SPV is for Soapy Persuit Vehicle!

Heads-up, it's the BMSS (British Model Soldier Society) show tomorrow, in Reading, Berkshire, And, it's a full moon tonight, so lock up any lycanthropes' in the family, lest you fall out with the neighbours, big-time! I happened to need to go to Reading last weekend, and managed a quick trip to a couple of old collectables shops I know . . .

 

. . . of which the first, to be fair, is mostly comics and the usual Star Wars action figure type stuff, while the latter is a more eclectic shop. They are both next door to each other in one of the few remaining Victorian covered arcades. We used to have one in Aldershot, but it was ruined, blocked-off at one end, and replaced with a rebuilt fake, a couple of decades ago.

 

However, I did manage to find one of 1993's Captain Scarlet SPV soaps from NAPA Products, which had seen better days, but was, nevertheless a bit of fun, and which, being modern, in my eyes at least, will probably end up being used in the bath!

 

The dust of ages, or, at least, 33 years!

 

The vehicle - marginally smaller than the Corgi model - was more battered than the box, but you get the idea, and there's not a lot I can add to the photographs, it's a soap, with no rope! But I thought the colour was well-chosen?

 

After a bit of a wipe with a damp cloth!

 

If you do happen to go tomorrow, both shops will be open, and are minutes, or hundreds of yards from both the station and the show venue 

L is for Local Loot - 2 of 2

It looks like I might be picking-up two lots of donated loot at the BMSS show this Saturday, if I can swing my carcass out of bed, early enough, something I have been struggling with recently! So at some point I'll have to get back to a more regular posting, but with over a million hits since Christmas, the Blog seems to have reached a self-supporting momentum, based around it's existing content, which is nice, but may be one of the [subconscious] factors contributing to my lack of motivation? Never thought I'd accuse myself of sitting on my laurels! Anyway, in continuing the plan of some weeks ago - there was a second successful trip to charity shops at the start of the year . . .

 

A bag of bits, a bag of animals and a couple of Stegosaurii . . . Stegosauruses?

Before and after cleaning - three Galanite infant-toy vinyls from Sweden, the poorer brother of Tomte, Both in accuracy (although the BMC 1100/Mini is quite good), and the wheels, which are no way as nice as Tomte's, or even the cheap 'W.Germany' (Stelco, Vinylline) and Hong Kong (Miniflex?) clones which were around at the same time. But collectable nevertheless, and there's a tub of them all somewhere!

 

There was also these . . . they went to 'Recyche'!

 

I'm pretty sure these are from the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus sets, and will need to be compared to the others, there's a bigfull somewhere, to get the best samples in the 'master collection', then the others can be disposed off, probably to charity! They all suffer from paint loss due to play-handling.

 

I suspect these are Corgi too, I don't remember a Zebra, but the same Hong Kong identifiers, and lack of marking, suggest they go with the giraffes? Close to the Britains sculpt, they are also very close to the various Blue Box, Redbox, Holly and New Maries zebras, which I'm one day going to have to try and sort out!

Likewise, note-wise, these two yellow tigers, the white one being marked and probably Holly? Again, someone, someday is going to have to sit down with all the boxed, carded and bagged sets, any catalogue images and all the loose examples, and try and sort them all out and get them annotated correctly by plastic colour, paint, markings etc . . .

 

Britains Llama, Corgi Rhino; a later vinyl moulding, and the bear, which again, may be Corgi, it's quite common in mixed lots, and has a lot in common with both the Rhino and the Corgi Bull from the Lamborghini, so it may be another Corgi, but I'm not sure I have it listed?

 

Modern, Chinasaurs, two makes, both unknown, but we may have seen them in show-reports, or carded acquisitions/donations, all to be sorted another day!

 

 

 

I also picked up this for next-to-nothing, a couple of the figures are damaged, but they just join a growing sub-branch of the collection . . . Box in the recycling bin, and I kept a couple of the accessories, as a sample!

 

Popular movies or other licensed productions, TV, Comics &etc, produce a plethora of crap over a shortish period (unless they really take off like Star Wars or TMNT), and while there's a lot of Minions stuff around at the moment, in 30-years, they'll be more like Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite or Richard Scarry animals are now - half-forgotten, and "What was all the hype about?"!

J is for Jährliche Osterhasenparade

Did you anticipate this post? I'd totally forgotten . . . again! But Brian Berke has done one of his regular photo-essays for us, by heading down to Scully & Scully, at 54 Park Avenue, an address, to Americophiles, as prestigious or exciting, as something on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées would be to a Francophile, or Park Lane to an Anglophile! And why has it taken me nearly a decade to look that up?

 

Brian had real problems with reflection this time, hence two visits were called for, and he even tried different cameras, and while I've done what I can with cropping and contrast, you can see a camera in three or four of them, and I cropped the mice out of a larger image, so that one is a bit fuzzy, because they were background!

 

As always, the sculpts, and their painting are exquisite, and while we've seen some of them before, it's all new painting, and/or some new vignettes, along with new trees, I think. I didn't reject any of the images, so there's a bit of duplication.

 

Nothing else to add, as they are a perennial here, now, so please enjoy a bit of Easter magic from the Big Apple.

 

Many thanks to Brian for these, they are a real treat!

H is for Happy Easter . . .

  . . . although I'm not sure what's supposed to be so 'happy' about the crucifixion of a human being? 

 

There's a number of reason why I haven't posted recently, and I'm not going to list them all here, but really, what is there to be happy about? America is being run by a potty-mouthed, narcissistic, inveterate, constant liar and megalomaniac, who seems, along with his friends Putin and Netanyahu, to be determined to destroy the world economy, the world order and international rule of law, maintained since 1945, sometimes at great cost, for what? So he can rename everything after himself?

 

Starmer, along with the King, are proving to be a pair of gutless fuckwits, and while they seem to be starting to stand-up for themselves, Europe hasn't preformed much better. Easter has become another money-fest with most supermarkets only closed today, and otherwise observing none of the Bank Holidays, and with an October storm in March, the weather is clearly as fucked as a Messiah with nails through his hands and feet.

 

Sighs . . . anyways, here's some Easter stuff, both new and from the archive, with a better post later today.

 

Scanned in '22, I don't know if these where from then, or earlier, it was a major scanning session with several hundred bits of ephemera scanned, most of which is still in the long queue! But, card flats, to join the card-flat zone! I don't know if the names change from box/batch to box/batch, and they are obviously renditions of the Lindt chocolate bunnies, from the back of a Lindt egg box.

 

One of my fondest memories of Easter was hunting the Lindt foil-wrapped, mini-eggs; in the garden if the weather was nice; in the house if Christ's tears prevented outdoor activities.

 

Mum would buy them from the big glass jar in Richard's newsagents in Hartley Wintney, and she would have the staff ensure there were equal quantities of each colour (maybe she just ate the spares?!), which I remember as two shades of gold, a pastel green and blue, a heliotrope-purple, a mauve, and a red which was closer to pinkish-crimson/maroon.

 

Anyway, there was a big divvy-up at the end, between my brother and I, and if the two piles weren't balanced, we'd have to go off again and find the missing ones! I don't think you can even get them any more, it's all unwrapped, licence-related eggs, in plastic bags now, and getting very expensive in the last few years, for a number of reasons, not the least being the chocolate-loving, 8-billion souls.

 

Somehow missed when I did the chocolate bunny season back in '24, this was the Kinder effort, I thought it might have a 'maxi' egg, but it's a bog-standard sized capsule, with what appears to be a lamb in a blanket, but it's not 100% clear, and the toy's 'aint what they used to be!

 

Staying with the edible theme, I actually ate these weeks ago! Branded to World of Sweets, I think they were in B&M, but I honestly can't remember, they might have been in The Range? Anyway, they were a sort of generic tutti-fruity flavour, and are 'Spring', not Easter, is that Trump's hated 'woke', or just canny marketing, from money-grubbing, middle-class executives, no better than Trump himself?

 

Some actual Toys! These WERE in The Range, a couple of weeks ago, and remind me of an old Christmas stocking gift we got one year, which were egg-shaped vehicles, with fat 'racing slick' tyres, like the Marx fire engine we saw here, but as animals, so, more like the Pelican marker pens we saw here, given that one was a grey mouse and the other a pink rabbit, if memory serves? I occasionally look for them on eBay, but haven't found them yet!

 

These are a selection of sort of monster/alien types, using the same craft foam you can buy in sheets, applied to basic blown-plastic eggs, Not sure what the plastic type is, but it seems very thin, so some ethylene hybrid probably?

 

And, as I said at the top, something better, which you might have anticipated, latter today! Bah! Humbug!