O is for Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy-fish!

A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, Oh! . . . Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy-fish! . . . That went wherever I . . . did gooooohw.

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.