D is for Donation - Chris - Animals

The backside of this pair (ooh missus!) is the recent parcel from Chris Smith and the animals therewith, and it was quite a fishy sample! But sea life seems to play fourth fiddle, to farm, zoo and dinosaurs, so it's nice to find what was available, over the years!

 

A couple of incomplete walkers, as with the Jigtoys, and cereal premium mini-kits, there is a tub for bits of these, and hopefully, eventually, enough parts will enable the reconstruction of some, I know I have a spare blue leg in there already, so the dog may walk again, but it has to be the correct leg!

 

On the subject of dogs . . . I love the blow-moulded celluloid effort from Japan, he has a tree hanger, and I hadn't even entertained the idea that such things might be used in that way, but with modern families throwing movie villains and Disny characters on their trees with gay abandon, I guess anything is possible in the non-bauble, bauble world!

 

Three! Looks like someone's fledgling collection of Octopi (and squid) ended-up in Chris's odds tray! I do have a few Octopuses and squids (fight among yourselves on the correct plural, spellchecker is happy with both), so, hopefully, we will have a post, or page on them one day.

 

Reptiles and anphibians, often got a shared set, or even shared book-space, when we were young, and with three 'rubber jigglers', there's plenty of nostalgia in this shot. The orange one, nylon I think, washed out by the flash, may be a place-card holder, it has a large, triangular wedge under his belly, which it's sitting on, and you could curve a place-card/name-plate through the slots of its arms, but then again, I may be over-thinking a game-playing piece?!!

 

The originals of the mini Elephant flat seem to have been US-available, US made, and hard polystyrene, these soft polyethylene ones which turn-up in the UK will be Christmas cracker novelties. Two squirrels, another favourite subject, the bisque one has lost an ear which would be hard to replace, but might perhaps be built-up using the superglue/baking soda method, and a file?

 

The plastic one may be from a kids comic/magazine set or something, while the little white lamb is almost certainly adrift from his/her small, cheap, Hong Kong nativity set?

 

These are very interesting, probably Hong Kong, and never to be ascribed a maker, they are a set of sharks, including some unusual ones, like the Thresher at the back with the long upper tail fin, which they use as a whip to herd small fish like sardines into a bait-ball! Or the Saw Shark, front left.

 

Pencil tops, they are mostly marked 1980 / 5p, as can be seen on the upturned Bowmouth Guitarfish, possibly by the collector who purchased them, as a lot, and recorded the price and date, as it's not something you'd find on a tub of them, back at the time?

 

 

Another shark, and several interesting fish, some copies of US originals, and at least three probably belonging to sets/part-sets already in the pile, so very useful, Chris was taken with the flying fish, and it's a lovely sculpt, while the seahorse is a scale-up of a similar one seen in a past sea life roundup, even to colour and type of plastic, so they probably belong together too?

 

Rubber jigglers of a whale and a lobster, I shot the whale from an awkward angle, but it illustrates the gape-mouth, a feature of many jigglers, from alien monsters through full Chinasaurs, to this chap, or chapess!

 

This is interesting, it's fully fired porcelain or fine china, as opposed to bisque or terracotta, and fully glazed in two colours, I suspect it might be a chopstick rest, but not the common 'Blue & White' ones normally found (post in the queue, and boat seen in the last 'brown water navy' post), so it may just be a French pudding prize, or more miscellaneous keepsake/collectable?

Again, many thanks to Chris for these, all new to collection and new to blog

Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish! 
A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh. 
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish! 
That went wherever I did go.