Who knew, who knew it had double-B's, who even thought to think of knowing you might have to spell-check yaba-daba-do? But there you go, the World's favourite allegory of the 1950's, middle-class, suburban, American 'nuclear-family'? Actually the world's ONLY allegory of the 1950's, middle-class, suburban, American 'nuclear-family', but I'm not splitting hairs!
Imperial Toys, these are a hard polystyrene, and hugormous, as we will see in a mo'. A ridiculously sublime exemplar of everything weird about my life alongside the rest of humanity in the late 20th/early 2st centuries. It makes absolutely no sense, is full of plot holes, anachronisms and plain idiocy, yet, it is absolutely perfect, and I don't know many people who actively dislike its daftness!
Marked Hong Kong and possibly cake-decorations, these are smaller and polyethylene. Fred and Wilma Flinstone and their neighbours Barney and Betty Rubble, live life as many american families were, or aspired to in the late 1950's, even to having cars, pets and salery-jobs . . . in a rock quarry, of course!
These are vinyl, and unmarked, so maybe knock-offs, or more recent playset stuff? Clearly based on the next lot down, but I've loaded them as I shot them. What would they make of the world we've created since, and I mean the people who watched as well as the characters!
Polyethylene copies (probably from the same tools) of the old Marx Minature Masterpiece set, these will almost certainly be from Rado Industries / Ri-Toys, but were not offered to the likes of Marksmen. Both Rabbit Angstrom and Willy Loman were, in their own ways the epitomes of Fred Flintstone, they both lived in and afforded (with troubles) the newish houses in suburbia, which they confidently hoped their kids' would, too.
Eraser to the left, Marx original to the right, as a sizer. Now, their kids can't get on the property ladder, and the longevity so sought 60-years ago, is the new millstone round the necks of people who have to sell those houses to afford healthcare over the pond, or 'downsize' for the cost of living, here?
Newer stuff from the eminently forgettable 'live-action' remake, along with a Bullyland Dino the Dinosaur - Wilma's been cut-off her base. But elsewhere in Europe, where they understand liberal-socialism, or social-responsibility, things are a little better, CEO's do not earn the same ridiculous amounts they do in the English-speaking world, healthcare is now usually better than Britain's, wages are higher and disparity is lower, while their old and infirm are cared-for, looked after.
Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, these are Imperial too. Done in a faux-vitrine style. All that promise, all that promise of a brave-new-world and a bright-tomorrow, built on the '"white heat of technology", and it's come to nothing for most, and the poverty index is climbing into the middle-class, even as we create more billionaires who've never done a day's hard work in their lives, either as aluminum-siding salesmen or rock-quarriers.
It's no coincidence that the Simpsons, knocked the Flintstones off their perch as the most financially successful and longest-running, network television, animated series ever, the gentle parody holding the hope of the former, replaced by the cynical, near-hopeless, satire of the latter.
