N is for "Nart a'Nurtherrr Whone?!"

As if this set hadn't given us more than most already, another Wilton set has turned-up, only this one has just five figures (the austerity set!), for a two-a-side game with referee, giving us new all-red and all-white strips into the bargain!

 

 

Still sealed, in a charity shop a few weeks ago, I don't know if it's an import, or if someone bought it in the 'States and brought it over here/back here? We have after all looked at it a half-dozen times now, with variations on each issue, what more could be added to the story?

 

From the number of sets we've seen here now, we can begin to conclude the pale green bases, equate to Referees with whistle, so must be the earlier production run/s, while dark green bases should be later sets, with the Ref' turned into another player for single teams of seven.

 

The guy on the ground, and the Number 2 shirt are the ones dropped from this fixture!

 

If you want to see the others - roughly in the order in which they appeared, i.e., the reverse of how they're found if you follow the tags;

 

Wilton - three-a-side 

Anniversary House seven-a-side - red shirts

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/01/f-is-for-football-2-w-is-for-wilton-and.html 

 

JPW seven-a-side - two teams

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/f-is-for-football.html

(courtesy of Brian Berke, and I only realised, just now, scrolling through all the football posts, they are the same sculpts! Don't know if they are the larger ones or the smaller ones)

 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - all white faces

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/t-is-for-they-keep-coming.html

 

Anniversary House seven-a-side - blue shirts + comparison shot (mixed post)

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/02/f-is-for-follow-ups-various-recent-posts.html 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - Four white, three black players

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/06/k-is-for-kicking-and-screaming.html 

Knightsbridge PME three-a-side - Four black, three white players + comparison with the small ones

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/f-is-for-follow-up-footballer-cake.html 

 

Wilton two-a-side

This post! 

 

 

Kaskey Kids - Similar poses, but not the same

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/02/f-is-for-follow-up-kaskey-kids-soccer.html 

 

So the Anniversary House sets are the dark-green based later issues, still in retail outlets, although the PME and Wilton can also be found, while the JPW were probably a one- or two-season rack-toy presentation. What next? We still need a full set and branding for the smaller figures, clearly from the same source, as they are the same colours/materials.

 

Fourteen teams, nine examples, seven posts, four brands, three team configurations, two versions of the referee sculpt, all one set! 

F is for Follow-up - Footballer Cake Decorations

Harder to believe - than last time - that this is another follow-up to all the follow-ups, being the fourth or fifth for PME, sixth or seventh overall, spacifically, this is a follow-up to the last follow-up here.

As per last time!

 

The trick being that all the pink poses in that previous set are now decorated as black, and the three black figures last time are rendered pink this time! Makes sense really, one team of out-painters takes one ethnicity, the other the contrary, and you split the winnings back at the packing desk!

 

Although there was an element of pure luck about it, in that I forgot we'd had the previous set, and just grabbed this one as it looked 'new'!

 

And here they are with the smaller ones Peter Evans has sent to the Blog, whether they run to the full seven poses or not only time will tell, but if they are going to run to all the colour variations I've found for the larger ones, I'll be drowning in footballers before too long!

K is for Kicking and Screaming . . .

Hard to believe that a modern set of such poor overall (paint and fine detail) quality could feature on the Blog for a forth or fifth time, but that is what is happening here and a follow-up to various follow-up's, found in The Range, Aldershot (looking for hose connectors - always check the toy section!) and branded to the previously seen PME, but with a new header-card, it's those footballers' again!

Although, if you're a racist, this isn't a set for you, oh, no-no-no, you go and sit in your so wrong, white-right zone and leave the rest of us to enjoy the fact that a set that's been around for over a decade now has finally decided to represent what's happening on the pitch!

Sticking with one of the previously seen colour schemes, shirt wise, we now have 50% of the players showing obvious ethnicity and the knowledge that the Ref' might be a gay Scotsman, or even that one of the players might be gay, means inclusivity finally comes to the hallowed turf -  provided it's icing - as it has in real life! And it's Pride month - go Justin; you've got the ball ('Forest strip!), score goals on a green cake!

F is for Follow-up - Large Scale Cake Decoration Golfer

Rack Toy Month seems to be creeping-in a few days early here, but given Covid-19 has rendered the whole year with a veneer normally associated with that quiet-news period during the summer 'hols' (albeit with a week's worth of proper news every day, all of it viral!), I guess a few extra days won't hurt!

Picked this PME cake decoration up in Hobbycraft Farnborough the other day, we have looked at it before, both in a break-down/review and in the golfer posts more recently; but here's a new colour-way!

Not only is it a new colour scheme, but I then saw yet another on feebleBay the other day, so I will keep an eye on that hook-board, and we'll look at him again when they get the next batch/colour variant!

F is for Follow-ups - Various Recent Posts

A few bits and bobs pertaining to previous posts; we'll start with the recently seen African native set ID'd by Peter Evans the other week;

Chris Smith had one with three colours, the shorts and red-clay'ed hair of my better sample but with the addition of silver for the spear tip, studying mine under the looking-glass I can find no hint of silver and I think it really is an example of how the paint was slowly reduced to cut costs, perhaps dating the set to the midst of the oil crisis?

Chris also has this lovely marbled rhinoceros which came in the same lot/sample, whether they go together or not is still a question-mark, but it's a fine beast! It is also however a bit Asian-looking, rather than an African black or white?

Which leads me on to the wheeled crocodile, I don't know why I didn’t spot it at the time, but there are little spigots on its tail and little dimples on the roof of its mouth and on its tongue . . . it's only from a crocodile 'train', or crocodile 'crocodile'! How cool is that? Too cool for first class!

I dropped into the party shop at Clapham Junction when I was up in The Smoke for the Toy Fair at the end of last month and they did have some blue teams left, the shop-assistant had to go in the basement for them, but I stole-away with one . . . after passing over the requisite shekels!

Giving me six team strips from three brandings, and enough figures for an interesting five-a-side competition. There must be some war-gaming style rule-sets you could use for such a venture, maybe some of the board-games with footballer figures could supply ideas for a skeleton rule-set without a board? Playable on a Subbuto pitch maybe!

Chris also sent in the autumn parcel a soviet-bloc, flat figure for which I already had a clone (seen before), but mine is a poorer quality copy; something which sometimes happened 'behind the curtain' as we saw with all the versions of Progress cavalry, and as it did here in the West.

The new one has been mended with a combination of an Evostick-like snot and some fag-lighter, heat-melting, so cowardice has decided me against trying to clean it up for fear of doing more damage! It’s a new colour anyway, and as I say - a better sculpt - Thanks Chris!

As a follow-up to an older post, I recently got another bunch of Merten copy Victorians/Edwardian (Wilhelmian?) civilian cake decorations (from Peter Evans I think? Cheers Peter!), with a colour variation of the pink lady we looked at before.

T is for They Keep Coming!

I picked these up the other day!

Having said I'd go back for the dark-blue team when we last looked at them, I didn't and they've probably all gone by now, that was back in January, but now a third 'player' has bought into the league - Knightsbridge PME Ltd.?

Totally new colours, even the referee has white turn-downs on his socks for a slightly different look to the originally-found Wilton's ref '. The set is following the Wilton's pattern with 3-a-side and two goalies but is the most colourful to date.

Numbering has gone a bit awry, with the true number-one miss-registered and the number-three over-stenciled with a 1, despite 3 being marked on the base-underside and - as a raised moulding - on the shirt!

The card, albeit in black & white, seems to suggest other colourways, so I suspect we'll be returning to them, whether I track-down the blue set or not. And 50p each with two 'free' goals - bargain! Have you found these, what colours have you seen/got, or . . . what brand were they sold under? 'Cos that's three now; I'm gonna' need a bigger tub!