F is for Follow-ups - Recent Bits

When Chris Smith sent his parcel a couple of months ago, I told him I'd seen another of those finger monsters, a day or so before, and then spent ages looking for it, real rabbit hole stuff, in the end I went through most of the near-thousand folders in Picasa, thinking I must have moved it by mistake (sometimes you pick something up, absentmindedly, on the cursor and dump it elsewhere, without even realising it, on the way to somewhere else!), only to find it the other day, in the short or 'this year' queue, in a possible post on an exhibition!

 

Definitely a forth sculpt/pose, and if the paint-chips are anything to go by (almost certainly home-painted), this one is yellow plastic, which reinforces my - still possibly false - memory of a brown one? And obviously some kind of Kaiju from the Godzilla or Ultraman franchises.

 

From two different show reports, the Reliable figures and probably Reliable side-by-side, the standing shooters look different, because the foot-plug on the older version is not fully pushed-home, but I lined them up, and they are almost identical, even down to the long, adjustable iron-sight, over the breach, so clearly they just added integral bases changing the tool from a two-part to a three-part mould.

 

And thanks to Anonymous for highlighting the link, in comments, I was using the Way Back Machine version of the now defunct Ponylope as a guide!

 

Also from recent posts; show reports and donations, we've seen three of these recently in two posts, the others earlier in the year, brought together, you can see the two sizes (bigger pair on the right), to which can be added the several base marks, which I previously highlighted.

 

When combined with the couple of dozen which have come in over the last three-or-so years (get-at'able in storage), it will give an even better picture. While the master collection, buried in the container, which also includes the big ones, when all the new ones are added to them, will be the basis of a much better overview, one day.

 

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In this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/02/t-is-for-two-roarsome-rack-toys.html

 

We saw a metallic dino'bird/pterosaur kind of thing, which bore little resemblance to the other four on the card-back, but separately, and also from BJ Toys, I've been picking these up at petrol stations, namely the Esso outlet at Tongham/Hog's Back, and Bordon's BP station!

 

Plant spider!

 

Reverse colours.

 

Balrog's horns on this one!

 

The trouble is, they seem to appear one or two at a time, in a large counter display carton on the bottom shelf of a dedicated/custom BJ Toys sales display unit, mixed-in with an assortiment of other novelties, so I don't know how may there are, or whether they all have reversed colour versions.

 

And if you think this link is tenuous, for a follow-up - I thought I'd already posted one! But they were in two folders, with the other not photographed, so I was happy to find the Dino-phoenix, looking for the non-posted dragon! The point being, I think they are from the same source, not BJ; in China?

 

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On the subject of ducks,

 

The two vintage British plastic foul, one from Peter and one from Chris (pretty sure I have another in pink, or a maroonish-purple somewhere), brought together with the TK Maxx crayon ducks and a generic CHINA-marked goose from a rack-toy bag/toob/tub, for scale.

 

Similar, but simplified toys from Sonsco of Hong Kong, again I have several of these in various colours, including a fluorescent pink one which is just as leery as the green one in this set!

 

And on GI's,

 

This set of re-issue ex-Marx figures, being a mix of different sets, has the chap, both Chris and me thought "looked like Marx?", middle-top, and, sure enough, he was a Marx sculpt!

 

But I'd totally forgotten that Chris sent me this shot ages (six years) ago, when discussing something else, probably wanting it to feature in a Question Time, so, to repeat the earlier question, we know the re-loader is a Marx pose, now, but can anyone give a maker/brand to this marbled maroon-brown chap, and B) does anyone know anything about the figure on the left?

F is for Festive Finger Friends!

Getting very close to the sharpest point of what's acceptable on the blog, or within the collection, but, it IS Christmas, they ARE Figural, and it's a bit of fun in a darkening world!

 

I picked up a load of stuff from Peter Evans the other day, but it was owed quite a bit on the shekels-front, so it'll mostly be filtered away into the archive/collection, against future use as 'my stuff', rather than being labelled as contribution, however, there were several items which Peter had obviously grabbed or saved for me, so he'll get credit for them, and this is another of them!

 

Festive Finger Puppets!

(Gem Imports, Barnsley) 

 

Certainly a figural sub-genre or category, and not the first time we've found room for finger-puppets here, they are - again - ideal Christmas stocking-fillers for younger kids, and it's a non-electronic form of imagination stretching, to make up and act out stories in a theatrical fashion. And, it's the second time Peter has found a Gem Imports thing, so many thanks to him, for finding this!

News, Views Etc . . . London Show

It's the London show today, and I'm off! Chalk Farm tube station - helps if I know where I'm going, I've always driven it before!

 

Heres' a random shot of some cracker toys!

 

U is for Up the Smoke!

Except it's been smokeless for most of my life, people under 40 have no idea what fog was like once, I remember going to pick our pet rabbit up, from the pet-rabbit people in Rotherwick, a journey which would normally have taken maybe 20-minutes, round trip, but which took over an hour, because Mum had to drive at ten miles an hour, in the hope that if she caught-up with someone going 9-mph, she wouldn't hit them! Fog-lights became visible at about 20-yards!

 

Anyway, I was up to London the other day, and as is customary, had a look, first with PW's roving reporter; Peter Evans, then, on my own, while returning to Waterloo, for items of use! And these were the things which came back to Ash Road Towers, or not!

 

This was the 'or not', £7.99 is too much for such a piece of rack toy shite, so it stayed on the peg (keeping it warm!), hopefully one of the Bocheng Jin tanks will turn-up in a mixed lot in a few years, and I can see if the red flash-eliminator is easily removable? Daft soldier may also reappear at some point!

 

Timeless pocket-money, rubber-jiggler, 'finger fright' shite! A set of six from House of Marbles, I think we've seen theirs before, but these seem to be new and better colours than those seen previously (Waterstones?), I particularly liked the metallic gold one!

 

Imported by Thomas Benacci, I thought these 40mm figures would prove to be poured PE-resin, but they are, in fact, PVC, so well within the scope of the core project! And I think we've seen the policeman already in a mixed lot or show report, so they don't take long to filter down!

 

And I'd bought these earlier than the others, but they got shot last, so yah-boo-sucks to them! Four quid's more like it, and I thought the painting of a couple (Spinosaur and Sauropod) were better than the common offering. Unbranded, but it's a rack toy!

D is for Did I Mention Bagshot Garden Centre?

As well as the erasersaurs, I found a few other items of Rack Toy Month'able Blogging potential, up at Longacre's vast site on the old A30, and them be these . . .

 

Dimetrodon, one of several in the 'assortment', but obviously the one to come home with me! Quite a good one too, with the dog-like countenance which the better books tend to give this particular beast! Issued by an outfit called Free & Easy of the Netherlands

 

A colour variation of the freebie I got from the Keycraft Rep', back in February, which means (with the holy-cheese and pair of mice) that I've gone from none to three of this genre in less than six months!

 

Also keycraft (same display/dispensing 'tree'), are these, the latest edition of a set we saw a few years ago, in different colours, I hope, I think there was a yellow or blue one, but two yummy-mummy/trophy-wives were standing in the way of the stand, chattering away with three brats and a pram, five minutes from closing with no awareness of the rest of the world whatsoever, so I could only grab what looked to be one of each (it was!), without worrying about colours!

 

 

I also got these - Rex London, ostensively for the Jig-Toy page, but they can go here first, and I'll re-shoot them for there, another day. I did do a bit of an update of that page back in the spring, and can't remember if I said anything at the time, but there is a load more content on that page if you haven't visited it for a while!

M is for Mostly Stretchies!

I thought, given what else is there, that there would be some Henbrandt in the archive of previous show visits, but there isn't, it seems we covered it all at the time, but when they have stuff to shoot, it's usually stuff of interest, and while ephemeral or novelty in nature, this is true for what I shot this year up at the NEC.

 

Finger Monsters = finger fun!

 

Some nice figural Halloween stuff here, I never seem to find it out there in stores, the UK being very bad at this kind of stuff, which makes much better 'treats' than more tooth-acid, but it must be out there somewhere, if you have a better party-shop than my locals, check them out in October?

 

More by accident than design, we've covered both version of their small animal sets over the years, quite thoroughly! But here's another shot, 'cos you can't have too many!

 

? Sort of figural shots, I fired-off, but really just novelty rings.

 

Snakes & Skeletons

 

Lizards & Smileys

 

Skeleton box, but they are Mummies

I think we saw the flicky Superheroes in Hawkin's Bazaar?

 

Frogs & Dinosaurs

 

Mixed jungle animals I'll be looking out for,

and black & white Rats

 

I wonder how many colour-change items there are in the stash, not having a habit of giving everthing a hot bath when it comes in to the collection, I wouldn't know unless someone told me?! All-in-all, a few bits of interest, one way or another.

H is for How They Come In - Chris - Monsters!

It is always the unexpected oddities which make 'mixed junk' lots so interesting and fun to unpack and sort out. I've had an odd finger puppet in the collection for many years, a vaguely Kaiju looking monster.

One of the first things I saw when I'd lifted the bags of small scale Hong Kong Wild West off the top of Chris's parcel contents was another, a frisson of disappointment crossed my mind, because when you find a second of something, there's always the possibility that 'that is that', a one-off, of which you now have two . . . 

 

. . . but then I found a second, buried, and instantly thought 'another', then saw it was different and looking again at the first one, realised neither is the same as my hanger-around (who has a smoother 'skirt'), so immediately went to officially bloody chuffed with these! I further have a vague memory of a fourth now, in brown, but I may have invented it in my head?

But, yeah! When it comes to 1970's (or even 1960's/) rack-toy tat, these will take some beating! And I love them, cheers Chris!

Another oddity in the most recent lot from Chris was this, which is sort of a bull, sort of something more fearsome and nameless, Devil'some even, yet also cartoony!

 

I'm guessing it belongs to one of those double string things, with the discs at either end. Where it would dance up and down the lines, due to the holes in hands and feet. Like the skeleton and Devil-Santa we looked at in [a] previous lot/s from Chris. But it could be a sort of Jacob's ladder climber type thing - fun anyway, and new to Blog!

D is for Dang! It's the Dastardly Day of the Dead Again!

Rather like with this year's ITLAPD, Halloween hasn't gone smoothly, and might seem a bit bitty to some, but I managed to pull back a few boo-boo's at the end of the week and am starting the blurbification on Friday night to get the posts done in time . . . I hope!

And . . . although I've never intended Halloween to grow to the size of 'Pirate Day, A) I never intended West Country Accent Day to grow quite as big as it has the last few years either, and B) these things will wax and wane under their own steam! But we might as well start with the same 'round-up' post/format I've adopted for ITLAPD!

I've had this for years (I think?), anyway it was in the mixed, unbranded monster box, and while sorting earlier in the year, fired off a few shots for today before it went off to storage. It's a sort of dragon/bat/vampire finger-puppet, and in polyethylene so not as comfortable as the more usual PVC ones on a finger, especially a fat, grown-up's one!

But it also makes a passable stand-alone, 'toy soldier' figure, and is here posed on 1898's Transylvania, then the eastern part of Austria-Hungary, now in central Rumania. Worth a read . . . Wikipedia

This came in recently (charity shop mixed lot) and is - I suspect - quite modern, being a sort of flexible polyethylene which means the sucker doesn't really work, but it's a bat, on All Hallows Eve, so that's a box ticked!

I seem to have ended-up getting eMail updates from Poundland, due to some past, self-inflicted, button-clicking misdemeanor I'm sure! But I've recieved several on Halloween stuff recently (very little of which seems to have made its way to the store in Farnborough as I checked once or twice), but of use - if you could have found them, or to ID when they turn up in job-lots a few-years hence - are these skeletons in larger pairs (44cm/17"!) and smaller quads (160mm/6").

These came in with a mixed lot I'd bought for something else we'll see today, but turned out to be the hard-plastic versions of one of the STS or Greenbrier sets we've seen in the last few years, but missing from those posts. I think it's the latter Greenbrier, but I'm too busy to sort it out now, however we'll have a full round-up/comparison of all these grey sets in a year or two.

Because Halloween is firstly a North American thing, and secondly a kids thing, there is a tendency for me to look upon the day as a more general fantasy/medieval day, as far as subject matter goes, and these are obviously from a board game I haven't tracked down the title of yet, but appears to be about four empires/nations, and aimed at younger players?

The dragon giving it an Arthurian bent, it's otherwise a medieval setting with a (THE?) sword in a  stone, wishing well, sub-scale tent and pack-animal, and two figures per 'side' or 'team', there's definitely a dragon missing, and possibly other stuff?

On one of the Faceplant groups I'm on, there has been a lot of edible Halloween stuff in the last few weeks, not least a recurring line of seasonal breakfast cereals, and the coffin-candy we looked at a couple of years ago, so I was happy to find these in Sainsbury's and post them over there the other day, as it's mostly an action-figure site, so I don't post as much as some of the others! Purple Jaffa Cakes! They're Purple and they're JAFFA CAKES!!!! Well . . . lilac . . . with an orangey-bit! I've still got a pack . . . I'm going to go and have one in a minute!

I've also been filling gaps in the Technolog collection and here's four suitable for Halloween, from the top; chocolate-brown Heroic Barbarians, lilac Amazons, large green Orks and a set of what I suspect are bad Knights, very bad knights, and god knows what that colour is; metallic mauve? It's not quite purple, it's not quite maroon . . . Kriminal Krimson?

H is for How They Come In - Peter - July

Another donation to the Blog wung its way from North London and the Generous Peter Evans in late July, and while we've seen one or two bits from it already, there were some interesting single/stand-alone figures which we're looking at in a minute.

First the inevitable 'group shot', the box ended-up in such a performance it's getting its own post! The bag of horses and the motorbikes both made it into a rather interrupted Rack Toy Month, but I still managed 45 posts, so all was not lost! Not shown below are the red mechanic, a couple of Britains part-zoo-keepers, ertzgibirge cottage and a silver Timpo-clone, sub-scale knight-copy.

A bunch of five! From the left; Worlds Apart/Horrible Histories Centurion, I may paint him up so he's not the same as the original gifted by the promoter, a - probably originally - 1950's kit figure, could be from an AFV, but in silver is more likely to be from an aircraft or rocket kit?

A very interesting figure, which is of the Airfix/Aussie/NZ set of eight seen here numerous times now, but this one a home-cast (and it is technically a casting, being poured) copy from a home-made mould, by Peter, more interesting still is that it's in a material which has set-hard, but flexible, with the properties of PVC.

Then we have a Safari astronaut of the NASA type and a fine but poorly-painted artillery corporal . . . sorry; self-confirmed Emperor! I'm guessing a modern'ish tourist keepsake? Having started a tub just for Blownaparts after I Blogged my small sample, he has a home to go straight into!

This must be kinder (or similar) and is a rather nice fairy, as you can see! Rather peacock'y wings which are made of a sort of plasticised cartridge paper which is relatively indestructible and the specific hols in the base may point to some kind of larger assembly being possible, or collectable toward? [Images might belong in the August lot - publishing later today]

Speaking of kinder, the Hippo'/Rhino' (it's not clear) are definitely Kinder from the 1990's or 2010's, as I have a similar Polar Bear family somewhere, as you can see they stack like Russian Dolls! The sci-fi knight on an armoured Dinosaur is also Kinder while the two (gum-ball machine?) finger-puppets are fun - a Lion holding burning brands a tad too close to his mane for comfort and an Impish Devil who's lost a thumb I fear!

The gold paper worked better this time . . . different light conditions? 

A handful of 'Chinatroops' made up the parcel, and these are they; two iterations of the same pose from different makers, a buckshee Airfix 8th Army piracy and a similar Afrika Korps soldier - we'll return to such things later today if BT Wifi lets me get them all up later!

Many thanks to Mr Evans for another fun lot which pushes the envelope that little bit further!

H is for Halloween - Intro.

I thought this year's 31st of October Posts were going to be a bit weak if not actually non-existent, but in the end I seem (with a fair bit of help over the last twelve months) to have ended-up with seven posts, of which this is probably the weakest, while the seven as a whole will suffice!

A couple of witches familiars' or just scaredy-cats? Worth a thought though . . . fireworks frighten most domestic pets, heat the atmosphere and produce a mass of greenhouse gas. In India they are being severely curtailed, here Sainsbury's have decided not to sell them anymore, and while I like a firework as much as the next man, it's equally true people used to 'enjoy' going to a beheading on Saturday Morning . . . perhaps it's time we consigned Fireworks to the land of Bear Baiting and crucifixion?

On the left a finger-bob or rather loose pencil-top, on the right probably a novelty from a gum-ball capsule machine?

Another small novelty, possibly also a cracker-prize, but definitely in 'pumpkin-orange' and - despite the ball of wool - in possession of rather sinister eyes, I thought!

I haven't opened it as I believe it's got some age, possibly pre-90's as a minimum and may go back to the 1970's, it's not a graphic range I recognise as recent? You've got a bat and spider (rtaher wrapped-together) and a rat and snake, the snake being a pretty timeless design, all four in fluorescent plastic of a PVC type.

And thanks to anyone who sent the cats, Chris, Peter, Jim?!!