Now, there's a title I should have, could have, aught to've thought of years ago, having decided to stubbornly stick with the 'A is for . . . ' trope. Especially when I could have dropped it the first month, after we got to zed, or the next month after we'd gone back up to ay? But, whatever, we've had it now!
February's Sandown resulted in lots of nice things being added to the pile, and these are all those - we haven't seen yet - which came/come with their packaging, there not being enough stuff for thematic posts, I'm finding other ways to run-off shots from the main folder!
This was an amazing find, on the nostalgia front, not because you can't probably find them regularly on feebleBay, but because I hadn't thought to look, having forgotten this for several decades, but this was my Brother's piggy-bank, when we were kids. I had the hard polystyrene 'pillar-box', with three black bands, numbered as a combination lock (which I have seen, but not while I was buying), from Hong Kong, while my brother had this, also from Hong Kong, imported by
CODEG Productions (
Cowan de Groot)
It's not exactly the same, as his was yellow plastic under the flocking, which came off quite soon, ears first! So our Rupert was plain yellow for years, probably until we moved house in 1980, while this one is actually red polythene, so at least two production runs for this.
We loved Rupert, and had quite a few annuals from the Church fête, it was all a bit Edwardian, prep-school and jolly hockey-sticks, but kids don't mind, same with the Enid Blyton stuff, prejudices are passed-on by grown-ups, kids just like reading that other kids are having adventures in a pirate cave with a pet mouse in their pocket, or - in Rupert's case - chasing a Bramble Imp with an Elephant in a suit!
Purchased purely for the card sample,
we looked at the figure set a while ago, as I have them all loose, but at that time I only knew about the five or ten set cards, now we have pairs, for really poor kids!
Close-ups; Slinger (below) and Stinger!
Box-ticking, I now have complete sets of Romans, Greeks and Egyptians, and most, if not all the Wild West, but I only had one nurse from this set, maybe another figure? Although, looking at the card-reverse, I still haven't found the firefighters!
Unusually (especially when you consider there are ten firefighter sculpts), there are only six poses in this set, with four duplicate pairs and two 'uniques' for the ten-count?
Contemporaneous with all those magnetic novelties, was this,
Falbala the Fakir, from
Fairylite, who could be cut in half, yet remain whole, I say 'could', because his - probably - phenolic-based polymer has warped, and he actually falls apart rather easily and stays together only with delicate intervention!
When new, you would prise his two body-halves apart, enough to get the sword in, then, upon slicing downward, would push a locking key out of the way. There are three of the slightly curved keys on a revolving wheel (think the Coat of Arms [legs] of the Isle of Man), so as the sword pushed one out of the way, another would come round and lock in behind it, so the Fakir stayed together as the sword went right through him!
From the 'Empire Made', I'm guessing this was a Swansea-operation corner of the 'Kins universe, if it was the US arm of
Marx behind it, it would usually be 'Made in British . . . Hong Kong, Crown Colony' and/or etc. The seller had several, some with two
Fairykins, some with common window-box accessories like the dog-house, but I thought the semi-flat guardsman was a bit different, and needed to be in the master collection!
More Humpties here;
100% sure this is
Airfix, no pattern number, and no banner-logo, but in every other way mirroring other known examples of early
Airifx novelties, plastic colours match the animal flat/building block/baby bricks, and the micro-aircraft I've also called as
Airfix, while the card is very similar to the one the animal flats came on, and I bet those 'planes came from similar cards? I will add more imagery of it to the
Airfix Blog, in a day or two.
Finally, a cereal premium Hulk, mint in 'food-hygienic' pack! Called 'Desktop Buddies' and issued in 2003 by various Nestle properties, including Golden Nuggets, it's actually a relief sculpt with a hollow back, but a packaging sample is always useful!
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