G is for Gift Egg Updates - 1 - Overview

I didn't know whether to use this as a last post roundup, or a first post intro, but guessing a lot of the die-hard 'Toy Soldier' purists will quickly get pretty sick of little novelties (and it's not December so I can't use that excuse!), especially five posts of them; I figure if we start with the bits and pieces, we can end with a short post...with proper figures!

In the beginning there were gift eggs, and they were egg shaped and full of gifts! Originally these were made of waffer-thin wood, by the inter-war period tin was common (and is making a comeback as trinket storage/jewelry boxes) with papier-mâché and heavy, pressed card also popular, but by the 1970's it was another item of human construct ripe for a plasticisation!

Kinder themselves (still the market leader) have made two changes to packaging in the last year or so, firstly the wrap-around was changed to two foil halves (of which one is shown flattened above) joined pole-to-pole, and more recently they've been turning-up with two moulded plastic halves or 'clamshells' like a lunch-box snack-pack dip! Because when the world is knee-deep in plastic waste; let's find more things to make out of plastic!

The Ziani Frozen we looked at a year ago (I got the little dwarf thing, you may remember) but I've since had a session of scanning the paperwork into the archive, while these two Trolls (one of which I think we looked at in the novelty posts last Xmas) are both imported by CBG of Belgium (not Minot!) from WF Industrial of China. The paper slip of the earlier being replaced by, yes, you guessed it...a printed plastic sheet - that's not going to find its way into the environment between the sweet-shop and home/school is it!

The drag-racer in the upper shot was broken, some of Kinder's suppliers in the 1980's used a silver plastic which was very frangible, and is almost impossible to glue, however I have a method...I coat both halves in a cyanoacrylate 'super-glue' gel, then put a blob of that plumbers-sealant between the two and wedge them together.

The sealant evaporates away to nothing in minutes but bonds and fills nicely, being mixed with the super-glue gives the whole thing added robustness...or at least I like to think so! Time and chemistry will tell if it's a busted-flush?

Below is a bunch of Kinder motorcycles and such-like (pedal trike!) from the 1980's and 1990's.

From that same lot (I got at the PW show back in May) came most of the ships, I've left them in the bags as they are a real bugger to set-up for photography and I have a bunch-more in storage, so one day we will come back to them and do them justice.

Below them a selection of lorries and vans, we looked at a couple of them with the other novelty mini-trucks in December-last, sorry! Another racing-car for the project...but I think I already have the yellow one, so it can stay on its low-loader.

This is brand-new, bought last week for a quid in Wilkinson's (Wilco) and branded to them; it's an egg full of rubber dinosaurs no bigger than a fingernail! Four poses and four colours, packed as two each of two each, I suspect you would only need two eggs for all four of all four, but one's enough to give you the idea. Same new crumbly rubber as other things we've looked at though.