T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - HGL - Aliens & Monsters

Or A is for a tale of two genres!

Continuing to look at the shots I got-off at the Toy-fair last month; we'll look at the monsters first, or 'dragons' to be more exact!

This is an odd one; it clearly states 12, not once but twice, yet I can count at least 18, possibly a few more, and it looks to be three-each of six (which would be 18) or seven (21) sculpts, whether they have combined the contents of two boxes for display purposes or not I can't say, but can guess at . . . that'll be a yes then!

Also while they are called dinosaurs (and this image was removed from that batch of shots), they are clearly dragons, and of European/heraldic pattern or tradition, rather than a more Chinese/Asian design or Mayan/Amerindian style.

Also - look at that unit-price! I bet they'll be at least two-quid; retail! But - very useful for fantasy gaming.

I shot a couple of these in TKMaxx, can't remember if it was this autumn-gone, or last autumn (2016), but they were four or five-pounds I seem to recall, and fifteen-odd for the large set - matched in style to the Megasaurs box of similar size.

Moving from fantasy to full-on sci-fi; we have a box of big-head, squeezy-aliens, shown here for completion, because I took the shot and to get them out of Picasa, not because I've any desire to track them down and add them to the physical collection!

There was also a full range of eggs with or without slime or gypsum/plaster and a digging tool, along with the novelty 'grow' aliens - just add water!

I have a few grow-your-own novelties, I think we may have had one or two on the blog over the years, but fully-grown they are A) a bit big and B) a bit damp! I wonder if you could coat them in something to keep them small - problem being that most 'coatings' are likely to be or act like liquid, so likely to soak-in, causing growth!

Perhaps you could use a lacquer-spray (hair-setter or artists pastel-fixative) to seal the foam, then a spirit based varnish (Humbrol spray-matt?) then a top coat of something more substantial, that plumbers-sealant would give them a nice polymer 'shell'. You could then use them forever with 40-60mm figures!

Peter Evan's; who I was at the show with, suspected the larger models were part of the production process; masters or mould blanks, and certainly the smaller neutral-beige one would seem to be, but the two purple ones don't bear any relationship to any of the sculpts of the products on show, and were quite 'play-worn' so I wonder if they might be display models or painted-blanks left over from earlier lines or ranges, perhaps from some time ago - Grossman have been around for decades now?