N is for New Novelties - Chris's Parcel II

It's really only by collecting everything that you can get the 'bigger (or best) picture' and to that end I have all sorts of junk, crud and novelty crap in the pile, and some not so crap novelties, thus I am always happy when other people send the Blog junk, crud or novelties, and whether of crap or quality! Here's some of the more esoteric stuff in Chris's most recent parcel.

I can't for the life of me remember who these are attributed to, but I know I've posted their A-Z entry, so I'll look them up when I'm up the Library to post this and put the brand in these brackets; here (Ace Acme - same poses but colour variations and a new green)!

They were capsule toys and tend to turn-up in ones or two's, although I think one of the US dealers was selling them by the handful back in the 1990's, and I hope I have both new colour variants and a new pose in this trio.

These were also a welcome addition to the vaults, I have a few already, and I know they are Christmas Cracker inserts, but there are three new poses here (there's a whole post coming) and a matching, larger-scaled Chinasaur who is new to me, and extends the 'story' of these otherwise unremarkable, unattributed mini'mals.

This is fun despite not being a figure at all really, rather a graphic representation of a . . . err . . . penguin? But he comes after this post (yes- the title was diabolical!) the other day and is probably the 1970's grandparent of the newer, all polyethylene ones, having a steel-bar axle for ethylene wheels with a styrene body.

I vaguely remember posting a link to these a few years ago, some memories of a mail-order catalogue's scans . . . or screen-caps from a .pdf? Anyway, here they are in all their flat, floppy glory . . . fridge magnets!

AND - continuing the running trope in Plastic Warrior magazine recently - the 'orange force' are all left-handed, left-hooking, left paws! Due to their all having being mirror-flipped vertically at the printers! Brilliant!

Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub!

How cool are these? Cool enough for firefighting school; that's how! Pencil tops of Trumpton firemen (they were definitely firemen, not firefighters in those days!) and I'm not sure they are among the six named in the ditty, being the station commander and his boss? I'll check with Youtube, there's bound to be a clip there? Later . . . Captain Flack on the left and Barney McGrew on the right!

I recognised the way the trees were attached to their bases as being the same as the trackside accessories from the old Mettoy Playcraft plastic-railways of our childhood, and knowing there were Hong Kong copies of it (our childhood track (all village-fête buys) was more HK silver than Playcraft red!) I looked them up in Bill B's catalogue, and sure enough, here they are; from Rays Ltd., (Wah Hing Industrial Mansion) of Kowloon - another one nailed!

The scale is more G-gauge ('Big') than anything else, which is, the Rays' stuff; the Playcraft rolling-stock was all smaller, aping Brio. And looking at the inner set's track (black), this would appear to be more compatible with Big Train or Timpo's Wild West trains than the Playcraft stuff? But the outer track (blue) does seem to have the Playcraft wheel-channel system/design. I think Tomy had a similar system?

Cheers to Chris, all found a happy home here now! Coming next - some other highlights.