W is for With Thanks at the Witching Hour!

Seem to have done it! Got up early, went over to pick the parcel up, managed to get to work on time, still tired, left work at about ten-thirty, had the shots done by the end of the eleven-PM bulletin, and by the time you read this, here they are!

 

So, plenty more in the parcel for another day! David Aaron DeSoto, dropped me a line about a month ago, saying he'd like to send me some Halloween figures, as a thanks for the Blog, which I wasn't going to turn down! And, once my head had stopped swelling, I explained that my current situation didn't really allow for trust in mail delivery, managed to get a mate to take it, and the rest is above, or in previous posts, first USPS and then US Customs returned the parcel to David twice, and it went down to the wire!

 

And, as David explained in his last eMail, it (the errant parcel) is mummified with official stickers, customs forms, postal ephemera and tape of various kinds!

 

Confirming that Brian's shelfies were this year's packaging, David has managed to track-down two sets, the Skeleton Army and Mummy Army, the recently 'new' Witches seemingly dropped already? Both sets and both lots credited to Old East Main Co., rather than the Dolgen of earlier sets a few years ago - and where David sourced these. Photo was a bit rushed, but does the job!

 

I can't remember if we've shot the Mummies out of the blister before, and haven't got the time to look if this is to publish in the next 25-minutes, but they didn't look as familiar as the skeletons which I know we have looked at, more than once, so these guys got the extra shots!

 

The skeletons, as I say, we've seen these before a few times now with comparisons, donors and derivatives, but it's always nice to see them again on the 31st!

 

I can't thank David enough. I'm always touched by these donations, and they've come from The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as closer to home, over the years, I know I can be a prickly-sod from time to time, but I'll keep posting if you're all still visiting!

 

There's lots more to look at, but the original aim was to get these out before midnight, and in that we have succeeded! Thanks David.

Spellchecker is not activating in Blogger, but I think I've found the worst of the typo's!

A is for All Sorts for All Hallows

There is a 'comedy of errors' ongoing in the background, in which a parcel from the 'States which should have been here a couple of weeks ago, has now been delivered back to the sender twice, due to perceived erroneous data on various postal and tax stickers, resulting in the sender reporting that the third time he took it to the USPS, they had to cover all the previous stickers with blank stickers, before starting again with a new set! It now has more layers of fossilised history than a shale-bed! The hope is that they will still be here to photograph before (or on?) Thursday, however, the sender indicated that some non-Halloween figures had smuggled themselves aboard the parcel, so there will be a post, even if we miss the day!

In the meantime, Brian Berke has sent me two lots of seasonal shots, two of which may represent the absent, much-travelled figures, so let's have a shufftie at 'em . . . 

 

. . . by going firstly to Scully & Scully, where Brian was a little disapointed to find only two flats, but to be fair, the Blog is testement to the fact they've never done as much on Halloween as they have at Christmas of Easter, which my be a sign that it's not big in Germany or Europe? And, while it may be growing - purley as a consumer affair - here in the UK, even here, the trick-or-treat'ing is confined to social housing areas, with the emphasis being on fancy-dress parties, for adults as often as children? Often combined with the 5th November fireworks.

Earlier Brian had found this, it's a garland, but can be broken down into skeletons which look like they could give Action Man (GI Joe) a fright, scale-wise, I've seen similar stuff over here, possibly in Asda or Morrisons, who seem to have had the better stock/displays this year?

 

Both shot at a Family Dollar store in Waterloo, New York (aquired by Dolgen in 2015), he also found these, which may be the 'this year's packaging' of the missing parcel's figure sets, but the pricing leads Brian to wonder if they are old stock. We have seen them before, as the parent's Dollar General, always courtesy of Brian, and watched the additions come, and go, and the packaging change every year!

 

Brian also sent a couple of Autumn colour shots he took on the journey 'upstate', and as it my favourite time of year, I thought I'd share them with the rest of you!

To which I'll add this one, which I shot the other day, it's actually not doing the subject justice, as it had a weirdly metallic-pink sheen to many of the leaves, which has been washed-out by the camera? I thought I'd shot more trees, but I must have just admired them?

Many thanks to Brian for the shots, and I have a couple more to get out before the day, whether the parcel gets here in time or not!

T is for Two - Slime Zombies, or Rather; Zombies in Slime!

Sometimes I can be a bit scatter-brained, and this post is the result of a little moment of scattered brain! I've been tracking down the output of EMCE before they get too expensive or hard to get . . . there's a sweet-spot between new (a bit pricey for what are basically rack-toys) and when they are getting hard to get (also pricey), when people who've been gifted them and don't want them, sell them off for less than they are still listing for on Amazon "none in stock, we don't know when they will become available again" (half of Amazon is dead pages!), it's that sweet-spot I'm after!

I knew there were glow-in-the-dark Zombies in slime-bins, so when I had a moment I searched for them on feebleBay, and one chap had some up for auction in the 'States, so I popped a bid on and crossed my fingers!

But, in those lines of similar/sponsored stuff underneath the listing was another chap, offering three, for considerably less, BIN? So I quickly grabbed them, uncrossed my fingers and desperately started hoping someone would out-bid me on the first lot!

Needless to say no one else bid, and in the end the larger lot arrived before the by-it-now lot, not that I'm complaining they were both not due until the 19th and we're in the middle of postal strikes (I'm totally supportive of; having spoken to both my beat Postie and the parcel-van guy).

Anyway I started shooting them for the EMCE post, and scanned the box they came with (1st image above), only for the other three to turn-up a few days later, and they were something completely different! I hadn't bothered reading the blurb or studying the pictures, just saw 'slime', 'drum' and 'zombie' in the title-bar and hit Buy It Now!

But it was a pleasant surprise as they were more slime Zombies, just not the EMCE glow-ones! So, I took the first lot of images out of the EMCE folder (which is stuffed with other stuff, and may get further broken down anyway - gaming, horror, Star Trek?) and fashioned a quick T is for Two!

The late three being Dolgen (Dollar General Stores) Parts Alive, Spill & Rebuild Oil Can Slime, with a Lego-likey zombie figure! Here scaled with one of Berserker's mates who came in with a junk-lot the other day - he, himself, went to storage ages ago!

It was during this process that I discovered vinegar is the solvent for slime, I wanted to flush the muck away, only to find that neither washing-up liquid, nor TFR had any measurable effect! Although, when I say 'discovered' . . . I Googled it!

The seller included a loose figure which appears to have had a strange reaction to the self-seal/click-shut bag he came in, soaking-up more blue than the bag ever possessed, but I'll keep him like it, it works quite well!

Obviously the figures are the same as the standard WWII Zombies we looked at here, and with one per 'oil drum' I'll leave the rest for now, I just don't have the time to be wrestling with multiple slime and vinegar patties!

Forewarned (or previously experienced) is forearmed, so with this brown-black gloop, I just wrapped it in kitchen-paper and burned it on the stove! You can see it had invaded the packet the figure's parts were in, so it was still a messy business, but I rescued all his components.

There had been a leak from the 'sealed' capsule too, and like the EMCE Aliens egg-slime the other day, had set to a rubbery polymer which I could just rub off where it was stuck to the sticker-wrapper, rather than the cellulose outer wrapper.

So quite by the result of too much speed and not enough haste or something I ticked two boxes, and learnt more than I need to about the properties of slime . . . you can also make it yourself, but as most of the recipes seem to include white wood-glue/PVA, I wouldn't advise it?

The fact that the Dolgen 'kubrick' Zombie is the same as the one on the can-art, suggests they are all the same so I will keep the other two sealed as well. He seems to be a US policeman in a WWII German helmet? While the EMCE as well as sharing billing with PX / Previews Exclusive again, are further credited to the Brilliant Novelty Company.

P is for Putrid Pirates Pal-up with Perennial Packs of Plastic Playthings

Brain again! Sent me these a couple of weeks ago, as it happened I had sourced a set on feebleBay, but didn't know if they'd get here in time (they did - just), so we'll run with Brian's for this year, and then next year maybe look at them all again, as we've had four or five iterations of these now, in four or five years.

Previously branded to Dolgen Corp. (Dollar General), this year they are credited to an Old East Main Co., but still found in Dollar General, and while for the last few years it's been two sets (mummies and skeletons), this year we have a new set, Zombie Pirate Army!

Like the other two sets a bit cartoony, but they can be used to fill the ranks of the Blue Box mob from a few years ago, being the same size and a very similar plastic colour! Eight figures in eight poses, again as the other sets, although I seem to recall one of them was ten-figures for the first couple of years . . . skeletons?

Skeleton army; seen before, so just confirmation of the new packaging variant!

Mine, like I say there have been three or four card variations now, figure-count anomalies, and this third set, so in a year or two, when there's less to post on the day, I'll try to return to them for a more comprehensive pulling-together/overview, yet we may see them again next year, as we've seen them for five-years on-the-trot now!

Many thanks to Brian for the images, I'll try to remember to open my Pirate set for next year whatever else happens!

D is for Dino III - The Search for Karn...'ivore

I love that title! Sometimes you think of one and you think "Yeah, there's about four levels there!" . . . anyway, it IS the third Dino-post today, the second from Brian Berke over in the Big Apple, and we're looking at the Dollar Tree dino's, most compared to the Dollar General ones we saw earlier today.

These are branded to our old friends and regular visitor's to these pages; Greenbriar/DTSC, who are more widely available I think. Again there are no species given on the sales-tags/labels - I didn't ask Brian if they have monikers on their bodies?

Sizeing with both the previous lot and our trusty Crescent rifleman reveals a larger animal from a similar species, indeed it's almost a scale-up, but there are differences.

Compared to the pretty basic 'Chinasaurs' of our childhood, there are some very good models out there now, and while the real biggies from Schleich, Papo and Co., are very, very good, these cheapies are also excellent sculpts. I think a lot of it is in the skin-textures they give them, think of that WHSmith's set I was buying a few years ago?

The new set runs to seven against the five we looked at earlier and here the 'Tree's are compared with their 'General counterparts, except the Triceratops who is compared to the old Timpo one (which Brain pointed out is as good as a dinosaur 'dinosaur' such is its age!), the new one is a really nice pose, in my opinion! A second meat-eater should be identifiable from the larger arms but is unknown to me?

The two Steggie's are quite similarly posed, but the new one has slimmer limbs, while the Dollar General example seems to be barking! And there's a kerthunkersaurus to finish-off the line-up

Cheers Brain, that Dino's done in RTM, but I've only got a few days to tick the annual motorcycle and paratrooper boxes . . . it's in hand!

D is for Dinopost

Which was the title of the folder I chucked the images in, and it seemed to be an appt-enough title so I kept it! You were going to get this morning's LB (LP) post a couple of days ago, but Brian sent these late on the weekend, so I pushed the other post back by a day to get this edited and in shape, only for Brian to send more on Monday, so it all got another delay, and we can have Dino-Day today - which would have been a good title too!

Brian has a young grandson for whom he has been out and about buying dinosaurs . . . start 'em young, and all that! To which end he went to Dollar General and purchased their current range of medium-large models for a single greenback apiece (about 80p?).

Now dinosaurs are funny things to scale as the new-born's of many species would have been no bigger than a cat or dog, but a 80/100-year old adult might be half the size of our street! And my sizing isn't terribly accurate, but these are clearly useful with 'toy soldiers', whilst being maybe half their scale, as intended?

Branded to Dolencorp (who did some of the skeleton/mummy stuff a year or two ago I think? Phantom brand of Dollar General?) and the models are exactly what's written on the tag!

Brian found five different animals in total and while the slaes tags don't give names, what we seem to have here is a Stegosaurus (used as a sizer), a Triceratops, a meat eater who is probably an Allosaur' or Gigantisaur' rather than a 'T'; T-Rex - if modelled well - has larger concave 'dimples at the backs of the cheeks, roughly where our ears would be.

Finally a veggie sauropod, who's clearly a smaller scale (box or 'unit price' scale!) as is often the way with these and would go better with HO/OO type figures, but if you're 2 or 3-years old, you're not worried about scale, you just want to see how many things that go "ROAR!" there are in your granddad's toy box!

Thanks to Brian for this rack-toy update, and there's more to come, later, from Dollar Tree!

Later the same day/Early the next day!...

Further to the comments on the post after/above this one (newer post) I asked Brian for the names printed on the bellies and he sent some more shots WITH the names (which was very kind) and which I've placed under each animal.

No surprises but what I called the Triceratops is actually a Styracosaurus (which is a mistake I often make) and I would argue the T-Rex is anatomically incorrect (which is a mistake Chinasaur designers often make), but hay . . . it's a vicious meat-eater, right? Thanks again Brian!

BRACHIOSAURUS

PARASAUROPHUS

STEGOSAURUS

STYRACOSAURUS

TYRANOSAURUS REX

H is for How They Come In - Often from America!

The same day Peter's parcel arrived, another hitched a ride with it on Postie's trolley, in fact with both of them sent regular-mail and the postmen working under cut-hours (or under-cut hours!), he didn't even knock, just tucked one on the other, behind the wood-stack in the porch and I found them both returning from the station with the daily Metro!

It was from Brian in New York, and had all sort of goodies in it!

He sent three bags of the Flixstars from Mattel we looked at last time he sent some! I'm going to have to keep one mint, but don't know yet which of them will be the two to open, but I must say I think they're fun, and from the front they all make nice figures.

I opened this one straight-away, because the packaging is a huge thing, and I can scan the card sometime for the archive, which will stack flat 'for posterity'! He's a bigg'un, about 80mm if we assume they grew to human size, and from Monogram 'the new'.

Funnily-enough I found the old Playmate's 54mm'ish TMNT's while putting that Plume Brisse (or whatever it was) Indian premium away the other day and I thought that with the ones we've seen in the last few years and others including the Yolanda Sobre ones we might have a round-up of turtle ninja, mutant-teenager figuress in the spring!

This year's packaging colour-way from Dollar General/Dolgen, I would save it for October, but thought I'd clear the decks now, as we can compare all three - to date - next year, they being; black, orange and purple cards. Still unfair that the Mummy's get ten poses and the Skeletons only eight!

Brian also sent three bags of some of his finds on the secondary market; the top bag has a mix of MPC 54mm (which I know I'm short of) and Hong Kong Monogram clones, the middle bag are the Payton (? I'll check before I blog them again) copies of the Marx hard plastic polystyrene figures. We did look at them, but it was ages ago, so they will prove really useful when I return to them here.

The last bag was particularly kind of Brian as we've already had the images - indeed it leaves me with a quandary as I'd like to shoot them again (now they're here!), but with some more CMV shots (for that is what they are) from Chris Smith added to the mix, they were/are fully covered on the khaki infantry page, so I'll have to be patient, or get a grip on an A-Z entry!

A return to Mattel with these two 65/70-mil'ish figures, a nice Batman and The Rock - who's pretty-much escaped me but I know of him from my Brother's enthusiastic gabbling on the Fast & Furious franchise!

I shot the card backs to illustrate a point previously highlighted - the mass of consumer information you find on these things, these days - they must be as 'safe' as a lungful of mountain-air!

Mr. B also sent three more of these large stretchy 100mm combat types from Greenbrier/DTSC for Imperial with a new colour and a new pose - the bazooka firer. Thanks as always to Brian and wishing him and the rest of you a Happy Christmas . . . I know - but it's not far off; any-day-soon and it'll be in the past already!

Z is for Zombie Men . . . Women, Dogs and Mummies!

We've managed black cats, skeletons, a possible yeti, assorted monsters and a bunch of ghosts, there's only one trope left really, the undead! The risen from the dead and the rising from the dead! Let's tick those boxes for the finale!

Again, we saw these last year as shelfies (or sent images) I think, but Brian B then kindly sent some to the Blog so here they are in close-up, issued by Greenbrier in the 'States and DTSC in Canada.

It's a fact that all the best of these Halloween/Horror figures come from (or via/due to the efforts of-) North America. Apart from the odd thing like 99p Store's re-issue of Dolgen or the odd Amazon offer (see below), I've looked hard this year and the mountains of plastic tat available for Halloween are of such shite quality and ephemeral robustness they constitute an excuse for banning Halloween here altogether!

It's also a fact I'll get this whinge into one of the posts every year!

Both sides of the card for those who archive this kind of stuff - I do!

A comparison with the other set (SCS Direct in the 'States) which Peter Evans had sent to the blog in time for last year's posts.

Now, I mentioned Amazon, and I did find these on Amazon UK from Fun Express (aping that other firm's packaging again, Amscan . . . or Unique?) and they were quite cheap so, despite the imagery being less than helpful or hopeful, I ordered a set, and this is it, but it wasn't much fun!

What you get is 12 figures, which seem to be split 6 each of the two colours, one a drying-blood red, the other looking to be glow-in-the-dark, but not; just a greenish-white - interior decorators would call it apple-snow or some pretentious crap like that, think - raw tripe!

But when it comes to poses the pack disappoints. Totally random contents with four of some and one of others, I ended up with three poses, one in both colours. now they were cheap, and I did intend to get a couple more sets to see if there were other poses, or just to get all (?) three in both colours, but I kept putting it off as there's no guarantee (from my first sample) that even two more sets would achieve that?

If you try, good luck, they are sized to fit others and as army-builders are a useful addition to the canon, but with most rack-toy issuers getting quite good at packing balanced lots these days it is disappointing to see these, especially as they seem to go to the effort of counting colours? Just pick from 'pose-bins' . . . some firms have automated it so you get a whole or part-runner in each bag!

You can see how he goes well with the WWII set (far right - EMCE Toys 'Previews Exclusive, Zombies At War') we looked at a year or two ago, and he's not much smaller than the two grey zombie sets (far left), so they are useful, but you may need four or five bags to get a good sample?

The big mummy is marked similarly to Phidal stuff but is a softer material than they are currently using and seems to be from 2009, so he may be an early issue from this increasingly prolific (55 sets in the 2019 catalogue?) figure source, he's also another candidate for a Scooby-Doo related-set?

While I don't know anything about the other chap, I'd guess a 1980's rack-toy . . . possibly a He-Man/MotU rip-off? He's a very dense polyethylene or some type of nylon?

Finally Mr. Berke has sent a shelfie of the same black carded version of Dolgen's Mummy Army, and how come they keep getting ten poses while the skeletons have always been limited to eight? Some Pharaoh's-curse rubbish I'll bet . . . fussa-russa!

Thanks again Brian, thanks again Peter, see what turns-up in twelve-month's time!

D is for Dem' Bones, Dem' Bones, Dem' Plaaaaasssstic Bones - Carded Sets

We have seen these before, the last two years-running I think, if not the last three, but they keep changing the packaging!

Last year Brian sent us shelfies of the purple card (they had an orange one the year before!)*, but then donated a sample to the Blog, which arrived after the event so I've been sitting on them even since, this year he sent shelfies of the new black-card! I've only gone with another shot of the orange one in the card, as there are lots of loose ones now, and it's the only carded sample here, but you get the idea!

In the meantime I'd found an aluminium-silver and gunmetal-bronzy one in the storage lot, so the sculpts must be over ten years old, probably older, although maybe not - then - Dolgen Corp., or PMS? The samples from Mr. B from two years ago, and the 99p Stores ones (from nearer Christmas, I seem to recall?) vary in shade slightly with light and dark tans, the lighter being the UK (PMS branded)  and some Dolgen ones.

Also shelfied from Brian (in 2017) were the Walgreen set, which he also then sent to the Blog last year, so a quick close-up of them; you get 4x4 poses for 16-figures in an 'onion-bag' net, and they are rather floppy!

They are also rather tall! but there are no rules for fantasy undead skeletal corpses brought back to like and they could have come form god-knows where, or when!

Thunderbird Two! No! But . . . when we were kids, birds peanuts came in long red net-bags (they also came in Christmas stockings and I still prefer them to salted ones) with a similar tie, but it had a bigger slide and more substantial loop which was shorter, fatter and more rounded, and it looked like a red T2, I had a whole squadron of them!

You don't need the warehouses' piled high with plastic tat, we've come to expect in the last forty years, kids raised to imagine, will. And as the planet's journey toward a looming death speeds up, this is something parents and parenting need to recognise and address.

*Checking the posts over the last few years it's all a bit complicated and we have almost over-seen these now, but I think the order of card-graphics is Orange-Purple-Black!