About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label PET Aliens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PET Aliens. Show all posts

Monday, January 15, 2024

V is for Vitriform Venusian Villains

Well, they don't look very friendly, they're as likely to be from Venus as anywhere else, given they are FICTIONAL, and they are definitely glasslike, as they are made out of glass! I shot these oddities on Adrian's Mercator Trading table back at one of the London Shows in the year just gone - torch-welded rod-glass alien figuriens

They look like the kind of thing you get in the sort of gift shop which isn't tied to a major tourist attraction, or a posh/independent Hotel's gift shop - "Something to take home for the relatives"? Clearly in a Murano style, but not well-executed enough to be such a renowned mark, and these were unmarked, in generic plain stock-boxes, but still - rather fun!

I think the two on the left are variations of the same purple/mauve chap/ess, while red and blue are to the same design, but obviously different colourways (red is quite opaque) and the green amphibiman one is altogether different, maybe from Mars! They could - of course - be qualification/end of term pieces from a glass student? The bases are also glass, opaque, white glass, like and Old Spice bottle!


Sunday, December 3, 2017

H is for How They Come In II - Little Rubber Guys

Found in a charity shop in Farnborough, up the road, at the end of October, some immediately got shoved onto the Halloween 'spreadsheet', but worth a second look as I seek to clear them out of Picasa!

Again two bags - a bit pricier at one-ninety-nine, but then they were a lot heavier, although that was due to the amount of PVC rather than the number of items! Funnily enough; I haven't collected much of this stuff in the last few years, I've quite a bit in storage, but nothing rare or exciting.

However I think the LRG collecting community is larger and more active that the poly-troop brigade and they tend to Hoover them up with quiet efficiency? It may just be that they have yet to come to market in bulk, but as I say I picked a load up in the 1990's-2000's so I think it's more that they are collected with enthusiasm.

Contents of one bag, there was almost a 50-50 split between Monster In My Pocket's and everything else, with the everything else including Yolanda, Wrestler's IMP, a few [possibly/probably] Pokemon's, a Snoopy (going to bed!), Galoob and a pencil-top which I think might be from The Mask . . . did it have a morphing dog?

There was also a Mighty Max pocket-dungeon thing, but it's not clear if the two figures belong with it and I need to find a website that lists them all, anyone know where there's a good one?

I was forgetting the Virtual Toy Chest! Chronosaur, but the squid's from somewhere else!

The person who sorted these in (or for) the Charity Shop was scrupulously fair, and the contents of the other bag are - to the casual observer - the same, even to the splitting of duplicates between the two, apart from the large Lion which I assume is from that Disney bloke's dead-lion-dad movie that wot I never soor!

Anyone recognise the pink guy with the bobble-hat, he looks like a Muppet to me, but he could be from another Henson franchise, Fraggle Rock or Sesame Street?

While the squid belongs in this Lavabeast head with the skorpider thing!

So the squadron of (Pokemon?) bees was two each in the two bags, the Pet Alien eyeballs and gecko-lizards (Pokemon again?) likewise one-each. I'm guilty of never having followed-up on John's invitation to explore HOTT (other than by downloading the rules!), so I can't say for sure; but I suspect multiples like this would make for 'army building' units in that gaming system.

The bees certainly looked worried enough to be flying naked into the withering-fire of hairy, undead, lizard-men space-marines from some esoteric resin-caster working out of a garage with a 3D printer in Toronto or Turin! 

I love the winged-eye, he reminds me of the eyes of Mouse & Kelly which made such an iconic contribution to the whole feel of the Psychedelic Movement in the print media, yet also of the Droogs in A Clockwork Orange - with the bowler hat!

Saturday, October 21, 2017

D is for Display

Some of you may have noticed I rescued some of the Impact rock formations or 'mountain-piles' from that Drummond Park/Idea Shop/Seven Towns board game I blogged earlier in the year . . . I actually dove back into the recycling bin for one each of the three, as it occurred to me they'd make useful little display bases!

The locating-studs that anchor the pieces to the card holes in the original playing board have to be removed which is done first with side-cutters, then finished with a scalpel - and kids . . . if there are any kids reading this; never, ever, ever, EVER cut toward your exposed thumb as in the picture above . . . it's a posed shot!

Or at least never, ever, ever, EVER cut toward your exposed thumb until you're old enough to take responsibility for your own stupidity, as I am!!

The finished objects can them be used to display all sorts of things, adding a bit of visual interest to otherwise formulaic images!

Seven Towns on Seven Towns as PET Aliens clamber over the rocks.