K is for Kinder Katch-up . . . Follow-up, News, Views, Bits & Bobs and Contributions

Or better late than never!

So, it's back to Kinder, with all sorts of stuff to cover, some of it covered the other day elsewhere, but as I pointed out earlier in the year; the more they try to be me, the more you all are the winners, and the picture is more complicated than their 'news, views'!

To the news from El Cheeto 'the orange Brillo-pad's' America that Kinder will be allowed, but only, apparently; Kinder Joy, although that's only as far as capsule toys are concerned, the edible-only's are also available as this American price list shows.

A price list which has Americans paying up-to - or more than - four-times what we pay for them? Given the amount the average American has been [not] paying for Levi jeans and petrol this past fifty years, they will forgive me for having little sympathy; they should've saved enough by now to pay through the nose for these plastic novelties!

The third image is of one of the still 'illegal', or 'still not allowed' original Kinder Eggs, which was bought in the same US store, literally (I am led to believe) from under the counter! Well, if you are dealing with say; a Canadian firm, and he has a plentiful supply of the eggs - legal in the more enlightened market north of the boarder - you may be tempted to have a few cartons tacked-on to the 'for retail display' portion of the order, for to err . . . not display!

The supplier of these images of FDA contraband must remain anonymous to save him from the gulag's of the rust-belt coal-seams El Cheeto is so determined to mine-out before the climate kills us all.

However - it shows the nonsense of a 'policy' being made on the hoof, with more of a nod to what's being said on the Wikipedia page than any real commercial pressures. We have this year and last looked at two products with no real, practical, or "Health & Safety" difference to a Kinder Egg, feely available in the 'States, with connections to Turkey and Mexico, so whatever the continuing problem with Kinder's flagship-product are . . .they are not the Health and safety reasons given by Federal spokesmen! Sorry; it's 'spokespersons' these days isn't it!

Meanwhile a certain Mr Berke of New York, contributor to this parish, legitimately bought some Barbie figurine Kinder Joys for his Beryl the Peril to worry, how cool is that Beryl?! To the right, another Barbie, this one sent to the Blog by Peter Evans the other day.

The toy has four parts and a sticker sheet which you are supposed to use to decorate the model's shirt, bag and base; frankly - they are best left on the sheet! The larger sticker is for wherever!

Here she is in all her glory, they are nice little toys, and now that Kinder Joy and Kinder eggs seem to be having a convergence of offered toys, they will not be rare, as there will be hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions!

The insert shows the set of eight to find in the current range, and they were first reported in Plastic Warrior magazine (issue 168) where Les White showed previous waves that are out there to be collected, and which have slightly different (Barbie 'B') bases, this one too is the 65mm of the figures Les showed.

Having mentioned Kinder Joy and the apparent convergence of toy contents between the two ranges, these were Joy-only as far as I know, and this little lot were part of a larger charity Shop purchase the other day . . . well a couple of months ago now!

They seem to be pulling from all angles of popular culture, with nods to custom 'art' figures, traditional monsters, anime/manga art, smiley-faces (now emoticons!) and real-life animals (in the monkey-face), even native-American/Polynesian tribal iconography; my favourite is the rather laconic-looking (or spaced-out!) triclops!

Francesco Ferretti sent this fantastic shot to the Blog, being an impressive collection of Res Plastic's robots made for Kinder back in the 1990's; the 'golden age' of steckfiguren as the Germans call them - and the best way to find them on European evilBay sites.

On the left we have a Kinder-like Minion, which I think IS Kinder (they had some minion-branded/tie-in stuff a while back), but there were/are other Minion things out there (the big plastic eggs), but I don't know for certain where he comes from.

To his right are a pair of . . . err . . . fairy-butterfly-teddies! Peter E also sent these, with the news that they were imported via Turkey or a Turkish wholesaler. Now; Turkey is behind a lot of capsule-toy chocolate eggs (and bears!) including some of those previously seen here at Small Scale World . . . being retailed in the New World.

And as we become an ever more global community (against the best efforts of the trumpundbrexitt 'iers), this sort of thing will become more common as smaller importers search around for the cheapest deal, or businesses run by immigrants go to/through their relatives 'back home' or contacts in the country of origin.

I don't have  a problem with this, anything which by-passes the big-boys and may increase my choice is all right by me, I disagree with the Orange Wonder on this point, and his walls will only prevent US citizens - living abroad - from facilitating reverse traffic. Ooh! A tad-more policticticticing there; but relevant, and pertinent - if your world-horizons extend beyond the Deleware.

A couple of inserts from Peter, we will look at the parrot below, and it seems Peter sent the Blog 2/3rds of the whole set of fairy-butterfly-teddies!

Lidl's in-house Mister Choc branding - who we've seen here before - have had a makeover in the packaging department with an animal-related junglie-scene, a theme sadly not carried-through to the contents!

Some of the above mentioned contents, a novelty windmill and a deux-chevaux with cam-operated jumping bonnet (hood) and a set of stickers which I haven't applied. Note that Mister Choc's inserts are sub-branded to Lotto, while rival Poundland's are called Toto? Toto-Lotto was the old German lottery, plastered on newsagents hoardings.

Even as I was starting to edit the folder for this post, I bought two generic Kinder Eggs (no Boy/Girl, Disney, Star Wars or/&etc graphics, just a tray of 'basic' eggs), and got lucky with these little slightly-cartoony animals, both with a minor kit-element; the whole 'egg-magic'!

The Bobcat is the more realistic of the two toys, the Bears having googlie-eyes!

There's a Black Panther! Both sets are Katoons (geddit? K for Kinder!), but the upper set is clearly aiming at a level of realism the lower set isn't? And I wonder how may sets there are in the total line? I suspect also different sources for the two sets as one had a separate consumer info. chitty, the other had the toy instructions and consumer panels printed on the one sheet.

With the Superheroes (we looked at the other day), various Barbie waves and these, there is clearly a move from Kinder toward stuff we haven't seen in numbers since the change in gift-management back in the late 1990's, and I think more chocolate will be on my menu in 2018!

Among the lot Peter Evans sent to the Blog was this loose, novelty ring, which has a flying fairy, she goes round and round and round and round and round and round  . . . . and round and round and round until she begs for death!

And while she's very small, she's neither my smallest figures overall - Preiser Airliner figures in 1:500th scale, nor my smallest Kinder (1990's-issued lighthouse keeper and safari guide).

Also coming in an odd lot was this handless Sylvester with both eye stickers, so he will donate vision to a more complete one in storage! Peter also sent a scale-down of the old pull-action UFO launcher and the parrot, who is supposed to be a finger brush, but - fortunately - for those of us with larger fingers than your average infant; he fits on pens and pencils!

It also reminds me that the last time I saw this kind of paper paint-pallet, it was as a child, at Christmas, when our Rupert The Bear annuals often had these pages which looked like rather dull cartoons in various dark pastel shades, but when you wet them with a watery brush, the encapsulated paint in the dots of the cartoon-colouring blossomed into bright colours and you then had to fill-in to the black lines without going over!

While these are the contents of a 3-pack of Toto's from Poundland (upper shot) and the Mister Choc from Lidl (below) with very different capsules, although I think we've seen them here at Small Scale World before?

The nodding head (and tail!) triceratops is fun (and figural!); the others are only plastic tat!

Finally Francesco also sent this shot of one of the shelves from his RP collection's display, these are all classic 1980's or early 1990's Kinder toys and hopefully we will see more in the future when Francesco gets some more images to me, but I'm proving a problem in the receiving of them with my luddite eMail-based ways of doing things in the cloud-age! My Bad!

Thanks to Brian Berke, Francesco Ferretti, Peter Evans and the will-remain-unknown; purchaser of smuggled, Canadian-contraband, eggs; for their contributions to this post and/or donations to the Blog.

From Wikipedia:

"Semi-legalization in the United States

In May 2017, Ferrero announced that the Kinder Joy (a variation of the Kinder Surprise) will be available in the USA starting January 2018. They will be partially released, exclusively at Walmart stores for 30 days after the official release nationwide, starting Black Friday."

So - even the Kinder Joys were technically 'contraband' when photographed! And the Mexican/Turkish Emoji and Star Wars eggs Brian has sent in the past are both still technically illegal?