G is for Gashapon - Introduction

Well, these have been in the queue for nearly two years! A mate, Adrian, was doing the Cherry Blossom trail in Japan, with his wife, and I said to him "Oh, you'll be able to fill your boots with Gashapon!", which required a quick explanation of the particularly Japanese take on capsule-toys, as they evolved from Western gum-ball machines, themselves evolved from earlier, Victorian postcard dispensers, a mutual friend - Gareth - backed up my enthusiasm, and Adrian was clearly intrigued enough to look them up while he was out there.

 

What I didn't know was that when he came back, he would present me with results of his research as a fiftieth birthday present! So we're looking at them over the next few days, purely as a brief overview, their full story is far greater and there are catalogue-type books on the subject available in Japanese, rather like the O-Ei-A books on the similar, but tending to more juvenile, Kinder Toys.

 

So, Gashapon, from Gasha (the cranking of a 'one-armed-bandit' handle) and Pon, the actual capsule; Japanese capsule toys; not the occasional tray of chocolate eggs, or the odd machine outside a convenience store, but rather a semi-industrialised craze, primarily 're-invented' by Bandai in the 1970's, with Tomy ('Gacha') and Kaiyodo also heavily involved now. There have, since the late 1990-early 2000's, been whole stores dedicated to banks of the machines, which we are looking at here, all shot by Adrian.

 

Clockwise from the top left we have, 'luck dip' mystery prizes, highly detailed miniature firearms, specifically semi-automatic military rifles, I guess pistols or machine-guns will be separate issues/series? Some kind of miniature viewers (?), construction-brick bunk-beds, cat's arse rings (who knew there was even a market for them!) and Tama and Friends keyrings - more Hello Kitty knock-off?

 

Squishies, manga deforms, some kind of pump-dispenser keyrings (?), Halloween wallets, more cutesy keyrings and miniature lunch-bags - it's quite an eclectic collection of subjects, and materials, especially when compared with Kinder*, but that - in part - explained by the larger capsules, and the fact that adult collectors don't hide under Edwardian leftover shame as we do, in the west, the Japanese 'grown-ups' happily collecting them as an expression of Shōwa nostalgia.

 

*Kinder do seem to be moving (at a glacial speed) in a similar direction, with more keyrings, phone-hangers and luggage tag type prizes, appearing these days. 

 

A canyon of gift-dispencers!

 

Choices, choices!

 

Advertising display cabinet, I believe all the larger Gashapon stores have something like this, with a selection of current of recent offerings, to kick-start the consumer urge, among the undecided!

 

Platform shoes and fishing lures! And the lures, conveniently telling us - in English - that they are the 5th wave, I think? And - even more weirdly - without actually knowing much about it, I suspect, you could remove them from the keyrings, tie them into your tackle line, and use them to fish?!

 

Miniaturised, or doll's house scaled, tea-ceremony furniture, and necklaces of . . . Japanese mythological themes?

 

Miniaturised foods or foodstuffs seem common themes, both modern and nostalgic, and the display of cartoon, Manga or Anime figural models, above the machines, may be some of the staff's own duplicates? Or maybe leftover/end-of-line stuff, or damaged capsule comtents . . . something like that?

 

Likewise, here, where more necklaces and keyrings feature in the machines themselves, including miniature beach sets, blood bags (?!!) and two different 'Juggler' related things I can only guess - badly - at!

 

Watch-battery illuminated, stand-ups of Harry Potter characters.

 

Sci-fi feature quite heavily, along with historicals, and here we see stuff related to The Rocketeer, Batman, Star Wars and The Avengers

 

More Anime/Manga stuff, either side of miniaturised Pioneer Hi-Fi decks!

 

An amazing maze!

 

A mystery to finish, not speaking Japanese, I can only guess these are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland coasters? Featuring Sir John Tenniel's (the first commercial illustrator to be knighted) original artwork? Which would require the largest size of capsule? There are different sizes and designs of Capsule, as we'll see working through them, while a few sets seem to be cheaper or more expensive than the 'standard' Gashapon.

 

Many thanks to Adrian for all these images, which give us a good flavour of the subject, and for the toys which we will be looking at over the next few posts.

W is for Wehrmachtsmodelle

Wiking, the company best known to railway-modellers as a manufacturer of HO vehicles, and now owned by Siku, began life before the Second World War, as a maker of a larger range of small-scale (1:1250) ships and vessels in a lead-based Zamac, these ships were used as recognition and training models by the German Army, and were joined by 1:200th aircraft models, a range to which, AFV models known as the Wehrmachtsmodelle line, were added, and that's what we are looking at here.

 

Sadly not in my collection, I shot these on Mercator Trading's table about six years ago, and the group shot is taken with a Britains limber (#1726) for scale. The sample would appear to a complete air-defence unit.

 

Heavy trucks, a command/control 'office body' vehicle and GS troop-carrier/ammo-truck, both variants of the Mercedes G3A I think, but that's off a quick Google, not personal depth of knowledge! The nearer one may be a Krupp L3H?

 

Opel 'Blitz' and a command car/utility vehicle.

 

Staff car and two of the guns, which I think are the WWI forerunner of the famous eighty-eight, the 8.8 cm Flak 16, also known as an "Acht-acht" by the Germans, which became anglicised as "Ack Ack".

 

Two Krupp Protze medium trucks in the passenger configuration, one towing the searchlight and the other a generator needed for the power to the searchlight, and the equipment in the command vehicles, lights in the tentage/shelters &etc. Not the best shots, but they are very, very small, and shots at shows are always hurried!

 

By 1936, these were being made in plastic (probably the same grey plastic as the WHW's we've seen here several times, I've suggested Siku as a source for them, maybe it was Wiking?), so these metal ones are quite early, and quite rare. Ironically, they would fit-in perfectly with the Skytrex range of my childhood!

T is for Thunderbirds' 2, 4, 6, FAB 1, and a Whole Bunch They Didn't Bother to Number . . . are GO!!

Funny story behind this one, the guy wanted (and I don't normally deal with the grubby stuff, but it's central to the story) 55-quid for this, a bit steep I thought, but I know this imported stuff commands a premium, so I thought "Fuck it, I'm playing catch-up with bushy the twig, I might as well?", and got sixty out, "Have you got a fiver?", I asked the dealer, at the start of the day . . . bear in mind, the dealer I was with, had a wad of fivers, and a bag of £1 and £2 coins, because he's prepared his float!

 

"Err, no" he says, so I asked him what we were going to do, and he half-heartedly muttered 'the wife' or something, and with no further words, exchanged a glance with her, and said "No". "Well, I'm not going to give you sixty?" says I, and he leaps back indignantly "I never asked you to!", "No" said I, "But that's the other logical solution?" To which he hummed an acceptance of that logic, and after a laboured silence, I said "Well, I'll leave it than, maybe later?" handed it back and walked away.

 

And I would have left it at that, indeed I went back past the stall a couple more times, gave it the once over, and studiously ignored the set, and would have left it. If you're setting yourself up as retailer for the day, no matter what your 'day job', you either go to the bank and get a wad of fivers and a bag of coins, or, if you don't do that many shows, save your one's, two's and five's in the two-to-four months between shows? It's common-sense as much as anything else.

 

However . . . on the other side of the hall, another chap had the exact-same contents of this set, in two window boxes, one with T2, T4, Pod 4 and - I think - Fab 1, the other having all the other vehicles, and the spare Pod 3, he wanted £60 or £65 for the first, and £40 or £45 for the second, I can't remember the exact amounts, but it was going to be over a hundred-quid for the pair, so in the end, I went back to the first stall, and I bought it after all, while he wasn't there, as it happens.

 

But, that was only half the story, as when I first spotted it, it had no price on, and I asked the lady (who would transpire to be the dealer's wife), how much it was, and she said she didn't know, but that 'he' was coming back, so I hung-on for a minute or two, then she said she didn't know what had happened to him, so I left it with her, assuming she would keep it behind until I returned.

 

The standard approach at shows, when someone shows interest in something, and the helper, for whatever reason, doesn't know what's going on. However, when I returned to the stall, it was back on display, for any Tom, Dick or Harry passing-by, to purchase, with it's newly added pink £55 label!

 

It takes the shine off the day, dealing with these fuckwits, you know? It's not rocket science, there are rules to the art of pretending to be a retailer for a day, and this stall literally failed all of them! Fackin' ell, G'want! An ironic cultural reference, as they went through a phase of wearing Thunderbirds Are Go T-shirts!

 

Anyway, I am now the pround'ish, owner, of a maybe cheaper than I thought it aught to be, Thunderbird Two from Bandai, with most of the more memorable pod-vehicles, to add to the already growing collection of micro-mini's we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/01/f-is-for-five-four-three-two-one.html

 

To which I've already added a vinyl tree-hanger, the dug-out 'Colourform' ones, a board-game foursome, and a couple more, in plunder-posts which didn't get the T-bird Tag!
 

 

Mole, Firefly and the Excavator, which should be red, and which I saw in an episode the other night, there's one of these 24-hour live streams on YouTube, which seems to be connected to the remastered Blu-ray, and I'm dipping into it from time to time, but you never know where in the loop you're going to drop-in, so you then have to fast-forward through a few, to get to where you were, after which the episode cursor stops progressing, all very confusing, but great-fun seeing them all again!

 

Fab 1, and the two blueys, the ray turns on the Transmitter Truck, and the grabs (I don't know this vehicle's name? Another Excavator?) are articulated, the only other interactive one is the Excavator above, where the bucket is clip-on and can be configured for travelling in the Pod, or as shown.

 

I'm minded, if I ever get the time, to scratch-build a few more to go with these, the last episode I watched was 'The Uninvited', about the mysterious pyramid of Khamandides, with the half-tracked 'Jeep', it would be fun to do that in this scale!

 

Three more, I don't know what the first one is, a laser-cutter - should it also be red? The second is one of two Recovery Vehicles, the other would need to be scratch-built, and it can be red or yellow? While I remember a trio of the Elevator Cars (which should also be red, or white with a red cab?) trying to save the huge (and rather silly) Firefly, I can't remember the whole story, and will catch up with it soon, hopefully, but I think they sort of succeeded?

 

Thunderbird Six . . . it's not a Pod-vehicle! My late father's Tiger Moth, which was an ex-WWII trainer, had a very similar paint-job, but blue, not red, and I wonder if the MOD-approved sellers painted them like this, to hide the military markings, prior-to-sale, but, like so many things (you realise, after they have gone), I never asked him?

One of the great continuity errors of Thunderbirds, which niggled me, even as a kid, was the fact that Thunderbird Four, was named thus, and got its own Pod, while none of the others got either a number or a dedicated Pod, I don't even know how many Pods there were, was it six? The two Pods in this set are only numbered on the front, they should be numbered at both ends, and the registering of the sticker here, leaves a lot to be desired!

S is for Supersonic Set!

Starting to wind-up the Sandown plunder posts, and we have this interesting little carded set of - probably - 1950's plastic, bought from the same vendor as the Poplar Plastic canoe-race set, we have three small aircraft in two designs but raising more questions than they answer!

 

 

Two sort of 'Shooting Star's, and something with the lines of a Hawker Hunter or Sabre, but the nose of neither! We saw an unmarked version of the 'Hunter' here, from Andreas in Germany;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/c-is-for-comedy-of-errors.html

 

and, many years ago, a green one, marked Tudor Rose, with a more substantial pair of tail-planes, and lower wheels;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/04/t-is-for-tudor-rose-part-2-lose-ends.html

 

. . . all suggesting this was one of those early designs and/or tools which 'did the rounds' of early plastics manufacturers, at the small toy/novelty end of the market.

 

And, while the odd thing turns up (like this unidentifiable card) on evilBay or at shows, the fact is, we have mostly lost that information forever. We don't know who companies like Codeg (Cowan de Groot) or Chad Valley were commissioning things from, what people like Rosebud were making to produce cashflow while they developed their dolls, who supplied Tom Smith, where old moulds went, when Kleeware or Bell were finished with them, add the international aspect, and a bit of tax-driven mould swapping or greed-driven piracy, and this stuff is likely to remain 'unknown' forever?

E is for Emergence Event

One of those many, many board-games, aimed at the adult members of sites like Boardgamegeek, I saw it going cheap, as many of these games do end-up, once the hype has settled, back in 2021, shot it, shoved the pictures in Picasa and forgot all about it!

 

I'll almost certainly never play it, and don't know anything about it, and in the grand scheme of things, it represents the straight-to-landfill waste of human endeavour, ingenuity and resources, which is one of many facets of the end of humanity event, we're currently living in! So . . . not much blurb! But it does have nice micro-spaceships, in plastic! Megacon Games - Emergence Event.

 

 Box art, half Jean Giraud (Moebius), half Frank Frazetta.

 

Half blokade-runner, far-far-away;

half Weyland-Yutani mining vessel, silently screaming.

 

Firefly 'Reaver' vessel,

or Harlock cruiser?

 

Babylon 5!

 

Romulan Warbird / Klingon Bird of Pray

 

Box full of bits!

 

By the time you've learnt the rules, you're bored with the game, and you've painted-up the playing pieces to go with your micro spacefleet stuff! Box ticked!

 

If you need more;

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/154857/emergence-event 

G is for Gygax Monsters - Part V - Lik Be (LB) Piracies

I am assuming, from size, style and numbering within the wider LB oeuvre, that these appeared around the same time, and in similar sets to that which we looked at here, and indeed, with that set called Monster Fantasies, may have been another/the other assortment with the same header-card and cavemen?

 

Knowing what I do about Google and it's SEO (which isn't much!), and what with that being the third time I've linked to the same article, in a few days, in posts also multiple-mentioning Gygax Monsters, it will give the bots something to mulch on, and if it annoys the 'LP' dilettantes at the same time, well . . . so much the better, and my work here would be done, before we've seen the images!

These came in as a 'clean lot', suggesting that either the previous owner had two sets and lost an orange 'Friendly Monster', or that the original set had two of each, with a similar AWOL orange monster scenario, and, even without empirical evidence, we can be pretty sure they are Lik Be's, as their numbering is midstream* with the farm 'funimals', and includes the two previously seen prehistoric mammals, from the linked-above set.

 

Listing

No. A111 - Macrauchenia (? Prehistoric camel/giraffe ancestor/ant-eater) [seen before]

- 

No. A122 - Crustacean 'Gygax Monster' (Smaller copy of prone Rust Monster Chinasaur) 
No A123 - Wavey Fan Whiskers 'Gygax Monster' (Smaller copy of waving Chinasaur)

No.A124 - ?
A 125 - Ardvaark 'Gygax Monster' (Smaller copy of standing Chinasaur, also 'Armadillo Man') 
No. A126 - Dinocerata-like (? Large, tusked mega-mammal) [seen before]
127A - Friendly 'Gygax Monster' (Smaller copy of horn-nosed, cartoony dinosaur) 
A.128 - Wavey Winged Whiskers 'Gygax Monster' (smaller copy of waving Chinasaur) 
A.129 - Spiney 'Gygax Monster' (Smaller copy of double-row, spine-backed Chinasaur)

 

If LB copied the Gator/Lizard Man sculpt, he/she/it could be the A.124? Likewise, any of the missing ones, but that's probably the most obvious? Pure conjecture though!

 

* To be honest, once you plot all the known Lik Be / LB (previously ID-IDL-ID Ltd-LP) stuff, the conclusion is that the numbering is either pattern codes or cavity numbers, as the Funimals are all over the place, these and the prehistoric minis are split, with the cavemen between, a jump to the 200's of the Wild West sets with divers, fishermen and Spacemen/alien-robots never numbered, but surely filling some of the block gaps, while a few 500, 600 and four figure numbers exist for sets, or what appear to be earlier hard polystyrene production only? There are also a few B-codes, with the Explorer Cars (space tanks) having their own system!

Standard Holly Plastics on the left, you can see how much smaller the Lik Be copies are, it's literally a magnitude smaller; about half the size, and a quarter the mass? As OO is to O-gauge, or 1:64th is to 1:32?

 

That's it, short and sweet, the Lik Be chapter is more of a side-bar to the Gygax Monster's tale, and while unusual for LB to be pirating like that (obviously now we recognise the mini dinosaurs (A.70's) as being reduced-size Holly clones too), they did, also, seem to have knocked-off some of the Western Christmas cake decorations as well, so they had prior 'form' for copying. 

N is for New Face!

I don't know how many Toy Fairs I've been to, not that many, probably less that twenty since I went to my first one in . . . the late 1990's? But I can't remember ever having seen Safari? Schleich and Papo are near each other on the wrought-iron edged mezzanine/balcony and have been for over a decade, while the others - Bully, CollectA, K&M, Mojo etc., are more on and off, with Battat being found on several other people's stands, but Safari never seem to have bothered, or at least not the years I've attended?

 

So it was a bit of a surprise to find them at Kensington Olympia this January past, with what looked like a hastily-prepared stand, mostly draped orange cloth over trestle tables (next time take a steam iron guys!) and pin-board/divider panels, so whether they got someone else's cancellation slot, or intend to build a presence in future years and just left preparation to the last minute, I don't know, but there were two newish things on display.

 

But first, the classic Toob's;

 

Trying to study these using Amazon is an exercise in both frustration and futility, one of the follow-up posts on the horses in Jon Attwood's donations was going to be a set of Safari, only they turned-out to be from several sets, and several more were on Amazon, so I rather gave up and put them back in the long queue!

 

Also, my recent misidentification of the Arctic vignette, lead me to discover there are two versions of that set, an older 12-piece set with two human figural items (in different scales), and a newer 'shrinkflation' version with only the ten animals.

 

I tried raising the difference with the display-team member who was guiding me round the stand, but he wouldn't be drawn on the subject, while on Amazon (and similar platforms) some traders are still selling the older versions of these sets (it's not the only one with a 12-10 cut, when you start looking), some are selling the newer sets, but off the old images (so a disappointment will arrive), and only fresher, or newer dealers are selling off the new 10-count images.

 

Which means that A) at some point in the future, some items will become 'rarer' and/or therefore, more sought-after, and B), there is a remaining window of a year or two, in which you can track-down the older sets, before they are replaced totally in commercial stock inventories.

 

One of the surprises for me, although I was led to believe they have been around for a while now, are larger animals, following the CollectA-Papo-Schleich market. I don't think I have any yet, not even in the Charity shop bundles which sometimes contain one or two of the others, although the Prehistoric Hominids set Brian Berke sent us, a few years ago, was a clue to larger scales braking out at Safari!

 

I need an albino hedgehog! But there are some nice subjects here, lizards modern and prehistoric, fantasy and domestic farm animals, something for most tastes? That octopus looks great too, and would make short work of pirates!

 

The other new item, actually released last year, I think the chap said, were these mini animals, which would have be going head-to-head with the Schleich-Minis, but I don't think Schleich offer them any-more?

 

Being 'unit sized' some will be useful for HO-OO use, some better suited to larger scales, some may even hold their own against N-gauge or something? They were actually hard to shoot, given the way their display stands had been positioned.

 

A few other shots;

 

The newer issues, from one end of the display table.

 

Not the world's best photograph, I'll grant you! I've checked the butterfly set against the Insect Lore set, and they are not the same, in the middle is the set Brian drew to our attention back in 2020, while a set of Planets is actually a Sun and eight Planets . . . poor bloody Pluto!

 

Also heading for a slice of the novelty market?

 

Useful larger-scale figures.

 

The other end of that table!

 

All-in-all, despite the Lothario's just-got-out-of-bed-sheets in tangerine, there was a lot of good stuff packed into one of the smaller stands, and while I may give the show a miss next year (? The plan is to alternate, but it's a nice day out, and I get to meet friends), I look forward to seeing what they have next time I do visit?

 

Safari's website;

https://www.safariltd.com/