A is for Audit of Alien Astrofarers!

Yeah, well, with well-over four thousand posts now, the thesaurus needs to be dug out occasionally! It's a brief look at a small sample of Kinder and Kinder-like Aliens to finish a flying visit to the subject!

One of the first shots I took off evilBay about 18 years ago (the date on the image is the 1st of January 4501?!!), these were late 1980's I think, and there were equally cartoony, mounted knights and cowboys in the line, I should have a couple somewhere, but they weren't in the main pile when it pased accros my bows the other day; Robot's on Robot horses!

They are small, about 28/30mm equivalent, but the horses - particularly - are styled very-much like the Hing Fat 'Galaxy Cowboys', while the riders are styled like Arco's or Pikit/Gordy Bi-Tron robots so could be used as scout/reconnaissance units in an army of rack-toy robots!

These seem to be quite common, in that I have three and keep seeing them on feeBay, but the other item in the pair/set seems harder to track down, it was a similar balance/move toy. Three aliens in mini-saucers, 2000's I think, up to no-good!

This was from 2002, and while the creature looks like the Aliens in the previous mobile, the fact that the other member of the pair has polar-bears (with the biggest in-scale mushroom-house you ever saw!), he may be meant to be a more earthly thing like a caterpillar? But he's taking photographs, so I suspect an Alien reconnaissance team for the saucer aliens!

2010's for these and the next lot, I meant to get more of them at the time, but budget constraints and the randomness of 'blind-bag' purchasing curtailed that idea! I don't know if they are Aliens or robots or battle-suits, but they were quite cool given how shit Kinder toys got for a while once MPG had taken-over the toy side of the Ferrero chocolate eggs.

They are semi-action figure with swiveling legs and ball-socket arms to give them a surprising level of articulation for such small things and - of course - the arms can be swapped around between 'platforms'.

These came out at around the same time as the previous lot and are only spoiled by the googley-eyes which could be removed to make them more spacey 'mech's'? They are more sort of junkyard, or anthropomorphic robots? I can't remember if there's an element of interchangeability with them and didn't try while photographing, I think if there is any, it's minimal and accidental?

Another one from Metro (Leoni), and I can't remember if I found him somewhere, or if he was in the lot from Peter Evans, but thanks to Peter anyway, he gave me a bag-full, most of which may never appear here! You never-know though; there's - hopefully - plenty of RTM's, or capsule 'round-ups' still in my future?

Not sure if he is meant to be a robot, an Alien or an ice-monster? And he's the sort of 40mm LRG (soft rubberised polymer, or 'elastomer') you will find credited to gum-ball machines, because he was to be found in gum-ball machines, when he wasn't in a budget chocolate egg!

F is for Ferrero's Fleet of Flyers to Faraway

The rest of the spacey-looking ships, vessels and err . . .  a skidoo! I don't have a vast collection of Kinder, but back in the day I did pick-up a few and Andy Harfield of the now retired Harfield's would talk me into his latest box of junk Kinder when I went down to his shows in Kent, so a few came in over the years, this is the rest of the 'spaceships' . . . and a skidoo!

I like these, they are a bit Battlestar Galactica in the front end, and the nearer two have folding wings like the Imperial Shuttles from Star Wars, while the one at the back just has little folding weapons packs or hard-points.

These were all around at the end of the 2010's I think, the slightly hippy 'Jetson's' one bottom right may be older. The one at the back has a rather daft alie'phant pilot, while the one on the left looks a bit like a flying glass-brick!

Space Shuttles; from two sets I think, one more realistic (red and black), the other altogether more pulp'y! In fact it looks like the sort of thing which might have crash-landed on the Clangers' planetoid and produced a five-minute episode of stop-motion shenanigans!

Standard novelty 'flying saucer' design; the red one is a more recent re-issue, the others are from the 1990's I think, I've lost the launchers for the earlier ones but they fit the red one's so all is not lost, but they were always - and remain - too delicate and fiddly for kids.

I know, I know, well it was in with the space figures/robots and their various buggy, sled and rover types . . . it's a skidoo, I know! Might not be Kinder, might be Maraja, Czapp, Rübezahl or one of the others? The thing is though - or was when my collection was more biased - it's a really nice 1:76/72nd scale!

This was quite a recent one and is a form of fancy glider. It's got a bit squished in storage and I've kept the stickers on their sheet, which show a young lady's flying it, so yeah . . . 'The Last Star Glider'!

These came from the master finder-of-good-things; Peter Evans, in a bulk lot of mostly non-Kinder brands, and is credited to a Metro of Modena, Italy (could it be related to the Cose Progetti of the previous post?), which became Leoni S.P.A. and now appears defunct, although the item is a Chinese import.

Indeed it's a nice piece of post-apocalyptic Mad Max rip-off, straight-to-video, B-movie merch' . . . the Intensive Fighting Chariot! The bagged one appears to have a different front end/fender/ram arrangement, but not the other one on the paper slip, so at least three ITC's to find!