A is for Another 'Lucky Bag', and Some Seasonal Stuff!

A few other purchases in the last few weeks, and after the blind surprise 'Lucky bags' we saw from The Works earlier in the year (October), I noticed similar bags in Poundland the other day, and again got the Dinosaur themed one as the best chance of a figural, and as a comparison with the disappointing inflatable of the last example.

 

A task made slightly easier by the fact that the contents are illustrated on the outside of the bag! Stickers, puzzle, skeleton, collector cards and a 'bonus' key-ring . . . if it's listed, pictured and included in every bag, it's not a bonus, it's a priced element of the contents!

 

A few minutes later I popped into the aforementioned The Works, and bought these, as apart from the fact I thought they would make nice additions to the wooden-trees subsection, they might also prove useful as photo-shoot accessories in the future?

 

To that end, here they are, both artfully arranged (!) in the fashion of an interiors' magazine shoot! You have to imagine they are on an immaculately-polished, white piano, with a recognisable supermodel, just out of focus and staring intently at a Hockney, on the wall!

 

Mostly duplications of one sort, or another, I also picked these up on my day's shopping in Farnham a few weeks ago, they sort of complete what Opie calls a cameo, in that we have previously seen the Santa's in individual bags the same as those the snowmen are in, here.

 

We have also seen the snowmen in the red and green scarves, along with a mauve version, so this blue one is new. And we saw a copy set of the Deer, red-Santa sleigh, snowman (red scarf) and tree, also from The Works, so that's pretty much all known versions of originals and copies, now, in several variations of packaging!

W is for Wroxham Miniature Worlds

This was going to be part of a twin posting/comparison with the 'museum' at Mountfitchet, but things took a darker turn at that establishment, and for now I'll stuff it inconveniently under the carpet, and instead you can enjoy this as a stand-alone!

 

The shots Chris Smith took on a visit to the Wroxham Miniature Worlds attraction up in Norfolk, just NE of Norwich . . . 

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"From the outside the building looks like an industrial unit with entrance via a propped open fire door escape, I knew entry price was £13.95, did think about not going in... But took the plunge.

Very well laid out displays, some massive model railway scenic setups. Not my thing but couldn't help but be impressed by the standard of work involved in creating them, 100's of plastic buildings and 1000's of small figures included. All the trains controlled by a central PC program.

A number of working flight and driving simulator PC games from the 80/90's set up to try. I was useless at these back then so passed on trying."

"Good Scalextric track and display. Pelham Puppets, another massive collection on display. Huge vintage Star Wars action figure collection, figures, vehicles and boxes"

 

"Only other plastic figures I spotted were four Britains RNLI boats and crew in with some other, larger model ships."

"The Lesney/Matchbox bus was amazing, the sheer amount of vehicles was staggering. They do need to improve the lighting in this and the head height is an issue if you're over 5' 9" having to stoop on both levels."

 

 

 

"A small display of more general toys of interest were Magic Roundabout Figures, Sooty & Friends cereal premiums and a strange space bike with no rider, approx 1/32 scale that I'm sure would know the maker." [MPC Fireball XL5]

 

"Massive Lego display, from vintage Lego city to more recent lines of  Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter etc."

 

"Knitting! Not my thing, but impressed with the level of detail and work involved."

 

[Excellent use of a mirror-back display cabinet, to visually double the size of the diorama]

 

"Airfix models, poor display, obviously not loved. Poor quality build and a bit battered now. Were a few Airfix painted 1/32 figures and 1/72, but at ground level and hard to see.

 

One of my favourites was a collection of penny arcade machines all in working order, old pennies available via a change machine a £1 for ten, which I enjoyed spending. 

 

Overall, I'd recommend it to anyone if you're in the area on holiday or in Norfolk visiting/working. Personably disappointed by the lack of plastic figures."

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To which I'll add my tuppenny's worth, firstly thanks to Chris for sending all this to the Blog, and secondly, it appears to be a much better curated and displayed than others I have seen, the Airfix 54mm case, not withstanding!

C is for Cone'ucopia - 2 of 2

This is still out there, I've seen it quite often in petrol stations (service stations), and some of the smaller convenience stores, or at least those which carry stock from BJ Toys, such as the Premier store in Pirbright, which seems to have replaced the NAAFI, and from which I got mine, at about the same time Peter Evans also found them, and mentioned them to me.

 

BJ Toys; blue cone is for blokey kids, pink is for less-blokey kids! I got a blue one!

 

A real cornucopia!

 

Clockwise from top-left; Rocky keyring and collector/backing card; sports themed puzzle and colouring book; a self inflating light-stick (read 'lightsabre'), which I haven't inflated yet; a multi-hole bubble-wand and bottle of bubble liquid; three packs of fizzy candies; a Dino' mini-set, which contains stuff we've seen in BJ carded sets here at Small Scale World; and, finally, a Letrabot blind bag.

 

The dinosaur, comes with a ridiculously over-sized egg, which is more chicken than dinosaur, so clearly the egg came first! And a new take on the current palm-tree design, in that it's a single moulding, with bi-colouring, dwelt-on before, here.

 

I see a lot of this stuff in the fish departments of pet stores or garden centres, even at The Range, and I suspect that industry might have had a hand, along with the fake flower people, in the multi-colour shot techniques becoming so common now.

 

Rather aptly, I got the letter H, and it's a simplistic transformer 'bot'.

 

Sub-branded Planet White, which may be a wave-indicator (?), the Letrabots (or Letr-A-Bots) are from an Italian outfit called Ciciboom Srl., and Letranimal, Kartbots, Numberbots (with symbols) and Letrazoo also exist!

The cones retail at £4.99, and with the equivalent of three rack-toys, and several other novelties, I think they are worth the money, for kids that is; this sample will be enough for me! Remember, sometimes we buy this stuff so you don't have to, otherwise we'd probably be desperately scraping flying saucer pictures off of that evilBay!

L is for London Toy Soldier Show - 2 of 2

I must confess I didn't stay long at the show, and wasn't carrying much cash, but I bought a few bits off everyone I knew, and ended-up with enough for two posts of mostly interesting stuff!

 

I can't veer into 'new painted metal', but one should support one's mates in their endeavours, so I try to buy the odd piece off Matt from White Tower, and this lovely Mongol/Hunnish horse-archer came home with me, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper by Matt!

 

Three Reliable interwar 'doughboy' infantry from Canada, these used to be considered copies, but I think everyone now accepts they were a licensing deal, or cross-boarder mould-swap, as there's nothing in them bar the different marked bases.

 

Marx on the left, in the box, I believe he's called Bill Mason! Lido in the middle, the rider's lost most of his lasso, so I think the kindest thing to do, will be to pare-away the remnants, so he can concentrate on fighting the bucking bronco! An early kit figure, on the right, is the third American here!

 

Three from Eastern Europe, with two of the Drevopodnik figures from the former Czechoslovakia; a railway platform guard and a medic, while I think the third is what we call a fake, a deliberate attempt to deceive - I stand to be corrected, and he's marked Elastolin Germany.

 

But the material is all wrong, and I think this is an East German fake of something which, by then, was the other side of the wire? It looks to be a pumice type composition, not the correct wood-chip and linseed? If I'd been doing it, I would have stained the base with coffee before I painted the green on!

 

 

Obviously removed from a very big, probably mostly tin-plate jeep, this guy is a 'dolly' rubber, probably PVC, with a mostly-polystyrene gun, which had a glowing-tip at some point I suspect, there's the remains of wiring up the barrel (so also battery operated/supplied)?

 

And there's what appears to be the remains of a mechanism for traversing, probably as the jeep went along? The figure's roughly in the four-inch bracket, and his toes are pined-trough the plinth and the pins have then been heat-sealed.

A Starlux diver, bought to compare with the smaller ones, the Dinky one and the unpainted (Solido?) ones, he's the full 54mm, while I don't know the maker of the colonial soldier, but he's another French figure I think?

A Charbens press-ganger, LB (for Lik Be of course) Indian girl and one of Cherilea's Elizabethan types, an eclectic trio, but all nice enough samples, clean and with good paint!

 

Another trio of the Vilco copies of old Cofalu aluminium figures, except these are in a rather nice marbled red, hard polystyrene, so may be by someone else, I thought maybe Toumoulage, but without any evidence! I have a feeling, though, that I did get an ID for them in silver & bronze hard plastic at some point?

 

Whatever the truth, I have a growing sample of these now, in hard and soft plastic, painted and bare, and think they are among my favourite French figures, although only the four poses (the standing firer is missing here), so far?

 

A couple of Spanish bullfighters to finish, Reamsa I think, the one on the left is very brittle, and has been repaired and repainted at least twice, and is to be considered only a pose-sample, until a better one appears, and there may already be one in the stash?

L is for London Toy Soldier Show - 1 of 2

So, as I wasn't helping anyone this time, I had the luxury of a lie-in, and a more gentle mosey up on the train, not knowing there was a winter fixture at Sandown Park, meaning the train was well-equipped with early-drinking rowdies, until Esher, when more people seemed to get off the train, than it could have possibly held!

 

Fortunately, a few hours later, we raced back through Esher at some speed, the mostly now skint punters, a mere blur either side of the train, their 'How am I going to pay for Christmas now?' faces illuminated a pallid-yellow by the carriage's own lighting.

 

I didn't stay long at the show, missed Paul, although I saw him a couple of isles over at one point, but managed to catch-up with everyone else, and purchase a bag of bits! I then forgot to go to the Pub, and managed to get involved in a mini-adventure, or 'experience', back in the city centre, but, toys first;

 

Two Cherilea spacemen, I have a decent sample of these now, especially with the three based ones I added the other day, but I know that when I Blogged them (not that long ago) it was a cobbling together of archive, show-shots and my own samples, to get the story clear, so my own sample was small and probably still has gaps, so I tend to grab them when I see them, and these earlier, pod-feet ones are rather nice.

 

Between them is an early Kinder toy, in which the capsule itself is used, with pre-formed slots to receive the bits inside, and a sticker-sheet to produce a small R2D2 type 'astromech' droid / robot, with articulated arms.

 

More of the native-dress figures, in semi-flat polystyrene, the weight of evidence veers toward India, but a commenter at the time of last seeing thought Sri Lanka, so still technically a question mark, and we have several new paint schemes, and a new pose, so worth keeping-on buying them, when I see them.

 

Looked at here - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/i-is-for-asian-rack-toys.html

 

There's evidence on a couple of them, of having been glued to cards, maybe in window-boxes? 

 

More Kinder toys, the barbarian needs a weapon, the Indian needs some hair (both in the spares bags, I think) and a mini, cement-truck.

 

A third Kellogg's Frosties Campbell land-speed racer (on the right), to join the pair I found in February, along with a duplicate, which may be a useful swap for the missing fourth vehicle, in the course of time?

 

Seeing red! Another of the Pomeroy-designed game-playing pieces, a rather nice sub-scale Swoppet clone from Hong Kong and a piece of Bisque from a Christmas cake, or even a Birthday cake, I think it's a clown which is more generic, isn't it?

 

Another game playing piece, a small rubber dog, probably contemporary and off a kid's magazine, the third item is a WWF trophy, an accessory from a larger action figure set, but the two figures making-up the trophy-sculpture are almost perfect HO-gauge compatible. The final figure is a priest, possibly for wedding-cakes?

 

Rack-toy Submarine.

 

A handful of French production, there's a possibility that the last one is Polish, but he's hard plastic, so the feeling if more likely French. The Mokarex chap next to him is from the paired French regional-dress figure set, the small one is an integral-base (Kinder?) version of the usually separate base premiums, and the first figure has been paint-stripped - like Starlux, but not?

 

Matt Thier did tell me the origin of the lead lady being beheaded (Mary? French?), but I forgot it in all the conversations with everyone, the paper boy is an old Bergen-Beton figure in hard 'styrene, the mint-green chap is from a kit (Monogram, Pyro, Revell?) and the little corporal is a brass tourist trinket, from France.

 

Nice, probably French stand of fir-trees, with a bit of damage to the tallest one.

On my way back to Waterloo, I dropped off at Leicester Square, to check the bookshops in Charing Cross Road, and look for something for someone else (which has been another mini-adventure). While I was there I found a 'German Market' in the centre of the square, it was pretty shit . . . no German stalls selling hand-made wooden toys or blown-glass ornaments like the one in Berlin, the Bratty' stand was run by Asians and there was a stall from the 'Great Cornish Pasty Co.,', or something equally non-German, so all a bit naff really, and incredibly crowded.

 

Put on by a global entertainment corporate called 'Underbelly', it might be more bearable later at night, but I doubt it, as you'd just be adding the inevitable drink and drugs to the mix!

 

Walking back out and up to Shaftesbury Avenue to visit Forbidden Planet (which also depresses me these days!), I narrowly avoided being hit by a horse pulling a sulky! Closely followed by several more, which started parking on the pavements, willy-nilly, as pedestrians dived everywhere, so I dived up the Avenue, and bought a few books!

 

When I returned, about 20-minutes later, to head off up to the tube station at the big Tottenham Court-Oxford Street's crossroads, it became clear there were now nearly a hundred Traveller carts, wagons and racers of all types, and about 20 double-decked buses, going nowhere, who had advised their passengers to alight, the whole of Charing Cross Road, now a pedestrianised sardine-tin!

 

It turned out this was an annual thing, lost in the mists of time - all the travellers from Kent, Essex and North London, gather somewhere, and rally down to Central London, park wherever they manage to end-up, and while the younger ones look after the horses and pose for photographs with tourists, the oldster's all go off to Harrods, to spend what cash they've made, legitimately, in lawful enterprise - of course!

 

Poor Harrods was my thought, I was dressed better than most of them, and I wouldn't have got into Harrods! Non-branded jeans! But tradition, is tradition, and makes us, Britain, what we are, so I was rather glad to have been part of the whole chaos for a few minutes, to have seen it, I've never seen it before, and am unlikely to, again!

 

Apparently last year's 'event' was marred by an 'incident' involving the 'younger element' so there was a heavy police presence, and I was very disappointed by the Traveller's vehicles - a few had the old paint-schemes, but most were plain, and almost all welded steel, even the old-looking spoked wheels, were flat steel and welded-tube, while one of the sulkies had what appeared to be a pair of mag-alloys off a 1986 Ford Granada, with low-profiles!