with Peterkin, is the use of smaller unpainted animals in with the larger one.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, who, on glancing at something on eBay or at a show, and deciding it's needed for the collection, have got it home,/had it delivered, only to find it's a piece of shite, and that I already have a better one? Well, that's because when you're scrolling dozens of tables at a show or hundreds of eBay or auction lots, you are visually overloading your brain, and snap decisions are made without the full facts.

It would seem the latest thing going round the cheapo-toy factories of China is to fill the tubs, buckets and header-carded bags with a few big animals/dinosaurs and a bunch of small ones, to overload the casual browser, in order to get them to think the contents are better than they might be, and take them to the till!

 

Obviously a tropical farm with those palm-trees!

The above two sets were seen in B&M over last Christmas and posted in another lot of shelfies, back in February, but here they are again, further proving the independence of the brand (mused upon then, too), and still looking reasonable, if not decorated to the same standard as the Schliech they were placed near! But then, at 12-quid, you'd be lucky to get two of Schleich's!

 

A couple of aisles over, and in the same line as the farm tub, was this set of dinosaurs, also looking quite similar in contents to the Peterkin set the other day, and other's we've seen shelfied here in the past, Tesco supermarkets carried a tub like this a few years ago, if I recall well? It has one huge dino', several middle-sized ones and more undecorated 'mini' fillers.

L is for Late Layabouts Languishing in Limbo!

As well as lots of old Charity shop stuff, there's also a lot of toy show/toy fair stuff, which will probably be broken-down into box-tickers, or thematic posts now, and a few Shelfies which seem to have missed previous round-ups, including these, most of which are from the Autumn/Christmas just-gone, despite the fact we did have several 'shelfie' posts from both my Camera and Brian Berke's? But there you are, they hide from me!

This is actually from 2021, so a real hider! It was, then, the latest iteration of the rather generic and poorly-detailed/sculpted 30mm'ish figures Mark, the Man of Tin, has such success, and apparent delight with, in turning them into spacemen, monsters, Napoleonics and colonial thin-red-lines, among other things!

 

We've had various shelfies of these, over the years, since they started appearing, not long after this Blog was born, and Poundland, Poundstreatcher, the defuct Poundworld Plus and 99P Stores (along with others), have all carried them, often in more than one packaging, while Amazon has carried dozens of generics and phantom-branded stuff, tubbed, carded, bagged, blistered and clam-shelled!

 

Which is why I only shelfie them, I have samples of various sizes, in dozens of colours, and they will be findable, mint, on evilBay for decades to come, as ex-stock, if you really need them in packaging! 

I hate this shite, I phuqing hate it with a vengeance, and to be fair to my sensibilities, I hated the big-head/bobble-head/nodding crap of our childhoods, and I hated the Corinthian cricketers and footballers of the 1990/2000's, it's awful stuff. I think it's an extension of clown-phobia?

 

I even hate the 'Nutty Mads' from Marx . . . "Let's apply teenage, 50's surf-culture to World War Two murderers, shall we? Make them look silly! The Butchers of Nanking will look harmless after we've given them some racially-profiled extremities!", said no sane person, ever. Garbage!

"Yeah, but the kids like them", go the supine, brain-dead, left-of-bell-curve parents! Because unethical, immoral, capitalist Toymen, who have a greater love of money than the future mental well-being of the human race, have sold them the concept, while you were getting drunk and watching porn, to blot-out current-affairs and drown the misery of your existence, you dullards!

Deep breath Hugh, take a moment, and then see if you can find some nice dinosaurs . . .

Self-branded/in-house from B&M, I think these are the latest from HGL (Grossman) or HTI (Halsall), repacked for B&M, and at less than the price of a single larger Schleich or Papo, a bloody bargain! Who wouldn't like this under the Tree on Christmas morning?

 

These - Wenno - might be a phantom brand (also for B&M) or an actual brand mark for a China toy maker (I haven't seen them at the trade-fairs?), but they seem to be newish sculpts (albeit, maybe copies of other makers) and relatively well done for the price-point, which, again, beats the big-names hands down, and I thought the giraffe was particularly well done, compared to the rack-toy giraffes of our youth!

 

 

 

We're on safer ground with Teamsters, having seen them several times before, an imported sub-branding of HTI, covering a variety of die-cast or 'toy car' lines, and I wouldn't buy any of these, new, but they will help ID loose dinosaurs at some point in the future! Also shot in B&M.

And finally a similar set, in B&M packaging, really a generic, but helping to pinpoint an origin for some of the many teeny dinosaurs, if no better candidate comes forward in the future.