I don't suppose we'll visit fish here again
at Small Scale World for the longest time, so this is a round-up of all the
fishy stuff that's hanging around, most having come-in in the last 18-months,
so there's a synergy to the thing and the post is clearly meant by the gods
(unless you believe in one of them, then you'll be spitting nails at my casual
atheism and refusal to take your pan-dimensional mega-being any more seriously
than the next guys, anyway - his is the one true-one, not yours!).
It's also all rack-toy type stuff, if not
actually from a rack toy, or seen on a rack! Although; if they were on a rack,
they'd be smoked and we don't do smoking here anymore - vaped mackerel anyone?
These are currently available for next to
nothing from The Swagman's Daughter and when I first found them I thought they
may be the old Prior moulds, but
actually they're rather more 'based on' than actual and are - in any case -
marked Hong Kong rather than Macau.
They are also in hard to shoot psychedelic
primary-colours, but I had a go! In fact a mishap meant two sets were forthcoming
and between photo sessions I took enough to give you an idea; but to be honest
I think the shots on the originating site are better!
I wasn't the only person looking for fish
online, the owner of the old photography/camera shop in town, recently
rebranded for the digital era was also looking for fish to decorate the shop's
float in this year's carnival, he found some, but they were . . . err . . .
weren’t what he was expecting - always read the description!
They were in fact 30-40mm or so; not
including flappy-bits! Anyway they went in the window for the same carnival's
window-dressing competition, where I spotted them, took these shots and got the
sorry story of how they couldn't be seen on the float!
I then tracked-down the catalogue images
on-line and as you can see there are only six poses, but they come in assortments
of twelve, six in a basic-paint finish and six patterned. I couldn't tell you
if they are made-up markings or representative, but with the same sculpt used
for two different schemes I'm guessing (like assumption - but wilder!) they're
made-up's. Available here.
These were from Peter Evans buried
in the big-bag of Army Men, the one with obvious markings (angel fish?) seems
to be a direct copy of a Prior
sculpt (with reverse stripe markings), but again they are all marked Hong Kong, not Macau and the others
aren't so obviously Prior, although
with different sources crediting two different crabs to Prior (one of which looks like this sculpt) and me not having any Priors here to compare-with; I'm
sticking with 'after Prior'!
They are also all laced with a piece of
fine thread, so may have been part of a hanging mobile, all very 'Seventies!
Whether they were sold as a mobile or bought as toys and 'crafted' at home is
anyone's guess. Actually (after checking); two - the crab and the fish with a
stand weren't hung, so maybe a low-maintenance faux-fish tank? And why is the
one so much better painted than the others, it's painted to match the Prior as well?
The rest of the local piscine shoal, a
varied bunch with - from the left: an eraser-type rubber blow-fish (Schleich 'mini'?), an ethylene pipe-fish
(US?), a modern, PVC electric eel from China, a small PVC goldfish similar to
but smaller than the first set above, a two-part styrene goldfish (possibly of
Japanese manufacture) and a leaping, factory-painted dolphin, probably copied
from one of the US premium sets?
To which are addended two crustaceans, the
left hand in polyethylene with traces of past having had gold paint round the eyes and the right-hand in PVC.
This chap (from Beverly Hills Teddy Bear - best toy company name ever!) was going
to finish the post, he was sent by Brian Berke over a year ago, and was waiting
for this exact post . . . to finish! However, no one ever said life was fair,
or if they did (say it) they were lying, or unbearably, sickeningly lucky . . .
. . . so Brian sent this the other day to
trump the Nemo-shark at the finishing
post! Literally - because the post was in edit and nearly got published the
other day.
I thought these to be bootleg Iwako erasers but I think they're the
same ones we had in Poundland-Plus
here, however it had already struck me it's clear that about 30% of all 'Iwako'
erasers out there are bootlegs.
Given the history of relations between
Japan and China over the last few hundred years, there probably isn't any
licensing involved from the Nippon-end, or much policing from the Beijing-end!
What's less understandable is that high-street names like Wilkinnson's-Wilko and WHSmith
are happy to carry the bootlegs, heaps of them!
That's yer'fish, you'll have to find you
own chips, and we'll probably not return to these 'till I get the similar
sample of mixed odds-and-sods out of storage.
2 comments:
How about the fish and chips?
Visitors have to provide their own chips . . . haven't you heard; this is 'Austerity Britain' here! Anyone calling them French Fries gets banned!
H
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