L is for Legami

Mentioned twice recently, and both products make a reprise in this post, the Italian (Milan-based) Legami is a new name in stationary, or new to me at least, and as a follow-up to the previous post, continuing with the theme of pencil tops and etcetera!

 

Pencil Tops - We've seen the Panda here at Small Scale World

 

Foam Unicorns!

Definitely a theme at the moment! I'll have to look out for the [scented? really?] eraser, and the light-up pencil-sharpener, although both are cartooney, it doesn't stop us buying them/shooting them so you don't have to! There's also a spaceman on the three-colour highlighter, with an ariel on his helmet, like the Stingray crew!

 

Clingers and moulded finials

 

Looks to be the same as the ones I found in WHSmith, a few years ago now, during the height of the Iwako (and clones) moment - although they are still everywhere; I think the initial flood has retreated from the doorstep! So could they have been re-badged Legami all along?

 

All the above shot at the 2025 Spring Fair at the NEC in February.

P is for Puffy Projectile Pen!

As the Actress said to the Bishop! Real life seems to be intervening again, but here's something I picked-up in Home Bargains a couple of days ago. As well as small pulp-rockets trending these days, pen and pencil tops are also enjoying a renaissance, with the big displays of such items, in The Works and some garden centres, and the many museums and 'end-destination, high-end, tourist leisure-facility' gift shops, where such things have always been the pocket-money staple!

 

So, combine the two tropes, with a soft-foam, spring-loaded, cartoon rocket on an teathered elastic string! Branded to TJM worldwide and Maxi Save down-under, it's a bit of fun and another Retro Rocket, which is not the same as a retrorocket!

F is for Follow-up - LB Spacetronauts!

I picked this set up in the November toy fair at Sandown Park, and it's interesting for a couple of reasons, one wouldn't necessarily get from online images, or, without the benefit of poring over it and comparing it to other examples.

 

Whole set.

 

Full extant of the graphics.

 

Card slid-out and opened-up.

 

Moon-shot landing module, and this is the first interesting aspect. Obviously it's missing its little antenna-dish, but I think I have a spare one, possibly in white, but there may be a chromed one kicking-around somewhere, so? And, if I only have a white one, you can get this media in paint-marker pens now, the Ad's keep appearing in my Faceplant feed!

 

However, you can see from the off-white at the hole, this seems to be the same lander which came as a cake decoration with the late NASA suited pair & flag, from Lik Be (LB), via Culpitts, which matched the robot aliens. Something that may not surprise the average viewer, as the figures look to be the larger LB figures?

 

But, as you can see here, they are actually the smaller ones, which were new to me with the little chromium-plated one we saw last time we had a catch-up of these old favourites. The original is on the left with a dodgy paint-job!

 

And, as a reminder that there's no fool like an old fool, a friend picked several of these out of a bowl I'd already ignored at a show (actually the September Sandown!), because I thought I had them all, but then I looked at these two remaining ones, and under the show lighting, they looked to have different paint, so I grabbed them both slightly chagrined I'd missed the other six, only to get them home and realise in the cold light of day, that the red, the gaiters and the silver on the rears, are all some other Muppet's home-painting! Hay-ho - a full strip awaits them!

 

But, by the time I realised my mistake, I'd already shot this comparison with an Athena spaceman from Greece, a UK knock-off of Premier's fellow (I don't know for sure, if the paint is home or factory, but they do turn up like this, occasionally) and one of the diminutive copies of Ajax/Archer, both of which may be Tudor Rose or Kleeware? All of which, I picked-up at the same show.

 

This all, above, led me to shoot a couple more comparisons the other day, and here, only from the stuff which has come-in over the last 24-months or so, we can see various treatments of the LB (for Lik Be!) and clone figures.

 

Of note here is that the hollow-based copy (forth from the left, is copying the earlier LB paint, which extended to the rears, and was dropped (probably as a cost-saving) on later LB issues, before all painting was dropped around the time the robots/Aliens were converted to chain-hangers.

 

While the yellow issue is a solid based version, despite hollow based monochrome examples also existing in yellow, and the small chrome chap (middle-right), is the same as the painted trio in the new set.

 

Coming with the lander, there is a strong possibility that it/they (set/figures) may be later, reduced-scale production from Lik Be, for a specific client/contract. But equally, one has to maintain the possibility that a pirate just bought-in some LB landers? Until I've compared with the known Culpitt stuff in storage, I'll sit on the fence!

 

The robot/Aliens, we actually had a very similar shot, not that long ago, but with 90%  of the LB & clones in storage, since before I shot the space-tanks, it's only the recent stuff I have to work on!

 

In both cases I've used the same sucker on the jumper and while previously seen here as a clearer HF, on this one, it looks a bit like it could be a poorly registered HE, so I've annotated both images to that effect! Personally, I think it is HF, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Every time I post Lik Be (LB) stuff (or even mention them in the text), one of two or three individuals will post an 'LP' article, usually within two or three days, as their stubborn refusal to accept it's an LB logo, apparently knows no bounds!

 

Their logic being backed up by the fact they think (with no empirical evidence) that it (the 'LP') is arrived at from;

The Lik Be Plastic And Metal Factory Limited,

 

. . . which totally ignores all the rules of English, and/or abbreviations, acronyms, initialism or shortened form/shorthand! By their own logic it should either be LPM, LP&M, LBP&M or LBP&ML, it's not any of those, because it's LB for Lik Be, but stupid is, as stupid does.

 

Just as it's not [technically] Spacex, but LB for Lines (Triang-Hornby and Raphael Lipkin), or LB for MPC, or LB for Ward, Sears, or LB for whoever, and Lik Be went on to produce many other versions/formats/packagings, with other Hong Kong numpties responsible for all the many copies, some also bought-in by Western branding's. Lines, Multiple, Culpitt, Clifford and co., just bought-in limited parts of the range from a catalogue, or, after a sales-rep's spiel, from Lik Be, from a Lik Be sales-rep'! well, Clifford might even be an LB branding, or partner?!!

 

One of the 'LP'-stubborn brigade has even used one of my clearer LB images (with the heavy corner where the bottom of the B's lower loop is), without permission, to try and maintain it's an 'LP'! But stupid is, as stupid does, and it's LB.

 

The new boxed-set with the more recent carded LB and other acquisitions (the hollow-based yellows are in the Space Patrol set).

 

You can copy all the feebleBay, Worthpoint, Scalemates, SAS, Vectis or wherever, whoever's images you like, but if you're not holding the stuff, looking at the stuff and comparing it in the palm of your hand, you're pontificating half-blind. . . Sigh!

W is for Welgar

Also in the Nabisco section of the folders (see previous post) was this from the 1950's, credited to Welgar, the original branding of the Shredded Wheat factory, Shredded Wheat being a US licensed product, which Nabisco bought, Shredded Wheat is now part of the Kraft group, while Nabisco is owned by Mondelēz. Welgar is a portmanteau word for Welwyn Garden [City], where the factory was established.

Part of a set, the rest can be seen here, but sadly only as thumbnails. I might cut these out one day and stand them up with a few Britains Polar Bears or something! Not really to scale, the two figures are around 60/70mm?

F is for Follow-ups - Recent Matters Arising

A few shots of thing mentioned in passing or otherwise covered in recent posts;

It turned out I actually had the buildings, found on the cereal packet-backs, that were part of the N-gauge promotion from Graham Farish in Shredded Wheat, hiding in the archive folders! They are based on existing structures from Grafar, but simplified, the farmhouse having two chimneys in the case of the original, for instance, while I think I have the BP garage as a small, plastic box, so we may return to these, one day?

 

The comparison shot I meant to take at the time, but didn't manage to, when looking at the Marx play-set tin, the other Marx in the middle and the Deluxe Reading (Thomas in orange) on the right. And I was wrong to suggest they'd go with the other figures, as both a markedly smaller, but you could mix them in with a larger set-up!

 

IF - reading the minds of the locals!

 

I wasn't sure if we'd seen the figure in  a post, but I don't think so, anyway, when I got home from the Sandown show, the red driver here had ended-up in a tray of smallies, but I knew it was part of this old Tudor Rose dumper-truck, so I suggested to Adrian that next time I saw him I might as well get the truck, as I should have done so at the time!

Twelve parts including the driver, and we've seen him before, he's one of those chaps that keep turning-up in lose lots and donations, and I should have him in blue, green and yellow plastic too. We have actually seen this before, it was an early post from archive material, shot with the blessing of John Begg, many years ago, with a multicoloured version in that set, one has to suspect all-one-colour versions were available in the other three colours as well?

 

Finally, combining the donation from Chris Smith with the Sandown purchase, on the little brittle polystyrene sub-piracies of what were probably early Matchbox 1-75 series, as mentioned previously, gives us six models! And the point it's illustrating is that with all this stuff there is often more than one pile currently in the stash, and when it all gets brought together, we will start to see some definitive stuff, I hope!

 

I was looking at a rather nice 76-foot long-boat the other day for £45k, well within my budget?!!

L is for Lithesome Luminous LED Lurker!

Picked this up the other day, it was greenhouse plant ties which kick-started the wider, more regular coverage of the almost timeless bendy-toy novelties here at Snall Scale World a few years ago, something which has lead to mini-micro bendies from Chris, and the discovery of possibly the first bendy on the back of the paperwork from the archive, so it's fitting that the latest instalment is back to gardens, or at least, a garden centre!

 

There was another in a sort of aqua/turquoise, but I thought the Purple People Eater ("But now he only eats guitars" Beeeoooowwh!) was the better of the two! The head is a rigid polymer, probably 'propylene, but the body is in the standard bendy-toy construction; a stable PVC-like material, with internal soft-wiring and the little air-holes, a central ball-joint then locates in a socket under the torch-head.

 

Illumination is bright-enough, modern consumer products tend not to disappoint in the way they could back in the day, how many cycle torches did we get through, it's like they were incapable of lasting five-minutes, whether 'Eveready', Pifco or Lucas - The Prince of Darkness!

 

The legs are long and flexible, and the torch can therefore be set-up to illuminate anything from a very specific angle, and I feel that, while I bought it as a novelty, figural item, with the Blog in mind, I will actually get use out of it, going forwards!

 

Manufactured by IF LLC of the USA, it might soon be hard to get, as I think the USA just shot itself in both feet after nailing them to the MAGA floorboards, but coming from Brwreakshiteer Britain, it's hard to feel superior at the stupidity of fellow citizens, failed by an education system only interested in churning out consumer/workers, who can just-about tie their own shoelaces.

 

Lurking lurker lurks!

J is for Jurassic Era!

Purely in the sense that that's what it says on the cards, and that it makes a rarer 'J' title, I'm quite sure an expert palaeontologist will tell me there are hundreds of millions of years between some of the species depicted in these sets!

 

These are in corner-shops, petrol stations and small convenience stores, as I write, and were last seen in the previous two posts, from Kandy Toys, they are retailed for between two-fifty and three-quid or thereabouts (2.99!), and while there are three sets here, each with different animals (four per card), there may be more in total?

 

So, I picked the upper one up back in the Autumn sometime, in a newsagent in Alton I think? Or Borden, not that it matters a jot, and is of no consequence to you, loyal reader, but I feel sometimes these irrelevent facts add . . . bones? To the blurb!

 

Then Peter Evans (Plastic Warrior's London office!), gave the other two to the Blog, in one of the November/December lots, so we'd obviously encountered them at about the same time? Each has the four prehistoric animal models, a twin-palm of common design, a blow-moulded boulder and a 'volcanic' piece, which looks more like a meteor scar, or fumarole, if you recall third-year geography!

 

 

 

Most are one-colour over a base polymer in another colour, with a third pigment if you count the eyes, two are red-plastic, with the Pterosaur being only one added colour, the rest a pale-yellow, and modern substitute-PVC type; soft rubberised polymer or elastomer.

 

Current thinking on the appearance of late Raptors, and a three-colour paint-job (with the eyes), done to a better level than the others. But, as with all toy Dinosaur sets, no scale beyond 'set scale', a matching-size form of the old 'box scale' concept, so this would be much smaller than most of the others, in real life, and I'd call the whole set medium-sized?

 

I think this last one, half-Spinosaur, half-Dimetrodon, is another of the not true dinosaur or mammal earlies, like Dimetrodon, but not related? I don't know, and apart from the obvious ones or favourites, I try to avoid speciation on dinosaur posts, so's not to reveal my ignorance too plainly!

Many thanks to Peter for the pair of blisters, and we have quite a bit covering Kandy here now. Onwards and upwards!