C is for Colouring In!

Mentioning - as I did earlier - circa-1975 colouring books, this is dated 2024!

 

Note the rockets! I popped into McDonald's back in the spring, and found a bunch of these left on one of the tables, presumably some kid's party had been and gone, anyway, the girl cleaning the floor said I could have one if I wanted, so I did!

 

In my dotage I may even have a crack at it, but with proper pencils rather than the supplied set of four wax-crayons, (ham-fisted, for the use of), which bear a remarkable resemblance to those seen from Henbrandt in a previous post here at Small Scale World.

B est pour les Bestioles Bleu!

I threatened these the other day, so let's get these out of the way! Smurfs! I assume some Movie or DVD release was the trigger for them?

McDonalds Happy Meal premiums, who have grown over a year or two from two to 11 different sculpts, and while I know Macky-D's do some quite large sets in these promotions, I wonder if there aren't more than one tranche of these, and how many there may still be to find; one - for twelve, or loads?

Originally I got the two (red one [Papa Smurf] and Smurfette, in a creamy-white); pretty sure they were a charity shop lot, back in January 2018 (they're actually dated 2017), then another came in (holding the book) but I'd already lost the first two in the pile, so I shot him alone - next collage!

Three more came in months later, but by then I'd united and put the other three in the attic, so nothing happened 'till October of this year. One was a duplicate and went back to charity in the next bag of saleable tat!

On the 31st October (while all the scheduled Halloween posts were publishing and Britain wasn't Brwreakshitting, or stepping over its dead premier's body in a ditch?) I was photographing Smurfs (well; somebody has to!), and had found five different sculpts - now I think at least two lots were Charity shops here in Fleet, but I can't rule out some having been in Peter E, Chris S or Jim's lots, so thanks to them, for everything, anyway.

Then, last week Mr. Evans sent me a parcel which had seven, six new poses and a duplicate. When I first sorted them out, I noticed the duplicate, thought the Papa Smurf was a duplicate too and assumed one Smurfette was a duplicate, and just crossed my fingers that the 'missing' pose (or two - two Smurfettes, knowing one was new, put my 'total' up to a likely eight figure set) would be among the other four.

But, checking the photo's taken in October (the five are temporarily lost again!) it became clear there was only one duplicate, which raises the question over number of issues, as two duplicates in total, over two years among thirteen figures suggest a lot of sculpts out there, as does three Smurfette poses and two Papa Smurf poses; you'd expect only one of each per set?

So the hunt is on; had they been a set of six, I may have shot them and handed them back to charity, but multiple issues and suddenly they're collectably collectable! I suspect there are going to be as many as eighteen, with maybe some Gargamel sculpts and/or his cat?

I'll dig out a link if I can at the end of the post, which may make it all clear to the interested, but I'm writing this in the dark when I could have looked it up ahead of time, because it's new stuff, the answers are all out there somewhere!

However, and . . . the really interesting aspect of the set is that some of the figures are over-moulded!

Both of the Smurfs with one hand on the ground are pinned-through the white base by their blue bits, and the tails seem to be drilled through the white to appear Aires Rock-like as little batholiths! While Papa Smurf is also an over-moulding of red/blue, with a white painted beard.

It's not as simple as 'they are all over-moulded' though - the Smurfettes' legs are stenciled-in in blue paint, as are some of the tails and the way the heat has joined the colours on the obvious over-moulds has left a feathered boundary-line which can look a lot like the spray-boundary of the added blue, so I can't actually tell you all the bits which are over-moulded, or on which of the other figures (some may have painted bodies?), but some are definitely over-moulded to a high degree of tolerance . . . it's another reason to find the rest!

Now, one shouldn't get too excited about the fact, after all, these days fine-geometry over-moulding can be found on such things as kettles, domestic irons, promotional biros, garden-tools, even sex-toys or key-fobs! But it's nice to know toy figures - always the poor relation in toys (we like think they're important, but with one or two exceptions - Britains, Hill, Timpo, Starlux - they weren't even the main part of the main figure-makers catalogues!) - are still seeing the odd bit of over-moulding.

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Oh My Lord! . . . It's a whole damn conurbation . . .

DC is for Thompson!

No . . . not Detective Comics but David Coupar Thomson, who took over his father's Charles Alexander & Company, renaming it DC Thompson in 1905, long before the other DC's rise to prominence in the 1930's, although the titles we're looking at here date from the late 1930's.

Of its many titles the most famous to those of us of a certain age and who maybe don't live on the Dundee doorstep are The Dandy and The Beano, and it is to those works of great literary merit we turn today, with help from Brian Berke, Jim (from Sandown), Royal Fail and the good burghers of Dundee!

Although - in Desperate Dan's case it's probably the good burgers of Dundee we should be investigating . . . ?

Minnie the Minx is a female clone of Dennis the Menace, although I don't know which came first, and yes, he predates the other annoying, eponymous clone by decades, she is modelled here for McDonalds Happy Meals in the UK. They both appeared in the Beano

Next to her is a metal Desperate Dan, whose home title was the Dandy . . . Dan-dy . . . geddit! Hay; don't blame this author, it was all puns in British comics! Made by Unicorn Miniatures, we saw their Dan Dare (but dare he eat a cow-pie?) figures, also from Mr. B, at the start of last month.

Minnie's a modern rendition and about 4" tall, while the Unicorn figurine is a tad above the standard 54mm at around 60-mil against the 'berserker', and if you think Dan's looking untroubled by the likelihood of a bayonet-wound, believe me; he's seen far greater dangers off in a trice, indeed I think larger blades have blunted just trying to shave him!

The other Dan in the right-hand image is a plastic figurine of unknown origin, he looks to be very similar to some of the Phidal stuff, whether they've ever tackled UK-specific licences I don't know, and equally he could be a specially commissioned cover-freebie/premium?

The label (dating the figurine (or license) to 2005) suggests the comic's ownership; could he be from the now defunct (or re-purposed) rides at Chessington, or the gift-shop thereof?

We also see a Desperate Dan club badge! There used to be badges for all sorts of kids things, I have Airfix and Corgi badges somewhere, and the Sword Blog (link) regularly passes on news of their badges?

A larger glazed-ceramic Desperate Dan with his 'cow pie' . . . take one whole cow, cover it in pastry, cook it! Simple really and the horns hold the crust up like singing blackbirds! Foreign readers have by this point given-up on the madness - I'm sure; but need to know a Desperate Dan storyline wasn't complete until he'd sat down with a cow-pie with potting-fork and trowel.

The storylines actually often started with his attempts to eat a cow-pie being interrupted, usually by a 'grown-up' giving some kids a hard time!

To the right we see a group shot of Brain's DC characters, with Dennis the Menace and Gnasher (his immaculately well-behaved little dog . . . NOT!) having a bath - as a bubble-bath dispenser, and another McDonalds Happy Meal toy of him causing mischief with a toy spider; a toy of a toy!

While I was awaiting the above to be sent, Jim gave me this in the big box, again I suspect a cover freebie, as it hasn't got any of the 'club' stuff of a send-away, so probably taped to the front of an issue?

Meanwhile a travel piece in the Metro or 'i' suggesting Dundee as a perfect weekend-break showed this, how cool is that; keep your bronze lord-this or nappy-emperor-that, Dundee has Desperate Dan striding across the main square with Dawg!

While Royal Fail put both comics on postage stamps back in 2012!