About Me

My photo
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.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

K is for SS Kresge, Kids, Kmart and Super K!

Nearly history now, but the Australian operations continue as an independent enterprise, several stores outside CONUS are still going and a limited presence on an old Floridian site is still doing business. But back in the day, they were big!
 
Claimed by a Chemtoy Corp of Circero, Illinois, the set also states the contents are made in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and to anyone who's been following this stuff, clearly contains the products of the Lik Be Plastic & Metal Factory of the territory, but not carrying the LB logo on this occasion. It's then further branded to SSK, the short form logo of the earlier iteration of Kmart, - SS Kresge.
 
I said, in a post on other things (astronaut-spacemen I think) a while ago, that I had two farm sets to post, but don't seem to have got round to doing so yet, however, as one needs much editing before it goes first, of the pair, I thought I'd shift this out of Picasa as a warm-up!
 
How it arrived from the 'States!
 
 
After I had matched up glue marks and restored a bit of order!
 
A mix of three from the anthropomorphic animal band (bases marked with the LB hugging monster, as per the divers/fishermen/astronauts) and seven of what I call the cartoon 'Funimals', we also get five sections of the distinctive LB farm fencing, in two blisters, heat-welded and dated to 1971.
 
There is no relationship between the Key 1 code here and the British supermarket chain Keymarket, which, although having a similar logo, was not related to Kresge at all. The first supermarket locally was a Keymarket,, back in the late 1960's, it's now the - totally rebuilt - Sainsbury's site in Farnham, we would go there, very occasionally, to do a 'big shop', and it was a big deal!