L is for the London Scene

Peter Evans also sent me some rack-toy stuff in time for the end of a slow month! We've seen some of it before, but images is images and these blogs are all about the images;

There's a lot of this kind of thing around at the moment, funny little pull-back-and-go cars, carts and these trikes, ridden, driven or mostly consisting of baby animals, teddy bears or dinosaurs, and I've seen boxed-sets of multiples!

 

I think we've seen both of these here, but new images, and out there now (try garden centres, if out of town), Peterkin above and Halsall below, the Peterkin's are similar to the old Ackerman (et al.) sculpts, while the HTI set is from a current generation of China-troops in the style of modern US GI's.

 

These are the larger version or 'next size up' from the sets we saw out of Poundstretcher the other day, Supreme copies, but here four figures (instead of two) and two main accessories instead of one, so presumably four assortments, two with cowboys and two with Indians. 

 

 

And I think we saw a green one of these a few years ago, also Poundstretcher, or similar? Soft vinyl or silicon rubber key-ring dinosaurs.

 

Many thanks to Peter for these, all submissions gratefully received! 

T is for Two - Peterkin

When we looked at the Peterkin's I both purchased and shelfied in a garden centre near Borden, back in the autumn, I mused that there must be cats, if - as there were - they had a set of dogs, and sure enough, in another garden centre I found the 'missing' cats, and a set of birds, so grabbed both!

 

Cats on the left, birds on the right!

 

The birds can stay in their bag, they look OK and it's reminded me I should pop-up to Birdworld and see what they've got in their gift shop, it must be 50-plus years since I was last there! 

 

The cats are a bit disappointing to be fair, a bit lacklustre, particularly the tabby-cats, although half an effort has gone into the grey, but the two gingers are very poor, while I'm not sure what species the one in the top left corner is supposed to be, but, still, cats is cats!, and under the poor decoration (the Calico is the best, I think), they are characterful sculpts!

P is for Peterkin - 4 of 4 - New Purchases

OK, so, probably the best post of the four, as we get a bit closer to them, and they are three new sets! These were a few quid each, so I grabbed the three different ones I saw, and they are not carrying the contents of the sets we've looked at earlier this morning!

The My Farm (possibly the least original title for a set of rack toy farm animals ever!) seems to contain a set of totally different sculpts from the bucket, the Dog World hints at a Cat World, which I would have bought in preference if it had been there, but it wasn't, and it may just be wishful thinking on my part? While we have a set of soldiers, looked at properly, below!

 

The dogs are nicely executed, but let down by a rather nondescript colour scheme, with the dogs moulded in either a white or mid-tan polymer, but then decorated in black or a brown of the same shade? But they seem to be new sculpts, although - famous lasts words - they may well turn-out to be copies of Schleich or Papo or someone like that.

It's one of the big jobs in my future, sorting all this farm-zoo-bird-sea life-insect-dinosaur stuff out, and attributing it all properly, but hopefully when I get stuck into the A-Z blogs properly, it will all come together better, for now, we look at this stuff just to help ID some of it!

The horse has a rather daft face (the bucket horse is much better) but the rest of the set is reasonably good, and well decorated for the price-point/rack-toy type, while a smaller bag is stapled into the larger carrier, with the poultry in it, clearly they are a separate tool and get passed across the factory-floor after decoration/sorting!

 

The military set contains 16 figures around 54/60mm (depending on the pose), and they seem to be copies of the New Ray figures (which must be 20+years old now), but the quality of them suggests they may be from the New Ray tool, I won't be able to say until I've compared them all . . . 'them' being several other sets of clones, along with the originals!

 

They are numbered on the underside of the base (or the belly of the prone figure), which will also help with the tool comparison, and are that 'first' Gulf War (liberation of Kuwait) uniform style, US GI's. As you can see, cavity 5 is closer to 70mm if he stands up!

 

So that's Peterkin given more coverage that they probably deserve in one day, but nice to see someone importing that amount of cheap pocket-money stuff these days!

P is for Peterkin - 3 of 4 - Shelfies

If you happen to be within comfortable driving distance of Borden in Hampshire, there is a Peterkin motherlode to be mined in the big Farm Shop there (Malthouse and Osborne Farms, Country Market, Garden Centre, Farm Shop & Shopping Village), along with a lot of Siku and Maisto farm stuff! It's only ten-minutes up the road from Bird World too, or five minutes from the Monkey thing at Alice Holt!

The farm sets take up a fair bit of the shelf space, as farm is the main theme with all the stocked toys, at a Farm Shop! I did purchase some Peterkin (next post) but the bagged farm had very different contents/sculpts from the big tub (which was only £8.99, but I was feeling tight, and don't have the room right now), so they are obviously using different sources in China, for these sets.

Wild/zoo animals and dinosaurs again.

 

Both the farm and wild animals sets in these tubs share the quirk of the dinosaur sets in having the bulky, paint-decorated animals filled-out with smaller-scale 'monobloks' in bright colours of polymer, and all the animals seem to be PVC-types, but the scenic accessories are polyethylene or polypropylene?

And the medieval set was there.

These are the sets which have managed four previous mentions in the Tag List, not something for me, I think I called them Juvenilia last time! And when they have come in, in mixed lots, they have gone back to charity soon-enough, but someone may be interested (some of our fellow collectors chase Lego or Playmobil after all?), and they are figural, if a bit daft, so I shot them, and they are here now!

P is for Peterkin - 2 of 4 - Spring Fair '23

A few weeks after the London Toy Fair in January, I went to the Spring Gift Fair in Birmingham, at Peter Evans' advising, and - for rack toys - it was probably better than the Olympia show, certainly Peterkin had a much better stand, and I shot more there. I should add, I've not managed any of the Trade Fairs this year!

A bit blurred!

Those dragons!

The tower

 

Only more of the same, and I nearly posted them altogether, but as I'm likely to do the Gift Fair more regularly, thought I'd tag it separately, so two posts were the result, and while only the two tubs were out on display at both shows, a year-and-a-half ago, there were a farm and zoo set in tubs, and the next post will show how the line has expanded since.

P is for Peterkin - 1 of 4 - Toy Fair '23

Seems to have been all the 'P's this month, sometimes that how the cookie crumbles! A quick look at Peterkin, who were founded in the 1950's as W.J.Brown (Toys) Ltd., and changed their name to Peterkin in 1995, probably at the changing of the generations (?), and who have managed to get their Tag in the list four times so far, mostly for younger kid's toys.

 

 

We actually looked at these in the Supreme mini-season, back in '22 where they were generics off of that Amazon, after previously being under the Toy Major label, currently here in Peterkin packaging, and the best way to get them if you haven't yet, as you get both foot and mounted with siege engines, along with two dragons and a tower.

 

While there was also a dinosaur set on display with a mix of larger, decorated models, and smaller 'monobloc' types in brighter-coloured plastics. I know where you can get these in the Central Southeast (forthcoming post), but they should be findable on-line, as everything is on-line . . . Somewhere!

S is for Shelfies - Geoworld, Imperial, NBC Apparel & Safari Etc . . .

This article's folder was titled 'Shelfies II' revealing the fact that it was supposed to follow-on from another (then recent) shelfies post, which was back in Jan/Feb I think . . . needless to say it never happened!

These were shot by Brain Berke back in the Autumn of last year, but will still be around and about. I don't actually collect these; I have enough of a problem with the few sticky/silicon things I do have to start amassing a new genre of them (the early ones leech gunk everywhere!), but there are probably some people out there who specialise in such things?

Wall Tumblers, Wall Walkers, Sticky Dribblers, Mirror Mountaineers (I made that one up!), Window Jumpers . . . whatever they're called they seem to be having a renaissance at the moment, or is it that they've always been there but I've been noticing them more now I'm looking harder? Imperial, still going strong, bringing cheap rack-toys to the masses!

I'd had a session in TKMaxx just after Christmas, which mostly reprises what I've shown in previous shelfie posts, but you can never have too much imagery! Here we have more of the Dr. Steve Hunters' dinosaurs from Geoworld, and while we may have seen one or two of them before, they are really lovely and I just shot all the offerings they had that day which happened to collage nicely as a quartet.

Fantasy dragons from NBC Apparel, relatively compatible with smaller scales, they could be used with larger figures, if only to reduce space-used by constricting 'scale'. Of note is that colours other than those shown on the artwork are available.

The 'toob' of dinosaurs is also an NBC Apparel branded set, I don't know who was responsible for the large 'baby' farm animals behind them (probably Peterkin?), which I also suspect may be squeakers, but if you have kids or (who are we kidding!) grand-kids, these might be worth looking out for and they are figural! But it was the Dino's I was trying to shoot!

Other toobs include sea-life in the same series as the dinosaurs in the previous shot, and larger dinosaurs and wild animals in longer tubes without the internal divider-card but with 'filler' palm trees - both sales techniques reduce the 'body-count'!

We looked at these - also NBC - around Christmas-time but I took some more shots, some of possibly different animals (I think the giraffe is new), large, hollow, squeegee animals, but quite accurate (given what scant data we have beyond the stone bones!), and - in the case of the big 'Dippy' dino' - as close to 54mm compatible as you are going to find!

Brian also sent these a while ago, I've seen a prehistoric tube from them in their normal series, but these are a larger scale and blister-carded, probably, primarily aimed at natural history museum's gift-shops. Courtesy of Safari; it's one for the family-album - great-great-great^x20 granddad and some of his decedents/our relatives!

J is for Jolly Jeep

Picked this up on Friday in the local independent toy shop, it used to be called Fleet Toys when I was a kid (at one point they had three shops within sight of each other; FT, Fleet Cycles and Fleet Models!), but I think it's now part of the co-operative buying group known as Toymaster? Anyway, it could have gone in next Friday's H is for..., but as it was a retail purchase, it should have a post of its own!

This is it, they had about four of them, no counter-box, no packaging, around 1:32nd scale/54mm figure-compatible and looking quite Cararama-like (but they were mostly 1:43 or HO, made in China by Hongwell) in the manufacturing quality. Separate tyres and a tampo-printed plastic windscreen which doesn't fold down.

The small load-area is filled with two ammunition crates to hide the screw-fix construction, which is driven through from the other side.

It's actually made by another of China's prolific contractors; Welly, also overprinted to Peterkin (who we last saw on the blog, hiding-out at TKMaxx) and you can see the method of fixing the wheels is a bit odd, I guess it reduced the material used in a hidden section?

A couple of bonnet-numbers from the spares-box would help, and you may have noticed mine has caught the printing pad on the edge of the bonnet (hood), so could do with a bit of weathering to hide the damage!

S is for Shelfies - TJ / TK Maxx

So; I take the odd shelfie or two every time I go to TKMaxx in Basingrad and while a lot of them are of not much interest, they are all figural, so have at least some relevance, and this is a round-up of the last few month's-worth.

Remember that weird Superman with foam wings, who came-in in a mixed lot, got photographed and went back to charity? Well, the mystery seem to be solved; modern-to-current, made by an i-Star Entertainment and being fired by means of an older type pull-cord mechanism and a more techie' trigger which seems to momentarily store the kinetic energy. And - apart from missing the trigger and pull cord, mine was probably/vaguely complete?

Chad Valley are very much a trading brand now, having been resurrected and gone bust, bough by Woolworth's and gone bust, bought by Argos, bought by or sheared with Sainsbury's . . . and cleared through TKMaxx, while both organs are themselves still trading!

The figures (54/60mm) look familiar and I feel I've seen them before somewhere, but then they would be bought-in, as a trading brand Chad Valley does no original manufacturing itself anymore. Indeed; I think the building has the same sticker as the Ja-Ru (?) set Brian shelfied a year or two ago? But the figures are from somewhere else, the helicopter a common rack-toy trope, the traffic-cone from elsewhere?

Sub-scale shuttle and intermediate scale figures (around the 30/35mm mark IIRC) from Johntoy of the Netherlands, but I was drawn to the satellites which would go well with my Airfix HO-OO astronauts, but it wasn't particularly cheap so I left it one the shelf!

Diving out of TKMaxx for a moment I shot these dolls house accessories in Flying Tiger a while ago, notable for the fact that as polymers continue to be implicated in mass pollution, environmental damage, infertility, biological-androgyny and extinction, wood and metal will regain their lost roles in the toy industry . . . as they will in the kitchen, garden and garage/shed!

Back to the Max' and every boy's Christmas fantasy was a big box with everything in it, and this isn't far off! You even get a small forest of poplar trees! Shit image means I can't read the full logo but it's looks like Play Fund, Play Land or Play Pound (as in 'Dog Pound')? This is likely a phantom-branded packaging - several of the vehicles are recognisable from the multi-brand post a couple of Rack-Toy Month's ago.

The kneeling police sniper is an old (and as we've seen here at SSW in the past) much copied Ja-Ru sculpt, so I assume the others will be two, all-six drawn from a larger 'menu' of figures, produced by a contract manufacturer somewhere.

Just because it's figural . . . and may turn-up in a mixed lot! It says 'Brick' so may be Duplo-sized/compatible?

Seen at the London Toy fair in January '18, seen them in TKMaxx before, Interplay's Fairy Garden the fairy is another one likely to turn-up in mixed lots and may be of use to fantasy collectors, if only to have the game-master declare her 'captured by Orcs' and demand her rescue as a game-wining aim!

Phidal - smaller toy/book confection, and aimed at much younger readers than the full-size My Busy Books, can use non-licensed stuff without hitting sales, not that they aren't loosely based on My Little Pony, but them isn't MLP only a further commercialisation of the pink, yellow and blue animals transfer-printed on our cots and play-pens by Pedigree Triang Mettoy fifty years ago?

We saw a couple here in a mixed lot a while back, both went back to charity the next day, Peterkin are behind this juvenilia.

Two brand-marks here, Country Life and My Lovely Horse, both from Johnjoy out of Holland (a place called Waddinxveen), not my thing, but for farm collectors, horse collectors or animal collectors, they may have appeal, clearly going after the Breyer market, which both Schleich and Papo are also chasing these days.

If Tomy are to do anything useful with that Britains Farm property of theirs, they might do well to dump the Britains tools, double (or halve?) the scale and go after a slice of this bandwagon's pie!

That's yer'bunch of mixed shelfies; with one exception, all recently or currently from TKMaxx.