The bulls are still around, but they seem to have had a makeover!
http://www.notcot.com/archives/2013/07/torres-sangre-de-toro-bulls.php
About Me
- Hugh Walter
- No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
- I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
S is for Space Paratroop
After the paratrooper post the other day I
found two more shots in Brian's folder, one of which should definitely have
been in that post (Jaru card variant), still, we will return to paratroopers again and I'll try to
remember to use them both then!
In the meantime we are looking at a
Paratroop toy with no parachute!
These turn-up as single figures, loose,
from time to time as they were probably quite common once, however it's nice to
see them in the packaging, and who needs a parachute in space!
Copies of MPC spacemen, but with lenticular
faces behind fish-bowl visors which gives them a quite realistic look . . . who
am I kidding; you've probably all seen them in the flesh . . . they look like
lobotomised starey dolls; the Stepford Space Paratroop!
Labels:
90mm,
Carded,
Hong Kong,
Lenticulars,
MPC,
S,
Sci-Fi,
Space - NASA,
Spacemen
S is for a Shed-load of Shelfies of Saurapod Sets in time for Santa!
Both Brian Berk and myself have been busy
since August taking shelfies of Chinasaur Dinosaur sets, which have been gathering in a folder with a vague aim of doing something at Christmas in the back of my
mind, this is that something, it's nearly Christmas . . . so!
Starting to recognise the different
shelving in Brian's shelfies I think these will be found in Walmart, 'State-side? Largish-looking
scale/size wise and nicely decorated; since the Chinese started finding such
well preserved evidence in their sedimentary beds, toy makers (and dinosaur
artists generally) have got more experimental in their decorating of them,
particularly the larger models.
Although tending to use snakes and lizards
for their guiding-influence, rather than birds, as they probably should, true
reptiles being a separate branch of the taxonomic tree - I believe - from
dinosaurs; the two groups existing side-by-side for hundreds of millions of
years.
The back of the box has the sort of
info-panel kids' love collecting, cutting them out and keeping safe in 'their'
drawer or a little folder or something! But spot the deliberate (not!)
mistakes!
Ten out of ten for Kid Galaxy from this critic! Four more; the . . . Monoceratops, Multiceratops
(? Front-horn's too long for a Styracosaurus) is particularly striking I think.
Meanwhile I was over in TKMaxx taking shelfies as well, these
are less well decorated (or 'traditionally' decorated - blast from an angled
airbrush both sides and brushed highlights in a contrasting colour!) beasts
from HGL (formally H Grossman) being sold here as a four or
five lot (check-out the blue one's neck for a bonus!), but also available . . .
. . . as a proper old-school play set!
Twenty-nine dino's and a tree . . . and a volcano!
The volcano being filled with mini-saurs
and - despite picking-up a lot of mini-saurs in recent years - not instantly
recognisable - so possibly new sculpts, or new to me anyway. I was tempted, as
well; 16-quid makes them just over 50p each, cheap as a bag of junk at a toy
show! But it's a 'big ticket' at one swoop and they'll be in charity shops for
less eventually, so I'll wait!
Back to Brian's snapping and we have this
set of 55-pieces, most of which also seem to be Chinasaurs, rather than scenics
or flimsy transparent volcanoes! Also in Walmart
and the count is in part arrived at with duplication, but even if it's 24
sculpts and a tree, it's gonna'be good value for younger relatives this
Christmas!
These come with a mildly amusing story of
uptight British mannerisms - I needed to buy a small paint-tray, and no one in
town had one (well, Baker's would
have but it was a Wednesday afternoon so they were closed!) that wasn't part of
a large set, every other piece of which I had no yearning for!
The chap who's recently taken over the odd
& sods shop did have one, but it was less than three quid and I only had my
card on me, so feeling guilty as we walked back to the till, I grabbed these
two as I felt I needed to 'make-up' the amount; terribly British nonsense, but
there you are - by accident of birth!
Anyway, they were 1.99 each and took the
total over six pounds so 'honour' was restored, or achieved or whatever the
Brit's think they are doing when they unnecessarily buy stuff to feel better
about buying stuff from someone who sells stuff - for a living!
The orange one seems to be the least well
painted of the set of six we've seen some of before here, sold singly in Poundland (or 99p Stores before their demise) and shelfied in TKMaxx last year as a threesome (I've seen them elsewhere in ones
or threes) this one branded to Tobar.
The other is new and gives us another tag; Out of The Blue, a German importer, how
he ended-up sharing a shop-stock box with the Tobar is something only the stock-keeper knows!
Another shelfie from Brian, but this one
taken in a British seaside town during one of his visits to the homeland, and
it's a seaside classic, baggy ethylene sack with flimsy card header claimed by Kandytoys and all ready to populate a
sandcastle! They look to be older sculpts from the 1970's or '80's getting
another outing?
I'm not sure 'Go Back To 180 Million Years Ago'
is quite the message our tourist destinations should be broadcasting in these
Bwreaksit times though? Although, maybe they're preparing for the end of
tourism, the shackling of horses to cars and the re-learning the art of living
off swede or turnip soups' when not waving two fingers at 'Johnny-foreigner'
over the Channel?
Finally,
some vintage 'Frankosaur' action with this charming Stegosaurus I shot on
Adrian's table at a resent Sandown Park toy fair. Starlux (for it is they) did some lovely sculpting for their
prehistoric range, given the age they were made and this is a little peach, if
a tad miserable-looking, but eating tree-ferns and cycads all day without getting eaten by something bigger can't have been a particularly joyous existence!
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
A is for Another Box Ticked
'Cos some of the figure purists feel miffed
by the sort of post we had this morning!
This really is a box-ticker, left over from
a photo-shoot I did ages ago (March 2013!) and missing a hard-plastic one in
creamy-white polymer I thought I had somewhere? But I may be getting confused
with the Lone Star ones . . . or the Charbens Guards Band!
Charbens - 6 poses (I thought there were eight for the longest time!), the two
to the right-hand-side are French 'bazar' or rack-toy copies, I think, but I'm
not sure, Charbens had lots of
different issues themselves. One is the pose missing from my factory-painted
sample; chain-mail striking with sword; a re-working of the axe-man next to
him, or was it the other way round?
Labels:
1:32,
54mm,
A,
Charbens,
Make; British,
Make; French,
Medieval,
Plymr - Ethylene
W is for Wheelimals!
A real Box-ticker today, you may well have
seen these on evilBay and wondered at their parentage, unless you already know
what they are in which case there may be something more interesting here
tomorrow!
Tri-ang Noah's Ark (Ply-wood)
Horse Box?
Farm Truck?
Wheelimals - known or suspected;
Donkey
Dromedary
Camel
Elephant
Giraffe
Hippopotamus
Lion
Panda
Bear
Rhinoceros
Sheep Tiger
Cow?
Pig?
Tri-ang. That's the box-ticking element done! Seriously; it's just to get
them in the tag-list, I think they were also associated with Minic and Mettoy and possibly later under the Playcraft label, so they're all going on the bottom. I call them
'wheelimals' for want of a better title as they follow a tradition going right
back to early hand-crafted wooden toys; of being attached to 'carpet' wheels.
The toys they accompany are 'big box' type
'Christmas & Birthday' toys, the ark being nearly three feet long and
solidly built of ply-wood with metal door hinges, the roof opens to get the
animals out for play and to store them in the meantime or inbetweentimes!
The lorry being more of a garden toy, in
tin-plate with large solid-rubber tyres, and a hinged rear-door/ramp.
I believe there was a Farm Lorry version of
the truck toy, coming with a five or six-inch figure of a farmer which looks
exactly like a Marx cowboy; a sort of reversed Seth Adams pose, striding with a double-barrelled shotgun instead of the rifle, and a distinctly US style
'cowboy' hat! But he may have come with the smaller (two-axle?) horse-box toy
that included the two giant Britains
horses?
Elephants and Rhinos, one of which has been
got-at by poachers! Although; the sad truth is that both animals are at risk of
extinction, not just in our lifetimes, but within a decade or so at the current
rate of predation.
Sheep.
Lions and Tigers, two lions in Noah's Ark
may have raised a few small 'c' conservative eyebrows in the past, but hey, if
they loved each other and considered themselves a couple, why not!
Camel
Considering their core purpose is for use
as hard-wearing playthings for younger children or older infants; they are
surprisingly well sculpted toys, they lose a bit in the leg department, but
even then the outsides of the feet, hooves or toes are well executed.
Sets - known or suspected;
Tri-ang Circus Van (Tin Plate)Tri-ang Noah's Ark (Ply-wood)
Horse Box?
Farm Truck?
Wheelimals - known or suspected;
Donkey
Dromedary
Camel
Elephant
Giraffe
Hippopotamus
Lion
Panda
Bear
Rhinoceros
Sheep Tiger
Cow?
Pig?
Labels:
1:No scale,
Animals,
Farm,
Infant Toy,
Make; British,
Metal - Tin-plate,
Mettoy,
Minic,
Noah's Ark,
Playcraft,
Plymr - Styrene,
Tri-Ang - Triang,
Vehicles,
W,
Wood,
Zoo
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
G is for Ge-Models Gemodels and Gem, but never Gem Models!
The full story for which is covered in the
Plastic Warrior 'Gemodels Special' but suffice to say they seem to have been
briefly Gem Models at the start and everyone refers to them as 'Gem'! I
say "they" - it was a he;
George Musgrave, and he was quite prolific, but it's all in the aforementioned
publication, and we have looked at their output before here, as well as these Lifeguards,
however following-up on May's post Jim sent an interesting item in his recent parcel...
... a carded set of Ge-Models Lifeguards; a full set of four poses, beautifully minty
with 98% of their paint (gem are terrible flakers!), although as we look at the
item in more depth you may begin to suspect repainting - for obvious reasons!
I have the standard bearer loose in storage
along with all the Horse Guards (my preferred choice of the Household Cavalry,
don't ask why? I don't know!), but it seems Lifeguards have been coming in
quite regularly this last few years!
Base marks are often not terribly clear,
but there's usually a smidgeon of a mark if you hold them to the light and
angle them properly. Marks can vary from a simple 'Gem' to a full 'Gemodels
Made in England [with code number or registered trade mark number]'.
Very like the Festival figures, and a quick note here; I have in the past
suggested a link between the two, even to discussing it with Barney over at Black Dragon once,
I've since noticed that there are plenty of Festival
items in the Musgrave museum displays, so the link is firm, but the
relationships remain to be sorted - particularly with Culpitt's, for instance; why are there so many Hong Kong versions
of Festival figures compared to Gem copies?
The officer has a bigger base, I don't know
why, as it's the standard bearer who needs it most!
But back to the card; first mystery . . .
it's clearly a copy, it's a high resolution scan and print, but it's the same
side twice, with the old staple-marks not Photoshop'd-out, and from the size of
the staples used for the copy, along with the smallness of some of the text on
the card, the suspicion is that the original card was bigger?
Not that Mr Musgrave wasn't above a bit of
plagiarism himself, if you thought the card's artwork was looking a tad
familiar, it's because it is! While lots of people used scroll logos in the
past, these are a little too similar!
And it doesn't stop with the logo! It's not
exact, and certainly different enough to keep it out of court, but I'd argue the
one has influence over the other? Even to both showing a red plume, despite the
fact that Gem always painted theirs white?
I think the unreadable-bit probably read
'High Impact Material'
A quick comparison with what I have here,
left to right;
Top Row
Gemodels, Britains Herald
(ethylene), Britains Herald (vinyl), Britains Hong Kong, Britains Herald (ethylene), Britains
Hong Kong x2 and Gemodels.
Bottom Row
Gemodels, recent from-hollow-cast (Charbens?),
Hong Kong copies of Britains x2,
unknown (Cavendish or Hill?), Timpo (looking a bit 19thC despite being the same as the others!),
unknown from-hollow-cast and Gemodels.
All (other?) versions of Charbens still missing, still in storage.
And many thanks to Jim for putting this
curiosity to one side for me to share with you, now we need to find an original
and compare card-size; also - you can see why I suspect the four in the pack
may be re-paints, it doesn't matter; as if they have been, it's been done to
the same style (standard/quality) as the originals, but if you've gone to the
trouble of reproducing the card, it's a small matter to strip and clean a tatty
set and re-paint them? I think they are original paint though . . . just exploring possibilities!
The second mystery is - why haven't more of
these cards shown-up? Who was behind them and when did they appear? The one
sent to me has seems to have some age of its own, over and above the reproduced
stains of the scanned original.
Monday, November 27, 2017
A is for Annual Fix
It's been ages since I fed the Airfix addiction here and I found these
the other day looking for something else, it's a bit of a box-ticker, but we
haven't had one of those for a while either! Gets them in the tag list.
I seem to have taken them late in 2010 as
my second Fuji was giving-up it's electronic mental-stability, so they may not
reproduce well, but I've left them un-collaged, apart from the two 'wooden
bench' shots.
I think they must have been a purchase from
the penultimate (or last?) Dave McKenna-run Birmingham toy soldier show which
was a few days earlier than these are dated, I did do a show report, but there
was a lot of stuff, and A) I only blogged the highlights and B) I know it never
got sorted, it went into storage still mostly together in a spare box!
From the Airfix Motor Racing header-carded, bagged-set 5089 Track Officials & Spectators, a set of twelve figures,
including 2 older fans seated.
The painted figure is Preiser I think? Not sure, he could be Merten, but he looks like earlier Preiser (they're all in storage so I'm going on what I can see, not
what I can check!) although I can't find him in either catalogues and he looks
a bit 'British' . . . flat-cap and newspaper, having a rant (speak for yourself
Hugh!), he may be O-gauge from Peco
or Slaters? What I do know is that he
doesn't belong with the 5089 figures.
Labels:
1:32,
54mm,
A,
Airfix,
British,
Civilian,
Kit,
Make; British,
Plymr - Styrene
Sunday, November 26, 2017
F is for Follow-up to P is for Paint Your Own
Brian Berke responding to the 'Paint Your own' posts last week; sent these shelfies to Small Scale World earlier this week! Having thought there may not be Paint Your Own's on the other side of the pond
he proved himself wrong by finding Decorate-Your-Own's
and produced a follow-up post into the bargain!
From an outfit called Melissa & Doug, they are a bit cartoony and judging by the
paint-pots; larger than the ones we looked at the other day, which explains the
similar pricing, although these still come in a little cheaper than the UK sets
we looked at, but equivalence in polymer used is there to be seen!
As with the more cartoony ones last week;
paint will hide a multitude of sins, as the caricature'ness of them is mostly
in the expression which can be hidden. Also note that the paint-strips looks
very familiar, here we get lots of useful desert colours! And the brush too, is
a better one than the old stiff craft things I mentioned last time.
Sea creatures, again, fill the goggle-eyes
and paint well; you'll lose the slight daftness, and a lovely choice of colours
with this set.
Thanks to Brian - as always; and are there
any paint-your-own (or decorate!)
sets in your neck of the woods?
Labels:
'Paint Your Own',
1:Large Scale,
Animals,
Boxed,
F,
Make; USA,
Melissa & Doug,
P,
Sea Life
Saturday, November 25, 2017
M is for Minty'mals
Editing the Land Rover reminded me I was
going to post these two, and as the 'Rover post was a bit sparse, I thought I'd
chuck these up here as a sort of 'Bonus Post'!
I think these are from Dave Scrivener's
collection, in a roundabout way, purely from where I found them and the reason
I bought them is simply - they are near mint. An oft misused word, and the
paint isn't perfect on the Ant Eater, but these Cherilea animals are notorious for shedding their paint if you so
much as look at them wrong, so to find these in such condition is a definite
feather in one's cap - and; (Vichy!) that's not me being big-headed, that's me
stating a fact and proving it by sharing them with everyone else!
The Otter, as this is smaller than the one
I'm more used to seeing I'm guessing (not assuming!) it's from the hollow-cast
sculpt, and would be therefore; the earlier, the more common one is much
Larger, but I don't know for sure.
Again this is smaller than others I've
seen, as a matter of fact this is the first time I've seen either of them in this size.
Possibly not the best rendition of a South American ant-eater; it looks more
like a hyena with a long nose and very furry tail!
Who remembers David Attenborough standing
next to one (anteater, not hyena) and saying something along the lines of "the reason I can stand so close to this animal is that is eye-sight is
not very good and it's nearly deaf, so as long as I stay down-wind of it, I can
get very close" at which point; as if on cue, the animal turned and
peered at the cameraman (clearly up-wind) and flicked it's tongue like a snake,
as if to say "...but I can smell
you!"
Monday 27th - Looks like they are actually Hillco? Cherilea did a larger Otter, but it must have been a scaled-up piracy or after they obtained Hill's intellectual property?
Monday 27th - Looks like they are actually Hillco? Cherilea did a larger Otter, but it must have been a scaled-up piracy or after they obtained Hill's intellectual property?
Because the above is a bit brief, I've
tacked this on as an afterthought. Does anyone know why this particular PVC model elephant,
marked 'MADE IN TAIWAN' is so blinking common? I think I have a few other
animals with a Taiwan-mark somewhere in storage (one of this, one of that), but
I've picked up six of these without trying in the last few years, and have a
bag-full in the storage unit.
Literally every mixed junk-lot of animals
and/or small-scale stuff you see on feebleBay seems to have one, every rummage
tray at shows, every animal bag in charity-shops, it's as if there's a secret
never-ending supply of them somewhere.
It's not Corgi (nor Dinky or Matchbox), yet at some point was issued
somewhere in large numbers. I wondered if it was the Arco pair until we blogged that a year ago, I'm now wondering if it
was a popular board-game - long since forgotten - some Tarzan or Daktari-related
TV Tie-in? If anyone knows I'd be interested.
And it's perfect for smaller Asian (or the mythical Atlas Mountain) war elephants in 1:76th scale!
A is for Abenteuer in Afrika . . . Mit dem Landrover auf Safari
Spidec
Spielzeug provide us with today's post, and it's a
real curates egg (he says; not for the first time, there are a lot of curates
eggs in the toy basket, and a lot of them came from Hong Kong!), being at the
same time both a copy of the Blue Box
Land Rover AND at least one, possibly two Corgi
Land Rovers! Spidec - presumably -
being a German importer/jobber (?), I have a nice copy of the Britains-Herald totem pole marked to Spidec somewhere.
Nice boxed set with a reasonable
afternoons-worth of play value which is all you would have been looking for in
1970-something having paid very little for this off the cheapie rack! Not sure
about the artwork . . . He's got two live ones in the back but then gets a
sudden urge to blow another away!
Unlike the Blue Box vehicle it's aping, this one doesn't have a trailer, but
because it has copied the 'giraffe hole' in the cage (the Corgi Lions of Longleat one had it); both the big cats can escape -
I hope they jump out and eat the driver before he gets a shot-off, although -
the way he's holding that rifle he's going to hurt himself more than the
fleeing lion anyway!
The door stickers are also falling back on
the Corgi Gift Set 8 Lions of Longleat (but the Corgi cab had a hole for the guard) with
further references to Corgi gift sets 31 (Safari
Land Rover with Animal Trailer) and 36 (Tarzan'
Rover was hard-top LWB in both sets), while I think the roof-horns are from a
late Dinky breakdown truck? There are
also shades of the Daktari set (GS14)
in the mix.
The model differs from the Blue Box one in the 'ally rims' which
although just as leery with their chromium-plated finish are to a different
pattern and the radio-aerial which is found further forward on Blue Box models.
A more major difference between the two is
that while the Blue Box version
(quite common)* is a simple model with clip-in axles allowing for hand-powered
motivation, the Spidec Lanny has a
push-and-go 'friction motor' for more independent carpet safaris!
* Turns up at shows as ex-shop stock and on
evilBay; found with two, one or no trailer/s in recent years; it's as if
there's a warehouse full somewhere, they turn-up with French and German
language consumer information panels and I think I've seen Spanish ones, so a
'Euro-importer' seems to have lost a batch at some point, or maybe it was just
a popular and therefore numerous line at the time?
The lion and tiger . . . "A Tiger! In Africa?"! . . . are
pretty common as generics from larger bagged/carded sets or early toobs (they
were called tubs back then I think!); polyethylene sub-scale copies of Blue Box copies of Britains sculpts.
Thanks to Mercator Trading for the
opportunity to shoot this.
Labels:
1:24,
A,
Animals,
Blue Box,
Hong Kong,
Land-Rover,
Make; German,
Plymr - Styrene,
Safari,
Spidec Toy Co.,
Vehicles,
Zoo
Friday, November 24, 2017
A is for Airborne Armymen Again!
One day I'll run out of decent titles for
these posts, but it isn't today! In the lot Jim sent me the other day, there
were two large paratroopers of a design we've seen before here at Small Scale
World, both in passing and in depth - when I followed up on the Fairchild version.
Well; we now have another UK branded
version, this time Rosebud; better
known for their dolls but we have also looked at their construction sets here,
in the past. There are differences between the two, but if anything they help
to sort them out, as while the Fairchild
is the better finished, the Rosebud
is the fuller-detailed, (rounded buttons against Fairchild's hinted buttons - that sort of thing) suggesting Rosebud's was first and the Fairchild came later when techniques had
improved, but there's no evidence for it and whichever was first, we don't know
if the other was a copy, or licensed, although both companies were operating on
(or off!) the A1/M1-corridor (if memory serves), so they probably had talked to
each other about the toy.
The other paratrooper Jim sent is third
from the left in the above line-up and is the biggest Hong Kong version to date
(here; I may have others in storage), being a copy of the Rosebud sculpt with the larger, slightly lop-sided helmet, as
opposed to the current Jaru (et al) offering, which is a re-cut of
the Fairchild version with the
slimmer/rounder helmet.
Most of the others follow the Rosebud version, the red one has a
question mark, as he is so clean he may be a more recent 'China' rather than
older 'Hong Kong' moulding, the apparent rifle-but sticking out of his side is
the remains of a runner-tip.
From the left, Jaru Shelfie from the 'States courtesy of Brian Berke; Jaru at Asda Supermarkets version bought by me a few years ago and finally Kids Fun from The Works last year sometime? There are subtle differences between
the ConUS and UK cards, but they may be no more than batch changes and of
little significance.
Close up of the new donation from Jim with
the marking in the same place and similar style as the Fairchild one; in the
parachute cavity.
Both the Brits alongside their colonial
pirate, the image serves to suggest further that the Fairchild came later as both the Rosebud and the HK copy are heavier sculpts and share some
features, while the Fairchild has
slimmed in the adding of detail, clearly: if the Fairchild had been around first (to be copied) the other two
wouldn't be so well-fed! Also note how the HK copy has 'got' the Rosebud face, the significance of which
will be seen after the next image.
When I said the Rosebud had better detail above, I wasn't contradicting the fact
that I'm now saying the Fairchild has
more detail, it's that the Fairchild
has better engraving, but the details on the Rosebud are richer somehow . . . painterly; if that makes sense?
And if it doesn't; you should stick to the pictures and not read the blurb!
The HK copy however, is the most
fascinating example of the pirates art, there is no sculptural element here at
all, whatsoever; from a arms-length away he looks as believable as the other
two, yet look closely and you realise he is a series of milling-marks and
that’s all, no engraver was involved in the preparation of the moulding, well,
maybe he was allowed to spend fifteen-minutes sanding/polishing the face?!!
Layered like a 3D deposition-tank or
sintered-powder model, the fine-lines
are where the pantograph has been used to cut straight into the steel tool
block (possibly brass but by the 1970's steel was becoming the norm),
transferring rough shapes and contours across from the (almost certainly Rosebud) work-piece being copied, and
after a test-shot had been taken of that first stage, the decision not to
finish the mould-tool by hand was made - time is money. Webbing detail and pockets etcetera; being
also and only milling marks - it's crude, but it's clever.
===============
I happen to know the Rosebud original was sold as The Red Devils Parachutist as I have an
evilBay auction image of one 'on-the-card' from ages ago in the Rosebud folder on the dongle, and it's
interesting to think this pose is now probably over 50-years old, yet the
current, well-spread and easily-available Jaru
sculpt/re-sculpt is still not shabby!
Labels:
1:Mixed Scales,
A,
Carded,
Fairchild,
Jaru,
Make; British,
Make; China,
Parachute Toy,
Paratroops,
Rosebud
Thursday, November 23, 2017
M is for Minions!
This is an odd one as I was sure I'd handled
them before, but once I got them out of the box, they ceased to feel familiar,
turns out I'd selfied a similar set last Christmas in TK Maxx, today's was the reduced end of line/scruffy last set in The Works a week or two ago.
This set differs from the one we saw lasttime in a number of ways, firstly - there are no duplicates and secondly there are
non-minion items, a monster rock-ape-dog-boar thing and a unicorn?
Now I've noticed that unicorns are
everywhere this Christmas (or this autumn if use of the 'C'-word is still too early
for your sensibilities!), mugs, toys, cushions, egg-cups, stuffed-toys
('plushies' for those who indulge in baby-talk), fleeces, you name it I've seen
it unicorn shaped or unicorn decorated in the last few weeks, 18 months ago you
may remember a similar summer fashion trend for flamingoes, that didn't last
long!
Another way they differ is that they all
have their arms down, the previous set had far more animation in the individual
sculpts included. This pre-production publicity shot also has them all with a
printed logo on their dungarees which didn't make it to the production batch
contained within the box!
The artwork is cleverly arranged to reveal
the full extent of the playability; the heads come off and you can pull the
monster-pet's legs out, and . . . err .
. . that's it! Although you can also pull the feet out with a sharp tug, they
are actually - like the gloves to the hands, the arm-sections to the dungarees
and the goggles to the faces - glued on/in.
Lining-up against the new backdrops! Four
of the characters have the same basic body, arms and legs (including the pair
on the left here) while one is taller and thinner, the other shorter and fatter
- whereas the previous set seemed to have more variety or uniqueness between
sculpts; with the Despicable Me 3 set
only the heads differ on four of the figures.
The other two with common parts, the reason
they didn't seem so similar when I'd opened them is that last time I only
studied them on-store, and later from the shelfie. Now, it looks in that old
set as if they do all come apart fully, but I suspect lost components led to
poor customer feedback and as a result with this set the gloves are firmly
attached; trying to pull them off stretches the arm, and as it's made of that
crumbly new faux PVC - damage would have occurred had I persevered!
Likewise I tried to prise the arm/side
units out but they are stuck-fast somewhere in the middle of the figure.
However you can remove the feet, by turning sharply until you hear the
non-solvent bond between the two polymers snap and then the feet become almost too
free!
They also serve who only stand and wait!
The previous set had 4 each of 5 poses, this set has one each of six, plus
these two.
They're really just Kinder-egg capsules with dungarees and faces drawn-on aren't they, let's
be honest; there's nothing new under the Sambro
sun!
Be Bad!
Labels:
1:No scale,
Erasers,
M,
Make; China,
Minions,
Plymr - Vulcanised Rubber,
Shambro,
Stationery,
TV/Movie
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