About Me

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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, March 8, 2018

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Schleich - Superheroes

As with Papo I've broken the Schleich (or Schleich-S as I think they are aiming to be called?) down, but not into the same number of posts as Papo, simply because there wasn't much to see! The display seemed smaller than Papo's despite the stands being of equivalent size (they were only a few yards from each-other as well!), the move seems to be toward scene-in-a-box play-sets, fantasy (of a pinky-purple type) and the dreaded licensed stuff (the target of this post), but don't be put-off be my wittering, the animals are still about the best out-there.

And they are big, some of these a four-and-a-half-inches (120mm) or taller.


Marvel superheroes, being - if anything - a DC guy, I tend to just shake my head and move on, they have Spidey and the Hulk I s'pose, but it's not enough when the enemy have . . .

. . . Superman, Batman and the babe in a basque! Now she's in an armoured-basque I may have to be more respectful! But DC has its duffers too; who the hell's Shazami? Don't all write-in at once - I don't care; he looks like a hippy dance-guru, or a cheaper Flash! Cheap flasher? Peter Stringfellow's going to a Toga Party?

It's nice that there are different generations of the Batman, although the TV one isn't shown and he's the one I like. There may be other versions at the website (link www.schleich-s.com) where we are invited to "Discover other superheroes at:...", you will find that following the link will take you to a local (US, UK etc...) hub.

It's funny; the Man Bat gets all these upgrades with each movie (as does Marvel's Iron Man really), Wonder Woman has gone all Spartan-Amazon on us, but all Superman's got out of all the Hollywood attention is slightly fancier boots!

Thought for the day - why do the comics (or the movies) never show us Superman, at the end of his adventure, sewing-up his wreaked civi's at the speed of light, presumably in the same telephone box where he left them, all torn and ripped, so that he looks like he's just been to the water-cooler when he steps back into the office?

2 comments:

Terranova47 said...

While not a fan of all these alleged superheroes, Marvel or DC, SHAZAM is I believe the latest incarnation of Captain Marvel the now DC charactor that was sued out of existance as being oo close to Superman.

The interesting part of this, is that the British reprints of Captain Marvel ended and the void was filled by MARVELMAN created by Nick Anglo. This British version of a US superhero had more humour than the US versions. Captain Marvel/MARVELMAN was a small boy who by magic powers could transform into a powerful adult, quite appealing to small boys everywhere.

Hugh Walter said...

I hate to say we did it better Terra, but I think we did it better, we had boys with armies that come to life (something we all wished for?) to get out of sticky situations, we didn't wish for destroying worlds!

Although for older audiences I think the Europeans got it best with both the comedy end (Asterix and Tin-Tin) and the darker work of people like Druillet?

H