A is for Animal Balls!

No, not a study of gynaecological gonads, so you can fuck-off, you weirdo! But rather, a continuation of the overview of inclusion toy bouncy-balls, through the imports of Henbrandt and their Harlequin lines. The guys who started it, as I found them first, and actually two lots, the Polar Animals, whose tub I kept, to keep them all in, and a set of cetaceans, which, with other issuers/carriers can be intermixed, either with each other, or with other sea-life, sharks or more conventional fishes.

 

There are three types of these, and, after the card disc type and PVC landscape type, represent three other types, of four really, being plain, large iceberg (upper-left), pack-ice-slush (lower-right), iceberg with snow (below) and half-and-half clear and opaque, with the opaque half providing the backdrop, which we have seen already, with dinosaurs.

 

Airfix Zoo size! But only if they are all juveniles! So small, so easily lost, and with probably 90% of them either incinerated or in landfill already, it's lucky I've got some to show, although they are still available, from Chinese wholesalers and importers like Ravensden.

 

Snow over iceberg, two seals, and unfortunately, the method of construction, or properties of the materials means that while I could extract the tiny animals, or figures, the other inclusions were fully melded with the clear ball material, and broke-up with it, instead of coming out whole.

 

Although described as PVC in the Tags (the animals and figures are) the balls are made of something else, like polybutadiene, or polyvinyl acetate (PVA (like white glue/woodworkers glue)) adulterated with borax, (sodium borate), or a silicon/cornstarch mix, and even when formed in separate layers, they become one entity, which I had to scalpel to pieces, to extract the inclusions of more interest!

 

Underside of one of the icebergs.

 

My full sample, less the cetaceans, a range of sea lions, seals and a walrus, with penguins and a polar bear, most of them not longer than the width of a thumbnail, yet really quite well-decorated. They would have been an absolute in our Christmas stockings as kids, but seem to be a late-1980's-onwards thing, unknown to the parents or kids of the 1960/70's?

 

Another sizer, 'ball scale', the penguin's maybe 10mm?

 

Tub sticker!

P is for Pint-sized Players

The more interesting of the inclusion-ball figures, being near HO-gauge compatible, and I managed to find quite a few, liberating most of them, keeping a sample in his ball, and not the first time we've seen them, the British Football Association (FA) having commissioned a larger one, which we looked at years ago!

 

I found nine, each in the same strip, but it was one tub, and I would guess that over time the factory may have produced other batches in other colours? Nine is an odd number for a set of anything, so the suspicion is I may have missed one, or even three? Check-out the teeny balls!

 

Obviously with the sizer being one of Airfix's smaller figures, at around 18mm, these footballers are a bit small, but as a background on a model railway layout, a bunch of them playing a game behind the marshalling yards would still look grand! Although Preiser do full teams!

 

Backgrounds have little relationship to the individual figure in the ball, and are cut-card discs with library photos of actual teams/players, among which, the Dutch national team (I think?) seems to dominate!

 

Variation of the first shot, no balls!

 

Here you can see how the magnifying effect of the ball makes the figure appear larger than he actually is, by some degree. Note also how the still-included 15-shirt has a red numeral, rather than the black numbers on the two I've removed from their balls . . . Ouch!

S is for Smallest of the Small!

Well, you may have thought we'd got as small as it comes when Brian B sent us that mixed lot of space/sci-fi kit figures', from New York, a few of years ago, but I think we're going an increment smaller now, with the smallest of the small, here branded to Henbrandt's Harlequin Brand, although these are available elsewhere, and in other branding, we saw the more recent Keycraft Global iteration of these inclusion balls, a while back too.

 

The first few posts of this new series will be looking at Henbrandt, simply because I bought an initial sample, over a few years (1997/8-2005/6'ish) from the same party shop in North Camp, long gone now, called The Balloon Shop, if memory serves (I think it's a Kebab place now), they also carried the last version, smooth-based iteration of the Lik Be (always, and still LB!) 54/60mm spacemen.

 

They let me have the tub, when I bought all the remaining arctic animals, so I keep all the 'inclusion balls' in it! As well as the Arctic animals, there were soldiers, footballers, and the smallest of the small, hobby skydivers, practising formations over micro-scenes!

 

As you can see, from the Airfix ceremonial sizer, they are about 3.5 or 4mm, no more! With the magnifying effect of the clear PVC ball, enlarging them to 5 or 6mm to the eye! The scenery, looking more like a 3D map, is made from PVC, as are the diminutive little figures, and I only found them in red and blue jump-suits.

 

Where/when I accidentally, or deliberately bought duplicates, I would dig them out with some scalpel-surgery, and apart from this set, most just have a card disc, or an opaque/solid-coloured 'other half' of the ball, as a curtain-backdrop, while a few have further 'scenic' inclusions. The parachutists are set a couple of millimetres above the disc, to further enhance the 3D impression.

 

I produced this little 'heads and tails' sketch (R = red, B = blue) of the four arrangements I found, at the time (2000's), for the archive, while the shots above were taken in 2021, when they turned-up during all the moving/sorting, which means the Keycraft Dinosaurs jumped the queue, but then, there's always order in chaos, if you follow quantum science!

B is for Benevolent Buys - 2 of 3

This first shot was a bunch of things from a charity shop in Cranleigh, same visit as the Post Office and includes the deer we've already seen (I should pop over there again, it was a while ago!), while the others are more recent, but a few interesting things?

 

A ceramic cat fairing, I've picked-up so many of these I wonder if I shouldn't do the 'Shire Album'! In point of fact, the 'proper' ones have been done, and most of the ones I've picked-up over the years, are the cheap, unrated/discounted (by the serious/dedicated collectors) copies, or Japanese imports, so that's not a viable idea! I'll do a page here one day!

 

A resin otter and Phidal Marvel or DC character, a capsule-toy dinosaur, distributor obscured, the glass vitrine deer we saw the other day, two teddy bears, one generic, the other from the Noddy set which is slowly growing, along with an inclusion bouncy-ball.

 

That inclusion; it seems to be a cake decoration, with icing spike!

 

Undersides of the two bears, one in plastic and marked 'Noddy Subsidiary, Empire Made' with code and date (no, I can't read them either!), while the generic, probably also a cake decoration is chalkware, made of a plaster composition.

 

 

This was one of those strange moments of serendipity bordering on synergy, I'd seen the [marked] Peter Fagan (which is why I could 'believe' earlier today!) in Blue Cross, and left it as a bit daft, then went next door to the DEBRA shop and found the 'Sitting Pretty' trio from The Leonardo Collection (real high-street jewellers fare from Lesser & Pavey), so, it seemed dafter to not grab the one, and wizz back next-door for the other! Kittens . . . in satchels . . . on the Internet!

 

1987 for the smaller, 1998 for the larger, and I'm guessing, given some cats' love of bags, that this is a common trope among these ornamental 'collectable' sets of cats, so we may find more!

 

This came with one or other of the above purchases, and I don't think it's Jade, but one of the many false Jades which can be marbles, or quartzes/quartzites, maybe a greenish onyx? There is a sub-collection of reptiles in a half-shell, which we haven't really looked-at yet, but one day!

 

And there is another one or two of this type there, as they are always popular tourist mementos (there are elephants too, and we've seen a lizard here, I think), things made of the local stone, are forever anchored in where they came from, if you know what I mean? Much nicer than a poured-resin, puffin, fridge magnet with Camber Sands marker-penned on it!

K is for Keycraft - Spring Fair, Earlier This Month

So, to the reason for clearing all the previous shots out of Picasa! This year they had a very big stand at Birmingham, and I shot a lot of stuff, the doing of which resulted in a useful conversation and the two free samples (squidgy mice and bendy astronaut) we've already looked at, a while ago, the posting of which led to Wood's juvenile reaction!

 

That spaceman for the last time, with some squeezy/stretchy Shuttles!

 

Stretch [Neil] Armstrong! He's transparent and filled with a clear liquid, which seems to have light-enhancing/magnifying properties, so you get maximum reflections off the glitter suspended in the filling, so he glistens like some universal god-head in a home-remake of 2001 - A Space Odyssey! He also comes in a purple shade.

 

Huge spiders, actuallu quite realistic red-Legged, bird-eating, Tarantulas, for when you want to make your mother hate you for a week, by coming up behind her at the sink and saying, "Look what I found, can I keep it!"

 

Those wooden robots are still in the inventory, and someone has folded some of these up so you can see how they fold and turn many ways.

 

The Hedgehog thing! Sqishies.

 

The golden fleece is still there!

 

Giant insects and another spider!

 

Squishy cats.

 

Smaller, but still large insects, with caterpillars.

 

The Dinosaur 'toob', they don't seem to have any others (farm, zoo, sea-life etc.)?

 

Bigger Dinosaurs.

 

The set we've seen here several times now, nice sculpts, with simple paint schemes which keeps them cheap. I'll try to get them all as I want to compare them with that WHSmith set from a few years ago, the poses are different, but the painting is similar, the eyes especially, and they may be two halves of a larger Chinese line?

 

Another line of medium-giant Insects!

 

New packaging or a third line? I think they're new?

 

Distribution point. I think the new Toyhouse in Basingrad has a two-sided one?

 

Butterfly inclusion-balls.

 

Giant slugs!

 

So, that's Keycraft properly represented on the Blog, and up-to-date on outstanding posts. I'll try to find the other Dinosaurs in the medium-sized set (there's only four illustrated on their website, and I've found at least eight different ones so far), and keep an eye on them, as they have had some cool stuff over the years, and will continue to, we hope!

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/

K is for Keycraft - Keycraft Fumfings

It wasn't the 2020 show report which got posted, it was a cross-reference to that spotted-dinosaur in the Tobar show report! These are the 2020 London pictures! And it clears up a few of the things already mentioned under the Keycraft Tag label!

 

Firstly, that the - illustrated on the box - yellow one was there in the stretchy monsters!

 

Note the mice (green box, top right) were already on the scene in 2020!

 

 

 

I obviously came close to posting the Keycraft report, as I'd scanned the catalogue for this image, if I recall correctly the catalogue was a vast tome rather like some of the old combined Hong Kong Toy Development Council ones. In the style of the mice, with holes in the 'moon' (very small asteroid!) for the stretchy astronauts to weave in and out of!

Likewise with Kittens and a ball of wool, Unicorns and a cloud.

 

Metallic stretchys, we've seen the similar dinosaurs (below) as part of the stash.

 

The rack-toys were also carried by Tobar, without the Fumfings addition to the card, it was in that guise we saw them here at Small Scale World previously, and as they may be in the stash, via Hawking's Bazaar in Basingrad or Camberley, before their demise?

 

Very-much in the vein of K&M (Wild Republic)'s toobs, these are cheapo-dino's from China, and are still in the inventory, indeed, I think they are in both forthcoming posts!

 

The Dinosaur balls and eggs! In point of fact, the balls are mixed animals, there is a post coming on these, as Henbrandt, from the 1990's, so we will be covering the whole 'inclusion' range in the fullness of time, although I think we did have a brief look at them back at the start of the blog, including digging a few out of their balls, to find they are teeny-tiny, even over their look in the balls, as the balls have a slightly magnifying effect on the models buried within!

 

Again, yellow, the obvious colour for the Smiley, was missing from the previous post, but is out there, I think I have one in the Bendy-toy tub, but a vintage one from the 1970's, not this chap? Along with the mini 'emoticon' one, from the capsule toy Brian Berke sent to the blog a few years ago.

 

Since obtained, Blogged and Tagged, with more images in the Parachute Toy page's queue! And seen in several brandings I think?

 

Those stretchy dinosaurs, I thought one set (the smaller ones on the right) was the same as the Henbrandt ones we looked at years ago, but I think they turned out to be subtly different poses. The slightly larger ones can be considered Keycraft / Fumfings originals, until they turn-up in other branding/s!

There's a possibility that the oddly-spelt Fumfings sub-brand, is as such, due to the fact that there was a previous Fun Things, which was part of the 1980'90's marketing of the small-scale Supreme/SP Toys stuff by the likes of Ackerman, Titan and co., in the researching of which, I seem to remember finding the name Fun things had been registered by a jewellers (?) by the 2010's?

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/