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, February 5, 2018

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Minichamps


Paul's Model Art of Aachen trading as Minichamps had a huge catalogue with probably over a  thousand offerings, makes 1970's Corgi or Dinky catalogues look like the leaflet's they were!

But it's a different landscape now, with online sales allowing vast numbers of what are mostly just paint-variations of a few basic castings - a production model you have to add to a collecting model that has field of adult collectors who will be trying to buy all Senna, Schumacher or Hamilton-related or all Ferrari or Beneton-logoed examples or all the 1997-grid teams, across the various manufacturers or scales/materials; no one actively tries to get all the Minichamps, or all the Corgi aeroplanes; the odd IT-millionaire maybe!

However, there were a few figures on show, like the Jada Man Bats (sorry - posts out of order now!), just standing next to their 'wheels', but unlike the Jada sculpts, these are plastic and smaller at 1:43rd scale, or O-gauge compatible; equating to 40mm for the 'average' man.

There was also a sub-line of Valentino Rossi models in various scales and full figurines in resin; a line which was not clear from the catalogue, but seems to offer, or be planning to offer figures in 1:8th (nine/ten inches?), 1:12th (six inch) and 1:43rd scales.

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