T is for Two - Novelty Pencil Sharpeners

We like a bit of novelty stuff here at Small Scale World - as you may have noticed! And two additions to the collection have come in over the last week or so, both are pencil sharpeners, but then I wouldn't have put 'pencil sharpeners' in the title-bar if I was going to be showing you cocktail-sticks or bouncy-balls!

This was a charity shop purchase a week and a half ago, and is a die cast moulding, similar to that PVC sculpt from 4M, but that's more coincidence than design, this is a slighter model - with a heavier sword!

The two arms, head and sword are a little loose and wobbly with the body being in two halves once - the whole seems to have been clamped and riveted in one action, from all 7 pieces (including the base), probably under heat, before the/a generic, plastic pencil-sharpener was slotted into place; once the product had cooled down.

Mining polymer beads at an ethylene seam . . . what? Didn't you know? Oh god-yes; they're resting near the surface, up there on the high plateaus in Fantasia Minor, as formally deep-ocean, pre-Cambrian nuggets, now just lying-about in the deserts, regularly revealed by the shifting sands and migrating dunes, the unicorns thrive on them, indeed it's been said the golden-horn evolved purely to dig polyethylene nuggets out and has nothing to do with mating or making flowers bloom at all!! Although, as it's clearly a desert; the flower story is an obvious old-wives-tale.

You may still remember the Massy-Ferguson look-alike I found a couple of years ago, well the same source seems to be responsible for this JCB-likey . . . albeit missing a back-hoe, but aren't we all! The title bar has already revealed it's a pencil sharpener, but it also has a blue, finger-action bucket thing - Ooh Matron!

It also has a plug which A) helps keep the sharpenings in the cab until you want to dump them somewhere, and B) keeps the cab (now with snazzy smoked-glass effect) with the digger if it pops off accidently.

A comparison with the previous find, the tractor came in four colours I think (from memory; red, yellow, green and blue, of which I chose the closest to Massy-Ferguson colours), I suspect the digger does too, but this was the last one in my local Rymans, so I don't know, I do know it was reduced to 99p!

The wheel units and tyres (US, cryptic - tires without getting sleepy) on both models are identical mouldings, so I'm sure the same factory produced both, it's imported (almost certainly from China?) by Strawberry Design & Marketing, who also imported the tractors.