M is for More Balls - Bouncy Balls!

A bit of an image dump today, as we roll-up, on the balls! The first tranche are quite low-res, but illustrate a few points about how this stuff reaches the stores, while the others just show what's out there, often in the few remaining, smaller, independent Toy Shops, often in smarter towns (Farnham!) or the up-market or 'nice'  areas of larger conurbations. These are also exactly the kind of novelty you'll find in Gift Shops and Garden Centres.

 

I can't remember the company's name, but this was an online, trade catalogue for one of the Chinese factories, I think they might have been called Superball, rather unimaginatively, but here we have Wild Animals on the left, Farm/Domestic on the right.

 

Guinea Pigs & Otters!

 

Panda's and Dinosaurs, and, not those carried by Keycraft Global.

 

On the left Fishes, with a few cetaceans and penguins mixed in, on the right the set which Henbrandt obviously carried all those years ago, with plain, 'slush' and iceberg balls, and a crab?

 

While these last two are larger mixes, with fish predominating in the first set, and turtles/crabs (bottom feaders, shore/beach dwellers?) the second, but with cetaceans, sharks, fish and the odd polar animal mixed in. The point being that you (Henbrandt, Keycraft, Playwrite, Ravensden . . . whoever) go to the Chinese manufacture, and get a tailored selection, which suits the needs of your perceived customer base, budget or forecast trends.

 

The Playwrite (WH Corneilius - WHC/Success) catalogue from a similar time (2006), showing that they were carrying animal faces and insects, in addition to the more obvious stuff, as seen above. This, and the next two images, should enlarge properly.

 

Ravensden catalogue from the same era (2010's/20-teens), also has a full range of subjects, including some familiar looking ones, either from the recent, previous posts, or from the trade images above. And between them all, there must be a couple-of-hundred of these incredibly small sculpts, most of which are quite well done, and nicely decorated, down to species/subspecies identification, in some cases.

It's worth noting most of the above are either clear/tinted-transparent balls, or the bi-coloured, half-opaque ones, there are few of the background discs which were a feature of most of the Henbrandt imports. There are a few more in the last post of this series.