W is for We Buy This Shit - Magazines

It's been a while since we saw what's on the news-stands, which these days include precious little news, beyond the downright depressing, I mean, who had World War Three on their card, for before the end of the year?! So, here's three which caught my eye, to the point of purchasing them?!

 

Horrible Histories usually have complete tat-shite on their covers, but are worth watching for the odd occasion when there is something that fall within the collector's frames of reference, and for me, this was one such issue!

 

There's a side collection of skeletons, and a bag of generic rats/mice somewhere, so that was good-enough, but then there were two maggots for the insect pile! Skeleton key-rings used to be a standard fairgrown prize for the lower scores on sideshows, like the duck fishing, hoopla or shooting booths.

 

A frighteningly realistic tongue and faker soft eye were the other novelties, but I wonder if the ring-jointed skeleton isn't actually an old tool from the 1960's or '70's? It looks very similar to others I have in the collection, of greater vintage than a few months ago!

 

This is last year's mag, yet it still took him more than six weeks to scrape one off of that there The Internet . . . outstanding, Bushey! Keep it up!

 

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/10/horrible-histories-freebie-skeletons.html 

 

I have no idea about PJ Masks; I've not seen it, not Googled it,

but I know it's one of the 'new generation', alongside Paw Parol!

 

I bought these to pose with small scale space stuff in the future!

Shades of batman movies in these! 

 

BBC Swashbuckle magazine.

 

A bit too cartoony, but they're here now!

Take the faces off with spirits and they'd be better. 

 

All the toy cards were supplied by Kennedy Enterprises, presumably a wholeseller, as you often find similar stuff on other magazines a few months apart, or slight variations on the same magazine as we've seen here with the Dino'mags/Dino' offers. And I've covered the fact that there are donation bins about the place for moving these cards if the kids aren't interested - Libraries, charity shops and some supermarkets carry them.

F is for Follow-up - Dippy Dino' Mags

We've had fair few overview posts on these kids magazines over the years, and they are worth keeping an eye out for, because they often have useful stuff on them as part of the 'freebie' element, which is not really a freebie when you see the price of the magazine, which varies from two or three-quid for the simpler infant ones to five pounds or more for the more substantial ones such as these, although 'substantial' is a moot point, when you would learn more from two pages of World of Wonder or Look & Learn, that you get from all the info-panels in one of these.

 

These look familiar, but last time there were six & six, this time we get a pair of sevens, and having purchased a sample, I shelfied a second which serves to illustrate that the dinosaur models come in other colours.

 

The Parasaurolophus, solid and skeletal! Each of the fleshed models has a stripped version, although the anatomical correctness is probably something which would give a palaeontologist apoplexy! As last time, the 'living' dinosaurs are PVC, the bones a rigid polyethylene.

 

A few weeks later I spotted this issue, with twelve dinosaur skeletons, and a quick look at the Parasaurolophus (bottom left corner) reveals they are all new sculpts, I can't see much play value in these - and there are many of them - but I'm not six, or twelve, so what do I know? However, it seems to me they would make excellent additions to Fantasy war gaming/role-playing skeleton armies, which is one reason why I post them from time to time!

 

We looked at the 'chomper' before, years ago, and, as then, it went off to charity. These cover offers do tend to come around several times, as we found with the Dr. Who Adventures mag's before they disappeared, and I haven't seen this for a few weeks so it too, may have gone now, the 'churn' with modern kids mags is far greater than it seemed to be in my childhood.

 

The most recent one I've found, which was a while ago now, had three medium-sized vinyl types, and a pointless plastic box with a button that went straight in the recycling bin!

 

I think I've mentioned before - some supermarkets (and libraries?) now have collection bins for these carded giveaways, so if the kids show no interest, or are so young they're only being read the contents, the toys can be passed on to charity. And, there are lots of others we haven't looked at, cartoon puppies and kittens, farm and zoo, doll type stuff, Thomas, Paw Patrol &etc.

 

But the animals are perfectly reasonable, and, as I've mentioned before, when I sit down to make more sense of the many tubs and boxes of these, and all the loose ones, I'm sure we'll discover the monochrome chaps will be found to have decorated versions, under other branding, probably in a more dense material? As far as I know, these are all issued by Kennedy Enterprises.

T is for Two - Freebies!

Except at £4, 5, or 6.99, these modern kid's periodicals aren't exactly cheap, so whatever they Sellotape to the cover is not entirely 'free', but it brings down the unit cost, and none more so than this rather generic mag' I found back in November - Everything Jungle!

Two stories and forty-four stickers, sort of explains why we are going extinct, doesn't it? Sort of explains why we aren't rioting in the streets over the 300,000+ excess deaths of our loved-ones in the last four years, why we aren't protesting outside No.10 about the closure of 700 libraries? When you compare Look & Learn, World of Wonder or Tell Me Why to what kids get given these days, it rather explains everything.

 

But let's not worry about that boring real-life stuff, we've got free toys! I'm not sure if you'd call the upper cat a Leotah, or a Cheepard, but comparison with the other big cats will eventually clear up that attempt at a lame joke, by forcing it into one bag or the other, and for either cat it's quite well decorated for a Chinese generic.

 

As is the tiger, 90% of all tigers ever, having being pretty poor in the decoration department, over the years (and I include all generations/materials of Britains in that damming statement), obviously Schleich/Papo it 'aint, but better than most, it is. A reasonable [baby - if they are in-scale] elephant makes up the trio.

But then they gave us these as well, Iwako style/rip-off, plug-together erasers, two parrots, and - more amazingly - two designs, bargain! Kennedy Enterprises go in the Tag list and everyone is happy . . . aren't they?