R is for Regular Rubber Rampage!

Eraserbots and Erasersaurs, two of my favourite side-subjects, oozing childhood memories, Christmas spirits and Nostalgia by the handful! As a follow-up to the Charity shop Dinosaur pencil-rubbers, and as a draw-up to Jon Attwood's latest, huge donation, we are going to have a bit of a Saurian season for a day or two!

Today we're looking at those which have come in recently, mostly Charity Shops or donations, and it was three lots, but as we'll see, it is now four, I think! Of which these are the most numerous, and we've probably seen some of them before, Hong Kong marked copies of the Diener poses, or based on them, the other closely related set are 'China' marked.

 

Mostly reasonable sculpts, for what they are, but the green one has a definite Godzilla vibe going-on down that spine, and I'm not sure about the Cycloceratops (or Uniceratops?) bottom right (common for that species with this material), or the stretching brown Arzach at the rear!

 

These I think we've seen twice, under different branding (Asda and Paperchase (now defunct)), so just a loose trio, for colour variations if I haven't already got them? I'm going to have to go through the 'eraser' Tag soon, adding Dinorasers, or Erasersaurs, to all the relevant posts to seperate them from other eraser posts and get them all on one Tag!

 

The Charity shop ones again, the blue chap (or chapess) won't stand up, so I have to lean it against another, each time!

 

Comparison shot of similar pairs across the three lots which have recently come-in, the new charity ones are a mixed bag, with three blobby ones and three quite good sculpts . . . but when I was putting them away, I noticed . . . 

 

. . . the kerthunkasaurus is actually in two parts, which after a quick inspection . . . 

 

. . . revealed that I had three each from two sources, with the two-part dino's being better sculpted, larger models of smaller dinosaurs, while the other three are mini's of larger or 'box scale' animals, which we have seen before, again under more than one brand (The Works and Poundland), as both capsule-type and six-to-a-card toys, respectively.

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Iwako Dinorasers

Timely or not, this stuff will be available in one form or another for some time, and has been around for a while already, but we like our regular visits to Iwako and/or erasers and/or dinosaurs here, or at least I do, so it's timely enough for me!

Seen briefly in the initial round-up of the Toy Fair last Friday, so he may as well go first . . . this was a sample of a new sculpt, but only new to me as round here the Iwako stockists have only had the four sculpts seen previously.

This is a Parasaurolophus, and there are three colour-ways to find, each in a pastel body with contrasting darker spine - yellow, pink and mauve. Paperchase haven't carried the dinosaur sets at all, while the pick-bins in Hawkin's never had this as a singly?

The sets on display were numbered 40 and 52, but the 52 is numbered 57 in the Iwako catalogue, which may be down to differences between the Japanese domestic and Euro/Western export markets, we don'r get the Lego-likey sets either.

Also, the large Brontosaur is only available in the carded sets, not as a single figure. Other animals not seen locally yet include the Spinosaur (also three colour-ways) and the Ankylosaurus (two versions). Of more interest perhaps are the mini raptors and Archaeopteryxes, both of which seem to be the additional animals in the little eggs we've seen a few times here now?

They must have been added as copies to those mini-micro sets after Iwako added them to these carded sets? There is a whole page in the catalogue on how to spot fakes, and in chatting to the girls on the stand I think both the Wilko and The Works' versions (including the Christmas set on the Blog this year) are knock-offs.

A small display on the stand at Toy Fair 2020, I think they are both being stalked by a large yellow & white monkey, but it might have been a chipmunk!

I knew there had to be a second Tyrannosaur colour!

They're not rare and they never will be rare, but they are fun, they are well made and they are a global collecting phenomena, with a vast number of official colour-ways, the many possible combinations . . . and the copies to find; it's box-ticking on a grand (but equally - quite small) scale!

The 'collection' now; the Dimetrodon (which we may or may not have seen in an update) seems to be a discontinued model, as I've never seen it in H's Bazaar and it's not in the current catalogue? I would expect at least one colour variation?

If you can't find them try Green Elephant Trading for your nearest stockist. 

A is for Again!

It's funny; on the Blog, some - stand-alone - things have come and gone, some things get a re-hash every few years (WHW), other's grow and fade (insects) but will return, while a few become scheduled features (ITLAPD and Rack Toy Month!), but these? These came quite late (year seven?) and now just keep coming! Dinoraser Chinasaurs!

Picked this up in Smiggle the other day and I'll need to keep an eye on them as I haven't been paying close-enough attention - I thought all that pink and mauve meant they were more like Clair's or Accessorize, so I just used to walk past!

Speaking of which, there are now several of these stationary/novelty chains; Neon Sheep, Paperchase, Smiggle, [Flying] Tiger and Typo, to name a few, and they are competing with the Poundland's and Wilkinson's/Wilcos of this world, to shift vast quantities of what is mostly utter shite! It cannot continue indefinitely, given the damage being done to the planet, but while it does; I will keep a look out for the figurals!

We've seen the sculpts before; twice - I think? But these have some new colours and have been impregnated with fruity scents, which don't mean they smell like a Californian hairdresser who likes frilly, purple shirts, but rather that they smell of oranges or bananas &etc.

Although, as they have been Sqiudgged-together in a plastic egg for a while, it's hard to tell which is supposed to be what fruit, as they all smell like the old Bundeswher ration-pack, boil-in-the-bag, mixed-fruit desert!

A few days later and these turned up in Paperchase, seen before in Wilko and - courtesy of Brian B - badged to Imperial in the US, they clearly had new poses and colours, so I grabbed a couple (quid each? cheap as TV antique-dealers chips!), but suspect I'll have to go back and study them more closely, with a view to further purchases, as when I got them home and had a proper look . . . .

. . . I found an Archyop... an Archieo... err . . . a featherd dino-bird I hadn't seen in the store, and realised there are two new pose/colour animals in each egg? So I will need to check there aren't more? New sculpts are a pterodactyl, an over-scaled velociraptor, an under-scaled T-Rex and the furry one! Note: one was short-packed with only seven items in total.

So there you go, both out there now, sixth or seventh post on the subject in the last 36 months or so, and if it's 'your thing'; all the better - Chinasaur Dinorasers!

W is for Well, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Not so much a follow-up as a return-to or more of an annual glance-at?

I said I wouldn't subject you to the Basingrad statues, not least because they are all over the place and I can't be arsed to look for them; it may be the season of goodwill to all men but I'll be damned if I'm going to troll round Basingstoke looking for something you probably don't want to see, and saw last year anyway!

But I didn't say I wouldn't subject you to a few nutcrackers, just for the hell of it, and worse, having got the 'Fleet' day out of the stack, today we're clearing the miscellaneous 'Proper Crimbo' odds'n'sods from the queue!

This (on the right) was the 49th toy-scan of January (I'm up to 87 already [Sun. 2nd] for December, mostly archive stuff) and was an impulse-buy in the Paperchase January Sales (probably the only one!), relief stickers; you know; those foam-filled squidgy things, and at 20p or something I thought they were worth a punt . . . I'm not so sure now, but they've helped make the post! They go with the flats! 20mm!

The full force of TKMaxx's 'large' size, nutcracker display on the 23rd October; they were still putting other stuff out as I shot their morning's work! I was over there on Saturday of the week just gone and it's all a bit chaotic now as that 'bit' of Christmas is wound-down to make way for the edibles, bathroom gift sets, novelty socks and etcetera, and then it'll be January Sale stuff!

Brian Burke took these at the start of November in - you won't be surprised to hear, from the graphics - the gift shop of Cornell University! I'm not sure if I should be impressed by the marketing application, or mildly depressed by the inherent naff'ness? But many thanks to Brian for sending them, and they are rather smart in the red and white 'team colours', maybe the teams should be made to play a game dressed as nutcrackers, against a similarly attired opposition . . . or snowmen!

. . . I don't follow American Football, but that's a game I'd kill to see! They could all have giant foam crowns and shoulder-pads along with those big boots from Jeux Sans Frontières. In fact, we should have a 10-a-side with the Premier League's mascots!

I used to find these faintly sinister as a kid (like that awful shelf-elf - he's still as sinister as hell's gates), but they seem to be growing on me in old age; now I know the protective nature of their mythology.

That's Crimbo nutcrackers, for 2018!

F is for Festive Fun

And excellent stocking-fillers if you have little-ones! These are currently in Paperchase, I think they were a quid-each . . . I buy this stuff so you don't have to, but they are fun!

Iwako Christmas puzzle erasers, except they aren't puzzles like 'jig-toys' are puzzles (so they don't get to go on that page), they are really plugging/stacking toys more akin to swoppets but without the ability to swop, except between same-pose items.

Santa' in two colours, we've seen Iwako several times now so there's not much to add, but they are out there at the moment if you are tempted; they would also go very well in make-your-own Christmas crackers, if you do that in your household.

R is for Rubber Raiders Run Rampant

Seen briefly earlier in the year, this is the Paperchase carded pirate rubber/pencil-eraser I got in a new-year's sale while visiting PW's editor earlier in the year.

Blurb Kreator 4.2 says; Packaging - forms of ephemeral and/or disposable material used for transporting goods safely and/or hygienically, without damage from factory to end-user, or from one user to another!

The monkey is in three pieces (hung from the yard-arm by the Bwreaksiteers of the North East, you know? But if he was waving a bloody-great knife around - he deserved it; Vichy swine-monkey pirate!), the parrot and the pirate four-chunks each, while the treasure chest is the real eraser; a solid lump!

R is for Rubber Round-up

I don't know when 'eraser' replaced 'rubber' or why, I vaguely remember the new wave of European rubbers from Pelican, Staedtlar Norica, Rötring and co., coming to the UK at some point in my childhood with 'eraser' on their little card wraps, and while much better that the old India-rubber ones which seemed to be made of either wood-pulp (the pink 'pencil' rubbers) or recycled sandpaper (the 'ink' rubbers)* I wondered at the need to change the name, after all they rubbed stuff out didn't they?

I ask because for a while they were interchangeable words or terms, but these days rubber is rarely used, and when listing on auction sites, or tagging on Blogs 'Eraser' is supreme and 'Rubber' carries the slightly giggly baggage of French Letters and English Overcoats!

* While ink rubbers had a tendency to drill holes in your exercise book, they weren't as vicious as 'typewriter rubbers' which seemed to be made from recycled concrete!

Anyway - as the trope of 'A is for . . . ' I stuck-with years ago continues ad nauseum (it was going to be a quick single run through the alphabet and then more normal post titles) it gets harder to find title-words which haven't been used for those things which keep coming-up.

All of which is a overly long-winded intro for bugger-all's worth but it's also sometimes hard to find an intro paragraph in a fuzzy brain . . . and it gets us to picture one!

As a follow-up to January's football mini-season, Terranova sent me this image of another Amscan rack-toy which - if nothing else - is fun! But it's also useful! I suspect the bar-hole that appears to run through the shoulders is designed with the placing of a pencil in mind, for the playing of school-desk-table-bar-football!

Brian also sent this which is similar to a set of four we looked at a couple of Christmases ago as a shelfie from Basingrad, but I think this chap is larger and more angular? Obviously one of four, he is distributed also by yesterday's new tag; MZB, as Imaginations this time, not Inc. He may be the same in individual packaging though, I can't find the images now, but will check when I upload the post!

Really meant for TLAP Day, but we can return to look more closely at the figures then; I picked this up in Woking on Tuesday in an end of January Sales clearance sale in Paperchase, in April??!! There's no way I'd give you four-fifty for a half a palm-full of erasers, but one-fifty? . . . Bargain!

Brian also found these . . . how f*****g cool are these? These are too cool for the International Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol School, that how cool! Imported into North America by the regulars here; Greenbrier (USA) and DTSC (Canada) I've got my eyes peeled until they hurt so's not to miss them if they turn-up this side of the pond!

Soldiers and erasers, erasers that are soldiers; "Rub him out Private!", I'd like to think my work here is done, but this is the Internet and you're only as good as your last post, so - more to come! And thanks to Brian for most of these.

C is for Carboniferous-crayon Correctasaurs!

Another quickie here, I found a quid's worth of polymer dinorasers in The Works the other day and thought I'd better grab them, as these things disappear if you don't buy them when you see them - ironically though; if you do buy them they often then hang-around for months!

While I had them in front of the camera I sorted the Dino's into new boxes and took a couple of comparisons of the existing eraserpods. At the same time I bought another quid's worth of puzzel-ball eraser in Rymans which has gone on the jig-toys page.

These are the newies, somewhere between the minis and the 'standards' in size and some new colours with - from the left - a sauropod, spinosaur, meat eater (fore-claws are too big for Tyrannosaurus) and ceratopsian.

Here they are with the previous effort from The Works we looked at a year or two ago, the strangely fully-round 'flats'! You can see the new ones are quite a bit smaller, but better sculpts, However; both these sets are at least original designs, all the other dinosaur erasers we've seen here at small scale world are from the same eight sculpts . . .

. . . as can be seen in this rubber round-up.

Front left are the Imperial minis Mr. Berke kindly sent to the blog last year, with the Wilco ones to the right. Immediately behind them are the four new ones and then the four older ones from The Works with a mix of WHSmith's (blue & red) and Paperchase's (orange & green) at the back.

The thing is - all four of the WHSmith set are reproduced in the orange quartet from Paperchase, whether this means there is/was a second set of WHSmith ones mirroring Paperchase's green ones or not I don't know. Further to that though is that the later mini's are also aping seven of Paperchase's eight sculpts.

This also suggests that an eighth pose (spinosaur) may be in some of the Imperial sets, if not the Wilco ones, or, given the Wilco ones were paired more carefully than the Imperial ones, that there was a whole second assortment in the Wilco eggs?

Hawkin's Bazaar have some lovely, well detailed, bi-coloured, puzzle-eraser dinosaurs at the moment, but they are  not so cheap, so while I have looked upon them with admiration - several times; I have yet to shell-out any shekels for one!

I knocked this up at the end in case my descriptive prose was more confusing than clarifying!

Comparison of the packaging - I stress these are all contemporary or should at least still be findable, there are older erasers in storage including some Dino's (I think) so a return to wrangling rubber is inevitable!

R is for Robot Follow-up

Having added that set of five eraser-robots from a charity shop the other day, I popped into WHSmith in Basingrad on Friday, and a year or so after I bought the pink-bot in a sale, I found they had three more at 50p each, one was damaged but the other two were fine, so the quid was parted-with

Here's the two new - rather frowny - miscreants, one arm's fallen-off but they are a bit loose anyway and there's nothing wrong with it, the one I left had the receiving-stud broken-off, two for a pound; you can't say no!

With apologies to Ray Winston - I know he's the Daddy really!

Droid Army - a round-up of robots, all previously Blogged here I think, bar the BraveStarr Galaxy Rangers robo-Wild West figures from Hing Fat et al - not sure about the silver PVC chap, have we had him? I've more of that type in storage so we'll return to them again; I'm sure. Droids come in all shapes and sizes!

Three pens and eight erasers; office-bots!

T is for Two - Charity Shop Plunder

The other plus drôle  from yesterday's post is that A) I already had this post in the queue when I bought the Leprechauns last week, and then B) this week I had several scores, in various charity shops, in two towns! Among the new finds were a lovely board-game for a quid and several bags of oddities including two examples of figures already waiting in the pipeline from Poland.

Indeed - there's now so much in the pipeline I don't know when half of it will get Blogged! And the Blog will trip the 2-million hits mark, in the first or second week of October . . . it's all rather go-go-go at Small Scale World, but if you keep coming; I'll keep posting! Although; you will have to accept the odd dud, and for some of you - both these will be duds . . . I love'em!

Picked this up about three weeks ago, Blue Cross (animal charity - we have dominion over them and we treat them like shit), it's marked Chap Mai, is basically a Land Rover Defender and probably came with the figures we looked at a while ago hidden in a C130 Hercules or aircraft-carrier play-set.

The front (radiator area) however seems to contain some H2 / Hummer DNA! While there are two locating-slot type-things sticking down underneath that make it impossible to push over soft furnishing like carpets . . . Doh!

Saw these in Paperchase about two years ago, baulked at 4-quid'odd, happy with 75p! It's robots, five ov'em, with gears for eyes and radio aerials designed by a blind man who only had a broom-handle and some tennis-balls to hand! They look like mobile, clockwork, Norwegian stoves!

'Revenge of the Demented Toasters!' - Coming-soon to a theatre near you; be amazed by the lack of electrical flex; be horrified by the slightly orangey-red elements; be slightly miffed by the trail of crumbs; you'll never bath with the door unlocked again!

I is for Iwako

Right...total surfeit of vintage crap in the last few days so lets have a look at some modern crap! This crap is - on one level - real crap, but it's also trendy-crap which means that in about 15 years time you'll have 30-somthing's on whatever replaces Facebook, or whatever Blogger's morphed-into going "Ooh, I remember collecting them back in the twenty-teens!"

Take the Deiner Industries robots I posted right back at the start of this blog as a minor make, they now have several web-pages and a couple of forum threads across the Internet, dedicated to them by the LRG (little Rubber Guys) collectors, who are a generation below me.

Anyway lets look at them...

 ...except of course - you've already seen them...there are great piles, tables, racks, tubs and other displays of them in WHSmith, Paperchase, Staples, Rymans, all the toy chains, most of the independent toy shops, Wilko/Wilkinson's and most supermarkets!

You just saw them out of the corner of your eye and dismissed them as crap - correct, well done, move to the back of the class and muck about!

But a massive collectability-factor with endless colour variants means they are taking-off like Loom-bands did last year (readers in the US had the bands craze a year or two earlier...I won't be covering them here, nor Hipsters with Merman hair-do's!!! Planet's going to the dogs...), and as new packaging types come out the older ones get reduced - and they're not expensive to being with - so collecting on pocket money budgets is a goer.

The above are the two standard formats from Iwako themselves; carded sets of 6 or 7 items and individual bags with a header card.

Ty have re-packed some in the hope of repeating the success of their now fading Bennie-Babies, but giving them a name and doubling the price hasn't helped when the originators are flooding the market with their originals!

There are non-animal subjects around like these trucks, although these might not be Iwako originals, the Wilko ones seem close but not quite (see below), however they are cheap, with the three cats being offered for 49p

Anything coming from the Far East is soon copied in the...er...Far East! these are fakes, found in an Independent toy retailer and were also only pennies. They (Playwrite) are quite poor, with daft colours and a poor register for the components, the Wilko ones are closer to the originals but made in China, not Japan

A comparison between various Iwako and non-Iwako giraffes, some dice (also Wilko) and a nice Battleships game from WHSmith wihich was around five or six quid I think, but I couldn't resist it. Wilko also do three larger stacking space-ships, but I forgot to photograph them!

All these are made from a new hybrid synthetic rubber, which is a softer version of the stuff HäT used on their Assyrian Chariots, it is gritty, easy to tare and not very good at the job it's earmarked to do...erase pencil lead!

However the old PVC and soft styrene that made the best 1970-90's erasers were very damaging to the planet and the UN are keen to get PVC phased out completely in time, so this stuff is presumably a step toward that goal?

Some more shots, it's all self explanatory. Apart from a bear that was blogged here a while ago; I was bought the first few as gifts, and since last autumn have been building up a small collection specifically for this post, that's them done and I won't be seeking any more, but they will start to come in in mixed lots in a few years - guarantee it!

Link:
Iwako Company Website

D is for Dinosaurs - Modern

Most of these have been sitting in Picasa for a year, or two, or more! So they may not all still be available, however the article will give you an idea of the sort of stuff out there these days if you have a hankering to start collecting - mostly small - dinosaurs! Or to identify some if they come in with mixed lots of something else....as is often the case!

The fad for hiding things in plaster must be more than ten years old now and most toy or gift shops have something like this in them most of the time (we looked at Pirates a while ago). and while there is some sense in putting plastic 'fossils' or plastic 'skeletons' in plaster; a whole - glow-in-the-dark - dinosaur? Anyway, these Geoworld digging sets were 99p in The Works a while ago and I bought one for the hell of it. I haven't got it out as they are all illustrated on the box and he/she is easier to store still in the box with a pile of other boxed things!

Paperchase had these for a couple of quid a year or so ago, although I think they are still available. While being rather rounded-off for their primary design-use of pencil-erasers,they are never-the-less reasonable renditions and most dinosaur fleshing-out is conjecture anyway! Indeed, in recent years they've re-invented the way they believe a lot of them moved and stood upright so it's a very movable feast!

Signature Publishing's Dinomite is one of those ephemeral 'comics' that come and go with print runs of - sometimes - only a year or so, I don't even know if it's still going, but there are several 'dinosaur'-titled kids periodicals on the self at any given moment and they all buy-in mass-produced Chinese manufactured bits and bobs as cover premiums, as this had two I bought it.

The contents (from Co-Prom) are common 'toob' toys which have been around for a while now, but this stuff gets marketed in dozens of ways, and they are quite nice sculpts.

Back to The Works for more clearance! Nicely finished with a matt coat, these are let down by being a bit wobbly, they're made of one of these new slightly 'crumbly' hybrid plastics like some of the HäT stuff which seems to be PVC with a bit of styrene in it?

The rest of the Dinowaurs (geddit?!) bumpf from One2play, the inevitable 'collectors/trading' card and a set of rules for a sort of three-dimensional 'Trumps'. These were down to 49p, so I grabbed a handful over a week or two, while they were available!

All the above are small figures, a few inches long at most (the Paperchase are the biggest), but then collecting dinosaurs in true scale at 1:7something or even 54mm would require a warehouse as a living space...