D is for ♪Dee ♫Dah ♪Dee ♫Dah - Ah; That'll be the Fire Brigade . . .

. . . coming along here with their noise and flashing lights, their lardy-dahr 'appliance', clattery-ladders, hoses, water and stuff, saving lives again, what are they like!

This is in every way the twin of yesterday's post and I'll go though it in the same vaguely chronological order (they came in) as I did yesterday too, but with an 'action figure' tacked-on the end!

From the mobile, from 2011, from Halsall's HTI, four-quid seems a bit steep, but they are die-casts; not all-tacky-placky, so I guess there's a 'quality' premium (or material cost!) built-in to the pricing.

Branded to Hunson with a JPW import label, this is a set with figures I have no lose samples of, but you can see several which aren't in the line-ups below, pity as they look to be reasonable figures, the out-of scale accessories on the other hand . . . ?

From last year and re-shown to compare with the next image, as both are Jaru but this set has different contents from . . .

. . . this one, which (like yesterday's Police set) has the firefighter figures moulded in two colours; red and yellow, but - again - not the hollow based ones in the [later?] set above (this one's dated 2002) but rather; flat-based figures in 'new' (old) poses.

With a beach-toy type fire engine, like yesterday's; this too is a bargain at a fiver!

Another comparison, the Lucky Toys medic is a motor-racing repaint and I'd not clicked he was in there or I'd have striped his paint and put him with the others when I Blogged them back in April, May? I'll be doing so now!

With small samples of both the toob-toys from Funtastic and last year's Jaru I can only guess at the full pose-count, but the Top Toy (and others) were topped-up by poses in Peter's 'Big Bag' and a US-style hydrant back in May and are looking good at a round-ten?

The blue set is hard plastic from the 1970's or '80's and a major theme is rescuing people; the last of those blue firefighters has a child piggy-backed with its arms round his neck. Funtastic has a firefighter carrying an adult, the guy down the bottom has a clearly unconscious girl in his arms, the chap from HTI is carrying a swaddled infant while the bloke two across is wearing the distinctive stahlhelm helmet of the cold-war era Deutsches Feurwacht and has a small child over his shoulder - that's around 12/15% of the poses are rescuing someone.

Speaking as an ex-soldier (and knowing at least one ex-firefighter visits the Blog), I'd like to say that firefighters are like soldiers, only better! Both are willing to risk their lives, but while soldiers are trained - and occasionally called-upon - to kill and destroy, to lay-waste and blow things up, firefighters save lives and property; they prevent death and destruction - respect to them.

Finally an 'action figure', stranger to these shores and not a habit I'm encouraging - if only because of the vast number of them, mostly generics, mostly of limited articulation and therefore limited play-value, and . . . basically . . . they're dolls!

This one was imported into the 'States by JPW International via/for Hunson Trading, the 'fire-service' logo is similar but not the same as the one on the older Jaru card, clearly a bit of Chinese free 'clip-art' or shareware!

Brain photographed it with a similar Ninja, also marked JPW but via OKK Trading, so you pays your money and takes your choice with these sales-brands, or you can make it up as you go along.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the Ninja in Poundland under Funtastic! But that's for another day.