T is for Two - Novelty Figures

Picked-up one of these on my recent trip up to The Smoke, picked the other one up a couple of days later in a charity shop!

And so to Lan'dan Tar'n! Filthy, noisy, place, full of selfish, self-absorbed, shoulder-bargers, glued to their dumb-phones and apparently playing Russian roulette with what appears to be half the vehicular traffic in Western Europe - as it happens, but full of little touristy nick-knack kiosks.

One of which was purveying this little LE'delight and I had to have it! It's too cool for luminary school, and it's a guardsman, so will join the toast-mould cutters & egg-cup, knitted-woolen egg-cosy, bog-brush, clockwork walker, nutcracker et al!

It's by Puckator, who did those nearly-impossible to get out undamaged, resin pirates in plaster blocks, Peter Evans let me have a few years ago!

The downside is that when you press the button you don't just get light in the darkness, you get a tinny rendition of half-a-verse of the Rule Britannia. It sounds like someone coerced a grasshopper to play it on some frayed fishing line, in a biscuit-tin! Still - it could be worse; it could have been the national Anthem!

I don't know about you, whoever you are or wherever you are, but most National Anthems are pretty tedious affairs, one tries to hear as infrequently as possible, especially if one - having been in the forces - has already overdosed on the bloody thing.

It's the one thing I feel sorry for the Royal family about, they get to listen to the same, slow dirge, umpteen times a day, played by amateur bands, rappers, junior-school recorder and triangle 'orchestras', steel bands and foreigners who saw the music for the first time two days previously, or who possess un-tuned instruments (it's on the Internet somewhere!), they get it played on spoons, wash-boards, tea-chest cellos, coloured-water filled milk-bottles, flower-pots and probably - at least once - Imperial Stormtrooper's helmets! They get it acapella from groups of poets, school-dinner ladies, Uncle Tom Cobly an'all.

They must all have been driven slightly insane, or borderline suicidal, by the dreadful tune?

I intend to try disabling that relevant part of the PCB!

This was a nice find, I remember seeing them a couple of Christmases ago in one of those gadget-gift round-up's in the national press, I think they were about £12 plus postage, so finding one for four-quid in a charity shop was a bargain. I think I said a while ago when discussing the dongle-upgrade - I don't mind paying a pound a gigabyte, but more than that - when corporate PR exercises give away 4 or 8Gb data-sticks these days - is madness.

And who can say no to a naughty monkey in a green T-shirt (don't go there; I think I might have, but I think I got away with it! And a jungle hasn't been mentioned . . . Doh!). I like the fact that there's a rubber tag (with a tight-fit) you can slot in the USB hole to keep the two halves together while you're using it.

I scanned the can's wrap-around before it went in the recycling. Imported by Satsuma, and as I said above, was retailing a couple of years ago. I'm after a flash-drive robot I saw a while ago too, I don't know if it's also Satsuma or someone else, but I can see a collection of novelty memory sticks in my future!

Whoops - T is for THREE - Novelty Figures! The Darth Vader LED has been seen here before, but they are now a group, along with the coffin data-stick we've also looked-at previously.