W is for With Thanks at the Witching Hour!

Seem to have done it! Got up early, went over to pick the parcel up, managed to get to work on time, still tired, left work at about ten-thirty, had the shots done by the end of the eleven-PM bulletin, and by the time you read this, here they are!

 

So, plenty more in the parcel for another day! David Aaron DeSoto, dropped me a line about a month ago, saying he'd like to send me some Halloween figures, as a thanks for the Blog, which I wasn't going to turn down! And, once my head had stopped swelling, I explained that my current situation didn't really allow for trust in mail delivery, managed to get a mate to take it, and the rest is above, or in previous posts, first USPS and then US Customs returned the parcel to David twice, and it went down to the wire!

 

And, as David explained in his last eMail, it (the errant parcel) is mummified with official stickers, customs forms, postal ephemera and tape of various kinds!

 

Confirming that Brian's shelfies were this year's packaging, David has managed to track-down two sets, the Skeleton Army and Mummy Army, the recently 'new' Witches seemingly dropped already? Both sets and both lots credited to Old East Main Co., rather than the Dolgen of earlier sets a few years ago - and where David sourced these. Photo was a bit rushed, but does the job!

 

I can't remember if we've shot the Mummies out of the blister before, and haven't got the time to look if this is to publish in the next 25-minutes, but they didn't look as familiar as the skeletons which I know we have looked at, more than once, so these guys got the extra shots!

 

The skeletons, as I say, we've seen these before a few times now with comparisons, donors and derivatives, but it's always nice to see them again on the 31st!

 

I can't thank David enough. I'm always touched by these donations, and they've come from The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as closer to home, over the years, I know I can be a prickly-sod from time to time, but I'll keep posting if you're all still visiting!

 

There's lots more to look at, but the original aim was to get these out before midnight, and in that we have succeeded! Thanks David.

Spellchecker is not activating in Blogger, but I think I've found the worst of the typo's!

A is for All Sorts for All Hallows

There is a 'comedy of errors' ongoing in the background, in which a parcel from the 'States which should have been here a couple of weeks ago, has now been delivered back to the sender twice, due to perceived erroneous data on various postal and tax stickers, resulting in the sender reporting that the third time he took it to the USPS, they had to cover all the previous stickers with blank stickers, before starting again with a new set! It now has more layers of fossilised history than a shale-bed! The hope is that they will still be here to photograph before (or on?) Thursday, however, the sender indicated that some non-Halloween figures had smuggled themselves aboard the parcel, so there will be a post, even if we miss the day!

In the meantime, Brian Berke has sent me two lots of seasonal shots, two of which may represent the absent, much-travelled figures, so let's have a shufftie at 'em . . . 

 

. . . by going firstly to Scully & Scully, where Brian was a little disapointed to find only two flats, but to be fair, the Blog is testement to the fact they've never done as much on Halloween as they have at Christmas of Easter, which my be a sign that it's not big in Germany or Europe? And, while it may be growing - purley as a consumer affair - here in the UK, even here, the trick-or-treat'ing is confined to social housing areas, with the emphasis being on fancy-dress parties, for adults as often as children? Often combined with the 5th November fireworks.

Earlier Brian had found this, it's a garland, but can be broken down into skeletons which look like they could give Action Man (GI Joe) a fright, scale-wise, I've seen similar stuff over here, possibly in Asda or Morrisons, who seem to have had the better stock/displays this year?

 

Both shot at a Family Dollar store in Waterloo, New York (aquired by Dolgen in 2015), he also found these, which may be the 'this year's packaging' of the missing parcel's figure sets, but the pricing leads Brian to wonder if they are old stock. We have seen them before, as the parent's Dollar General, always courtesy of Brian, and watched the additions come, and go, and the packaging change every year!

 

Brian also sent a couple of Autumn colour shots he took on the journey 'upstate', and as it my favourite time of year, I thought I'd share them with the rest of you!

To which I'll add this one, which I shot the other day, it's actually not doing the subject justice, as it had a weirdly metallic-pink sheen to many of the leaves, which has been washed-out by the camera? I thought I'd shot more trees, but I must have just admired them?

Many thanks to Brian for the shots, and I have a couple more to get out before the day, whether the parcel gets here in time or not!

U is for Undead, Previously Unaccounted For

We covered most of the commoner rack-toy skeletons a few years ago, over a year or two, with updates on each-year's packing of the most recent sets, but two sets escaped, the WHC/Success issue (which we saw the catalogue image for at the beginning of Rack Toy Month in August just passed) and the Toy Major originals, although we have seen some of them and their later unpainted issues/copies, so let's look at them now!

Obviously they (Toy Major) had to try the new beast, it will definitely look better with two or three of the smaller Game Workshop figures, perhaps a larger band in a howdah, or a padded bench-seat like that Histrorex wagon we looked at back at the start of the year?

 

I had already shot them a while ago with a two-headed dragon, not sure who made it, it might be Imperial, but a lot of this stuff is, very much, still to come!

 

The full set was five figures and a rider, the reissues gave him a base, so there were six 'infantry', basic decoration with a wash of dirty-weathered bones, wood and silver highlights.

 

A couple of the reissues; base marking is the same distinctive TM contract coding, but for a different client/batch, the bases are also noticeably shallower, which can be explained by a seperate tool-insert having less depth.

 

Last year's set from Brian Berke, when they added the witches, still in the card, with the Cornelius set in silver to compare, two Toy Major and the Walgreen on the end of the row for a comparison.

 

The full set of the WH Cornelius/Success/WHC figures, what differentiates them from the more recent Old East Main Co., carded set above, is that the WHC are manufactured in a very soft rubbery polymer.

H is for Halloween How They Come In!

I was really struggling to find anything for Halloween, although I thought I had the bits of one post, you won't see it today, because I can't find any trace of it, if it existed! Anyway, with help from Loyal Readers we have a programme of mostly novelty [not] horror after all, and it started with these, sent in by Brain Berke, over in New York.

These are classic rack-toys! A felted or foam pumpkin attached to a pair of plain-lens, plastic glasses, which are so basic they probably used a 1970's mould-tool! Brand-marked to Party Solutions, I believe most of the items in the post were shot in Dollar General but I'm not so sure about this one.

Brian also sent this year's Dollar General offering in the figure department, the skeletons and mummies we've seen before, and the count had gone down on one I think, but now they are joined by witches, and all three are eight figures not ten - 'The cost of playing crisis!' *

He also offered to open the Witch Characters and photograph them, but I said that wasn't necessary as I knew Shaun had already blogged them so you can go and see them on his Fantasy Toy Soldiers blog - and check out his for sale department!

*for non-UK readers, the current global turmoil is being referred to in the British media, and by our politicians as 'The cost of living crisis'.

He also did the card back for us and it's here; cropped out and heavily contrasted to reveal the old crones in all their hideous glory! The semi-flat nature/design of them will be most likely to disappoint on the cauldron crone, but I like the look of them, nothing like them in the UK again this year, and I've searched!

All of which suggests the Zombie Pirate Army have been dropped this year, and that maybe in a year or two we could get a fifth set? And they are under the Old East Main Co. branding again this year.

From the dents left in the abdomens of these Forum Novelties (seen before here) spiders by passers-by, these look like blow-moulds, but the extremities don't look thinned-enough, indeed: eight thin extremities would be hard to successfully blow-mould, so I suspect rotary-moulding, where powered polymer is heated in a rotating mould to deposited a melted layer over the inside of the cavity.

Packaging to match the figure sets, these are nice looking skeleton hangers (length of sisal-string attached!), and while not apparently articulated they do seem to have revolving heads to help them wave in the breeze! About four or five inches high by the look of it?

Not Halloween per-se, but equally something we'd be less likely to see here, outside an RTM maybe, but with the glasses already above, and the naughtiness inherent in owning one of these, especially on Halloween, they definitely belong here!

It's ironic, because you don't see these like you did when I was a kid (hence 'vintage toys'), yet they have always been there, as we discovered - when I was a kid! Fishing-tackle shops will sell you a die-cast aluminium/mazac one, with heavy square-section rubbers and an arm brace, which will throw a grenade over a 100-yards - or a tobacco tin filled with dust and gravel!

And an old curmudgeonly codger could use it to fire sweeties all over the village green and start a kid's riot?

Cheers Mr. B - you saved Halloween!

P is for Putrid Pirates Pal-up with Perennial Packs of Plastic Playthings

Brain again! Sent me these a couple of weeks ago, as it happened I had sourced a set on feebleBay, but didn't know if they'd get here in time (they did - just), so we'll run with Brian's for this year, and then next year maybe look at them all again, as we've had four or five iterations of these now, in four or five years.

Previously branded to Dolgen Corp. (Dollar General), this year they are credited to an Old East Main Co., but still found in Dollar General, and while for the last few years it's been two sets (mummies and skeletons), this year we have a new set, Zombie Pirate Army!

Like the other two sets a bit cartoony, but they can be used to fill the ranks of the Blue Box mob from a few years ago, being the same size and a very similar plastic colour! Eight figures in eight poses, again as the other sets, although I seem to recall one of them was ten-figures for the first couple of years . . . skeletons?

Skeleton army; seen before, so just confirmation of the new packaging variant!

Mine, like I say there have been three or four card variations now, figure-count anomalies, and this third set, so in a year or two, when there's less to post on the day, I'll try to return to them for a more comprehensive pulling-together/overview, yet we may see them again next year, as we've seen them for five-years on-the-trot now!

Many thanks to Brian for the images, I'll try to remember to open my Pirate set for next year whatever else happens!