Mermaids; in scallop-shells - except they
don't look like scallops, they look like cheap rack-toy purses from the 1970's,
or Polly-pocket compacts from the '80's? But Mermaids are mermaids and out of
the shell they are nice sculpts if that's you thing.
Unicorns; I've said it before and I'll say
it again: They're everywhere! Quite apart from the bandwagon of the
unicorn-fest, it's a clear attack on whoever's got My Little Pony franchises,
and there are quite a few of them.
Unicorns with fairies! Again; nothing wrong
with them as sculpts, they are a bit big for figure collectors or modellers to
do much with, but it's where the money is . . .
. . . the biggest section of the Schleich catalogue (after the Wild Animal section) is the Horse Club section, clearly going after
girls' pocket-money or girls' parents money, and attacking Breyer - all these big companies are ruthless businesses, and if Breyer are doing well, they will be
attacked.
As well as the DC & Marvel comic
stuff (increasingly: 'movie' stuff!) I posted yesterday, Schleich have two
other licensed product-lines in the early-year catalogue (everything we're
looking at in these posts is good 'till June 2018), one being Peanuts, no surprises here, various
companies have done PVC Peanuts over
the years; with or without permission! We looked at the latest (Phidal) the other day.
Of slightly more interest (from a purely
intellectual point of view - I'm not rushing out to buy them or anything like
that!) is the Maya stuff. Without Google to hand I think it's an old
European TV thing (Heimo or Bully did some figures ages
[decades?] ago - I'm sure), clearly with
a Movie out (or forthcoming), which is nice.
Not because I like franchises, I don't; I despair
at the state of the whole licensed-character 'thing', even though it goes back
the best part of a century, with Betty
Boop, Robinson's Gollies, Jonny Walker, various cats (Felix,
Figaro, Fritz . . . ) and Disney
- of course, but it's got to the point were there's not much else? At least the
Bayala above seems to be a totally
'in-house' construct.
But in a world where Disney, Lucas, DC, Marvel
and Nintendo seem to own half of
everything cultural or toy-like, it's nice to see European (or Bwreaksit
British!) things like Dr. Who or Pepper Pig getting picked-up and passed
across the pond, or further afield like Japan. The irony in this case being
that the Maya figurines aren't even
available in the UK . . . Doh!
Still - I get to put Maya in the tag-list! More Schleich
tomorrow.
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