R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Five of Six

The penultimate batch of Brian Berke's rack toys shelfies, and  a few more of interest, but more of a box-ticker for the Tag-list, although I know some people have interests different to mine!

 

Didn't know Buzz had a cat . . . Alien cat at that!

 

Imaginext, a Fisher-Price/Mattel property, gets a fair few mentions on Little Rubber Guys, usually in the 'what is this' section, due to the number of parts and constant new production cycle, and there are some interesting things among the sets and accessories, but the figures are semi-deform.

 

Monster trucks!

 

Interactive dinosaurs.

 

Could use a coat of paint!

 

Nice, it's surprising how many sea-life sets there are out there, or probably not surprising if you were always a fan, but we had mostly Britains farm and a bit of zoo, with some Cherilea and Crescent animals, as kids, I never remember sea-life, but there's a growing side-stash of sea-life in the collection, with people like Marx having a stab.

 

More Hunson, I thought these were flocked, at first glance, but i think they are one of the new soft-feel polymers? Thanks as always to Brian for taking the time and trouble to go out and find this stuff and get the images to us.

S is for Slimy Slime From Slimesville, Slimesylvania!

I bought this back in the autumn, can't remember where, possibly B&M or even Smyths, but, I know it was inexpensive?

 

The turtle is not what I was expecting at all! It's an actual turtle, and I assume the other three would be similarly rendered, each is his own shade of green? But I'm not intending to try finding-out, as the slime is like fortified washing-up liquid, it's the vilest stuff you ever encountered, woe-betide any carpet or clothing this come into contact with! Co-branded to Playmates and Nickelodeon, it's pure weirdness on several levels, out there now.

S is for Stampers

Just a quickie, although I'm trying to save my shekels, I had to go to Home Bragains (who, answering my own question of a week or so ago, may be the future slayer of B&M?), to get a couple of vape pens (nine years no cigarette), and checking the toy section, which usually has little to interest us, found these.

 

One of those annoying lines wherein there are 12 to collect, but they are five-to-a-pack, so you must collect/acquire duplicates to obtain a set, and I was going to take a shelfie and move-on when I noticed they were only £2.99 each (presumably clearance stock), so quickly investigated the packs to find there were only three variables, and bought all three, intending to open one, which is what's happened.

 

These are the two which remain sealed, for now, one day I may get them out, or once all the boxes have been ticked (future entries on the A-Z blogs, TMNT round-up &etc), they may be sold on to raise funds for future purchases? As you can see, they are more cartoony/stylised sculpts than the more realistic ones we've seen from Yolanda, Phidal and Playmates et al. And they are solids, not action figures.

The five who have been released from their vac-formed prison, vaguely 54mm compatible, albeit with the very thick bases associated with this type of novelty, you can see that Donatello is much fatter in this iteration, while the other three are much skinnier (two of each character, plus four other figures), and while I did Google the 'Rise of' era, I couldn't find a good explanation for this change, nor why they can be brothers when apparently they are four different species of turtle?

 

Dirt cheap rack-toys, out there now!

TMHT is for There's More Hero Turtles!

Like Ninja Turtles but safer for poor little British kids who might otherwise be corrupted into whacking each-other over the head with broom-handles or something . . . humm . . . that worked huh!

A quick follow-up from a post last January, and I don't need to subject you to a back-link as they're all here; they are Ninja's. not heroes!

Brian managed to find the missing pose/character from the Playmates set he shared with us back then, and it is the above 'Mikey' Michelangelo to be precise, complete with nun-chucks! That's two broom-handles-worth of mayhem! Perfect 54mm as well!

Complete line-up, you may recall I'd had one come-in from Chris, and at some point I'll get the others myself, just to box-tick, but as far as the Blog's concerned and thank to Mr Berke, the box is already and well and truly ticked here now! Cheers Brian!

R is for Renaissance Reptiles

Another quickie, this one covering a few TMNT bits which came in over Christmas from Brain, Chris and Peter, but; working in reverse . . .

. . . with this 'shelfie' which came in the other day from Mr. Berke, who managed to find three of four (no Michelangelo) of these Playmates figurines, imported into his part of the world by Greenbrier; DTSC - their normal 'partner in crime' seem to have passed on this one?

The missing pose's the problem with here-today-gone-tomorrow, rack-toy sets that happen to have multiple characters; that you sometimes miss one! I never found the missing turtle in the remaindered set a few years ago!

Pack-back and a sizer - you can see from the Lone Star shooter (Berserker on his Christmas break?) that these are an almost perfect 54mm, and they are an un-articulated 'solid' figure in a dense'ish PVC or modern equivalent polymer, and I know that because a few days earlier . . .

. . . Chris Smith had included one in his latest parcel! Here posed next to the key-ring giant Mr. Evans had sent a month or two previously (seen before here at Small Scale World) and which I have now removed from his seriously large (and limiting) base. Indeed, after this shot was taken I removed the key-chain and ring too.

Cheers to all three for the contributions, and while there is no official Talk Like a Teenage Turtle Day (maybe there ought to be!), we will have to have a full TMNT post one day as I have quite a few of them now.

A is for Another . . . Board Game with Turtle Ninjas

. . . another charity-shop purchase . . . another Nickelodeon-licensed to Tactic game . . . another box ticked!

Now I'm back using the library for internet, these boxes get shot in the shopping precinct and left there! I may be more honest and open with friends and family about my collecting than some in the hobby (anyone read the recent story of the family sorting out their late father's property for sale, finding thousands of quid's-worth of model trains under the floorboards, even the deceased man's wife new nothing about!) but I'm not wandering around town with a kids toy box under my arm any longer than I have to!

'Kimble'? It used to be called Ludo or 'Pachisi' when I wer't' whipper-snapper nipper!

Four times four figures, each colour-coded by 'Lone Ranger' style 'kerchief mask and coming in at a comfortably-compatible with role-playing figures' 28mm, you'd have to remove the locating-tube under the bases though. Softish PVC-replacement polymer.

The only point to note is that the purple one (Yeah! I could look 'im up, but I can't be arsed! Botticelli the Younger, Mona Liza Presley . . . one of them!) comes in two variants; two-each with the staff bent forward at the top, two-each backward and there's no apparent reason for it?

N is for Nickelodeon's Ninja's in New York

With nearly 3000 posts under the belt it's getting hard to come up with original titles, so I apologise for the above! It's another quickie! It's another board-game! It's already gone to recycling! It had four figures!

Actually it wasn't a board game, more a sort of 'carpet game', with card discs (man-hole covers) to be shuffled, randomly spread in a trail and then followed by the Turtles. But - the important bit; it has four figures!

The Turtles, around 45mm, soft vinyl/PVC and glued to harder, polypropylene bases, each base coloured to match the bandanna colour of one of the four characters, and that's it really, another box-ticker; Sambro for Nickelodeon, TMNT Foot Clan Street Fight Game . . . four more figures!

Ph is for Phollow-up to Phidel

Eager to see what TJ had taken delivery of, the other side of the pond from TK, Brain B took himself-off to the local outlet, and was sadly disappointed - no Marvel, no DC! However, he took his usual plethora of shelfies and fired them off to Small Scale World Towers, and it is them we are going to meander through now.

The Disney Princess is a sort of collective sub-brand, bringing various otherwise unrelated young ladies together under one heading, and there's some useful items in this set. The Mermaid looks familiar, although I don't have one here, and I didn't think Phidel had been doing these for that long, but . . .

. . . since the TKMaxx purchase and subsequent Blog post the other day I have been seeing them everywhere, or when I say everywhere, there have been at least five in the various charity-shops in town in the last week or so.

Some of which have been these, semi-flats with suckers on, that can be attached to the glossy board pages, also while looking on feebleBay I think I've seen magnetic versions as well? There's also the added element of a board-game included.

New one on me, assuming from the Nicolodeon flash that it's a kid's TV thing; less of use by the looks of it, but when they come in - in mixed lots - at least you'll know where they came from!

Also missed this, but from the number of MLP things in shops at the moment I'm guessing there's been a recent movie!

Squeeky-voiced mouse and friends, take'em or leave'em they will enhance all those 1970/80's Heimo, Schleich, Comics Spain and latterly Applause, Bully & the French Poly-whatsit figures!

And! Because it contains both Pluto and Goofy, you can arrange your own anachronistic vignette on the bookshelf, of an anthropomorphic, talking-dog in human cloths, leading a dumb-idiot dog around on a lead!

I bought one of the sets I encountered this week, incomplete it looks like a shotgun-wedding photograph for a very strange coupling! "Well; OK, I'll marry you, but only if our kids can be page-snowmen!" They were only 50p! Box went in the recycling before it was photographed and there is a second, different Frozen set out there - That's 14 different snowmen!

I've also discovered WHSmith are carrying them - they had a really nice Spiderman set, but they want £9.99 ($12.50'ish?) for theirs against the £5.99 (8-odd dollars) of TKMaxx!

I don't know why anyone actually patronises WHS, they are pricier on everything than their rivals, here we have WHS and Ryman's next door to each other and you can compare in seconds; it's not that WHS are a bit more, they are 10, 25, 50% more - every time! From books to Biro's, calendars to Christmas-cards, Ryman's, Clintons, Partners - all cheaper . . . probably not Paperchase though!

The next five images are further-cropped close-ups of the 'goody' trays from Brain's above imagery.

The woman with a bow & arrow looks very useful for fantasy stuff, and as they all have flowing dresses they may all be useful for those Napoleonic ballroom scenes which used to be de rigueur in modelling mag's a couple of decades or so ago!

Flats - with suckers . . . sorry; 'suction-cups'!

Is the peacock a worthy addition to a poultry collection, or a daftly cartoonish sculpt? The others seem to be half-Aladdin, half Powerpuff Girls!

I think the foxy-gentleman is my favourite in this lot.

Chipmunks! Donald Duck! Some other stuff . . .

Cheers Brian! We're really getting the hang of these now and they're good value for money, there are about five Superhero-sets out there, hopefully we'll get them all on here in the near future?

H is for Heroes in Half-shells

Back in the late 1980's when these guys first picked-up momentum (and kick-started the modern graphic-novel moment (in the English language that is; the Europeans were - of course - way ahead of the Anglo Saxons on that one . . . bigoted Brexit idiots!), I'd just got out of the army and was living in Aldershot where one of those combined head-shop/t-shirt/punk-badge/comic kiosks had both the US TMNT editions and the self-censored TMHT version . . . our kids weren't to be influenced by Ninjas apparently, they had to have 'Heroes' . . . go figure!

Carded Leonardo and Michelangelo, the figures are about56/60mm, but as they represent cartoon anthropomorphic turtle Ninja warrior monks who live in a sewer and allow themselves to be trained by a giant rat, I'm not sure that their being a few millimeters taller or shorter than your favorite figure-size is much to worry about!

I picked them up in a non-chain clearance/pound shop in Aldershot the other week, three of five, the missing figures being Raphael and a 'Foot Soldier'. And this gets Finland in the tag-list again!

Donatello in his blister and a line-up of the three, I've been back to see if I could get the others, but it's clear I got the last three of an end-of-line thing! Still - three-quid for the trio? I bet Forbidden Planet had them at  +/- a fiver-each whenever they were 'high street' retail stock!

The cards that came with them made no sense; nor did the all-languages/no language graphical instruction sheet! There seems to be an element of having to give your figure away if you lose at a round of 'Top Trumps': madness! There's a video on-line that might make it clearer. . . no, I haven't and I won't be, I'm a collector, not a thrower-away of good figures on the turn of a card!

These are nice sculpts, well painted, in a tactile material, if you see some, get them, put them on the shelf next to your JIM Napoleonic's, Timpo swoppet 'Great Helms', Marx beach babes and Cherilea Mexican bandit, they all represent the same thing - Childhood.