P is for Plunder Post - 1. Deutschland Über Alles

So, as I said the other day, re. PW's show, the Germans mostly turned-up, and despite rumours of his trading demise Peter Bergner was there with his usual island of goodness in the middle of the room, and was one of the first to set-up, so I was straight in there for 30-quids worth of 50p stuff before the tubs got a crowd! And I went back and had another fiver's worth later and then four more items for two quid before packing up time!

The figures

The first three (top left - two policemen and skeleton) turned out to be duplicates, but at 50p will move on for the same one day, while synergy being what it is; I picked up another of the yellow/white swivel-waist figures at the same show but with the colours reversed! The rest of it was really just make-weight stuff, it's very hard to exercise self-control with Peter's tubs, you just grab things which look useful, unusual or new.

We'll look at the pirates again on TLAPD, I suspect the 'Princess' grinning like a loon is a recent Kinder or similar, there were 4 Saban in the lot - yellow winged Egyptian god thing, Soma-like knight and the power rangers - they are from a rival chocolate gift-egg brand. The painted Indian is a vinyl copy of a US figure, here marked Hong Kong.

But the best thing here is the running tooth! Marked 'medentex recycling service' in English, he/she/it looked Heimo or Bully-like to me (heavy, dense, PVC) and a quick Google the other day confirmed that that's likely to be the case; a German firm founded in 1984 and centred in Bielefeld, now owned by the UK's Rentokil. There must be thousands of these corporate salesman's-gift / trade-conference mementos / advertising-giveaways out there, I wonder if anyone specialises in collecting them?

Logo

The Animals

We've already seen the fish, the unmarked but probably Heimo version of the Disney Bambi is a nice find as I now have that sculpt in about five versions? The wild pig (Hong Kong) is really quite good, but must be a copy of something from Europe? The big vinyl tiger/lion with the collar is I think a He-Man MotU item, but from which toy line?

The rather indecent blue horse was unusual, I think he is meant to be attached to something else with that prong and while he looks like a cheap French or German rack-toy figure from the wrong-end of the 1970's, he could be HK. The hen too is 'different', with the legs bent in the middle and stuffed into a slot under the bird.

A ZIP turkey to join a growing sample of those otherwise anonymous Hong Kong copies, and an elephant because I like elephants, a prehistoric something'o'therium (anyone know who by?) and a Topps hippo are other highlights.

Transport, scenics & other items

Nothing to write home (or a Blog post!) about here really except the little house, it's made by Hoffmann of Austria, who were err... in homàgé to Wiking (shall we say!) and it's from their Der Kleine Städtbauer play-set, among other things.

A few trees and a native hut converted from the straw-roof of a larger structure I suspect, but at 50p you can't complain! The two racing cars are clip-together (Manurba?), while the 'planes are catapult types.

Andreas Dittmann had taken a table to shift a few spares (I took a few bags along the other year - or else you'll be found drowned in the stuff one day!) and I had some of his 50p bits, which he kindly added-to gratis! Motorbike, because . . . like elephants! And an elephant!

The Two smaller cowboys are Dulcop (about 45/50mm), which is interesting as I think Dario sent a 25/30mm one to the Blog, with a 54/60mm to compare, if I can find them, I'll do a comparison of all three (?) sizes.

Wilma Flintstone (or Betty Rubble?) on the shell-phone - geddit! And some nicely painted Russian/Polish flats, which may be home painted, or may be commercial; it's hard to tell, they have a commercial feel to them with air-brushed highlights, but the cross has been carefully painted-in by hand? An Indian and a couple of Kinder finished the purchase.

A close-up of the 'flat' musketeer from Kinder, There were two ranges of these, the one's with card over-lays and fully-formed headdress and the all-flat ones with coloured-plastic plug-ins and it's nice to find these card ones complete now, although his ostrich-feather's a bit bent!

It's funny, when I was eating Kinder like a daemon to find the astronauts with satellites and other small scale figures (late 1980's-early 1990's), I used to give these away to other people's kids, now I'm buying them back - without the chocolate . . .Doh!