S is for Seasonal 'Shelfies'

A few things I captured on my way round Woking while Christmas-shopping and visiting PW's estimable editor the other day . . .

Four for £10 from the Evil Empire, exclusive at the Toysaurus or you can get similar for a quid at Poundland, or less at Wilkinson's/Wilco; as we saw the other day [link] . . . and it's your money!

In Debenhams for xmas, shipped by Keycraft, another of the new names this year I've seen several other - non-toy - novelty items from, in my travels. Decent re-sculpts of the much-pirated Matchbox figures - why didn't they just do new figures?!!

How cool is this? Too cool for night-school, that's how! A Subbuteo colour-change, night-light I caught in Robert Dyas, didn't get the brand and have already deleted the un-cropped originals, but I think it was about 14.99?

P is for Premiums

There have never been so many premiums around as there are now, they fill the gap left by the old 1960’s Hong Kong rack toys, or 1970’s Lucky Bags, so here is not so much a round-up, as just a quick over-view of some of the toys currently available.


Corinthian are responsible for several of the current crop, as well as Ben10 (which has totally escaped me, something on TV I think…shows my age!) and the Gormiti (Below) they are producing Zoo’s, Pets, Marine Animals and other “…in my pocket” toys, the brand-name originally produced/issued by a MEG/Kellogg’s/Matchbox consortium in the mid-late 1980’s as larger single colour or ‘dab-painted figurines around 40mm in a rubberized vinyl material.

These are around 50mm, in harder vinyl and follow the trend started by Galoob and Co. in the 90’s. The packaging talks of larger sets with more figures per box, I haven’t seen any so I’m guessing Toy Chains like The Entertainer or the ubiquitous Toys’R’Us?

The Gormiti have the added ‘bonus’ figures in unpainted gold or silver and being smaller (25mm – ideal for role-playing) come two per the smallest container. Like the Ben10 you get a small bag of cheap, undersized jelly-beans and a leaflet with some of the others in the range.

Zeta (Barcelona), Zàini (Milan) and a third company beginning with Z which I can’t find right now (all from Spain and probably all the same firm) have aimed at the Kinder market, with cheap toys from China in the Christmas Cracker mould, sometimes rip-off or direct copies of Giodi or Res Plastics (both Italy) or Bruder (Germany) products.

The subject of the egg (or other object, the ‘other Z’ did hollow-chocolate Bears a few years ago) has no relationship to the contents as you can see from the jet-fighter that came from this ‘Flintstones’ egg! Pink Princess gift-eggs were in Poundstreacher a year or so ago, probably the same set-up?

The current set of Lego point-of-sale collectables, in the style of trading cards, Character Options are fighting back with a Dr. Who set, the Dalek for which I have added to the ever-lengthening Dalek post, while an overview of construction-block figures has gone on the Other Collectables blog. And I mean ‘Fighting Back’, there’s been a ‘Free-Figure!’ war in the red-tops for a week or a few now!

Not illustrated here today are a set of Superhero eggs with 30mm hard styrene figures currently doing the rounds of local shops, and the endless out-put of Tomy in their shopping-mall dispensers…no chocolate with those but they’re the cheapest at a pound a shot!

B is for Blockmen (or Cubix as some are calling them!)

Just when I thought I’d got all the Daleks I could on the Toy Soldier page, I found another one! I’ll put it over there so you’ll have to go and have a gander separately.It all came about because I found a free offer of an Amy Pond figure.


They were being given away free in the paper the other day, and I thought they were Lego, but it turned out that they were actually Character Options, who already have various licenses for Dr Who stuff.

In fact the papers have been having a bit of a gift-war in the last few weeks, with Lego, these and other toys on offer most days! I was pleased to see they were putting proper feet on them…typical that they were in fact somebody else’s figures then, as the history of Lego figures has always been “Where our rivals lead, we will follow”!


Predating (the UK Toy Industry Award winning) Lego Space (1978) by some years was Tente Space from Spain, which was advertised on TV when I was still quite young, and I can remember it coming to Fleet Toys and Mum not letting us have it, because she’d heard on Woman’s Hour or You & Yours than it wasn’t compatible with ‘another leading brand’!

Early figures had non-moving arms (top left), while later figures (top right) were not only better articulated, but also had connection points (female connection on the back-pack, male on the ‘butt-tocks-sirrr!’), both versions of the figures had male-connectors on their feet. The soldiers that ran alongside them had no connectors (bottom right).

The back-pack usually had a 'Space' logo; to start this was a metallic blue, then a plain blue, before being reduced for the second design and finally dropped (bottom left).

The original Lego Space (top center) and other figures including the Nestlé ‘Nesquick’ Bunny, one of the first uses of Lego ‘minifig’s’ as an advertising premium by another company, some enemy of Spiderman with a shaped helmet and a Gamorrean Guard with an all-over body-shaper.

The two Martians make use of the design tested on/coming from the skeletons and – then – new Stap battle-droids from the Star Wars franchise. While finally the Pirates are by COBI, with the beard which clips on to a hole on the face of the ‘Captain’, mirroring - in construction - the figures produced by Res Plastics and others for Kinder in Italy in the mid-1970’s.

Once Lego had got the ‘collectable’ idea, and realised the implications of Adult Lego fans, they got well into the production ‘sets’. The first were the sprung-loaded Basketball players, and now a set of 12 new and ‘unique’ (nothing unique about something produced in its millions – if not tens of millions!) figures appear next to a million tills every 6-months or so.

The South-sea islanders from the ‘Pirates’ range, these have been added to over the years with Newspaper-freebies and the new collectable figure sets, and are among my favorites from Lego. Actually from ‘Enchanted Island’, they seem clearly related to ‘Achu’ from the Adventures range!

Lego were sliding into oblivion about 15 years ago, and it was touch-and-go whether the newly purchased (at the time) Star Wars franchise would save them, but it did!Here are 3 types of Stap battle-droid, the Dri-Decker droids and some Gungans!

Main picture shows the vinyl Snow-monster from Megabloks, which led-off the Lego 'Artic Explorers' by several years! The Lego version stands behind.

To the left are two more Megabloks, with more realistic feet, swiveling arms in all plains and better heads (two of which are to the right). Like Lego they started with a simple ‘smiler’, and added individual features latter, as all these makes are really following Playmobil/Little People, it’s all a bit achademic!

Bottom left, and the level of ‘realism’ is getting silly, with a chunk of hideousness from Megabloks from the Medieval/Ork? Range, this range also beat Lego to a Viking Longship, and having seen the price of the follow-up from Lego, I don’t know how they get away with it, or why some of these other brands aren’t more popular?!

Bottom right shows the tool-set that came with a Megablok's Spaceman.