B is for back to B&M

Except these were shot months before the ones we saw this morning (yesterday), being the other, larger half of the stuff in the lost folder! It's mostly this modern trend for blind-bag collectables and nothing for toy-soldier purists, but it is what it is, and we shoot this stuff so you don't . . . err . . . you know what I mean!

Rainbow unicorns . . . "Rainbowcorns"! Two types of packaging, a starter set with multiple blind egg capsules and top-up bags in a counter-display carton. Zuru, they're 'up there' with Moose on this stuff!

"Bunnycorn" . . . yeap, you guessed it! Really; it's nasty stuff, in fact, it looks like it's been designed by Douggy Pledger or Dr. Knorkles [Artistic Oddities] in AI!

 

Playmates are chucking-out these Miraculous'ly like Pokémon figures, I know nothing else about them, and probably don't need to!

 

I can see these having more mileage than the above trio, and with larger play sets, there's the whole dolls-house thing going on here, but they will turn-up in mixed lots soon, especially those colourful Charity shop bags, so, if nothing else, it will help list them accurately on evilBay!

 

Not even close to the parameters of this Blog, action figures from the pink/purple end of the spectrum, but I shot them, so they're here! Licensed to Character Options.

 

I've seen these around a few times, and they are squidgy-stretchy types, but not something I'm tripping over myself to seek out! Branded to Jakks Pacific, who I thought had folded a few years ago, Google says I was probably confusing the death of the founder with the death of the company!

 

Another Playmates product, quite a nice set of totally out of scale (with each other) figurines from one of the recent movies, but was it a Godzilla movie or was it a King Kong movie, and does anyone except a hard-core fan give a shit?

 

These 'franchises' are being thrashed to death now, aren't they? Planet of the Apes, Alien-v-Predators, there's supposed to be a new/third Bladerunner on the way . . . sigh! I want new visions, not hackneyed old ones with their arses torn-out of them.

 

Poppy Playtime figures from Phat Mojo, some sort of happy-horror-anime? Wiki' says "Poppy Playtime is a horror video game where the player plays as a former employee of Playtime Co. who returns to the abandoned toy factory of said company . . ." So now I know!

 

These Among Us are of interest both as being boarderline useable space-aliens, and because we saw the same figures without the keychains, as similar blind-bags from Poundland recently? While . . . 

 

. . . these have just been seen WITH keychains (and no bases), in Poundland? The suspicion is, both were poor sellers in whatever was the earlier guise, and are now being cleared any way the wholesaler's can come-up with, and that subsequently the 'Series 1' they both march under will prove to be the only series for either? Both are on-line, multi-player, 'party' games.

 

And it was needing to make/highlight the twin-format point (keychains/no keychains) which led me to realise there was a missing post somewhere, and find it earlier today/yesterday, now. Both from Toikido, the Gang Beasts further branded PMI as manufacturer.

 

And three more, all from the above companies, the Goo Jit Zu from Moose having a window bag rather than being blind, a far more civilised way of doing these things, while both Brawl Stars (PMI) and Pet Simulator X (Phat Mojo)are kids video-games, although why they are still called video-games now technology has moved so far from VHS/Betamax is anyone's guess!

100 is for Monsters . . . Not . . . quite!

With any luck I'll have this up before midnight and we're back where we started, with SCS Direct, this time it's the Horror set, now listed as Horror Set I on the back of the Fantasy box, but still Monsters on the toob.

Having the same contents and carrier as the one which confused me back in 20218 on Shaun's site, but not the same as the ones Peter Evans sent me the same year, missing here are all the zombies bar the one eating an arm! Although between the two I don't think I'm missing any now, but there must have been a Zombie mix at some point?

So a briefer visit than this morning's as we are reprising a previous post - with the packaging as the 'new information' - and Shaun's already there! This time you're getting around seven-boxes equivalent of Airfix for the money, but the contents are a lot shakeir than this morning's with little consistency and another short-count!

I've highlighted the more obvious anomalies in red, the only real pain is the spider; only two and neither of them in light grey, one gets the feeling there should be four? The gravestone also gets an odd mix, while with the Mummy and the man-bat, it's just overload!

It was the 'Mothma' (for Godzilla to play with!) and everything on the bottom row we didn't see last time, although - obviously - apart from the spider, I now have all of them in both colours. Comments last time apply equally here but the moth is not very good, I mean they are all a bit cartoony-harmless, but the moth is too cuddly by half!

From the backs/undersides, really I'm a bit pissed-off with the spider situation and will have words on my Amazon feedback! There's more too it! So, that's Halloween; coming-in over-budget but on time!

T is for Toy Fair 2019 Reports - Bandai - Bits & Bobs

As well as the Anderson stuff I sent to Moonbase, I took a few other hurried shots while gabbling enthusiastically; having blagged my way in to get the Thunderbirds stuff I managed to grab these on the way out.

Bandi are one of the companies who run a closed stand at Toy Fairs, which you have to book-in to, then be escorted round, and preferably you need to be a toy-buyer, -shipper or -agent, or a member of an accredited journalistic outlet, not a blagging Blogger!

SD (super deform) Godzilla characters, I really was rushing the shots, and was taken with the triple-headed dragon, but you can see bits of two others in the background, deforms aren't 'my thing' at all, but they do come in occasionally with mixed stuff and some people will love them!

More Realistic Godzilla figures in two sizes, including the triple-head again in a more realistic form, if anything fantasy can be realistic, but you know what I mean . . . more accurate to the movie version.

Godzilla himself, this is the size where gaming him in 1:76/72nd becomes a reasonable proposition! The funny thing is, even though he's all modernised and professionally finished as a toy, he still looks like a man in a rubber suit!

All kinds of Gundam; from teeny SD's to what I think was a 12--inch monster, with plastic model kits for basher's to have a go at. I didn't get a good look at the 'weapon-sprue' runners, but suspect they are not multi-shot 'overmoulds' but rather slot-or-clip-jointed at the colour demarcations?

Close-up of the super deform, I saw some of these from the 1970's or '80's a few years ago, and you could see why they are so collectable, lots of fine detail, in brittle polystyrene or something similar and lots of metallic stickers, starting to lift at the corners,. To get a whole one in good condition must be quite hard; this modern issue is a more robust propylene type polymer and sans stickers!

Again, the more realistic lines of accurately scaled models, and I think - deliberately - all five display models are of the same character (the AILE Strike Gundam), for comparison purposes. If the HG and RG models are 1:144 (as seems to be the case?) that would make the other two eminently compatible with 1:76/72nd (MG) and 1:35/32nd scales (giant one).

Not much - but a few snatched shots from the 'inner sanctum' of Bandai's stand!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Mystery Monsters

So, these are a mystery and a treat, they are a treat because they were in the August lot  form Peter Evans, and while he was probably thinking of catching Rack Toy Month, they had to be held-over 'till today! But they are also a mystery because they seem to be part of a much larger selection which different importers/jobbers or other clients are picking 'selections' from?

The best way for me to explain is for you to first check-out this post from 'Fantasy Soldiers' Shaun on the SCS Direct set, then look at last year's contribution from Brian Berke, and as we go through the sample from Peter you'll see both similarities, identicalities (which should be a word!) and differences between all three 'lots', although the Greenbrier/SCDT ones are probably knock-offs?

The whole lot; as they arrived, I wondered if the extra small-zombie (bottom right) was deliberate or accidental, as the pair take the sample-count to 21 one feels the extra may have been picked-up by the packing machinery and flicked into 'my' bag as an extra, but he's small enough to be included to make the two 'equal' to a whole one.

Either possibility has merit, but once you see how different this set is from Shaun's, you suspect it may not be complete (there was no packaging) or that it is a whole set of Zombies with some monsters thrown in? There are no pale-grey versions either.

Plain zombie types, there is an element of cartoonishness shared with the set from Terranova last year, and as they are zombies, you could lose a lot of the 'fun-look', with paint - lots of blood methinks!

The sausages for a farm-fresh breakfast I promised two days ago, except we both know it isn't a string of sausages, don't we . . . euuwwe! These four are all doing stuff, although in the case of the first it's just wearing an axe as a hat! The other three are eating body-parts - nice!

Common cinema/popular-culture tropes again with - from the left; a mummy, vampire/Count Dracula, werewolf/Wolf Man type and another vision of Dr Frankenstein's monster.

More mythological are an Indo-Asian looking cyclopean, a devil/Satan bat-type and an itty-bitty baby Godzilla, although given it was a man in a rubber-suit and all the scale was 'in the studio set' it's actually an accurate man-in-a-Godzilla-suite sculpt! Missing from the SCS tub on Shaun's Blog is the Aquaman/Marine-boy/Man-fish/Sea Monster type.

Also missing from that set are the gravestones and giant insects.

This mummy is in a hurry, and here he's compared to one we'll be looking at later today courtesy of Brian, for all intents and purposes they are 'classic' 54mm, unpainted toy figures and happily carrying Airfix or Marx's torch into the 21st century.

Back to zombies and a couple of humans; again the humans are quite comical in their hysteria but this is where you notice the similarities with last year's figures from Brian, although the previous lot had the rack-toy flash not seen on these, the sculpting, plastic colour, large bases and grave-stones seem to tie them into the other two SCS sets as well as this mixed sample.

The duplicate/question-mark pose and a figure which - due to the cartoonish 'Mad Magazine' facial features of all of them - could be a fearful human or over-active zombie? Or, a sort of 'Carrie' figure; chasing after the mummy!

Cheers Peter, lovin'em!

B is for Badassasaur and Bionic Boy - Argentina Part III

Some you may be disappointed to learn this is the last of the unknown-believed-to-be Argentinian figures' posts; some of you may be delighted! I think I've saved the best (err . . . and the worst) 'till last?

This is the poorest quality of all the figures in this batch we've been looking at, the master hand-carved from a block of margarine . . . I think, maybe, probably!!!

I assume it's one of the monsters from the long-running Godzilla franchise, but which one is anybody's guess, although; if you're familiar with the films he'll be easy to ID with that nose spike and the spinal-ridges, not to mention that he quite deliberately has one humanoid foot and one combined dino-claw and can-opener?

For all the lack of quality; he's my favourite of the lot; being made in a luscious, marbled, salmon-pink plastic, no sign of paint so I'm guessing either a member of a larger play-set, or a very cheap kiosk type thing?

I'm sure Google would quickly reveal whether this chap is a giant from the Godzilla movies, a friend/enemy from Ultra Man or a character from another Japanese Anime or Manga series, but I don't care enough to look it up before posting, and I'm writing all these posts away from the Internet, so if you know, you're one-up on me!

However, whoever he is, he's the best paint of the lot, and not a bad sculpt, so my second favourite of these after the dino-monster above. I used to have a bookmark of a Brazilian toy site which I lost when I changed computers back in late 2011, but that had a big-box play-set called Phantom or Phantasm (?) where the main character-figure was a very similar (hooded, black and purple?) sculpt, so this figure may also be from Brazil?

To be honest, they would all have looked much better when new and the extreme levels of paint loss on all of them (last three posts) and the tatty capes are probably testament to their having been much-loved and played-with by someone , somewhere!

Thanks to Adrian again for letting me photograph all the figures in the last three posts - Mercator Trading's website.