The last of the 'Micro' or mini-stuff for
now I think, and not a particularly full sample, but fun nevertheless! Kinder
have from time to time produced sets of items so small you wonder how they got
under the safety radar, but then a lot of their toys include equally small
components, so I guess it's all covered by the H&S caveat on the packaging!
A few of my smallest Kinders, the safari (green) is complete I think, the explorer being
around 10mm, and I assume the coach must have come with something else? The
pale blue bloke with binoculars is a lighthouse keeper, but I discarded the
lighthouse at the time (late 1980/early 1990's), the pair are from a fuel set -
see below.
That Wil West stage-coach from both sides, about the same
size as the teeny capsule/Christmas cracker ones, but with ridgid moulded-in
wheels . . . and giant horses!
These came out in the mid-2000's I think,
and the animals are a quite good HO/OO-compatible size, being a small pony and
a cow with ball-tipped 'safety-horns'! Although they are not quite in scale with the trailers, but that's more about the thickness of their bases!
I'm not sure if this is a parallel line to
the previous ones (came-in about the same time), or a rival, the code-letters
on the wings suggest it might be Czapp,
another chocolate prize-egg issuer from . . . the former Yugoslavia? It's all in the
archive and will be correct when it goes on the A-Z Blogs - a job which is still
probably a year away?!
No figure/s in this one either, but plenty
going-on at the local aerodrome and a couple of mini-trees to add to the
jungle. A common trope with these is the stiff foldable sheet of polyethylene
or nylon, which slots together and gets covered in stickers to reveal the
building's role, really they'd need a bit of carefully applied heat to look
good, but tend to end up looking like inflatable's!
Another common trope has been natives, of a
sort of generic 'South Seas' type, and I've picked-up a few over the years, the
cartoony one bottom-right was part of a set of four I think; each having a more
outrageous finial to the hut's roof!
The two-part green canoe near my finger actually
goes with the Disney plug-together
figures.
Is he a native, a pirate or a Robinson
Crusoe type? But the hootch would paint-up nicely for a WWII Japanese-held
island or something in Vietnam, while the boat makes for good background
scenery. It all goes in one egg!
While I will have to re-shoot this one next
time I visit the 'brown water' navy! Hootch is a bit small and impressionist, but could be used
as a food store in the same scenarios mentioned above, or one of those horrid
POW cages from Vietnam? A few of the boatman would go well fussing-around Atlantic's Nile vessels too!
These were sent in by someone a few years
ago, and while I assume they were evilBay, if they are on your site let me know
and I'll take them down. I've actually tweaked the light to improve them a tad,
and they are here to show the wider range of these micro-sets, and also that
you get reverse colour-ways of each so the tool moulds them all in one colour and then they are
split, probably automatically by a/the runner-guillotine?
I have the Arab somewhere (been on the blog
I think, or the Airfix Blog?), and
guess the coach went with another Wild West set? You can also see the reverse
of my fuel pair in grey. These micro-toys (and there have been others) can
provide useful stuff for 20mm, 15mm or 10mm war gaming, while some of the vehicles
will happily slide into 1:300 micro-armour games with a bit of paint.
