News, Views Etc . . . Out There Now!

Quick run of some domestic and contributed shelfies;

I shot these in The Works on the 30th January, might be of some use to ship war-gamers, I'm guessing they are old 1960/70's tools put-back into production for the express production of a cheapie toy and three-quid's not a lot for a ship kit, even a small and perhaps dated one, anyone recognise the original from the instruction diagrams . . . or the artwork?

40-odd parts and can be finished as waterline, and while I suspect the artwork on the side of the box is the whole [four-kit] line (and my local store only has New Jersey's), they are all large capital ships with class-sisters who could be modelled from duplicate kits? Anyway, out there now, try the website?

These were TKMaxx, 6th February, more from HTI (Halsall)'s Teamsterz, a three-deck boxed set of approximately 1:48th/50th die-cast emergency/first responder vehicles with two more figures which will start to turn up in charity-shop bags soon and in rummage trays at show in a year or two!

Indecently - the card shipping container/port-a-cabin is an old Blue Box trick! Tom of Finland's got his truncheon out; he must be a special constable! But what's with the peaked, chef's hats! Out There Now!

Kinder egg's, pink, nom-nom-nomnivore for the use of; have a new series of Barbie's, I've lost count of how many lines there are in the range now, this must be the fourth or fifth line-up? Film Director Barbie, Doctor (or vet?) Barbie and . . . err . . . cage-fighter Barbie?

Figures are quite nice but idiosyncratic, with two clipping firmly into their bases and the other having no fixer and constantly falling-over! And they all have some kind of card interactive or backdrop, which are hideously bent from their time in the ovum and just get in the way, it's not even clear what the left-hand ones do, some sort of game I think, but multi-lingual pictogram instructions leave you with no real idea!

Each also comes with a mini sticker-sheet, but they are those paper ones Kinder have always used, which curl, dry and fall off over time. I wish they'd go over to the vinyl type that Lego use, if you get them straight and rub them on with a finger-nail; they stay-on! Out There Now, don't eat them all at once!

Sticking with capsule-eggs, but switching to contributions, Brian Berke found these Disney toy eggs in the 'States back in the late autumn, you can find Zàini in the UK, usually smaller independents or the sort of General Post Office/stationers which are becoming an endangered species in the South East!

I do have a few interesting Zàini-LZ (Luigi Zàini), Maraja, Metro, Zepter, Partizan (et al) capsule toys so one day we'll have a 'mini-season' on the minor-make capsule toys here, once the box turns-up in the garage! Although; Peter Evans gave me a bunch of Maraja last May, which are in the queue somewhere?

Brian also shot these at the end of December last year; really quite good-looking copies of Matchbox Afrika Korps in a nice sandy-coloured plastic, branded to Arcady from DA Toys Group, in the 'States Now!

And having mentioned Peter; he shot this set somewhere in North or Central (?) London (I guess) on the 14th of January. The fort - an apparently unbranded generic (there may be something on the back of the box?) - looks to be a solid, stackable modular thing, in a soft rubber or faom-plastic of some kind, while the figures have DNA from Starlux (archer) Cofalux (pole-arm) Timpo (mounted jouster) and Supreme (swordsman) among others!

He didn't say exactly where he'd found it - in an (un-named) discount store of some kind, but I've not seen them locally (we have 'Stepford' universal-brand high streets round here!), so try larger inner-city or out-of-town clearance places? It's bit pricy at £12.99 (for tight-wads like me) but very useful and a bargain at 2-for-twenty-quid; if it is in your budget. Also two forts would make a very substantial piece of baronial real-estate! While a single one would be equally useful for small-scale gamers. Out There Somewhere!