P is for Puffy Projectile Pen!

As the Actress said to the Bishop! Real life seems to be intervening again, but here's something I picked-up in Home Bargains a couple of days ago. As well as small pulp-rockets trending these days, pen and pencil tops are also enjoying a renaissance, with the big displays of such items, in The Works and some garden centres, and the many museums and 'end-destination, high-end, tourist leisure-facility' gift shops, where such things have always been the pocket-money staple!

 

So, combine the two tropes, with a soft-foam, spring-loaded, cartoon rocket on an teathered elastic string! Branded to TJM worldwide and Maxi Save down-under, it's a bit of fun and another Retro Rocket, which is not the same as a retrorocket!

T is for Two - Cosmic Correctors!

 Or: P is for Poor-old Pluto!

 

Picked these two up on Wednesday of this week, so both are fresh in the shops, and shops I regularly check for such stuff, to boot!

 

The second find is on the left, the Legami set of Solar System erasers, while about an hour earlier I'd grabbed the Scribble Pop Shop set in Home Bargains (the TKMaxx vehicle). Google's AI answer-bot tells us "Legami was founded in 2003 and has their headquarters in Bergamo, Northern Italy. They started by selling book straps to tie your books together for easier carrying, and now they have more than 4000 products across all sorts of stationery types.", which makes more sense than they're having appeared out of nowhere, as they otherwise seem to have - presence at both recent product fairs, and more items in the queue, from a garden centre!

 

Obviously, it was the Iwako-style mini-rocket ships which attracted me, not the . . . 

. . . astronaught in a nappy (diaper)! The Scribble Pop Shop; an in-house branding, also responsible for a pencil case and colouring set in the same space theme, is presumably ('obviously' once you know the history/timings) aimed at countering the Legami set, or riding its boot straps (book straps!). And they seem to have got their generic planet from whoever made Legami's Saturn? The Legami set was in Ryman's, but they are also in garden centres, venue gift-shops and Claire's I think? Poor old Pluto!

H is for Happy Christmas!

Welp, that all got a bit frantic in the last three days, but at least we were given today off, to start the recovery (before the four-day onslaught which is getting the booze out for New Year's), unlike another company's drivers who seem to have been out, delivering, today! Anywhoo; I was getting back too late and too knackered to post anything, and now, here we are, the 'big day'! It's gotta' be the Nutcrackers!

 

Earlier in the Month, or even late November, I can't think that hard right now, Brian Berke indicated he'd not seen many, and wasn't that enamoured of what he had seen, and I rather agreed with him. This post, the 'nutcracker round up' became a regular rather by accident . . . they are figural, they appeared to be having a comeback (in the UK at least) a few years ago, several quirky aspects had turned-up at around the same time, as had the life-size quiz-trail in Fleet, and with Brian's help and the odd news clipping, we had a regular seasonal theme!

 

But, let's be honest, they are very German/Eastern European, by tradition, and have only been marketed worldwide, in vast quantities, in recent years, to take our money for things made cheaply in China! And, frankly, the gloss has come off them; for every interesting or quirky one, there are four shelf-meters of generic, formulaic wood/resin/fibreglass or plastic shite in every store, which stocks them, for most of November and December!

 

However, I guess they will continue to pop-up at this time of year, not least than because they are in the Tags, which might as well be added to occasionally! So, bowing to the inevitable, here's six images, for this year!

Brian sent this chap with the thought that he looked like he was wearing a 'Demob Suit', which (for loyal foreign readers) was the complete set of civilian clothing, the short-service and conscripted soldiers of our 'Citizen Army' were given, upon demobilisation, in the late 1940's, so they would have something smart ('ish) to attend job interviews (or the labour exchange), go home in, or meet landlords &etc!

 

I replied that he looked to me like an Italian card-shark! The sort you might find on a Mississippi paddle-steamer, calling himself a count, without any genealogical right to do so!

 

Brian also sent both the above as an example of the "nah-yeah-NAH!" end of the market! About 20-inches high, and looking like they are about to do a dance-number for Sister Sledge on Top of the Pops, they are really pretty hideous, still, I can see the wife of the President-elect populating the White House with them, if she doesn't join Putin's ex' in Kaliningrad! We haven't seen or heard much from her, have we!

 

I did add two to the stash, the one on the left is a more traditional wooden one, in the vaguely 'smallest' common size, if that makes sense? And I have a few now, so they may get to make a mantelpiece line-up in future years, while the other is [whispers - another naff gold one!] a smaller sized (roughly 70mm), poured-resin, tree decoration, who will go in the 'miscellaneous ceremonial' section of the stash.

 

I shelfied these in TKMaxx's little brother, Home Bargains, and they illustrate the way the money-men target everyone, on the far right we have a traditional red, blue and green set, to their left is a set which is more 'chintzy', even to looking a bit Highland, despite the lack of actual tartan patterns, while on the other end, we have a wood-look or 'gingerbread' style, and a 'Christmassy' red and white!

 

While this plaster one appeared the other day, as a lone survivor from Christmases past, in a couple of boxes of oddments which the staff put-out in The Range, as they were starting to clear-off this year's decorations, last weekend. This is the quirky-fun end of the oeuvre, and joins all the other Paint-Your-Own stuff, on that Tag!

 

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And, yeah, a Happy Christmas to all Loyal (and not-so-loyal) Readers, all contributors, commenters and the more hidden supporters (they know who they are!), I would, back in the day say 'May we never have a worse one', which would cause some to pause for a second while they worked it out, but the simple fact is they have been getting steadily worse since 2020, and in twelve days, all hell might break out! So, have the best Christmas you can, given your circumstances, and pay heed to those close to you, while they still are.

P is for Prehistoric Party Packs

Right, I'm two days behind, not that there's ever much of a plan here, but this should have posted later the same day as the previous post, with Dan Dare returning by now (hopefully tomorrow/later today), but I realised I hadn't shot the contents of one and had forgotten the origin of the other, so among other rushing around's in the last two days, I tried to track-down/tick-off those queries with little luck (I bought a duplicate of the one I have shot properly!), so I'll chuck the images I do have, here, first, and tie them together with a bit of blurb at the end!

The set with the blue ones, which I found second, was from/is from The Range, while the other set were from Home Bargains (the budget end of the TKMaxx empire), The Range still have them on display, the HB ones have disappeared, whether because they've taken them off for the Christmas season (the party bits seemed denuded) or because they've sold out (they are perfect Christmas stocking fayre) I don't know, but worth checking your local store/s, if you're taken by them.

 

The really noteworthy thing about them is that after years of the tired old Tim-Mee, MPC or Marx knock-off mini's which we have seen here before, that have been the staple of Hobbycraft and the party shops for years now, these are two sets of new, realistic, well sculpted and cut models, in the same bright colours and small sizes as those older ones.

And I use size because scale is a moot point at this size, and with the varying final size of the different species, these are all juveniles or babies in 1:76th, but artistic licence is allowed when you bring this stuff together!

The sealed set (Home Bargains) has eight different, slightly larger models, in a harder polyethylene, paired in four colours, while the other set, also four colours has only seven sculpts, which are more randomly packed (in both colours and pose numbers) as tens, of a modern, softish, PVC-replacement polymer.

B is for Blasting off Again!

My evilBay treat to myself this month was the other configuration of the Blast Off eraser set from TJM, for nine-quid-odd with postage on a Buy-It-Now. It was preferable to drive to Basingrad to see if the Home Bargains there had taken delivery of the other set (Fleet's branch of the TKMaxx subsidiary still has a stack of the set we looked at last time!), only to find they haven't, which would cost the same in petrol.

The two together, for those who need to know, the yellow is a good match, the red is pinker, and the green and blue are different shades, brighter and darker respectively. Pencils and box are identical.

 

The blasted additions, the rocket can lose the column of flame, to stand on its stumpy fins, and the two planets are the same moulding, which is also the one used for the 'rings' planet in the other set, as I suggested might be the case, last time, and that's them, box ticked!

T is for Terrible Tool-Use

It will kill us in the end, we haven't got the self-control, but this isn't about reality, rather, the fantasy of bringing cut pumpkins to life with little faces, by gouging their eyes out and removing their innards!

Having had some success getting three figures from that set of Halloween cutlery a few Halloweens ago, when I saw these I knew the potential was there. They are not specifically figures, but they are anthropomorphic piles of grinning pumpkins, which will make amusing fantasy figures.

Tesco had them in orange, Home Bargains went with purple and Morrisons had them in all three colours, the boxes suitably illustrated to reveal the contents, but the other two may have had the other colours in different stores/batches?

 

Asda had a double set, with an added ghostly pin-wheel (for decorating the rind?), but having found all three colours over a week or two, I wasn't shelling out three-quid for something which will be available in boxes of kitchenalia at car-boot sales for the next 50-years.

The flesh-cutter would need to be heated and pulled-out with pliers and the 'base' probably cleaned-up, but the spoon should be a simple saw-cut and a soft-sanding; all good fun!

W is for Whacky Walkers

No wall required, but Winter's coming and no mistake! These, like the jumpers, are a growing collection, or sub-collection I wouldn't have given houseroom to, in my small-scale only days, and couldn't have imagined a few years ago, but after robots and ceremonials, it was only a matter of time before Halloween (or Christmas) entered the ledger!

 

Welp, they were like 79p ladies and gentlemen, so under the 'we buy this shit, so you don't have to' rule, I managed to find the shekels for the eyeball as I knew we had another in the pile, and then went back for the pumpkin!

 

They both came from Home Bargains and I think there may have been a different eye, or a purple pumpkin (which seemed daft?), I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure I left one on the rack? Green eye maybe?

 

The other eyeball was in one of Jon Attwood's boxes (and I have a feeling another one came in a few years ago, possibly from Chris?), and we looked at a set of them from Amscan, here, many full-moons ago, via New York!

Then, the other day, I found two end-of-line walkers in the local garden centre while looking for Christmas Decorations! Now these two ARE walkers in the common sense of others we've seen here, the pumpkin and eyeball are actually hoppers, like the original 'ACME' cartoon (and real) teeth, often used to chew-up Tom the cat's tail, or similar!

B is for Blast Off!

I'm sure we've had that title before, but it keeps appearing in popular (and not so popular) culture, the 'Blast Off' hook; books, toys, board games, T-shirts, nightclubs, maths programmes, several movies, songs, poems. . . and now, these eraser sets!

I thought I'd shot these on the rugs from the kitchen before I put them into storage, but I'm not so sure that it's the same pattern, so I'm not so sure that I did? Therefore, they may be feeBay images, but whatever, you can see a nice set of erasers with a large'ish astronaut and some space-related items - a nice pulp-type ship atop a 'pillar of flame' (to milk the metaphors) and two planets.

 

Then I saw this in Home Bargains the other day for less than a fiver, and thought "Blog!", so grabbed one, not realising the contents were different, so I will go back and try to get a spaceship one with another-colour of figure for a follow-up post!

 

Credited to a TJM, which I think is the in-house label of TKMaxx? Which would mean that TKMaxx, Homesense and Home Bargains (a downmarket clearance type rival to B&M) are the same company, as is Maxisave in Australia! We are being corporatised!

 

Clearly the UFO (or it is Saturn, one of the planets in the other set, given a skirt?), needs some hot water, and the shooting star is the weakest of the seven items ID'd so far (astronaut is the same in both sets I think), but - from its shape - would be the best eraser!

 

The pencils are all gray/graphite pencils, not coloured 'crayons', and each has an uplifting motto, including the eponymous Blast Off! There's no sharpener to get them started though, which given the cheap nature of the units we've looked at here at Small Scale World for things like novelty sharpeners and Christmas crackers, seems a bit tight?

S is for Stampers

Just a quickie, although I'm trying to save my shekels, I had to go to Home Bragains (who, answering my own question of a week or so ago, may be the future slayer of B&M?), to get a couple of vape pens (nine years no cigarette), and checking the toy section, which usually has little to interest us, found these.

 

One of those annoying lines wherein there are 12 to collect, but they are five-to-a-pack, so you must collect/acquire duplicates to obtain a set, and I was going to take a shelfie and move-on when I noticed they were only £2.99 each (presumably clearance stock), so quickly investigated the packs to find there were only three variables, and bought all three, intending to open one, which is what's happened.

 

These are the two which remain sealed, for now, one day I may get them out, or once all the boxes have been ticked (future entries on the A-Z blogs, TMNT round-up &etc), they may be sold on to raise funds for future purchases? As you can see, they are more cartoony/stylised sculpts than the more realistic ones we've seen from Yolanda, Phidal and Playmates et al. And they are solids, not action figures.

The five who have been released from their vac-formed prison, vaguely 54mm compatible, albeit with the very thick bases associated with this type of novelty, you can see that Donatello is much fatter in this iteration, while the other three are much skinnier (two of each character, plus four other figures), and while I did Google the 'Rise of' era, I couldn't find a good explanation for this change, nor why they can be brothers when apparently they are four different species of turtle?

 

Dirt cheap rack-toys, out there now!