P is for Playset of Polymer Performers!

A small victory for my research efforts with this one, as I've had the cutting in the archive since 2005, but have only recently found the set, badged to someone else, but I suspect they are one and the same, certainly the carry-case/tub-graphics seem to tie in, but more globally it may have been a common contractable 'generic' at the time?

 

 

On the left we have the original cutting from Lidl's weekly flyer, so my handwritten date would probably have been the due date, the following week, rather than the date I got the flyer.

 

For those whose countries haven't yet encountered such stores, they started life in Germany (there's a similar-sized rival 'Aldi'), where I knew of them from my time there, not as a kid in the 1970's, but as a soldier in the later 1980's, although I think the one local to Wavell Barracks was another store brand altogether!

 

They pile-high with a basic range at low prices, and enhance their offering with bulk-ordered household furnishings, goods, tools, toys and the like which are announced the week before in the little flyers or pamphlets which in a quiet week might be a three-page gatefold, and in a busy period like now might run to 16 stapled pages, with occasional extra flyers/validation periods (of a few weeks, or 'while stokes last') for meats, wines & spirts, or - now'ish - toys and sweet treats/cheese etc.

 

It is from one of those flyers that this page came, while on the right, we have a Padget marked tub, which seems to have the same graphics. But the label goes on to say Padget Trading Limited C/O [care of] Padget Services, so apparently not our more commonly seen here, Padgett Brothers (A-to-Z), but probably a similarly-named, similar importer, who 'got the gig' to supply these to Lidl at the time?

 

Obviously, our interest is in the figures, which are of a mixed quality, around 45/50mm, and PVC, the dancer/performer figures, being based on sculpts going back to at least the 1960's are quite good, and the magician (who has to double as ring-master) is passable I suppose, as are the clowns if you assume they have papier-mâché heads, and take into account the giant shoes, but the pair of acrobats are bloody-awful sculpts of some hidiousity! I suspect I got an extra figure, but luckily of the better sculpt!

Anatomically incorrect, clumsy-looking and as un-athletic as it's possible to be, she still managed to get across the high-wire while I changed films; Hee-hee! The high-wire consists of three parts, so you can have a single span (as here) or a double, they locate into the crossbars with little spigots, and the trapeze uprights can be two heights.

 

The animals are really more tub-fillers than anything else, with an inordinate number of tigers, given the lack of a big-cat trainer! Most of the baby giraffes won't stand up and have a completely different paint-treatment to the adults, and all are in a very stiff PVC-alike. The adult elephants would make very nice war-elephant conversions in the 1:72nd to 28mm range.

 

The stands combine into a half-circle, so two sets would make a full ring, but leave you with a lifetime's supply of rather leery tigers! And the all-male lion family in two sizes are hardly going to jump that burning hoop! As I'm sure you can see, scale is all over the place!

 

 

The stands are all in a 'styrene polymer, but the other accessories (and the shrubs) are polyethylene, so the fact that the clowns' cannon looks like it might be the same as Hing Fat's pirate cannon, probably suggest an origin for those (polyethylene) parts, certainly I think the shrubs are theirs too, and possibly the zoo-cage pieces, with the [softer] animals & figures, and [harder] stands possibly from another/other source/s?

 

In total there seems to have been six sets in that week's 'assortment', and this poor quality image should help ID jungle (larger animals by the look if it) and sea animal (mixed sizes) sets in the future, although from time to time one would expect one or the other to turn-up in some sort of played-with condition.

 

 

Thought for the day

If you write - the animals and figures, and stands, it reads clumsy, but if you write - the  animals & figures, and stands, your brain reads the ampersand as 'n or un, so; Animals n'figures, and it reads better? I don't know if it's something unique to English, but it's purely psychological, both lines are technically correct, however one scans in the brain as acceptable the other doesn't? Is there a word for this, or is it a known 'rule'?