A is for All Hallows' Eve - Creepy Critters

While last year I found quite a few new bags of stuff, if only ephemeral semi-flat shite; leading to several insect/vermin posts running up to Halloween and another couple on the day, this year there's been very little, Waitrose had the same set as last year and I think Wilkinson's did at one point earlier in the short season, probably old stock as it quickly cleared.

But otherwise - apart from the snake and crackers (the Hunted House was a while ago) - there was nothing to find of the varmint or horror-figure variety, so thanks to Peter Evans and Brian Berke for more than half the stuff in the preceding nine posts, but I did manage to find these less than a week ago, in Poundland Basingrad, to finish this year's Halloween posts.

Creepy Critters - I think we saw something similar last year, but I'm pretty sure the contents are new, and ten posts is a nice round number!

Six items for a quid, you can't knock it, although I hadn't noticed my cockroach is missing his front legs to a short-shot mould problem, I should have looked for a better one and it's probably too late now, however in this price range, the whole batch was probably the same!

The bat has a deep hole which may be a mould-release pin mark but I suspect is also used for threading elastic in/for other, different contracts, I picked up a generic spider the other day with a similar hole.

And now on Small Scale World: today's lesson in Biology for GCSE - how a snake works!

To paraphrase Mrs. Tweedy of Tweedy's Farm "Rowd'unts goo'win . . . poo cooms'owt"!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Army

The only thing to fight a mummy army is a skeleton army, so lucky for us Brian managed to find one of them too, and if I understood him correctly he had to keep looking in Dollar General for them and only managed to find both sets the other day, so many thanks to him.

Also from Dolgencorp LLC, these were also issued last year with an orange card and in the UK under the PMS brand by 99p Stores and we have seen them before, but new packaging means new post! Only eight poses, so you get two duplicates but luckily they have used 'trooper' poses rather than the horn-guy, maybe another 'Hell's Angel' would have been nice?.

Over here they were only eight, while last year's offering from the 'States was also 10 and it was the same two poses duplicated. I also rather like that the horn-player seems to be using a giant-catapult's bolt as a personal weapon.

Another look at the figures, this year's batch are slightly lighter-sand in plastic colour, but I haven't noticed any other differences, and like the mummys are a bog-standard ethylene polymer, a bit more rigid than Airfix's formula, and the same as last year's issue.

Playing! We've had this image once today already (or a near identical one from the same sequence), so I've launched these guys strait out of hell in a technicolour nightmare with the heat-map button in Picasa!

See! The snake is 'main man' in a skeleton army, although I'm not sure if you would apply AFV rules or siege-engine rules? As it's 'sword & sandal', I guess siege-engine rules would be the more applicable until play revealed limitations and someone sat down to write-out proper rules for 'giant undead zombie snake skeletons'! That head, used as a bettering-ram, would make short-work of the main-gates at Troy . . . just saying! Stuff yer' wooden 'orse and get a bone snake!

Many-thanks again Brian!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Mummy Army

Imported by Dolgencorp for Dollar General stores in the 'States and sent to the Blog by our friend in New York, Mr B, just in time for Halloween, not that I was expecting them at all, but I had seen them on Shaun's Blog a while ago and was hoping they'd appear over here somewhere, but they didn't or haven't, or not so I know it!

These are good value with 10 figures in 10 poses, all new and while I'd agree with everything Shaun said a while ago aboutthe sculpts I'd add that while there is [also] an obvious lack of ribs, the real reason they look so skinny or cartoonish is the lack of hip-bones under the bandages, but that's more to do with the skeleton models we've got used to in the Toy Soldier collecting world; the real mummy's - when they are found - are very skinny!

Strangely: the pen & ink artwork on the rear of the card shows fatter chaps!

All ten, both sides, cool as a burial chamber! Two unarmed, two swordsmen, two axmen, two apprentice Death's with their scythes and a couple of ex-ninja's equipped with fighting-sticks, one of which looks to be a giraffe's shin-bone!

I quite like the two unarmed ones, while the one is trying really hard to scare Scooby-doo by waving his arms around and murmuring "whoo-hoo", the other is stood there, going "Hank, dude . . . really . . . it's not working . . . "

Close-ups of the 'scarer' pose and the base mark, these are a standard polyethylene type with enough flexibility to take rough play, but relatively un-glue'able. The 'pipe-cleaner' legs are probably another factor in their cartoonishness!

I gave the 'armed reconnaissance troop' a scorpion light MAFV (multiple-armed fighting varmint) for 'fire-support' from the pending insects/regular return post!

While below them a quick comparison with one of last year's Previews Exclusive Nazi zombies and one of this years SCS Direct zombies, you can see they are all pretty much of a muchness height-wise, and paint would bring them all together, better. The SCS are a bit chunky and the Nazi has more or finer, etched surface detailing.

Cheer's Brian, perfect timing!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Pirate - Large

The resin pile continues to climb skyward, the second time I've said that in three days, but what a nice piece of resin; this was a very expected Ashland 'Tiny Treasures' surprise in the parcel Brian Berke recently sent to the Blog, and it's great.

He has a [really quite vicious] real steel hook, whether it's part of a whole armature (unlikely) or an embed at the wrist (more likely) I can't tell, and he is posed in a manner best described as pretty louché!

There's not much you can do with a single figure to build or enhance a Blog-post, but I wanted to stretch it to ten-posts once the dearth of Halloween stuff tuned suddenly to a flood, so here he is, for scaling, with the berserker - not for the first time in recent weeks - picking on someone who doesn't care and isn't troubled!

I enhanced the colour on this picture, and raised the light levels to banish shadows and as a result the strawberries have all 'gone critical' and are about to blow!

You can see he's the same size as the bear/diver (diver-bear!), which means he's a good match for this chap's crew as well, like I say; the resin pile's growing - Many thanks Brian!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Snake, Snake Skeleton!

When I first saw this I almost ignored it among all the other tat that gets piled-up for the three or four weeks of the short Halloween selling season, but then I though "Well, actually it's almost perfect for Games Workshop's skeleton warriors, or any other undead forces for that matter? So quite useful"

It wasn't a lot; maybe £1.50, something like that? Currently at Wilkinsons (Wilco - until the end of today at least) and might be on a clearance-sale between tomorrow and the weekend; if you're lucky?

Obviously a simple moulding (it's one piece with four sprayed, matt-black, stencilled blobs) and representing a quite short, fat snake, it's hardly going to scare anyone but could have its uses, not least as a cheap film prop!

'Crazy Bones' by Seasons, never seen or heard of the latter and suggests a range of the former, have you seen other Crazy Bones?

Tried it with both this morning's new addition and an old sculpt from the 90's, and both ride it quite well. Are you a gamer fielding a skeleton army, are you thinking 'Hell, that's what I need - right there!', or could it have a use even/just as a piece of scenery or terrain/obstacle.

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Halloween Crackers?

I'm not sure if I should be castigating these as the devil-spawned, tradition trashing, obvious and overdue  move of some capitalist Mo-fo intent on destroying the world to push his profit margin up naught-point-five percent, or celebrate the fact that while most of the world still don't have Christmas Crackers we can now have them twice a year . . . Neah-neah Na-naeh-neah!

I'll play it safe and try to please both camps of thought . . .

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Post One

Oh-Em-Gee!! Can you believe these?!! Some pocket-lining, money-grubbing city-type, with more money than sense already, has done a number crunching exercise and decided to run a coach and horses through the lovely old tradition of Christmas crackers, by associating them with the horrors of pre-Christian barbarism, old-wives tales and the South American day of the Dead!!

For a few points on the top-end, the bottom line is now there's something else for hard-pressed, austerity poor parents to be badgered for by their kids, innocent of the strain on the family budget as their little eye light-up at the thought of a gift, snap and motto. There should be consumer laws protecting society from this kind of blasphemous corporate hegemony and I can't understand why the Daily Wail hasn't taken a stand!

I mean it's right there before your eyes in black & orange, you can't miss it, how could you fail to be outraged?!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Post Two

How cool are these, Christmas crackers . . . at Halloween! Too cool for party-school I dare say and full of old favourites! The card (on the left) and my sample (on the right) differ only in the body of the insect and the species of semi-flat animal!

Both the spider and the octopus have been seen in a set of mouldings which have been around since the 1970's, while we saw chrome-coated versions of the beetles last time we had an insect round-up and I recently saw several of them on a kids magazine so another ubiquitous novelty doing the rounds.

It seems each set of six has two tricks/dressing-up accessories, two games and two toy figurines. Top idea, I hope the Daily Pail gets right behind this modern thinking, to bring colourful, affordable novelties to the suddenly brightened-homes of austerity Britain!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

I'm not sure; I think it's a bit naff, but I got two [proto-] posts out of it . . . and some stuff for the collection, but at four-quid; not something I'll repeat!

Although note that the person dotting the eyes of the beetle (with a permanent marker) was drunk when they did mine! And as with some of the claims made for the creepy-crawly sets from all sources last year - nothing hair-raising or creepy about them!

Time will tell if it takes-off and I know - hyperbole apart - that you have always been able to get crackers for other occasions from specialist suppliers or party-planners, such as for weddings or birthdays, so why not Halloween, but it begs the question, how long before some corporate back-handed junket-taking columnist tells us in his or her erudite fashion that funeral crackers are "Just de rigueur at wakes these days"! Remember; this is Waitrose, not Poundland!

Apart from the two variables noted above, I think it's a standard content-mix as the jokes are numbered 1 - 6 . . .

1 - What is a mummy's favourite type of music? Wrap

2 - Why do demons and ghouls hang out together? Because demons are a ghoul's best friend

3 - What do you call a witch who lives at the beach? A Sand-witch

4 - Why didn't the skeleton dance at the party? He had no body to dance with

5 - What happens when the ghost gets lost in the fog? He is mist

6 - What are ghosts' favourite kind of streets? Dead ends

. . . while the paper crowns are - of course - pumpkin orange!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Pirates - Small

These Blue Box are a bit of a mystery too, only because while I keep a good track of everything that comes-in, I seem to have completely lost track of these! I can't find them in any 'how they come in' shots published or not, but I don't remember them coming from a charity shop either, so while they may have been in the ex-storage stash, or a Sandown purchase which escaped the radar; if you recognise them as being from you, let me know for a full acknowledgement and thanks!

If they did come out of the 'storage sorts' the other week, they pre-date the issuing dates given elsewhere, by a certain self-abusing monkey-lizard, by some years, as they would have to be from 2010 or 2011 at the latest?

Skeletons that are pirates, pirate-skeletons . . . which day to post them, are they firstly pirates and skeletons second, or primarily skeletons with a secondary pirate theme? It's not all having toy-fun, or baiting TJF here at Small Scale World Towers, some heavy editorial decision-making has to be undertaken on an almost daily, weekly, monthly . . . regularly occasional basis!

They came with five similar - but fully-fleshed - pirates, in blue,  I may (must?) have somewhere else! Bases only have a generic 'CHINA' mark.

Comparison shot with some of the similar figures out there, the 1980/90's Egyptian skeleton sculpts are a little bigger than the others, but nothing paint won't hide! Sculpting style is quite like both Jaru's pirates and their version of the Egyptian skeletons?

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Mystery Monsters

So, these are a mystery and a treat, they are a treat because they were in the August lot  form Peter Evans, and while he was probably thinking of catching Rack Toy Month, they had to be held-over 'till today! But they are also a mystery because they seem to be part of a much larger selection which different importers/jobbers or other clients are picking 'selections' from?

The best way for me to explain is for you to first check-out this post from 'Fantasy Soldiers' Shaun on the SCS Direct set, then look at last year's contribution from Brian Berke, and as we go through the sample from Peter you'll see both similarities, identicalities (which should be a word!) and differences between all three 'lots', although the Greenbrier/SCDT ones are probably knock-offs?

The whole lot; as they arrived, I wondered if the extra small-zombie (bottom right) was deliberate or accidental, as the pair take the sample-count to 21 one feels the extra may have been picked-up by the packing machinery and flicked into 'my' bag as an extra, but he's small enough to be included to make the two 'equal' to a whole one.

Either possibility has merit, but once you see how different this set is from Shaun's, you suspect it may not be complete (there was no packaging) or that it is a whole set of Zombies with some monsters thrown in? There are no pale-grey versions either.

Plain zombie types, there is an element of cartoonishness shared with the set from Terranova last year, and as they are zombies, you could lose a lot of the 'fun-look', with paint - lots of blood methinks!

The sausages for a farm-fresh breakfast I promised two days ago, except we both know it isn't a string of sausages, don't we . . . euuwwe! These four are all doing stuff, although in the case of the first it's just wearing an axe as a hat! The other three are eating body-parts - nice!

Common cinema/popular-culture tropes again with - from the left; a mummy, vampire/Count Dracula, werewolf/Wolf Man type and another vision of Dr Frankenstein's monster.

More mythological are an Indo-Asian looking cyclopean, a devil/Satan bat-type and an itty-bitty baby Godzilla, although given it was a man in a rubber-suit and all the scale was 'in the studio set' it's actually an accurate man-in-a-Godzilla-suite sculpt! Missing from the SCS tub on Shaun's Blog is the Aquaman/Marine-boy/Man-fish/Sea Monster type.

Also missing from that set are the gravestones and giant insects.

This mummy is in a hurry, and here he's compared to one we'll be looking at later today courtesy of Brian, for all intents and purposes they are 'classic' 54mm, unpainted toy figures and happily carrying Airfix or Marx's torch into the 21st century.

Back to zombies and a couple of humans; again the humans are quite comical in their hysteria but this is where you notice the similarities with last year's figures from Brian, although the previous lot had the rack-toy flash not seen on these, the sculpting, plastic colour, large bases and grave-stones seem to tie them into the other two SCS sets as well as this mixed sample.

The duplicate/question-mark pose and a figure which - due to the cartoonish 'Mad Magazine' facial features of all of them - could be a fearful human or over-active zombie? Or, a sort of 'Carrie' figure; chasing after the mummy!

Cheers Peter, lovin'em!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Haunted House

I found this among a pile of similar press-out card booklets, in a charity shop (Help the Aged/Age Concern) back in the summer, from the size of the pile they were being sold as clearance, probably donated by Poundland when they took over 99p Stores, and taking a while to filter through to the shops.

Branded to PMS, there was also a nice football one with whole teams (larger scale I think?) which I intended to go back for, but the next day they had all gone, no doubt some feeBay bottom-feeder or car-bootie bog-troll saw a profit in them?

The reason for getting this one wasn't the simplistic card building, but the six stand-alone press-out figures which cover the main tropes of horror characters - clockwise from headless; zombie, vampire, Dr. Frankenstein's monster, knife-murderer/serial-killer, witch/hag and mummy.

Two other figures complete the line-up of 'usual suspects' a much-alive skeleton and a ghost, although both are to be slotted into the finished model rather than having independent bases,  while a living tree ('Ent'!) is another useful stand-alone . . . 40p the lot - bargain!

I may try to get some spare game-board slotted stands (for cards) as their press-out stands actually get in the way of the artwork - at least four designs commonly available.

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Bits & Bobs

Although coming soon after ITLAPD, we had a bit of a bean-feast last year on the 31st October, and while there shouldn't be (and technically - 'isn't'), there is always a sub-conscious pressure to perform similarly the following year, just in case a follower of the blog has been sat at home for the last 364 days, waiting . . . !

. . . and while I'm making no promises for next year, the Blog has managed to pull a small rabbit out of the hat, as at around the 1st August there was one image in Picasa, the next one, and nothing on the horizon, but due to donations from Brian B (Terranova), a contribution from Peter Evans and a couple of last-minute purchases, there is quite a bit to look at today,  which - apart from the bits in this post - we'll look at in the order they were shot/came in, so let's get started!

These three came in a mixed bag from a charity shop back in July, with the red one being one of those horrid, stretchy, cold, clammy, 'wet-feel' silicon things so beloved of certain kids, and not really destined to stay in the collection, but with nothing else for Halloween at the time it was photographed as worth a shot, and I liked how he could carry his commoner gum-ball/lucky-bag novelty skeletons like milk-bottles! As a size-guide, they are about 60mm.

The skeleton on the left in the previous picture is one of those modern semi-flat 'why did they bother?' types, but the other one is older and fully round, with the key-chain/charm-loop removed he'll pass muster in most of the recently issued skeleton armies, but he needs to find a weapon!

Brian also sent the rather sparse display from Scully & Scully's window on a Halloween theme, let's hope the Christmas one is as good as previous years, as they've barely tried for Halloween, although looking up flats the other day, it's clear that while they produce plenty of Christmas and Easter stuff, Halloween isn't something commonly available, being a more US-centric  thing maybe, although getting ever more commercialised in the UK these days. And I love the autumn trees.

Not really a Halloween thing; as I think it's from He-Man (and the MOTU!); but where else do I post an evil looking elf/sprite/Jawa type thing? It's not even evil, being the same 'annoying kid' character many productions have, to give the younger viewers something to connect-with while their elder siblings get into the latent sex and/or ultra-violence, think: the space monkey from Fireball XL5, Tribbles, Jaja Binks . . . and there's always a brat or two in Jurassic Park movies!

It's marked Hong Kong, and made of a spongy yet dense rubber of the biscuity variety which has suffered both crumbling damage and osmotic staining, it took several scrubs to get it clean enough for posting, having had a hand in someone's pretty active and apparently quite mucky childhood! Many thanks to Chris Smith or Jim (from Sandown) for this one I think?

D is for Brucey Bonus!

Didn't get the text done in time yesterday!

This is the regular return or regular roundup - if you like, they haven't been in the queue, but rather collecting in a TBS (to be sorted) bag as they come in until there's enough for a quick phot-shoot. Mostly generic-enough Chinasaur shite, but there's a gem or two among them.

Start with a pair of classic, rubbery, proper-common, cheepo' Chinasaurs, these turn-up all the time and always remind me of baby birds, with their gaping mouths, soft PVC and their eyes painted like gum-ball machine rubber-jigglers or Imperial Poopatroopers. The carnivore won't stand up, so he's punching Dimetrodon in the face! Nature, even bug-eyed nature; raw in tooth and claw!

Having let a whole set through my hands a few years ago, I'm now building the Invicta/Natural History Museum set again, one dino' at a time; this is number three I think! Described as 'Scelidosaurus - about 4 meters'.

A collection of mostly old-school (or old tool) Chinasaurs from the HK days, the one on the right (looks like a mole-rat!) is definitely an earlier issue, with the middle pair of very poor quality, one marked with a bit of Hong... the other not marked at all, while the one on the far left may be a more recent 'China' re-issue.

The per'terra-thingy has been seen here under both Home Collection and Perfect Moments branding, and while the Steggie' looks likewise familiar from those monochromatic sets, it's actually a different sculpt with opposite plates rather than the off-set ones of the other brands, and a very poorly sculpted head on an otherwise reasonable body.

The little yellow one is tiny; about the same height as an Airfix HO/OO guardsman, but a relatively original sculpt, so he may be a baby from a larger parent in a more commercial play-set?

Two ceratopsian's from the current crop of toob sets, which one - I haven't a clue, but there are dozens of them and one day we'll have a proper look at them and make some sense of them all.

These are utter shite, but I love them! Reason being, they are modern shots taken from the old 1970's rubber dino' moulds from which my childhood Dimetrodon comes! They have been moulded in a pale fawn or sand rubber and painted likewise with over-brushing in oxide red or grey for a dusty, desert-dwelling look.

The Dimetrodon on the right is the one I remember with a sharper-tipped sail, the one in the middle has had his sail-tips smoothed-off. The one on the right also ended-up with some flash, pulled away from the gate-mark as he was taken from the mould, and now looks as if he's god and is using a gecko-like tongue!

Anyone who had these in the heyday of their semi-translucent, silicon-rubber, 1970's glory will recognise the smooth scalloped bellies of the other three sculpts, and the rather flat 'fence-panel' of the Dimetrodons!

News, Views Etc . . . E is for . . .

Eye Candy!

https://lang.smugmug.com/Toy-Soldier-Collection/

and

https://lang.smugmug.com/Toy-Soldier-Collection/i-gvcXMqd

D is for Dinosuars 2 of 2 - Regent Products Corp.

We've seen these before as a contribution from Brian B, but he very kindly sent me my own sealed set to open for the blog, which is what I did!

The same four capsules in the same four colours,

branded to Regent, Illinois out of Quindao, China.

Last time I wondered out loud how they might be distributed, given the listing wasn't divisible by four, the answer is; randomly! No duplicates with Mr. B's four; but a duplicate within the pack, along with a mammal!

Now there is a way of calculating how many 'things' you need to buy to find all of a random sample, but A) I can't recall the formula, and B) it was a one-of-so-many formula, not an in-fours-of-so-many, so I don't know how to calculate it, but assuming a totally random distribution of the 16 listed poses, I recon maybe six or eight packs?

Tries to work it out in his head . . . we have one duplicate in 8 eggs, so 16 eggs may be assumed to have two duplicates, so a fifth pack must be bought, but we know from the two packs so far opened that there's a 50/50 chance of another duplicate, so you should (technically) need six packs (24 eggs) to [theoretically] find the 16 sculpts?

As they are stumpy-legged micro-erasers, you wouldn't want to, so it's a purely mental exercise, but I needed some sort of blurb for what is a duplicate post!

Thank you again Mr. Berke!