UFO is for Undersized Forces of Offworlders

As a sort of 'follow-on' rather than follow-up from the recent eraser and other mini-UFO/Space type posts, including the Buck Rogers stuff (which Woodsy and Mitch managed to miss!) I found these, but they are all teeny-tiny little things no bigger than a thumbnail, so we go down a size, to Micro-UFO territory!

 

These are currently on Amazon, branded to Kid Fun, for possibly a few too-many quid, and seem to consist of 24 sculpts, each of three colours for a 72-item count, no more than 30-somthing pence each, so one can't be too harsh, if you are looking for things to fill party bags, 20 kids will get at least three each?

While these may have a bit of age about them, although not as much as the graphic might suggest? Japanese minis sometimes referred to as 'glico' due to the use of similar minis as premiums in the Glico food combine's confectionary products, and here, possibly intended as erasers?

 

Looking at the two sides of the card, there 'might' be one or two other designs, but I suspect this is all of them, there are six designs here, all slightly different, but all marred slightly by the little finger-grip rod sticking out of the top of each.

 

Obviously, my Japanese language skills are less than rudimentary, but I think the right-hand view's card is showing the types of movement 'observed' by UFO watchers? While the left view a more fanciful showing of 'known' UFO designs! Branding looks like it could be Crescent! Or Crescent Moon?

There is a seventh item in the bag which I suspect shouldn't be there? Unlike the hard vulcanised ribber of the other six, this one is a soft silicon of the stretchy-animal type, and is either a malformed piece of factory-junk, or a bag with two corners tied-in with string?

 

If the former; it's just fallen or been thrown (by machinery?) into the bag accidentally, if the latter; it belongs in a different set, perhaps with a figure to hold/carry it? It could however be a bonus item (like Strelet's streletsi?), to be collected one at a time by multiple purchases of different sets to build a 'free' set? You can see the fine detail on the actual UFO's also contrasting with the smoothness of the probable interloper!

And they really are all no bigger than a thumbnail!

 

They remind me of two of my favourite sci-fi shorts, one of which might have been done as a Tharg's Future Shocks cartoon in 2000 AD? In the first a mighty invasion fleet has spent many-years in hyper-space travelling from wherever to invade the luscious looking Earth, only to materialise in front of a big-rig on a US highway which promptly smashes them into a billion pieces without ever seeing them, as they were no more than a cloud of gnats in our scale, the other story was similar, but a dog licked them off his food after they landed, or something like that!

Haha! Two hours later and Geoff found this one on eBay, now (nine dollars plus postage), same set, same soft silicon-looking addition, but clearly a 'death star' type space station, with one or two sucker 'ears', which have obviously deformed on mine, so that's that mystery solved!

F is for Follow-up; the Mailman Called!

So, further to the previous two posts, the other sucker-toy spaceships turned-up, as did another larger lot of mixed erasers, pencil tops and fridge magnets, so a quick follow-up here, a return to rubber robots later and then something else, because you can have too many multicoloured infant toys in any given period!

 

Three new ones and a duplicate of the evil-looking crab-like, bomb-shaped, claw-armed one! I have no idea how many there are, or how many colours they come in, but I think I have seen them in the background of other fleaBay searches over the years, and there are a few more to find . . . or one or two maybe?

I shot them twice as it'll be a while before we see them again, I don't doubt! And as I said the other day; they are made out of a polymer which doesn't seem to be aiming at erasing anything! So potentially capsule toys, sold as 'sucker' novelties rather than erasers?

They still stick to windows, but the sky was less interesting today! The act of photographing them against glass with the background at infinity (photographically speaking) makes them looks slightly fake, Photoshoped or an animation cell!

The other set which came in, contains various themes, some of which I've been aware of (spaceships and robots) some I wasn't, while the two 'mineral samples' (or asteroids?) came with a different lot a while ago, but clearly match the rest.

 

Spaceships on the top row, the fighters may be re-issued, I know I've seen the F14 Tomcat in other colours (Diener?) but they may be bigger, likewise, the vehicles in the bottom row have 'vintage' counterparts. Another clue to their being re-issues is that markings differ between them, while the quality of the mouldings is good, due to their being from Japan rather than Hong Kong or China.

There's also some robots, here compared with a previously mentioned Diener chap ('Gill Face'), nicely compatible, and again I don't know how many there are, do they go with the spaceships, or are we looking at several part-lines here? I suspect various part lines, re-issued in gold/silver elastomer and sold out of shop-stock grab-trays? Certainly I do know the robots had a vintage issue, in primary colours, and there are several more to find in either iteration - a lop-sided 'duckting' one and a couple of Diener-alikes!

UFO is for Utterly Frivolous Objects!

Following-on from last night's post, I sort of went off down a quick flying saucer/eraser rabbit-hole, and here's the results, nothing too exciting, but it's all fun!

 

The Imperial saucers again, along with those polyethylene ones we looked at here, and the red one in the middle which is a newbie! Not sure if it's meant to be an eraser, or just a novelty, but it has a sucker-pad and is manufactured in more of a PVC-alike, than a pencil rubber material type?

On the left here are two combined erasers (outer, white portion) and pencil sharpeners; hidden within the coloured transparencies. They are still wrapped in a crisp film, but I can't decide which one to open!

Adding the two rounder ones from the previously blogged lot (and I forgot the Silvercorn saucer in that post, but I don't know where it is right now, to compare anyway!), and a mini UFO Frisbee, branded to Dick Turtle, who was the mascot/brandmark for one of the lucky-bags available in the late 1990's. He WAS a 'space' turtle, more normally depicted riding a rocket, than a UFO though!

Three more of the sucker set (there's a few in the post, so we should soon be returning to them briefly?), they are more generic in their sci-fi'edness, but shades of Star Wars and Star Trek I think? Even Alien, with that chunky, funky-green 'factory ship'!

They stick to windows!

H is for How They Come In - June 2021 - 2 - Three Days in June

Toward the end of May last year I went a little mad on evilBay, call it shopping therapy, call it depression, call it extravagance . . . it wasn't a good time, there were no shows, lock-down was into its 26^th month and it's comforting to go and buy shit, however transitory the feeling it brings, so that's what I did! And I like to think I have a good eye, so it's all worth a look, these are some shots I took not long after the Postman had been!

Tuesday 8^th June - Parcels from the four corners of the world here, almost, with packages from Amazon, the USA, Ukraine and Greece all arriving together! From the latter came the Louizos Toys Wild West set, which I hope contains cowboys around 50/54mm and probably of the Solpa type, but I don't know as it's sealed, and having never seen one before I thought I'd better keep it sealed for now!

Below the unknown cowpokes we have a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtle Anthropomorphic knock-offs from the former Soviet Union, and bunch of Japanese glico-style spaceships and UFO's, but from the 'States, and a rather nice magnetic bottle-opener which was one of two I got in the last 18 months or so, I thought it looked like a Matchbox GI-copy, but it's closer to the Marx 60mm sculpt.

This single parcel arriving the next day was several lots from the same seller (Tony; a friend of the Blog), and contained all sorts of nice things, starting in the top left-hand corner, and moving vaguely clockwise - several swoppet knights, some Elastolin 54mm and some Hong Kong copies of Britains mounted Swoppets.

Below which is a handful of the RP issue of Co-Ma's Roman sculpts, with enough duplicates for me to send the five I hadn't previously been able to, to Peter, small thanks for all he sends to the blog, and who I'd originally sent my only one, we now both have a full set!

An empty swoppet box I can fill at some point! Two empty Airfix boxes and a bunch of loose Airfix figures, two of the new 1:144 war-gaming AFV's which have become popular, literally over the lifetime of the Blog! Below them are two Roskopf blisters, which are nice as I previously only had them loose, or in the small tan boxes, while in the bottom corner two sets of the Roco-Minitanks 'Artillery Group' (copies of Tamiya's 1:35th scale desert-attired 25lbr crew), so I will - at some point - make one up.

The 'box-square' of figures to their left are more modern HK/China (Rado) & Caesar and older Roco and Eidai figures in various amounts with a Japanese officer from Marx Miniature Masterpiece's lines.

To their left a mix of larger figures and above them smaller Giant, post-Giant and Montaplex, other HK figures of interest and a 45mm Ri-Toys (a.k.a. Rado) French soldier taken from Airfix. In the centre we have an Airfix boxed 6x6 truck, a post-Giant two-horsed, articulated chariot, Eidai FlaK's (one mounted on a  half-track) and Roco SPG.

While the 11^th brought a very eclectic mix, which I thought to shoot, but not the best photograph of the three, nevertheless full of nice things!

In the distance, lined-up on the laptop is some Comansi Wild West, but not just any-old Wild West, they are the five character sculpts (husband, wife, two kids and uncle) from the High Chaparral, in front of them some cake-decorations (I can't even remember - one looks Chinese?), a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea . . . heehee!) diver from Remco, another PVC bird from that set we looked at the other day and some Toy Major knights.

We saw the two Soviet-era AFV's back in the summer or autumn, the V2 will be made up at some point, I intend to compare all three - Condor, Eidai and Revell! While I'd forgotten the two Hong Kong AFV's, they are the same maker as the one we looked at the other day, so I'll be able to cannibalise one of the Dingo's to give the Humber it's missing set of wheels.

Other AFV's include two guns and the weird six-wheeled AMX30! Three swans (?) a bag of ? (something), and finally; a set of Supreme Saracen/Livonian type knights made up an eclectic list of arrivals. Most got sorted away quite quickly and sent up to the storage unit, some just packed in 'To be Sorted' boxes, so I will have the fun of discovering them all again at some point!