P is for Profuse Plastics from Pandora's Box!

Crimbo' 2021 hasn't had much of a festive feel here, but the effort has been made, and perusals undertaken, and this is what I purloined on a recce' to Pandora's Box in Basingrad the other day.

And shout-out to them as they had the only face-masks in three towns on the 13th March 2020, when we went into lock-down (understanding the science and following the story since 24/25th Dec. 2019; two things our useless cock of a clown Prime Minister seemed blissfully unaware-of at the time), and I managed to grab enough to last until they became more readily available here (in Sainsbury's) a couple of weeks later.

Two resin unicorns (as 'last year' now, as flamingoes are 'last decade'! Although cacti seem to be on the rise?), but from a tag already on the Blog; Puckator, who did the pirates, so I thought I'd better grab them and chuck them up here to fill-out that tag! And they are a nice 28/30mm compatible, so role-play gamers could keep an eye out for them? But then it's cheaper to add the tip of a toothpick to any suitable horse!

The strange 'yoga' Santa's; we may have seen these before, with or without packaging and/or spikes, or even me removing the spikes, but it might have been another set, as there are two or three of these smallest size? Anyway, with packaging and spikes - Anniversary House!

The similar figure next to them was in a display-box at the counter when I went to pay for everything else, branded to Doric (who have also been here at Small Scale World before now), they were mostly very pricey, but one compartment/section in the middle of the tray was cheaper so I bought one of each in that price bracket, he was one.

In fact we dealt with them at length in 2019

The other item was another of the old winter cottage designs we saw here, and which I suspect is a cleaner and better painted version of the third (newest type) in that Post, but it might be a re-cut fourth type, I won't know until they are all got together in a year or so.

In the meantime I had found the bisque original, suggesting that Gem/Festival added the shrubs to the opposite corner to try and hide a bit of plagiarism (although Musgrave was probably around to have provided the master for this one too?), which would mean that the HK copies are in two yolks of a ven-diagram; from-Gem (with shrubbery), from-bisque (without) and it would be nice to find a chalkwear one (if it was done in plaster), for the 'whole' set!

How quick did they get these in the shops?!! the craze is weeks rather than months old (well, about four months, in August of this year none of us had ever heard of it, now no-one hasn't!), and there was a whole box of reasonable sculpts, over-moulded in three colours of substitute-PVC and fitted with a key-chain loop - Squid Game guard, no brand. the big-head renders them 'deforms' or semi-deforms!

I listened to a fatuous piece on Radio4 (which is a shadow of the station I've listened-to all my life) when the craze first became noticeable about how it is a variation of Tag, or the British Bulldogs game, when in fact it's a parable about totalitarianism, closer to hunger-games and taking a deliberate side-swipe at the capitalism which has trashed the planet and is now creating whole swathes of young adults in the UK and America, who can't feed themselves on their wages, or ever get a car or a foot on the housing ladder. While the Korean kid's original is a more complicated struggle between two teams.

Squid Game

Squid (game)

I think I may have bought these before and bloged them (the tags are in Picasa's tag-archive!), but here they are again! Imported by BCG Ltd., and with no other obvious brand, and poor copies of Matchbox 8th Army and DAK. If I have bought another set, I'll open one when I find the other and we'll add them to a Rack Toy Month.

Pandora's Box is the only retail outlet round here with a turnover of traditional rack-toys and novelties, and they don't turn-over that quickly, but it was a fruitful visit this last time.

We have a couple here in Fleet; Izzy's who use Tobar and another which seems to be semi-permanently closed these days and stocks Red Deer, but not all the stuff from them that Peter Evans manages to find, so "keep looking around" is still a must!