C is for Contributions to Charity Coffers!

I've not been 'doing' the Charity Shops in the last few years with the same diligence I used to, not enough time/inclination, and a different life-routine means I just don't pass them like I did, but there have been a few small purchases in recent weeks/last couple of months, and this is a quick view of the resultant plunder!

 

A few bags in the Blue Cross, which I always check as that's where I got those Britains Herald ECW when I first started checking Charity Shops again after a hiatus of a few years, and the other week they had a bunch of nice bagged animals, from which I selected three (the lady in front of me in the queue had a nice bag of Dinosaurs!), to which I added a resin Hippo from the 'White Elephant' (ox-blood hippo!), or knick-knack shelves.
 

Clockwise from the top left; A bag of Britains in various states from very play-worn (tiger) to quite mint (baby hippo), then that lump of resin mud-lover, a nice group of Chinasaurs, including two gape-mouths, and a new version of my favourite childhood rubber Dimetrodon, but in a more ridged PVC-alike, than the usual silicon-rubber of the originals, but nice to know the tool is still out there and in use!

 

The last bag had a mixed lot of smaller animals, and while I'm not sure about the orange pig, the other three in that corner (green and blue) probably do go together and look like they might be modern lesser-brand or generic chocolate egg prizes. The startled lion-cub is probably Kinder?

While the larger bag was a whole bunch of MEG Kitty in my Pocket toys, which gave a whole shot each of gingers, black & white and/or or floofy types, smudgers and a more oriental looking group of greys! I have a few in with the cats, but always knew they'd turn up cheap eventually, so nice sample for pennies!

 

I was actually passing the next day and popped-in to see if there were any left, I don't like to be greedy and had only grabbed the more interesting looking bags, the day before, and found two more bags, while a couple of larger animals were procured next door!

The biggies from DEBRA UK; I can't remember now which was which, but there were a Papo, Schleiech and Triple-A among these, and I think this is a Schleich rhino and generic elephant? It'll all come out in the wash, when we look at them again in more thematic posts, another day!

 

Again I can't remember which brand the tiger was, or the elephant, but the moose is interesting, as it's Kinder, but far too big for the normal eggs, so it must be a Maxi-Egg toy? I've noticed they are gaining popularity, especially at Christmas/Easter.

The other bag was a right-old mix, with farm and zoo, branded and unbranded, for some reason the pig-shot snuck into the collage twice, so you can see what they look like, before I sort the contrast! Doh!

These - found in Phyllis Tuckwell  a few weeks ago - weren't really Charity-shop priced, but lacking only the backing card, were a clean sample and I've since seen what people want for them on evilBay, and decided they were a bargain! And the rest of the packaging went to recycling weeks ago, so the missing card - was not missed!

 

Being Disney Stores, they are more tourist oriented, lacking firm set/line lists, coming and going, not necessarily found in all territories and unbranded beyond the carrying store, who isn't a toy manufacturer. one of the other sets online - for instance - is much bigger, while some small die-cast vehicles (Luke's 'landspeeder') are in the rather bitty range!

 

They look very similar to the Applause set, so maybe there's a connection there, but they are - at least - solids, so 'toy soldiers' rather than action figures, although action figure size at about 100mm!

Finally, this pair came in a week or so ago, £1.10p for the lot, and it's for charity!

The sea-life are all equipped with pencil-topping holes, the dragon is another capsule/Christmas cracker looking type and the two Fairies are, I think, from the Flower Fairies (Interplay - IP) which we looked at in a London Toy Fair revue a few years ago, and which, again, I suspected would, if successful, end up in mixed/charity lots, so more samples procured against future thematic posts!

F is for Fairy Flowerpot

We've had a few of these Interplay - IP's shelfied since we first saw them at Toy Fair 2018, always in TKMaxx so a continuous relationship there, and - as with some of the Christmas stuff - not necessarily clearance or end-of-line, but more likely just loss-leaders to keep the toy section ticking over and looking well-stocked - I think I first saw them there weeks after the Toy Fair?

Anyway, some might be interested in these near 54mm fairies, I've yet to find any in second-hand sources so for bow we rely on shelfies and these are a week old and TKMaxx as stated.

"Includes easy-grow seeds" and "Grow a plant in the flowerpot house" suggests you plant above a false floor in the dolls- fairy-house flower-pot?

As I say the fairies are about 54mm (I haven't actually measured them, I don't tend to wander about in department stores whipping out my tape-measure . . . Ooh Missus!) so are useful only in fantasy settings as they are hardly dressed as saloon 'galls' or combat refugees, the other two reasons 54mm women might be of interest to figure collectors of our ilk.

And you get a rabbit, but a bit too cartoony for animal collectors who lean toward species-typical purism.

S is for Shelfies - TJ / TK Maxx

So; I take the odd shelfie or two every time I go to TKMaxx in Basingrad and while a lot of them are of not much interest, they are all figural, so have at least some relevance, and this is a round-up of the last few month's-worth.

Remember that weird Superman with foam wings, who came-in in a mixed lot, got photographed and went back to charity? Well, the mystery seem to be solved; modern-to-current, made by an i-Star Entertainment and being fired by means of an older type pull-cord mechanism and a more techie' trigger which seems to momentarily store the kinetic energy. And - apart from missing the trigger and pull cord, mine was probably/vaguely complete?

Chad Valley are very much a trading brand now, having been resurrected and gone bust, bough by Woolworth's and gone bust, bought by Argos, bought by or sheared with Sainsbury's . . . and cleared through TKMaxx, while both organs are themselves still trading!

The figures (54/60mm) look familiar and I feel I've seen them before somewhere, but then they would be bought-in, as a trading brand Chad Valley does no original manufacturing itself anymore. Indeed; I think the building has the same sticker as the Ja-Ru (?) set Brian shelfied a year or two ago? But the figures are from somewhere else, the helicopter a common rack-toy trope, the traffic-cone from elsewhere?

Sub-scale shuttle and intermediate scale figures (around the 30/35mm mark IIRC) from Johntoy of the Netherlands, but I was drawn to the satellites which would go well with my Airfix HO-OO astronauts, but it wasn't particularly cheap so I left it one the shelf!

Diving out of TKMaxx for a moment I shot these dolls house accessories in Flying Tiger a while ago, notable for the fact that as polymers continue to be implicated in mass pollution, environmental damage, infertility, biological-androgyny and extinction, wood and metal will regain their lost roles in the toy industry . . . as they will in the kitchen, garden and garage/shed!

Back to the Max' and every boy's Christmas fantasy was a big box with everything in it, and this isn't far off! You even get a small forest of poplar trees! Shit image means I can't read the full logo but it's looks like Play Fund, Play Land or Play Pound (as in 'Dog Pound')? This is likely a phantom-branded packaging - several of the vehicles are recognisable from the multi-brand post a couple of Rack-Toy Month's ago.

The kneeling police sniper is an old (and as we've seen here at SSW in the past) much copied Ja-Ru sculpt, so I assume the others will be two, all-six drawn from a larger 'menu' of figures, produced by a contract manufacturer somewhere.

Just because it's figural . . . and may turn-up in a mixed lot! It says 'Brick' so may be Duplo-sized/compatible?

Seen at the London Toy fair in January '18, seen them in TKMaxx before, Interplay's Fairy Garden the fairy is another one likely to turn-up in mixed lots and may be of use to fantasy collectors, if only to have the game-master declare her 'captured by Orcs' and demand her rescue as a game-wining aim!

Phidal - smaller toy/book confection, and aimed at much younger readers than the full-size My Busy Books, can use non-licensed stuff without hitting sales, not that they aren't loosely based on My Little Pony, but them isn't MLP only a further commercialisation of the pink, yellow and blue animals transfer-printed on our cots and play-pens by Pedigree Triang Mettoy fifty years ago?

We saw a couple here in a mixed lot a while back, both went back to charity the next day, Peterkin are behind this juvenilia.

Two brand-marks here, Country Life and My Lovely Horse, both from Johnjoy out of Holland (a place called Waddinxveen), not my thing, but for farm collectors, horse collectors or animal collectors, they may have appeal, clearly going after the Breyer market, which both Schleich and Papo are also chasing these days.

If Tomy are to do anything useful with that Britains Farm property of theirs, they might do well to dump the Britains tools, double (or halve?) the scale and go after a slice of this bandwagon's pie!

That's yer'bunch of mixed shelfies; with one exception, all recently or currently from TKMaxx.

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Interplay

As we were looking at pinky-purple stuff earlier, we might as well get these out of the way; although there was a bunch more of the same gear on Schleich's stand which is still to come!

Called My fairy Garden and coming from an outfit called Interplay (IP; which is lucky 'cos that's the title of the post!), you get real grass seed, compost and a flower pot or tray, along with fairy stuff for scenic diorama modelling. Sets are in different size-price brackets.

They're useful - for 54mm fantasy; if nothing else, and well modelled, with lots of little itty-bitty things of the sort you'd find in a Playmobile or Lego house set, but slightly more realistic and scaled smaller.

I didn't get to handle them, but I would imagine a PVC or PVC-like polymer for the horses unicorns (everything's unicorns at the moment!), larger mouldings and fairies, polypropylene for the buildings and smaller accessories.

There's a website and the pictures will further speak for themselves . . .