M is for Meri Meri Men; No Robin!

Part I

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!