P is for Partially Seen Elsewhere - Acédo African Scene

I posted my small sample of these elsewhere, the same day, I think, but I shot a better sample on Mercator Trading's stall at the show (last London show of last year?), so we can have a better look at this French production now.

Acédo, the plastics 'arm'  of Domage et Cie (Domage and Co.), the company also behind Aludo (aluminium production), are responsible for this little set-up! Obviously made in polymerised cellulose acetate, and apparently depicting a peaceful, or civilian take on African life in a rural village, sans modernism!

 

I wondered about the trees and huts, as they looked a bit homemade (huts) and converted from something like Playmobil (trees), but a quick Google that evening revealed similar huts and some similar, but very different-shaped trees, so I think the pieces were made as flat sections, or bare boughs, and then assembled, with heat, glue and hand-held pyro-gravure work - to hide the joins. Portable hairdryers were invented in the 1920's, and can be set 'too hot' (for scalps!), so all very doable.

 

The running boy and drummer being not warlike, although the full set does include a warrior with spear and shield and a white hunter in pale safari-suit, the warrior is sort of waving his spear & shield as if 'beating' the game toward the hunter.

Close-up of my previously seen sample, other colours of loin-cloth turn-up including dark blue and white, but I don't know what other animals might be considered part of the set, a rhino, hippo, ostrich and more monkeys were in the 'zoo' sets, so there was a species-bank to pick from!

 

Usually found decorated, and the only one seen, on the day, I don't know if it's a late production thing, unpainted, or if it has been stripped, due to poor wear of the original decoration?

A is for AaaaHaaa! Once you know what you're looking for . . . .

Someone in France has a shed-load of these, but there was one in the UK with a fiver on it, and I was paid on Friday, and the parcel was at the old house when I dropped off the recycling, on my way to work, so I've just shot/scanned this little beauty!

These are boxed and have a B prefix to their codes, so I suspect the others had a W prefix for 'window pack', and another look at the logo reveals it's probably CWT or WTC?, these lack the painted details of the others, so may have been later, or a budget line, and I think are the sort of thing you might have found as fair-ground side-show prizes - hook-the-duck, hoopla or the coconut shy?

 

Properly set up, and in fact both her hands were blocked with PVC-paint, so you have to force them, but it was an easy job. Accessories in white this time, but the drumsticks are green as last time. The French lot were mostly white too.

 

Box art and codes, still only the six instruments/one pose, but we now have more colours hinted at, while the French lots include the mustard yellow, we're still looking for red and pink, and a darker blue than the lot the other day.

 

To fill the post, I think we've seen these all before, but these are the bendies which have come in over the last few months, including the Brabo-marked soldier, and possibly the first bendy ever, the 'Little Rubber Man' who's clearly a Witch? The smoking dog came from Chris Smith and is one of a series of smoking dogs! The two littlies I can't remember, one's a Mickey Mouse knock-off, the other a small, daft-looking dragon type.

Q is for Question Time - Famine?

It's been a while since we had a Question Time, and this is an odd one, but I feel it should be more obvious an answer than I have so far uncovered, or failed to, so can anyone help ID this figure?

About sixty or seventy millimetres, but of a child so 100-mil plus in scale. He is clearly holding a bowl, but is it an empty food-bowl, or a begging bowl, and is he in an aid-queue or looking/waiting for non-existent food?

Polystyrene and with no signs of glue or other fixing on the underside of the base, I feel he must be some kind of famine-relief fund-raiser, or token of such, but who issued him, the UN, War on Want, Oxfam . . . There are so many NGO's trying to save the millions of souls failed by capitalism and dictators (there is enough food, land and money on this planet for all eight-million to enjoy a decent standard of living), it could be any of them.

And when, 1970's, 1980's or earlier? If this rings a bell with anyone, I'd love to know more about it. He seems to be more Asian than African or generic, and the lack of gunk on the base-underside, suggests he wasn't attached to a donation receptacle/collection-box, but issued as a figurine? Was he part of a set, maybe a family group?

R is for Rainbow Re-issues of Rug-Rats & Ranch Kids

A bit of Marx for a change, and something that really makes you go "Whaaa....?". Kent Sprecher's site explains that originally a few of each mould-shot would be added to a larger Wild West ranch playset, and that sort of makes sense, as does the fact that people like Thomas had sets of kids or 'dressing-up' kids in their ranges, but it looks like a lot of effort to go to for something I wouldn't have thought sold well, but they did things differently in the past!

Boys and girls; that's a dolls-arm in her hand by the way . . . not anything else it may appear to be!

The green chap seems designed to hold something in his raised right hand, which is not a full 'ring-hand' but clearly curved to hold stuff, but there was no stuff with them?

While these two are also foxing me, they both appear to be interacting with absent articles, which from the poses would seem to have been quite large, horses, barrels, tree trunks . . . something like that? The dog goes with the set, the barrel is Britains, late PVC stuff (starting to go sticky) as is the pile of luggage in the previous shot.

The rest of my pose-sample, I'm missing a prone/fallen, baseless Indian boy and the adult who's tasked with looking after them! He may be in the box of unsorted Wild West large-scale we saw in a forthcoming as I was initially sorting stuff out?

While we're looking at Marx, I have these three soft ethylene copies, sequentially numbered on the base-underside, from 17, and managing to look a bit premium/givaway, a bit Italian (especially the bases), a bit shooting-game and a bit US dime-store hard styrene Space-toy . . . all at the same time! They have no other marks and remain a mystery, can you help; do you know them?

 

Now known to be of Greek issue, both as Kain premiums (product still unknown) and as carded generics, with the Kain removed on some and struck-through on others.