So; this came in for one of your Earth
pounds the other day, not a cup-cake to be seen - which probably explains the
cut-price retailing! Merri Meri's
die-cut cardboard Brave Knights
centerpiece.
You won't find this in a toy shop, you
won't find it on eBay under 'Toys and Games', you won't (or are unlikely to-)
find it searching for Toy Fort, but here it is, the camera never lies, and it's
fantastic - for what it is.
You may find it searching 'party ware' or
'centrepiece' or even 'cake stand' and you should find something like it in a
larger party-shop? It was originally £15.99, reduced first to £7.99 it then
sold for 3.99 before being handed almost unused and definitely un-cake-stained,
to be squirrelled-off by me for a quid.
I say all this not to show off (everyone
gets a bargain occasionally); but as a parable for the modern age, it's a fort
. . . it will be a useful fort; for
forty things like displaying toy soldiers and was never a very good cake displayer
( as its own photograph shows!), they needed to stand higher of the
battlements, who thought it was a good idea to market it as such? It's even
marked "This product is not intended
to be used as a toy" in capitals!
They instantly lost their core customer
base, people with toy figures looking for a cheap fort! As a card catering
accessory; it was too expensive at sixteen-smackers, A centrepiece should be
more robust, while a card cake display should be a fiver, and once it was
a fiver - it sold.
Anyway - it's fallen into my hands so I can
show the rest of you, and if you want one, you may well find one - heavily
discounted - still around somewhere, although it was a 2011 release - this one
came from a Garsons wherever they are
or where (Google says - Surrey farm shop and garden centre!).
The expanding folder contained several
crinkly cellophane envelopes with all sort of toys catering accessories;
a dragon, two mounted knights, five foot knights, their cross-bases, three
shields (to be stuck on to the fort) and their sticky pads (plus spares), four
sand-castle type flags of the swallow-tail banner design and a fort!
The poses are somewhere between Britains' Deetail and Accurate/Revell's in appearance and
pre-coloured like everything else in the set, the two sides being mirror images.
Thinking of the recent articles and
feedback in Plastic Warrior magazine
on the subject of left-handedness; the mirror-imaging means that they are all
both, depending on which side you view them from . . . something common with
flats!
Mounted knights - only the one pose and you
see here how they are 'the same' from each side, just going in a different
direction! They are 170mm under-base to lance-tip with the foot figures around
the 90-mil mark.
The Dragon is very much in the heraldic
(read 'Welsh') mold, although, looking at him; he may well have eaten all the
missing cakes - diet and exercise are required there I think! Suitably
friendly-looking (the Soup-dragon's cousin!) to not frighten over-sensitive
brats in the age of the law-suit, he's also sized well for the figures, and his
decoration is nicely understated.
Thinks
- Yeah! Whatever!
I would point out that my assistant -
despite having a whole lawn to take it on - has chosen to take her break on the
soil I've put down to fill the path she and her son have worn across the grass!
Who'd've thunked it . . . they wore a series of little holes in a line by
always putting their feet in the same place.
"Bloody hell! STAND TO!
There's a sodding dragon on the South tower again!"
We'll look at the fort later, - it's not a
toy; it's for cakes!
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