About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, January 9, 2022

F is for Four Fingers of Fictional Fun

A few Sci-Fi bits and bobs which were kicking around various corners of the Laptop, and which might as well be shoehorned into one post to clear the decks a bit!

1940; 1951; 2000 Leagues Under The Sea; 20th Century Fox; Applause Star Wars; Astounding Science Fiction; Astronauts; ET; ET Phone Home; Farewell to the Master; French Dinky; French Meccano; Gnut; Gort; Harry Bates; J.A.R. ET; JAR Sales; Lego Star Wars; LJN ET; LJN Toys; Novelty Key Rings; Novelty Star Wars; Remco Diver; Short Story; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Star Wars Key Rings; Star Wars Novelties; The Day The Earth Stood Still; The Exraterrestrial; Vinyl ET's; Zygon War Chariot;
Star Wars key-rings; We've seen a few before now, but I thought a comparison was in order, and we have - from the left - an LED torch, Lego 'maxi' Darth Vader, followed by three normal 'minifig' sized rings, then an Applause young Anakin/Vader, which I think is part of the avalanche of merchandise which accompanied the fourth/first movie.

I don't know how many there were in the Applause set, so the gap is for the missing Vader in an otherwise complete set of the capsule key-ring figures, cleared through The Works a few years ago, then to Pound-Plus, branded TPF Toys for shipping-in by STL.

1940; 1951; 2000 Leagues Under The Sea; 20th Century Fox; Applause Star Wars; Astounding Science Fiction; Astronauts; ET; ET Phone Home; Farewell to the Master; French Dinky; French Meccano; Gnut; Gort; Harry Bates; J.A.R. ET; JAR Sales; Lego Star Wars; LJN ET; LJN Toys; Novelty Key Rings; Novelty Star Wars; Remco Diver; Short Story; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Star Wars Key Rings; Star Wars Novelties; The Day The Earth Stood Still; The Exraterrestrial; Vinyl ET's; Zygon War Chariot;
ET's, a planetoid's worth of ET's! The three to the right are licensed LJN, and from a set of six (or eight?), while the chap on the left is marked J.A.R. Sales, and may be more of a knock-off than an official product, but both lines are dated 1982, so may both be legitimate?

I have no idea how many of the JAR ones there were and scale on them is 'big' as he fitted in a bikes shopping basket I seem to recall (never seen it, have no intention of seeing it!), so about 1:18th or larger? I guess there was half-an-idea for them to be compatible with dolls, for playing-out the movie scenes?

1940; 1951; 2000 Leagues Under The Sea; 20th Century Fox; Applause Star Wars; Astounding Science Fiction; Astronauts; ET; ET Phone Home; Farewell to the Master; French Dinky; French Meccano; Gnut; Gort; Harry Bates; J.A.R. ET; JAR Sales; Lego Star Wars; LJN ET; LJN Toys; Novelty Key Rings; Novelty Star Wars; Remco Diver; Short Story; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Star Wars Key Rings; Star Wars Novelties; The Day The Earth Stood Still; The Exraterrestrial; Vinyl ET's; Zygon War Chariot;
Ignore the Greek, he's been joined by three of his compatriots recently and will be Blogged separately at some point. I managed to pick up both the Remco divers from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea last year, but they have been separated already, one here, one in storage - funny story; TJF managed to score a brownie-point with this one when I posted it elsewhere, but really, Journey to the Centre of the Earth / The Land that Time Forgot / 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea / 10,000 BC and a dozen other movies of the time were basically variations on a theme!

The metal-detector/mine-sweeper one is missing the base-stud, but as it's only used to lock them onto the floor of their retail carton, it's more a question of Do I remove the other one?

The chap to the right is supposed to be Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the head's all wrong, so I'll leave it to a jury, preferably a Bristolian one! He's a soft polyethylene and Argentinian.

1940; 1951; 2000 Leagues Under The Sea; 20th Century Fox; Applause Star Wars; Astounding Science Fiction; Astronauts; ET; ET Phone Home; Farewell to the Master; French Dinky; French Meccano; Gnut; Gort; Harry Bates; J.A.R. ET; JAR Sales; Lego Star Wars; LJN ET; LJN Toys; Novelty Key Rings; Novelty Star Wars; Remco Diver; Short Story; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Star Wars Key Rings; Star Wars Novelties; The Day The Earth Stood Still; The Exraterrestrial; Vinyl ET's; Zygon War Chariot;
Picked this up cheap a while back, as a sort of follow-up to the other day's Lunar Rover post; it's Dinky France selling-off the Zygon War Chariot crew figures as 'astronauts' in their spare-parts program! Daft in'it . . . got tub full's of orphaned seated figures and I go and get three more, but it's always about the packaging!

The funny thing is I know I have a metal Gort somewhere but can't find him, and there are more ET's in the post, so we will be returning to both those subjects in the not too far future!

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