L is for Late Layabouts Languishing in Limbo!

As well as lots of old Charity shop stuff, there's also a lot of toy show/toy fair stuff, which will probably be broken-down into box-tickers, or thematic posts now, and a few Shelfies which seem to have missed previous round-ups, including these, most of which are from the Autumn/Christmas just-gone, despite the fact we did have several 'shelfie' posts from both my Camera and Brian Berke's? But there you are, they hide from me!

This is actually from 2021, so a real hider! It was, then, the latest iteration of the rather generic and poorly-detailed/sculpted 30mm'ish figures Mark, the Man of Tin, has such success, and apparent delight with, in turning them into spacemen, monsters, Napoleonics and colonial thin-red-lines, among other things!

 

We've had various shelfies of these, over the years, since they started appearing, not long after this Blog was born, and Poundland, Poundstreatcher, the defuct Poundworld Plus and 99P Stores (along with others), have all carried them, often in more than one packaging, while Amazon has carried dozens of generics and phantom-branded stuff, tubbed, carded, bagged, blistered and clam-shelled!

 

Which is why I only shelfie them, I have samples of various sizes, in dozens of colours, and they will be findable, mint, on evilBay for decades to come, as ex-stock, if you really need them in packaging! 

I hate this shite, I phuqing hate it with a vengeance, and to be fair to my sensibilities, I hated the big-head/bobble-head/nodding crap of our childhoods, and I hated the Corinthian cricketers and footballers of the 1990/2000's, it's awful stuff. I think it's an extension of clown-phobia?

 

I even hate the 'Nutty Mads' from Marx . . . "Let's apply teenage, 50's surf-culture to World War Two murderers, shall we? Make them look silly! The Butchers of Nanking will look harmless after we've given them some racially-profiled extremities!", said no sane person, ever. Garbage!

"Yeah, but the kids like them", go the supine, brain-dead, left-of-bell-curve parents! Because unethical, immoral, capitalist Toymen, who have a greater love of money than the future mental well-being of the human race, have sold them the concept, while you were getting drunk and watching porn, to blot-out current-affairs and drown the misery of your existence, you dullards!

Deep breath Hugh, take a moment, and then see if you can find some nice dinosaurs . . .

Self-branded/in-house from B&M, I think these are the latest from HGL (Grossman) or HTI (Halsall), repacked for B&M, and at less than the price of a single larger Schleich or Papo, a bloody bargain! Who wouldn't like this under the Tree on Christmas morning?

 

These - Wenno - might be a phantom brand (also for B&M) or an actual brand mark for a China toy maker (I haven't seen them at the trade-fairs?), but they seem to be newish sculpts (albeit, maybe copies of other makers) and relatively well done for the price-point, which, again, beats the big-names hands down, and I thought the giraffe was particularly well done, compared to the rack-toy giraffes of our youth!

 

 

 

We're on safer ground with Teamsters, having seen them several times before, an imported sub-branding of HTI, covering a variety of die-cast or 'toy car' lines, and I wouldn't buy any of these, new, but they will help ID loose dinosaurs at some point in the future! Also shot in B&M.

And finally a similar set, in B&M packaging, really a generic, but helping to pinpoint an origin for some of the many teeny dinosaurs, if no better candidate comes forward in the future.