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.

Sunday, February 4, 2024

W is for Westair

A year old, but not of any consequence, despite TJF's opinings about 'timely manners', it's all still out there, and all this museum gift-shop stuff from companies like Westair and Timeline Gifts (Ancestors of Dover) tend to run for years, but still, box-ticking a couple of points:

In recent years the old 1960's die-cast mazac figurines from Peltro/Fontanini sculpts have finally been retired and replaced by new sculpts produced in a softer, poured whitemetal, and here we see the Tudor set, four figures (probably also sold individually at a pocket-money price-point), we have Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare and Sir Francis Drake . . . Raleigh lost his head!

But what actually caught my eye was these rub-down sheets, in the style of the old Patterson-Blick/Lettraset/Waddington's (et al) ones of our childhood, but all new artwork and transfers. They look familiar, especially the WWI and Battle of Britain ones, but I checked with this website, and they are all-new artwork.

The website. I think I've posted the link before, but it's worth posting again as it is quite the monumental work, with nearly every set ever issued, and many I remembered for the first time in decades, like all the cereal premiums!

They kindly gave me the fifth as a sample, and while I haven't opened it yet, it's a gatefold scene with a sheet of rub-down transfers and a colour-in picture on the back with a potted info'panel on the theme/subject of the card.

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