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.

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

L is for St. Labre Indian Catholic High School

Wikipedia suggests not all is rosy at this establishment, and I could dig deep and make a few more 'eemies' with my usual revisions of history toward a more accurate truth! But this is really only a quick box-ticker, while the eventual A-Z entry should have a better historical sketch.

We've seen some of this issuer's products before, quite recently with the canoe mini-season (thanks Brian) and ages ago with the semi-flat, relief tipi/tee-pee & children, as well as one of these totems, way back at the start of the blog, but here's a few more of the figural/toy figure output - an output which seems to have been quite prolific, due to the attachment of a Cheyenne Indian Museum & Gift Shop to the school, although there was clearly also a mail-away or direct-sales thing as well.


I've had the one on the left for years, and I have no idea how many there are now! Two lines, with the thinner more realistic ones being simple Totem poles, the other two seem more figural (legs and feet) and I wonder if they represent another type of 'totem', maybe dance costumes like the pueblo Indian clay heads, or stylised 'Welcome Poles'?
 
I could Google it for hours, but life's too short!


One of mine is missing its top-cap piece, so it was but a second's work to confirm you could stack these to infinity! I have seen one with black or green I think but the same design with the same three slip-in/slip-over, silhouette elements - 'Thunderbird', owl and wolf or bear? Beaver?.
I'm pretty sure I saw a third design of these too, on eBay at some point, so it looks like both lines ran to at least three variants, possibly more, and the construction of these is slightly more complicated than the straight poles, with no interchangeability. They also look like 3D forms of the designs you find on some of the rugs and blankets woven by Native Americans?

 
Additional to the Native American we saw with the canoes is the lady with papoose, this just plugs in to her back with two studs, and with the boy/chief makes three in the pile now. The figures are hollow polystyrene mouldings, the straight poles are polyethylene, while the 'totems' are a denser, possibly nylon polymer.

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