C is for Contributions to Charity Coffers!

I've not been 'doing' the Charity Shops in the last few years with the same diligence I used to, not enough time/inclination, and a different life-routine means I just don't pass them like I did, but there have been a few small purchases in recent weeks/last couple of months, and this is a quick view of the resultant plunder!

 

A few bags in the Blue Cross, which I always check as that's where I got those Britains Herald ECW when I first started checking Charity Shops again after a hiatus of a few years, and the other week they had a bunch of nice bagged animals, from which I selected three (the lady in front of me in the queue had a nice bag of Dinosaurs!), to which I added a resin Hippo from the 'White Elephant' (ox-blood hippo!), or knick-knack shelves.
 

Clockwise from the top left; A bag of Britains in various states from very play-worn (tiger) to quite mint (baby hippo), then that lump of resin mud-lover, a nice group of Chinasaurs, including two gape-mouths, and a new version of my favourite childhood rubber Dimetrodon, but in a more ridged PVC-alike, than the usual silicon-rubber of the originals, but nice to know the tool is still out there and in use!

 

The last bag had a mixed lot of smaller animals, and while I'm not sure about the orange pig, the other three in that corner (green and blue) probably do go together and look like they might be modern lesser-brand or generic chocolate egg prizes. The startled lion-cub is probably Kinder?

While the larger bag was a whole bunch of MEG Kitty in my Pocket toys, which gave a whole shot each of gingers, black & white and/or or floofy types, smudgers and a more oriental looking group of greys! I have a few in with the cats, but always knew they'd turn up cheap eventually, so nice sample for pennies!

 

I was actually passing the next day and popped-in to see if there were any left, I don't like to be greedy and had only grabbed the more interesting looking bags, the day before, and found two more bags, while a couple of larger animals were procured next door!

The biggies from DEBRA UK; I can't remember now which was which, but there were a Papo, Schleiech and Triple-A among these, and I think this is a Schleich rhino and generic elephant? It'll all come out in the wash, when we look at them again in more thematic posts, another day!

 

Again I can't remember which brand the tiger was, or the elephant, but the moose is interesting, as it's Kinder, but far too big for the normal eggs, so it must be a Maxi-Egg toy? I've noticed they are gaining popularity, especially at Christmas/Easter.

The other bag was a right-old mix, with farm and zoo, branded and unbranded, for some reason the pig-shot snuck into the collage twice, so you can see what they look like, before I sort the contrast! Doh!

These - found in Phyllis Tuckwell  a few weeks ago - weren't really Charity-shop priced, but lacking only the backing card, were a clean sample and I've since seen what people want for them on evilBay, and decided they were a bargain! And the rest of the packaging went to recycling weeks ago, so the missing card - was not missed!

 

Being Disney Stores, they are more tourist oriented, lacking firm set/line lists, coming and going, not necessarily found in all territories and unbranded beyond the carrying store, who isn't a toy manufacturer. one of the other sets online - for instance - is much bigger, while some small die-cast vehicles (Luke's 'landspeeder') are in the rather bitty range!

 

They look very similar to the Applause set, so maybe there's a connection there, but they are - at least - solids, so 'toy soldiers' rather than action figures, although action figure size at about 100mm!

Finally, this pair came in a week or so ago, £1.10p for the lot, and it's for charity!

The sea-life are all equipped with pencil-topping holes, the dragon is another capsule/Christmas cracker looking type and the two Fairies are, I think, from the Flower Fairies (Interplay - IP) which we looked at in a London Toy Fair revue a few years ago, and which, again, I suspected would, if successful, end up in mixed/charity lots, so more samples procured against future thematic posts!

F is for Follow-up - Disney Stores by Zizzle

This was - in part - originally included in the intro, post, but I then remembered I'd had some others come in which I hadn't shot, so I got them all out the other night and took some supplementary photographs and knocked-up this three-hander!

This guy is definitely new as he was waiting here after the rest went-up to the shipping container! I still haven't worked out what - if any - significance the little animal cartouches have, but I am pretty sure now that these were Disney Stores exclusives.

However, as you can see from the comparison-image; bottom left, of Jack Sparrow, that they are quite 'lumpy' compared to the general Zizzle line (and other Zizzle products), so it looks like Zizzle may have subcontracted them out to an as yet unknown factory, other than their own/their usual contractor? But by 'lumpy', don't think I'm being derogatory, I prefer these to the over-engineered 'collectables' of the standard range, these have a more traditional Toy Solder charm.

The line-up as it stands, there are starting to be duplicate characters in other poses, so this must have been a series of sets over a few years running alongside Zizzle's own-branded sets, now they're not rare (they're mass-produced, 21st century polymer, sold through one of the once-busiest (another closed the other day) chains in the developed world!), but they are hard to track-down and I am enjoying the slow-building of the 'gang'!

Two versions of Bill Turner, was he in two movies (- two lines in the rage) or one (= two sets in the same year)? Unfortunately, while there are PotC wiki's, they seem only to list Zizzle's branded sets, not the Disney Stores ones! We will return to these!