W is for White Buttons & White Ghosts

I shot the first of these in Sainsbury's a couple of weeks ago, found the second a few days later, and Brian Berke sent us the rest a few days ago, and they illustrate one of this year's Halloween trends - short, fat, stumpy white ghosts with cartoon faces!

 

The white button toys in Sainsbury's, among the only Bloggable novelties I found this year (there is another post's-worth), and technically, well, factually, they aren't white-button, they are pull-back & go, so I lied there!

 

I then found this Ghost candle (right) of similar size, both about 70mm high, in The Range, and this design of short (height-to-width ratio), fat ghosts with -  mostly - silly faces, is a real trend this year, with basically this design, found as soft toys of pillow-size, large ceramics of the TKMaxx decor-types, blow-ups and etc . . .

And these - branded to Daiso (of Japan) - are white-button's . . . I suspect, from the left, a jiggler or runner (the ghost), a jumper (the pumpkin) and, obviously, a walker Zombie? Not seen over here, maybe next year, or maybe in another region. And, we find the same basic design of the ghost, possibly with flappy arms? Thanks to Brian for the shots of this last trio.

 

Daiso/Seria seem to be a chain of 100-yen stores, like pound- or dime-stores, but a different value point, in Japan, and also operating to similar values in the local currencies of South Korea and Singapore.

P is for Performing in the Spotlights Candle Light!

Why has it taken me nearly eighteen years to work out you can use basic HTML tags in the title bar? Doh!

 

Just a quick box-ticker, I bought these at a Squires garden centre, last autumn (2024) and got them lost in Picasa somewhere, a set of novelty circus candles, by Smiling Faces, a bit cartoonish, but fun cake decorations, with wooden icing-spikes!

 

 

That's it really, they are what you see; a set of Novelty circus candles, by Smiling Faces!

 

H is for Hodgepodge Hash of Halloween Horrors

I'm hoping to get another post out before midnight tonight, and it should publish before the witching-hour in the US, as I get another five or six hours, after my shift, to facilitate the aim, but in case the UK readers miss it, before bed, here's a few other bits and bobs which have a seasonal element, and have mostly crossed my door in the last five or six weeks!

Remembering I found a set last year, when I saw these in B&M (Morrison's last year) I had to have them, and like last year's, they were lovely, in the same generic tutti-fruity sort of supposedly 'strawberry' way! Indeed, I would say they came from the same source, and I didn't see any others, not even in Morrison's?

 

I seem to recall these were Aldi, but they might have been Lidl? More edibles, best kind of seasonal stuff is edible stuff! Fondant-centred, [not very] monster mice, one a sort of truffle-cream with rice crispies, the other white-chocolate fondant, nom-nom-nomnivore! Obviously a shit-shot of the white one, but you can't re-shoot something, if you've eaten it!

 

Having grabbed two walkers, as the only thing worth buying in a garden centre last year, I felt I also had to grab these, while muttering darkly to myself about 'another side-collection', but you can blame that yellow Christmas stocking robot who survived for several decades in the attic! These are pull-overs, in that cold, clammy silicon type mega-soft, stretchy rubber, which a generic white-button body underneath, and while two are the same design under the paint, the other had no second version, and all three were equally distributed? Asda for the win!

 

I would add - having mentioned them - that the Garden Centres had very poor Halloween displays this year, and seemed to clear them quickly, like over a week ago, they are too desperate to get their Christmas 'markets' up and running!

I'd found these online, and don't know the maker/brand, but if I see them out and about, they will find home-room in that slowly growing 'walker' sub-collection, I actually found a bunch of the other white-button walker soldiers a while back, but forgot to shoot them before they went to storage, so there's a future post!

 

Finally, these came from Lidl about two weeks ago, ghost tea-lights! I think I might paint-in the eyes and mouths of the other two to match the white one, black paint for the orange one and white for the black candle?

Apologies for spelling but Mozilla ad-ons don't seem to be working properly tonight, and I have no spellchecker!

C is for Cake Candle Carriages

This has been sat in Picasa since we last looked at mini-trains (about a year ago?), Brian sent me the last image (below) as a follow-up, and I nearly ran it a few days later but wasn't happy with the Festival photo's, so dug the 'here' lot out and combined them with the storage lot, and then sort of lost interest . . . as you do sometimes? Anyway, mojo back now and time for this lot to leave the laptop and go and live on the archive-dongles, via the Blog!

Ancient and modern; the newer one behind and an older 1970's one in front, probably from the same source although I've got evilBay images of several different packaging/brands . . . and yes; the pale-orange wagon in the middle should be pink - a perfect example of the opposite-origin to a 'smoke free house'!!

The older one is manufactured from polystyrene with nylon or polypropylene wheels, and you can see the engine has undergone some discoloration as well, but the others seem to have fared better. The coupling is a hook-under-slot design.

Close-up with a pretty bog-standard 'Made in Hong Kong' mark.

The newer train (still available if you search-about I think?) is all polypropylene and the roof sections can be lifted-off the four circus-wagon coaches, not a practical solution to anything cake or birthday-related, but a method of allowing for two colours and a fancier design!

Each roof is attached to a pair of circus animals which, from the left are; tiger, lion, polar bear and blob!

The blob started life (in my head) as a bearded-lady, or - after further study - a mermaid, but is in fact, I suspect, meant to be a monkey?

The locomotives with their cow-catchers already put the trains firmly over the pond as far as operation goes, but in addition the clerestory-papoose wagons bringing-up the rear are also very North-American, and follow the role of our 'guards/brake' wagon. Indeed the external steps down to low platforms are an American design feature too.

You can see how the wheels follow the earlier design but are not identical and the coupling as changed to a hook an eye, but I still think they are from the same source as they follow both number of items and colour of items rules.

Moving away from the larger train brings us to the old George Musgrave design, also a candle carrier, but a much smaller scale; paint it khaki and you could use it as a troop train with micro-armour . . . at a touch!

We have looked at this one before, but more (Hong Kong copies) have come in so a quick recap. The Festival packaging in the background and an extended train in the middle-ground - mostly from my brother and my childhood's cakes! The cellophane bag has a Hong Kong piracy as is the little pink tank-loco to the front-centre.

A point to note here is that the Festival train will only take the very thin 'austerity' candles of post-war Britain while the HK trains take the current 'fat-boys'! The two trains making-up the bulk of the post - however - take both sizes and the larger Christmas candles for those heat-powered mobile tinkley-brass things (look again at the papoose wagons).

The passenger wagons from the colony are a tad smaller (and more colourful) but otherwise the same, pointing to some pantography, but the 'Wild West' locomotive is a re-design with a slimmer but taller chimney-stack and forward-set lantern, the whole being elongated slightly with larger gaps between the wheels.

I don't know if the tank-engine is a copy of a Festival model or something more original thought-up by the chaps in Hong Kong (it could be a scale-down of the Lone Star Tripple-O train tank-loco?), but I don't remember - as a kid - seeing anything other than the large 'Wild West' one, of which we also had a blue one which has long-gone to the great turntable in the sky!

In a different league altogether, and carrying no candles! From the shininess of the tracks I assume a modern casting, but probably from old Nuremberg-flat moulds, and I'm not sure if it's 'Der Adler' (the Eagle - Germany's 'Rocket') or just a generic early dampflok (one of those brilliant German words like krankenhause or krankenwagen which tells you exactly what it means!), and sent to the Blog by Mr. Berke as a follow-up to the previous micro-train post.

It's just charming! Although I'm not sure I'd want the job of human bridge-gauge!

T is for Two - Rack Toys - In The Shops Now!

Something current, something new, something waxy (?), something err . . . green! A couple of recent pocket-money purchases (not everything makes it into the Friday 'H is for ...' posts!), pound each; we buy it so you don't have to!

Well! They're bears, look . . . teaddy-bears, what's not to like! PlayWrite are the new branding of what used to be Success or WHC, parent - WH Cornelius. Still importing and jobbing wholesale tat to the corner shops and independents (where they still exist) using contacts they've established over more than 60 years in the business.

Light them and their little hearts melt! Murderers!

These were in Poundland, credited to GE of Willenhall (Wolverhampton) and while cheaper than the WHSmith set we saw awhile ago, seem to be the same set, only there's two more, and a new sculpt (bottom, middle), having based the others and coloured some with art markers, I'll leave these as they are for now, but Wild West dioramists may have other ideas!

C is for Candles...Three Candles!

Weird...it doesn't seem to work...I'm sure that was funny the last time I heard it! No matter...do you remember when Tom Clague sent the picture of the GI Candles, well I picked these up sans box/liner the other month from a cake-decorations shop in Basingrad.

But I hadn't recognised them from last April's post, and the way they were stuffed into the tray and hidden at the back of an old-school glass display cabinet/counter unit, I thought they were resin like just about everything else in the store, so passed on them as a rather odd take on the Hong Kong clone thing, when she actually had all five.

Close-up of one of the figures, a nice jade green wax and assuming the wick runs down through one leg only, you could end-up with a rather macabre battle-casualty...'Stumpy'! Tag list says Noup Design, and you know they're Matchbox clones.

[Later the same night...]

I forgot I'd photographed another one a couple of days later...the platoon runner/signaller guy, with that wick he looks like a particularly evil gnome! "Oooozzzziii Neinnmilllimeeeeetterrrrr!"

News, Views...etc...Space Candles

Tom Clague has sent me this picture, which he took in a store 'down-under' somewhere...

As Tom pointed out they are Matchbox sculpts...as candles! I did Google Noup Design and couldn't find them but I did find ten-stud Lego bars as candles and cartoon bombs with fuses!

Tom makes music of a trancy ethereal nature, and gives it away! Details of the new album - which features Airfix astronauts on the cover and mentions Gerry Anderson - are here;

Mood Processor

and the free download is here;

Dropbox

In other news, I updated the Foreign Terms and Figures pages yesterday and should add some more to the Khaki Infantry page today.