The main direction of the tie-up this year
is a range of retro tin-plate, these may well be from the same source as the
tin-plate tree-hangers carried by both Shylling
and Ingo Roggaz's ZZ (not
George Zimmermann Mr. Dildobrand; definitely not Zimmermann) back in the
1990's? Particularly the small hot-air balloons? The duck on a tricycle is a
timeless novelty, while the three robots cover all the tropes of their 1950's
forbears.
Radio Control is getting very interesting,
with new digital tech', miniaturisation and lessons learnt in the mini-drone
sector being converged into smaller and more sophisticated toys at affordable
prices, here a set of two 'firing' tanks are more traditional, while who could
resist a digger which digs!
On the subject of construction vehicles; Maisto (a Thai-centered, US headquartered
group of Chinese factories and brands) who I think now own the Bburago name (ex-Italian; Mebetoys) are another one probably
coming to Tobar via Schylling or as a joint-purchase with Schylling; and here we see various die-cast
construction sets in two scales and several formats along with dinosaur play sets.
Counter-display cases of more traditional
clockwork wind-up and squirty-toys! Not really 'my thing' but it's nice to see
these things still out there; they are the 'meat & two veg.' of toy sellers;
the everyday earners.
I thought this was a lot of fun; a mini or
nano-bot cockroach, with a very small motor driving (or jiggling) tiny hidden
legs to propel a larger 'rubber-jiggler' shell across surfaces - what's not to
like?
You can tell from the above that there
wasn't much to excite plastic figure collectors on their stall this year, but
it just so happened that the managing Director of Schylling was on the stall at the same time as me, and the lady
from Tobar offered to get me a slot
with him, I explained he probably wouldn't want a farty, middle-aged,
toy-collector/Blogger trying to confirm or deny Erwin's bullshit with him
(slightly more politely than I've just written-it, of course - I know how to
behave in public!), however she confirmed that both companies import from Supreme (indeed; looking at Supreme's 1986 HKTDC year-book advert', the cockroach may well be theirs), have
done for years and that Supreme are a
stand-alone toy manufacturer.
[latter offices: Room 504-507, Tower B, New
Mandarin Plaza, 14 Science Museum Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong]
Now most of you already know this, it is - after
all - a good decade since Plastic
Warrior magazine was carrying editorial provided by Tiger Hobbies on their importation of Supreme's 60mm figures, and longer since the figures were first
covered there.
Tiger had through the 1980/90's being importing the first series 54mm knights
and Wild West (Deetail style bases)
with Strawberry Group (who further
worked with 3-D Licensing) and (or alongside) Toy Major, Simba carried
them too. While Ackerman and Halsal/HTI are known importers of Supreme, as are Titan, while they are now also re-packed for on-line platform Sunjade and, through Schylling via-Tobar, are - as I write - now probably in Hawkin's Bazaar?
Yet Erwin, who, electing to start
pontificating only in 2015, and who clearly wasn't around to read 'from the
horse's mouth' a decade ago, has decided to make Supreme his second favourite go-to brand-mark for
bullshitting-about - after Blue Box!
He has variously claimed Simba 'designed' Supreme figures "...first"
(with no quoted source or empirical evidence), that Supreme are actually Schylling (while trying to flog his own Schylling stock), that Supreme are a sub'er for Sunjade (when the opposite is probably
true, despite Supreme having their
own wholesale unit) or sub' for Schylling (who
admit the opposite) and that Supreme
are 'just' an exporter and x all else. Oh . . . and that Schylling - with a 'y' - are German! And while his utterances are spread over many comments, posted over four years - he managed to repeat most of them in the single comment above!
I could do a word-by-word autopsy with lots
of screen-cap's, but this isn't the post, suffice to say wherever you find Mr
Sell pontificating on any of the above, know that he doesn't know what he's
talking about! They are all getting this product from an old, established Hong
Kong toy maker; Supreme/SP Toys. Luckily
for the hobby most of his nonsense-utterances are hidden in Shitestuff's
comments or on the locked Vichy-forum; both places ignored by the Googlebots - phew!
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