About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label DC Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DC Comics. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2025

M is for More from London, Third of Three Plunder Posts

Finishing this run of plunder-posts with a right-old mix of Wild West, ancient & medieval, pirates, Sci-fi, cartoon, TV and Movie stuff, and as always, some interesting stuff, some stuff you'll be familiar with, but perhaps juxtaposed with stuff they're not usually compared with? I mean - waffling for the opening paragraph - these posts get the traffic, and people seem to enjoy an assortment of new images with some interesting items buried in them!
 
Red-on-red, what am I like! From the left; European, probably French 'bazaar' figure, small, Comansi 30mm, probably Novalinea, but in a colour and tinney polymer I'm unfamiliar with, possibly a sobre knock-off, or supplied as a premium?
 
Hong Kong Timpo'esque cavalryman, but from the legs, obviously copied from the Hong Kong rip-offs with their plug-on boots, a small Britains piracy, I have a lot of these but always in one's and twos, so probably 'Lucky Bags' or Christmas crackers?
 
A modern PVC figure who seems to be a short-short with truncated lance, and one of those from hollow-cast cowboys, who were Lido over there, and might have been Tudor Rose over here, nobody seems to know, but something must have gone with the hard plastic set of mounted Bergan/Beton-Airfix copies, with the Thomas/Poplar being for the soft plastic issues - but nobody seems to know for certain? And the only TR catalogue image I have is for another set altogether (the large scale stuff), a situation complicated by Hong Kong's own output!
 
An assortment of wagon crew, it's more about finding the last colour variations with these now, and I have many more riders/drivers/guards than I'll ever have coaches/wagons for them!
 
Discussed before, a major job one day, sorting all these out, and not much data you can trust, from a small, mixed sample like this, so they tend to go/be put separately,, against themselves being sorted, once I have worked out which torsos go with which legs, heads and accessories, information you can only get from comparing clean samples to bagged/carded sets.
 
The one on the left is a better pose, and if clean; interesting, while the two to the right look 'correct', but running-waving guy is well-dodgy! 
 
Nice from hollow-cast guard, a probably Airfix cadet, a Tudor Rose knight in a bit of a state, and I think the big knight was ELC, or unmarked (now defunct Wilco?). The guardsman is Hong Kong, and the little chap is some fantasy thing, from a mini-play set in the Blue Box 'Hidden Adventure' style of semi-deform.
 
Two pirates from the K&M/Wild Republic tube, modern PVC.
 
A board game man-at-arms taking on a bunch of spray-painted China clones of Italeri, Zvezda or similar, other Bloggers have covered these, which you find on evilBay or Ali Baba and Amazon in - often - large quantities, but of limited poses, here only two.
 
Four Phidal's, I think we've seen three before, the tall, slim babe possibly being from one of the Barbie sets, which I know I haven't looked at yet, I should keep an eye-out for one, while TKMaxx are pushing them through for Christmas!
 
Hasbro's Star Wars 'Command' Stormtrooper on the left, then a fascinating chap, who could earn 'best of parcel', as I already have a white one, I think, and possibly another, but clearly a Hong Kong parachute toy, taken from the Major Matt Mason bendies from Mattel!
 
We then have a common-enough MPC-alike, and a limited-articulation action figure, who's only a couple of millimetres over 54-mil, and who looks like I should recognise him, but I don't, so if anybody can help ID him . . . ?

A mixed bunch here, if ever you saw one (and you're about to see a couple more!), I think the grey chap is from Galoob's small line of Micromachine 'Alien/s' sets, which only went to a handful of cards with one or two - larger than other MM - figures per card, but I'm not sure?
 
Loose Thomas-Poplar PVC Santa's are probably more useful than Western wagoneers as I have several of the sleighs now, in two designs, so for the 'definitive' line-up one day, the correct number of clean, tidy Santa's will be required in the stash!
 
The rest are a mix of modern Kinder, a damaged Games Workshop skeletal horse (useful as it's glueable 'styrene), a Michelin Bibendum, a cake-decoration Santa, &etc.
 

An older Kinder 'steckfiguren', two novelty monkeys which seem to form a larger assembly if you find all of them and a capsule dragon-thing, which folds up into almost a ball, and may be Kinder, Pokémon, Ben Ten or something else entirely - there's so much of this small, blind-bag, limited edition and capsule-toy catoony stuff around now, it's impossible to follow it all, unless that's what you specialise in!
 
More Kinder, racing cars, of one type or another.
 
Again, mostly Kinder I think, the Gnome has a bit of age, but comes from a sub-set of Kinder 'solids', of which there were about eight or ten sets issued, maybe more, and with between six and twelve figurines per set, I'm nowhere near having all of them, but I do have a fair few, so we will look at them, one day.
 
Many thanks as always to Peter Evans for saving this lot, or spotting it at car boot sales, and saving it for me to share with you, here at Small Scale World.

Friday, August 29, 2025

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Four is for More

Back to Queens, New York, for the last few posts of Brian's rack-toy shots, an eclectic lot, but more figures and animals;
 

Modern Transformers!
Bumble Bee, Optimus Prime and Barricade. 

Mario, his box seems - from the illustration
- to fold into an overcomplicated display stand?


I think we've seen these Goo Jit Zu super-deforms, from Moose, here, I've certainly seen them in B&M, but might not have shelfied them, a sort of soft foam stretchy, which is also a squidgee!
 
The classic 'suck your drink through your glasses' novelty!
 
Probably similar mechanism to the rockets we saw the other day?
Sealed unit, movement activated, LED's?
 


Bubble-guns!
 
These Power ranger knock-offs were everywhere, here, about ten years ago, but seem to have disappeared now, over here they tended to come with five mini-figures, in the same colours, which we have seen here, passim. There are colour variations over time/batches, and I think I'm right in saying some issues have a gold figure?
 
Pull back and go!
 
Horses
 
A duplicate horse, so while the contents are otherwise very different and the cards seem to be branded differently (well; Ucok for the horse set, the mixed-farm more generic), the source would appear to be the same. Glued vinyl, there's a lot of this larger animal stuff around at the moment, as well as wild animals and dinosaurs, genres which remain healthy for the pre-teens, and something which will need ID'ing one day; thanks to Brian we have the cards!

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Two of . . . a Few!

Continuing to look at the stuff Brian B has sent to the blog in the last few weeks, these were all shot in a Target Store in Connecticut I believe, and mostly TV/Movie related licensed characters.
 
My Little Fawn?
 



There is, somewhere in Picasa, a multipart 'miniseries' which never got published (it will, one day!), which Brian contributed to, on the subject of those figurines you see in the windows of game-swap shops, which are interactive, electronic playing pieces, for/from several modern gaming systems, these seem to be similar, but are more music oriented I think? Can't knock The Muppets!
 


Superstuff!
 
Also a bit big for my parameters, but I know from the Plaid Stallions crew, that there's a massive fan-base for GI Joe, Stateside, with the guys telling each other where certain figures have popped-up! Same with the 'new' Mego's!
 
Even dog-food is promoting the new movie! It launched with much hype as the summer's big movie, and a sort of reset for the brand, but it's gone quiet now, so I don't know if it's good, OK, or a bit duff . . . Has anyone seen it?
 
The two boats are halfway between the rockets and the rubber-boats we saw yesterday from B&M, and it looks like the two boats are wind-up workers.
 
Plastic flat, gravity floaters?

Thanks again to Mr Berke for going out and finding these.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Everything Else!

Sadly, all good things come to an end, and this is what didn't end-up in the other folders for whatever reason! Mostly because they were mixed shots, although a fair bit of the TV/Movie stuff ended up here rather than in the sci-fi post, but, well, it's another post!
 
A Phidal dome-headed 'Mysterio' (one of the things I hate about Marvel/DC is that many of the heroes and villains are named by five-year-olds, like 1950's cleaning products, shine'o, cleanrite, rinsit, floorbrite!), a pair of Fortnite figures, the one on the left is a stamper, the one on the right might be from a key-ring, hard to tell.
 
The Archer is The Archer/Clinton Barton/Hawkeye from Marvel? The other three still have question marks, Mobile Man ?. . . Or Cellphone Man!
 
The surface of the previous shot wasn't level and I could only get two of them to stand-up by turning them round! So here they are leaning against the backdrop the tight way round! I think the chap on the left is probably a 'solid' from Kinder, they have many of these hard plastic figures, a subcategory to the dedicated collectors, and this may be a specific character, or part of a set I'm unfamiliar with, and I could try looking him up, or not worry, if you know, you already know, I'll have a session in the future ID'ing all sorts when I label them up!
 
While the red guy might be a stamper or a keyring, or another source altogether, there is a lot of this Fortnite stuff in the queue, both Peter Evans and me have located a fair bit, and it was mostly shot some time ago!
 
An Anime/Manga schoolgirl keyring, the closest match I can find are free images, but named characters with green uniforms do exist, however with green, black or red bows? Her interest here, to us, is in the over-moulding of the different colours of vinyl. She's a relief flat - which should be 2½D, shouldn't it; not quite 2D, not quite 3D!
 
Somehow escaped the military post, becase it was mixed combat and historical, I guess! A cake decoration figure, seen before here, a copy of Airfix AWI, scaled-up, two dark green versions of figures more usually seen in dung/khaki, a Marx 50mm Training Centre figure, and a premium flat ascribed to Bonnie Bilt in the 'States, a Timpo copy who might be Polish, or a BR Moulds piece, and finally a US 'comic flat' also AWI.
 
Disney bits, including two princesses, one of which may be a knock-off, a large LotR Elven archer (presumably Legolas?) from McDonald's, who apparently came without a bow, even though he's clearly firing a bow, due to 'health & safety'? The martial-arts chap on the end will be from Mulan or something similar, I haven't followed the recent releases, just become aware of them through social media or Phidal!
 
The guy on the left here is probably a driver from an omnibus/tram/streetcar model kit, someone like Pyro maybe or a smaller maker, Palmer? Someone like that? Although he's also quite Parker'esque! The heavy chunk of ersatz PVC on the right is from Harry Potter, and is a statue which came to life at one point I think, again, I haven't read or seen any HP stuff, but did get Steven Fry's excellent reading of the first book, one Easter on the Radio, years ago!
 
The small scale here consists mostly of Galoob, from pretty-much all their lines, but there's a Mattel or two in there too (Action Man or Batman villain with pistol, and the firefighter), and a Bluebird Snow White sitting on her own, while a Zizzle Cap'n Jack stalks her!
 
Kinder bits, to go in the Kinder bits zone! I think that monkey may be another from the set which included my CAD-monkey mascot! The helmet is a soft polyethylene knock-off of Lego, while I'm not sure about the large lady, but she's certainly Kinder-like enough for the shot!
 
Also Kinder, but mostly mucked-about with.
They'll go in the future project zone!
 
And bringing us to a close on these posts, the 'Halloween' shot! The two ghosts are also Kinder I think, or one of these sets we looked at a year or two ago, the spotted mushroom is a Go-Go Crazy Bone I think, not so sure on the blue (robo-elephant?) thing, while two earlier novelty flats, probably from 1970's (or earlier) Christmas crackers, finish it all off.

As always, very many thanks to Chris Smith for finding, saving and sending all this stuff to the Blog. It's not just that we get all these posts out of each parcel, with something for everyone and lots to ID, but that in the future, there will be more in specific subject posts, a better picture of everything or anything, and I am very grateful to all those who save or send stuff to/for the Blog/Archive/Collection, especially where, like the probably broken cat flat above, it might otherwise go in the bin, a first sample is a first sample, whatever the condition, so, thank-you very much Chris.