About Me

My photo
No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

D is for Mar...mer...err...not DC

While clearing a few DC bits out of Picasa around the submissions by Brian, I also thought to clear these out, but they are the other lot - Marvel! It's funny, when I was a kid the impression was always given (or that's the message I got) that Marvel were all powerful, and DC the 'also-rans' or 'smaller party'.

But actually it's clear that it's the other way round, Marvel have the Spider Man (a copy of the Man Bat) and err . . . the Hulk? Thor totally escaped me and Captain America was . . . an American! Likewise; Collectively the Avengers are a warped mirror of the Justice League?

DC - on the other hand - have Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, Super Girl . . . a whole bunch of big characters, but anyway, that was my take on it then and my opinion now, however; some people prefer Marvel and for them: a quick round-up of current gift-egg contents . . . and a few other bits.

These are all out there at the moment, the Zàini 'Ultimate Spiderman' ones have reappeared with a greater choice of contents and next to them are a set of 'Avengers' eggs from the same source with various characters on the wrappers, I got a Hulk, but I saw Thor and a Captain America one.

This figure is becoming a bugbear for me, I was given one by Garth Morgan years ago as thanks for helping him with his Blog, then I bought one from Peter Evans in a mixed-lot, and finally when I bought one of the eggs I got him again! And I've forced you to share [suffer] the same disappointment . . . because he's been on the blog before!

It is nevertheless a nice sculpt, with a dynamic pose attained through the use of multiple clip-together parts to get round the problem of undercuts. I probably said all that before too, if I was you; I'd ask for my money back, this is duplicate copy!

The new changes in the gift line-up, between issues 1 and what - going on the information on the safety leaflet - seems to be issue 6; namely; the addition of three pencil-rubber/erasers.

I actually got one of the looped 'charms' - of interest as it is an over-moulding; using the layered over-moulding Italian military badges were using long before Timpo had a go. Which is not a dig at Timpo, their form of over-moulding was a far more technical achievement that this one-layer-over-another style, but you can see where the idea came from.

Also I got a pencil-rubber, but from the Avengers egg, not the Ultimate Spiderman one. As there are nice figures in the series I will try again, until I've had all the wrappers and scanned them into the archive, but these will all turn-up in mixed lots five or ten years from now, if experience is any guide! It's worth noting that the disclaimer/'small print' down the bottom of the paper slip hints at a wider range?

Bonbon Buddies are offering a much wider range of gifts, but no figures, so I won't be returning to them in a hurry! This is real 5p / 10¢ vending machine stuff isn't it!

These came from The Works quite a while ago (2011), and were clearance from a larger line coming from Hasbro Canada; reasonable figures in around 54mm I think - they're in storage now and might have been closer to 60 or even 70mm.

I picked these up in the same The Works about three-weeks ago, for a quid each, and I can't remember the handling brand, but I will get more when I see them (they've disappeared but should reappear) as they are really nice figures, and we'll get the brand then.

The Disney Princesses are the 'new movie' style which is semi- or near-realistic, especially when turned into a 3D figure, while The Hulk is a solid chunk of PVC; these figurines are/have real value for money.

The Hulk was funny . . . every week he'd lose his temper, rip his shirt 'clean ahrrrff' (to quote Dirty Harry), somehow maintain his trousers at the waist but shred the turn-ups? Tip a pick-up truck or car onto its side, not kill a bad-guy or two, stop a digger, let the bad guys run off, calm-down, find a woman to fall in love with, do something in the bedroom with her (which we knew involved kissing a girl...urrrh), have a shower, get new clothes from and then leave the woman - citing his crap life and at the same time next week, be found losing his temper again, in another set of clothes altogether! And where did his little rucksack go between the temper-loss and the end credits, when it always reappeared? Maybe his rucksack was like a Tardis, waiting somewhere out of shot to be called when needed, filled with a thousand sets of clothes . . . and shoes . . . and a toothbrush!

Calling the curtain down on Superheroes of all types for a while here on the Blog are an unknown 'super-deform' Spidey that must have come-in with a mixed lot at some time and the set of Mon Desir figures we've also seen before.

2 comments:

Jan Ferris said...

Interesting and colorful specimens. Wasn't there another sort of toy that was offered in an egg capsule?

Hugh Walter said...

Loads Jan...click Kinder on the right of the page and you should get most of the posts up.

H