HB is for Horror Bargains!

And Home Bargains, where I went at the end of August, and found a few bits of interest to readers of the Blog, ticking two boxes here, edibles and white button toys,, and incidentally; I spent a couple of hours last night re-Tagging White Button, which now shares the Clockwork Tag, but Clockwork of the vintage, large or tin-plate variety won't have the White Button Tag, I also added Cable Drum as a Tag!

 

Hallow Scream . . . geddit! Well, once you have a few, you just have to keep getting them! A gangling ghost and a perambulating pumpkin, similar to the garden centre ones we saw last year, and with a growing selection of robots, marching troops and a couple of dinosaurs, not to mention a Grinch (also Home Bargains), it's a race to see who dominates what will become a dedicated tub!

 

I thought the 'BOO!' detracted from the overall character of the toy . . .

 

. . . so I removed it with a bit of hand-sanitiser mixed with de-icer!

 

I also picked up these chocolate eggs, and managed to remove the wraps carefully (another collection of mine is old sweet and confectionery wrappers!), and managed to take the outer liner home with them, so I can scan it for the eventual A-Z listing, which in this case is Mon Desir, the people who brought us the chubby, semi-deform Superhero gift-eggs, about ten/twelve years ago.

 

Pretty standard chocolate, not unpleasant, no white chocolate half, and a fun thing for a lunch box, or even the breakfast table - Halloween falls on Saturday this year doesn’t it?

 

Sadly the contents aren't Halloween related, being 'bog-standard' stuff we've seen before from other minor brands, with the bobbing 'chariot' and  jogging dog-team, both mirroring such items from Kinder's past, the frog a common capsule toy, and the 'space' pick-up truck is fun!

S is for Spooky Sweets!

We (UK) may not be good at figural toys, compared to the ''States, come Halloween, but on the edible figural front, we always seem to provide, and while B&M had the same lollies as the last two years, I managed to find these iced jelly lollies in The Range.

 

Jelly Pops, produced in the Republic of Ireland (first for the Tag's maker list?), for CDS Group, they are iced with a sort of hard fondant, and we have two full figurals in the cat and ghost, along with a pumpkin and witch's head!

H is for Happy Easter . . .

  . . . although I'm not sure what's supposed to be so 'happy' about the crucifixion of a human being? 

 

There's a number of reason why I haven't posted recently, and I'm not going to list them all here, but really, what is there to be happy about? America is being run by a potty-mouthed, narcissistic, inveterate, constant liar and megalomaniac, who seems, along with his friends Putin and Netanyahu, to be determined to destroy the world economy, the world order and international rule of law, maintained since 1945, sometimes at great cost, for what? So he can rename everything after himself?

 

Starmer, along with the King, are proving to be a pair of gutless fuckwits, and while they seem to be starting to stand-up for themselves, Europe hasn't preformed much better. Easter has become another money-fest with most supermarkets only closed today, and otherwise observing none of the Bank Holidays, and with an October storm in March, the weather is clearly as fucked as a Messiah with nails through his hands and feet.

 

Sighs . . . anyways, here's some Easter stuff, both new and from the archive, with a better post later today.

 

Scanned in '22, I don't know if these where from then, or earlier, it was a major scanning session with several hundred bits of ephemera scanned, most of which is still in the long queue! But, card flats, to join the card-flat zone! I don't know if the names change from box/batch to box/batch, and they are obviously renditions of the Lindt chocolate bunnies, from the back of a Lindt egg box.

 

One of my fondest memories of Easter was hunting the Lindt foil-wrapped, mini-eggs; in the garden if the weather was nice; in the house if Christ's tears prevented outdoor activities.

 

Mum would buy them from the big glass jar in Richard's newsagents in Hartley Wintney, and she would have the staff ensure there were equal quantities of each colour (maybe she just ate the spares?!), which I remember as two shades of gold, a pastel green and blue, a heliotrope-purple, a mauve, and a red which was closer to pinkish-crimson/maroon.

 

Anyway, there was a big divvy-up at the end, between my brother and I, and if the two piles weren't balanced, we'd have to go off again and find the missing ones! I don't think you can even get them any more, it's all unwrapped, licence-related eggs, in plastic bags now, and getting very expensive in the last few years, for a number of reasons, not the least being the chocolate-loving, 8-billion souls.

 

Somehow missed when I did the chocolate bunny season back in '24, this was the Kinder effort, I thought it might have a 'maxi' egg, but it's a bog-standard sized capsule, with what appears to be a lamb in a blanket, but it's not 100% clear, and the toy's 'aint what they used to be!

 

Staying with the edible theme, I actually ate these weeks ago! Branded to World of Sweets, I think they were in B&M, but I honestly can't remember, they might have been in The Range? Anyway, they were a sort of generic tutti-fruity flavour, and are 'Spring', not Easter, is that Trump's hated 'woke', or just canny marketing, from money-grubbing, middle-class executives, no better than Trump himself?

 

Some actual Toys! These WERE in The Range, a couple of weeks ago, and remind me of an old Christmas stocking gift we got one year, which were egg-shaped vehicles, with fat 'racing slick' tyres, like the Marx fire engine we saw here, but as animals, so, more like the Pelican marker pens we saw here, given that one was a grey mouse and the other a pink rabbit, if memory serves? I occasionally look for them on eBay, but haven't found them yet!

 

These are a selection of sort of monster/alien types, using the same craft foam you can buy in sheets, applied to basic blown-plastic eggs, Not sure what the plastic type is, but it seems very thin, so some ethylene hybrid probably?

 

And, as I said at the top, something better, which you might have anticipated, latter today! Bah! Humbug!

C is for Cone'ucopia - 1 of 2

It's been a while since we did a capsule-toy round-up, but they have been gathering in several folders, so I thought I'd get some of them cleared-out over Christmas and the New Year, as it all has to be ticked off sometime! This came from the 'plastic-Poundland' in Aldershot, Bargain Buys, about a year and a half ago.

 

Cornet'toys, geddit?

 

A ball of Gummi Bears, a 'play-dough' cutter, a nodding-head novelty tortoise and a dancing sharks sticker, it won't set the world alight, but it will keep little people happy for a while! The 'main toy' however, Orka, seems to have been sourced in Rumania, who are a rarity in the Tag list!

N is for Nutcrackers in November, Naturally! 1 of 2

Brian Berke has sent his pretty-much annual batch of Nutcracker shots, from the Big Apple, and not to be outdone I shot a bunch up at Longacres Garden Centre the other day, which I'll post later today, I also seem to have ended-up with a couple for the tree, which will be in a Charity-shop plunder-post!

 

Fun ones!

 

Edibles!

 

The red one's a bit sinister?

 

Not for me, but 75 inches? That's over six-feet!

 

Paint your own from Strawberry Kazoo with Advent calender!

 

I know gay marriage is legal, but this is the odd couple!

Liberace (No, Gran', he really is!) and his Pirate Beau!

 

Cake hat? Hat cake?

 

Many thanks to Brian, it's interesting to see how things are elsewhere in the world, or how trends come and go, I've noticed this year, a larger number of Mushrooms, blown glass, wood and paper-folds, in various designs, all the purveyors of tree-hangers have had them.

C is for Comedy Candy

As mentioned elsewhere in the last few days, Halloween was just not a thing in the UK, when I was a kid, we didn't 'celebrate' it, we weren't [culturally] aware of its connection with South/Latin America and The Day of the Dead, we didn't import any Halloween 'stuff'.

 

It is, entirely, here at least, a commercial invention (like Father's day) to sell us stuff, and we keep buying it! Ephemeral stuff, piles of polymer stuff, which goes straight to landfill, unnecessary stuff, stuff we don't need, stuff we didn't know we don't need, and . . . amusing, edible stuff!

 

This missed last year's Halloween posts, as it was given to me by a customer I was delivering to, in Frimley Green, on the 31! Under the wrapper it was a smooth, milk-chocolate oval, and very nice!

 

These are in Lidl at the moment.

 

Candy Container.

 

Anything container!

 

I succumbed to some of the polymer shite, myself! There were several colours and I nearly selected the purple one, but decided the clear one would look most like a crystal skull, once emptied, and took that instead, and I think it was a good decision, looking at it empty? I'll find something to keep in it, and it can sit somewhere, looking vaguely sinister! I think it was also Lidl?

 

Not nice! Not-chocolate-mice! Chocolate 'flavour' (not 'flavoured') sugar candy, they taste fatty, and aren't quite as realistic looking as the artwork on the B&M box would suggest. As kids, I remember us being disappointed by mini-eggs at Easter, which were made out of this devil's faux-chocolate!

 

The missing pumpkin from a previous post . . . I bought another pack, they were so cheap! B&M stores, and they did have the more colourful ones, from a couple of years ago, I just didn't see them last time!

 

Also Lidl, these are better chocolate, with some actual chocolate in!

Well - once you've unwrapped it, to photograph . . . ! 

 

The Aldi catalogue shows similar Lollies.

T is for Tricky Treats

I posted one of these a couple of years ago, but didn't see any last year, however, B&M managed to get another five out this year, although I ate the pumpkin without photographing it in close-up, soz!

 

Not as colourful as last time, but, like last time, I'd describe the flavours as 'tutti-frutti', yet, I did notice that they varied between the lollipops, and it would seem they are all supposed to taste different, nevertheless, there's no hint as to what the flavours are, or which lolly is which? Still in B&M, and worth looking out for instead of photographing all the piles of polymer, land-fill, shite!

 

As I entered the store, the couple ahead of me said "Oh, there's a spider on the floor" and we had a laugh about it, and as they wandered-off to look for whatever they were after, I though, it might need a good home, so rescued it from the detritus under the shelves! I think it had fallen-off one of those big polymer, land-fill, shite piles! There's a trend for 'spider's web' netting, pre-stapled with hundreds of spiders?