D is for Donation - Peter - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Probably the best subsection after historical, for general interest, and new figures, due, as much as anything, to the large number of die-cast or big-box play set enhancers, or small run/low pose-number figure sets; drivers/pilots and play-accessories, novelties, or game-playing pieces, which turn up, and both donations have stuff which is new to me!

 

And we'll start with these which are all new to me, allowing for a couple of missing figures, they would seem to be a 48-count, split into four sides, each of 3x4 poses, although some of the poses are very similar.

 

Something of Groot, or Ents here?

 

Flamers, if you study the hands you'll see they are different sculpts - just!

 

Likewise with the second and fourth poses here.

 

Is it Earth, Fire, Air and Water?

 

A simple 'CHINA' is the only clue to these, who would have required a quite large bag or box. They are a softish PVC-alike polymer, possibly a silicon, but not the old glossy type of Diener erasers? Anyone recognise them, I don't think they can be that old, and may be/have been, from a game?

 

Two probable game-players here too, either side of a magnetic ger'nome of unknown origin. That's 16 out of 16 totally new items! Good start!

 

This is all new as well, or is it? We may have seen it here as a 'paint-your-own' shelfie, possibly from/in The Range, as I suspect that's what it is, I wondered if it might be/also be glow-in-the-dark, but it isn't/doesn't.

 

HG or DFC types, they all need a bigger sort out, as quite apart from three or four companies issuing this stuff through the 1980's, mainly, there were also sub-piracies, and base variations, which all need to be properly annotated.

 

I think we've seen these before, one Halloween, or in the build-up to, and despite the disparate nature of the and/or the materials they are made from, I seem to recall they were all the contents of one big-bag, from one of the UK's major supermarkets. It was a few years ago now, and recent years have seen no similar offerings.

 

Grist-to-the-mill here, but the more of these which come in, the more paint/finish variations pop-up, especially in the treatment of helmet visors, and the amount of paint on the figures, NASA-types, from four or five sources, here we see the smaller, believed to be Pioneer (for Realtoy/Dacron) and K&M (Wild Republic) sculpts.

 

A trio of MPC clones to be sorted into the collection, and a number of the Mon Desir chocolate egg premiums, but four sculpts we didn't see last time, so possibly-probably an earlier 1st, or later, 2nd tranche?

 

Five of the Lik Be (LB) spacemen, these are the later - Clifford era - version, following the paint scheme of earlier issues, but simplified (no green air-tanks, unpainted bases) with no paint on the back halves of the models, and the strangely blue-eyes; really late sets being unpainted.

 

And finally . . . an ornamental ger'nome, of the fairground side-stall prize variety - hoop, hook or shoot the ducks, fish or clowns, get a ger'nome, to take home! A solid chunk of polystyrene, decorated by automated or stenciled air-brush, it's very much in the same style as the Irish passenger-jig we saw a few years ago, as a PW show-purchase.

 

And, when I said it was a month to the next show the other day, it was actually two months, but now, it's only about six-weeks! Thanks to Peter Evans for all the above, does anyone know who the first lot are, or the pair with the magnetic Gnome, or for that matter, what he is?

D is for ♫♪♪ Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem . . . Crazy Bones! ♫♪♫

Another quick box-tick of colourful weirdos, this was a charity bag in 2018, I can't believe I've been threatening to post these on and off since 2016, I knew I'd put it off for a year or two (it's hardly high priority), but a decade? How fast has that gone!

 

Playing!

 

Blacks, whites and greys.

 

Some proper reds.

 

Greens.

 

Tart's nail-polish colours!

 

Camel dung!

 

Blues.

 

Oranges, yellows and caramels. 

 

Another factoid to add to the previous stuff, this was the first one with Metafleck type glitter inclusions, in a semi-transparent polymer, I have no idea if that has any significance beyond a new variant, but it might have!

D is for Donation - Chris - [Not] Paratroops!

The exception which proves the rule! As we saw Chris's most recent parachute toy finds/donation in a post at the end of April, I thought we'd look at the civilian vehicular portion of the last parcel, and there haven't been any in the three recent tranches from Peter, so it all sort of balances out!

 

Vessels, and we have an all new - to me - sailing ship, possibly a game-playing piece, or just a novelty? A variation of Hong Kong mini bath-toy to its right, both versions of cereal premium baking soda submarine, and  Marx Miniature Masterpiece rubber boat, all good stuff!

 

Five of the Quaker cereal premiums at the back, two of the commoner Hong Kong Minic knock-offs. but in the less common blueish-sea green, and another of the forward sloping prow vessels, which were new to me, when we saw a silver one recently (probably also from Chris), this pink suggesting the bottom-end of rack toys, such as those parachutists who would come in a bag with a couple of aeroplanes and a cyclist or something . . . something like this ship?!

 

Another pair of cereal premiums, this time the R&L plastic-kit types of US locomotives, from different sets I think, and a similar Hong Kong effort in black, all three are in polystyrene.

 

A couple of Kinder or Kinder-like racers in the foreground, with something more interesting behind, it's in the style of a blow-mould, but is actually PE mouldings, plugged-together, however, what Chris would like to know (as I would), is . . . 

 

. . . who made it? It's clearly marked 'Made in Finland', and there can't be that many Finnish toy makers; we've heard of one or two, in the Space Toy business, courtesy of a loyal reader, on the Blog passim, but does anyone know who made this?

 

Micro-stuff included a Star Wars Micro-Machine, and one of the MPC 'minis' copies, out of Hong Kong, all useful grist-to-the-mill, and one day we will look at all the Micro-Machine stuff in better detail.

 

Vehicular jalopies aplenty! Game-playing piece, back left, I think (one of those car-park/traffic jam puzzle-games?), bits of some Kinder or similar model railway vehicles, a soft-plastic copy of the old dime store 'Morris Mini-Minor', the die-cast is a Hong Kong take on a Marx or Tootsie Toys mini, I suspect, while the charm-looped actual 'jalopy' is probably a cracker toy.

 

It's funny ironic too, as it's probably taken from those Japanese slush-cast minis carried by Shackman and others, while it is also aping the actual silver, or plate charm objects, of the sort well-to-do young ladies collected on a bracelet?

 

Back, centre is an interesting, all-plastic American muscle-car type (or Japanese sports type?), marked 280 ZX Fairlady, which Google revealed is a Japanese model - the eponymous Datsun-Nissan to be accurate, I don't know anything about the maker of the toy version though, do you?

 

Interesting, but very large, and will probably end-up on the swaps page, this is a Play Craft [sic - usually Playcraft] large-scale ('Big', G-gauge or LGB) hopper-car, for an all plastic floor/garden railway, the wheel-base however seems to match the soft ethylene infant railway, which shared the gauge of Brio wooden sets!

Heading to the card and paper tub (a Really Useful Box 35lt job), these are a pleasant mystery! Not apparently configured for slotted-wooden stands, but having clearly had the home-cut fragments of magnetised rubber sheet added by an owner, I don't recognise the characters, but they would seem to be recognisable comic creations? Can anyone add anything that might serve as a further clue? Batman?

 

A 1968 Japanese anime; Speed Racer, with Chim-Chim the monkey, see comments. 

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these, the highlights, for me, are probably the pink vessel and the card bits, it's always nice to see things you've never seen before! Although a racing car from Finland is pretty special!

D is for Donation - Peter - Paratroops

One of the best things in these mixed lots, whether from shows, charity shops, car-boot sales, or donations are the parachute toys, simply because there have been so many (many more that ever jumped out of a real aeroplane), copied endlessly, and found in all sorts of places, gum-ball machines, Christmas crackers, Lucky Bags and rack toy trees, and from quite expensive to ephemerally dirt-cheap, I'll probably never track them all down, but the more that come in, the closer to the whole story, we get!

 

I can't remember if this was the Rosebud, or Fairchild moulding, but apart from the marking in the parachute cavity on his back, they seem to be the same tool anyway, but one of the earlier toy paratroopers (there were no parachute toys before the war, as there were very few parachutists!), from the 1950's, and a much copied pose, whose section is probably ready to go up on the Parachute Toys page.

 

Shot with a hollow-based Airfix German clone, and a heat-distortion Afrika Corps'man, who will be a useful addition to that page on the Airfix Blog in the fullness of time, he needs a wall of the correct height to be leaning on with his elbow, as his back's bent forward! 

 

The latest iteration of the Airfix piracy figures, with a few non-Airfix sculpts, that, to be fair, are crude enough to fit in well, with the much copied, umteenth-generation Haldane Place clones. The crinkly cellophane bag, with generic graphics is a common current trope, not so much Poundland, but many of the independent or small-chain discount stores, straight out of China! 

 

A different sample of these were added to the Airfix knock-off section of the Parachute Toys page a while ago now; https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html

 

One of the modern cloth-bag 'chute, troopers, there are quite a few, and they already have a section on the Parachute Page, so it's a question of colour/size comparisons with the odd lose one like this. As always - a quick thank you to Peter for saving these.

B is for Bones, Box-Ticking Crazy Bones!

This is from the folder 'Crazy Bones II', except they have five mentions in the Tag list already, but some of those mentions are in passing, of the Magic Box stuff in these next few posts, when they came-in, and are now all part of the capsule and blind-bag Picasa clearance exercise!

 

The original post was here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/10/c-is-for-crazy-bones.html

 

And, because I've learnt very little more about them, nor given them much more thought, beyond editing the posts in vaguely artful ways (by colour, alright! I sorted them by colour!), they really are just box-ticking, so any genuine fans who might find them, might feel inclined add comments of merit (like - are there any rare ones!), for those of us who remain no more than mildly curious!

 

Metallic finished ones.

 

Comparison between the 'traditional' ones and the metallics of the same moulding.

 

Blues.

 

Reds, yellows and oranges.

 

Pastels, purples and greens.

 

A couple who came in around the same time with more mixed lots, and this was all happening back in 2018, the flood of these to charity-shops seems to have receded, but for a couple of years I was picking up huge bags of them for pennies.

 

Something to add to the previous post's info' is that it seems that a late (or even 'contemporary' a few years ago) issue of Gogo Crazy Bones had these flat, triangular bases with curved tips, I don't know the significance of them, or whether they all had them, but it was taking them further from the original 'bones' concept, which, of course goes back to antiquity and a dice-less, dice-like game played with knuckle-bones, as is Jacks!

D is for Donations - Peter & Chris - AFV's

On the Military hardware section of these posts, and both Peter and Chris have included a few AFV's in the stuff they've saved for the blog, which, being not figures, tend to be more incidental, so I've shoved them into one post;

 

Micro armour odds-and-sods, I think the hull is a challenger, and that these are probably GHQ, the quality is better than the Skytrex I had as a kid, and the lack of cut-wire gun-barrels also precludes them?

 

Largish jeep, from the wheels I'd say pretty modern, so kind of grist-to-the-mill, but still a useful sample, especially if I don't already have one!

 

Ideal board-game pieces, these are rather piling up in a tub somewhere, and I'll have to think of something to do with them, they are fictional, and fun, and there are a few variants to be sorted out, reverse colourways etc.

 

One of the mini-tanks we looked at some time ago, but will return to, there's more on them in a download folder somewhere, and a couple of trees which escaped the 'odds' folder, the one on the left, a copy of a Cherilea-Phoenix window-box accessory, the other a current'ish Poplar, and a very new re-sculpt/evolution of the old Lego Lombardy Poplar, whose evolution we looked at in a previous post once.

This was a superb find by Chris, as I have a pair of these bobbing-commander tanks, unmarked, and possibly in a darker green, which is how you can find them across the pond too, so this one with its clear Peter Pan marking adds a whole 'nother paragraph to the story, which includes a different tank and those easter-bunny trucks! Presumably - a mould-swap?

 

Three micro-armoured cars, which we will return to one day, as there are three types of these Daimlers, two types of the little gun which often accompanies them, and only one version of the 'carrier', but with sets to look at and different wheel-axle types, worth a proper dive, one day.

 

Behind them is a probable Kleeware, or Pyro original on the right, and one of the metal axle trucks from the river-ferry sets, I call Type 5 or 5/6/hybrids;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2011/10/m-is-for-mini-trucks-part-6-types-5-6.html

 

Click on the 1-ton Humber Tag, for more on them! And many-thanks again, to both collectors, for finding/saving/getting this stuff to the blog, for me to share with you.