C is for Cats, Chats, Mats

The Brit's 'll get it! We are back to lumps of plastic that are not toy soldiers, which will pee a few people off, but they probably need peeing-off occasionally, keeps them grounded in reality! I'm a cat person, so this post is fine in my book.

Brain Berke sent me a couple of shots of cat related rack-toys; sounds like they were mongeese or civets or something! Start again; Brian sent me some shots of rack toys with cats, and nothing un-cat in them!

A few weeks later - when I got those insects and stuff - I found a set of ten cats for a pound, well, that's half what it cost to make them and ship them 14,000 miles by truck and container vessel, so it would be rude not to buy them . . . a whole pound!

When I got them home and compared them, one seemed to be the same as one of the cats in Brian's MTC blister, but over here they were Amscan. As Amscan have a US office and are FoB'ers, I guess they probably facilitated the MTC deal, separate from the Milton Keynes based UK office issuing them under their own Amscan branding.

My ten were actually seven poses, with four of the foxy-looking breed top right making-up the total. As Brian's 'mere' four has three poses I don't (well actually I do now because he sent me the blister - thank you Brian!), I am guessing, these are from a larger pose-sample maybe 15 or twenty, possibly originally arranged for a kids magazine as a cover freebie (like a lot of the smaller Chinasaurs are), so I will return to the Party Shop they came from and pay greater attention to the little bags and see how many I can find, they'll make a nice post for December!

Brian also sent pictures (and then the bag - Thanks again!) of this Hunson/JPW bag, with what looked to be larger models of smaller kittens, they are definitely fluffier, and they look more recognisable as the Euro-tabby mongrels I'm used to (is the pale one a 'rag-doll'?), the MTC/Amscan set has some odd-looking breeds in it!

Look at the face of the ginger-tabby in the right-hand/reverse artwork . . .

. . . That's a real face, which real cats make at real humans!

After the two sets arrived I could take a comparison shot to confirm the above musings. Apart from the odd breeds (another clue to a part-work type thing going on there) in the adult cat series, these are all quite nice sculpts, but are all let down by the eyes . . . I suspect a Chinese cultural thing might be in the background and they have that 'Lucky Cat' thing, and I think . . . no; no I don't know what I think and rather than throw a paragraph together full of question-marks, I'll leave it hanging. . . possible reason for big eyes . . . cultural?

These were in Picasa from a year ago, not really Rack Toys either, a rule broken in Rack Toy Month - Doh! Schleich kittens playing on a rug, well; on AND under a rug! Their eyes are a bit OTT too! The Tabby paint-jobs are better, but as they are also made in China, it's all about budget, and these are $4, 5, 6.99 each, not £1 for ten!

Well - now the rule's broken lets go for the full witches brew (is that even a proper saying? I have been up a ladder all day, in the sun! Posted 12/08/16!), two more kittens playing on a coir mat, watched by two adults, several puppies and a grown Alsatian . . . along with a hedgehog . . . all Schleich, and still an improvement on a parachuting penguin!

I think we've seen most of these before, a badge, some charms, a large resin kitten and a Whimsy from Wade in pottery, all compared to one of the cats in the first set. And thanks to Mimi for two of these.

That's it for cats for a while, rack toys or not; nice aren't they?