T is for Tops...on Pencils!

I know! But now that I've combined this page with the 'Other Collectables' page you'll just have to bare with it on the odd piece-of-shite posting!! They do after all have their place in the cultural history of toys and things...what '70's child didn't have at least one Munch Bunch?

The Kellogg's super-hero Snap, Crackle and Pop are actually more recent, being mid-80's of thereabouts (I don't have my 'Cluck' at the moment), and I'm missing one pose of Crackle, they only came in the four colours shown and seem to be Ashford Mouldings products, there were other sets in the same style - but not Pencil Tops - involving both these guys and other characters from the Kellogg's universe (Coco monkey, Tony tiger etc...).

Next to them are two sets of Paddington Bear figurines, the top row being a soft silicon rubber with red or blue plug-in hats (the black one was stolen from a spare hard vinyl one for the photo-shoot!) and below them the harder/more rigid PVC figures with red or black hats just mentioned.

Odds and sods. the Wonder Woman is - again - a more recent product, I think it came from Tesco's about ten years ago, and is technically a 'Dangler' not a 'Top'. The big silver monster (Minator?) is the only one with a mark; CH.

Danger Mouse sort of completes the Super-heroes, while how many Highland Pipers based on the Zang/Herald/Britains figure can a man have in a collection?! I must have a couple of dozen now from the Zang original through various Herald and HK-for-Herald,to other UK company's copies, Hong Kong pirates, key-rings, whiskey mascots, and this topper.

Like the upper row of Paddingtons, the two figures bottom left are made from a silicon rubber and bare more than a passing resemblance to the Poopa-Troopers that used to come with little parachutes.

The last shot is just a few odds, I'd like to find a Jerry to go with my Tom, the dinosaur is flocked, and the green parrot/penguin will give succour to 'Folgor' the idiot Italian who once accused me of "...Collecting little ducks and things..." on a forum!

The Munch Bunch...or are they Fruit Salads...or Mr Fruity? They are all three (and probably more beside?) I don't know how many of these there were altogether, I remember as a kid having a purple blackberry, red strawberry and tomato and a rather sickly creamy-white onion, while among others not shown here there was a black something (version of the green pepper above?) and another corn - with the leaves as a jacket? Green apples, oranges and orange pears, a yellow gourd...

Shown here are at least six types;

*Plug-in hat - long legs
*Moulded-on hat - short legs
*Plug-in 'greenery' - long legs
*Moulded-on greenery - short legs
*Moulded-on greenery with key-ring/charm bracelet loop - short legs
*Nothing on the top, nor hole for anything - long legs

I'm guessing the blue 'Pineapple Pol' (the only one who's name I can remember) is a more modern/recent version in a non-realistic colour...and I hope the brown one is a sausage of some kind?

Someone with limited space and limited budget, looking for a hobby could do worse than to collect these alone, it would take a year or two to track down a good example of every version and you'd need a side-collection of pencils to display them!!

L is for Like LEGO - But Impossible!

Bought this on eBay the other day, I have a soft spot for Lego, and having been talked into selling half mine for bugger-all-money following a flood in my storage unit, I'm now clearing the rest on eBay, but still have a vague interest in the stuff and things related to it.

First inspection looked promising, hard to tell whether it was German or Swiss, but my guess is one or the other (so - knowing my guesses it's probably Dutch!), very well engineered but immediately it became apparent that for such a simple looking vehicle (in the photo on the box it seems to be more simple than the classic 1970's Legoland trucks) there were an awful lot of very small pieces.

These are they. The pile of tiles and number of white junction-bricks led me to believe they had provided spares to help the budding Lego traitor explore his imagination with this new system, I was wrong, although the instruction sheet tried hard to keep me in the dark!

To build one of the old Legoland articulated trucks would take me five or ten minutes, I would use everything in the box except the one or two spares they always provided of the very smallest pieces, and the finished model would look just like the pictures/drawings on the box.

This photograph is the result of about 8 hours work over two evenings, some of the bits left in the pile of 'spares' should actually be on the vehicle, but where is anybodies guess. It took over an hour to get the layer of protective wax off the 6 tyres (and the carpet will never be the same), the fifth-wheel arrangement is not right, and the whole thing was 30% guess work as the instructions are clearly - less than clear.

Add to that, the wheels stick out like a wide load and the whole thing is less realistic than the crudest of eary 70's Lego vehicles.

Yeh...Baks...or Herbert, or Herbert by Baks, the system you've never heard of because they produced an over-engineered product with instructions you couldn't follow, aimed at an age group who couldn't have dealt with it, and hoped it would knock Lego off it's perch!