W is for Wax Wildlife!

Wax novelty-shaped crayons, a staple of Kinder for many years, but other people do do them, from time to time, and these were picked-up in The Range and TKMaxx, months apart, but they were figural, so . . . Small Scale World's latest wax wildlife!

 

Not very gummi-bear'ish, their arms and legs are too 'formed', and they have proper faces! Pretty sure these NPW were in The Range, back in April, but I'm not as sure now, as I was a few minutes ago, and they may have been TKMaxx clearance?

 

These (Rex London) were definitely in TKMaxx, last weekend!

Gotta' get your ducks in a row!

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.

F is for Follow-up - Place Marker / Glass Hangers

Remember those two figures Peter Evans sent the Blog around Christmas-time and my tale of woe in trying to get some surfer-babes only to find you needed to remortgage your house to purchase them? Well Terranova sent these and judging by the price sticker, it's the same story the other side of the pond!

Now these are hard to make out, the one on the far right seems to be giving a thumbs-up sign, but number three looks to be 'flicking the bird'. Far left may be thumbs up, while 2 would appear to be giving a Papal-blessing! I suspect they are all thumbs-up and it's just my imagination? Inspired anyway - the sort of stuff Archie McFee used to do!

But these are NPW, previously associated - here on the blog - with cheapie-budget stuff, yet the four come in at a frankly eye-watering . . .

. . . $15! Which is around the same price as that I baulked-at in Basingrad's new M&S back in the January sales, I guess they're aimed at the sorts of Trumpundbrexit 'eer celeb-culture types who will pay to have the 'right stuff' at their party?

'Men in Uniform'? I think we're talking a Village People tribute act at the Blue Oyster Club here, aren't we? Not so much publicly-spirited, uniformed professional types, nor heroically serving Blue Watch night-after-night while the nation sleeps, but rather baby-oiled,  semi-dressed, hen-night heroes - pumping to the beat!

Cheers Brian - has anyone else seen these, what others are out there, we've seen Her Madge The Twoeth, Surfer Dudes, JC and the above, I know there are bikini-girls (keep the surfer-dudes happy!), but there must be others? They're 54mm give-or-take!

T is for Two - Novelty Place Marks

In the after-Christmas sales I found a carded set of six young ladies in different coloured bikinis, but there was no price label on them even though they were in the crimbo-clearance zone of John Lewis's new huge aircraft-hanger of a store in Basingrad.

I took it to the till, thinking if it's more than three-quid I won't bother, explained to the checkout-staff-person that it was in the clearance isle, but didn't have a sticker and could she give me a price, which she did "It's eight-ninety-nine sir?" she said, "That's OK" I said, "I'll leave it, thanks!"

As a result I can't show them to you, but then I ran into Peter Evans last week and he thrust these at me . . .

'Her Madge' and a man called Brad in blue trunks! They're not far off the magic 54mm either, although she has more to offer after the addition of a base then he has, he can only peep-over things!

They look to be from the same source as the bikini-girls I saw back at the start of the month, same plastic, same names on the back, same kind of decoration - what else is out there?

Thank you Peter!

8-06-18 - Probably NPW? Follow-up now here

Q is for Quick One!

Have we had that title before? I don't think so and that's another 'Q' in the tag list . . . bargain!

This was also 45p in the Basingrad charity shop, I got a bear and a kangaroo AND change for a quid! I put the ten in the box . . . what do you think I'm like!

The tub of lip-balm was a bugger to get out, in the end brute-force and a screwdriver blade did the job! Quick clean-up of the glue-gun gunk and . . .

. . . I've got another bear for the cartoon animals tub, another Blog post, but not another tag; we've seen NPW novelties before here at Small Scale World!

R is for Rubbed-out

The other noticeable trend - which we've been showing here for a couple of years now - is the modern, crumbly-rubber eraser trend; kids have always collected rubbers (I once fancied a girl who collected them!) so that's not as new as the material which seem mostly to be aimed straight at collectors.

I shot these shelfies the other day in a discount store (Home Bargains) in Basingrad, I've collaged all four images as the reflection was diabolical! Around the 70mm mark, these are like the Iwaco rubbers, having a slot-together 'swoppet' element to their make-up, but much bigger.

And: a new name in the Blog's tag-list! Sambro seem to another of those modern equivalents to the old FOB-jobbers, handling licenses and their applications, rather than inventing 'new' stuff, wearing their branding but manufactured in an anonymous great OEM-factory in China.

Brian Berke sent these to us at different times over the last year - on the left is a London Bus (in New York!), with a pull-back motor in the lower half (the body of the bus seems to be in two parts) while the torso of The Batman is  also pierced for use as a pencil-top, but he's a bit heavy! Your handwriting would suffer long before RSI kicked-in . . . stick him on the desk-top as an ornament of popular culture! Thanks again Brian.

This goes with the little Bluesky shuttle/spaceman combination we've already looked at on the Blog, a hybrid modern multi-role fighter with something of the Typhoon and both Mirage and Saab's latest offerings, along with a Russian or Chinese looking rocket eraser.

Finally you can't go wrong with this from the same maker as the Turtles, but shelfie'd in TK Max . . . an army of minions! There's actually only five sculpts (four of each) and they don't all seem to interconnect, some of them have different dungaree designs, therefore different neck/shoulder shapes, but 20 Minions for a few quid? Bargain!

I is for Insects Again!

So the multiplicity of sources for the same figures I mentioned in yesterday's monkey post, is highlighted again with today's post (most supplied by Brian Berke), which looks at insects again, had I known I'd be running Rack Toy Month I might have held over that first post, but it's all grist to the mill!

So these are the same insects as were (are being) issued over here by Unique, except in the 'States they are under the MTC branding. Although, tomorrow's post suggests that the Unique set should be findable in the New World too. A few days after the original post (couple of weeks ago), I found the same set of insects as glow-in-the-dark novelties, in the same net-bag as Unique, but branded to H.Grossman (HGL) - one of our oldest surviving importers (although recently sold; I seem to recall reporting here a while ago), which is two types of product from the one set of moulds in three formats from at least three brands on two continents!

These 'Souvenirs de Fiesta' (must put that in the foreign terms section!) from Amscan are larger and what I consider novelties rather than model animals (but then so were the The Works insects!), and it's nice to see that something (or a version of something...) which is 30, 40, 50 years old can still be bought by - mum's and dad's who enjoyed them then - for their kids to enjoy today.

I think it's 3x12 and the list looks like (from the top); dragon fly, bristle-tail, millipede, mantis, scorpion, ant, fly, earwig, grass-hopper, caterpillar, spider and cockroach?

These seem much cruder than the Unique/MTC beetles, more like the older Ackerman bugs we looked at the other day, same softer rubber in black, with basic paint-job in a contrasting colour. Don't show them to my mother, she'll be off up to Baker's hardware to by a packet of magnets and some glue . . .

. . . for her fridge door! Thanks to Brian for the pictures in the first three images.

C is for Chitinous Creepy-Crawly Carded Chinacritters

So - I am declaring August 'Rack Toy Month'. I'm not sure if the UN or HMG will add it to their lists of official days, weeks, months and cultural years, but certainly at Small Scale World, this August will be Rack Toy Month . . . and if Brian Berke keeps sending me images and examples at his current rate, it'll be Rack Toy Month for the whole of the second half of 2017!

As well as lots of images from Brian, I've collected a few myself recently and there are a few older ones in Picasa, all of which can be grouped, lumped or thrown-together violently in thematic posts, or as stand-alone posts.

We'll start with last week's little act of serendipidy or co-incidence; I had to go on an epic journey the other day involving 7 buses and several miles of walking, I won't bore you with the details . . . all frightfully parochial real-life shite involving a drive-belt for a garden chipper, but I had to pop into Farnborough for some vape-juice (over two years, no fag!) at the start of the day so popped round the corner to a party shop I check for this stuff occasionally and got more lizards, four key-rings, a bag of cats (coming soon) and a bag of insects!

The netted set top right, be they! One of the key rings was a snail, so the two purchases rather drove each-other. Two buses later found me in Frimley, where there used to be a shed-load of charity shops, some of them seem to have gone, but there were a few and with 20 minutes to kill for the connection, I flew round them and found the old tub of insects - bottom right.

As I'd seen, and rejected a set of large and not very good insects in The Works earlier, I thought "Well, 'it has to be' now!" and so, two buses later, shelled out the couple of quid for the set to the left in the above collage!

The contents of the three sets, you can see why I initially rejected the Works ones, they (upper shot) are big, rubbery, lacking detail and are not trying too hard to resemble anything known to entomologists - in all cases the legs/thorax rule is studiously avoided!

Below them to the left is the Ackerman charity-shop purchase, with 13 present I suspect a couple are missing? To be honest they're not much cop either but were only 50p! Finally the Unique branded bag's contents are a bit better, probably not that accurate either, but better sculpts and more subdued colours make them a reasonable set. They would respond well to a repaint.

Comparisons between the sets, you can see the sizes in the previous collage are pretty close to the actual size comparisons here, anyone who knows how Picasa collages work will know that's more by good luck than good judgement!

The un-branded key-ring which started the insect purchasing frenzy is probably a marine mollusc - with a shell like that, certainly something very foreign to the UK? I've removed the ring & chain for this shot, and looking at it next to the monkey and horse it came with, I suspect they were tub/toob items themselves once?

Supporting evi'dawnce! A few weeks ago I'd got the trick roach, also from The Works (59p, for a hysterical insect . . . bargain!) to add to the small number of novelty insects and invertebrates we saw back in December's novelty posts, now I'm well on my way to my first shed-full!

Several of these will be very useful as monsters in a secret dungeon trap! Although the best candidates for that are the scorpions who all need their tails bent up with hot-water treatment as they are all moulded flat. Indeed; the scorpions (count the legs!) can all be ridden by 25/30mm figures?

Again . . . from the I-buy-this-stuff-so-you-don't-have-to dept., a couple of day after I put this article to bed, I found these two, from H. Grossman (HGL) which I bought a while ago with next December in mind, bearing in mind last December's novelty 'season'!

The snake is vile, both sets come with a protective sheet to prevent them damaging the card backing and neither has the 'may stain clothes' warning of the 1970's capsule toy we looked at last Christmas. But, while the maggots are fun and quite realistic; the two larger black ones are more like leeches than maggots - the snake is a blob, which stained and deformed the first PE bag I put it in, which went soft and wrinkly - in hours?

I've now stored it in foil, rolled in one bag, in another bag, with a mental note to chuck-it if there are any more problems! Vile, I tells' ya; cold, slimy, probably radioactive, lump of sun-gelled, hell-spawn!