D is for Donation - Chris - [Not] Paratroops!

The exception which proves the rule! As we saw Chris's most recent parachute toy finds/donation in a post at the end of April, I thought we'd look at the civilian vehicular portion of the last parcel, and there haven't been any in the three recent tranches from Peter, so it all sort of balances out!

 

Vessels, and we have an all new - to me - sailing ship, possibly a game-playing piece, or just a novelty? A variation of Hong Kong mini bath-toy to its right, both versions of cereal premium baking soda submarine, and  Marx Miniature Masterpiece rubber boat, all good stuff!

 

Five of the Quaker cereal premiums at the back, two of the commoner Hong Kong Minic knock-offs. but in the less common blueish-sea green, and another of the forward sloping prow vessels, which were new to me, when we saw a silver one recently (probably also from Chris), this pink suggesting the bottom-end of rack toys, such as those parachutists who would come in a bag with a couple of aeroplanes and a cyclist or something . . . something like this ship?!

 

Another pair of cereal premiums, this time the R&L plastic-kit types of US locomotives, from different sets I think, and a similar Hong Kong effort in black, all three are in polystyrene.

 

A couple of Kinder or Kinder-like racers in the foreground, with something more interesting behind, it's in the style of a blow-mould, but is actually PE mouldings, plugged-together, however, what Chris would like to know (as I would), is . . . 

 

. . . who made it? It's clearly marked 'Made in Finland', and there can't be that many Finnish toy makers; we've heard of one or two, in the Space Toy business, courtesy of a loyal reader, on the Blog passim, but does anyone know who made this?

 

Micro-stuff included a Star Wars Micro-Machine, and one of the MPC 'minis' copies, out of Hong Kong, all useful grist-to-the-mill, and one day we will look at all the Micro-Machine stuff in better detail.

 

Vehicular jalopies aplenty! Game-playing piece, back left, I think (one of those car-park/traffic jam puzzle-games?), bits of some Kinder or similar model railway vehicles, a soft-plastic copy of the old dime store 'Morris Mini-Minor', the die-cast is a Hong Kong take on a Marx or Tootsie Toys mini, I suspect, while the charm-looped actual 'jalopy' is probably a cracker toy.

 

It's funny ironic too, as it's probably taken from those Japanese slush-cast minis carried by Shackman and others, while it is also aping the actual silver, or plate charm objects, of the sort well-to-do young ladies collected on a bracelet?

 

Back, centre is an interesting, all-plastic American muscle-car type (or Japanese sports type?), marked 280 ZX Fairlady, which Google revealed is a Japanese model - the eponymous Datsun-Nissan to be accurate, I don't know anything about the maker of the toy version though, do you?

 

Interesting, but very large, and will probably end-up on the swaps page, this is a Play Craft [sic - usually Playcraft] large-scale ('Big', G-gauge or LGB) hopper-car, for an all plastic floor/garden railway, the wheel-base however seems to match the soft ethylene infant railway, which shared the gauge of Brio wooden sets!

Heading to the card and paper tub (a Really Useful Box 35lt job), these are a pleasant mystery! Not apparently configured for slotted-wooden stands, but having clearly had the home-cut fragments of magnetised rubber sheet added by an owner, I don't recognise the characters, but they would seem to be recognisable comic creations? Can anyone add anything that might serve as a further clue? Batman?

 

A 1968 Japanese anime; Speed Racer, with Chim-Chim the monkey, see comments. 

 

Thanks again to Chris for all these, the highlights, for me, are probably the pink vessel and the card bits, it's always nice to see things you've never seen before! Although a racing car from Finland is pretty special!

D is for Donation - Peter - Books, TV, Movie and Licensed

OK, so we're on to recognisable characters, although these days, they are coming so thick and fast, from so many streamers, with all the old favourites getting darker (Batman) or lighter (the dreadful Disney Pooh) makeovers, alternate universe versions, good and bad clones (Spider-Man, or should it be Spider-Men now?), indeed, the whole Marvel/DC thing is disappearing up its own arse, as Andy Warhol once predicted, albeit with choicer language!

 

Another Smiley (we've seen one or two recently), but this one has some age, and unlike the modern ones with their overprinted faces, his facial detail is sculpted-in. A Batman keyring, a bit of a caricature, this one, and a Gamorrean Guard from Hasbro's Star Wars Command.

 

This is an interesting one, on one level it's a teeny novelty rack-toy from China in a generic bag, but it's in the style and material of, and the same size as, the Phidal interactive book figure Duke Caboom (Captain Canuck knock-off from Toy Story), and the suspicion is it might be from the same source/factory, maybe a cancelled order, on clearance, and is compatible with the better-known figure? We can compare in a later post of this series!

Disney . . . for girls! And we have two from Frozen, Kristoff and Elsa, both capsule toys, one Kinder the other a lesser make I think, possibly both seen before? Bo Peep from Toy Story, a larger figurine from a source unknown to me, and a less definite 'fairy' like figure, almost certainly a Kinder something?

Some Japanese Anime/Manga thing, don't know anything about him, but nice figure.

Alternate Hulk in red? Actual Hulk from Phidal, we saw another recently, but they are very different shades of green, a Hotwheels figure from Mattel, shades of General Grivous in him, a damaged LB knock-off in 50mm (in the wrong post!) and a stamper;

 

I searched 'yellow suit' and 'horns' for both Marvel and DC, and couldn't find anything looking like him, although I knew several of the new characters have a similar look, then I remembered the flyer from the Fortnite post, and there he was, top left in the 'legendary' section, so a Fortnite character.

 

Current, or very recent Kinder, in two separate lots from Peter here, and interesting as they seem to be copies (fully licensed, the Playmobil logo is all over the packaging) of the children from that toy line, but with clip-together waists, to get them into the eggs. DC Superheroes, they have all the better ones! And, I guess, you add them to your Playmobil tub, as children dressing-up as DC characters? No accessories, but the hands are full-size for standard Playmobil stuff, and - with these - there's already a lot of value packed into the standard-priced eggs.

 

No idea on the Superman, the diver is also in the wrong group-shot, but hey, there he is, definitely to be further sorted (he's probably still in a bag with the other three!) a modern stretchy-smiley, with the over-printed face and a Homer Simpson of the size of, but not from the Monopoly set, so maybe a lesser capsule toy egg issuer like Zàini - LZ or Maraja, like the Kristoff from Frozen above?

 

I suspect these are from a kid's comic or magazine/periodical, they are that two-halves-of-substantial-polystyrene, glued together, which you see with a lot of the cover-presents, we've seen Clangers, Peter Rabbit and Octonauts here so far, this is the Fat Controler from Thomas the Tank Engine I think, and clearly two different issues, one realistically finished, one all in silver?

Super-deforms, I recognise a couple of the recent Marvel Spider-People, don't know the other two. They might be from a blind-bag set Brian Berke sent images off, but I can't find them on the Blog, and I can't find them in the ever-growing Picasa queue, so possibly badly tagged, however, the search did reveal how much of this blind-bag stuff is out there, and how much we've seen, one way or another!

 

Two more, not much idea on the issuers, I think Chewy may be Kinder, the sucker Captain America is the first licensed figure of the type I've seen, but there is a growing bag of the generic cartoonish sucker 'monsters', in the style of Shopkins, Moshlings, Smashers, Ooshies or Superzings, from which he's taken!
 

On the left another superhero I think, but I don't recognise him or his line/make, then a Barbie, which looks Kinder, but is a whole figure and wouldn't fit in an egg, so some other cheap bagged, capsule or rack-toy line? Disney dwarf, and another Fortnite stamper, easier to ID, as most of the female characters seem to have those armoured knee-pads!

 

Thanks again to Peter for saving all this for the blog, quite an eclectic mix!

H is for Happy Easter . . .

  . . . although I'm not sure what's supposed to be so 'happy' about the crucifixion of a human being? 

 

There's a number of reason why I haven't posted recently, and I'm not going to list them all here, but really, what is there to be happy about? America is being run by a potty-mouthed, narcissistic, inveterate, constant liar and megalomaniac, who seems, along with his friends Putin and Netanyahu, to be determined to destroy the world economy, the world order and international rule of law, maintained since 1945, sometimes at great cost, for what? So he can rename everything after himself?

 

Starmer, along with the King, are proving to be a pair of gutless fuckwits, and while they seem to be starting to stand-up for themselves, Europe hasn't preformed much better. Easter has become another money-fest with most supermarkets only closed today, and otherwise observing none of the Bank Holidays, and with an October storm in March, the weather is clearly as fucked as a Messiah with nails through his hands and feet.

 

Sighs . . . anyways, here's some Easter stuff, both new and from the archive, with a better post later today.

 

Scanned in '22, I don't know if these where from then, or earlier, it was a major scanning session with several hundred bits of ephemera scanned, most of which is still in the long queue! But, card flats, to join the card-flat zone! I don't know if the names change from box/batch to box/batch, and they are obviously renditions of the Lindt chocolate bunnies, from the back of a Lindt egg box.

 

One of my fondest memories of Easter was hunting the Lindt foil-wrapped, mini-eggs; in the garden if the weather was nice; in the house if Christ's tears prevented outdoor activities.

 

Mum would buy them from the big glass jar in Richard's newsagents in Hartley Wintney, and she would have the staff ensure there were equal quantities of each colour (maybe she just ate the spares?!), which I remember as two shades of gold, a pastel green and blue, a heliotrope-purple, a mauve, and a red which was closer to pinkish-crimson/maroon.

 

Anyway, there was a big divvy-up at the end, between my brother and I, and if the two piles weren't balanced, we'd have to go off again and find the missing ones! I don't think you can even get them any more, it's all unwrapped, licence-related eggs, in plastic bags now, and getting very expensive in the last few years, for a number of reasons, not the least being the chocolate-loving, 8-billion souls.

 

Somehow missed when I did the chocolate bunny season back in '24, this was the Kinder effort, I thought it might have a 'maxi' egg, but it's a bog-standard sized capsule, with what appears to be a lamb in a blanket, but it's not 100% clear, and the toy's 'aint what they used to be!

 

Staying with the edible theme, I actually ate these weeks ago! Branded to World of Sweets, I think they were in B&M, but I honestly can't remember, they might have been in The Range? Anyway, they were a sort of generic tutti-fruity flavour, and are 'Spring', not Easter, is that Trump's hated 'woke', or just canny marketing, from money-grubbing, middle-class executives, no better than Trump himself?

 

Some actual Toys! These WERE in The Range, a couple of weeks ago, and remind me of an old Christmas stocking gift we got one year, which were egg-shaped vehicles, with fat 'racing slick' tyres, like the Marx fire engine we saw here, but as animals, so, more like the Pelican marker pens we saw here, given that one was a grey mouse and the other a pink rabbit, if memory serves? I occasionally look for them on eBay, but haven't found them yet!

 

These are a selection of sort of monster/alien types, using the same craft foam you can buy in sheets, applied to basic blown-plastic eggs, Not sure what the plastic type is, but it seems very thin, so some ethylene hybrid probably?

 

And, as I said at the top, something better, which you might have anticipated, latter today! Bah! Humbug!

C is for Clone Charlies, Charly Clones, Charly's Clones?

I muttered about clearing some of the capsule toy backlog, and while not strictly capsule toys, unless the Kinder variant, these are . . . were (!) in the same section of Picasa and can go first! Dulcop's line Super Charly and his cousins.

 

These are half-and-half mine and Internet scrapings, and in the order they joined the folder, some have been seen before, I think, in a show-plunder post, but it's a better overview!

 

A lot on evilBay back in '21, which I meant to bid on, but either didn't, or failed to win, I can't remember now. Obviously from Soviet-era Eastern Europe, and bilingual, is it Polish and Russian? Hungarian/Bulgarian? Out-and-out copies.

 

Also from Eastern Europe, this was a Sandown Park jobbie, I think, last year sometime, again, a straight-up copy of Dulcop's American Indians, and which kicked-off the next few comparison shots. He's lost a feather from his headdress, and a bow.

 

I first became aware of SMĚR, just after the 'Wall' came down, when they started shipping copies of old Viking ship models into the west, here, to the UK, via Pocketbond, but these would have probably remained something more domestic, in Czechoslovakia, whether they are now Czech or Slovakian, I have no idea!

 

Mine, on the left, possibly a Hong Kong copy, I think he's supposed to be a medic, I'm not sure why he has a walkie-talkie? Dulcop original US Cavalryman from feeBay on the right. The Eastern copies, both from SMĚR and the unknown packs, have button noses, Dulcop, Kinder and Hong Kong pirates have rounded m-noses, like little piggy-wigs!

 

The lot which I think we've seen before, these are the sub-scale Kinder, probably under licence from Dulcop, or somebody with a Dulcop licence like CGGC/Grisoni? Above shot shows six complete figures, below shot, the 'bits  pieces', but with a bag of bits in the old storage lot, there should be a future coming together of parts to make more 'wholes'!

 

Two Kinder, the SMĚR and a Dulcop sized figure, which I suspect is HK.

Note the SMĚR has more ovoid feet/shoes.

 

So I felt I should add some actual Dunlop examples, and grabbed these off feebleBay not that long ago, two larger boxed sets of cowboys and Indians, and a smaller single-figure window-box of a confederate soldier, with hidden horse and cactus, and illustrations of several others, foot & mounted, on the back. Accessories are mostly from the standard 54mm figure range.

M is for Musings on Mini Mecha's

One of the problems with researching or collecting 'Kinder' (inverted commas used for a reason), is that, firstly they have been mythologised, especially by the more fastidious German collectors, to the point it's not even clear if they were the first company to the genre?

 

William Salice, who along with Michele Ferrero has been credited with 'inventing' the eggs, stated before his death that he was merely the "material executor" - 'exploitation' being an acceptable way for companies to find a way around intellectual property rights, on existing designs, but more especially, on existing ideas.

 

Secondly, they carried a lot of stuff which was either pre-existing as mini-novelties (like the Mattel 'Zowees', from Hot Wheels, which had been issued in 1972 (the first Kinder Surprise eggs were '74), and already carried as a Shell Petroleum premium/giveaway), or which was, on the little accompanying paper sheets, branded to someone else, often someone (like Marajà) who had their own capsule-eggs at some point.

 

The subject of today's post is a perfect case in point, as they are considered Kinder by those overly-intense collectors, yet are usually accompanied by Menotti Giocatolli papers, and still seem to be out there somewhere. So I'm going to try and put them in a sort of order-of-evolution, without the narrative having much weight!

 

Possibly the first iteration, maker/issuer unknown, but many of these humanoid figurals were issued back in the 1970's and early-mid 1980's, these were probably branded to Menotti Giocatolli, at the time of issue, if only because of what follows.

 

First they were robotised!

 

Then Centaur'ed

 

Definitely Menotti Giocatolli, someone has given them robotic torsos, a robot horse body, and angelic, mechanical wings, which one suspects are death dealing, they would have been in my toy universe, the alternative would have been too 'girly'!

 

Still with Menotti Giocatolli, and someone has said "Lets give the robot horses, robot horse-heads with a saddle for a full robot, who can dismount and act independently of the horse" . . . "Make it so", said the design department!

 

And it is in that iteration that they seem most numerous (these may not be Menotti Giocatolli, nor, necessarily, Kinder?), with at least four sculpts of horse-body, horse-head, mini-robot and robot weapon, which, while usually issued in an 'egg specific' configuration, can get mixed up, in a sample of the size seen here.

 

A couple which have (who have?) come-in over the last couple of years, both 'believed to be' Kinder, by me, but with no empirical evidence, they are another of the many Kinder (or similar) which have been rather distributed to the four corners of the stash, by dint of their bittiness, and the lack of serious sorting over the last few years.

 

But it'll give me an excuse to return to them, when they are all in one place, for a box-ticker on poses/colours, and hopefully, I have a blue robot to replace the incorrect red one, in the spares/bits bags?

 

Where Kinder are definitely involved in the evolution, is in these cartoony Wild West, who follow the same basic format (cartoon horse, element of 'swoppet' or plug-in, mini-rider) who are getting very brittle now, which suggest further, that Res Plastic (RP, not 'LP', nor LB!) were involved in the production, as a lot of their stuff suffers from the same brittleness now.

 

Note the 'Pharaoh-head' from the previous collage is on a green-bot's horse, with another horse waiting a rider, it'll be fun getting all the bits bags together and sorting out a better sample!

 

Two other Menotti Giocatolli designs, which have been credited to - and may well have been carried by - Kinder, the upper following the designs of the fantasy muscle-men and monsters we saw here, and the lower R2-DBot looking like the Bluebird Toys Manta'bots!

 

Another Internet image here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-is-for-audit-of-alien-astrofarers.html