H is for How They Come In

Another box from Peter Evans, which he kindly brought to the recent show in London for me, and even more kindly; reported that some of the figures are from his late mother's 'cabinet of curious things'.

We'll look at them all in a minute but I'll just draw your attention to the Panda on a park bench as I rather cut his head-off without noticing in the second image - nothing lasting, just poor photography!

He's sitting on a park bench and reading a copy of the China Daily! Whether he represents the detent following Nixon's visit or one of the many baby-panda exchanges of my childhood, each of which, single or pair, used to generate more headlines and column-inches that Trump and the Windsor's do now, put together!

Equally he could be an early Beijing tourist souvenir, his China Daily has very Chinese stories?

If we work snail-round, anti-clockwise from the panda (you can see what I did there!) we have 'enry from Westair in a 70mm poured-resin with factory paint, another micro-racing car (we've seena  rather chewed pale-blue one in polyethylene, this one's styrene; cracker's the pair, I suspect) and a police-bear with Harrods on his tunic!

A safari bust from the Egyptian toob, two 'winterval' cake-decorations either side of St. Francesca Romana the patron saint of drivers, who has a dash-board sucker (starting to perish with age but still usable), and might be made of casein under the paint? Below the Iwako eraser (sample from Toy Fair 2020 in the wrong shot!) is a small vinyl, probably from a safari set or Jurassic Park knock-off in Matchbox 1-75, Majorette or Hot Wheel size?

A small carousel/roundabout from a funfair as a bracelet charm, a probably-Kinder penguin and then two characters from the Wind in the Willows. I think they are from one of those board games I keep bookmarking and doing nothing about, like that Dougle game, Chris sent some-of the other day! Anyway, there is probably a Mole and Badger to find?

Snow White and the six dwarves! . . . in terracotta; she seems to be a new'ish sculpt (with a very porcine face), but I think the little fella's are cast from Marx's Disnykins and I will track down the seventh . . . some day! One of my great regrets [now] was selling a set of all eight in Japanese blow-moulded celluloid, but they went to a good home and I didn't collect that scale at the time . . . hey-ho!

Three cartoonish Buddha-types, clearly enjoying life, in antiqued 'ivory' plastic take us back to the top where we find a rural or farm-couple spinning wool, a memento from Junin, Peru, they are constructed in the same way as the teeny-tiny worry-dolls, but much larger and obviously another touristy thing.

Finally another, new Phidal busy-book character; I have ceased to be amazed at the number of these, I'm pretty sure he's not a duplicate and I saw another (new) one on the Toy Project's stall the other day, so heaven knows how many sets there have been now? He's (Iron Man) standing over two of the 40mm Papo-Mini sea-monster/pirates in the centre.

Another fine sample of eclectic stuff, mixed toys and novelties, tourist souvenir figures, trinkets and mementoes in fabric, metal, various plastics and terracotta to filter into the pile, with some definitely destined for a return under one theme or another and as always; many thanks to Peter.