E is for Easter Bunnies - The Half-Sensible Bit!

Well, it was a bit of fun, and not as expensive as I thought it might be, some of them were only a quid or two, but I have got about 20-quids worth of chocolate rabbits to eat, just as I was sliming-down down that middle-age spread, having gone back to work, at something semi-physical!

 

But I didn't purchase every bunny I found, just a cross-section of the more normal ones, I regret the grinning Kinder Bunny, as it's really in the class I avoided, but I console myself with the fact that at least I know what it will taste like!

 

Aldi's had a plethora of Bunnies, including a colour variant of the one I obtained (left), which was the 'specially selected' hazelnut one, and a more colourful range of both upright and squatting milk-chocolate ones . . . maybe next year! The Aldi Rabbit also won several of the online taste-tests, so I'm saving it till last!

 

I seem to recall touching on the Rabbit Wars, a few years ago, when Lindt finally had to admit the basic shape predated their Rabbit by decades, allowing Aldi, Lidl and others to turn-on the taps which have led to today's choice. Since when there has been the Caterpillar Cake War, and regular flare-ups!

 

The Lindt, though, remains a nicely smooth 'European' chocolate, and comes in about six sizes, of which the larger ones tend to have more limited availability, and I only got the smallest three, having half a mind how the posts would develop!

 

I didn't see Lidl's Lindt clone, but they got too confident after the previous round of Rabbit Wars, and made one so similar (in packaging) they had to destroy tons of them a couple of years ago! But their upright did run to two colours, of which I took the blue, naturally, but pink was there!

 

Rejected uprights included the three licensed or 'product placed' Rabbits from Smarties, Milkybar and M&M's, all stupid looking, and while OK for kids, a further example of how a few corporations have literally turned us into consumer-sheep in a few decades, nasty!

 

And don't get me wrong, many years ago I asked for a Smarties egg, and still have the mug, it's one of my favourite mugs, but firstly, that was when A) an egg in a mug was as good as it got, and B) Smarties still tasted nice, and of chocolate, the last few times I've bought smarties I've regretted it, they're flowery-chalky pap now!

 

The three uprights I did end-up with included the Cadbury's Peter, because it was Peter, not because I like their chocolate, I don't! The Lidl Favorina and the Kinder, if I'd been thinking straighter, I'd have got the Thornton's and shot the Kinder, but given the amount of Kinder on the blog, and the fact there may be a toy worth a post in its belly, means it happened the way it happened!

 

Bare chocolate Rabbits were around, and while the Thornton's was expensive for what is now no more than another shelf-brand, I think most of their shops have gone now, just a few dozen franchise 'boutiques' mostly shared with other brands, like Ferrero (Kinder), while the Favorina (Lidl) was too daft-looking, another one for the kids!

 

While this one wasn't as big as its message gives the impression it was, to the casual observer, rejected for being daft-looking! I think I shot it in Aldi?

 

These three all seem to have used the same contractor, or the same commercially available 'off the shelf' mould-tool? From the left we have Tesco's, Morrisons' and Asda's, with only the wrapping being different, I will eat these in sequence, to see if the taste differs? Follow-up in twelve-months? Possibly!

 

The Tesco came in four different pastel wraps, I chose the green, while the Asda also came as a white-chocolate Bunny with a suitably pale artwork and polka-dots! Interestingly though, the online artwork for 'my' Asda Bunny shows a much darker-brown colourway, which may be last year's version, still being used for publicity shots?

 

Another upright and more animated, smaller, filled Rabbits from Nomo, these were in Morrison's, but I think I did see them elsewhere, and I was tempted by the upright, he would have improved the group-shot above, but my several experiences of gluten-free pies have not been good (the pastry is like cardboard), so I stopped myself, and will never know how good or bad they might have been!

 

I can't remember if I shot these in Morrison's or Sainsbury's, the latter, I think, but again too cartoony for me, and more eggy than Rabbity, so pretty much off the parameter list, before I saw them, but Belgian chocolate is never bad?

 

Speaking of Sainsbury's, theirs was by far the prettiest of the wrappings, with a rich greenish-gold that gave Lindt a run for their money, without aping the Swiss one so close as to risk a court-case, design was the closest too, but it wouldn't stand-up, having a bowed base, and needs to be propped!

A comparison with the Aldi and one of the similar trio, to compare with the previous shot.

 

If you go ordering Chocolate Bunnies online, you find lots of smaller, regional or bespoke brands offering similar fayre, of which I was rather taken by the semi-realistic wrap on this one from the Candy Store, but I wouldn't trust chocolate hollow-Rabbits or eggs ordered online to arrive in one piece! And with those ears it might be a Hare!

 

With the many types out there, the alternate wraps, and the regular changes in artwork, one hopes somebody, somewhere, is annotating them all, as I'm too busy with toy figures to disappear down a Chocolate Rabbit hole!

E is for Easter Bunnies - Breaking! Murder in Rabbit Town!

 

"They've killed Kenny!"

 

E is for Easter Bunnies

 

 

 The gathering of the Clan!

C is for Clipper and Cable Car!

A couple more novelty, card-packaging vehicles, and first we'll have another bus, but it's not flogging chocolate bars this time, rather tea leaves! Although, why do they call them tea leaves when they are little crumbs of tea-leaves? Leaf-tea I get, tea-leaves I don't!

 

You can make a decent collection of this stuff, and that's how I've ended up with a dozen or more (no, I only scanned these four, so the rest can wait for another day!), I'd bid on a junk lot of railway accessories, and when it can time to pay for and collect them, it turned out there were two boxes under the table, with the same lot-number, full of miscellaneous bus-stuff!

 

Our scalers are a little younger now, school-kid sized, next to the conductor, who's around the 40mm mark, and again we have a product-related number-plate. The '49' still runs from Clapham Junction up to Shepherd's Bush and back, I have myself ridden it once or twice, but not for over a decade. Clipper - who still seem to be going - aren't actually on the route, being from the West Country!

While the Cable Car contained four Wispa bars. I think these might have been a present from someone who didn't know me too well, as I hate Wispa bars, a cheap, claggy rip-off of Aero, and with hardly any bubbles, quite disgusting, and I thought they'd ceased to exist (Caramac just died, so it's Gold Bars or nothing kids!), but was disappointed to see a heap of them in Sainsbury's this afternoon!

D is for Double Deckers and Double Decker's

Which is important because one of them is a single decker! B is also for a Blast from Christmases Past!

 

Christmas (and Easter) is a time when all the chocolate manufacturers, some of the biscuit makers and a few other snack-food guys like to play with the packaging (and pricing) as part of the consumer-fest which is the Western holiday season, and Cadbury's iconic Double Decker bars used to pull all the stops out, I haven't seen anything like this for years though, now it's all more blatant 'multi-packs' . . . sniff!

 

The actual, big red double decker 'London' bus, even though it's actually in the distinctive orange of the Double Decker bars, and it contained four bars so it's a bit broader that UK roads would allow-for, especially with all the cycle lanes we have now!

 

Posed with two of the 30mm copies of Commonwealth national costume ladies/dolls of the world, and calling for a bus to stop with an Alpine Horn wouldn't endear you to a British bus crew, no matter how multicultural the area!

 

Please note: the mug says 'I think, therefore I am not a Daily Mail reader'!

The weird thing about this is that it came out long before the UK had 'bendy-busses', yet was almost certainly a UK specific issue? It's also presaging the corporate colours of Stagecoach, many years before the chaos of privatisation! And I hope you've noticed the number-plates, on both models!

This too, was four bars, but two in-line stacked pairs (double-decked Double Deckers!) so is better proportioned. The Esquimau is slightly overdressed for our climate, and waving a raw, unwrapped fish is not going to go down well with the other passengers, these girls aren't really helping themselves fit-in with the locals, are they?!

H is for Haha-Haha-Haha-HA!

Or; follow-up to Smash mashed powdered potato Martian Alien Robots!

I have an annoying habit of shooting a post (probably leaving it Picasa for an average of six months!), editing the images, maybe taking  a few more, doing the text/blurb, and then chucking it up on the Blog, trying to check for typo's and finally publishing it, then, and only then, I think "Ooh I wonder what's on eBay related to these?"!

And - imagining all the Loyal Readers have had the same thought, I then rush off to eBay and grab something I probably didn't really need, before any other bright-spark does . . . the other day, after publishing the Smash Martian pencil-tops, was one of those occasions!

And this is what I found! Aren't they lovely, I found some Marx stuff and a chunky bendy-toy too, but these were affordable! Small polystyrene badges of the robots as 'flats', with chrome-effect plating blue-on-white and silver-on-red and green, with a standard safety-pin heat-welded into the rear for attaching to clothing. No obvious maker - for Cadbury's Smash.

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Sci-Fi Figures

Another in the occasional PC-clearing series of the stuff I've already shown somewhere else! Some of which will have been seen here too, but the idea is to get all new images up, or do a bit of extra box-ticking!

"For mash get Smash!", the almost immortal (if you're of a certain age) tag-line jingle that ended the humorous TV adverts' for Cadbury's instant mashed-potato powder! Technically 'Martians', they appear to be Robots (the actual Martians never being seen?), they were such a successful campaign several toys resulted, these pencil tops being possibly the most common, but a chunky Bendy exists and a Marx clockwork wind-up.

Argentine copy (pink) of the female space warrior (black) from Britains compared, the lower shot is out of focus (obviously) but the upper one was a poor choice of background, so I've put them together as I can't re-shoot at the moment, they're buried in a shipping container!

We saw these not that long ago, but I'd shot them for the Faceplant group, so here they are again! Mattel GUTS! Laser Fighters space figures, the helmets are all different, as are weapons, while equipment layout and colours also differ from figure to figure, so more a bunch of space pirates or mercenaries than an organised force!

We should have had these here too, in a show report, but I can't remember posting them, so it may still be in the queue somewhere. I did post them as shelfies from someone else's table once though - Vision von Anderen Sternen or 'Vision of Other Stars'.

Elastolin's hysterical lobster-hula-cow lady ('Venus Amazona') and 'Saurus Saturn' the turquoise space-ant eater! These were as rare as rocking-horse shit, but when the factory shut down a huge heap of them turned-up and I think everyone who wanted a set got one! I previously dubbed them Rubber-girl (catalogue No. 8304) and Dino-grinch! 8300.

I was a small-scale collector at the time but can remember loads of them on several tables at the Herne show, only to see people wanting pretty silly money for the few on show up in London! I sort of paid silly money for these, but they don't turn-up now like they did 15-odd years ago - because they are all in collections! And to be fair I didn't pay what I know some are happy to pay for all four!

The Astronaut (8310, who didn't get a name . . . Raumy?) was originally the most expensive (separate helmet?) at DM 1,50 pf. (about 30p in the 1970's?), with 1.25-each for the previous two and only ,90-pfennigs for 8302 the 'Jupiter Gorilla', or Crab-Taz the Lobster-man! And while some sources claim they were game-pieces for a board game (Perry Rodan?), they were issued in a bilingual (German French) clear carton.

Clearly though they were some kid of experiment or one-off, from Elastolin, the non-standard bases, painted different colours, singling them out as not the norm, and reputed to be sculpted by a Max Weißbrodt, they didn't take off, or didn't get the head-office support they needed, and consequently a shed-load turned-up at the end! The catalogue numbering though, suggests the line was to be expanded?

Finishing with a question-mark, anyone know who this is or what toy-line he's from? The hole in the back of his helmet and rather smoothly-finished back-pack seem to point to a missing attachment or fixing of some kind, he's nylon or polypropylene and about 54mm, I suspect he's quite modern or even relatively current? Although, he also looks a bit 1980's 'straight-to-video' post-apocalypse punky!

T is for Two - New to Blog Food Premium Capsules

Staying with the theme for a day or two, these have both come in recently, although in the case of the Cadbury's Frog it was actually 2020, that's an indication of how long I've been stuffing things in the Kinder &Etc. Round-up folder, and how long since we last looked at such things, well over due for a file-emptying!

Some of you may have encountered the pop-culture mythology of these, or at least: Freddo's chocolate-bars, online, but it's a mythology that post-dates my childhood? I don't remember them at all, but a lot of stand-up comedians seem to have at least one stock joke on the subject of the economic research value of a Freddo's price in any given era!

Anyway, once your brand-mark has cultural status at street/classroom/playground level, it's de rigueur to tear the arse out of it with further line-products, one of which is this pack of Chocolate-Buttons (which had their own mythos when I WAS a kid!), branded to Freddy (is he Freddy or Freddo?) Frog.

Not something I need, but I think a few have come-in in various Charity Shop mixed bags, and while I tend to send them back with one of my donations, I often photograph the stuff fisrt, so we may yet see a box-ticker collage here, in a few years! Swivel-head Funko-Pop knock-off!

While these Wow Eggs are in the newly reborn Izzies in town, Izzies were/are the local indie' discount store, who were threatening to close-down a while ago, but when Baker's went first, they hired one of its best men, and moved into a new store where the old Poundworld Plus was, a unit which has been empty sine I Blogged its demise back in 2018.

Except they've changed their name from Izzies, and I can't remember what the new name is! Their toy section remains half-and-half Tobar novelties and big-box 'Made in China' generics with light and sound, but these are new on the counter - they never did edibles before the move.

Manufactured/Distributed by Meeran of Harogate, Lincolnshire, they may be Turkish in origin, most of the lesser brands seem to connect there or Spain, but Italy too has rivals to Kinder, and I think the former Yugoslavia has claimed a brand or two (I have about 20 now, in the archives?). Also it's obviously channeling the Kinder Joy concept of a puddle-pudding with - single-use - scoop/spoon!

Generic capsule toys, I've had a version of that camel (roughly 1:72nd) in the micro-animal's unknown zone for years, they are OK for what they are, small rubber animals, I'll get a couple everytime I go in there, if every egg is going to contain something 'archive' worthy, they're better value than Ferrero's or the Poundland lot? The Ceratopsian is very small in scale!

B is for Bunnies - 3 - Chocolate Bunnies and Bits!

As I was replying to Brain's eMails last night it crossed my mind I hadn't checked Picasa for any 'Easter' tagged folder/s waiting patiently for their day, so I did and found one with two images, to which I added a third later, this is the crumbs of Easter, at the end of a nusy weekend on the Blog!

A Cadbury's mini 'super-bunny' compared with two sizes of the famous Lindt gold bunny, I think this was my edible haul at Easter 2019, when the world was still sane'ish! And - to be honest - I think most of them are supposed to be hares (Osterhase), but we ran with a Bunny trope this year!

Brian sent these last May and while the aim was a Wind in the Willows post, I felt they were eggy enough for an Esater post, I think they are Ceramic gift-shop ware, but they could be chalkware and I don't know who the maker/branding is?

Downloaded these from an eBay lot a while back, couldn't resist them! They are by Goula (who's wooden station with plastic flats (nice book-ending to the days posts!) we saw on the Blog here - fourth image down), and they too are all wood . . . and wire.

That's about it for today, Happy what's left of Easter!

Z is for Zoo Animal Premiums - Update

A quick update on the Zoo Animal premiums post ( Here ) of a few weeks ago, thanks to the Philosophic Toad for sending this image in of the 1972 issue of Zoo Animals;

This shows the 8 Animals as issued in 1972 (the date I couldn't tie down in the previous article?), but raises the questions of where Ratcliffe gets his list of 16 animals if there were only another 8? Why if this date is correct (it appeared in TV Comic and Look-In Sep/Oct '71 in one of two layouts) did they carry a set of 8 animals the same as the 1971 set, but remoulded, only to re-issue them again as a set of 16 later in the decade? And/or; Were the set of 16 taken from some of the smaller animals issued in Europe as Bubble-gum premiums as I suggested last time, or not issued by Kellogg's at all?

Note that this issue is related to/promoted by Puffa Puffa Rice and Coco Krispies, while the '71 set included two other brands; Sugar Smacks & Sugar Stars.

I suspect the set of 16 were not Kellogg's Frosties at all, but one of the other mentioned products, or an as yet unmentioned (in connection with these) brand...such as Peak Freans, who you'll remember had got involved with the equally internecine 'Soldiers of the World'. Leaving The two sets of 54mm'ish animals for Kellogg's, both coming from whoever (Tudor*Rose?), the second set being uprated and added-to for bagged rack-toys or a second customer such as Cadbury?

It's still not very clear and yet again I've got three web-pages open and two files next to me (at least I haven't had to cover the sofa this time!) but still seem to be confusing myself, let alone the reader! So I will try to redo both articles into one and delete the two older ones soon, in the meantime you'll have to jump between the two to try and make sense of the nonsense!

Also turning up in the last few weeks are this lot of vaguely HO/OO copies of Britains 54mm Zoo Animals, they are marked with a faint HONGKONG and probably came in Christmas Crackers of the 'Budget' variety.

Also Arlin Tawzer got in touch with an image of a set of animals which while similar to the (already similar) Dunkin and Kellogg's/not now Kellogg's (?) small scales contains some very different animals, I can't get hold of the Copyright holder so can't show it here, but the set is identifiable by a Water-Buffalo and an African Elephant with a very pointed back along with a small scale version of the above Rhino (not the blobby, cartoonish one of the other sets), also colours are different with dark greens and dark blues. If anyone has an un-copyrighted image of this set - complete - we'd love to see it here!