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.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

T is for Trains and Boats and Planes

"Trains and boats and planes are passing by, they mean a trip to Paris or Rome, to someone else but not for me. The trains and boats and planes took you away, away from me."

I'm not a great fan of regular 'pop' but some can give you the same nostalgia-hit as old toys, especially at this time of year...cheers Burt!

Again, in storage I have a lot of this stuff, in various sizes, and a whole tub of Kinder railway bits, but this is what's cone-in in the last couple of years. The three little ones at the front are from a Noddy board game and a green one is missing, while the Kinder loco with pantographs is missing a set of horns.

Veering away from thoroughbred cracker and capsule stuff I happen to have these two carded sets kicking about, both The Round House and the Grace Toys brands being made-up-names, I'm guessing; hooks to hang cheap generics on - like Grandmother Stover's, SSCO or Interesting Toy?

Because we've done both micro-vessels and micro-planes to death, there are only a half a handful to look at, and these are they! Kinder airliner, a polyethylene, hollow-underside version of the catapult planes for the dime-store aircraft carrier we looked at a while ago, a micro-ship from mini/decorative tree crackers (maroon), two pleasure cruisers (there are a few in this chaos!) which are cracker toys but were also sold as carded set 'bath toys', along with a modern tug in propylene, similar to the Giodi/Bruder stuff, but unmarked and only two pieces.

2 comments:

Ed and Bettina Berg said...

Great stuff Hugh! Even after cleaning house I still have a bunch of tiny trains

Hugh Walter said...

I will return to these Ed, with a better round-up one day, I have somewhere an old Japanese made lead-metal dime-store set in a little box, labelled Shackman I think? Similar to the gold one but gloss primaries.

H