D is for Dinorasers

I'm sure we've had that title before, but I can't be arsed to think up something else! Not exactly a Rack Toy Month perennial, yet something we have returned to often enough, and probably during some RTM's, but it happens I've found four new (or newish?) Dinosaur eraser sets recently, and these is they . . .

 

This was the missing Iwako set, which we did eventually look at I think, but I can't remember if it was shelfies, sealed, a show-shot or the full enchilada, so I grabbed this one when I saw it a while back now (garden centre I think, early May?), so I'd know I had one!

 

We've seen the Pterodactyl, and the other four biggies in close up for sure, but this set (and another multi-animal set) also has the two smaller, single-piece Velociraptors, and a pair of Archaeopteryx (Archaeopteryx'es?) for a nine-model count.

Then, at the end of May, I found these Kiwi dinosaur pencil rubbers, and again I can't now remember where, but it was probably another garden centre, but might have been Home Bargains, the TKMaxx full-price but cheapo' off-shoot? They are straight copies of Iwako (with the exception of the green cartoony smallie, who's also a single piece moulding), but more obvious piracies for not following the colours of Iwako as other clones do, but making for a more interesting heard, when added to the existing Iwako/Hawkins ones!

 

The other day I found these in . . . yeap, a garden centre, but this time I know where! It was the big Longacres  one up at Bagshot, and they are familiar sculpts in a new packaging, this time branded to Deluxbase.

 

And one new colour - the red Spinosaur! Although the two greens are quite different too. We saw the Range/i-doodle set a while ago, but for comparison, you can see it's basically the same assortment. 'Back to school' season, can be a good time to look for these things!

S is for Shelfies - The Range

Shot these back in February, but like a lot of things, they got caught in the general malaise here at Small Scale World this year and languished, lost in Picasa! So, with a rather Easter flavour, here's what was trending in The Range, six months ago!

 

Paint your own Rocket, what's not to like - 

And the umpteenth cartoony-retro rocket this year!

 

I shot these out of a sort of nostalgic feeling, one of the first things I ever reviewed in PW was the encapsulated toys, imported, then, from the USA (circus, wild animals and dinosaurs), and facing stringent safety stuff, due not to the swallowing danger (the capsules melted in warm water . . . or throats), but because the foam would then expand and present a breathing difficulty, they are now around the place in several formats, with no hysteria! Although, these are larger and for print-stamp painting.

 

More paint-your-own!

 

Blobby infant toys, but might turn up in mixed lots in the future?

 

Again nostalgia bit and I bought these, reminding me of the old Pop-a-point pencils of my youth, I've since seen several other similar products, bears, pigs etc . . . as pencils, coloured crayons or felt-tip markers, so clearly another bandwagon trend this year.

 

I also bought these because while the main 'Iwako Eraser' fad, seems to have cooled off, pencil-rubbers remain a great favourite, and you do still get the odd set of Iwako clones or homage-copies, and with a section of them in the collection, it's worth adding to, occasionally, to keep a picture of the genre's trends. These are not direct takes on Iwako, and bent ears seem a defining feature of the set! Branded to i-Doodle, everything else was in-house for The Range or CDS Group.
 

M is for More - R is for Rubbers!

I've been rather too addicted to 'Reels' since Facebook started posting them on our feeds about six-months/a year (?) ago, and one of the common themes seems to be younger Brit's and Americans comparing each other's food, language and culture, often disparagingly, or at least comically, and one of the words which keeps coming up is 'rubber' for eraser.

 

Now, I deliberately chose to use the word 'eraser', from the off, and as the Tag, back at the start of the blog, or when I first covered them, as even if you're not chasing clicks, it behoves you to at least help the search-bots, which are, in the English language, mostly American in origin or location. But yes, we use rubber in everyday lingo.

 

And the various European forms of Spanish 'goma', the French 'caoutchouc' (cow chew!) or German 'gummi', all refer to rubber, as in the latex from rubber trees, while the word erase belongs in the group of words that includes destroy, obliterate, as in to wipe out or cancel. Although the fact that in Hollywood movies, the mafia are often rubbing people out, suggests that the connection is there, and that American English has evolved away from English, and 'rubber', with the adoption of 'eraser'?

 

I'm not sure that we've learnt anything there, or prevented future giggling on dreadful teenage influencer's Tick-Tock's or Instagram's, either side of the pond, but I've got a substantial intro', without much effort! As a follow-up to the eraser's seen in the 'London loot' post yesterday, here's a few more which have come in recently.

 

These are by Rex London, who we've seen before, and I can't remember where I got them now, but it was only a few weeks ago? more Iwako knock-offs, and more marine subjects, the whale with the fountain-spurt found in yesterday's Symex set is here, but the others are a bit more toward the realistic than the cartoony?

 

We did look at some of these in a previous post too, with their little black plastic eyes, and I wonder how may of them ever actually get used as rubbers, the bulk just building as a combined weight of collected novelties on the planet's surface, with the occasional clear-out sending some to landfill?

Dinorasers! We have seen these sculpts in WHSmith packaging before, but I think we have new colours/shades in this set, which is branded to i-doodle, one of the in-house brands of The Range, for their stationary lines, suggesting a third party contract-manufacture for both lots, and further brandings likely, away from these shores!

50p in a British Heart Foundation charity shop here, fundraisers for the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), another charity, and a flat lifeboatman was the attraction! There have been quite a few lifeboatmen figurines, and other relevant items from the RNLI, over the years, and they will get a page on the A-Z's one day, as I have several flyers of their fundraising items.

As an addendum, because I also chose to set my PC to proper English, every use of eraser above, has a blue line under it asking me if I want to switch spellchecker to American-English! And yes, we use the other 'rubber' too! Although there, the nationalism switches to our 'Auld' enemy', where we also call them French Letters, and they call them English Overcoats!