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.

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Y is for Yearly Yuletide Yield!

Well, I've picked the easiest bits out of a folder with tons of images in, before 'sending it back', a folder I've just been throwing stuff in for a couple of years or more now, but not really considering for posts. Hopefully next year I'll do a bunch of cake decoration posts instead of nativity posts.

I picked this up, as I have a tatty old empty one, and just wanted a good tub/pot (?) against future posts, I wasn't 100% convinced by the contents shown in the listing, and what turned up confirmed those suspicions; two Gem/Festival UK-manufactured polyethylene decorations and one hollow-styrene snowman from Hong Kong?

Which is not to say Supercook couldn't have bought bulk from more than one source, and 'mix & matched' into their product range, but having two un-matching material/construction snowmen, both with brooms, is a hard one to reconcile with how commerce works?

So, while I now have the nice clean container, I'll keep a eye on feebleBay for a more obviously original contents, indeed, I'll need to spot two or three before I can call it firmly, due to the ease with which the lid can be removed/usefulness of the container, against the likelihood of additions not being made to the contents by the householder/cook!

Supercook are still around, or were until quite recently; stores still have 'new' stock, and were carrying resin dinosaurs! To wit: a T-Rex and a rather dodgy-looking Triceratops along with a shallow-spiked 'Happy Birthday' label.

They've got cartoon faces, which could be painted out, but as they're going to stay in the packaging, they can stay looking a bit dim-witted! Keeping them sealed will also - hopefully - keep them from the inevitable chips or broken extremities which resin figurines tend to suffer from.

Back to the contents of the tub, and the Santa Clause - holding ball and teddy bear - was a new sculpt (to me), and joins these others who/which have come-in over the last year or so, all Gem/Festival and all seen before. Note the yellow one has lost it's skis, for which it has the lugs, but which weren't heat-sealed underneath the ski, hence the loss!

Another thing I've discovered over the  last couple of years is that George Musgrave experimented with different icing spikes or "picks" to hold the things onto the cakes before adopting the common flat base you just squidge into the icing before it sets!

A few other points of note, clockwise from top left; A variation of the Hong Kong copy of Gem's sledging Santa' is equipped with a stick-on sheet of 'snow' (left of pair), two snowmen who are primarily pencil-tops, but could also be used as cake decorations and a size variation of the smaller Hong Kong Father Christmas we've seen here before.

That's it, I'll try to do more cake decorations, this time next year, and we'll be back to more normal output from now. That is, with silent-gaps, while I get this house sold and move into a temporary (I hope!) rented flat I paid-for, in advance, in full, several weeks ago!

2 comments:

WOODSY said...

Happy New Year Hugh! Love those festive toppers! Hope you get yer house sold soon! Very stressful! Take care mate.

Hugh Walter said...

And to you and yours Woodsy!

H