News, Views Etc . . . Ukrainian Video

My friend Oleksandr Batrak, last heard of helping out damaged buildings in Kyiv, has made a video with his friend Oleh Smorchkov, unfortunately the AI lady-robot translation is a bit idiosyncratic, but the video is interesting, and you can buy the figures he makes (mostly 40mm) from his Facebook page (search for Александр Батрак) occasionally, the Polish Winged Hussars are lovely . . . anyway; enjoy;

Hmmmm . . . I think that Hauptmann at the end had some lucky dice!

СЛАВА Україні!

SLAVA Ukrayini!

Slava Ukraine!
Glory to Ukraine!

F is for Follow-ups - Space Stuff

Sorting folders I've found two readers contributions following up on stuff from ages ago, so I'd better get them up here before they get any older!

Apologies to all, you will by now have realised it's organised chaos at this end, and with about 800 folders on toys and toy stuff, things do just 'disappear'! Sometimes they actually disappear; it seems that from time to time Picasa will just stop showing a folder on the scroll, so every year or so I try to find an hour or two to go through the 'My Pictures' folder, looking for both empty folders and folders which have been lost / forgotten or hidden by Picasa's ornery rules!

This was sent to the Blog by a loyal reader in Finland (he's since sent me something equally interesting, which is on-hold due to current events in the Independent Republic of Ukraine), and shows playing pieces for a board game which you will recognise as the Reisler spacemen (one shown) but in plain / primary coloured plastic; red one damaged. We partially tied them to Thomas's space figures here.

The game is by a Danish manufacturer Adolph Holst of Aalborg and called Avaruuspeli or 'Space Game', published in Danish there are also Finnish language versions ('rare birds' in the contributor's words!).

The same company produced a WWII type board game; Taistelupeli (or 'Conflict Game'), an example of which can still be seen here, but it's a sales site so it won't be there for ever! You can see it also has undecorated Reisler figures as playing pieces, the rather generic 'combat infantry'.

While Ed Berg sent these as a follow-up to Brian Berke's follow-up to a spring-launched missile post I did!

They are another version of MPC's rocket launcher, the missiles are very different to those shown in the original post. A smarter version still can be seen on Ed's excellent Blog here, while this is awesome!

Cheers guys, it's all bricks in the wall! It's all appreciated and it all makes it here - eventually!

A is for Audit of Alien Astrofarers!

Yeah, well, with well-over four thousand posts now, the thesaurus needs to be dug out occasionally! It's a brief look at a small sample of Kinder and Kinder-like Aliens to finish a flying visit to the subject!

One of the first shots I took off evilBay about 18 years ago (the date on the image is the 1st of January 4501?!!), these were late 1980's I think, and there were equally cartoony, mounted knights and cowboys in the line, I should have a couple somewhere, but they weren't in the main pile when it pased accros my bows the other day; Robot's on Robot horses!

They are small, about 28/30mm equivalent, but the horses - particularly - are styled very-much like the Hing Fat 'Galaxy Cowboys', while the riders are styled like Arco's or Pikit/Gordy Bi-Tron robots so could be used as scout/reconnaissance units in an army of rack-toy robots!

These seem to be quite common, in that I have three and keep seeing them on feeBay, but the other item in the pair/set seems harder to track down, it was a similar balance/move toy. Three aliens in mini-saucers, 2000's I think, up to no-good!

This was from 2002, and while the creature looks like the Aliens in the previous mobile, the fact that the other member of the pair has polar-bears (with the biggest in-scale mushroom-house you ever saw!), he may be meant to be a more earthly thing like a caterpillar? But he's taking photographs, so I suspect an Alien reconnaissance team for the saucer aliens!

2010's for these and the next lot, I meant to get more of them at the time, but budget constraints and the randomness of 'blind-bag' purchasing curtailed that idea! I don't know if they are Aliens or robots or battle-suits, but they were quite cool given how shit Kinder toys got for a while once MPG had taken-over the toy side of the Ferrero chocolate eggs.

They are semi-action figure with swiveling legs and ball-socket arms to give them a surprising level of articulation for such small things and - of course - the arms can be swapped around between 'platforms'.

These came out at around the same time as the previous lot and are only spoiled by the googley-eyes which could be removed to make them more spacey 'mech's'? They are more sort of junkyard, or anthropomorphic robots? I can't remember if there's an element of interchangeability with them and didn't try while photographing, I think if there is any, it's minimal and accidental?

Another one from Metro (Leoni), and I can't remember if I found him somewhere, or if he was in the lot from Peter Evans, but thanks to Peter anyway, he gave me a bag-full, most of which may never appear here! You never-know though; there's - hopefully - plenty of RTM's, or capsule 'round-ups' still in my future?

Not sure if he is meant to be a robot, an Alien or an ice-monster? And he's the sort of 40mm LRG (soft rubberised polymer, or 'elastomer') you will find credited to gum-ball machines, because he was to be found in gum-ball machines, when he wasn't in a budget chocolate egg!

F is for Ferrero's Fleet of Flyers to Faraway

The rest of the spacey-looking ships, vessels and err . . .  a skidoo! I don't have a vast collection of Kinder, but back in the day I did pick-up a few and Andy Harfield of the now retired Harfield's would talk me into his latest box of junk Kinder when I went down to his shows in Kent, so a few came in over the years, this is the rest of the 'spaceships' . . . and a skidoo!

I like these, they are a bit Battlestar Galactica in the front end, and the nearer two have folding wings like the Imperial Shuttles from Star Wars, while the one at the back just has little folding weapons packs or hard-points.

These were all around at the end of the 2010's I think, the slightly hippy 'Jetson's' one bottom right may be older. The one at the back has a rather daft alie'phant pilot, while the one on the left looks a bit like a flying glass-brick!

Space Shuttles; from two sets I think, one more realistic (red and black), the other altogether more pulp'y! In fact it looks like the sort of thing which might have crash-landed on the Clangers' planetoid and produced a five-minute episode of stop-motion shenanigans!

Standard novelty 'flying saucer' design; the red one is a more recent re-issue, the others are from the 1990's I think, I've lost the launchers for the earlier ones but they fit the red one's so all is not lost, but they were always - and remain - too delicate and fiddly for kids.

I know, I know, well it was in with the space figures/robots and their various buggy, sled and rover types . . . it's a skidoo, I know! Might not be Kinder, might be Maraja, Czapp, Rübezahl or one of the others? The thing is though - or was when my collection was more biased - it's a really nice 1:76/72nd scale!

This was quite a recent one and is a form of fancy glider. It's got a bit squished in storage and I've kept the stickers on their sheet, which show a young lady's flying it, so yeah . . . 'The Last Star Glider'!

These came from the master finder-of-good-things; Peter Evans, in a bulk lot of mostly non-Kinder brands, and is credited to a Metro of Modena, Italy (could it be related to the Cose Progetti of the previous post?), which became Leoni S.P.A. and now appears defunct, although the item is a Chinese import.

Indeed it's a nice piece of post-apocalyptic Mad Max rip-off, straight-to-video, B-movie merch' . . . the Intensive Fighting Chariot! The bagged one appears to have a different front end/fender/ram arrangement, but not the other one on the paper slip, so at least three ITC's to find!

B is for Bruder . . . Kinder, Hans Postler et al . . .

And to be honest, Giodi should have Kinder's slot above as they made them, and they don't only seem to have supplied Kinder, but other people as well, while my 'third source' is Cose Progetti Promozionali, who may be designers (albeit copyists) as well as importers?

This is a very small sample of the Bruder mini space vehicles, and there are quite a few more, but this is an overview which will call on the past finds of Moonbase Central too! As far as we know Bruder were first with these as part of a wider range of otherwise civil vehicles in a distinctive red-yellow-orange-blue-green scheme.

Woodsy found this set in Rosita branding from Spain, which seems to contain Bruder product in different colours; Bruder state on their website that the confectionery trade were good customers for their small toys, so they clearly did a fair-bit of contract manufacturing.

And here's a Hans Postler set (last image) in standard Bruder colours

And there's more here

While these are the Giodi for Kinder copies, again, not sure it's all of them, but you can see (with the lander) how reverse colour versions are available. Although when I say copies, they are all new vehicle designs, but based on and aping the Bruder colours.

Flight-line; Bruder and two Giodi/Kinder, folding/swing-wings, the Bruder are about 50% bigger by mass, and probably wouldn't fit in Kinder eggs, or at least some of the parts wouldn't?

Giodi clone; the paper slip states Cose Progetti Promozionali (Modena, Italy - 'Promotional project things') and they are straight-out copies, slightly smaller still, you can see a few differences between the Giodi and Cose (bottom right), but they are the same design, and made in China (possibly the Tennison Trading in the links above?) so imports which other capsule providers may have handled.

Interestingly some are copies of Giodi (swing-wing sample), some are copies of the Bruder models - the Lander for instance.

A is for Astronauta Spaziale Dall'Italia

Sticking with Kinder, but going vintage, I didn't know whether to run through these in a vague chronological order of issue, but in the end the comparison shot rather dictated that we go by size, from the largest on the left below, to the smallest, and adding an intermediate size I found in an older folder!

So, that comparison, from the left we have RP (or Giodi?)'s 54mm'ish, semi-swoppet / swivel figures, then a more robotic figure around 50mm, the 40-mil' cartoony one (also RP I think?), two vintage 1970's polystyrene figures filling the 30mm slot, another 'styrene figure from 1988/89 in 25mm/1:72nd and a slightly later/more recent 20mm/1:76th scale figure, probably in polypropylene, as the grey figure is; the larger blue and the cartoon chap both being polyethylene.

So, back to the swivels, who are plug-together with interchangeable boots, helmets and belts. I only have a small sample, although there may be a few in storage, helmets came in black, grey or silver, with belt/backpack and boots only found in the former two colors so far, no silver? While bodies were in sky-blue, an 'aqua' shade (not clear in the lower shot due to camera flash) or white.

I don't know how many versions there were (the reference books are also in storage!), but the insert sheet will have had the 'official' configurations, which can thenn be multiplied by swapping boots, belts or helmets - notice also the suits differ too!

Again, my sample doesn't do them justice, they came with about four different vehicles of frankly rather Heath Robinson'eque perambulation! They have face-visors, suggesting humans (or humanoids) but have a rigidity to their suits which also gives them the appearance of robots. usually white or silver, there are other colours which may be from the originator factory.

The cartoon ones were part of a larger range which included cowboys and Indians, sportsman, firefighter, chef, bull-fighter etc. Apart from the swapping of headdresses (for no real benefit or reason) the swoppet element here is just to get them to fit in the capsule!

Like the robotic ones above, these come with a variety of vehicles, but all more conventional moon-rover or swamp-buggy designs. The robots - and I think these are robots - come in silver or white (I've swapped the audience around), while the vehicles come in silver or off-white/pale grey. Size-wise. they are between the next lot and the last lot at around 35mm.

These used to have a ridiculous valuation in the O-Ei-A guides, but they do turn up, and I think Peter or Chris included one in a donation a while ago, which may not be in this pair? Painting was a stab-and-hope in seven colours!

Stop me if I'm boring you with a duplicate story . . . oh, it's a Blog, you can't; sorry! I can't remember if I've told this story before or not. My first proper job after leaving the army (I'd had a few months temping) was as a tractor driver for the Parks department over at Rushmoor, and one day I'd got back to the depot with ten minutes or so to 'finish' and there was no way Henry (my 'chargehand') would let me go early.

So I was kicking back in the little staff-room they had there, probably drawing on a Camel, next to the greenhouses when I noticed the blue satellite/radar dish on the table, a quick check revealed one of the solar-panels in the ashtray and the game was on, the astronaut was next, at which point I knew I had a winner, and after about five minutes I had assembled all the parts! I think I even had the capsule and paper slip, long-gone now!

Someone had obviously had a Kinder Egg in his lunch box and had made a big thing of poo-poo'ing the toy and destroying it by chucking it about the staff-room, so the rest of the crew didn't take the piss (I took my lunches in the cab - on the job/site), you see - toxic masculinity, it's a real thing, if 'the wife' put it there, in his lunch-box; they probably had kids - take it home for them?

Anyway, that's how I can date this with the reference books in storage to 1988/89! Took me about twenty years to find the other satellite, and both have the same figure whose right hand extends to a spigot which locates in a hole in either vehicle (space ship?), so they can float on a moon-walk if you hang them from a ceiling! There were only the two in the set (on the insert sheet) they are both quite fictional I think, and don't join to each other.

While I think this chap is from the 1990's or early 2000's, but I can't remember what he went with! He's a dense polythene or polypropylene, like nylon anyway!

O is for Other Capsule Eggs

More standard egg shapes here, some with chocolate, some without, along with a blind bag (Lego) and a Tomy 'gum' ball!

Bandwagoning from Schleich here, and why not, but they're following Lego's blind-bagging band-wagon, not the original Kinder, although that was itself only a commercial formalisation of gum-ball machine prizes, with better quality toys and a chocolate egg!

Bayala is very-much the 'pink & purple' line in Schleich's catalogue, and these eggs, with no edibles, seem to contain one of twelve winged kitten-dragons in ten sculpts, again, not really a bit of me, but they will come in, in mixed lots over time, and it's always nice to know what you're dealing with!

I think we've seen something like these before (from Dracco Candy of Spain) and I castigated them on that occasion, well, I had another go and these are an equal  rip-off with little in them beyond shite, but the jelly-beans were OK! I've lost the brand on this one, but it's around somewhere.

Picked these up in a discount supermarket in North London when I visited Peter Evans, back before lock-down . . . three years, god! Aras Eggo Toys from Turkey, they also do larger sweet-container eggs with thematic branding - army tanks, puppies, Cindy-doll knock-offs &etc.

The toy is a small, simple 3-part jet-fighter, made in China, which I thought I'd shot assembled, but obviously not! While the egg is - for me - a preferable all-chocolate, to that sickly white stuff with makes up half a Kinder egg.

I've had a go at BIP (Holland) before, as well; their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle egg was a disappointment, and that story continues with this jump on the art / designer-toy bandwagon, with an Ugly Dolls button-badge, mini-sticker sheet and those barely edible chalky candies.

I should caveat my attack with the point that I'm coming from the angle of looking for figurals - some kids love stickers . . . and badges, and will be well-happy with this as a pocket-money treat!

Safer ground with Tomy's capsule toys, large dispensers in shopping precincts (malls) and some retailers (The Entertainer always has a bank of them near the tills or the entrance), and here we have two of the Incredibles from Disney-Pixar.

Finally, there's these from Lego, their blind-bag minifigures, I got the mad Doctor Bunsen Honeydew, but would like the band! They'll turn-up on evilBay as full sets of twelve, if they haven't already, some traders buy wholesale and break them down.

T is for Two - New to Blog Food Premium Capsules

Staying with the theme for a day or two, these have both come in recently, although in the case of the Cadbury's Frog it was actually 2020, that's an indication of how long I've been stuffing things in the Kinder &Etc. Round-up folder, and how long since we last looked at such things, well over due for a file-emptying!

Some of you may have encountered the pop-culture mythology of these, or at least: Freddo's chocolate-bars, online, but it's a mythology that post-dates my childhood? I don't remember them at all, but a lot of stand-up comedians seem to have at least one stock joke on the subject of the economic research value of a Freddo's price in any given era!

Anyway, once your brand-mark has cultural status at street/classroom/playground level, it's de rigueur to tear the arse out of it with further line-products, one of which is this pack of Chocolate-Buttons (which had their own mythos when I WAS a kid!), branded to Freddy (is he Freddy or Freddo?) Frog.

Not something I need, but I think a few have come-in in various Charity Shop mixed bags, and while I tend to send them back with one of my donations, I often photograph the stuff fisrt, so we may yet see a box-ticker collage here, in a few years! Swivel-head Funko-Pop knock-off!

While these Wow Eggs are in the newly reborn Izzies in town, Izzies were/are the local indie' discount store, who were threatening to close-down a while ago, but when Baker's went first, they hired one of its best men, and moved into a new store where the old Poundworld Plus was, a unit which has been empty sine I Blogged its demise back in 2018.

Except they've changed their name from Izzies, and I can't remember what the new name is! Their toy section remains half-and-half Tobar novelties and big-box 'Made in China' generics with light and sound, but these are new on the counter - they never did edibles before the move.

Manufactured/Distributed by Meeran of Harogate, Lincolnshire, they may be Turkish in origin, most of the lesser brands seem to connect there or Spain, but Italy too has rivals to Kinder, and I think the former Yugoslavia has claimed a brand or two (I have about 20 now, in the archives?). Also it's obviously channeling the Kinder Joy concept of a puddle-pudding with - single-use - scoop/spoon!

Generic capsule toys, I've had a version of that camel (roughly 1:72nd) in the micro-animal's unknown zone for years, they are OK for what they are, small rubber animals, I'll get a couple everytime I go in there, if every egg is going to contain something 'archive' worthy, they're better value than Ferrero's or the Poundland lot? The Ceratopsian is very small in scale!

Thought for the Day - Slava Ukraine!

One of the things which has annoyed me in recent months is the way some people; both overly well meaning but nonetheless; thoughtless idiots, crippled by Political Correctness on the Left and argumentative, ignorant trolls, crippled by their own stupidity on the Right, have taken to saying of the coverage of the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and / or of the way we - in the West - have responded with aid or by taking refugees, with a line that goes something like this;

"What about Syria/Afghanistan/Yemen/Congo . . . you didn't / don't treat them like this?"

Well. here's the thing . . . The Afghanistan's, Iraq's, Iran's, Tunisia's, Yemen's, Mali's, Sudan's, Rwanda's and Burma's of this World are (and often have been for some time/centuries) first and foremost squalid little spats between squalid little local chiefs, warlords, priests or witch-doctors, criminals, self-appointed 'strong men, or just those with the guns or the keys to the Treasury, all these other wars, conflicts or revolutions are the same hated track of humanity's B-side, playing over-and-over and depressingly getting us nowhere.

But, all of human history is about the slow and steady rise of liberal, tolerant, secular democracy, and while no one sensible would claim it's been easy, no one sensible would claim we are there yet - indeed we are in the middle of one of the periodical 'Right Wing backlashes' which make the rise of right-thinking so slow - and no one sensible would claim it'll ever be a 'done deal', not with capitalists fighting against it every step of the way, nevertheless, it has brought us - recently - over half a century of relative peace and prosperity at home; in Europe, North America and Australasia.

However, in Ukraine, the Orks of Mordor have come out of the backward-thinking, backward-looking back-woods of the East to attack civilisation and try to tear-down the very tenets of democracy which the civilised world hold uppermost, with brutality, ignorance, lies, fake news, torture, execution, rape, murder, looting and other human rights abuses not seen since Hitler's Orks swept across the same lands.

So god-damned right we're going to support Kyiv, we're going to help the Ukrainians, we're going to send money, arms and blankets and we're going to make a fuss.

A is for Among Us . . . Among Us!

Sticking with blind-bag/capsule toy stuff for a bit, we come to another new line spotted in The Works, I actually bought one a while ago with yesterday's dinosaur sextet, but grabbed another on Saturday with this morning's Dino' capsules. We've previously seen Fungus Among Us, well now Among Us are among us!

From a PC/Platform game, Among Us - I had to look it up! From Wikipedia; "Among Us is a 2018 online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio Innersloth", while a quick Google-search reveals dozens of different characters/configuration from several toy lines.

These are from Toikido (geddit? Toy Kiddo!), credited to Sinco Creations (design?) and Singleton Trading (distribution?), they are pretty standard lumps of a modern rubberised plastic, PVC-replacement in a blobby style like Crazy-Bones or similar 'fad' collectables and are around 40mm. This pair will do me for now, they will be bagged-up, in handfuls, in Charity Shops, in a year or two, for very little gelt!

The second purchase was the last in the box so the ladies let me have the box as I had the three capsules as well! I have no idea why the green one has a tail instead of legs, giving it a  slug-like countenance, but it's not an imposter, my brief read of Wikipedia makes it clear Imposters are nominated by the games algorithm after the characters have been chosen by the players . . . I think! Although the bag suggests an extra 'blind' figure which will be identifiable as an 'Imposter'?