L is for Legami

Mentioned twice recently, and both products make a reprise in this post, the Italian (Milan-based) Legami is a new name in stationary, or new to me at least, and as a follow-up to the previous post, continuing with the theme of pencil tops and etcetera!

 

Pencil Tops - We've seen the Panda here at Small Scale World

 

Foam Unicorns!

Definitely a theme at the moment! I'll have to look out for the [scented? really?] eraser, and the light-up pencil-sharpener, although both are cartooney, it doesn't stop us buying them/shooting them so you don't have to! There's also a spaceman on the three-colour highlighter, with an ariel on his helmet, like the Stingray crew!

 

Clingers and moulded finials

 

Looks to be the same as the ones I found in WHSmith, a few years ago now, during the height of the Iwako (and clones) moment - although they are still everywhere; I think the initial flood has retreated from the doorstep! So could they have been re-badged Legami all along?

 

All the above shot at the 2025 Spring Fair at the NEC in February.

F is for Found Objects - Three of . . . We'll See

Stationary here at Small Scale World usually means erasers or sharpeners, and sometimes pencil tops and while there are some pencil tops here, there's also a fake, a novelty pen and a pen-converter!

 

Some stationary items I found in an old desk, there was much more obviously, conventional stuff, one of which is here purely for a scaler - the iconic BiC Crystal, but among them were a joke rubber pencil (silver jobbie) and a teeny-tiny rabbit pencil top, on his own bespoke, teeny-tiny pencil, both credited to the Japanese Kutsuwa, who are still going 50-odd years later, this is just the kind of thing they were known for in the age of miniaturisation!

Either PVC or silicon rubber, it's not that clear, a bit soft for the former and a bit hard for the latter, I suspect PVC, as it has reacted with the 'paint' coating of the pencil, usually a form of powder-coating back on the day, to produce a chip-resistant surface.

Two more rodents turned-up a few weeks later in another part of the house/piece of furniture, and they triggered a memory of my having bought them for Mum, with my meagre pocket-money years before, they came in a little PVC wallet with a matching mousey notebook, and I think there were about eight or ten different little animals?

 

My brother bought a similar set of Snoopy ones I think (just printed pencils, no toppers and a little bigger), we wrapped them, and hid them in the tree at Christmas, so when she was helping us look for our chocolate bauble treats, she found them! I think, over the years, they were used as pencils with her pocket diaries, which always lose their little pencils!

 

This was mine! I don't know how it's survived, lost under the bed and found by Mum after I left home, maybe? It's an arrow! You could probably fire it, from a small bow, but you'd need to weight the end slightly to stop it spinning end-over-end! Unmarked polystyrene, but probably Hong Kong manufacture?

It was a Christmas stocking filler, we would have got one each (she was always scrupulously fair) but my Brother's may not necessarily have been the same, just another novelty pen of similar/identical cost . . . might have been a giant nail?

This actually came in recently, but I thought it could be added to this page for reasons of interest, as while we have a couple of pencil-top posts in the long queue, this is more of a converter, turning the writing instrument into a fish . . . of sorts!

It's actually too big for pencils, but works well with these Sharpies, I want a bunch now, different tails, dinosaur tails, a kangaroo tail . . . shaggy-dog tails!

H is for How They Come In - Cheap Deals

This post deals with stuff I picked-up while out and about last April-May, or at least that's when I shot the photographs, sometimes things get shot same the day sometimes they don't, nor do they always get photographed in the order they came in, so March may be the start-date of this little lot, but it hardly matters!

This must have been a previous (2020) Christmas range, on clearance, from the same Hobbycraft decoration line we've looked at here recently from the year just gone (2021), which are themselves now on clearance! Not the best sculpt, it seems to be channeling at least two species, but what do I know, the cake-decoration deer have their own box (there's so many of them) and he'll add to that 'archive'!

Erasersaurs, we may have seen them before as another iteration; I haven't checked, but, even if we have, they may be new colours. There is a post on Dinorasers in the long-queue, but these aren't in it?!! Asda supermarkets, and close-enough to the now ended Walmart ownership for them to possibly be findable over the pond in that establishment, but probably not now?

This was 20p in Paperchase! They had a table with tons of stuff, most of it one-offs, some of it quite dusty and had obviously had a serious five- or ten-year stock take and cleared out the forgotten corners, and 'behind the shelves' areas of the storeroom? You can see from the chunky pen that it's a largish beast and had a lovely metallic decoration. 'Bronty' the Biro!

This was in the same Paperchase pile, and also the only one, missing it's cap and not something I would normally give house room to, but A) it's cats! B) I had, only a few days earlier, split the cats, dogs and elephants into their own tubs, and C) 20p!! Soft-foam calico cats with a Biro up their arses!

Flying Tiger gave up this for a quid, the same day I think? It was my first trip to Basingrad since before lockdown (a year or so?) and is just for the archive, to ID in the future, to box-tick the brand and items, fun, silicon 'rubber jigglers' in the old-school style.

These were on clearance at TKMaxx, and you know by know I really like these, the . . . start again; We are about to look at three of these sets of Nano-Metal's from Jada, two of which (probably these two) were on clearance at TKMaxx, the other - I think - came in a few days later, either from eBay or Asda stores? But . . . it may have been a donation and because the amount of stuff which has joined the long-queue in the last 14-odd months is vast, I'm not 100% sure on the history of these now! So I'll thank the two obvious candidates - Brian Berke or Peter Evans - for everything they do for the Blog, and carry on as if they were three similar retail/clearance purchases a few days apart, nearly a year ago!

The first set (above) was a straight tie-in with the Incredibles movie, or at least Incredibles 2 which I haven't seen, but I thought the first one was fun and they have that lovely metallic paint which makes this range so lush, while there is a duplicate pose in the second set which is a sort of Disney 'starter' set with figures ancient ('classics') and modern (Pixar joint-productions).

I don't know who Baymax is (actually I've just Goggled him! Big Hero 6, which had totally escaped me?), but there are characters here from seven franchises, with pairs from Monsters Inc., and The Muppets.

The one I'm not so sure about, I think it was reduced in Asda, but . . . which definitely came in a week or two after the other two sets and, again, another 'starter' set to get you wanting more Disney "100% diecast" Nano Metal's, with a lovely pair from Alice in Wonderland, two Scrooge McDuck characters and little Lilo.

N is for Nostalgia - Meeces-to-peeces and a Cat, four Pelican's but no Swan!

I have been building-up a bunch of Nostalgia folders for anytime, or even a new Blog I've half a mind to at some point, but this one needs to go out at this time of year so it might as well be this year, as these were in our Christmas stockings many, many moons ago.

I can't now remember if we got two each one year, one each over two years, or one each with the spare mouse and cat retained by Mum? The fact is I do remember 'the' mice (at least two) being in Christmas stockings (which we always seemed to open about 4am!) one year toward the back end of the 1970's.

Made by the German firm Pelikan (pelican) similar-to but unrelated to Schwan-Stabilo, another German stationer, I don't know how many there were in the series or what other animals might have been produced, while Google and feeBay only seem to confirm they are hard to find! The black's dried-out and the green's gone a bit weird, while the Blue's gone turquoise!

I'd shot three before the blue one turned-up elsewhere, I don't know how they ended-up here, as they should have been played-with to death with by my Brother and I, but I guess Mum saved them when we'd gone off to big school! Nice thing to find many years later anyway!

They are similar to a series of trucks/cars both freewheeling and - I think - pull-back motor, which were also given animal/rodent faces and big coloured wheels, which were also popular novelties at the time, we had a gray rabbit and . . . a yellow cat? Also Crimbo-stocking presents but long gone now. D'you remember these?

S is for Swings & Roundabouts

An odd one here, and definitely from that 'We buy this shite so you don't have to' department, which has brought you so much quality tat over the years, I literally bought these knowing I was likely to be disappointed, but as they were so cheap, willing to take the hit if I got a Blog post out of them . . . this is a Blog post, but I was a bit disappointed; so - swings and roundabouts!

How they arrived, five novelty pens of Egyptian gods, in a fetching gold sprayed hard-placky, probably a cheap 'styrene, but I'll chuck ABS in the tags to cover my arse! 

There were branded to Toyvian but came [unbranded] from an Amazon warehouse so technically a  'generic' in phantom branding, and the photo's on the listing showed five different gods, but then stated they would be sent as a "random pattern", so a classic flagging of likely shite'ness in the 'small print' there!

Has it happens, getting two Bastets (insert your own joke about Amazon here), or two anything's is not so bad if you want to pair them-up either side of a doorway or something, but just annoying when you know there are other sculpts, and in fact three of the sculpts from the listing are missing!

Not strictly rack-toys, but priced in the same pocket-money / novelty brackets. And with both Anubis (jackal) and Bastet (cat) missing from the sales ads', I really can't bitch as much as I already have - here and elsewhere! A Pharaoh and Ra make up the four different ones I got, but that only brings us to problem number two.

The Pharaoh was broken! How? How do you break one (sealed) out of five (sealed together) and not the others? Probably because it was broken in the automated assembly and bagging process of a Chinese factory thousands of miles, and many months away from the ultimate delivery to my door, is how!

So, if we take the duplicate and the broken one out of the equation, only one of the five illustrated survives, with two newcomers! Suddenly seven-quid something starts to look pricy . . . we buy this shite so you don't have to!

From the back. If I wanted to use them as pens, obviously the Pharaoh's innards could be transferred to one of the others to extend their life, after they and run out, but pens, or 'more pens' is the last thing I need and they were purchased as novelty statuettes with a view to war-gaming scenery and that's where, hopefully you can see their potential . . .

. . . as here, where Atlantic's Pharaoh 'Ramses' is waved through the starg... err . . . portal to his throne room! Swings and roundabouts, init? They are what they are, and with a sand wash and matt repaint might be useful to someone! They do free-stand, without extra work, after the barrel and gubins are removed, but you'd need to fill the hole at the top.