F is for Follow-up - B&M Stores

 As a follow-up to this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/12/s-is-for-shelfies-b-stores.html

 

I did go back and get a set of the mini-animals;

 

12 Dogs.

 

12 farm animals, including another dog!

 

12 wild / zoo animals.

 

12 Dinosaurs.

They work out at less than 10p each! The dinosaurs are much-of-a-muchness, I've got worse, the wild animals are more hit-and-miss, while the farm animals have their scale all over the place, but are mostly reasonable sculpts, the dogs are probably the poorest of the four sets.

 

Two of the poultry were designated to carry the consumer information for the whole set, while a comparison between the farm's collie-dog and the dog's Alsatian, reveals the different levels of expertise in two sculptors!

S is for Sifcon International / SiL Interiors . . .

. . . and Temerity Jones, and if there really is someone called Temerity, I hope they punished their parents somehow! Another stand which caught my eye at Birmingham, back in February, was the Sifcon International / SiL Interiors / Temerity Jones stand, which was more about cats, than anything else, but cats, or big cats, as tree-hangers, and nutcracker tree-hangers at that, were an absolute for getting the camera out!

 

They appear to be pressed copper or, more likely brass-sheet (although they could just be edged-card?), litho-printed with a Victorian or early Edwardian'esque artwork, which is then given a deep domed lacquer effect coating, which looks like clear enamel glaze, but is probably a two-part epoxy polymer. Available as standees in two sizes, along with smaller tree-hangers, there were domestic animals, and four of the 'big five' wild animals - no elephant!

 

The nutcracker designs - as you can see - are carried over to soft furnishing, cheeseboards, bottle gift-boxes, jars, mugs, and no doubt, if they prove successful, other items of interior decor? Sadly I haven't seen them about, as I'd get both the smaller cats, for the tree!

P is for Plastic Glass!

Sort of a 'part three', but not really connected to the previous two, which dealt with the 1950/60's stuff, these are the more common stuff from the 1970/80's, and will be quite recognisable to most of you, and really no more than an overview of the other plastic 'vitrines' out there.

 

I sorted the Tags out last night, and 'Glassware' covers everything made of glass from marbles up, but not these, 'Vitrines' covers the real glass versions of these, and they will also have the Glassware tag, while 'Glass Animals' will cover both these plastic ones and the glass ones, so these will have the latter Tag only, marbles will get Glassware only, and real glass animals will have all three Tags, which will hopefully help someone in the future, get the right search-results up?

 

A nice set of six from Hans Postler over the Channel, they are better known, to us, from their many sets of rack-toy soldiers, more in keeping with the main thrust of the Blog, but that this is here, reminds us most of these guys were general 'Toy & Novelty' importers/wholesalers, and would turn their hands to anything they thought they could make a small profit on, and, these are probably 1980's, or later?

 

These have more the look of the '70's about them, and they have tree-hanger rings in them, so there you go, get a daft-looking mouse hung for the festive season! But, you know, if you can't afford the glass ones, because you have some shitty, underpaid job, and live on a trailer-park, and you see these going cheap in the local gas station, or drug store, why not, if only for the kids?

 

Kids aren't snobs, now, I am a bit of a snob, specifically on Christmas decorations, but I was raised to be so, by my late, and much missed mother, who had her own reasons for being like that; Nuns, an even stricter mother and an Edwardian upbringing!

 

'The sins of the Fathers . . .', 'The child is the father of the man'  and all that! There is always a truism in old sayings, wives tales and aphorisms. The tragedy is that somehow, 70-years of progressive democrats, totally failed to educate enough idiots, as to what they were trying to do, and we now have enough Morlocks and Yahoos, who don't get 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel', and they are giving justification to the Trumps, Farages and Le Penns of intolerance?

 

Just as we need the World to come together like never before, the warmongers, climate-deniers, the superstitious, and the anti-science brigades, rise, like muddy, Ork scum from Isengard, to wreak the planet with their ignorance, and singularly selfish stupidity.

 

A knock off Snoopy, an elephant who's also a key-ring, two more of the cocktail glass donkeys, we saw in brown, last time, and a variation on the Hans Postler elephant. The HP set is basically the six commonest types (from experience; that may not be strictly true!).

 

Another elephant, slightly better (slightly earlier?), another mouse, and the deer we saw in one of the comparison shots a few weeks ago. The elephant, if cleaned would have that faux uranium-glass look to him, but I don't know if it's a transparent marker (like most of them) or dyed plastic, and fear if I cleaned him, he might lose all his original colour!

 

A swan and yet another mouse!

 

Two of the mieces, back to back, but not yet in pieces!

 

Two of the elephants, with a small rhinoceros, he's probably from a Christmas cracker, but could equally be a gum-ball, capsule-machine prize, or something from a Lucky-bag, this stuff tended to get around!

 

The Rhino', it's missing one of those crappy plastic key-rings, you press both ends of, to hook onto the plastic oblong which he has retained. Is it meant to be a woolly-rhino'?

 

Only came in recently, and a charm-loop suggests gum-ball or Christmas crackers again?

 

These are interesting, Bam Bam and Pebbles, from the Flintstones, both larger sculpts to, they seem to have been taken from the sort of PVC stuff Bully and Comics Spain might have been issueing, he's holding a club behind his back!

 

While these are equally interesting for having been taken from a set of dogs, which we may have seen here in more realistic colours, as polyethylene toys, but here in the same clear 'canopy' 'styrene, enhanced with transparent coloured marker-pen! We'll look at proper glass ones next!

T is for That's a Relief!

Does anyone else remember these, I have vague memories of them, in school science labs, hospital waiting rooms or corridors, dentists surgeries, that sort of thing, but I also remember them being cracked, dusty, sun-faded or discoloured, so they must have been popular in the 1960's perhaps, most of my memories being after 1970, when I was six?

 

Rico Firenze of Italy, but an English Language version, and a thin, polystyrene vac-formed moulding, I assume from the contour-following location lines, that the coloured artwork was added before the shaping of the sheet?

 

Dog!

 

Deer.

 

Heart and the Digestive System of a carnivore.

 

Digestive System of a ruminant, and the Lungs

The reverse of the card/sheet.

Imported into the US by the Master Mount Corp., of Flushing, New York.

 

And while I may have given the impression in my opening paragraph, that I remember them everywhere, or all over the place, I don't, but I do remember the odd one here and there, and probably in small frames, did they come here from the US, or dierect from Italy, or did we produce our own, were there more than one maker? I would have loved something like this at Christmas, you could look at it again and again!

 

Thanks to Adrian Little for letting me photograph this old treasure, and rare survivor.

S is for Season's Shelfie Summery

Recently shot shelfies, nothing exceptional, just a few things shot over the spring/summer, which either missed other shelfie posts, or have only been taken recently, and typically after a couple of weeks of behaving itself, Blogger just unloaded them in reverse-order, so the less interesting ones are at the end now!

 

Shot in Poundland about a week ago, as with all similar shots, it's against future ID's, although they look familiar, and are probably under several brands already going back a decade or so, here 'Gear Box' with a Maisto/Jada style 'die-cast' cartouche!

 

I don't think I've had the Peppa Pig 'Busy Book' from Phidal here yet, but knowing these Tattle Tales are only half a set or less, I wasn't about to start now. Interestingly, I think this was in Morrisons, up at Elvetham Heath, near the DVD's!

 

The Works, thematic Lucky Bags, I did get a test purchase, which will get a post, but it was disappointing, as these things always are these days, human progress disappeared in a miasma of disinterest and rip-offery, years ago!

 

Currently, or still (I shot this in April) in B&M, and again, it's to ID insects in mixed lots years form now, and not something which came home with me, although, it's nice to see old favourites like fake poo, whoopee-cushions and snapping-gum are still of interest to modern kids!

 

Also April, TKMaxx, and it's a bunch of hares and rabbits (arbitrary ear-length!) in ceramic, got shot in passing, and should have been in one of the Easter posts, really!

 

The rest, all figurals, were shot with the cats we saw the other day, all in TKMaxx, all in the catering section, with bag-clips, bag-ties, tea-diffusers, a banana-tree and a fun potato-peeler!

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Animals

Welp, seems to be turning into the animal end of the week! Back to Whitton, back to June, back to a Sunny day among friends, and it's the animals, now; prehistoric, wild, farm and domestic, and with a couple of Vitacup to start - I detect a theme!

 

A couple of Vitacup boxed animals, who seem to have been sold separately to any jar of bedtime cocoa-powder, but, two shillings & sixpence wasn't cheap in the early 1960's! So it may be that the price label is for animal AND drink?

 

And, further to the two previous posts, if both sets were twelve, that leaves a 24-count, which, with the other mostly domestic or woodland animals, means probably not enough room for three fallow deer, but there must have been three sets for a 36-coumt? Note their spelling of 'Ivorene'.

 

Already seen, they snuck into a Rack Toy Month box-ticking exercise!

 

A bunch of 'unknown' dinosaurs, the T-Rex is a particularly good sculpt.

 

Mixed, small animals, the blue monkey seems to have had a plug-on hat? While I forget if the ostrich premium flat had a branding or not. The crocodile is a 'rubber jiggler' type, while the monitor lizers may be Kinder?

 

Marking on the base elicited nothing from Google or evilBay, but it looks recent, and is KFS a subsidiary of Kentucky Fried? I don't think so, nothing about Animal premiums in searches ether, but?

 

Three polar bears, the left-hand one, despite not being the best quality copy of Timpo, you're likely to find, may be Blue Box, while the right-hand one is a more generic Britains copy, while in the middle, a modern vinyl-PVC jobbie!

I was sure these were Charbens, but now I'm not so sure! Early British plastic for sure, and very clean for their age, if not Charbens, who, Hill, Cherilea?

 

Mixed small farm, some Hong Kong, some better, hen & chick are PVC rubber.

 

Probably from a bagged rack-toy set?

 

Chambourcy nodder premium, the ring may have been for a cord or ribbon to hold the animal on to the 'petit-suisse' cheese product, or possibly for a keyring, a bit of a survivor, by the looks of it?

 

Mini-animals for future sorting, with a quite well painted OBE of the Airfix draft-horse, a Merit pony to it's right, and a bunch of piggy-wiggies!

 

Modern'ish sheep-dog, which I may already have, and might have ID'd somewhere, a fox who looks like he's from some larger scale action-figure, or doll type play set, and a - probably - premium peke, but he could be a better quality Hong Kong rack-toy?