C is for Cinematic Celebrities and Cartoon Characters

All the other sci-fi/fantasy stuff tends toward the realm of TV and the moving pictures, to which cartoon characters and fairy tales add a few other harder to classify items, and that material is the direction of this post!

 

A lovely 54mm Barbie, who could have gone in the previous post, as an obvious astronaut, but she's better employed kicking this post off. Credited to Mattel Canada, she is probably the same size as the US shelfied one, with a different card, Brian B sent us, a few years ago, and of which I had no clue to the size - see the Barbie Tag.

 

And - of course - a small scale, solid figurine of a much larger articulated doll, this is exactly what Andy Warhol was on about when he famously said "Pop [culture] will eat itself", something you can also see in comics and Graphic Novels now, with endless mash-ups and crashing of characters into each-other's 'universes', in the end it all gets very silly with Star Wars-Angry Bird-Deforms, or, take The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; on the one hand, a fine, stand-alone, escapist action-movie, on the other hand, utter nonsense and rubbish, which had several authors' spinning in their graves! Internecine naval gazing!

 

Three Power Rangers, these are the Kellogg's premiums I think, and they clearly seem to have only done the two poses, and covered the various Rangers with colour variations! Although the ladies have different heads, so maybe it's just the guys who share a sculpt . . . does it matter? I've got the paragraph!

 

Gulliver's Supergirl premium from Pepsi, on the left, beautifully painted by someone, and while the paint has been chipped a bit over the years, I'll leave it, maybe even touch it up one day? Interestingly, she's the same sculpt as the Res Plastic for Kinder (and PIF Gadget?) one, so some cross-fertilisation or mould-swapping there, I think! I should add that I now believe only the 30mm ones were issued by Kinder, these 54mm's wouldn't fit in the eggs.

 

On the right is a soft PVC-alike Superman figure from NJCroce of bendy toys fame, how they came and went in a couple of toy-seasons?! He's not a bendy, just a slightly wobbly figure, clearly they haven't finished with their DC licence! 

 

Two vast blobs from Argentina, and you can't beat Argentina for 'toy' appeal! I think they may be from Kamen Rider (is that a crude attempt at Kuuga on the left?), but what do I know, very little on that subject, so Atomic-Super-Kaiju-Boy is still in the frame! They are about 120mm and showing that Argentine favourite, lashings of silver paint!

 

Army Ants/Combattini/Terminators, we've seen them before, no black ones this time, but a new colour, bright pink, and the details are on the Tag. But I noticed some seem to be missing separate weapons, and/or have holes for accessories, of which, one, a radio-set, is still attached, so I now have to hope I have some of the missing items in the bits-zone!

 

Pretty sure these are Kinder now, and probably quite recent/contemporary, we saw a Chewbacca from Chris I think, not that long ago, and they seem to be taking from the 'classic' characters.

 

A Disney sucker, we've seen several generic 'monster' characters and a superhero, so I'm guessing some recent playground craze/blind-bag thing which I missed? Along with what I suspect are two Pokémon?

 

Marx Simple Simon in chalky-blue plastic, and an unknown action figure who may be a knock-off of something more obvious like the GI Joe's or that Airfix line . . . I really don't do action figures, unless they are Galloob, or Matchbox, or . . . doh! And is he a diver or a spaceman?

 

Odd gnome to the left and swivel-head alien to the right who was probably a key-ring, or hand-bag/mobile-phone hanger, and I think it glows in the dark, but forgot to check! 

 

Small scale bits include a DFC or similar revolting peasant (and he's rebelling, too, boom-boom!), a couple of Bluebird Zero Hour/Code Zero, a small vinyl shuttle from Star Trek (Playmates?), a Marx 'Kin's cat (Figaro), Christmas cracker angel orchestra figure, and a lovely fully-glazed, ceramic little-baby-Jesus, who might be a French fève?

 

I think these are all Moshlings? But they could be Zomlings, Ugglys pets, Super Zings, Super Things, or even Shopkins/Grossery Gang, I really don't know, and purple eye 'shadow' seems to be a feature of most of them!

 

They are mostly in the Capsule Toy/Blind Bag queue, I started clearing a while ago, and I'll make some sense of them here, just to get the boxes ticked, but there was this bagful, as a part of one of the donations.
 

Again thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin for everything on the day.

F is for Follow-ups - Recent Bits

When Chris Smith sent his parcel a couple of months ago, I told him I'd seen another of those finger monsters, a day or so before, and then spent ages looking for it, real rabbit hole stuff, in the end I went through most of the near-thousand folders in Picasa, thinking I must have moved it by mistake (sometimes you pick something up, absentmindedly, on the cursor and dump it elsewhere, without even realising it, on the way to somewhere else!), only to find it the other day, in the short or 'this year' queue, in a possible post on an exhibition!

 

Definitely a forth sculpt/pose, and if the paint-chips are anything to go by (almost certainly home-painted), this one is yellow plastic, which reinforces my - still possibly false - memory of a brown one? And obviously some kind of Kaiju from the Godzilla or Ultraman franchises.

 

From two different show reports, the Reliable figures and probably Reliable side-by-side, the standing shooters look different, because the foot-plug on the older version is not fully pushed-home, but I lined them up, and they are almost identical, even down to the long, adjustable iron-sight, over the breach, so clearly they just added integral bases changing the tool from a two-part to a three-part mould.

 

And thanks to Anonymous for highlighting the link, in comments, I was using the Way Back Machine version of the now defunct Ponylope as a guide!

 

Also from recent posts; show reports and donations, we've seen three of these recently in two posts, the others earlier in the year, brought together, you can see the two sizes (bigger pair on the right), to which can be added the several base marks, which I previously highlighted.

 

When combined with the couple of dozen which have come in over the last three-or-so years (get-at'able in storage), it will give an even better picture. While the master collection, buried in the container, which also includes the big ones, when all the new ones are added to them, will be the basis of a much better overview, one day.

 

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In this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/02/t-is-for-two-roarsome-rack-toys.html

 

We saw a metallic dino'bird/pterosaur kind of thing, which bore little resemblance to the other four on the card-back, but separately, and also from BJ Toys, I've been picking these up at petrol stations, namely the Esso outlet at Tongham/Hog's Back, and Bordon's BP station!

 

Plant spider!

 

Reverse colours.

 

Balrog's horns on this one!

 

The trouble is, they seem to appear one or two at a time, in a large counter display carton on the bottom shelf of a dedicated/custom BJ Toys sales display unit, mixed-in with an assortiment of other novelties, so I don't know how may there are, or whether they all have reversed colour versions.

 

And if you think this link is tenuous, for a follow-up - I thought I'd already posted one! But they were in two folders, with the other not photographed, so I was happy to find the Dino-phoenix, looking for the non-posted dragon! The point being, I think they are from the same source, not BJ; in China?

 

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On the subject of ducks,

 

The two vintage British plastic foul, one from Peter and one from Chris (pretty sure I have another in pink, or a maroonish-purple somewhere), brought together with the TK Maxx crayon ducks and a generic CHINA-marked goose from a rack-toy bag/toob/tub, for scale.

 

Similar, but simplified toys from Sonsco of Hong Kong, again I have several of these in various colours, including a fluorescent pink one which is just as leery as the green one in this set!

 

And on GI's,

 

This set of re-issue ex-Marx figures, being a mix of different sets, has the chap, both Chris and me thought "looked like Marx?", middle-top, and, sure enough, he was a Marx sculpt!

 

But I'd totally forgotten that Chris sent me this shot ages (six years) ago, when discussing something else, probably wanting it to feature in a Question Time, so, to repeat the earlier question, we know the re-loader is a Marx pose, now, but can anyone give a maker/brand to this marbled maroon-brown chap, and B) does anyone know anything about the figure on the left?

E is for Everything Else - Odds & Sodds!

There were a few smaller pieces and loose figures picked up at the Last Sandown Part show, which was, in some respects, one of my best yet for purchaes, but in conversation, there's a feeling that while prices are down, this stuff is coming out of the woodwork at the moment, I got a really nice, never seen before piece off of that evilBay the other day.

 

I've never really followed this stuff, nor felt the need to, poorly acted 'C' movies, for kids, in the 'over the top' style of kids programming, never grabbed me, but there is a big following for the whole Kaiju, Gojira, Ultraman, Atomic-boy stuff, and these are probably quite modern 'Ultramen', and may be from one source, but two are realistic 54mm'ish solids, well within the scope of the collection, the other two are a super-deform (right) and big-head (left), both of which, leave me pretty cold.

 

A Christmas cracker bike, and two micro-trucks from Italy, another 1-ton Humber knock-off, too close to the Dinky original to be considered the donor for all the Hong Kong copies, but could be based on the Pyro/Kleeware minis? And a post-war US 'duce-and-a-half' probably an M39 era/generation?

 

Very obviously an ex-Giant chariot, we looked at them on the Romans page (above), and eventually will look at them again on the But is it Giant sub-Blog, in greater detail, but for now, this one needs a good clean, or at least, the horses do!

 

A couple of bags of odds I picked up on a wander, the gum-ball robot will go in a bag with several others and bits, in the hope his arm turns up one day! Two lesser characters from the larger, 'styrene set of Noddy figures, a Fozzie Bear pencil top, and another of the Rupert Bear pencil-top torsos, I think I have four now, two Kinder and an LB for Culpitt spaceman!

 

Adrian found these two for me, French clowns in hard plastic of the polystyrene type, but being French could be Phenolic or a formaldehyde resin of some kind, although both are stable. Cyrnos, Clairet; someone like that?

 

A bit of fun, it links a common-enough piece of scenery to a specific animal, so not that useful, but it also links marks together.

 

Swoppet knock-offs!

 

A nice, early piece of, probbaly German composition, around 45mm, and unmarked, he's obviously a WWI-era German soldier, and I rather like him, as a possibly very old survivor . . . 1920/30's?

 

Isaac gave me these two lots, the Cherilea 60mm's are clean, but have lost 90%+ of their paint, while the karki infantry might have all been home-painted to match, or are a new-to-me paint scheme, the radio-operator is Benbros.

 

Seen in a recent book-post, useful little monograph on Selwyn Miniatures.

 

I'm guessing this is American, but it could be French, or from down the road! It's a solid lump of die-cast Mazac / Zamak or pure aluminium (not light enough?) with wooden wheels, and may once have been a penny-toy . . . a whole penny!

 

Make your own caption! How cake-decorations are born!

L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Everything Else!

Given that I got a shed-load of good stuff yesterday and still have to clear the Plastic Warrior Show stuff first, I'm rather glad to be putting May's plunder-posts to bed! Mostly civil subjects, with a couple of oddments, there were one or two treasures among them.

 

This was one of those frustrations, only associated with those who don't carry a farty, nerdy 'wants' list around with them . . . step-up that man, 'cos it's me! The seller had several of these, but I really couldn't remember which ones I already had, and thought this looked like one I didn't, when I did, doh! And while I looked for them again yesterday, I didn't see them!

 

Should hold this for ITLAPD, but there's some nice stuff lined-up this year, so they can go here, they are soft, PVC, factory-painted, generic versions of the unpainted Webb's Supertoy pirate set, which is also still contemporary, somewhere, as both me and Peter Evans have been finding them.

 

Tudor Rose seesaw, I got it primarily to help ID the babies, and was surprised to find they are PVC like the Thomas ones (I was expecting polyethylene), which means I'll have to be doubly careful, when I come to sort all the pink babies!

 

Also, it's a bit odd that both companies chose a material which can melt the accompanying polystyrene toys they all came with, but then, at the time of manufacture, neither knew the potential for the melting, which AFV kit owners would be learning about by the 1970's! Not to forget the proud owners of Action Man diving suits - that sticky, orange hood!

 

Unpainted castings of possibly game-playing pieces, but I have to compare them with the Lilliput one, before I decide if they aren't actually just home-piracies of the Britains ones? If they are copies, I might paint them up, at some point in the future, before the task is beyond my eyesight!

 

These are composition, and a pumice type, which suggests British or French production, but the little red collars mirror those of wooden erzgebirge stuff, so they maybe from the Ore Mountains area of Saxony (Germany) or Bohemia (the Czech Republic - formally Czechoslovakia)?

 

The two nearest the camera are larger and lack the scenic bases, and also might be bisque porcelain or chalkware, they seem a little harder (but you don't casually test things this small) so I bagged them separately.

 

Some Japanese stuff I guess?, I don't know if they all go together or not, some are harder, some softer, some have pencil-holes, some don't, a few won't stand up, alone, some are transparent, others opaque, so I arbitrarily grouped them into three for shooting, and await further info' on what they actually are!

 

Circus! A Frazer & Glass clown, who has no signs of being glued to any of the accessories, or his compatriots, so one assumes that when they were being sold from the glass-compartmented shelf-displays in Woolworth's, you could purchase single, unadorned clowns? Of course you could, and he was in the sets as well; A1 Clown!

 

Two of the Merit 'Travelling Circus' wagons, which gave rise to various Hong Kong copies, both of the wagons as wagons, and as trains, and a lovely spirit-painted, wheeled, Japanese novelty, a celluloid blow-mould, of a monkey, in a fez, on a hobbyhorse, of course and why not!

 

These are definitely bisque, and probably French fèves, fox-hunters in hunting pink, with their hounds, around 35mm, they are a bit bigger than the common, modern fèves, so may have been more decorative, or even cake decorations, in which case they may be British; but, they need black boots?

 

These were a lovely find, Sima (Sixtus Maier, of Fürth, Germany) model railway flats, these were made for Märklin HO railways, back in the 1950's, although they measure a little larger, and presumably pre-date Märklin's own sets, and the similar Wettig sets? Note how the gosling doubles as a rearing chick!

 

I found another bird on the floor and retook the image, but the colour is all wrong, so I left it down here, purely for compleat'ness!