U is for Undying Undead!

This must be year eight, maybe year ten? Our roving reporter in North America, Brian B, has managed to visit three of the 'household name' discounters, to see what they had on offer this Autumn, and he's found a darn slight more than I've managed to, over here, and we're starting with the new packaging for an old favourite.

 

They've lost their blister-cards, in favour of card-headed bottle-bags, and there seems to be the one card 'Skeleton Army', despite the fact that some of them have the Mummies, but only the two types were to be found in New England!

 

Now claiming to be made in Vietnam, and imported by the Old East Main Co., Dollar General is carrying them. Thanks to Mr. Berke for shooting them for us, like the cyclamens under the cedar, they just keep popping up every year!

R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #4

Some of you may have had a weird alert for a post you can't find, this is due to my being an Aspergic idiot, and wanting to have four posts between each of Brian's posts, forgetting I'd done four because of the 'help wanted' post, which now isn't wanted (don't know, don't care), so, yeah, 'Hyperspeed' will post again in a few hours!

 

In the meantime, Brian sent a last minute set of shelfies from Dollar General in the 'States, and it's about half stuff not generally found on the Blog (but you never know who's visiting, or why), and half, some useful stuff, and here it is;

 

Wot? No caps!

 

Above is the stuff of less ineterst to the Blog, although the Mickey is a solid, and Spiderman has a solid fan-base, whatever size or figure type, and it's always nice to see figures who aren't WASP's, if you know what I mean, and it's a growing trend, to be encouraged.

 

Looks like fun, although some passing little scrote has squidged his head-in!

 

Both solids, and with existing, even 'vintage' figures of both Sesame Street and The Muppets, from Schleich, Comics Spain (and others), and a couple of breakfast cereal producers, a whole sub-genre of figure collecting, and/or TV/Movie related stuff.

 

Lego-likey, and always like Lego-likey as it's not plagiarist, lying, expencive Lego! And it's always interesting to see how 'other bricks are available' producers design their mini-figures, here we have real waists/hips and ripped shoulders! These officers could easily arrest any Lego mini!

 

I've seen similar in B&M and elsewhere, but not something that's lighting-up my universe! Although I 'get it', and they are the collectables of the future.

 

This looks nice, and a 'solid'?

 

I've also seen these, we may have had shelfies in the past, these here are possibly more colourful than the ones I've seen in UK stores, and like those minis we saw the other day, are window-walkers, in that sticky, cold, very-soft, silicon type polymer.

 

Many thanks to Brian Berke as always, rack-toys to be found in Dollar General, now. The four post thing was accidental, but after two, it made sense (to someone on the spectrum!), to continue it for [self-imposed] compliance sake!

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.

H is for Halloween How They Come In!

I was really struggling to find anything for Halloween, although I thought I had the bits of one post, you won't see it today, because I can't find any trace of it, if it existed! Anyway, with help from Loyal Readers we have a programme of mostly novelty [not] horror after all, and it started with these, sent in by Brain Berke, over in New York.

These are classic rack-toys! A felted or foam pumpkin attached to a pair of plain-lens, plastic glasses, which are so basic they probably used a 1970's mould-tool! Brand-marked to Party Solutions, I believe most of the items in the post were shot in Dollar General but I'm not so sure about this one.

Brian also sent this year's Dollar General offering in the figure department, the skeletons and mummies we've seen before, and the count had gone down on one I think, but now they are joined by witches, and all three are eight figures not ten - 'The cost of playing crisis!' *

He also offered to open the Witch Characters and photograph them, but I said that wasn't necessary as I knew Shaun had already blogged them so you can go and see them on his Fantasy Toy Soldiers blog - and check out his for sale department!

*for non-UK readers, the current global turmoil is being referred to in the British media, and by our politicians as 'The cost of living crisis'.

He also did the card back for us and it's here; cropped out and heavily contrasted to reveal the old crones in all their hideous glory! The semi-flat nature/design of them will be most likely to disappoint on the cauldron crone, but I like the look of them, nothing like them in the UK again this year, and I've searched!

All of which suggests the Zombie Pirate Army have been dropped this year, and that maybe in a year or two we could get a fifth set? And they are under the Old East Main Co. branding again this year.

From the dents left in the abdomens of these Forum Novelties (seen before here) spiders by passers-by, these look like blow-moulds, but the extremities don't look thinned-enough, indeed: eight thin extremities would be hard to successfully blow-mould, so I suspect rotary-moulding, where powered polymer is heated in a rotating mould to deposited a melted layer over the inside of the cavity.

Packaging to match the figure sets, these are nice looking skeleton hangers (length of sisal-string attached!), and while not apparently articulated they do seem to have revolving heads to help them wave in the breeze! About four or five inches high by the look of it?

Not Halloween per-se, but equally something we'd be less likely to see here, outside an RTM maybe, but with the glasses already above, and the naughtiness inherent in owning one of these, especially on Halloween, they definitely belong here!

It's ironic, because you don't see these like you did when I was a kid (hence 'vintage toys'), yet they have always been there, as we discovered - when I was a kid! Fishing-tackle shops will sell you a die-cast aluminium/mazac one, with heavy square-section rubbers and an arm brace, which will throw a grenade over a 100-yards - or a tobacco tin filled with dust and gravel!

And an old curmudgeonly codger could use it to fire sweeties all over the village green and start a kid's riot?

Cheers Mr. B - you saved Halloween!

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!

T is for Two - Webbs Rack Toys

Previously these pirates (1st set below) have been attributed to Dollar General in the US, I now seem to have a UK brand-mark, while the knights are 2nd or 3rd generation copies of the original 1970's Britains Deetail copies out of Hong Kong, now marked 'China' (like the pirates) and being hawked by the same rack-toy name - Webbs.

Packaging is about as generic as it comes on the front, but there is a consumer info panel and what looks like a phantom branding (but is actually S Webb and Son of Menai Bridge, Gwynedd) printed on the otherwise plain back, and the WST048 set's blister is 'space-filled' with spurious shite!

The spurious shite includes an injection-moulded copy of the old Noah's ark props and a rock wall, but the boat and cannon are useful and make up for the village-pond-with-coral-reef play mat!

There is another pose (swordsman, seen in black plastic in the rack-toy round-up, last ITLAPD), but of interest to the blog is a new pose here, the lady. She looks like she might be being made to walk the plank as a victim of wicked pirates, but is in fact holding a pistol in the small of her back with the clear intention of giving someone a third eye or a hole in the heart - generous girl! And don't worry - plenty in the bag for ITLAPD this year!

The seller is offering these in threes should you be tempted; and with the knights each assortment differs, but each blister (set WST051) gets two identical riders, so you need multiples to complete the set.

No filler and lots of separate weapons make these very useful purchases, although the play mat is "...far out there man" . . . with Frisian cows, stud-fencing, nicely-trimmed hedges and dry-stone walls sharing space with a pterodactyl, veggie'saur, giraffe and lion, while a Napoleonic grenade appears to be stuck half-way up the cliff . . . or is the pterodactyl bombing the mud-river with rocks??!!!!

That's them - they're still out & about there somewhere!

R is for Return to Rack Toy Rascals - Round Up

Having seen several of the following in the last year or two, sometimes both years, I didn't think we'd be returning to them again, but life happens while you're thinking things, and here they all are for a reprise/round-up/return!

Additions to the 'probably Red Box' lot, both poses and colours has raised the pose count to nine which is unusual enough to keep me looking for a tenth, even though I've never seen one! And three colours, although I think I've also seen them in green?

Similar additions (in the same purchase) to the Dollar General sample brought them to only five posts, but added both light and or dark red and yellow to what I already had, the dark yellow's however, have washed out under the flash.

Brian had also, earlier, sent me his Dollar General acquisition, so by way of a close-up of both sides - here he is!

Toysmith's pirates are new to the Blog's collection and came as enemy for the unpainted Tomb Warrior skeletons in 'Battling Pirates' sets (from Toy Major) with six sculpts found, all in a black-as-your-pirate-heart charcoal plastic, these came from a charity-shop purchase I think, but see final paragraph.

I think Chris Smith sent these only the other day, but also see final paragraph; and they are smaller pirated versions of the Toysmith set in a softer green polymer.

So, excluding Hing Fat who got a good going last year and from the top; Dollar General, 'believed to be Red Box', unknown and the Toy Major-Toysmith newbie's with their two copies at the bottom. The unknowns are very 'unknown' at the moment - Jaru , D&D Dist., and Henbrandt carry Hing Fat and Imperial carried copies of Hing Fat (in yellow only) a few years ago, but I have no clue to these.

More imagery for the Toysmith set; base marking is similar to some of their PVC dinosaurs, and lacks the TM mark, while the copies are a lot smaller and - as mentioned - softer plastic, probably not a full-on PVC but one of these new hybrid compounds.

Toysmith as a distributor are running Toy Major push-through; in the Toy Major lists the set is currently titled W5545 - Action World Pirate Collection in a window box as opposed to the earlier header-carded bag.

Here I've taken the unknown and Dollar General's away and added the pod-footed, PVC rubber, 'probably capsule-toys' which came from Peter Evans and other sources in several tranches over some time. They are all copies of- or based-on figures from the Toysmith and 'believed to be' Red Box sets.

Last paragraph - I can't always and/or forever keep track of everything that comes in to the Blog, and there's stuff in this post which may not be correctly credited (like the Toysmith stuff for starters), suffice to say Peter Evans, Chris Smith and Trevor Rudkin have all contributed some of the above at some point, so thanks to them for everything they do!