F is for The Franchise Continues!

Not much new in the way of Phidal for a while now, but TKMaxx gets regular updates, usually of sets we've seen before, or stuff which I don't need or want here, but this was just about within the wider reach of the Blog, so I grabbed one.

 

There's a certain irony, that a set of films in which the various movie-kids have quite eclectic collections of toys, unlike our thematic boxes/tubs of wooden bricks, Action Man / Lego / Meccano / Airfix / chemistry set or model railway stuff, has given rise to a range of toys which now means millions of real kids have models of those self same eclectic mixes! All very Warhol's pop, eating itself.

 

I haven't seen Toy Story 4, nor any of the others, for that matter, but I've seen enough clips, and read enough to know that '4 is a slightly darker work, with the toys meeting new toys, falling out, getting back together, saying goodbye to each-other and generally, reflecting more on the fragmented life of an adult? 

 

There's supposed to be a Toy Story 5 in the works, and it's said to be darker still - Toys meet Tech; will TS10 have the toys suffering sun-fading and plastic disease, while their human owners, all grown-up, lose their homes to unemployment, or die of cancer in childbirth?

 

Cover.

 

Contents - the play-mat looks naff.

 

From the top left; Ducky, Officer Giggle McDimples (supposedly based on Polly Pocket toys, with a bit of Paw Patrol, she bears a remarkable resemblance to Lucy from  Peanuts?), a Combat Carl Junior, Duke Kaboom (who has since survived a law-suit from the estate of Evel Knievel), Forky the Spork, Woody, Bo Peep, Buzz,  Gabby Gabby and Bunny - Ducky and Bunny are carnival prizes, sewn-together at one point!

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Six, That's It!

The last of the Stateside shelfies sent to the Blog by Brian Berke, from New York, and I think this is the last of the stuff from the Queens' novelty stores or touristy speciality stores?

 

Buzz!

 

Big Truck!

 

Batman!

 

Not my scale, but an interesting line-up of unusual - to me - figures, from all these new movies I haven't seen, I guess! A dearth of accessories, though, so larger sets needed first? Or are they hidden behind the card/paper inserts?

 

There are so many Disney Princesses now, including lots of 'solids' who have come into the collection, in mixed lots, especially those from Charity Shops, that an ID page may be a future project? The early ones are seared into our brains, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty with their distinctive dresses, but in the last 20/30 years, they have been joined by dozens of new ones, some of whom are known for more than one outfit!

 

There is another glider/hand-powered 'plane post in the long-queue, and as classic rack-toys go, you can't beat flying stuff! The upper one though seems to be a sort of mini Nerf gun!

 

Couple of 'UFO' or 'Space Disc' launchers, ubiquitous when I was a kid! Many thanks to Brian for getting all these shelfies to us in time for Rack Toy Month, and I seem to have got back in the habit of posting, so I'll try to carry the momentum into September!

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Five of Six

The penultimate batch of Brian Berke's rack toys shelfies, and  a few more of interest, but more of a box-ticker for the Tag-list, although I know some people have interests different to mine!

 

Didn't know Buzz had a cat . . . Alien cat at that!

 

Imaginext, a Fisher-Price/Mattel property, gets a fair few mentions on Little Rubber Guys, usually in the 'what is this' section, due to the number of parts and constant new production cycle, and there are some interesting things among the sets and accessories, but the figures are semi-deform.

 

Monster trucks!

 

Interactive dinosaurs.

 

Could use a coat of paint!

 

Nice, it's surprising how many sea-life sets there are out there, or probably not surprising if you were always a fan, but we had mostly Britains farm and a bit of zoo, with some Cherilea and Crescent animals, as kids, I never remember sea-life, but there's a growing side-stash of sea-life in the collection, with people like Marx having a stab.

 

More Hunson, I thought these were flocked, at first glance, but i think they are one of the new soft-feel polymers? Thanks as always to Brian for taking the time and trouble to go out and find this stuff and get the images to us.

S is for Shelfies - A Roundup II

Mid Jan' found me back at The Range, looking for paint or something . . . cat tower? And I spotted these, they're . . . 

. . . not the best shot, but it was an afterthought, I just can't believe the shite being offered and/or bought by people, even as the planet dies in front of their eyes! TKMaxx/Homesense, B&M, Dunelm and The Range are full of this stuff, a sort of hollow-cast/slip-cast resinated clay, they are all supposed to have a butterfly on their nose, most just have a jagged-hole, was it customer vandalism, or did they unpack like that from Asia, and why have they been left there? If we're still here in 20-years; I'm going to be pleasantly surprised!

A few days later found me back at TKMaxx, and shooting HTI again, but not in search of bathroom accessories, nor in Basingrad, but popping into the Farnborough Gate one (bigger, but not necessarily better than Basingstoke) after visiting one of the other stores (probably during the Laptop debacle!), and the reason I said maybe firefighters in the previous post is because I already knew there were pit-crew!

Obviously not interested in the large carry-case (his tail is in the red card compartment), but the smallies, which as I mentioned the other day, is one of my aims to catalogue and ID, as many of as I can, on a single page at some point, so that's a set of five, courtesy of an outfit called Geemac Sales & Marketing  - box ticked!

This is a different kind of shelfie all together, shot in the Phillis Tuckwell charity shop here in Fleet, it's a hand-made, box-diorama, doll's house and I thought (afterwards) that the left-hand figure could be converted to Pooh Bear with the addition of a longer nose and some yellow-paint! It was 20-quid which is steepish for a charity shop, but a lovely thing!

These were fun, but a bit too juvenile to purchase (although I have some similar Llamas in resin so who am I? To cast aspersions!), therefore I shelfied them in passing. New from Phidal Publishing, and possibly aimed at even younger readers than the My Busy Books, you get four models per My Mini Busy Book.

These were also new from Phidal; large-piece puzzles (no figures), magnetic sketching sets (also no figures) and 'Tattle Tales' with figures, but more on them in a future post, suffice to say they are a disappointment!

 

I'm gussing these are all part of the 'Cost of Living Crisis', priced as they are, the same as old Busy Books used to be, while the Busy Books themselves (there are one or two in the queue I think) have gone up a pound to £6.99 here

P is for Pop is Eating Itself

I've mentioned it before, but this is a particularly sublime example of the genre, as two sets of Tolkein stuff hit the streaming platforms, not quite as Worhol'esque as Star-Wars-Super-Deform-Angry-Bird Pencil Tops, but here, we are looking at a real-world toy line, of characters in a fictional back-story animated movie of fictional characters in an older animated movie franchise, who are fictional toys, it doesn't get much more navel-gazing as an example of 'all out of ideas'!

We/re back with Phidal for the toys within toys licensed toys! Only ten items again, which seems to be the new normal under the cost of living crisis, but the playmat will iron-out at some point in the future and provide and excellent backdrop for space photo's.

Good guys, from the left for those who haven't caught the movie are; Buzz Lightyear (obviously!), Darby Steel (a lady, on parole); Commander Alisha Hawthorne (Buzz's trainer); granddaughter, Izzy Hawthorne and Maurice "Mo" Morrison.

Bad guys, Zurg (purple) and one of his automaton Zyclops's, I am one of those who haven't seen it, although it looks like fun, but I believe it's all about Zurg being a 'Bond villian' (in space) and Buzz saving the world!

Other items, Buzz;s ship (XL-01), an irritating (I'm sure) R2D2 knock-off and a cat, Sox the robotic cat to be precise! We make allowances for cats even if they are the annoying kid/Zoony/Jar Jar Binks/Daggit character! And I don't know if it is; I haven't seen the movie!

T 'other sides! Out there now, must be one of the latest sets from Phidal, the Movie only came out at the beginning of the summer, and nice figures . . . as styles change in the real world, so they change in pop-culture and - space armour wise - I feel these would go well with Halo figurines of similar size - 60mm'ish.