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!

H is for High Days & Holy Days Hodge-podge

Well . . . you can drag it out to the 6th of January and some years I have, but only if I've 12 matching themed posts or images with which to do that, and this year wasn't the year for that kind of planning! Indeed, it's mostly been off the hoof, I've now sent what was left in the Nativity folder (most of the older images, mixed shots and comparisons) back to 1979 and renamed it Christmas 2023.

The Christmas cracker post (which I never really even looked at seriously) likewise, but we've got some bits and bobs here to cover, and I've still got the cake decoration folder up-here (in 2032), so I may grab a few of the images for a quick post over the next day or two, but otherwise that's it for the truly seasonal stuff.

I think I grabbed this last year, although it's one of many that make the rounds every year, but it's a little more cerebral than most, and directly aimed at people like us! I love the coloured wood-straw, we're immediately taken back to Primary-school nativity plays in draughty village-halls!

The apocryphal tale, or ultimate Jimmy-joke; little Jimmy gets the part of the inn-keeper and when the visitors from Galilee knock on the door says "Yeah, plenty of room, come-on in!" ushering them off the stage!

I sent this to a friend last year, but shot it for the Blog, because it's not bad - size wise - for 54/60mm figures! It was a traditional glass one too, none o'yer polymer shite! Miracle it got to its destination in one piece mind, but apparently it did! There's only a few left now, mostly repurposed into defibrillator-stations. unmanned tourist-information booths or community/free libraries.

We had looked at these, also HobbyCraft, last year I think, or the year before, anyway I went back for some more . . . it WAS last year, as I went back this year too and was disappointed to find the same selection, so didn't get any more, but this was what missed a Christmas follow-up post last year and has been sitting in Picasa for over twelve-months . . . just!

I also added a fourth hedgehog to the tree . . . my tree now, the larger one on the left, having added a third (second from the left) two years ago while Mum was in hospital, neither has hung in a tree yet, but I'm sure they've both been fully briefed by the veterans to the right, and next year, they will all swing gently and remind me of better times.

Found in a drawer, an old 'posh' cracker toy, still in the 'hygiene' bag! You can tell they are posh if the novelties are metal and/or have a use beyond entertainment; how many nail-clippers, nail-files, anodised mini-pens, over-sized paper-clips (or "Bookmarks") in chromed sheet steel and fancy bottle-stoppers do we all have in the various drawers round the house now?

I've bought a few ornaments this year, mostly from charity shops (I never pass the very small 20/30mm balls in green or blue as you just don't see them anymore, while pinks go on the 'gay tree'), but I did get a small pack of mini-balls from TKMaxx and this set of mini-shapes, which had two figurals, a soldier (who seems to also be a polar bear - not sure what the rest of the regiment will make of him!) and a gingerbread man!

I hope I always choose/send nice cards to everyone (but it's always a matter of taste), however I bought a couple of one-offs for friends of Mum who've stayed in touch, and as she was definitely a 'cat lady', I managed to find cat cards which I hoped would remind them of her, both were fold-opening, pop-up types and this was one . . .

. . . while this was the other! The first card's felines are a bit 'sweet' and cartoony, this lot look like a bunch of reprobates who've just about 'had' Christmas and being made to wear stupid headgear by stupid humans! "No, no, when I say 'Now' let-go and whip you hands out of shot . . . can't you make them smile?"! Obviously painted from life!

These were rescued from the Nativity folder before it was 'sent back', they've all come in this year at various points and may or may not be Crib-Nativity-Krip-Belens-Noël-Santon-Precepi types!

Left-hand figure is a Hong Kong plastic, probably a cake decoration, but is he magic/Harry-potter, or keys-to-life 18th/21st, or Old Father Time? Thoughts appreciated as he must be mass-produced and someone somewhere will know exactly what he represents!

In the middle is a composition figure on a wooden base, who could be a Joseph the Carpenter figure, a background shepherd or a priest, or the same as the next figure? While that 'next' figure, on the right, is probably a Mrs Noah from an old wooden Ark toy, she's all wood, turned with splint-arms, ignoring the various thick or no-bases they are 50mm (middle, priest/Noah) and 60mm - the other two.

It's a weak connection, I know, but I'm clearing folders here! Starlux farm items which wouldn't look out of place near a manger, in a stable, in downtown Bethlehem, circa the year dot! The milkmaid's clearly heard about Herod's men, and is prepared to do something about it while the shepherds all get stoned on frankincense and myrrh! I love the guy using an animal-skin water bottle, and even the cow has the look of a 'rare breed' about it.

Brian Berke shot these in a store window in New York before the really evil weather hit, and lucky he did as it wouldn't be Christmas without a nutcracker or two, cheers Brian!

Here's wishing everyone a happy New Year, lets hope it's a better one than the last three, being a cynic I doubt it, but some stable weather and a few less idiots in charge . . . oh, Israel have just shone a light on the New Year and it's not looking good! But Romania is arresting misogynists, so it's not all bad! Slava Ukrayini!

F is for Follow-up's to Donation Posts

A few things which have been raised after recent posting one way or another. The cream-white Cowboy flat's from Chris HAD had a mark, not only that but originally I had an email chat with Chris, in which they came up, so how I forgot I don't know, elsewhere it gets excused as brain-freeze I believe, I'm blaming the amount of stuff which has come in recently, and the fact that it keeps going to storage in dribs & drabs!

Anyway, I've adjusted the post and added Vortella Plastic to the tag-list, as that was the mark!

Further to Spectrum Steve's ID of the Pink Panther as being Dinky, I shot him with a few others which have come in recently, and so above, from the left we have Yolanda large and Yolanda small; both in the style of bendies, but actaully 'solids' from Spain, a duplicate key ring from a set we saw a year or two ago, another key-ring, probably Hong Kong, but new to me and then the Dinky, on the end.

While the bad guy from the Black Caldron cereal premiums in the same post hadn't been undercoated for painting, well, actually he had . . . but that wasn't the comment-worthy thing about him - he was a home-cast copy in solid pewter/whitemetal!

A comparison between the new - white - duck and the older 'Hubley' one in red, except all the Hubley's I can find are shades of brown, or white, while I have black, red and yellow, so possibly a European mould-swap or license involved there? The new one is a nicer sculpt with better wing-definition, and feet - more realistic overall.

I've also had a few more of the approximately 54mm Xandria's come in since Theo's stuff was posted, I think I said four were in the post at the time, but I forgot I'd had a fifth come in with a mixed Key-ring lot, a while ago; the lady on the left.

From the left; Unknown (Cinderella trying on the slipper from the fairy tale 'Pixies'?), Krent Kruidenier (Krent the grocer. a De Betuwe jam premium, seen before), Pied Piper of Hamlyn (Grimm's?), Bertje Big (Bertie Pig (?), another De Betuwe jam premium) and a Witch - another fairy tale Pixie?

Note Bertje's over-all PVC-vinyl trousers, the pattern making him look just like Podgy Pig from Rupert Bear, in his tweeds, who - when rendered in colour - is also often drawn as white, rather than pink? As Rupert dates from the 1920's, any plagiarism is Dutch I'm afraid! But, 1950's fashion on the farm, where you find pigs . . . I suspect more of a parallel evolution, there's only so many ways to anthropomorphise an animal so it's still recognisable!

A is for Advent!

This year's figurals, I think they are the same as some I had a few years ago, but I shot them so they can go up!

Halfway through the period we got an extra-big or double one, Santa' and his sleigh! And there's a soldier!

L is for Lakeland Plastic

A household name slowly going global with the aid of the Internet, Lakeland (who have nothing to do with the - actually - Derwent pencils) and have grown from an almost nothing agricultural supplier to what they are well within my lifetime. they regularly have a bit of Chinashite in their catalogue/stores at Christmas, and I think this is probably quite resent; 1990's maybe, 2000's?

Poured resin, decorated in muted pastel shades; there's something a bit pre-Raphaelite about them! With a minimal count of eight pieces, despite a extra lamb on the cover art, they were probably less new, than I paid for them, and I didn’t pay much!

The close-ups; all rather white and pink-cheeked I think it can be said, but the sculpting is fine enough, and Joseph's walking cane is a brass rod. To keep the sets body-count down the lamb came by himself . . . the shepherds', having washed their socks, had nothing dry to walk in!

Gabriel is particularly nice, and would make a good stand-alone fantasy figure summoning a host of otherworldly High Elves to save . . . Riverdeep? The only problem with that plan is that these are 100mm figurines, you'd need a garden for a war-games table, if you could find and afford the other figures - actually, there's all that ELC stuff, Schleich and Papo . . . it could be done!

I is for Indomitable Gauls . . . Still Holding-out!

A funny one this, I have the better known pastel-shade ones from Ola, Americana et al, which were issued on a one-random premium per product item basis over here, but we are actually going to look at the slightly larger knock-off clones seen elsewhere, because that's how the cookie crumbled!

Bi-lingual packaging for export, and they do turn up here, I've now known two dealers have a quantity of these, each time the same contents in every bag of a stock-carton, but different contends in the two lots.

This was the first lot, and I shot them ages ago meaning to do something with the smaller ones when they turned-up, but forgetting to do so when I did quickly sort some of the premiums last summer ('21). Note the header-card states '10' characters, but you get twelve items, however, one of them is a stone!

Close-ups, there are two Asterix models, one standing (bottom left) and one charging into action (top, 2nd from right), the premiums blogs only showed the former when they were covering the sets ten or twelve years ago, but I'm pretty sure I have them both in the smaller colours, and it seems there were various issues of different line-ups. This is all Gauls or Romans with one Egyptian (top right) I think?

The other dealers sets (I again bought 2) are part new, part duplicates, and again the count is twelve, not ten, with a duplicate menhir stone but no Obelix to carry it! We also get the chiefs shield, but only one bearer, and the missing bearer isn't in the others set I've found so-far, so there must be at least a third and fourth packing for the full 36?

I had a few of the older ones here from a Sandown purchase which may have been in the previous 'H is for . . . ' on the subject, if not it's still in the queue! You can see the older set are slightly smaller, but the clones are good, with most of the fine detail carried-over, although the menhir (Fascinating read) is a completely new sculpt with a flat bottom so it can stand in monolithic majesty after delivery!

The size difference hasn't affected the shield-carriers much and a non-matching pair (Euro-premium on the right) seem to hold it level, for the smaller Dogmatix to occupy the chief's position!

Getafix (by far the best of the anglicised names, and better than the original Panoramix in my opinion!) gets a little collar, set into the caldron bubbles, to hold his stirrer, which seems a little excessive to me! These seem to be the same figures also issued in Peru, whether the tool stopped on the way to Taiwan, or is slowly working it's way back here I don’t know!

Funny; I have a shed load of these loose, all the same blue, all the same 17 sculpts, and offered a load to a chap who was making/painting an army of them on Facebook, free, gratis, nothing asked in return, his choice and I would have swallowed the postage but he managed to turn them down with a brusqueness verging on downright rudeness! Obviously he'd taken sides in other matters, and managed not to be insultingly rude (we've ever met and I've never harmed him), while managing to be rude enough! His loss!

F is for Fontanini's Festive Figures

No more than a box-ticker, as it's a small sample from the larger scale 120mm 'pick & mix' range, with a few caption/notes, they are a hard'ish, dense, surface-stable PVC, so no sticky paint, but I don't think I've ever see sticky Fontanini, that weepie-shit tends to come from Hong Kong!

The happy family, separate baby in another basket of straw!

Shepherds and sheep.

Kings/Wise Men/Magi x3

Larger animals and another shepherd, two up-pipes and two down-pipes, Fontanini do several different designs across their range/sizes, with one or two down-pipes (reeds) and 1-4 pointing up, I haven't looked up the difference, but here's a link to the background stuff;

https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/zampognari-italys-christmas-tradition-of-bagpipe-playing-shepherds.html

Angel Gabriel.

I have a much better sample of the 40mm and a few of the 60mm sets in storage somewhere, so when they all come together we'll have a better look at all the rustic/rural personages another year!

F is for Found Objects - Tub of Cake Decorations!

Well, the chicken crown didn't have orange-sauce (see end of previous post), it had pork, orange and cranberry stuffing, so the lack of stuffing was alleviated! However what I thought was goose-fat roast potatoes in the freezer turned-out to be triple-cooked, chunky chips! So I had a very posh Chicken 'n' Chips for Crimbo dinner, but with all the trimmings!

Back in the summer, while sorting out and emptying the cupboard all the bee-keeping stuff and garden chemicals were kept in, I found this little tub; the sort of thing expensive ice-cream or a individual sponge-pudding may come in.

Contents were cake decorations (presumably you entertain the bees while working on the hive?!!), which are a mystery I shall never solve, as I can't ask Mum, but with the childhood decorations in the garage and saved previously (see Blog passim I think), and latter additions in the kitchen (some also seen on the Blog, the Yule-log squirrel from Schleich for instance!), I can't imagine where these came from, let alone why they were in the garden! But we never had a skiing Santa' when we were kids?

In the previous shot you can see the skis are heat sealed onto Santa with plugs coming off the feet. I believe Gem had at least three versions of the ski-equipped figures, removable plug-on/plug-in skis with the plug on the ski (as carried-on with by the Hong Kong pirates), heat-sealed with the plug from the foot (as here) and head sealed foot-to-ski without plug (on the Blog somewhere), which may have been part of their experiments with over-moulding?

Anyway, it's a "Ho-Ho-Ho Merry Christmas!" from Santa Clause!

N is for Nativity Figure Set . . . /s

These are almost, or probably - on the second-hand market - even more common than the Art Plastics set/s, and seem to consist of only two variants, but my sample is a bit dodgy, as is the narrative of this post, due to it being cobbled-together from last year's unused folder's images and a part/mucked-about-with set I grabbed the other day.

But I think we can weave most of the tale, and while I'll be looking-out for more chapters of the Art Plastics story, I'll also be looking for any further volumes which can shed a little more light on these for future posts/follow-ups.

A wholly (so far) generic set, which is typically Hong Kong, while carrying some of the elements of Marx's Hong Kong production about the style/values/materials, and is definitely a set of Italian sculpt clones, both Fontanini and others?

Here we have my recent purchase as it arrived, and after I'd unwrapped all the figures and set them up (top), the card after I'd removed the added (long ago) green baize strips (middle) and the scan I took before the remains of the box/packaging went on the fire - bottom!

There's a small lie in the shot above, in that the Joseph figure is missing his walking stick, becase he's the one from the spares box, as I thought the seller had lost/not sent one figure, but I found it a few hours later (or rather; Boysey-boy found it . . . whispers - he may have had something to do with the 'placing' of it?) under the bed! So he's now here, late, on the left with his stick.

Reverse of the other items, I'm not blaming the seller for the state of the set, it was clear in the pictures, and I was grabbing a few cheap ones for the blog without studying them too carefully, so Caveat Emptor . . . you get what you pay for! However it was missing at least the sheep, and possibly another figure or two

The angel Gabriel was wired in with something which was clearly not 'origial', while the tub of loose figures had an alternate angel from other sets in the series? It has a base like the rest and would have been glued into those sets, in the same fashion as the other figures. Inset is the sets code, the only clue we have; the 'L' suffix is probably for 'large' [set]?

Apart from the baize hiding the full number of pieces (from the white spot 'marks' where the actors are supposed to be placed) and the Sellotape damage to the outer, it was otherwise in good condition, but by the time the baize had been removed it was easier to get rid of it, and the two clever end shaping-pieces (and two hidden shaping 'steps' under the shelves) will glue-together to make a nice loading dock for O-gauge railways!

Last year's unused, loose images, one of the reasons I didn't use them is because I couldn't remember why some of the images were the way they were, but by dragging-out these and the Art ones, I may be able to make something of the ones which are left in the old folder!

The point to note is the much larger range of shepherds, pretty sure they are all Fontanini sculpts, but "Other Italian precepi-makers DO* exist, your list of Italian precepi-makers can go UP* in line with all information being subject* to change, this sentence does not affect your statutory rights"!

*The author/s maintain and accept no responsibility for any emphasis or lack thereof.

Here they are in close-up with the large animals below (I may have some of the sheep in with THE sheep, but I think I still have to find them), from behind. You can see one has a staff/crook which matches Joseph's stick and would have been on the same small runner, they are both soft polyethylene, while the box-end/shapers were hard polystyrene, so two tools?

The kneeling chap is a 'villager' with an edible offering for the Little Baby Jesus, while I think the chap to the far right of the upper shot is a camel-handler from a even larger set with standing camels, possibly with Kings/Wise Men upon them?

Some of the Animals; an older, handled-wear donkey, and two slightly different animals, from another set altogether; the two with the dark green bases, you can see they have simplified cavities as well - bottom shot.

A picture I grabbed off the internet to show a better version of the set than mine, with two standing sheep, but otherwise the same contents as mine, in the lower set we have two figures from the other set on the right; apart from the pose of the king (new) and the darker bases, they seem to be very similar to the commoner (?) set, even down to paint used and style of painting . . .maybe a little more measured, earlier issues/older tool from the same company?

Their (other set's) sheep is a variation on the Friedel and their bases are flat with pin-release marks like Marx production, or the Rado/Ri-Toys reissues! Again the animals do have the hollows of the other set, but simplified into more symmetrical shapes, or negative-shapes!

I suspect two sources, copying the same Italian precepis, but close to each other - two factories of the same company, or sister companies maybe . . . or just one contracted to help with/finish a contract or contracts of the other's?

I'm off to cook a chicken crown in orange-sauce (? Sainsbury's!) with all the trimmings, except stuffing, I forgot the stuffing, doh!