D is for Doh!

No, not Simpson's toys, although there are plenty...back on the 12th of this month I stated "...not something I'll be in a hurry to track-down the rest of..."

Well, inside a fortnight, they went from ten, to five, to three pounds, so I couldn't turn down a bargain of that level, could I? I doubt it'll go any lower - at 3-quid it's practically being given away!

The Undertakers Set from H. Grossman's Deadstone Valley play set, still in The Works, but not for much longer at 3-quid a pop!

Note how the back of the box and the contents seem to include lots of figures not mentioned on the website or smaller cards we looked at two weeks ago, clearly a range that's being cleared before it's had a chance to find it's feet, just like the Horrible Histories stuff, and the concurrent Star Wars Commanders range. There is a clear and damaging disconnect between the marketers or publicity people and the actual 'toy' people in the industry at the moment.

Two corpses and three dodgy-looking characters from the graveyard/burials team. The graves are the rather lame vac-formed moulds sprayed green and given two anachronistic rock-wall stickers?

The headstones are interchangeable so once you've got a few duplicates you can start mix-and-matching your graveyard...hey, don't knock it - if you're a goth; you're probably wishing someone pointed you at this range a while ago!

Separate shovels and moving arms, this had the potential to become a great series...add a zombie element, a game-playing mechanism, themed sets of corpses...clowns, dancers, teachers, school kids? Note also the slot-fixing for these 'dead heads' that the ballet-dancer didn't have.

However...the heads of the three living poses don't fit the dead ones (quality control), in fact one is loose in it's owner's neck but still won't fit in a corpses neck. And why is the undertaker 70mm+? These missed opportunities to build a figure-based toy range are becoming annoying...speaking as a toy figure collector! I'll be looking at the Star Wars sets soon!