M is for Mokkie's Military-Men Moulding Machine

Shelfies today, after yesterday's freebootin' figure-fest!

It's one of the rules of the hobby, as applied to shows particularly, but also a useful general rule, that if you see something and you like it and you can afford it, you should get it, as it won't be there if you come back for it later.

It's one of those self-prophesying rules that play on our tendency to doom and gloom, because actually if you return, you often get the thing you left on the previous pass, but it's the occasions when you don't that seem to reinforce the rule and build to this empirical 'mountain' of missed opportunities in your head!

I should have bought this, as I've been back three times and they haven't got another one in!

Branded to '3DMagic' with an accompanying website and licensed from Irwin RX of Toronto, Canada, this Fortress Battle Set is imported by Mookie Toys a newish name, but one we've seen here before recently; the Italian Buzzbee clearance in PoundworldPlus just before it's demise.

I left it because I thought 'Eight-quid for three figures? Nah, not worth it', but when I thought about it, with three coloured-gel bottles, it's nine figures if you only make one of each, which is less than a pound-a-figure, or around the average for figures at a show, so I should have got when I saw it and happened to have a tenner on me . . . Hey Ho!

They don't look terribly militaristic; grenade throwing (?), head-scratching and waving at a passing bus! But with a spare's tub of old Airfix ' Multipose', Italeri or Tamiya weapons, they could soon be knocked into shape for deep-penetration missions behind the sofa!

Set with a UV-light 'oven', I'm not sure how long they would last, or how robust they would prove to be, that 3D pen (a rather disheartening experiment in barely-controlled squirt-extrusion) I bought about a year ago in Lidl had bio-degradable filament, if this is a similar polymer . . . ?

Bee is for Bumble Bear!

There was a fad among the poured, painted-metal branch of the hobby a few years ago (I say 'a few', it's more like fifteen to twenty years ago, I keep forgetting how old I'm getting and how quickly!) for vignettes, issued around Christmas time, involving a child or two with a set of teeny-weeny, tiny toy soldiers they had found under the tree, that trope - for toys of toys with toys - was behind this purchase, from the struggling Poundworld Plus.

What appears to be a bit of 'Euro-clearance' from Italy, but it may have been available here earlier in somewhere like the late Toysaurus, and related to an Italian kid's TV-series La Cassa delle Api (the bee house/house of the bees), I only bought it for one item, but we'll look at the whole thing 'cos it's there!

After umming and aah'ing, I kept the three 'toys of toys', put the bee in the charity-shop pile and recycled the bed and hexagonal bin (bee comb - see?!). While the packaging and all other ephemera was in Italian - apart from an English age-restriction sticker - I would imagine some UK kids are familiar with it as the nature of the Internet and multi-channel broadcasting means most things tele-visual (or clips of them) are available somewhere, these days?

But this is what I was after! Is it a Bee Bear or a Bear Bee? A Teddy-bee? It can't be a Honey-bear, I know what they look like - I'm not stupid! It's too cool for nursery-school (about my level!), it's a Bumble Bear!

There's a mini bi-plane and a mini locomotive too, and you'll know from past posts that I am slowly amassing side-collections of both, but the bear is the best! The Bee; 'Buzzbee', has a fold-down hook so he can do a bit of zip-wire action, along a cable in one of the bigger play-sets.

Some of the other sets available at the time (2014); I've seen no evidence of them being part of this import tranche, and with none of them having anything like a stripy bear, I'm not concerned, although the little ladybird looks fun.

The problem with a globalised toy market is trying to make sense of who (or to whom) the toy can actually be attributed for the purpose of archiving the post after Blog-publishing, this appears to be manufactured (in China by an unnamed contract manufacturer) for Mookie Toys, on behalf of Space Enterprises licensed or licensing from/to Hive Enterprises (the TV company?), distributed (in Italy?) by Nice Group in collaboration with Junior Distribution who may (or may not) be responsible for it's turning up in the UK on Poundworld Plus's shelves!

I will archive it under Mookie and Space with a cross-reference (eventually on the A-Z Blogs) to Hive!

Of course it's all childish, but if I gave you nothing but wall-to-wall Marx, Cherilea and Airfix you'd soon get bored . . . and it was a quid, you know . . . a quid, why would you walk past it - it's got a 20mm bear in it . . . with stripes!