O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Animals

Welp, seems to be turning into the animal end of the week! Back to Whitton, back to June, back to a Sunny day among friends, and it's the animals, now; prehistoric, wild, farm and domestic, and with a couple of Vitacup to start - I detect a theme!

 

A couple of Vitacup boxed animals, who seem to have been sold separately to any jar of bedtime cocoa-powder, but, two shillings & sixpence wasn't cheap in the early 1960's! So it may be that the price label is for animal AND drink?

 

And, further to the two previous posts, if both sets were twelve, that leaves a 24-count, which, with the other mostly domestic or woodland animals, means probably not enough room for three fallow deer, but there must have been three sets for a 36-coumt? Note their spelling of 'Ivorene'.

 

Already seen, they snuck into a Rack Toy Month box-ticking exercise!

 

A bunch of 'unknown' dinosaurs, the T-Rex is a particularly good sculpt.

 

Mixed, small animals, the blue monkey seems to have had a plug-on hat? While I forget if the ostrich premium flat had a branding or not. The crocodile is a 'rubber jiggler' type, while the monitor lizers may be Kinder?

 

Marking on the base elicited nothing from Google or evilBay, but it looks recent, and is KFS a subsidiary of Kentucky Fried? I don't think so, nothing about Animal premiums in searches ether, but?

 

Three polar bears, the left-hand one, despite not being the best quality copy of Timpo, you're likely to find, may be Blue Box, while the right-hand one is a more generic Britains copy, while in the middle, a modern vinyl-PVC jobbie!

I was sure these were Charbens, but now I'm not so sure! Early British plastic for sure, and very clean for their age, if not Charbens, who, Hill, Cherilea?

 

Mixed small farm, some Hong Kong, some better, hen & chick are PVC rubber.

 

Probably from a bagged rack-toy set?

 

Chambourcy nodder premium, the ring may have been for a cord or ribbon to hold the animal on to the 'petit-suisse' cheese product, or possibly for a keyring, a bit of a survivor, by the looks of it?

 

Mini-animals for future sorting, with a quite well painted OBE of the Airfix draft-horse, a Merit pony to it's right, and a bunch of piggy-wiggies!

 

Modern'ish sheep-dog, which I may already have, and might have ID'd somewhere, a fox who looks like he's from some larger scale action-figure, or doll type play set, and a - probably - premium peke, but he could be a better quality Hong Kong rack-toy?

E is for Eye Candy - Wild Minimals!

E is for . . . will be a new trope here, a single shot of interest, or a couple of shots, with a bit of blurb, maybe maximising Tags, illustrating a particular feature or specific point, or just showing a nice image!

 

Today it's some of the many sets of 'Minimals' as I call them, the smallest size of commonly commercial plastic animals, approximately 30/40mm-figure compatible, but actually 'unit sized', so never to true scale with smaller animals in real life rendered larger, and larger animals in real life rendered smaller.

 

Two bags of loose, but clean samples (bottom left), probably complete or near-complete (all these sets tend to a content count of between 8-16 items), and then clockwise from the top left; Ackerman Group tub, 'Play Works' from The Works bag, Kandytoys blister-card, Boland BV of the Netherlands and Henbrandt (second set I think - newer card, we looked at both passim), both header-carded bottle-bags.

 

The contents of these sets are always fun, with an almost guaranteed Elephant, Giraffe and Lion, with Tiger and/or Leopard/Cheetah/Jaguar type (occasionally a black panther), then a Hippo and/or Rhino. Most sets will have some kind of Monkey or Gorilla, some have both, and a Zebra is almost as guaranteed as the three standards.

 

Then it gets a little less predictable with Camels or Kangaroo's to the fore and some kind of ruminant, either a North American / European Deer/Moose/Elk, Bison/Wisent or an African / Asian Gazelle/Antelope type or Buffalo/Wildebeest, better sets have a Bear, but it can be black, brown or 'polar', and usually only one, if present!

 

More off-the-wall items in bigger sets might include an Alligator/Crocodile type, an oversized Turtle or an equally enlarged Penguin! There have also been several insectivore/Ant-eater types over the years, and occasionally a - usually poorly sculpted - Hyena thing, or Wild Boar/Warthog! And these mini-sets are never usually more than two-fifty or three-quid - proper pocket-money toys!