News, Views Etc . . . More Stuff!

MPC Mini Ships

Donald D. Hood got in touch from the US of A with loads of fascinating minutiae on the MPC mini-ships, he has real life stuff going-on at the moment, but I'm hopeful that at some point he will flesh out his revelations for the Blog.

In the meantime; it appears many of the MPC vessels are in fact copies of models from other manufacturers, for instance - the Varicella was previously issued as a die-cast by Tri-Ang Minic (along with one of the tugs), several of the battleships seem to be copies of earlier Renwal mini's and the tramp steamer may be from a Lindberg (Pyro) set, along with both ACW 'Ironclad' vessels?

Anyway - hopefully more to come on this one. He also confirmed that there was a retail issue, but of smaller-quantity sets than the comic offers.

Other Ships . . . and cats!

While we're on ships, I found these decorating pedestrian underpasses in Basingrad the other day.

 I don't know the connection (I'll Google it)** between square-rigged, three-decked warships and landlocked Basingstoke, but I'm guessing that if the floods allow either of these to hove into view, you'll be beyond the help of the flooding-helpline!

**Nothing on Google, but it seems one of them is looking like HMS Victory?

The cat is a running gag in Basingrad between one or more graffiti artists and the local authority; which seems to tolerate the understated and artistic stencils! I photographed the other three in a separate set of underpasses some distance from the mosaic ship murals, a couple of years ago for my - then more-active - Faceplant page.

Bible Stories

This chap has been sat in Brain Berke's Folder for too long, he sent it soon after I Blogged the others, shelfie of David (of Goliath fame) from Beverly Hills Teddy Bear (via Greenbriar/DTSC)

Maxxi Toys

Peter Evans has sent another Apache Clan Collection set to the Blog, this one with the 'trotting' cowboy horse, and two new figures, there was the same bag of candy drops, along with another two pieces of fence (so I can now make a four-sided mini-corral) and palm.

While the figures are a bit semi-flat or demi-ronde both would look very acceptable with a re-paint and the cowboy has a plug-in bag of swag, which would make a useful piece of Stagecoach luggage!

I should also point out the cowboy has suffered the same pants-failure as Mr. I. Wraite's Indian and further; that Stuart Asquith had found the same figures in Funtastic branded packaging in Poundland stores; as reported in Plastic Warrior magazine No. 159 a few years ago (20 months odd?), a full report in that issue's letters (back issues available) shows four different foot figures and six foot Indians not seen here - yet!

The pirate set Brian B found

Artwork's apparently stolen for DVD's or Game packaging!

29-05-2018 - Now known to be being carried by Aliki on the continent and Liberty Imports in the 'States.

Smyths Christmas Stock

I was over in Farnborough checking out the almost empty aircraft-hanger that is Smyths new superstore, looking for Halloween stuff (they had none!) the other day, and picked up a catalogue, I also took the above shelfie of the only thing on their half-mile+ of shelves which caught my eye. It's the same Street machine stuff we saw back in Rack Toy Month (and a recent News, Views . . . it's the bottom-row which really interests), but without the Pioneer branding, nor the Pro Engine Series stuff.

Of more interest are these four sets in the Christmas catalogue; I'm sure there's more around if you Google them, but while some 3D printing stuff is taking a while to get fully off the ground, it is interesting to see really quite cheap aids to modelling (as these are) in the kids stores. I might try 6 or 7? And if you've got kids, you've got an excuse for buying!

They seem to be UV light-activation systems with a reactive polymer-gel or paste, rather than liquid-deposition or powder-based laser-sintering systems, but I can see applications there for war gamers and modellers?

Building armatures, or building onto wire-armatures for instance, scenic efforts, trees, barb-wire entanglements maybe? And with the moulds on the magic maker looking to be flimsy styrene vac-forms, you could develop your own moulds for repeat items, small bunkers, sand-bag emplacements, conversion turrets, wheel/tyre halves etc...

Blog

Several records/near-records have been broken in the last few days, with most posts in a year, 2nd best month ever and definitely still on track for the 3-millionth hit inside 11 months - ten to go! And I will post the 2,000th (visible) post here, any day now, if indeed this isn't it, I've been busy away from the Blog this last week and got behind with 'housekeeping'!

News

Not much since the last News, Views . . . ; all the quarterly results (which generate the toy-related headlines) have been posted and caught by the previous few posts. I think there was another Lego plug in the 'i' and there was more on the Toysaurus (US-side) but I haven't done the cuttings this week yet.

One story which did grab me, although not really affecting the hobby directly was the one about evilBay, Amazon and Co. profiteering from overseas sellers not charging VAT, this is not about second-hand toys or cack like that, but rather new goods, electronics and higher-end consumer-stuff, which are offered at below high street prices by sellers over the Channel or Irish Sea, and which should include VAT, to be taken by the platform and handed to HMRC.

It's not an immediate threat to us, but - as a bit of a scam - it'll become a stick for governments to beat the silicon-valley people with, especially when old-media, establishment paper's like the Daily Wail decide to crusade on the issue.

Link

The Scythian exhibition at the British Museum now has a Blog-post.

O is for Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy-fish!

A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, Oh! . . . Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy-fish! . . . That went wherever I . . . did gooooohw.

I don't suppose we'll visit fish here again at Small Scale World for the longest time, so this is a round-up of all the fishy stuff that's hanging around, most having come-in in the last 18-months, so there's a synergy to the thing and the post is clearly meant by the gods (unless you believe in one of them, then you'll be spitting nails at my casual atheism and refusal to take your pan-dimensional mega-being any more seriously than the next guys, anyway - his is the one true-one, not yours!).

It's also all rack-toy type stuff, if not actually from a rack toy, or seen on a rack! Although; if they were on a rack, they'd be smoked and we don't do smoking here anymore - vaped mackerel anyone?

These are currently available for next to nothing from The Swagman's Daughter and when I first found them I thought they may be the old Prior moulds, but actually they're rather more 'based on' than actual and are - in any case - marked Hong Kong rather than Macau.

They are also in hard to shoot psychedelic primary-colours, but I had a go! In fact a mishap meant two sets were forthcoming and between photo sessions I took enough to give you an idea; but to be honest I think the shots on the originating site are better!

I wasn't the only person looking for fish online, the owner of the old photography/camera shop in town, recently rebranded for the digital era was also looking for fish to decorate the shop's float in this year's carnival, he found some, but they were . . . err . . . weren’t what he was expecting - always read the description!

They were in fact 30-40mm or so; not including flappy-bits! Anyway they went in the window for the same carnival's window-dressing competition, where I spotted them, took these shots and got the sorry story of how they couldn't be seen on the float!

I then tracked-down the catalogue images on-line and as you can see there are only six poses, but they come in assortments of twelve, six in a basic-paint finish and six patterned. I couldn't tell you if they are made-up markings or representative, but with the same sculpt used for two different schemes I'm guessing (like assumption - but wilder!) they're made-up's. Available here.

These were from Peter Evans buried in the big-bag of Army Men, the one with obvious markings (angel fish?) seems to be a direct copy of a Prior sculpt (with reverse stripe markings), but again they are all marked Hong Kong, not Macau and the others aren't so obviously Prior, although with different sources crediting two different crabs to Prior (one of which looks like this sculpt) and me not having any Priors here to compare-with; I'm sticking with 'after Prior'!

They are also all laced with a piece of fine thread, so may have been part of a hanging mobile, all very 'Seventies! Whether they were sold as a mobile or bought as toys and 'crafted' at home is anyone's guess. Actually (after checking); two - the crab and the fish with a stand weren't hung, so maybe a low-maintenance faux-fish tank? And why is the one so much better painted than the others, it's painted to match the Prior as well?

The rest of the local piscine shoal, a varied bunch with - from the left: an eraser-type rubber blow-fish (Schleich 'mini'?), an ethylene pipe-fish (US?), a modern, PVC electric eel from China, a small PVC goldfish similar to but smaller than the first set above, a two-part styrene goldfish (possibly of Japanese manufacture) and a leaping, factory-painted dolphin, probably copied from one of the US premium sets?

To which are addended two crustaceans, the left hand in polyethylene with traces of past having had gold paint round the eyes and the right-hand in PVC.

This chap (from Beverly Hills Teddy Bear - best toy company name ever!) was going to finish the post, he was sent by Brian Berke over a year ago, and was waiting for this exact post . . . to finish! However, no one ever said life was fair, or if they did (say it) they were lying, or unbearably, sickeningly lucky . . .

. . . so Brian sent this the other day to trump the Nemo-shark at the finishing post! Literally - because the post was in edit and nearly got published the other day.

I thought these to be bootleg Iwako erasers but I think they're the same ones we had in Poundland-Plus here, however it had already struck me it's clear that about 30% of all 'Iwako' erasers out there are bootlegs.

Given the history of relations between Japan and China over the last few hundred years, there probably isn't any licensing involved from the Nippon-end, or much policing from the Beijing-end! What's less understandable is that high-street names like Wilkinnson's-Wilko and WHSmith are happy to carry the bootlegs, heaps of them!

That's yer'fish, you'll have to find you own chips, and we'll probably not return to these 'till I get the similar sample of mixed odds-and-sods out of storage.

C is for Contribution Season - XVIX - Bible Stories from Brian

From yesterday's sublime to today's ridiculous, although all toy figures have a place in someone's collection, whether you prefer the flat plastic Muscovites and Mongol Hord bashing each other's brains out by the banks of the Don, or the rather more peaceful subject of today's post.

Although believers in God have to reconcile the genocide of the entire human race bar Noah and his family and the less than savoury (by today's standards) familial relationships' that must have followed-on from that deliberate catastrophe!

Better that humans meet for a predetermined reason and butcher each-other for argued nationhood (Kulikovo), than that a bunch of illegal immigrants get a pan-dimensional mega-being to help them destroy the product of generations of honest sweat and sweep away the local's city (Jericho), and then the next city and then the next, until they've stolen the whole country!

And then there is the evisceration of his (own) son - to save our souls by forgiving our sins.

Yet life is still pretty shit for the majority of mankind, even the Christian ones, while we are told we still have to face judgement and possible final damnation - for all eternity?

Was the sacrifice on the cross in vain? Did he in fact die for nothing - he seem to have? Is there a chapter in the Bible I've missed, explaining how the forgiven sins were un-forgiven again? Was there small-print attached to the whole deal? Did some soul-investment banker re-sell our souls to the Mafia for a night with a sweet, dusky maiden?

And then we come to the rape of Mary; by an archangel! But then Lucifer was an archangel so their behaviour should come as no more of a surprise than yer'actual, tub-thumping, celibate, bishop- bashing, kiddy-fiddling, priest and they've uncovered thousands of those in the last few decades, there's not a year goes by without some scandal somewhere!

The truth is she probably went off with Joseph and made the beast with two backs under the olive trees - they were married FFS! They did what young couples have always done, sneaked away from the in-laws house on a warm night and did what humans do!

It was idiotic, power-hungry men who wrote the books later - with all the bollocks about virginity in them - it's called sexism, you raise woman-kind up onto a virginal pedestal - to keep them down!

So - to the deaths of all the first-born because Pharaoh was a bit stubborn, after a decent enough period of plague, pestilence and famine had taken its toll of course; that Jehovah - he's just full of love, huh?

Actually this is my favorite figure of the four; it's clearly the first set of commandments he's holding there as his face says he's just seen Baal - the gilded bull, down at the camp-site! That's not a saccharin smile, that's the beginning of a psychotic head-fit episode that will see him having to talk to God again and carve another set of stones!

Thanks again to Brian, away from my cynicism; they are charming little figurines!