B is for Bagged, Boxed and Blister-Carded!

Now, there's a title I should have, could have, aught to've thought of years ago, having decided to stubbornly stick with the 'A is for . . . ' trope. Especially when I could have dropped it the first month, after we got to zed, or the next month after we'd gone back up to ay? But, whatever, we've had it now!

 

February's Sandown resulted in lots of nice things being added to the pile, and these are all those - we haven't seen yet - which came/come with their packaging, there not being enough stuff for thematic posts, I'm finding other ways to run-off shots from the main folder!

 

This was an amazing find, on the nostalgia front, not because you can't probably find them regularly on feebleBay, but because I hadn't thought to look, having forgotten this for several decades, but this was my Brother's piggy-bank, when we were kids. I had the hard polystyrene 'pillar-box', with three black bands, numbered as a combination lock (which I have seen, but not while I was buying), from Hong Kong, while my brother had this, also from Hong Kong, imported by CODEG Productions (Cowan de Groot)

 

It's not exactly the same, as his was yellow plastic under the flocking, which came off quite soon, ears first! So our Rupert was plain yellow for years, probably until we moved house in 1980, while this one is actually red polythene, so at least two production runs for this.

 

We loved Rupert, and had quite a few annuals from the Church fête, it was all a bit Edwardian, prep-school and jolly hockey-sticks, but kids don't mind, same with the Enid Blyton stuff, prejudices are passed-on by grown-ups, kids just like reading that other kids are having adventures in a pirate cave with a pet mouse in their pocket, or - in Rupert's case - chasing a Bramble Imp with an Elephant in a suit!

 

Purchased purely for the card sample, we looked at the figure set a while ago, as I have them all loose, but at that time I only knew about the five or ten set cards, now we have pairs, for really poor kids!

 

Close-ups; Slinger (below) and Stinger!

 

Box-ticking, I now have complete sets of Romans, Greeks and Egyptians, and most, if not all the Wild West, but I only had one nurse from this set, maybe another figure? Although, looking at the card-reverse, I still haven't found the firefighters!

 

Unusually (especially when you consider there are ten firefighter sculpts), there are only six poses in this set, with four duplicate pairs and two 'uniques' for the ten-count?

 

Contemporaneous with all those magnetic novelties, was this, Falbala the Fakir, from Fairylite, who could be cut in half, yet remain whole, I say 'could', because his - probably - phenolic-based polymer has warped, and he actually falls apart rather easily and stays together only with delicate intervention!

 

When new, you would prise his two body-halves apart, enough to get the sword in, then, upon slicing downward, would push a locking key out of the way. There are three of the slightly curved keys on a revolving wheel (think the Coat of Arms [legs] of the Isle of Man), so as the sword pushed one out of the way, another would come round and lock in behind it, so the Fakir stayed together as the sword went right through him!

  

From the 'Empire Made', I'm guessing this was a Swansea-operation corner of the 'Kins universe, if it was the US arm of Marx behind it, it would usually be 'Made in British . . . Hong Kong, Crown Colony' and/or etc. The seller had several, some with two Fairykins, some with common window-box accessories like the dog-house, but I thought the semi-flat guardsman was a bit different, and needed to be in the master collection!

  

More Humpties here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/05/e-is-for-eggcellent-effigies.html 

 

100% sure this is Airfix, no pattern number, and no banner-logo, but in every other way mirroring other known examples of early Airifx novelties, plastic colours match the animal flat/building block/baby bricks, and the micro-aircraft I've also called as Airfix, while the card is very similar to the one the animal flats came on, and I bet those 'planes came from similar cards? I will add more imagery of it to the Airfix Blog, in a day or two.

 

Finally, a cereal premium Hulk, mint in 'food-hygienic' pack! Called 'Desktop Buddies' and issued in 2003 by various Nestle properties, including Golden Nuggets, it's actually a relief sculpt with a hollow back, but a packaging sample is always useful!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Sci-Fi Figures

Another in the occasional PC-clearing series of the stuff I've already shown somewhere else! Some of which will have been seen here too, but the idea is to get all new images up, or do a bit of extra box-ticking!

"For mash get Smash!", the almost immortal (if you're of a certain age) tag-line jingle that ended the humorous TV adverts' for Cadbury's instant mashed-potato powder! Technically 'Martians', they appear to be Robots (the actual Martians never being seen?), they were such a successful campaign several toys resulted, these pencil tops being possibly the most common, but a chunky Bendy exists and a Marx clockwork wind-up.

Argentine copy (pink) of the female space warrior (black) from Britains compared, the lower shot is out of focus (obviously) but the upper one was a poor choice of background, so I've put them together as I can't re-shoot at the moment, they're buried in a shipping container!

We saw these not that long ago, but I'd shot them for the Faceplant group, so here they are again! Mattel GUTS! Laser Fighters space figures, the helmets are all different, as are weapons, while equipment layout and colours also differ from figure to figure, so more a bunch of space pirates or mercenaries than an organised force!

We should have had these here too, in a show report, but I can't remember posting them, so it may still be in the queue somewhere. I did post them as shelfies from someone else's table once though - Vision von Anderen Sternen or 'Vision of Other Stars'.

Elastolin's hysterical lobster-hula-cow lady ('Venus Amazona') and 'Saurus Saturn' the turquoise space-ant eater! These were as rare as rocking-horse shit, but when the factory shut down a huge heap of them turned-up and I think everyone who wanted a set got one! I previously dubbed them Rubber-girl (catalogue No. 8304) and Dino-grinch! 8300.

I was a small-scale collector at the time but can remember loads of them on several tables at the Herne show, only to see people wanting pretty silly money for the few on show up in London! I sort of paid silly money for these, but they don't turn-up now like they did 15-odd years ago - because they are all in collections! And to be fair I didn't pay what I know some are happy to pay for all four!

The Astronaut (8310, who didn't get a name . . . Raumy?) was originally the most expensive (separate helmet?) at DM 1,50 pf. (about 30p in the 1970's?), with 1.25-each for the previous two and only ,90-pfennigs for 8302 the 'Jupiter Gorilla', or Crab-Taz the Lobster-man! And while some sources claim they were game-pieces for a board game (Perry Rodan?), they were issued in a bilingual (German French) clear carton.

Clearly though they were some kid of experiment or one-off, from Elastolin, the non-standard bases, painted different colours, singling them out as not the norm, and reputed to be sculpted by a Max Weißbrodt, they didn't take off, or didn't get the head-office support they needed, and consequently a shed-load turned-up at the end! The catalogue numbering though, suggests the line was to be expanded?

Finishing with a question-mark, anyone know who this is or what toy-line he's from? The hole in the back of his helmet and rather smoothly-finished back-pack seem to point to a missing attachment or fixing of some kind, he's nylon or polypropylene and about 54mm, I suspect he's quite modern or even relatively current? Although, he also looks a bit 1980's 'straight-to-video' post-apocalypse punky!

GUTS! is for a Massacred Abbreviation!

Ground Troops . . . it's awful isn't it! But the strangulated MUSCLE and CUTIES weren't much better, however, Mattel obviously thought they'd found the magical formula for flogging polymer tat to kids via-TV advertising; with abbreviated group-names! These Guts being issued in 1986, so now sliding into a true 'vintage', they are nevertheless still quite 'modern' and easy enough to find.

Although you may recall I had one 'unknown' and someone had to ID it for me, but I've now tracked down the full set of Laser Fighters, so let's have a look . . .

. . . at what are a fun set of figures. We looked at a couple - which turned-out to be smaller piracies, a while ago from one of Chris's parcels, and - as I said - someone at the time told me they were Mattel GUTS!, but I can't find the comment, so it might have been a private eMail, meaning I can't credit them unless they remind me, but thank you however you were!

Each of the ten sculpts gets a name, they were clearly thought-up in a coffee break before the artwork was "OK'd" back to the printers/art-room and are consequently less than memorable, but they are nice figures, albeit with a real 1980's vibe as far as space-figures go.

They are rocking Cylon Warriors and straight-to-video, post-apocalypse B-movies, imagine some scrambler-bikes with rusty armour and fishing nets, the [Nevada] sky always behind a salmon-pink filter and an old crone with a broken-back who turns into a sexy space-babe after a camera-wobble and flash of white screen, only to seduce our intrepid laser-fighters and suck their brains out!

The weirdest thing is that not one of them is identically uniformed, with every helmet slightly different, every weapon very different and varying paint details are applied - half have painted boots (in three colours) half don't.

Two have black visors, but only the one black helmet - normally you would expect the sculptor to make a matching head or two and reproduce them first; for use on all ten masters, but here; each was separately done.

Packaging of the larger set; poorer kids could save-up for sets of five and as we saw in the above link, someone copied them and issued them undecorated as metallic PVC's, the same material as these originals.

Full set here in a slightly crushed box; not that pricey, for N. America, but if in the UK, you can get them cheaper on feeBay, to account for the postage, if you're patient!