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, May 18, 2026

D is for Donation - Chris - [Not] Paratroops!

The exception which proves the rule! As we saw Chris's most recent parachute toy finds/donation in a post at the end of April, I thought we'd look at the civilian vehicular portion of the last parcel, and there haven't been any in the three recent tranches from Peter, so it all sort of balances out!
 
Vessels, and we have an all new - to me - sailing ship, possibly a game-playing piece, or just a novelty? A variation of Hong Kong mini bath-toy to its right, both versions of cereal premium baking soda submarine, and  Marx Miniature Masterpiece rubber boat, all good stuff!
 
Five of the Quaker cereal premiums at the back, two of the commoner Hong Kong Minic knock-offs. but in the less common blueish-sea green, and another of the forward sloping prow vessels, which were new to me, when we saw a silver one recently (probably also from Chris), this pink suggesting the bottom-end of rack toys, such as those parachutists who would come in a bag with a couple of aeroplanes and a cyclist or something . . . something like this ship?!
 
Another pair of cereal premiums, this time the R&L plastic-kit types of US locomotives, from different sets I think, and a similar Hong Kong effort in black, all three are in polystyrene.
 
A couple of Kinder or Kinder-like racers in the foreground, with something more interesting behind, it's in the style of a blow-mould, but is actually PE mouldings, plugged-together, however, what Chris would like to know (as I would), is . . . 
 
. . . who made it? It's clearly marked 'Made in Finland', and there can't be that many Finnish toy makers; we've heard of one or two, in the Space Toy business, courtesy of a loyal reader, on the Blog passim, but does anyone know who made this?
 
Micro-stuff included a Star Wars Micro-Machine, and one of the MPC 'minis' copies, out of Hong Kong, all useful grist-to-the-mill, and one day we will look at all the Micro-Machine stuff in better detail.
 
Vehicular jalopies aplenty! Game-playing piece, back left, I think (one of those car-park/traffic jam puzzle-games?), bits of some Kinder or similar model railway vehicles, a soft-plastic copy of the old dime store 'Morris Mini-Minor', the die-cast is a Hong Kong take on a Marx or Tootsie Toys mini, I suspect, while the charm-looped actual 'jalopy' is probably a cracker toy.
 
It's funny ironic too, as it's probably taken from those Japanese slush-cast minis carried by Shackman and others, while it is also aping the actual silver, or plate charm objects, of the sort well-to-do young ladies collected on a bracelet?
 
Back, centre is an interesting, all-plastic American muscle-car type (or Japanese sports type?), marked 280 ZX Fairlady, which Google revealed is a Japanese model - the eponymous Datsun-Nissan to be accurate, I don't know anything about the maker of the toy version though, do you?
 
Interesting, but very large, and will probably end-up on the swaps page, this is a Play Craft [sic - usually Playcraft] large-scale ('Big', G-gauge or LGB) hopper-car, for an all plastic floor/garden railway, the wheel-base however seems to match the soft ethylene infant railway, which shared the gauge of Brio wooden sets!

Heading to the card and paper tub (a Really Useful Box 35lt job), these are a pleasant mystery! Not apparently configured for slotted-wooden stands, but having clearly had the home-cut fragments of magnetised rubber sheet added by an owner, I don't recognise the characters, but they would seem to be recognisable comic creations? Can anyone add anything that might serve as a further clue? Batman?
 
Thanks again to Chris for all these, the highlights, for me, are probably the pink vessel and the card bits, it's always nice to see things you've never seen before! Although a racing car from Finland is pretty special!

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