L is for Late Show Report - Animals, Farm & Zoo!

You could subtitle this post 'Wot no dinosaurs?', as it's rare show these days, where there isn't at least one dino' among the plunder, but, with the exception of the double-headed monster we looked at the other day, there were no dinosaurs at all, in this year's PW plunder, four legs or two!

A few interesting pieces here, along with a broken Britains flamingo, but I may have spare legs for it? The Cherilea panda is not common, and from the hollow-cast I believe, while the croc' is Clairet? The giraffe may be Clairet as well, I can't remember, and is missing a hoof, but stands as a sample (on the back of the crocodile!), and while the gorilla on the right is a bog-standard one-of-meany, the one on the left (from Stad's) is new to Blog with the key-ring/charm-loop.

 

This was silly, I saw the painted cow, and thought "Looks like the Tudor Rose" (which I don't need!), but I couldn't read anything on the belly, and as it looked interesting, grabbed it in a rummage-tray lot, only to find it was the T*R one, heavily painted at some point, with poster paint, which soon washed-off on the Sunday as I processed through the plunder . . . hay-ho!

Looking like the Britains late, PVC version, I think this goat is actually the New Ray moulding? Two Matchbox cattle, one with horns, the other, later one (brown) without horns, from the gift sets. The rest are grist to the mill, with the marbled pig (bottom right), possibly having some value/interest beyond the HK tat of the others.

 

These monochromatics can be found in cheapo' bagged rack-toys, but are as likely from Christmas crackers, particularly the really cheap budget ones, and I seem to have photographed them in such a way as to make it look like the penguin is briefing the poultry on something!

 

"Guys, none of you are safe, voting for Christmas"

 

Three novelty dogs (I think we've had other colours in a Chris Smith donation in the past), could be cracker toys too, or may be low-price (1d or two new pence) gumbal capsule machine prizes, while the tiger who looks like a leopard/panther is a current capsule toy. There is a round-up of capsule toys (with contributions from Peter and Brian) in the 'hopefully by Christmas' queue!

 

More of the same novelty stuff; charm elephants and Scottie-dogs being standard tropes, the micro-mini red plastic take on a carved tusk being more fanciful than the common fare behind it and the donkey/zebra (?) being one of several in a set of chunky sculpts we may or may not have seen here before, I certainly have a few now?

 

And yet more novelties; most of the main tropes covered here, elephants, rockers, charms, Scottie-dogs, other dogs, monkeys, poultry, camels! That blue elephant is about 4mm x 6mm, absolutely tiny.

 

These were mostly in the bag from Trevor, as were a lot of the above novelties, and Trevor has found inordinate amounts of useful stuff for me, over the years, since Paul Morhead put us in touch back in 1995/6?

 

Butterfly hair clips from two sources, and a magnetic fly I remember having as a kid, in that little box. Flies were a standard of the joke shop/novelty section, and still are, flies in fake ice-cubes, flies for real ice-cubes, flies in sugar-lumps, magnetic flies, flies with glowing wings, jumping flies . . . and giant flies! And I've just realised I have to correct both the tags, there's no flys!

Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile.

M is for Minus One (Countdown to Halloween)

Found far too late for the countdown, this is Morrison's effort in this year's apparent 'competition' to see who can carry the most of an extended series of bugs and things!

And it's the winner, with 12 items - all the ones we've seen, a frog, a new spider and two snakes! The skeletons looked familiar too, but as the others went straight to recycling, so did these!

Couldn't wait - opened them on the train! But a red background wasn't the best medium for shooting them. Due to the lateness of their being located, I've not done comparisons, but they seem to be the same - or from the same source - as the Sainsbury's ones. I will do a follow-up of all these sets with the Morrison's one's included.

Better picture, but I forgot one of the snakes! The bat is even worse than the first one we saw, being a rigid  polyethylene semi-flat, yellow passes for glow-in the dark, it's another 'colour rule' with this stuff, and we have pumpkin-orange (Halloween) along with black (dark side).

Viper and Cobra types are the obvious additions to the 'oeuvre' and apart for the comedy-tongues, they're not bad.

Countdown to Halloween - 1 - Asda (Walmart); Look Familiar!

Slightly more interesting than they appear at first glance, these two packs from Asda are to the casual observer the same flies and cockroaches we've already seen this week, but as we know from the comparison of the flies, they aren't quite the same, and at a quid-each, were worth a punt!

I saw very similar stuff in Waitrose on Friday (20th), but being Waitrose, they weren't cheap, I may go back for them in the week, in which case they will appear tomorrow (this is all being done ten days or so before you read it) for comparison with the other sets, but they are literally twice as much** as all their competitors - or more.

Waitrose - where wealthy idiots with more money than sense and status-complexes go to shop with logoed bags-for-life that will help identify them as 'for the gallows' come the revolution!

Fly and 'roach bags, quid-each, nice mix of colours, the green isn't fluorescent, but after the orange rule, comes the 'use puke-green if you haven't got glow in the dark' and the 'purple is like a Vampire's cloak-lining' rules of Halloween colouring!

The clear ones aren't so clear - Halloween colouring rule-wise - maybe you hide them in your mate's Guinness and laugh like drains as he chokes on a rubber cockroach! Like the red food-colouring trick but with more immediate and very real medical consequences!

We have already looked at the fly in comparison with the other two similar sculpts, so it's the turn of the cockroach today. The Asda one is clearly better with full definition of the wing-overlap but nothing else notable as to clues to origins, what's amusing is that as the Poundworld/Sainsbury's centipedes mirror errors, so too has the bent antenna been diligently reproduced.

Accepting that the Asda 'roach is the superior and the Sainsbury's centipede is the poorer the order of copying would seem to be Asda → Poundworld-Poundworld Plus → Sainsbury's, but I still suspect better donors; yet to be turned-up and probably common/available a few years ago?

** They weren't, I did!

Countdown to Halloween - 3 - Sainsbury's Creatures Bumper Pack

Next to Sainsbury's where we find a bag of mixed critters, some more familiar, so less, to those we have looked at in the last few days.

A better mix than previous sets, with some duplicates and some newer specimens! Orange spiders, it's one of the rules - Halloween = Orange, it's connected to pumpkins, not a particularly scary or ghoulish vegetable as they go, and not really grown here until about ten years ago, however now that the marketing machine has succeeded in importing the 'festival', they are grown in numbers, and the orange parallel now applies here, as in the States!

The scorpion is a copy of the rubber one which came in a mixed lot the other day while the flies are similar to those we've already looked-at along with the centipede, the ants and mice are more unique - although I'm sure you'll find similar copies elsewhere!

Comparison with the rats and scorpions; the orphan scorpion is PVC, the Sainsbury's one polyethylene, but the design is almost identical, while the rodent is - I think - slightly more rat-like with its shorter, fatter tail, big feet and wiry whiskers? This is - of course - ignoring the fact that they are both (all four!) crude infant novelties!

A second comparison between the Sainsbury's and Poundworld Plus centipedes, neither gets the biscuit as their legs are all over the place, and while they do add-up the same both sides they are not always opposite each other, some segments have two legs within their bounds (which would indicate millipede traits!), other segments have no leg on one side, other legs are at the junction between segments . . . another ten minutes effort with the master would have made all the difference, but the makers know 99% of this shite will be in recycling or landfill, or on the way there by next Wednesday!

If this stuff lasts an extra week for Guy Fawkes Night parties (the proper autumn festival here), it's all it can hope for and pretty-much as good as it gets!

B is for Bug Life

Flies in sugar-lumps, flies in fake icecubes, flies in gum-ball vending capsules, flies in er...packets of flies! The universal, timeless novelty item...

...first available in the late 1940's/early 1950's and still a firm favourite in independent toy shop's pocket-money lines today. Other bugs are made, including glow-in-the-dark ants and large rubber...er...what the heck is it? Hornetsquito?