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.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

F is for Follow-up - Army Men

This is actually two follow-ups and a fuck-up! It could wait 'till Rack Toy Month, but some of it's been hanging around for a while now, and it's in the queue!

Firstly; courtesy of Peter Evans and one of the lots he sent in the Autumn, these are a follow-up to a post I can't find! Which was imaged on the hoof 9and clearly not tagged properly!), losing the little bag on the way so here really for completeness - and I know it's not everyone's 'cup of tea' (I'll be the first to call is shite!) but it all deserves full coverage if it's figural. The above is the outer of the 'lucky bag' style blind-bag from Poundland.

Colouring-book and crayons and the little inner-bag with a set of the figures, minty-mint . . . contents - as pointed out last time are not what's on the packaging artwork"

Sticker set, writing this up at home I can't remember what I posted last time so apologies if there's too much duplication with the above link, but that's how the cookie crumbles here sometimes!

This is a follow-up to the more recent HTI post. I was in the local toy shop the other day (I asked about the Phidal books - "No!") for some liquid-polystyrene glue and noticed they had several sizes of set with the figures from the set we looked at a while ago, but mostly larger contents and with accessories, or different header-card graphics, but they were pricey so I made a mental note (I almost certainly would have forgotten!) and then this lot turned up a couple of days later in Blue Cross for 99p!

Info' on the base points to 2014 for this batch and instead of green/grey, the mix is green/yellow, specifically that odd yellow of late-war German AFV's base-coat! I keep one of everything for the 'archive' and the rest goes back to charity. The grey flag (another identical one turned-up in the bottom of the bag) is almost certainly from some other toy.

Comparing to the previous post on these we can add poses to the previous base marking differentials, and I've since seen a set with the old 'My Toy/Time For Toys' packaging in the full Halsall logo, where the figures are in a washy 'Airfix' desert-sand and charcoal-grey.

Here there are four distinct batches, with the two greens having a different base-marking distribution, the yellows just pale and dark-shade runs. As with set 3349 (link above) there is only one figure with the full Quality Assurance/tracking information printed on the base, in the whole (possibly incomplete) sample.

This is the fuck-up! It should have been in the four-part overview which overran RTM in August, but it had been picked-up by accident and transferred to the Airfix 'pending' section (American Paratroops 1:32!), so missed it's slot, I now can't remember anything about it and as they have all been put away, it's just get-it-off-Picasa time!

I'm pretty sure they are either Poundland or the now-gone 99p Stores from the last four or five years, may be connected to some of the (Bely?) figures Mr Berke sent us and which were in those four posts, and indeed as one colour, may be in the posts anyway, but I can't be arsed (away from RTM, '28' in Part II?) to do the legwork!

I also think they may have come from several sources, Peter Evans and/or Brian Carrick, my own purchase and oddment bags-from charity shops? They are poorer versions of the 'lucky-bag' figures above (but missing the Matchbox officer and pulling in figure-poses from other sources), it's a pose/colour shot; end-of!

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