S is for Stretch Stretchy Scrunchems

Following the large stretchies in a post the other day, Brian Berke sent some shelfies from the States, the same day I'd found a few in the Garden Centre shop near Borden, and, not knowing I already had a few in the queue, however, while I intended to get it all out before the end of Rack Toy Month, that hurdle blew over before I got to it! So, we're looking at them all now . . .

 

I can't remember where I got these, but it might have been TKMaxx or possibly Flying Tiger (who I think are just Tiger again?), but it was a few weeks ago, and therefore they are out there, to be found. Very similar to the Henbrandt ones we saw over ten years ago now, both in size and material (stretchy metallic polymer), they are slightly different sculpts, and not sold as pencil-rubbers (erasers) like the similar robots we also saw some time ago now.

 

 

I then found these, in a branch of Waterstones, the booksellers, these are both stretchy, and they're made of that type of material which rolls down smooth, flat surfaces like windows or gloss coated things like doors, shower curtains, or kitchen cabinets, and they are near, or a 'vague' HO-OO size, so what's not to like!

I can't tell if it's one pose with lots of distortion, or two, or more, but they are vaguely NASA types, and come approximately 50/50 silver and white, so a game could be generated with target scoring, or last one hanging.

 

The material has been around for years and is what we used to call rubber jigglers, although we made little distinction between the actual jigglers (usually on a elastic string or sucker) and these true stretches, which tended to leech some vile oily material after some time or if stored in plastic containers, I don't know if this is exactly the same stuff, or, more likely, a modern replacement which may prove more stable?

The full gamut of modern 'rubber jigglers' (if you limit "full gamut" to reptiles and amphibians!), and stretchy! Courtesy of Brian in New York, with a Club Earth brand-mark, and we have the same metallic 'brights', looking larger that the Dinosaurs above, these are the sort of thing we chased the 'girly' girls with when we were small brats, but ours tended to be black, muddy-orange or some shade of dark green/khaki, and old school PVC without much stretch!

 

These are in The Works, and while I'd bought them a few days earlier, they didn't get shot until I shot the purchases the same day as Brian's eMail arrived, so they are here due to the chronological nature of the images!

Obviously for Halloween, which is rapidly heading toward us, albeit still nearly two months away, but over the last week or two the Halloween stuff has gone out, and I noticed tonight that The Range is putting out the Christmas stuff!

 

The beauty of them from our point of view is that they are a perfect size for 54mm figures/displays, being a little shorter than the fleshed-out bodies! And at 25p each, pretty-much a bloody bargain!

The same day as Brian's lot arrived I'd literally been finding a motherlode of stuff at that farm shop among which was this Dimetrodon, indeed it was the only one, so end-of-line? He's the newest style of stretchy, with the poly-beads in a soft case (as the Brian shelfies may be?). He's also by Keycraft Global, who issue the set at the top of this article, and is posed in the lower shot with one of Keycraft's solid dino's, they are both classic 'gape-mouth' Chinasaurs!.

I also took shelfies, and while we have three different brands here, I suspect - from the packaging -  that they are all coming from the same place as the Scrunchems astronauts, and are all the same crawlers. Toy Hub are relatively new to me, but this is their second outing, while HTI we've seen before both under this moniker and the older, last century, Halsall/Haswell brands.

More thanks to Brian for the shelfies, and that's the current state of the figural stretchy market!