R is for Retro Moon Man

If you have a theme - stick to it! This is actually the last one in the queue for now, but that's not to say I won't find another in the next few weeks, or certainly over the next few months. We're back to Legami, with another retro/deform/NASA astronaut, and this one is a pencil sharpener, with a shavings-collecting back-pack/life-support unit!

 

 

  

He also has one of those movement-triggered LED lights, hidden behind his opaque visor, so when you pick him up or shake/move him, he lights up, like some near-critical loon, about to go nuclear!

L is for Legami

Mentioned twice recently, and both products make a reprise in this post, the Italian (Milan-based) Legami is a new name in stationary, or new to me at least, and as a follow-up to the previous post, continuing with the theme of pencil tops and etcetera!

 

Pencil Tops - We've seen the Panda here at Small Scale World

 

Foam Unicorns!

Definitely a theme at the moment! I'll have to look out for the [scented? really?] eraser, and the light-up pencil-sharpener, although both are cartooney, it doesn't stop us buying them/shooting them so you don't have to! There's also a spaceman on the three-colour highlighter, with an ariel on his helmet, like the Stingray crew!

 

Clingers and moulded finials

 

Looks to be the same as the ones I found in WHSmith, a few years ago now, during the height of the Iwako (and clones) moment - although they are still everywhere; I think the initial flood has retreated from the doorstep! So could they have been re-badged Legami all along?

 

All the above shot at the 2025 Spring Fair at the NEC in February.

T is for Two - Cosmic Correctors!

 Or: P is for Poor-old Pluto!

 

Picked these two up on Wednesday of this week, so both are fresh in the shops, and shops I regularly check for such stuff, to boot!

 

The second find is on the left, the Legami set of Solar System erasers, while about an hour earlier I'd grabbed the Scribble Pop Shop set in Home Bargains (the TKMaxx vehicle). Google's AI answer-bot tells us "Legami was founded in 2003 and has their headquarters in Bergamo, Northern Italy. They started by selling book straps to tie your books together for easier carrying, and now they have more than 4000 products across all sorts of stationery types.", which makes more sense than they're having appeared out of nowhere, as they otherwise seem to have - presence at both recent product fairs, and more items in the queue, from a garden centre!

 

Obviously, it was the Iwako-style mini-rocket ships which attracted me, not the . . . 

. . . astronaught in a nappy (diaper)! The Scribble Pop Shop; an in-house branding, also responsible for a pencil case and colouring set in the same space theme, is presumably ('obviously' once you know the history/timings) aimed at countering the Legami set, or riding its boot straps (book straps!). And they seem to have got their generic planet from whoever made Legami's Saturn? The Legami set was in Ryman's, but they are also in garden centres, venue gift-shops and Claire's I think? Poor old Pluto!

H is for How They Come In - Charity Shop Backlog - 2020

Literally just clearing old folders, while I'm not currently adding much to the backlog, try to get the 900-odd folders back down to a more manageable 5 or 600 this year! These are all dated 2020, when a lot was happening, and while I did manage 377 posts (just over one a day on average) these got left on the shelf!

Must've grabbed these in passing, knocked off a quick shot and taken them up to the storage unit in a mixed tub, 'cos they're not here, and I've got stuff back to mid-2021'ish. Couple of cheap Chinacrap AFV's and three novelty elephants - one stained wooden Thai touristy thing, a similar soapstone one from East Africa (?) and a pot-bellied ebony one from god knows where!

 

Almost forgot to shoot these, and caught myself as I was putting them away, not that all the stuff in the bags has been seen here, but, whatever, I thought I'd better quickly shoot them as a lot, they'd come in a 50p-per-bear type purchase from a basket on a shelf! The Hillman's in the bag were a seperate purchase we may have seen, but they're not Tagged!

 

Confirmation of the attributions!

I don't seem to have shot the contents of this bag from British Heart Foundation separately/in close up, but it looks to be a mix of Kinder type novelty animals and a few of the smaller Pokemon, from Tomy prize-capsules perhaps?

An unloved Christmas stocking present? The silent witness to a child's death? I always get to pondering, when something like this appears, brand-new in a charity shop. One feels there is probably a sad tale behind it? I just thought it was fun, that the pencil is decorated as a piece of giant bamboo. I think the brand say Legami?

A bag of sea life, a growing collection, and the contents of another bag of mixed novelties, I think I got a second example of the wooden - probably French . . . or is it Charbens (!) - chicken, at around the same time?

The Hong Kong Timpo-copy ACW in butternut (chocolate?) was issued in various formats, in the 'States they made it into late Ideal playsets, if I recall correctly (with Crescent copy horses?), elsewhere more generic stuff, or small bottle-bagged rack toys of a few figures.