G is for Grisly Gratis Ghouls

A short one, but some nice stuff! These first four were in Chris Smiths latest donation to the blog, which will be staring in forthcoming posts, while the last shot shows one in Theo Van der Werden's recent parcel, which is also in the queue, but these mixed lots usually hold a few Halloween'y novelty types, which is lucky for us, as it's Halloween all day!

Oh and I seem to have cured the missing 'n' but only by making them all double 'nn's or triple 'nnn's, so for now 'n's may be involved in more typos than is right and proper, but we are where we are, and I try to catch them!

Clockwise; modern Japanese 'vampy', gothy, anime lady key-ring, a large (and pretty exceptionally complete for it's age) skeleton, smaller one we've seen before I think (but there are always variations to be found with this novelty/rack-toy stuff), and a sort of Frankenstein's Monster type, we will concentrate on.

Close-up of the three more interesting ones; we'll have an over-view of the littlies another day, but there are a few on the Blog, mostly under the Halloween tag, which surprised me at 62 posts! The Monster has four articulated limbs. The girl's mark, if it means anything to anyone and the flat rear of the skeleton, he has nice brass rings at his four joints.

But back to the 'Monster, and a dark-eyed, legless Santa, who came from Theo a few weeks before the one from Chris, and whom I had put with the Christmas stuff, only to realise he's an 'evil' Santa! Chris also remembered sending aother legless skeleton one to the Blog a couple of years ago; sixth image down.

Now I though (without thinking because I do that sometimes!) they must be jiggling pencil-tops, but . . . there's no hole! They have solid bums! And then I got to looking at those holes in the hands and feet and realised they must be from a set/sets of mini, novelty, string-puppets? How cool, weird, whacky and novel is that!

Or . . . how cool, weird, whacky and novel would that be if, it was the case, because I then remembered these - or something like them - from our childhood where two lengths of nylon fishing-line ran through the holes, one through the feet, one through the up stretched arms, both of which were attached to plastic rings (I think . . . this is a very faint memory), and when you pulled the lines taught, by pulling the rings apart sharply (or twisting them?), the figures did a little trick or dance????

But . . . both paragraphs are assuming you're reading to the end before following the link, because Chris's previously sent skeleton is NOT missing his legs and IS a jiggling pencil-top, or is he, we couldn't work it out last time! So is my memory entirely made up? What was the true action of the apparatus attached to the skeleton and could they be used as mini puppets? Still . . . THEY'RE FUN!

Note that Frankie'Mon has the same limbs as the skeleton, and the Santa has a flange (belt?) at the base of his torso, which the other's don't, so different sources I think? Many thanks to Chris and Theo for these and the past skeleton, if a few more legs (or examples) turn-up, we'll return to them!