M is for Mostly Stretchies!

I thought, given what else is there, that there would be some Henbrandt in the archive of previous show visits, but there isn't, it seems we covered it all at the time, but when they have stuff to shoot, it's usually stuff of interest, and while ephemeral or novelty in nature, this is true for what I shot this year up at the NEC.

 

Finger Monsters = finger fun!

 

Some nice figural Halloween stuff here, I never seem to find it out there in stores, the UK being very bad at this kind of stuff, which makes much better 'treats' than more tooth-acid, but it must be out there somewhere, if you have a better party-shop than my locals, check them out in October?

 

More by accident than design, we've covered both version of their small animal sets over the years, quite thoroughly! But here's another shot, 'cos you can't have too many!

 

? Sort of figural shots, I fired-off, but really just novelty rings.

 

Snakes & Skeletons

 

Lizards & Smileys

 

Skeleton box, but they are Mummies

I think we saw the flicky Superheroes in Hawkin's Bazaar?

 

Frogs & Dinosaurs

 

Mixed jungle animals I'll be looking out for,

and black & white Rats

 

I wonder how many colour-change items there are in the stash, not having a habit of giving everthing a hot bath when it comes in to the collection, I wouldn't know unless someone told me?! All-in-all, a few bits of interest, one way or another.

T is for Two - Full Size Christmas Crackers

Just a quickie, it's been a funny-old day, today!

We're looking at two complete sets today, both shot a few years ago, and both obtained for pennies, or I couldn't justify the philistinism of destroying them, although both are from the tail-end of the 1970's or - more probably - the 1980's, and both are budget types, so not exactly rare or valuable.

 

This one is a total generic with no identifying features or information. the photo-art on the box makes it recent in the history of crackers, but not ultra-modern, so the 70's seems likely, and there are 12 crackers in crepe-paper with metallic 'collars' - I'm sure all these things have their own piece of specific lingo within cracker-making circles!

Clockwise from top left we have a hair-clip, micro vanity-case/doll's accessory, motorcycle, cocktail ornamental-monkey, relief-flat spider, magnifying-glass key, elephant charm, moustache, two-part ring, fake fingertip, flat car (after a French original) and a baby's/doll's rattle.

 

Contents tick most of the boxes, there's no obvious puzzles or games? The cocktail-glass monkey was originally a design credited to Nosco in the 'States, but early plastics firms over here carried similar products - this one though will be Hong Kong.

The other set, equally cheap types, but in all-stiffer paper, and very 1980's is credited to a Napier Industries, who claim to be manufacturing over here, but using part-foreign pieces, we should get them on a boat to Rwanda!

Clockwise again - ballbearing dexterity game, hair-clip and trick rubber-pencil, Ultraman pencil-top, water squirter, magic maths puzzle, novelty curling-fish, metal puzzle, moustache, motorbike, rubber-spider and elephant charm.

 

Contents again ticking most of the boxes, but with the puzzles and magic tricks, which were missing in the previous set, note also, the motorcycle is a different design, I have bags of both, as with the elephant, but like the similar cats and Scottie-dogs there are many variants of them! Also we get a bi-coloured crown, but in the same easy-rip tissue paper!

 

Some of the LRG collectors get a bit excised over the Ultraman pencil-tops, not realising there were tens of thousands of them in British/Commonwealth crackers, and that they are ephemeral cheepies really!

Both boxes have a 'cut-out-and-keep' (or 'use') feature, for enhanced value-for-money, in a number of place-mat nameplates, which could equally be used as parcel gift-tags.

T is for Two - Mini Crackers

Way back when, Crackers tended to be limited to the actual dinner, you all had one and shared the hats and prizes if one person 'won' two ends, you then read the joke and wore the hat. Extravagant families might have a second pull before the pudding course, but there was the undeniable guilt of redundant hats?

 

In order to get round the unwritten limits on cracker engagement, some wag in cracker-central came up with the mini-cracker, which lived in the tree as a 'decoration' and cried silently 'pull me, pull me' for the entirety of the tree-up period. Pester-power (spoilt whining) did the rest!

Here we see generic and Sainsbury's branded versions of the same common mini-crackers, I'm really after another (1960's) set, which comes up regularly, but always goes for silly money, so clearly other people know what they are looking for, in the meantime these later ones (1980-2000's?) which flourished under several guises, are often going for no money, and these are from a few years ago (left) and this year, a charity lot (right).

 

You can tell they are the same from the little bells and Christmas trees glued to them, which didn't change for over a decade and can be found on the larger crackers, presumably from the same source/origin, too, whatever the design of the crackers themselves, which - with these minis - is always a variation of the metallic 'Christmas colours'.

 

But it's the contents which interest me and hopefully some of you, and here, mercifully, the rings have tied them together as closely as the glued tags! Only seven left in the first - generic - box, a full complement of eight in the newer, charity set.

 

Of note; another micro-racing car for my long-term project, the diminutive copy of a Layla type railway figurine, and it solves the question of the different bases on some of the copies, I thought we'd looked at more of the Hong Kong ones than we did in the linked post, but there are some (the above . . . golfer?) with better bases, but poorer sculpting than the Hong Kong bagged sets you could get in model railways retailers back in the day. Obviously, these crackers are one of the sources of them.

While the Sainsbury's-branded set is also interesting for having four items at normal cracker size (fake finger, moustache, ring and fly), and four mini-versions of what would normally be bigger - rocking bear, whistle, charm and the relief-flat crab. favourite here is the microscopic warship, we had a bunch of these in soft, silver polyethylene when we were kids, and I've found a couple over the years along with a red one, but this bright green one is the first polystyrene one I've found.

N is for New Name in the Tag List!

Carrington's the Jewellers of Regent Street no less! Taken from the Illustrated London News, May 1986 'Number' as posh people title their periodicals! A sliver centre-piece, for dining tables or sideboards, you can have him guarding the cheese board and grapes, or staring-down some of your dinner-guests!

 

The obvious question being, is it a Stadden piece? The horse looks a little too smooth in my humble opinion, but the figure has some of the sharpness of folds one expects from the master, and sometimes 'figure chaps' will work with an 'animal chap' (or chapess), as they often specialise in one form of physiognomy? Looks to be about four-inches in scale/size, but he could be as much as six? I'd paint him as a Horse Guard!

N is for Novelty . . . Guards - Smaller

So, these were the ones that prompted the utterance that I would return to them nearer Christmas, with Peter sending some back in the Spring or early summer;

I couldn't find all the ones I know I have and I suspect some are in the minor-makes A-Z boxes, but there are enough to work with here and get the foundations across! This is the 'Hong Kong Guards' box, and from the small-scale only days it doesn't (and couldn't) contain the big wooden ones, the nutcrackers we’ve seen, the washing-up sponge one &etc.

This is the smallest iteration of the sample, placed in a snow dome above a pencil-sharpener, but it's one of those lame domes with lots of polystyrene 'bits' in. It's not product granule, that's larger and smooth, this is like they put some small off-cuts in an old Italian coffee grinder with the very fast blades and shredded them!

Next size up are these, originally earrings from a David Halsall (still in the tags as Hallsal! I will sort it! . . . Half an hour later - done!), and I think some of the missing ones are stored under Haswell, which was a sub-brand of the company now known as HTI. I removed the jewellery component to get two fat drummers!

These are the biggies, so far only the two poses have turned-up; sentry/guardsman and drummer/bandsman, whether they are all available in all three sizes or not I don't know, but they're clearly based on the lawn blow-moulds so popular in the US and spreading across Britain as if we have a better planet to go to when we're done buggering-up this one!

At this size you can get them as crafting accessories, earrings, cake decorations and whatever else anyone can think of for novelty guards! Added to the collection later, I left the earrings intact and on their card. You can still find these out there at this time of year, last year I think I saw the earrings in the British Heart Foundation charity-shops as factory-clearance/new stock.

Scaler!

D is for Dancing Dancers Dance a Dance!

I have Adrian little to thank for the first two lots here, he; having found the Fontanini set and knowing I'd be keen, put it to one side for me; also chucked the other in the small-scale scruff lot he had for me, in fact it's probably the more interesting of the two, Fontanini may have the following, but they are mass-produced and a lot of the mould-tools went for not just years but decades, while the other is less likely to survive in any numbers.

Depose, 'Italy' and the spider/tick/beetle/crab-thingy mark these out as Fontanini, even if you miss the 'antiquing wash' clue! All six poses in what I think is the smallest size they came in, around 54/60mm compatible given the deep baroque 'regency wig' (my moniker for them!) bases they come on, I'm not aware of a painted 45mm vinyl-rubber set?

Having forgotten I'd shot the first two images above (for an 'H is for How They . . . ' post), I tried shooting them again a few days later, suffering from light problems and collaging the best of a couple-of-dozen poor shots, these are they!

This is the more interesting of the two additions, marked to Peter Pan Playthings (who made a mix of 'general' toys and the odd board-game and are one of several PPP's in the archive!), and carrying a magnet in her heavy, drum-base, she's likely to be form either a novelty pair who dance-round each other's polarity, or a wand-controlled magnet game, like Merit's Driving Instructor game?

She's 40mm in total, 30-mil' without the base and a hard polystyrene against the soft polyethylene of the Fonatnini's.

I was kindly allowed by the staff to shoot this in British Heart Foundation's Farnborough store back in July, after pleading poverty! It was in the 'smart items' cabinet so I wasn't able to handle it, but I think it consists of a head/torso assembly and two legs sewed into the pink dress.

Later versions of these things (this combines all the tropes - music box, manicure/pedicure, dressing-table and jewellery/make-up storage) tended to have the same copies of Britains (or Fontanini's) dancers as were also used as cake decorations, all from Hong Kong, and while I suspect this may also be sourced in the colony, I think we're looking at the late 1950's and a more unique sculpting?

Also, it would appear there was nothing new in Ms. Madge Ciccone 's pointy, gold brassier, but it was nice of her to reprise the apparel! Thanks to Mercator Trading, the British Heart Foundation and Madonna!

F is for Flocking Flocked the Hell Out of 'Em!

Picked these-up the other day, charity shop, 30p, couple of Santa Claus cake decorations or snow-globe figures converted/re-purposed into novelty earrings, I may remove the rings and stick them with the other Santa's or chuck them in the minor-makes boxes under C for Clair's.

The odd thing about them is that they have been flocked, but the flocking material is a semi-transparent (or originally; totally transparent) filament, which has been applied over the painted decoration, giving them a overall whitish 'halo' and making them look old and faded, even when brand new!

And to misquote a Christmas Dawn French; they're not Claire's, They're mine!

I added this just 'cos it was hangin' around! 50p from a charity shop in Basingrad, I was regretting buying it as she racked it up; in the glare of the spot-light over the till it looked a lot rougher than it did in a basket of baubles in a dark corner of the store!

But it cleaned-up OK, and I've since threaded it with a silver-flecked, fabric loop and it looks fine, it's a naff, polypropylene thing and it's still not brilliant, but the stricture is lowered for the themes, and with both bears and drums being themes on the tree, it manages to tick two boxes!

I've also removed the CHINA sticker, which bears a more than passing resemblance to those old Hong Kong stickers on HCF (and other touristy) imports, which may be a clue as to origin (but doesn't help without a name) or just a habit several manufacturers - or a shipper handling several manufacturers - adopted for novelty stuff?

F is for From Nutcrackers to Christmas Crackers

So there was I, on one of the hottest days of July, if not the whole summer, pulling twenty-four Christmas crackers with myself, as you do . . . n't! The final hours of Poundworld Plus brought with them a Brucey-Bonus for the novelty-tat arm of the collection!

I'd already had some smaller 'tree' ones, when these were reduced from 50p a box to 25p per box, which - if you recall the other posts at the time (June/July) - was further reduced at the till by whatever had been sent to the computer by head-office or the Official Receivers that morning - suffice to say I got silver back from my grubby quid!

Bog-standard fare - die-cut, stiff-card construction, simple CAD design in positive and negative silver/white colour-ways, six per pack gave me the aforementioned 24-crackers to deal with, and I wasn't waiting 'till now!

First disappointment was no Matchbox knock-off soldiers! Each box had one micro-plane, one hair tie, one 'tiddlywink' frog and one very thin, styrene ring, with two from a top, a spinner or a fake nail. Most of the things in the 'Image for illustration purposes only' picture are of better quality than those actually included but isn't that always the way!

The 'tree' crackers; I don't seem to have photographed the contents, if I find them in the increasing chaos of the 'bringing together' before Xmas I'll try to, but memory serves they were as crap as the bigger ones and relatively similar. Except they were only four per tray, and two of them - per set - had the [same] card-puzzle (like Kinder's) or bookmark, leaving me with only a few bits of polymer shite!

I didn't get the fortune-telling fish, the trumpet or the magic calculator! Both sets were imported by ITP, with the tree-crackers further known to have been manufactured by [PT] Cermai Makmur of Indonesia, so you might find these in KMart . . . now! It's all-right - I buy this shit so you don't have to!

M is for Mulan

A 1998 movie from the Disney stable, I won't pretend to know anything about it, as until I bought this from a charity shop I'd never heard of it! And until I Googled it; I didn't have the date!

Arcotoys Inc. a Mattel Company (yes - that Arco!) produced these 'jewellery' ('play' jewellery!) sets apparently in three slightly different configurations along with a larger battery-operated chirping-cricket toy, presumably as a tester to the likelihood of merchandise from the movie shifting?

Non-human items, after the real junk had already gone to recycling, all marred by the ring-loop for attaching to the plastic necklace. The tree is a flat, or relief sculpt with a plain back and semi-flat front while the panda is quite realistic, or at least bearable (geddit!) and the horse isn't too bad; pointy face though! The other three would have gone to 'recyce' if they weren't figurals!

The three humans, I have the chap in the middle in the unknown manga/anime zone of the unknown superheroes box in storage, so it's nice to have him ID'd, all three are about 30mm.

The figurines and tree are all PVC and the necklace, earrings and wristband, along with some of the smaller pieces were polyethylene.

After removal of the ring-loops and a quick touch-up with some PVA paint, they all look a lot better, the cherry-blossom with make a nice background scenic display shelf item; another set had an oriental doorway in the same shades of pink.

O is for Ostentatious

A friend of my Mother's was up at Southeby's for a lecture the other week and they (the attendees) were invited to view the forthcoming action while they were there, Helen kindly thought of me and took these shots of a rather over-the-top chess set.

There is a history of chess sets linked to toy soldiers...well it's obvious isn't it, once you have a range of figures there is an almost natural thought-progression to making them into two sets of 16 and lining them up on a Victorian kitchen floor!

But a bespoke set is a different matter, and while the section on the subject in Garratt's encylopedia is well worth the read and we all know about the sets made by Crescent and Britains and so on, or the sets designed by Stadden, this is in a different league!

Silver, silver-gilt, pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, enamel, suede, fine engraving upon engraving...but piled-up. Do the bases need extra stones, more tooling, another line of enamel? It's like they couldn't stop themselves!

More pictures here, but a final hamer price of £17,000+ when things of rareity and beauty sell for much more these days would suggest the buyers found it a bit OTT as well?

The base is too busy, the four corner knights confusing...not that playing light blue against dark blue is going to make forward planning easy, especially when all the royalty are in red! A lovely thing for the blog, but leave it to new-money...this needs a marble sample-table in a footballer's Geoff's Oak mansion really...he says - judgementally!

J is for Jewellery

The last of the real kak - if you're a male figure collector - but there will be a bit in the final round-up, I was actually looking at crackers in town today, and there are some things that haven't been covered at all, simply because there weren't any in the big purchase, nor any kicking around....tape measures spring to mind, but now'; it's badges and the rest of the Jewellery samples.

Butterfly broach: already converted to a fridge magnet and added to someone else's collection. More badges and broaches top left, necklace/wrist/ankle-chains and the like to their right and a fetching selection of polyethylene earrings in the bottom corner!

R is for Rings

Another lot to be quickly moved over! Actually in their attempts to render the contents of the vending machines of crackers 'unisex', there are some 'masculine' subjects among these, but really this is another corner of the novelty kak universe aimed at the fairer sex.

These were photographed for posterity with the capsule they came with - a time wasting exercise in the main, as the research I've done over the last few weeks would suggest that novelty and capsule are often brought together by wholesaler, sometimes by supplier and there is no firm relationship between the two...however the two top right are 'container specific'.

A decent enough sample, heavy steel rings (with age) at the far left (one, tray like, filled with green glass/enamel), down to a small piece of day-glo tat bottom right. In between there are styrene and ethylene plastics, lightweight aluminium alloys, tin-plate, a lenticular picture-changer, and a couple of daft animal rings (both damaged) along with a pencil-top fruit knock-off!

A close-up of the container specific rings with their locking mechanism, the outer curve of the ring sitting in the slots of a single-piece 'capsule' until prised-out by a fingernail.