W is for With Thanks at the Witching Hour!

Seem to have done it! Got up early, went over to pick the parcel up, managed to get to work on time, still tired, left work at about ten-thirty, had the shots done by the end of the eleven-PM bulletin, and by the time you read this, here they are!

 

So, plenty more in the parcel for another day! David Aaron DeSoto, dropped me a line about a month ago, saying he'd like to send me some Halloween figures, as a thanks for the Blog, which I wasn't going to turn down! And, once my head had stopped swelling, I explained that my current situation didn't really allow for trust in mail delivery, managed to get a mate to take it, and the rest is above, or in previous posts, first USPS and then US Customs returned the parcel to David twice, and it went down to the wire!

 

And, as David explained in his last eMail, it (the errant parcel) is mummified with official stickers, customs forms, postal ephemera and tape of various kinds!

 

Confirming that Brian's shelfies were this year's packaging, David has managed to track-down two sets, the Skeleton Army and Mummy Army, the recently 'new' Witches seemingly dropped already? Both sets and both lots credited to Old East Main Co., rather than the Dolgen of earlier sets a few years ago - and where David sourced these. Photo was a bit rushed, but does the job!

 

I can't remember if we've shot the Mummies out of the blister before, and haven't got the time to look if this is to publish in the next 25-minutes, but they didn't look as familiar as the skeletons which I know we have looked at, more than once, so these guys got the extra shots!

 

The skeletons, as I say, we've seen these before a few times now with comparisons, donors and derivatives, but it's always nice to see them again on the 31st!

 

I can't thank David enough. I'm always touched by these donations, and they've come from The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as closer to home, over the years, I know I can be a prickly-sod from time to time, but I'll keep posting if you're all still visiting!

 

There's lots more to look at, but the original aim was to get these out before midnight, and in that we have succeeded! Thanks David.

Spellchecker is not activating in Blogger, but I think I've found the worst of the typo's!

H is for Hodgepodge Hash of Halloween Horrors

I'm hoping to get another post out before midnight tonight, and it should publish before the witching-hour in the US, as I get another five or six hours, after my shift, to facilitate the aim, but in case the UK readers miss it, before bed, here's a few other bits and bobs which have a seasonal element, and have mostly crossed my door in the last five or six weeks!

Remembering I found a set last year, when I saw these in B&M (Morrison's last year) I had to have them, and like last year's, they were lovely, in the same generic tutti-fruity sort of supposedly 'strawberry' way! Indeed, I would say they came from the same source, and I didn't see any others, not even in Morrison's?

 

I seem to recall these were Aldi, but they might have been Lidl? More edibles, best kind of seasonal stuff is edible stuff! Fondant-centred, [not very] monster mice, one a sort of truffle-cream with rice crispies, the other white-chocolate fondant, nom-nom-nomnivore! Obviously a shit-shot of the white one, but you can't re-shoot something, if you've eaten it!

 

Having grabbed two walkers, as the only thing worth buying in a garden centre last year, I felt I also had to grab these, while muttering darkly to myself about 'another side-collection', but you can blame that yellow Christmas stocking robot who survived for several decades in the attic! These are pull-overs, in that cold, clammy silicon type mega-soft, stretchy rubber, which a generic white-button body underneath, and while two are the same design under the paint, the other had no second version, and all three were equally distributed? Asda for the win!

 

I would add - having mentioned them - that the Garden Centres had very poor Halloween displays this year, and seemed to clear them quickly, like over a week ago, they are too desperate to get their Christmas 'markets' up and running!

I'd found these online, and don't know the maker/brand, but if I see them out and about, they will find home-room in that slowly growing 'walker' sub-collection, I actually found a bunch of the other white-button walker soldiers a while back, but forgot to shoot them before they went to storage, so there's a future post!

 

Finally, these came from Lidl about two weeks ago, ghost tea-lights! I think I might paint-in the eyes and mouths of the other two to match the white one, black paint for the orange one and white for the black candle?

Apologies for spelling but Mozilla ad-ons don't seem to be working properly tonight, and I have no spellchecker!

M is for Motor Racing Series . . .

 . . . which extended to two sets! I picked this rareish carded set up from a mate a few weeks ago, I'd actually gone-over for an Arab, but he happened to have two of these, and I talked him out of the slightly tattier one!

 

 

 

The Kentoys Grand Prix mechanics, possibly designed in partnership with Victory Industries, the slot-racing and motor-boat people from Guildford. You can see the other set, St.John's Ambulance volunteers, as little stick-men in the background of the artwork!

 

They also did the wonderful set of six Dan Dare figures, in partnership with Eaglewall, and of which we have seen various elements of, here before, as indeed we have seen these loose, I think, even unto the very white-walled spare tyre, so really a bit of a box-ticker, but, it's a nice thing!

S is for Spooky, Shifty, Shelfies! Asda

While several of the supermarkets have had large (or 'larger') displays of Halloween stuff, and both Lidl and Aldi have carried their when-it's-gone-it's-gone stuff for a few weeks, the only one which was worth a photo-shoot, was Asda, and these are they! I was surprised by those stores which didn't carry any or much Halloween stuff; WHSmith, The Works, Waitrose and Dunelm to list a few.

 

We looked at these skeletal animals, and their incongruities last year, I seem to recall, but there were a bunch more this year, mostly more realistic, but the rendering of recognisable ears in 'bone' is the daft part, which also serves to remove some of the horror or 'disturbance' from them!

Tree hangers, or hangers for whatever you want to hang this stuff from!

I think these light-up, I can't remember!

Various skeletons, these were bigger than Action Man/GI Joe size I think, at about 14 inches? With various treatments of over-brushing, exhumed body's clothing, glow-in-the-dark plastic etc. . . were common to many stores.

Closer to 12-inch action figures, these seem to be the same or similar to those sent by Brian B, as shelfies, and presented as the same light-string, but with just the one visible in the window.

I don't know if there is a sequel in the pipeline, I know there is a new Beetlejuice in production, and both seemed to feature in several supermarket/large store displays, here it's the Nightmare Before Christmas which is providing the licence!

C is for Car Race!

My main purchase at the recent antique toy fair, up in London (report and bits forthcoming), was this little board game. Photo-dates say I bought it at Sandown, which makes more sense! A late Edwardian or early Elizabethan one, credited to a Geographia Ltd., the cars are pre-war I think, so probably the former, but all the board-game books are back in storage! I'm pretty-sure this is in one of them.

 

The board is almost mint, but the boxy nature of the box has attracted distress over the years with crushing, a large blob of paint (or liquid paper correction fluid?) and various nicks in the maroon paper foil-wrap.

A piece of tissue-paper, which I suspect is original, keeps two faux ivory dice in the tumbler and sets of hazard/penalty cards are part of the play mechanism. I think the rules were in the lid of the box, but I can't remember, and they may have been a separate sheet, which may have been absent? If they were in the lid, I forgot to shoot them!

 

I also forgot to shoot the whole board (I'll scan it for the eventual A-Z post), which was a map of the British Isles, and from the presence of the tissue paper and the state of the board and the paint on the cars, it would seem that while the box has suffered over the years, the whole has never been played-with? I think the cars are die-cast alloy, but they are so clean you can't tell if they mightn't be a lead/pewter?

 

And it's worth a thought that the aero-versions of the engines which powered these open-topped, roaring death-traps, would go on to equip both side's aircraft, in the Battle of Britain! Maybe that was the prophecy fulfilled; he didn't need to wake The Knights of the Round Table, Merlin worked his magic in the Spitfire and Hurricane.

A is for All Sorts for All Hallows

There is a 'comedy of errors' ongoing in the background, in which a parcel from the 'States which should have been here a couple of weeks ago, has now been delivered back to the sender twice, due to perceived erroneous data on various postal and tax stickers, resulting in the sender reporting that the third time he took it to the USPS, they had to cover all the previous stickers with blank stickers, before starting again with a new set! It now has more layers of fossilised history than a shale-bed! The hope is that they will still be here to photograph before (or on?) Thursday, however, the sender indicated that some non-Halloween figures had smuggled themselves aboard the parcel, so there will be a post, even if we miss the day!

In the meantime, Brian Berke has sent me two lots of seasonal shots, two of which may represent the absent, much-travelled figures, so let's have a shufftie at 'em . . . 

 

. . . by going firstly to Scully & Scully, where Brian was a little disapointed to find only two flats, but to be fair, the Blog is testement to the fact they've never done as much on Halloween as they have at Christmas of Easter, which my be a sign that it's not big in Germany or Europe? And, while it may be growing - purley as a consumer affair - here in the UK, even here, the trick-or-treat'ing is confined to social housing areas, with the emphasis being on fancy-dress parties, for adults as often as children? Often combined with the 5th November fireworks.

Earlier Brian had found this, it's a garland, but can be broken down into skeletons which look like they could give Action Man (GI Joe) a fright, scale-wise, I've seen similar stuff over here, possibly in Asda or Morrisons, who seem to have had the better stock/displays this year?

 

Both shot at a Family Dollar store in Waterloo, New York (aquired by Dolgen in 2015), he also found these, which may be the 'this year's packaging' of the missing parcel's figure sets, but the pricing leads Brian to wonder if they are old stock. We have seen them before, as the parent's Dollar General, always courtesy of Brian, and watched the additions come, and go, and the packaging change every year!

 

Brian also sent a couple of Autumn colour shots he took on the journey 'upstate', and as it my favourite time of year, I thought I'd share them with the rest of you!

To which I'll add this one, which I shot the other day, it's actually not doing the subject justice, as it had a weirdly metallic-pink sheen to many of the leaves, which has been washed-out by the camera? I thought I'd shot more trees, but I must have just admired them?

Many thanks to Brian for the shots, and I have a couple more to get out before the day, whether the parcel gets here in time or not!

D is for Duracell Durabeam

Another in the occasional series of nostalgic posts, and a funny one as I found the add' while scanning other stuff from the colour supplements going to recycling, when clearing the house out, back in '22, and doing so while sitting on the end of my bed nearest the scanner, with the actual torch, still working (not switched-on!), on the mantle-shelf behind, less than an arms reach away!

I don't remember many adverts for torches when I was a kid, this would have been from 1982, or thereabouts, I can't remember the date now, but there's chapter and verse on them, here. I do vaguely remember their being a larger one, but this little one was the classic, most UK homes in the 1980's had one tucked away somewhere!

 

The iconic black/yellow-highlighted design launched a thousand copycats and a - continuing - generation of like-designed Duracell's, with several of these being so-branded, the rubber one lying on the left, obviously, but a couple of the others, too, I think, they've gone off to storage with everything else! I think the one with a grey seal is none-Duracell, and the squared-end one is an Eveready?

 

And, believe me, this is about a third of the torches I've ended-up with, having now, the accrued torches of two lifetimes, my late Mother's and mine! All torches used to become temperamental, either because the tensioned copper or brass conductor plate/s at the switch, or between batteries would lose their springiness and not make good connections, or because acid-damage, from an old, dead-battery would kill the conductivity altogether!

I think my Durabeam (centre) was a Christmas stocking present, and one of the last crimbo-stockings I ever got, probably that 1982 xmas? And it still works, with quite a decent light, it has facilitated many Blog Posts, finding stuff in the attic!

 

Now, I have two pen torches, both LED, both still only two AA-batteries (same as the Durabeam), one a mini Maglite (about 2.5 inches long) which I keep in my driver's bag to find door numbers from the comfort of my cab, the other a cheapo' lookie-likie which I keep in the car, mostly to help fill my vape, or change its battery in dark lay-byes! And either of them produce a better light than all the above would, if used together!

Oh, and Energiser are a bunch of phuqing wankers! My own personal opinion, of course!

D is for ♫♪♪♪ Dog Days Are Over! ♫♫♪

Aaannnd . . . we return to the 'probably not Rubinstein' trope of a year ago! Indeed, while I have spent that year diligently (occasionally) searching (checking feeBay), and have seen a few more of the sets covered in those posts last year, I have still not found a single pack, or fragment of packaging linking Rubinstein to these dogs!

But, despite the complete lack of empirical evidence for a connection, people keep insisting they are Rubinstein, just as some persist not only in using 'LP' for LB, when they could just use the donor Lik Be (to retain a modicum of credibility!), or keep calling limbers 'caissons' or vise-versa (despite a long, cogent thread on the subject on Treefrog, or a Blog somewhere), the continued use of DGN ('design') is another one, but it does sort of explain Trump, Brwreakshit and a dozen other pointers to our careering toward the end of Western hegemony, or even full extinction!

I think this is actually the seller's image, and again, full sets, multiple lot-listing, not ex-shop stock, but, like yesterdays HK/Tim Mee set, ex-factory stock or ex-out-painter stock, not that either set was known to be painted, but you know what I mean, somewhere in the UK at least two people, had sackfuls of stuff which some collectors would have you believe - through their false narratives - shouldn't be here!

 

The American names for these are, from the left; Boxer, Pug, Boston Terrier and [Dobermann] Pinscher, but to my eyes the pug looks more like a Bulldog, leaving a Mastiff and Boxer as the white pair?

 

German Shepherd (Alsatian), Pointer (gun dog), Irish [Red] Setter, Beagle and Cocker Spaniel. Again, if they were in-scale, which they are clearly not, the Beagle would be better described as a Foxhound.

Dachshund, Scottie (Scot's Terrier), Toy Poodle, Basset Hound and Chihuahua.

 

Greyhound, Russian Wolfhound (Borzoi), Airedale (Terrier) and Collie.

And while most of these are white plastic, there are a few of the Nabisco silver/gold/copper-bronze ones, as made for Kellogg's and Nabisco (and Peke Freans et al.) as soldiers of all nations (under various titles), by Tatra Plastics, who also did a few white plastic soldiers?

Now, I'm not saying these are by Tatra, I know nothing about them as far as this apparent UK stock goes, they could even be Peak Freans premiums? But I am saying they, like the soldiers have as yet to be presented in Rubenstein packaging, and now we know Rubenstein were just another 1970's rack-toy jobber, they were probably last to this story if they turned-up at all, far better to call the Soldiers 'Kellogg's' (as they issued them in more territories that Nabisco or 'Freans), and the Dogs 'Nabisco' as the only named carrier, until more evidence comes to life.

Personally I suspect Tatra, but they didn't claim them when they were in contact over their 50th anniversary, and while they promised to look in their archive, once they'd had their publicity here, at Small Scale World, they went very quiet, and then, ironically given the number of companies they'd swallowed over the previous few decades, got swallowed!

And as to issuer . . . Nabisco have to be up there with Peak Freans, but ice cream, lucky-bags or Christmas cracker issuers (Tom Smith?) have to be serious considerations, suffice to say someone was clearly planning on issuing them here, even if they didn't.

 

Along with yesterday's these are still available on evilBay.uk, I think. Someone in the 'States has a set of these for over 100-quid on Etsy, while a seller in the UK will let you have them for a tenner! Interestingly Nabisco issued a book on dogs (as National Biscuit co.), and in their Australian territory, a set of cereal premium dog collector-cards, so they were a bit hung-up on dogs!

25-10-2024 - I got my copy of PW196 today, and read with interest the anticipated article on Rubenstein,; and nothing above, nor anything I wrote fourteen months ago needs to be corrected! It's actually quite amusing, only confirming some of my past mutterings, and I'll deal with it fully in a future post!

H is for Hong Kong Hounds?

The reason I was digging out old images of Dorset hounds was because I was raiding the unused 'Dogs' folder, for the Hong Kong dog images, which tie-in to those Adrian gifted the Blog, a few weeks ago, and of which I mentioned at the time, a follow-up was in the queue, this is that follow-up!

However, first I'll raise a few points over this shot, which I took as a load of stuff headed-off to storage, back in 2021, and which were mostly - then - recent acquisitions, also including some of the attic stuff, but not the storage stuff from Berkshire, which was somewhere else!

 

Those starred in yellow are the Kellogg's premiums, issued more than once, and probably manufactured by Crescent, their other production for Kellogg's neatly bracketing the issues of these, but that is speculative, and the only point to note is the variations of caramel or butterscotch, one being a darker orange, the other a paler yellow. 

The five starred in white, however, raise several questions, not least who made them and how many sets are they from? The two boxer-dogs in creamy-white are most likely to be Marx, Swansea, the smaller (which I used to think might be a Bulldog, to the larger boxer, I know, legs are too long!) is a dead-ringer for the US/Hong Kong productions of Boxer dog, from several Marx sets, while the Pekinese also resembles the Marx version, but is not the same, while the short-tailed setter/spaniel type doesn't equate to any of Marx's as far as I can tell, and the Dachshund, smaller than the Kellogg's one, is, like the Peke', not exactly the same as the Marx one.

Obviously, Marx wouldn't issue two different sized Boxers in one set, while the lack of sculpt-similarities with the other three suggest three or more origins for the five, and any help from readers would be welcomed. I think the slightly smaller Corgi on the Cereal Offers page may go with some of these five?

Below them is five-of-six of the Airfix dogs, from their early days, fully covered on the Airfix Blog now, here (mostly toward the bottom of the post/page), these had slowly revealed themselves to the hobby, on these pages while I was in Fleet, but with the final one coming-in after this 'conversational' shot was taken - added below.

Below them are two of interest; the inner pair, one of which is a perfect scale-down of the Airfix fox-hound, the other - an Alsatian type - being little alike the Airfix sculpt. They may be Christmas cracker prizes? While the outer pair are from of the Hong Kong set, we saw the other day, and are about to look at fully below.

Quickly though, a reminder of the sixth Airfix sculpt, a Spaniel, seen before here, but clearing Picasa and getting all six together for only the second time, it is intended to shoot all six together, properly, in the not-to-distant future!

These cards seem to be aping another set of larger dogs, made in the US by Ajax (Blue Ribbon Canine Pals, as Joy Toy), and titled Blue Ribbon Kennel Club [now added at the end of this post], not to be confused with Marx's Blue Ribbon Dogs which are smaller, usually hard polystyrene and factory painted in Hong Kong.

 

The actual dogs are copies of Tim Mee and are reported to be slightly smaller. As I have no definite Tim Mee ones, I can only go on sight, and, well, they look alike, with the quality of the two sets being so similar as to suggest the tool may have made its way to Hong Kong?

 

And I say this, not to stoke controversy, but because a UK seller has a whole bunch of these, and I bought a set a while ago, and shot them before the six came in from Adrian They are lacking the caramel ones of the Hong Kong cards, but have additional black plastic examples*, and knowing there was Tim Mee European production, I wonder if these are in fact the Tim Mee versions, the colours - apart from the lack of caramel - are the same.

 

And, until I can compare them to the six from Adrian, the two I shot a while back, and any others in the stash  (and there WILL be more in the stash, there's a whole 'really useful box' just of domestic dogs, somewhere!), I can't say whether there's any size differential between any of them!

 

*To further confuse, Adrian's six includes black and caramel, along with two shades of the oxide-red!

 

A slightly washier white version of the Alsatian was kicking around at the time, so I managed to shoot a comparison with him and a duplicate Boxer. Whether they are all from the Tim Mee tool, or from two sets of moulds, they are not rare!

I can say there's a size differential here, though! The one on the left being a clear copy, probably from gum-ball capsule machines or, again; Christmas crackers, and I know there are plenty of these in the stash, we've seen a fair few here over the years, particularly sheepdogs, but others too.

 

The kind of Hong Kong sets the above yellow jobbie appeared in, they also tended to be found in the previously mentioned crackers and as capsule toys. Quality is usually pretty poor, with deformation, flash, miss-moulding or short shots getting past the - non-existent - quality control!

 

This is actually a better set, again there are probably a few in the main stash, and when everything is brought back together, we'll have a revisit of all this stuff, if I live long enough! I'm not sure who's sculpts they are copying, but they will be copying someone's!

As a full stop to the post, this strange combo' is a doll's clothes set from Germany, out of Hong Kong, and included is a charm-looped dog, very similar to the copies of Thomas's dogs, as we saw back here, and may very well be part of a larger set, catalogued by a Hong Kong producer for various end-users to chuck in crackers, gum-ball machines, or, indeed, doll's outfit sets!

 

There was a follow-up to the Thomas post, here.

 

As a 'Brucey Bonus', the Ajax dogs mentioned above, from old evilBay lots, you can see the similarities with the Hong Kong cards. These are much larger though, and one of the amusing things about researching toy dogs, is that Marx, Ajax and Kellogg's all did almost identical Poodle sculpts, which were then copied endlessly, and there are so many variations out there (also saw a few here once), from the huge blow-mould infant/beach toys down to direct copies!