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.

Monday, December 22, 2025

F is for Follow-ups - Recent Bits

When Chris Smith sent his parcel a couple of months ago, I told him I'd seen another of those finger monsters, a day or so before, and then spent ages looking for it, real rabbit hole stuff, in the end I went through most of the near-thousand folders in Picasa, thinking I must have moved it by mistake (sometimes you pick something up, absentmindedly, on the cursor and dump it elsewhere, without even realising it, on the way to somewhere else!), only to find it the other day, in the short or 'this year' queue, in a possible post on an exhibition!
 
Definitely a forth sculpt/pose, and if the paint-chips are anything to go by (almost certainly home-painted), this one is yellow plastic, which reinforces my - still possibly false - memory of a brown one? And obviously some kind of Kaiju from the Godzilla or Ultraman franchises.
 
From two different show reports, the Reliable figures and probably Reliable side-by-side, the standing shooters look different, because the foot-plug on the older version is not fully pushed-home, but I lined them up, and they are almost identical, even down to the long, adjustable iron-sight, over the breach, so clearly they just added integral bases changing the tool from a two-part to a three-part mould.
 
And thanks to Anonymous for highlighting the link, in comments, I was using the Way Back Machine version of the now defunct Ponylope as a guide!
 
Also from recent posts; show reports and donations, we've seen three of these recently in two posts, the others earlier in the year, brought together, you can see the two sizes (bigger pair on the right), to which can be added the several base marks, which I previously highlighted.
 
When combined with the couple of dozen which have come in over the last three-or-so years (get-at'able in storage), it will give an even better picture. While the master collection, buried in the container, which also includes the big ones, when all the new ones are added to them, will be the basis of a much better overview, one day.
 
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In this post;
 
 
We saw a metallic dino'bird/pterosaur kind of thing, which bore little resemblance to the other four on the card-back, but separately, and also from BJ Toys, I've been picking these up at petrol stations, namely the Esso outlet at Tongham/Hog's Back, and Bordon's BP station!
 
Plant spider!
 
Reverse colours.
 
Balrog's horns on this one!
 
The trouble is, they seem to appear one or two at a time, in a large counter display carton on the bottom shelf of a dedicated/custom BJ Toys sales display unit, mixed-in with an assortiment of other novelties, so I don't know how may there are, or whether they all have reversed colour versions.
 
And if you think this link is tenuous, for a follow-up - I thought I'd already posted one! But they were in two folders, with the other not photographed, so I was happy to find the Dino-phoenix, looking for the non-posted dragon! The point being, I think they are from the same source, not BJ; in China?
 
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On the subject of ducks,
 
The two vintage British plastic foul, one from Peter and one from Chris (pretty sure I have another in pink, or a maroonish-purple somewhere), brought together with the TK Maxx crayon ducks and a generic CHINA-marked goose from a rack-toy bag/toob/tub, for scale.
 
Similar, but simplified toys from Sonsco of Hong Kong, again I have several of these in various colours, including a fluorescent pink one which is just as leery as the green one in this set!
 
And on GI's,
 
This set of re-issue ex-Marx figures, being a mix of different sets, has the chap, both Chris and me thought "looked like Marx?", middle-top, and, sure enough, he was a Marx sculpt!
 
But I'd totally forgotten that Chris sent me this shot ages (six years) ago, when discussing something else, probably wanting it to feature in a Question Time, so, to repeat the earlier question, we know the re-loader is a Marx pose, now, but can anyone give a maker/brand to this marbled maroon-brown chap, and B) does anyone know anything about the figure on the left?

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