R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #1

The Blog's New York-based roving reporter Brian Berke, seriously anticipating Rack Toy Month, sent these shelfies, back at the start of January, although he was probably aiming at the novelty-post element of the Christmas season, but for some reason, too much stuff, or my tardiness (checks history, 122 posts over Dec/Jan, so too much stuff!) that never happened, so we're looking at them now!

 

Erasersaurs re-purposed as Romantisaurs, but the only thing which renders them romantic is the sticker on a separate sheet behind them, which has the added bonus of saurian wordplay! Greenbriar claim responsibility for this mawkish nonsense, but they are possibly new sculpts, and I don't think the big Sauropod has been seen in other Dinoraser posts?

 

Thingy and Stitch, I've never seen it, and keep getting it confused, in my head, with the TV-show within the Simpsons; The Itchy & Scratchy Show, a violently slapstick cartoon, knock-off of Tom & Jerry, watched with glee by Bart and Lisa? But they look to be polymer solids, so there's a place for them here, if only temporarily, when they start to turn up.

 

And the same can be said of these, in fact, we saw a similar solid, 54mm Barbie from Mattel, in a recent plunder or donation post, with more in the queue, so these are probably an extension/different wave of the others?

 

Generic Action Figure, Seal Team Six, waiting for the SAS to show them how to do it!

  

Yes, I've looked it up, yes, I'm adding it to the Tag list, but it's still a larger Action Figure, and I have to draw the line somewhere (she's a 'good guy'!), but question - they've named the enemy raiders 'the Kharn', does this mean the long-forgotten owners of Bluebird's intellectual property can sue, or are all alien race names fair-game?

 

I'm trying to avoid Paw Patrol too, thankfully they are too big, but at some point, some small ones are going to come-in, and I know they're already Tagged, and, if they don't interest you, they may be ideal for kids/grandkids?

 

Many thanks to Brian, who has subsequently sent two more lots (I just found the latest in Gmail!), so we'll be returning to the budget-basements of the Big Apple, before the Month's out, if we don't just all get evaporated by the sun first! 

F is for Fireman Pat, the Paw Patrol Builder

There's a ton of this infant oriented stuff out there, and in scanning the shelves I tend to filter it out, what with the American knock-off of Tomas the Tank engine starting to make inroads to British shelves, and Postman Pat now joined by similarly-cloned builders and firefighters (still called 'firemen', shock-horror!), even if you could argue Pugwash or Mr. Ben came first!

 

But luckily, Brian Berke spotted these in the 'States a while ago, and they've been in edit since . . . checks images . . . 2024, in fact, June, so two years ago, and well overdue for an outing here. Also, while flat erasers aren't necessarily a thing, we have had similar robots and dinosaurs, so by default, they are part of the Small Scale World oeuvre now! The law of unintended consequences!

 

 

Apparently direct-from-Turkey imports, or is that a version of Arabic? Zaini (LZ) are well known as a Kinder rival, and we've seen a few figural efforts or vehicles from them over the years, the likely prizes as illustrated on the box, weren't in the box! But do include two figures who may turn-up in mixed lots someday?

 

Instead you got flat-slab erasers with water-slide transfer-printed images of the characters from Fireman Sam on them, credited to a Prism Art & Design Ltd.* Many thanks to roving reporter Brian, for roving, and reporting!

 

*According to the Fireman Sam wiki - "Prism Art & Design Limited is a Welsh entertainment company currently owned by HiT Entertainment, itself a subsidiary of Mattel" - so, wheels within wheels! 

D is for Donation - Chris - Books, TV, Movie and Licensed

Chris has also sent a bunch of licensed stuff to the blog, it made only three images, but some very interesting or useful bits are in there.

 

Three very different Hulks, the Mon Desire chocolate-egg gift, an unknown, which may be something like Wizards of the Coast (it has a 'gaming' finish' to it, but no base?), and a vintage pencil top, which is a real find! Superman is another pencil top, while Spider-Man is an eraser. He's a waterslide transfer print, like many of the 'flat' shaped erasers of the time.

 

The Super-deform is probably contemporary, or near-contemporary and is one of the archers, from the clips I've seen on YouTube, there are several archers, of both sexes and both franchises - Marvel and DC! And the Flash (?) could be also be Wizards, sans base, Kinder, sans base or one of the electronic game pieces (sans base!) we had an overview of, a while ago?

 

Brilliant find! We finally have the eponymous Charlie Chalk pencil top (blue, on the left), and confirmation that the previously seen Trader Joe had mould-release damage to his hat, although, it seems to be a double stamp of the triangular fold which is meant to be in his hat, but still nice to get an undamaged one with normal eyes!

 

The Simpsons Nelson Muntz (he's a  . . . yeah!) may go with the Homer (set wise) seen in the immediately-previous post, of stuff from Peter, they are the same size, maybe they are Kinder?. . . Goes and does a quick search, yes they are, but different sets! Bully, he was a bully!

 

But the pink Wilma is a fantastic find, as it's clearly a Hong Kong knock-off of the Kohner set's figure, we saw here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/12/y-is-for-yabba-dabba-doo.html

 

And it is amazing how much stuff, ends-up having an HK clone, several times this year I've seen things I thought were too rare, or esoteric to have been copied, standing there, all Hong Kong'y! Many thanks to Chris for saving it.

L is for Last Year's Theme!

A bit slower this year; what with us being four months in, a third of the year gone already, and the smell of Christmas barely out of the woodwork! I managed, however, to find a new space-themed bit of stationary in Waterstones on Monday.

 

Designed by Nick Lerwill for Suck UK (who provided the astronaut climbing a pencil last year), it's a shuttle eraser! With the main tank an orange clone of the old BiC Biro four-colour jobbie, with the booster rockets being basically a white pencil (plain graphite lead) sharpened at both ends and cut in half. A plastic (nylon or 'propylene?) moulding of the manoeuvring engines, doubles up as a belly-clip for the three engine tanks. There's also a probably 'styrene or plexiglass ruler.

A is for Another 'Lucky Bag', and Some Seasonal Stuff!

A few other purchases in the last few weeks, and after the blind surprise 'Lucky bags' we saw from The Works earlier in the year (October), I noticed similar bags in Poundland the other day, and again got the Dinosaur themed one as the best chance of a figural, and as a comparison with the disappointing inflatable of the last example.

 

A task made slightly easier by the fact that the contents are illustrated on the outside of the bag! Stickers, puzzle, skeleton, collector cards and a 'bonus' key-ring . . . if it's listed, pictured and included in every bag, it's not a bonus, it's a priced element of the contents!

 

A few minutes later I popped into the aforementioned The Works, and bought these, as apart from the fact I thought they would make nice additions to the wooden-trees subsection, they might also prove useful as photo-shoot accessories in the future?

 

To that end, here they are, both artfully arranged (!) in the fashion of an interiors' magazine shoot! You have to imagine they are on an immaculately-polished, white piano, with a recognisable supermodel, just out of focus and staring intently at a Hockney, on the wall!

 

Mostly duplications of one sort, or another, I also picked these up on my day's shopping in Farnham a few weeks ago, they sort of complete what Opie calls a cameo, in that we have previously seen the Santa's in individual bags the same as those the snowmen are in, here.

 

We have also seen the snowmen in the red and green scarves, along with a mauve version, so this blue one is new. And we saw a copy set of the Deer, red-Santa sleigh, snowman (red scarf) and tree, also from The Works, so that's pretty much all known versions of originals and copies, now, in several variations of packaging!

N is for November's Sandown Park - Erasers

And not just any old erasers, but that the bulk of them are probably Diener Industries, one way or another, the other factor being that they are also French premiums, but may, due to petroleum, also be British! I picked these up a few at a time, every time I passed the chap's stall, and wish now I'd hoovered up the last few, but they were mostly duplicates, I think!

 

These are probably not Diener, as they are proper eraser-rubber, but I thought they'd go very well with the Lik Be (that's LB of course!) and Holly anthropomorphic musicians, in a future comparison post / battle of the animal bands! They are also pencil-tops.

 

These are all clearly marked Diener Ind., with a '(C)' mark, and are a mix of generics, Disney, cute and a Fontanini clown-sculpt knock-off, along with an Easter basket of bunnies! And they may well belong to several sets, or even some of the sets below, as explained as we go.

 

These are unmarked, but are manufactured in the same smudgy silicon-rubber of all Diener's 'erasers', which were always shit erasers, as they just smudged pencil around the page, leaving everything looking awful! Again, they could be from more than one set, but the paint ties them into the premiums below. The red kitten is a slightly different sculpt to the yellow one in the previous shots - head moved to ease undercuts?

I can't work out if this is supposed to be some kind of anthropomorphic Viking, or a French TV character? Nor is it clear if it's damaged, poorly fettled or had a charm/key-ring loop removed?

 

These two, both Disney, are marked Esso and Disney Prod., and were a set of premiums, given away with Esso fuels, defiantly issued in France, the complete sets are to be found in the pages of Jean Piffret's book Figurines Publicities, but, as I think I've mentioned before, we had some when we were kids, not from this set, but from the set of woodland (or other) animals, some of which are in the upper shots.

 

Indeed, the slightly Beatrix Potter'esque pricklepin in the same flesh pink as the odd figure above, is one of the items on my nostalgia wants list, as it was in my pencil case until I was far too old to have affection for such things! And the three little pigs would also go with the other musical mammals!

 

While these are just marked (C) Walt Disney Prod., but you can see where the Esso has been obliterated on the tool, so there was probably a commercial issue too, at some point.

 

Therefore, I think a couple of the sets annotated by Piffret, as French, were issued here, also with Esso, at some point around the late 1960's or early 1970's, possibly without the paint highlights of the French and more commercial Diener issues. There were more sets issued as premiums in France, though?

 

Four other, non-Diener, non-Esso types, with, from the left a grotesque facemask pencil top, this was probably from the era of cereal-premium totem-pole funny-faces and the semi-flat African mask charm type premiums. Next is a vampire, or Dracula type, in his casket, and just waking-up, by the look of it!

The footballer is bigger that the Hong Kong painted ones, issued as either key-rings or pencil-tops, but may have been the inspiration for them, and he is a pencil top too! While the 'finger fright' rubber-jiggler just came with them to make a round-number! The first three being, again, 'proper' eraser-rubber.

F is for Follow-up - Robot Pencil Tops

Except, these mostly have a person inside, as the originals, and are therefore 'battle suits', except that some transformers or autobots don't? I don't know, I barely follow it and haven't watched any of the movies, too loud and too reliant on CGI for me, bah-humbug! We looked at my smallish sample four-and-a-half years ago here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/03/u-is-for-ultrapenciltop.html

A sample which has since grown, not least with the help of Chris Smith, who not only sent that pair the other day (I think the brown one is less common), but who seems to send one or two in every parcel, and a few have come in from other sources, which is useful, as there seem to be quite a few to find altogether, either version type (soft erasers or harder pencil-top-only's), or colour, or post number.

What follows is some Internet scrapings, I've been saving, on-and-off, since 2010, which back-up a comment I made elsewhere a couple of years ago, mentioning the fact that they keep turning up in quantity.

Here's a bulk lot, branded to Treasure Chest, by Goliath-Hall Inc., but obviously imported from Hong Kong, of interest is that the whole lot are in one polymer colour, yellow, but are otherwise the same as all the others, usually sold as generics. There is a current Goliath Games, but this lot were formed in the 1950's and closed-up in 2005.

Four of the poses, possibly on the origianl pencils some issues came with, possibly Tom[y], reading at the top of the left-hand one? I'd like to find more of the green ones! I'm not sure how well this image will show, though, until I publish? It's behaving oddly in Picasa!

Another all-yellow set, no 'Masked Kamen Rider' (thank you Geofry Peeters) in this issue apparently, whether that makes him rarer, when they turn-up by the box-load is anyone's guess!

Blue'ies!

 

Blacks

 

A mix of colours, including a clearly off-white, or cream, as opposed to the snow-white seen in my previous post, It would seem that rarer colours are the two purples (deep and mauve'ish) and the brown, but that could simply be a question of what I've encountered, rather than any genuine rarity!

While this generic, counter-top lot, have been manufactured in an eraser rubber, with no paint, whether it's a good rubber, or smeary silicon I don't know, but it looks eraserble! Rider is back!

Autobots, Godaikins, Grandizer, Mazinger, Shogun Robots, or Transformers, you have to be a more dedicated fan than me, to know what you are looking at, but the toys and minis are plentiful, and fun!

H is for Hoarded Hord of Halloween Horrors

Except none of them are remotely horrible, nor in any way horror inducing, which makes them all the more acceptable as fun figures/items you might use in gaming, or just chuck in the collection as box-ticking completers!

 

Indeed, if you want to hear something horribly frightening, or frighteningly horrible - I saw my first Christmas-lit house on Wednesday night, it's still October! And that's not including those few in our region, who have given-up taking their shite down every year, and just display a mawkish, illuminated-idea of a fantasy fairy-dell, 24-7-365!

 

I think we saw these a year or two ago, but I'm not sure if they went to eight colours last time? In The Works, and the only Halloween-related thing, of a figural nature I found there, worth a penny!

 

I shot these in Sainsbury's, but didn't buy them, as we did a whole bunch of these sets a few years ago, with various posts and comparisons between the contents, the differences between similar items, like the millipedes and such like, and I suspect these are re-issues of some of those, and I don't need them in the collection, nor the vast numbers in the bag, but I guess, for party 'scatter', they are good value. Credited here to a Rayland International.

 

But I did purchase this chap, about 6", so the top-end of the collection's range, and not very animated, he's a box ticker! The amount of safety information on the little card, for a single-piece moulding the length of a pencil-case ruler is daft, but that’s the times we live in!

 

TKMaxx gave-up this little gem of an eraser set, the ghost doesn't stand up, and could use a cotton-thread to hang him off something! In the Japanese, Iwako style, with multi-parts and ethylene inserts for eyes etc.

 

These are new, seen in The Range and too big a hole, for pencils, I wondered at the point of them, until I saw the boxes of glass straws! A sensible attempt to end the plastic straw problem, and invent a whole new genre of 'topper' at the same time.

 

The straws had year-round packaging, so I didn't shoot it - bad-enough I talked myself into buying straws I'd never use! - I thought, although I've since used one to get the juice out of the bottom of one of those prepared fruit-salads with separate compartments, so useful after-all, and luckily they also come with a useful straw-washing brush!

 

Also in The Range; figural 'pop-a-point' stacking coloured pencils, we saw a similar set earlier in the year, and there were others which were too big and or cartoony for the collection (similar in TKMaxx too), but these were figural fun in the smaller scale, or at least the ghosts are - box ticked!

 

Brian Berke sent these from New York, and they are definitely fun items from Forum Novelties, being those semi-sticky wall or window walkers, that jerkily shudder down flat surfaces!

 

I'd normally crop these sorts of images closer, but you can see pumpkin shaped treat-collection jars to their left, which are also quite fun, I've seen similar (in B&M I think?) but didn't shoot them.

 

I thought these were the same as the first item in the post, but bought them for the packaging variation, and the possibility there were colour variances too, only to find they were larger, but slightly less well-sculpted skeletons, in the style of, but all new mouldings. I guess the brand is Tell-a-Tale, but it's not clear, and I think I found them in a garden centre?