F is for Frog . . . Man!

This weirdness joined the stash a few weeks ago, and on one level I wish it hadn't, it's a kilo or more of cold clammy stretch-rubber I just don't need, but on another level it's actually a quite interesting find, despite being a pretty hideous thing!

 

This is how I saw him, and thought, "Oh, a rubber jiggler man-frog thing, better have that?", even though it was a pit pricy at a fiver. However, when I picked the parcel up from the Old House, the box was so heavy I thought Peter or Chris had sent me something without telling me (they both have, sent lovely things, in the last ten days!), but took it home and unwrapped it.

It WAS a rubber jiggler, and it WAS that stretchy, silicon-rubber, clammy stuff which gets covered in pet hairs, dust and some sticky substrate/exudate, so this shot is 'after cleaning', but the bugger was huge, and I should have guessed-so from the knicker-elastic used in place of the thin black elastic thread, the giant spiders and King Kong's of my youth used to get!

See! Mahoosive lump of rubber! But, marked AAA and dated 1968, the year AAA are believed to have been set up. Previously known for their animals, a lot subcontracted to other brands, I think this is the first/earliest [part-] human figure I've seen by them, and from the colours of both polymer and paint, we can probably assume, with some safety, that they are responsible for a lot of the similar rubber-jigglers found in gum-ball capsule machines, including some of the Lik Be (LB) copies, such as those we saw here.

 

Indeed, that A-mark (link post) may be a Tripple-A variant, they are known to have used single A's as well as triples, but it doesn't explain the 'S' and other letter (?) on my LB robot/aliens? So, on one level it is what it is, a piece of ephemeral shite from the 1960's, but on another, a useful connector of other parts in the whole-story, either though the clues, or the more empirical bits!

The elastic is perished and will need replacing, which will entail stretching the new stuff to maximum, to match the non-elastic remain's measurements, then cutting, and glueing to the end of the old one, so it can be pulled through a hidden bar of rubber or tunnel set into the rubber jiggler.

M is for Many Moulded Malleable Mammals!

Part three of Jon's big box brings us to the Mammals, although a bird snuck-in under the radar while I wasn't paying attention, and the rest are definitely from the Zoo/Jungle/Wild zone, farm and domestic will come later!

Big cats, 1 of 3, cheetahs and leopard'ish critters, I like the big cats but there is a tendency to use the same moulding for different cats, or just not pay much attention to the things at all, so while the Britains one is a 54mm leopard, also found in black as a 'panther' (melanistic leopard), the pair in the next size up look more doglike, as does the orange one to the right, he has quite a hyena'ish head/jaw!

There was a bit of a comedy involved in this image, as I shot what I thought was all five Cheetahs, then reshot 'all' six, before finding another one under the dinosaurs! The big, dark, stretching one (lovely pose) is Triple-A (the 'AAA' mark), the others, all generics, for now.

A pair of colour variations of the same toob' animals, and a larger one which is actually a lighter-weight than either of the smaller brethren, being manufactured of some slightly-foamed polyethylene?

 

Big Cats 2 of 2; hunting! They don't often bring down any but old, infirm, or very young, lost giraffe's, who otherwise enjoy a relatively blessed existence. The larger lion is a China-marked newie, the other, a similar sculpt, is an older Hong Kong toy.

The giraffes are three old HK's, probably from different tranches of the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus giraffe carrier, and two larger modern chaps, one clearly marked KS in a similar oval to Toy Major, the other a generic for now.

 

Three generics here, and the really big one is a Toy Major, probably from a pick-box/counter-display. And when I say 'Generic', the hope is a fair quantity of them will be attributed in the near-to-medium-future?

 

Smallies; seem to match each other with plastic type, sculpting, size, China-mark etc . . . and probably came together in a toob or small-tub, but sometimes the small ones are chucked into tub-sets with larger animals to make-weight, or add to the item count

 

Big Cats 3 of 3; The big orange beast at the back is a Toy Major animal, marked Cheetah! The cub to the right is another AAA, while the flocked guy to the left is just lovely, but of unknown origin, with no dinks or worn-patches, he really is sweet!

 

Three generic elephants, one of which was marked ELEPHANTCHINA and for a moment, just a moment, I wondered if I'd left it out of the prehistoric animals post! And, all three newish sculpts.

 

Thanks again to Mr Attwood for sending us these, they make a nice change from 'armymen', Wild West or space/fantasy, especially as we head into the Christmas season - Fleet had its night market tonight, nothing on the council or Fleet BID Faceplant pages . . . of course!

C is for Contributions to Charity Coffers!

I've not been 'doing' the Charity Shops in the last few years with the same diligence I used to, not enough time/inclination, and a different life-routine means I just don't pass them like I did, but there have been a few small purchases in recent weeks/last couple of months, and this is a quick view of the resultant plunder!

 

A few bags in the Blue Cross, which I always check as that's where I got those Britains Herald ECW when I first started checking Charity Shops again after a hiatus of a few years, and the other week they had a bunch of nice bagged animals, from which I selected three (the lady in front of me in the queue had a nice bag of Dinosaurs!), to which I added a resin Hippo from the 'White Elephant' (ox-blood hippo!), or knick-knack shelves.
 

Clockwise from the top left; A bag of Britains in various states from very play-worn (tiger) to quite mint (baby hippo), then that lump of resin mud-lover, a nice group of Chinasaurs, including two gape-mouths, and a new version of my favourite childhood rubber Dimetrodon, but in a more ridged PVC-alike, than the usual silicon-rubber of the originals, but nice to know the tool is still out there and in use!

 

The last bag had a mixed lot of smaller animals, and while I'm not sure about the orange pig, the other three in that corner (green and blue) probably do go together and look like they might be modern lesser-brand or generic chocolate egg prizes. The startled lion-cub is probably Kinder?

While the larger bag was a whole bunch of MEG Kitty in my Pocket toys, which gave a whole shot each of gingers, black & white and/or or floofy types, smudgers and a more oriental looking group of greys! I have a few in with the cats, but always knew they'd turn up cheap eventually, so nice sample for pennies!

 

I was actually passing the next day and popped-in to see if there were any left, I don't like to be greedy and had only grabbed the more interesting looking bags, the day before, and found two more bags, while a couple of larger animals were procured next door!

The biggies from DEBRA UK; I can't remember now which was which, but there were a Papo, Schleiech and Triple-A among these, and I think this is a Schleich rhino and generic elephant? It'll all come out in the wash, when we look at them again in more thematic posts, another day!

 

Again I can't remember which brand the tiger was, or the elephant, but the moose is interesting, as it's Kinder, but far too big for the normal eggs, so it must be a Maxi-Egg toy? I've noticed they are gaining popularity, especially at Christmas/Easter.

The other bag was a right-old mix, with farm and zoo, branded and unbranded, for some reason the pig-shot snuck into the collage twice, so you can see what they look like, before I sort the contrast! Doh!

These - found in Phyllis Tuckwell  a few weeks ago - weren't really Charity-shop priced, but lacking only the backing card, were a clean sample and I've since seen what people want for them on evilBay, and decided they were a bargain! And the rest of the packaging went to recycling weeks ago, so the missing card - was not missed!

 

Being Disney Stores, they are more tourist oriented, lacking firm set/line lists, coming and going, not necessarily found in all territories and unbranded beyond the carrying store, who isn't a toy manufacturer. one of the other sets online - for instance - is much bigger, while some small die-cast vehicles (Luke's 'landspeeder') are in the rather bitty range!

 

They look very similar to the Applause set, so maybe there's a connection there, but they are - at least - solids, so 'toy soldiers' rather than action figures, although action figure size at about 100mm!

Finally, this pair came in a week or so ago, £1.10p for the lot, and it's for charity!

The sea-life are all equipped with pencil-topping holes, the dragon is another capsule/Christmas cracker looking type and the two Fairies are, I think, from the Flower Fairies (Interplay - IP) which we looked at in a London Toy Fair revue a few years ago, and which, again, I suspected would, if successful, end up in mixed/charity lots, so more samples procured against future thematic posts!

R is for Rack Toy Shelfies

There's a few of these posts in the queue now, so we'll get some of the current stuff up here! Brian Berke, our roving toy-spotter in New York, sent me a bunch of shelfies the other week, in time for RTM, and while some have gone off to the near eternal Coventry of the long queue as being not figural enough for this Blog (they will eventually be used on the A-Z pages or in more thematic stuff), here are a few which hit the spot perfectly!

 

Superhero types, clearly aping the Power Rangers, and similar to the ones in our (UK's) pound shops a few years ago, but lacking the five minis that came with ours, and having some level of articulation - at the arms only I fancy?

 

Nice bunch of Dinosaurs, one day I'll put all the dinosaur bags and cards we've looked at on one page, so they can be more easily sorted and grouped, and so we can see easily which lots are in more than one branding/packaging! There's about fourteen in the bag, it's hard to see them all, and they look to about the same size as the next lot, so that's plenty of bang for your ten-bucks?

These are particularly nice for what they are - cheap rack toy animals - as I thought the paint was particularly good for the type? They are also on the large side, and I think that Panda (and possibly one or two others) are in the queue, loose, so a UK issue (probably in different packaging) is a certainty on this one! . . . No, we saw it here the other day, in the charity-shop round-up - I think it's triple-A or AAA under the generic card?!

 

I shot this in The Works the other day, I think we may have seen it before, so, if we have; ho-hum! But if we haven't, I think we've seen other items in this line, graphical-speaking? What I call medium-sized; 6/8-inches, and quite well modelled, but paint is a little uninspiring.

From the metadata on the shot, this was inches away from the previous set, but the price label was not a standard 'Works one, so I managed to confuse myself, medium smalls at about 4/6-inches, and paint/detailing pretty much matches the others so the same source in China? I rather like the Plesiosaur arching across the top!
 

And . . . that's three sets of dinosaurs, with no Dimetrodon? WT very actual F! You used to get a Dimetrodon in every set, line, range or bunch of dinosaur toys, now you hardley ever see them? It's discrimination, that's what it is, I'm joining the Far Left to militantly campaign against this injustice, 'caus the woke middle are ignoring this obvious slight against Dimbo!

Many thanks, as always, to Brian, for everything he does for the Blog.

News, Views Etc . . . Crimbo Roundup

Not the usual format today, there's only one date I know of this weekend;

Sunday 22nd December 2019

Orpington - SRP Toyfairs

Crofton Halls, Orpington, Kent, BR6 8PR

Web. - www.srptoyfairs1.co.uk

eMail: srptoys1@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 07739 998 012 (Paula or Gerry)

10:00 - 14:00hrs

Admission charge unknown

Gerry's shows are always well run and I think I'm right in thinking Orpington is one of the bigger venues in his itinerary, so if you've any spare cash after investing in a stash of mince-pies it might be worth a mosey-on-down, and traffic should have eased a bit by Sunday?

Then there's a bunch of shows after Christmas, which I may post earlier in the week if I get my finger pulled-out over this weekend?

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Firefighters

One of the more obvious developments this year on the Blog has been much more feedback to some articles, which is lovely, but it presents a quandary or two, due to the 'felt need' to get contributions up as quickly as possible, both by way of thanks and to encourage the individuals sending the items, images or other information.

Follow-up's to the follow-up!
(thanks to Brain, Chris and Theo for the above) 

Case in point was the resent series of Hong Kong company ID posts and the latter Firefighter posts, which due to a number of firefighters in the former have sort of morphed into a twin-fork of fire stuff and road worker stuff! Further enhanced by the two fire-engine posts the other day.

Firefighting contents of the miscellaneous emergency-personnel box

So I got-out a follow-up out to the first set of articles, but more stuff came in, which I put to one side and then added to after the second - fire engine - posts, and I think I'm beginning to understand why the editor of a certain magazine I know, has articles of mine going back years . . . I think it's called editorial control! If you keep doing follow-up's to follow-up's, there'd be no end to it, so at a certain point you must/have-to drop that subject and move on.

Mixed with firefighters

But, this is not to say you can't return to it as a new subject, months or years later, so don't think I'm not, or won't still be grateful for anything or everything sent, I am and I will be!

And to that end, with 460 folders in Picasa (one of which; Latest Toy Shots has 766 images in it today) and another 20-odd on the desk top (including Follow-Ups and Scans - 170+ images), I am now creating thematic folders which can be repositories of similar stuff, for future posts, both on specific themes and more general stuff. It's not an exact science, does Tarzan go as Tarzan, or with zoo for instance, but something workable is formulating.

The Firefighters, for instance will get a page, I haven't however decided whether to put it here with the other 'pages' at the top of the page, or give it an entry on the A-Z's under 'F'?

And to add to the stuff in the above images will be the stuff we've seen before (Corgi, Dinky & Matchbox, the Blue Box/Lucky stuff plus a few other bits which have been posted!) and the contents of a couple of tubs of larger-scale/recent additions.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Toys in the Media

Sort of Duplo/Playmobile clones helping advertise an Apple i-Phone10 contract, the 'i' stands for idiot, now they (the owners of idiot-phones) have taken my favourite 'dumb-phone' moniker to refer to other mobiles, I will bow to common-usage and change to idiot!

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This Week I Are Be Mostly Sorting . . .

More deer!

But it's taken so long, it'll be next Christmas that benefits!

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Edible Advent Calendar Update

Good week for figurals compared to last week, with an angel, gingerbread man, penguin, and Santa sleigh, alongside a stag's head and something which might be a Blue Meanie, might be a vital part of a tower-crane, might be an alien lander, might be an Egyptian cat-god with a comedy-moustache . . . but which we decided was probably John Lennon doing a Biblical Wise-man impersonation?

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

H is for How They Come In

Slow start this week but a few bits have been acquired for pocket-money, or less, although it was all money in my pocket, which might be the decider as far as the 'pocket money' designation goes, rather than the/a specific amount!

A couple of stand-alones; being a smallish ceramic Santa Clause 'fairing' type ornamental figurine and a Triple-A rabbit. The rabbit is actually much larger (1:6th?) than the Santa', but they collaged to the same height! He's a modern, softish PVC-substitute.

A House of Marbles retro' board-game brought-in four more micro racing-cars! Also credited to 4moreideas, I thought the board itself was lazy-design; racetracks don't cross each-other like snakes & ladders!

A bag of Ja-Ru 'Army Men' as imported by the - now extinct - Toysaurus in 2006, so predating the various sets shelfied and/or donated to the blog by Brian Berke in the last three or four years, and adding to that maker's known-output here. Unlike the current Ja-Ru 'fritz-helmet' set which are soft and marked on the base, these are polyethylene and unmarked. They reprise the old Tim Mee copies; a bag of classic Army Men for Christmas? What's not to like!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

 

Wot? No Bears!

This year's additions; 54 items

but I found room on the tree for all of them!

I'm winding-down for Christmas now, and while I'm working on all sorts of stuff, I don't know what I'll post or when over the next week or two, so here's wishing all loyal readers a Happy Christmas, and thanking everyone who's helped and contributed this last twelve months. Even with a near-three month hiatus while Dad passed-away, I managed the second best posting rate/year ever, here's to an even better 2020 - the Blog's 11th year . . . and second decade!

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