F is for Follow-up - Novelty Toppers & Sharpeners

Last time we looked at these I titled the post "M is for More to Come . . .", so confident was I that we were only going to scratch the surface, and further predicted a return, and while this isn't perhaps as full as I had visioned that future follow-up, it does widen the field and reveal some new poses . . . although it also clears a few duplicates out of Picasa, so apologies for that!

The first duplicate shot is - I think - the original Shackman set's listing shot, which I'd downloaded before winning the lot we looked at last time! But it reminds us of what we looked at then!

I'd also shot the comparisons and the 'new' policeman several times shoving the images in different folders, only to re-take them for that previous post!

This arrived this morning; I haven't even done the feed-back yet - next thing on the list, it's the man for the lady dancer in the boxed set, no branding, and very different packaging to the stock-box from Shackman, and never/hardly ever been out from the looks of him.

Clearly not a Spanish-anything, he's sort of Tyrolean, but more accurately a Slovakian Folk Dancer (Czech's tend to red or white trousers, while the true Tyrolean's wear short lederhosen or longer, black velvet trousers with high white stockings), not that the blue seems terribly Slovakian, but A) it's a cheap toy, B) it was a very brief Googling, in image results and C) I don't really care, but he's not a Spanish Dancer, whatever the HONG KONG box says!

These were (are?) both still being offered by an Argentine seller on feeBay, and seem to be an earlier iteration, loosely channeling the Disney cartoon of Peter Pan, base is flat (no step/plinth), but sharpener looks to be the same design as the others. L-in-a-triangle brand-mark means nothing to me, yet?

While these chaps are from the 1965 (or '68?) catalogue from Wilton in the 'States, we're looking at a full license here, I think, from Hanna-Barbera Productions, but the same bases as the Peter Pans', and definitely the same sharpener-units, it may be that they were all coming from a smaller factory among the many in HK, who only specialised in these and jobbed to everyone?

A new colour for the sharpener in the Policeman's pale blue, and a new pose in the Native American lady - another Commonwealth knock-off - both from feebleBay.

Returning to the new figure, a bag of what I suspect are wholesaled Christmas cracker inserts and a cat! The inserts include a green plastic copy of the standard die-cast alloy sharpener of our youth, two hexagonal ones, a hippo-outline (or at least I think it's a hippo, it's not terribly clear!), a heart-shape and a round one pretty similar to the one basing many of these figurative novelty sharpeners, but quite modern/current.

The new one is marked Hong Kong on the underside of the sharpener, has an unmarked plinth, and a box code which is in sequence with some of those we saw last time, but not the Wilton or Shackman codes, I guess it depended who the end user was and whether they chose to adopt the manufacturers code, or re-number in line with their own 'in-house' cataloguing system/s.

All of which brings us to three plinth types; flat, flanged single-step or edged double-step, coming with or without a pencil sharpener which itself can or cannot be a separate piece in crackers, gum-balls etc . . . and a selection of subjects from the Wild West, through dancers to civic & ceremonials, some of which are ex-Commonwealth, some based of Commonwealth-Van Brode sculpts and some quite original, with - now - Disney knock-offs and HBP characters . . . what next?

Because we're looking at mostly sharpeners;this is a follow-up to this post and suggests there were two each, cowboys and Indians in the 'West Germany'-marked set of pencil sharpeners utilising the Crescent/Lido poses? There may - of course - be more, but four as two-pairs seems sensible, and only those four keep turning-up? Another evilBay image.