B is for Bounty-Hunter Brickmen

I'm not a great fan of Lego (the corporation, as you might have noticed), and don't buy it like I used to, having given most of it away to friend's kid's, who have all graduated from University now! One of my mates bought all the big 100+quid jobs, and became a fully-fledged AFOOL; Adolescent Fan Of Old Lego . . . I think, something like that?!!

 

But I archive the ephemeral Lego stuff I encounter, and look out for sets with a decent figure-count, nearer the budget end of the brand, not that it actually HAS a budget-end any more, but you know what I mean!

So when I saw that there were four Kardashians (or whatever they're called) in this set, which was on a post-Christmas clearance price in Sainsbury's, I grabbed one, and took a few shots which have been in Picasa for two years! The Disney logo just doesn't look right there, does it?

 

The three bags of bits and an instruction manual, which is so simple, they appear to be expecting people with learning-difficulties to be helping two-year-old's trying to violate the 6+ or 5-99 rules!

 

These are two of the - previously mentioned here at Small Scale World - bricks which came AFTER the equivalent Megabloks design, even as Lego was chasing Mega through the worldwide courts! Have you seen their Daleks? Next to the lovely Character Options one's, they are shit! And that's a very English 'shit' with the emphasis on that last 't'.

 

Contents of the bags, are quite confusing with the figures unequally split between the two main bags, while some bits in the same bags are smaller than the helmet details which get a bag to themselves! And because they use the same holes you can only have a peak or a periscope thingy, but not both?

I forgot to photograph the assembled model!

T is for That Was My Idea, That Was!

Except it was Vic Reeves! And these aren't his at all! Something a little different tonight, these are my Lego improvement ideas, and they fall into two groups, those I sent to Lego back in the 1990's (before I knew they were the Evil Empire!), and those I probably didn't!

 

Sent to Lego

 

I can't now remember if it was before or after they had released their own footballer sets, I have a feeling it was after, they weren't very good in my opinion, and while I'm not saying mine were better, I was aiming for something more in line with the rest of the range, i.e. a carpet-play thing, more compatible with all the other Lego 'elements', as we are supposed to call a pile of Lego these days!

 

The most obvious difference was the attempt to make them look more like footballers in shorts & shirt-sleeves! And once I was looking at their sets and giving the whole thing some thought, the ball was obvious, as was a simple goal, using their own element rules, with the ball having their click-holes, so it could be used with other things in other colours, space sets, or ships mast radar-domes, while the goal is a glorified development of the fence/crash-barrier or roll-bar, both elements which had been around for years.

 

Further musings! I also thought a normal green baseboard (obviously in scaled-down pitch dimensions), overprinted with white lines, would be far better than the strange green chunks of their system (so it must have been after?), and while I provided alternate cross-sections for the bare arms/legs, the intention was to have them as the standard Lego 'rod' thickness, so they could grab each other in the goalmouth for a foul!

No, I'm joking, I was already, as with the ball, thinking ahead to circus clowns or acrobats, who would be able to grab each other's arms or legs, with their Lego hands (already set for the standard rod dimension), to build human pyramids or do tricks or something . . . they've never done Circus? They've never done a marching band?

 

My second idea, was so obvious I don't know why they've never done it, especially in the larger Primo or Duplo sizes. Alphabet or early-leading blocks, I mean, why the hell hadn't they done something so obvious? I sent these to them 25/30 years ago? And yet, as far as I know, they STILL haven't done them, or anything like them, despite the old printed bricks being among the better sellers in the vintage sets, we had it; HOTEL, GARAGE, TAXI . . . I can't remember the other two, you could light them from behind!

 

While my third suggestion was more of an exercise in getting studs onto the Insectoid wings, so more stuff could be attached to them. The actual range had transparent aqua-blue wings with few or no studs and a sort of printed-circuit design, and I just thought if they were studded, they could be given more robot 'stuff', like modern jets, or Stukas!

Probably not sent to Lego

I always thought the medieval range/Robin Hood sets could benefit from better detailing, and these are a few ideas along those lines. Mega Bloks already had sculpted-side elements in their range (as I was working on these), and the louvred-side 2x1 brick was eventually copied by Lego (slightly differently), but think how much better the current awful-AFOL architecture sets would be, or the Harry Potter sets, with better stone-mouldings?

 

I think they've done a hat like that now, the number of blind bag figures over the last decade and a half has produced all sorts of clothing and accessory elements, while the scarf was basically a variation of their own life-jacket, but the main idea was a single ski, and it's applications, they only do a sort of double thing which is unrealistically short?

 

Almost certainly not sent to Lego

 

A few more bits of medieval architecture, but I glued in an idea I literally had on the back of an envelope! Up until the 1990's, propellers in Legoland were pretty basic, there was a 2x3 tile with spigot for helicopters, or a 2x2 tile with a blunt-squared pointy bit at 90-degrees, and spigot for aeroplane wings, and a later, third version with an actual, small, grey propeller, rather than the studded-planks which had always been attached to the older two.

 

Now, at the time I was buying a lot of Lego from Car Boot sales, and damaged elements, after cleaning, would be cut, trimmed, shaved or melted back to a usefully usable 'new' or unique element, and this started life - I think - as the upper torso of an early Duplo figure.

I was trying to get it so that it would make a perfect, if generic, propeller for single seat planes like Spitfires or Cessnas! Or you could have four of them for a Fortress or Lancaster! Now - of course - they probably have much better propellers, and companies like Cobi and Airfix (Quickbuild) are making better Lego-compatible 'planes!

The bulk of the Lego went to 'Timpo' Dave in 2006/7? While the rest went to Johnny G's kids over a number of Christmases, all scrupulously split equally! And somewhere I have a nice "Thank you, but no-thanks' letter from some woman in Bilund . . . but they never sent the drawings back . . . dun, dun, DUN!

MMPR is for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

I know so little about the Power Rangers I thought I'd Google it to see if there was anything I should know and "Oh boy!" what a can of worms I dug-up! Homophobia, exploitation of non-unionised actors, racism, a US TV-show using stock-footage of three other Japanese shows crashed together with A-Team like footage shot on the backlots and in the valleys round LA (funny how the 'City of Angels' has so much filth and darkness attached to it), umpteen companies and or marketers involved, several license and character switches/arguments and, yes; it should have been 'morphing' with a 'g'. . . 'cos they morph into Power Rangers!

Anyhoos; the real reason for my Googling - what each colour means/represents and/or whether they have specific names - turned up that there were various people in each colour and one chap had three colours, so we can ignore the whole sorry mess and just look at an overview of the [non-action-] figures out there . . .

My sample in its entirety (actually that's not strictly true, there may be some more, somewhere else?), bottom row are all 20mm oddities, which I assume are from gum-ball/capsule machines, top row will be looked at last in this post and we're about to look at the larger ones but the lone yellow chap in a Ranger'esque bodysuit (far right middle row) is, I think, from a Mega Bloks set - they clip into the gap between four studs?

These were probably also capsule 'prizes' although whether they all came originally in a key-ring casket or not, I don't know. I suspect that - in common with a lot of this stuff - they had as many marketing iterations as could be thought-up for them, in various parts of the world, by various wholesalers!

Full-on 54mm Power Rangers, I need to find a pink one, and a lose blue one would be useful for the full set, produced for Kellogg's Frosties by Crocco (who also supplied other stuff to the rival Weetabix I think?), there is a glow-in-the-dark white one to find as well; the usual likelihood of finding a green one or a white one are unlikely, both are the unloved Power Rangers in Toyland, so it's refreshing to see Crocco doing one of them!

Galoob Micromachines, except, not MM size, closer to Action Fleet/Battle Squads, but without the action figure element. Red's trike is a trike, but Blue and Black both get sidecar combinations which can be converted into plain motorcycles for a bit of variety! I'm missing a blue with both hands up - like Yellow (below).

Black (who was African American!), and the two girls; Yellow (Asian - Red was a Native American!) and pink (her parents probably vote Trump!). Black was the last of the original line-up to leave (citing racism), upon which a member of the production crew suggested he'd never got on with the rest of the cast & crew - despite lasting longest?

Read the whole thing on Wikipedia, it's everything that's wrong with capital, marketing, pop-culture and licensing!

Putty Patrollers -  yeah, well; whatever was happening behind the cameras, it WAS aimed at kids! These are the bad guys. Galoob never got round to green or white Power Rangers.

If anyone can help with ID's on the smallies, that would be appreciated, they may be like Kinder, with little simplified vehicles, but with 7,000+ results for 'Power Rangers Figures' on evilBay I wasn't going to hang-around and try to find out!

S is for Shelfies

A quick round-up of shelfies I've taken over the last few months and not used in specific articles . . .

Currently in The Works, there seems to be only the three variations and the only variation is the figure, so to get all three you need £18, and will end-up with a lot of duplicate stuff, so a Shelfie seems to be the answer for future identification when they turn up loose.

The figures are around the 54mm mark, with two subscale tractors and animals in various sizes. The square 'tube' is quite long - you can see about a third in this shot - as there is a play-mat in the lower section.

Going, going . . . fire sale at Poundworld will end soon, these are - clearly - a bit 'pink and girly' but they are solids, around 80mm, and again, should they turn-up in mixed lots in a year or a few; label them ITP Imports!

Twins! Vacuous-looking twins at that!

I think I shot these in TKMaxx and I just like the fact that other brands are fighting back against the hegemony of Lego with cool licenses of their own, Brian B has sent me a fantastic Bending Unit which will go in the next Lego-likey post!

Wilco-branded (Wilkinson's - the real reason Woolworth's died), these are large, mixed scale PVC type animals, and again will help ID them in the future.

Back to the closing-down sale at Poundworld Plus here in town, these were reduced to 80p so I got the blue one . . . motorcycle! The vehicles are really 'cheap and nasty' and typically - for these days - no military option, but a motorcycle is not to be sniffed at; for less than a quid!

These are statuette crayons, with a pointed-bit hidden behind the battlements of the catchy packaging. With a King, Queen, princess, wizard and witch; that soldier's got a lot of guarding to do! But they're figural! NPW, who's novelties have featured here several times in the last few years; these were shot in TKMaxx.

These . . . TKMaxx . . . I just don't really get? It's apparently a glass drying mat, but with four semi-flat ballet-dancers. How are you supposed to dry the glasses? If you catch the dancer as you place the glass over it with wet hands you may drop the glass, what about shallow glasses? What about narrow champagne flues, or champagne bowls, why only room for four? Or do you place the glasses between the dancers, in which case; why have them? And even if that's the case there's only room for about six, and no mugs, the handles will get in the way - the whole concept is just daft!

A triumph of farty-art idea over practicality, hundreds of people were involved in designing, tooling, producing, packing, procuring and shipping this Caca!

It seems to me to be a sublime example of everything that's wrong with consumerism, as espoused by Thatcherite-Raganomics and the mantra of 'market forces' for the last 39 years. A totally impractical, ill thought-out, relatively unnecessary product, packaged to appeal to a certain type of 'lifestyle' cretin or brain-dead fashion-victim! People with bows behind their family pictures, matching his'n'hers anoraks and pink loo paper! The same people who've been buying waistcoats over the last two weeks.

The figures have fully-round skirts and plinths, but chunky block-flat bodies, they are silicon-rubber (I think), around 50mm (not counting the base) and could be fun; taken off the mats and displayed with the Britains, Gem and other dancers, but they represent our need to keep consuming until there's nothing left, it's not a good sign.

News, Views Etc . . . The Evil Empire

No, no; not Star Wars! This is about the market-leading, stealers of Hestair-Kiddycraft's good idea; the interlocking building brick, none other than Lego; who may not be market leaders for much longer?

Yada-yada-yada!

All these cuttings are from two publications, the 'i' Newspaper (surviving, and increasingly expensive, tabloid-rump of The Independent) and the Metro free-sheet.

And: have all been culled in the last three months.

There is more written about Lego in any given time-period in the British press (and I suspect elsewhere?) than is written about Hasbro, Hornby (Airfix, Corgi and Scalextric), Mattel, and Tomy -Takara . . . put together! This 'accidental' plethora of coverage is probably no accident!

Other, better systems exist!

Dr. Who from Character Options

While there is no evidence of collusion, other than the circumstantial evidence before our eyes in the first image, all that publicity - if paid-for as declared advertising - would be worth a fortune to some agency, and the fact is some of the other names have been having similar stories, without getting the same level of coverage.

Indeed, the board-room battles at Hornby Group this year (a UK-based company with several iconic names in its stable) were far more newsworthy than the Lego lay-offs, yet garnered no more than a few column-inches across the year - mostly confined to the 'i', while Lego's recent 'press' release got two pieces, in each paper.

All aboard the License please!

Lego - DC

And while these are the papers I take; I'm sure the picture is the same across the media.

Speaking of which, one of the stories with a more legitimate claim to column-inches was the TV series Lego Masters on Channel4 (second time I've mentioned them (C4) in a few days - I'll have to post against my own pro-bias next!), but I'm not sure it warranted the full-page, fully-illustrated, product-friendly fluff we actually got . . . "I'm a Legoista" wrote one journo-tosser; pass the sick-bucket!

Mega Blok's mini car; figure unknown

but probably the same maker's earlier efforts

Then we had to endure the excruciating pain of watching David Beckham spend three days building a castle you should be able to finish in a few hours . . . and I'll bet my shirt that was an on-line, global 'news' story, with social media live feeds, regular updates and sycophantic commenting, 'liking' and sharing to boot!

Then there was the 'good news' story of the little seven-year old who wrote to Lego asking for a job and got a day's 'work experience' at Legoland Windsor. Now - I don't know how many kids write to Lego every year asking for a job, or giving them 'ideas', but I bet if they were all given a day's work experience, Lego would become the largest employer of unpaid kids in the known universe, ever!

No; he was the lucky-one, drawn from the pile of hopefuls at random (or at 'photogenic' random!) by the press-office to provide a feel-good story the week [two days] before the redundancies were announced, it's not just hidden advertising - it's cynical, capitalist shit, generated by the Evil Empire, lapped-up by a supine media, that makes ME look like a happy-go-lucky, eternal optimist!

Lego 'technical' person.

Technically soulless!

Another way in which both papers (and the rest of the media?) treat Lego differently to other toy firms is in the fact that the letters sections often carry follow-up stuff, which you never see for the Hasbro or Hornby stories (when they occur); somehow Lego has a given for more column-inches than any other toy company!

There has been 'editorial' coverage of both Bricklive in Birmingham (over now, sorry but September went so fast I was expecting another week to get 'News, Views' out!) and the Hotel at Legoland Windsor, while a Serina Sandhu managed to write 19 column-inches in the 'i' about Ageism (!) which mentioned Lego more than four times!

Meanwhile over at the BBC World Service we had a 'reporter/foreign-correspondent' telling us her little-kid's non-Lego set (bought by [useless] husband - of course!) "Fell apart", naming the branded/licensed range so we'd know which brand she was talking about; well - I know the brand - it fits together just as well as Lego, indeed most of the clones are fine, while old Lego falls-apart just as easily as early clones.

Oh how the Legoland minifigure 'rules'

have been broken in recent years!

However it's not all bad-news and you won't have missed the big story - that sales are down, profits are falling, a second boardroom shake-up in less than twelve-months (Brit-out, Dane-in) was announced unexpectedly and 1,400 redundancies/not-to-be-replaced-wastage will occur in the global toy giant's staffing-levels (around 8% for the workforce)  in the near future.

We have seen in recent years companies which have become 'too big to fail'; European banks, US motor manufacturers and steel companies mostly; the odd airline (Boing last week!), but really, if you follow the tenets of Thatcherite-Raganomic, 'New-Blairist' free-market capital (that which we are all struggling under); they should be allowed to fail?

"Let the market decide" is the great cry from the establishment when people want to keep a school open, or save 'Woolie's' or BHS from disappearing, yet large corporation's run-off to government and explain (bitch, blub, threaten and cajole) that they must be bailed-out for the good of the economy!

Well, no! While I'm not suggesting Lego would seek a rescue package from the Danish Government, and it's not got to that point yet; still, Lego grew too big, too greedy, too litigious for a company with basically one product, a product they stole and which they saturated the market with, at prices well above their competitors

So if they go bust they should be left to disappear, to - hopefully - create space for a hundred new companies to have a go? That's free-market, entrepreneur-driven capitalism! Not a few behemoths kept-going beyond their years - and yes - I am also thinking of the recent Toysaurus storyline!

Kill'em-off, kill'em-all-off and lets go back to little toy-shops, back in those currently-empty retail-units littering our high-streets and malls, selling toys sourced from a hundred suppliers, from local craft sources, from catalogues with an internet portal and - why not - a local drone- delivery service!

Action-figs, not Minifigs

Mega Bloks do Marvel & Halo

Lego also featured in stories about super-heroes recently while the TfL (Transport for London) 'travel page' of Metro managed to push us Lego stationary like little multicoloured acid-tabs!

Another good news story is Mayka Tape (maykaworld.com) - designed in Cape Town, SA, by Anine Kirsten and Max Basler of Chrome Cherry Design Studios - an adhesive tape on a roll, with studs gauged to marry with the blocks of 'all leading brands' of building block. It's one of those 'Why didn't someone come-up with this 30-years ago and why didn't I think of it first' moments!

You can run the tape up walls, across work-surfaces, out the dog-flap into and around the garden, next-door and back (seek parental approval first!) obviously there will be distortion on corners or curved-surfaces, but just use single-stud bricks to anchor things, or cut for sharp-corners! There are base-plates with the same re-usable, low-tack adhesive in the range as well.

Zuru (the New Zealand company marketing Mayka) says there are already 30/40 Chinese factories producing knock-offs of the originally crowd-funded tape for the Christmas rush - thus it ever was! And you can bet some of them will be using that crumbly synthetic rubber being used for erasers at the moment, totally the wrong material for high-stress brick-clicking!

Clockwise from T/L; mad-dog Lego's called-in a vet!

Hagrid threatened by Mega Blocks rats!

Boom goes Lego and the Wizard's outta-here!

There are those who think I shouldn't 'do' politics, there's even one bloke out there who thinks I shouldn't do polictic (I don't know, some sort of nervous condition he thinks I develop when I eat Polenta?), but this stuff is our lives, and no man . . . or 'thing' is an island; one of the biggest threats to Liberal Democracy is 'fake news'.

The fact that so many Lego stories are being carried, whether or not you compare them to other stories about other toy makers, is either because someone is paying for all the stories (in which case it would be False Advertising - in law - without the 'advert' notifications) or because the journalists . . . aren't.

Journalism'ing, that is, and I fear it is a case of the latter with lazy journalists and lazy editors; sucking-up every story pushed-out by a consummate PR operation; whether based in Denmark or the UK.

"What's on the wire?"

"There's a Lego-PR thing just come in Boss - some puff-piece about a Dachshund who howls if you take his Lego away?"

"Yeah? Great - run with it, fluff it to six column-inches, add imagery - four-by-two - page 15, and use Septimus Fuckwit as a byline - everyone loves Lego!"

"For the headline Boss: Sausage-dog Serenade?"

"Err...no . . . try: Lonely Lapdog Laments Lost Lego"

"Oh good-one boss, you're the best!"

When you see such obvious 'fake news' you realise these awful Trumpundbreixt right-wing loons (as the Germans are calling them!) actually have a point, which legitimises their parochial, flag-waving, false nationalism and xenophobic desire to return to the golden-haloed uplands of 1950's rationing, small cars, long hours and the cane!

The media are responsible for what's happening with the West's crisis of confidence in liberal democracy, by dint of their A) giving-up on actual journalism and B) giving all sides an easy-ride under some misplaced PC belief in equal coverage which leaves someone like Farage (rhymes with C**t) being invited on to serious political magazine programs as often as people from the two/three main parties!

And yes; in a world where 'all publicity is good publicity', I am well away of the hypocritical incongruity of this post - so buy Cobi, buy Mega Bloks, try Mayka, buy those big sets for bugger-all money in Wilko's or the Works, or even Poundland, it's all just ripped-off Hestair-Kiddycraft interlocking building bricks!

Next time you see a Lego piece in your 'newspaper'; ask yourself if it's a legitimate news story, or just a page-filler because no celebrity-bimbo's had a nipple-slip in the previous 24 hours, neither of the Delavigne sisters left the house over the editorial print-period, no UKIP'er was caught doing a Nazi salute, no cow was rescued from flood-water, Boris kept his mouth shut for a day . . .

Tear-down the Lego wall, and demand better news!

T is for Toys in the Tabloids

The 'Easy-reads' like a toy story, so do the toy companies, they sell papers and they sell toys! here are a couple of recent puff pieces from the 'i' (little brother of the Independent)...

What intrigues me about this 'news story' is the little blobs at the front of the image...I suspect they are 15mm (or thereabouts) figures. Just like the figures Megabloks designed for use with their submarines and warship models about 15 years ago! The Chutzpah of Lego is really quite staggering...let's recap with a dateless time-line;

Lego 'acknowledge' (without credit!) Airfix with a very similar-looking Ferguson tractor

Lego steal the design from Hestair Kiddicraft

Lego lose a court case on that matter, to Hestair Kiddicraft

Lego pay a large amount of money for the intellectual property of Hestair Kiddicraft

- hiatus -

Lego copy Playmobil for their Minifigs

Lego spend years suing Mega Bloks and others all over the world

Lego lose the majority of those suits, and where they win; often see the win overturned on appeal

Lego drop their 'no war toys' policy (they'd actually dropped it years earlier, with knights, Cowboys and US Cavalry v. Indians, Pirates v. Revenue soldiers, space ray-guns &etc)

Lego FOLLOW Mega Bloks with a wider range of more interesting and realistic colours, after purchasing the rights to make Star Wars toys (I think Lego followed Mega Bloks with licensing as well?)

Lego FOLLOW Mega Bloks with Dinosaurs

Lego FOLLOW Mega Bloks with Arctic Explorers AND a Yeti

Lego copy the micro figures of Mega Bloks

From Wikipedia: "The Lego Group has filed lawsuits against Mega Bloks Inc. in courts around the world on the grounds that Mega Bloks' use of the 'studs and tubes' interlocking brick system is a violation of trademarks held by Lego. Generally such lawsuits have been unsuccessful, chiefly because the functional design of the basic brick is considered a matter of patent rather than trademark law, and all relevant Lego patents have expired. In one of the most recent decisions, on November 17, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Mega Bloks' right to continue selling the product in Canada. A similar decision was reached by the European Union's Court of First Instance on November 12, 2008 when it upheld an EU trademark agency decision following an objection by Mega Bloks against a trademark awarded to Lego in 1999"

Conclusion: Buy your kids Mega Bloks, they are cheaper per ton, and lead the field in the innovation of a universal product...even Hornby-Airfix are using the Kiddicraft design now! (this is a drum I'm going to keep banging!)

I Thought this was good news - a non-warlike figure wiping the floor with his armed companions! Although I supose the millions of deaths in the wars of the reformation could be laid partly at his feet?

One day I will do a proper post on these toys as their history and the number of brands involved is even more interesting than the 8-stud building-block story!

B is for Blockmen (or Cubix as some are calling them!)

Just when I thought I’d got all the Daleks I could on the Toy Soldier page, I found another one! I’ll put it over there so you’ll have to go and have a gander separately.It all came about because I found a free offer of an Amy Pond figure.


They were being given away free in the paper the other day, and I thought they were Lego, but it turned out that they were actually Character Options, who already have various licenses for Dr Who stuff.

In fact the papers have been having a bit of a gift-war in the last few weeks, with Lego, these and other toys on offer most days! I was pleased to see they were putting proper feet on them…typical that they were in fact somebody else’s figures then, as the history of Lego figures has always been “Where our rivals lead, we will follow”!


Predating (the UK Toy Industry Award winning) Lego Space (1978) by some years was Tente Space from Spain, which was advertised on TV when I was still quite young, and I can remember it coming to Fleet Toys and Mum not letting us have it, because she’d heard on Woman’s Hour or You & Yours than it wasn’t compatible with ‘another leading brand’!

Early figures had non-moving arms (top left), while later figures (top right) were not only better articulated, but also had connection points (female connection on the back-pack, male on the ‘butt-tocks-sirrr!’), both versions of the figures had male-connectors on their feet. The soldiers that ran alongside them had no connectors (bottom right).

The back-pack usually had a 'Space' logo; to start this was a metallic blue, then a plain blue, before being reduced for the second design and finally dropped (bottom left).

The original Lego Space (top center) and other figures including the Nestlé ‘Nesquick’ Bunny, one of the first uses of Lego ‘minifig’s’ as an advertising premium by another company, some enemy of Spiderman with a shaped helmet and a Gamorrean Guard with an all-over body-shaper.

The two Martians make use of the design tested on/coming from the skeletons and – then – new Stap battle-droids from the Star Wars franchise. While finally the Pirates are by COBI, with the beard which clips on to a hole on the face of the ‘Captain’, mirroring - in construction - the figures produced by Res Plastics and others for Kinder in Italy in the mid-1970’s.

Once Lego had got the ‘collectable’ idea, and realised the implications of Adult Lego fans, they got well into the production ‘sets’. The first were the sprung-loaded Basketball players, and now a set of 12 new and ‘unique’ (nothing unique about something produced in its millions – if not tens of millions!) figures appear next to a million tills every 6-months or so.

The South-sea islanders from the ‘Pirates’ range, these have been added to over the years with Newspaper-freebies and the new collectable figure sets, and are among my favorites from Lego. Actually from ‘Enchanted Island’, they seem clearly related to ‘Achu’ from the Adventures range!

Lego were sliding into oblivion about 15 years ago, and it was touch-and-go whether the newly purchased (at the time) Star Wars franchise would save them, but it did!Here are 3 types of Stap battle-droid, the Dri-Decker droids and some Gungans!

Main picture shows the vinyl Snow-monster from Megabloks, which led-off the Lego 'Artic Explorers' by several years! The Lego version stands behind.

To the left are two more Megabloks, with more realistic feet, swiveling arms in all plains and better heads (two of which are to the right). Like Lego they started with a simple ‘smiler’, and added individual features latter, as all these makes are really following Playmobil/Little People, it’s all a bit achademic!

Bottom left, and the level of ‘realism’ is getting silly, with a chunk of hideousness from Megabloks from the Medieval/Ork? Range, this range also beat Lego to a Viking Longship, and having seen the price of the follow-up from Lego, I don’t know how they get away with it, or why some of these other brands aren’t more popular?!

Bottom right shows the tool-set that came with a Megablok's Spaceman.