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.

Monday, May 8, 2023

UFO is for Undersized Forces of Offworlders

As a sort of 'follow-on' rather than follow-up from the recent eraser and other mini-UFO/Space type posts, including the Buck Rogers stuff (which Woodsy and Mitch managed to miss!) I found these, but they are all teeny-tiny little things no bigger than a thumbnail, so we go down a size, to Micro-UFO territory!
 
These are currently on Amazon, branded to Kid Fun, for possibly a few too-many quid, and seem to consist of 24 sculpts, each of three colours for a 72-item count, no more than 30-somthing pence each, so one can't be too harsh, if you are looking for things to fill party bags, 20 kids will get at least three each?

While these may have a bit of age about them, although not as much as the graphic might suggest? Japanese minis sometimes referred to as 'glico' due to the use of similar minis as premiums in the Glico food combine's confectionary products, and here, possibly intended as erasers?
 
Looking at the two sides of the card, there 'might' be one or two other designs, but I suspect this is all of them, there are six designs here, all slightly different, but all marred slightly by the little finger-grip rod sticking out of the top of each.
 
Obviously, my Japanese language skills are less than rudimentary, but I think the right-hand view's card is showing the types of movement 'observed' by UFO watchers? While the left view a more fanciful showing of 'known' UFO designs! Branding looks like it could be Crescent! Or Crescent Moon?

There is a seventh item in the bag which I suspect shouldn't be there? Unlike the hard vulcanised ribber of the other six, this one is a soft silicon of the stretchy-animal type, and is either a malformed piece of factory-junk, or a bag with two corners tied-in with string?
 
If the former; it's just fallen or been thrown (by machinery?) into the bag accidentally, if the latter; it belongs in a different set, perhaps with a figure to hold/carry it? It could however be a bonus item (like Strelet's streletsi?), to be collected one at a time by multiple purchases of different sets to build a 'free' set? You can see the fine detail on the actual UFO's also contrasting with the smoothness of the probable interloper!

And they really are all no bigger than a thumbnail!
 
They remind me of two of my favourite sci-fi shorts, one of which might have been done as a Tharg's Future Shocks cartoon in 2000 AD? In the first a mighty invasion fleet has spent many-years in hyper-space travelling from wherever to invade the luscious looking Earth, only to materialise in front of a big-rig on a US highway which promptly smashes them into a billion pieces without ever seeing them, as they were no more than a cloud of gnats in our scale, the other story was similar, but a dog licked them off his food after they landed, or something like that!

Haha! Two hours later and Geoff found this one on eBay, now (nine dollars plus postage), same set, same soft silicon-looking addition, but clearly a 'death star' type space station, with one or two sucker 'ears', which have obviously deformed on mine, so that's that mystery solved!

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