About Me

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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.

Monday, July 31, 2017

News, Views Etc . . . Monthly Round-up

A quick cover-all to help clear a desktop full of Rack-toy Month articles which are producing ominous whirring from the Laptop's fan!

Charity

Ever wondered what happens to all the toys attached to unsold sale-or-return magazines? I know I have, and there is now a donation-program to help a cancer charity by selling them as stand-alone novelties - I saw this in Basingrad's Wilkinson store, whether it's a one-off local or national-policy thing I don't know, but Wilko don't do magazines themselves as far as I know, so they must be coming from a central sorting place somewhere?

Holidays

Looking for something to keep the kids amused? The Evil Empire continues to spread and I'm sure Marwell Zoo will prove cheaper that Legoland, and you'll get to see some real animals before we've killed them all.

Speaking of extinction - as I was! - there is an exhibition of life-size, motorised models of dinosaurs at London Zoo for the next six weeks, the models include a T-Rex (of course!), Brachiosaurus, Pterodactyl, Triceratops and an Edmontonia - a kerthunkersaurus with spikes down it's sides and a real bludgeon of a kerthunkertail. The exhibition is included in the zoo's entry-price (so you can visit more real animals before we've killed them all), called Zoorassic Park (geddit!) and mounted by ZSL.

Idiot's Corner

That'll be Britains' famous secret Welsh factory will it?

Ah yes! Meet 'Blue Turtle' the elephant, surely rarer than rare!

Since when were Batman and Saturn Girl considered Toy Soldiers? The vagaries of trawling through the results of click-farm 'stats' manipulation! I will be doing a whole post on HobbyDB in September or sometime soonish anyway, but in the meantime can I suggest that if you get an uncontrollable desire to visit HobbyDB, you instead take yourself to Planet Diecast; as having two similar databases in one Cyberverse is dumb, especially when the owner of the new one . . . err . . . used to own part of the old one!

I was amused by these, some Alibaba brand-on-a-brand Chinese outfit, but what I like is that the French soldier looks more like a British soldier than the British soldier! Perhaps some enterprising tourist-kiosk owner near Waterloo (London) could stock-up on them, with a suitable sticker retro-fitted to the boxes of course, I could come up with some witty epithets - I'm sure!

More here

General News

Is a bit slim since the previous news wasn't that long ago, but Games Workshop have enjoyed a 10% rise in their share value following the announcement their full year profits are expected to beat market forecasts, not hard when you've spent the previous 18 months making all your fans (read: 'suckers') buy a whole new system!

The steps of St Paul's Cathedral were covered in 700 Teddy Bears the other day - of all shapes and sizes - each representing one of the children who flee war-torn Southern Sudan and enter Uganda each week. While artist Jason Bruges is showing an installation of toy pandas under a sheet of glass at the Living Planet Centre in Woking, Surrey - call me a critic, but it looks remarkably similar to an installation of little, lumpen, figures at the Serpentine Gallery about 10 years ago?

Composition News - A life-size soldier made of mud (representing the British losses at Passchendaele) was unveiled in Trafalgar Square last Tuesday, designed to be displayed for four days before being allowed to dissolve in the rain; our weather last week means it's probably already a bit featureless, but may be worth a look if you're passing.

Those Peter Rabbit commemorative 50p-coins mentioned in a previous 'News, Views'; There's currently a false scarcity-bubble on the Jemima Puddle-duck coin leading to prices of between 7 and 15-quid for something you can only get fifty-pees worth of stuff with!

Links

Second case of a Toy Soldier themed restaurant in two months, are we seeing a trend develop here?

Interesting and thought provoking; how some kids value one item with obvious love, while others are trying to win the 'He who dies with the biggest pile, wins' competition - far too young.

Following-on from the Cornish mess a few weeks ago is this on the other side of the world . . .
 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Hugh Walter said...

No! Right said 'Fred'

H

Hugh Walter said...

Paki? Are you sure you want to be known as that?

H