B is for Benevolent Buys - 2 of 3

This first shot was a bunch of things from a charity shop in Cranleigh, same visit as the Post Office and includes the deer we've already seen (I should pop over there again, it was a while ago!), while the others are more recent, but a few interesting things?

 

A ceramic cat fairing, I've picked-up so many of these I wonder if I shouldn't do the 'Shire Album'! In point of fact, the 'proper' ones have been done, and most of the ones I've picked-up over the years, are the cheap, unrated/discounted (by the serious/dedicated collectors) copies, or Japanese imports, so that's not a viable idea! I'll do a page here one day!

 

A resin otter and Phidal Marvel or DC character, a capsule-toy dinosaur, distributor obscured, the glass vitrine deer we saw the other day, two teddy bears, one generic, the other from the Noddy set which is slowly growing, along with an inclusion bouncy-ball.

 

That inclusion; it seems to be a cake decoration, with icing spike!

 

Undersides of the two bears, one in plastic and marked 'Noddy Subsidiary, Empire Made' with code and date (no, I can't read them either!), while the generic, probably also a cake decoration is chalkware, made of a plaster composition.

 

 

This was one of those strange moments of serendipity bordering on synergy, I'd seen the [marked] Peter Fagan (which is why I could 'believe' earlier today!) in Blue Cross, and left it as a bit daft, then went next door to the DEBRA shop and found the 'Sitting Pretty' trio from The Leonardo Collection (real high-street jewellers fare from Lesser & Pavey), so, it seemed dafter to not grab the one, and wizz back next-door for the other! Kittens . . . in satchels . . . on the Internet!

 

1987 for the smaller, 1998 for the larger, and I'm guessing, given some cats' love of bags, that this is a common trope among these ornamental 'collectable' sets of cats, so we may find more!

 

This came with one or other of the above purchases, and I don't think it's Jade, but one of the many false Jades which can be marbles, or quartzes/quartzites, maybe a greenish onyx? There is a sub-collection of reptiles in a half-shell, which we haven't really looked-at yet, but one day!

 

And there is another one or two of this type there, as they are always popular tourist mementos (there are elephants too, and we've seen a lizard here, I think), things made of the local stone, are forever anchored in where they came from, if you know what I mean? Much nicer than a poured-resin, puffin, fridge magnet with Camber Sands marker-penned on it!

K is for Keycraft - Spring Fair, Earlier This Month

So, to the reason for clearing all the previous shots out of Picasa! This year they had a very big stand at Birmingham, and I shot a lot of stuff, the doing of which resulted in a useful conversation and the two free samples (squidgy mice and bendy astronaut) we've already looked at, a while ago, the posting of which led to Wood's juvenile reaction!

 

That spaceman for the last time, with some squeezy/stretchy Shuttles!

 

Stretch [Neil] Armstrong! He's transparent and filled with a clear liquid, which seems to have light-enhancing/magnifying properties, so you get maximum reflections off the glitter suspended in the filling, so he glistens like some universal god-head in a home-remake of 2001 - A Space Odyssey! He also comes in a purple shade.

 

Huge spiders, actuallu quite realistic red-Legged, bird-eating, Tarantulas, for when you want to make your mother hate you for a week, by coming up behind her at the sink and saying, "Look what I found, can I keep it!"

 

Those wooden robots are still in the inventory, and someone has folded some of these up so you can see how they fold and turn many ways.

 

The Hedgehog thing! Sqishies.

 

The golden fleece is still there!

 

Giant insects and another spider!

 

Squishy cats.

 

Smaller, but still large insects, with caterpillars.

 

The Dinosaur 'toob', they don't seem to have any others (farm, zoo, sea-life etc.)?

 

Bigger Dinosaurs.

 

The set we've seen here several times now, nice sculpts, with simple paint schemes which keeps them cheap. I'll try to get them all as I want to compare them with that WHSmith set from a few years ago, the poses are different, but the painting is similar, the eyes especially, and they may be two halves of a larger Chinese line?

 

Another line of medium-giant Insects!

 

New packaging or a third line? I think they're new?

 

Distribution point. I think the new Toyhouse in Basingrad has a two-sided one?

 

Butterfly inclusion-balls.

 

Giant slugs!

 

So, that's Keycraft properly represented on the Blog, and up-to-date on outstanding posts. I'll try to find the other Dinosaurs in the medium-sized set (there's only four illustrated on their website, and I've found at least eight different ones so far), and keep an eye on them, as they have had some cool stuff over the years, and will continue to, we hope!

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/

K is for Keycraft - Keycraft Fumfings

It wasn't the 2020 show report which got posted, it was a cross-reference to that spotted-dinosaur in the Tobar show report! These are the 2020 London pictures! And it clears up a few of the things already mentioned under the Keycraft Tag label!

 

Firstly, that the - illustrated on the box - yellow one was there in the stretchy monsters!

 

Note the mice (green box, top right) were already on the scene in 2020!

 

 

 

I obviously came close to posting the Keycraft report, as I'd scanned the catalogue for this image, if I recall correctly the catalogue was a vast tome rather like some of the old combined Hong Kong Toy Development Council ones. In the style of the mice, with holes in the 'moon' (very small asteroid!) for the stretchy astronauts to weave in and out of!

Likewise with Kittens and a ball of wool, Unicorns and a cloud.

 

Metallic stretchys, we've seen the similar dinosaurs (below) as part of the stash.

 

The rack-toys were also carried by Tobar, without the Fumfings addition to the card, it was in that guise we saw them here at Small Scale World previously, and as they may be in the stash, via Hawking's Bazaar in Basingrad or Camberley, before their demise?

 

Very-much in the vein of K&M (Wild Republic)'s toobs, these are cheapo-dino's from China, and are still in the inventory, indeed, I think they are in both forthcoming posts!

 

The Dinosaur balls and eggs! In point of fact, the balls are mixed animals, there is a post coming on these, as Henbrandt, from the 1990's, so we will be covering the whole 'inclusion' range in the fullness of time, although I think we did have a brief look at them back at the start of the blog, including digging a few out of their balls, to find they are teeny-tiny, even over their look in the balls, as the balls have a slightly magnifying effect on the models buried within!

 

Again, yellow, the obvious colour for the Smiley, was missing from the previous post, but is out there, I think I have one in the Bendy-toy tub, but a vintage one from the 1970's, not this chap? Along with the mini 'emoticon' one, from the capsule toy Brian Berke sent to the blog a few years ago.

 

Since obtained, Blogged and Tagged, with more images in the Parachute Toy page's queue! And seen in several brandings I think?

 

Those stretchy dinosaurs, I thought one set (the smaller ones on the right) was the same as the Henbrandt ones we looked at years ago, but I think they turned out to be subtly different poses. The slightly larger ones can be considered Keycraft / Fumfings originals, until they turn-up in other branding/s!

There's a possibility that the oddly-spelt Fumfings sub-brand, is as such, due to the fact that there was a previous Fun Things, which was part of the 1980'90's marketing of the small-scale Supreme/SP Toys stuff by the likes of Ackerman, Titan and co., in the researching of which, I seem to remember finding the name Fun things had been registered by a jewellers (?) by the 2010's?

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/

R is for Return, to Keycraft Dinosaurs

They've managed to get a couple of mentions in the last few weeks, including the freebies from the Gift Fair, but it's their turn for show reports and not only do I have a load of Gift fair shots, but there were three in the archive from, 2020, '22 & '23! But here are a few physical Keycraft items!

 

Inclusion balls, under the Fumfings sub-brand, we have seen them before, briefly, in a Chris donation post, I think, and there are longer posts in the long-queue, but I picked these up, one of each, as samples a while back (January '20), not at the fair, but possibly on the way home, from the party shop at Clapham Junction, but I tend to publish those posts closer to the time, so it may be that they came from a discount store in Aldershot?

 

Construction/manufacture is slightly different on both of them, as well as the shape variation, with the Steggi's placed on the set green layer of his ball, sideways to it, while the Dimetrodon has been placed feet-first in the top of the red layer, before it was fully cured, so it's bled into the clear layer on top, leaving him floating in an egg of red-mist!

 

While on Monday I went back to Hobbycraft, and got three more of the dinosaurs we looked at the other day, knowing this sequence was in the offing. As with the others they are quite well done, if having unimaginative paint, and all three are from the 'green' batch, or same tool-run!

 

They are unnamed, with a Made in China mark and an alphanumerical code with an A or B prefix, so may be models previously seen elsewhere, and I suspect some of the set were in that big batch of mixed prehistoric's from Jon Attwood.

 

I was also going to suggest, previous issuing from Toy Major, but their markings/product codes tend to differ I think? However, the point I'm making is that with two code lines, there could be between a minimum of 12 to as many as 16 or even 24 animals or more (?), being found in a full set?

I is for Inclusion

I will add a new tag for this post: 'Inclusion Toy', as I have a whole tub of these somewhere with dinosaurs, sea-life, soldiers, N-gauge parachutists* and others with a few brands, but this one stayed on its card and is in with a bunch of other rack-toys we've been working through this RTM.

* They're real fun, between 1 and 5 tiny little almost-stick figures, doing various arrangements of free-fall display above small, aerial-view, photograph-discs also included a few millimeters below the figures.

Obviously the trope here is that a very small (about 1:76th) figure is set into the bouncy-ball, in this case along with a tiny football about the size of a pin-head.

While the branding is more problematical, as it's credited to 'England' (the team), Via the Football Association (FA), with the addition of Hy-Pro (an 'outdoor manufacturer'?) but there will be some management/publicity firm behind that, and they will have commissioned the artifact (along with mugs and t-shirts et al) from a third party who will have approached the same contract-manufacturers as every other rack-toy wholesaler!

The figure (as with all these inclusion balls) appears to be around 1:72nd scale, but that is the magnifying effect of the clear sphere of polymer surrounding it, when you dig them out they are always smaller. Memory suggests we did look at one some time ago - a dinosaur, or a sea lion? If I can find it, I'll tag it with the new tag, and I can build on the tag in the future, when I find the rest.