F is for The Franchise Continues!

Not much new in the way of Phidal for a while now, but TKMaxx gets regular updates, usually of sets we've seen before, or stuff which I don't need or want here, but this was just about within the wider reach of the Blog, so I grabbed one.

 

There's a certain irony, that a set of films in which the various movie-kids have quite eclectic collections of toys, unlike our thematic boxes/tubs of wooden bricks, Action Man / Lego / Meccano / Airfix / chemistry set or model railway stuff, has given rise to a range of toys which now means millions of real kids have models of those self same eclectic mixes! All very Warhol's pop, eating itself.

 

I haven't seen Toy Story 4, nor any of the others, for that matter, but I've seen enough clips, and read enough to know that '4 is a slightly darker work, with the toys meeting new toys, falling out, getting back together, saying goodbye to each-other and generally, reflecting more on the fragmented life of an adult? 

 

There's supposed to be a Toy Story 5 in the works, and it's said to be darker still - Toys meet Tech; will TS10 have the toys suffering sun-fading and plastic disease, while their human owners, all grown-up, lose their homes to unemployment, or die of cancer in childbirth?

 

Cover.

 

Contents - the play-mat looks naff.

 

From the top left; Ducky, Officer Giggle McDimples (supposedly based on Polly Pocket toys, with a bit of Paw Patrol, she bears a remarkable resemblance to Lucy from  Peanuts?), a Combat Carl Junior, Duke Kaboom (who has since survived a law-suit from the estate of Evel Knievel), Forky the Spork, Woody, Bo Peep, Buzz,  Gabby Gabby and Bunny - Ducky and Bunny are carnival prizes, sewn-together at one point!

S is for Shelfies - A Roundup II

Mid Jan' found me back at The Range, looking for paint or something . . . cat tower? And I spotted these, they're . . . 

. . . not the best shot, but it was an afterthought, I just can't believe the shite being offered and/or bought by people, even as the planet dies in front of their eyes! TKMaxx/Homesense, B&M, Dunelm and The Range are full of this stuff, a sort of hollow-cast/slip-cast resinated clay, they are all supposed to have a butterfly on their nose, most just have a jagged-hole, was it customer vandalism, or did they unpack like that from Asia, and why have they been left there? If we're still here in 20-years; I'm going to be pleasantly surprised!

A few days later found me back at TKMaxx, and shooting HTI again, but not in search of bathroom accessories, nor in Basingrad, but popping into the Farnborough Gate one (bigger, but not necessarily better than Basingstoke) after visiting one of the other stores (probably during the Laptop debacle!), and the reason I said maybe firefighters in the previous post is because I already knew there were pit-crew!

Obviously not interested in the large carry-case (his tail is in the red card compartment), but the smallies, which as I mentioned the other day, is one of my aims to catalogue and ID, as many of as I can, on a single page at some point, so that's a set of five, courtesy of an outfit called Geemac Sales & Marketing  - box ticked!

This is a different kind of shelfie all together, shot in the Phillis Tuckwell charity shop here in Fleet, it's a hand-made, box-diorama, doll's house and I thought (afterwards) that the left-hand figure could be converted to Pooh Bear with the addition of a longer nose and some yellow-paint! It was 20-quid which is steepish for a charity shop, but a lovely thing!

These were fun, but a bit too juvenile to purchase (although I have some similar Llamas in resin so who am I? To cast aspersions!), therefore I shelfied them in passing. New from Phidal Publishing, and possibly aimed at even younger readers than the My Busy Books, you get four models per My Mini Busy Book.

These were also new from Phidal; large-piece puzzles (no figures), magnetic sketching sets (also no figures) and 'Tattle Tales' with figures, but more on them in a future post, suffice to say they are a disappointment!

 

I'm gussing these are all part of the 'Cost of Living Crisis', priced as they are, the same as old Busy Books used to be, while the Busy Books themselves (there are one or two in the queue I think) have gone up a pound to £6.99 here

P is for Pop is Eating Itself

I've mentioned it before, but this is a particularly sublime example of the genre, as two sets of Tolkein stuff hit the streaming platforms, not quite as Worhol'esque as Star-Wars-Super-Deform-Angry-Bird Pencil Tops, but here, we are looking at a real-world toy line, of characters in a fictional back-story animated movie of fictional characters in an older animated movie franchise, who are fictional toys, it doesn't get much more navel-gazing as an example of 'all out of ideas'!

We/re back with Phidal for the toys within toys licensed toys! Only ten items again, which seems to be the new normal under the cost of living crisis, but the playmat will iron-out at some point in the future and provide and excellent backdrop for space photo's.

Good guys, from the left for those who haven't caught the movie are; Buzz Lightyear (obviously!), Darby Steel (a lady, on parole); Commander Alisha Hawthorne (Buzz's trainer); granddaughter, Izzy Hawthorne and Maurice "Mo" Morrison.

Bad guys, Zurg (purple) and one of his automaton Zyclops's, I am one of those who haven't seen it, although it looks like fun, but I believe it's all about Zurg being a 'Bond villian' (in space) and Buzz saving the world!

Other items, Buzz;s ship (XL-01), an irritating (I'm sure) R2D2 knock-off and a cat, Sox the robotic cat to be precise! We make allowances for cats even if they are the annoying kid/Zoony/Jar Jar Binks/Daggit character! And I don't know if it is; I haven't seen the movie!

T 'other sides! Out there now, must be one of the latest sets from Phidal, the Movie only came out at the beginning of the summer, and nice figures . . . as styles change in the real world, so they change in pop-culture and - space armour wise - I feel these would go well with Halo figurines of similar size - 60mm'ish.

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.

B is for Brave Busy Book

I mentioned in another post over Christmas how TKMaxx didn't have the usual pile of Phidel Busy Books this year, and to be honest, the supply of them has been dwindling for some time, after trying to scalp a couple of extra-quid per unit, WHSmith seem to have stopped stocking them (locally at least) some time ago, and my last few trips to TKMaxx haven't seen any, but I have managed to pick-up a couple at Charity shops, and this in one of them!

Brave, a Disney Pixar movie which - like most of Phidal's choices - has totally passed me by! Not only that, I'm an old git, it's bound to happen; but I've never heard of it, despite it's having won lots of awards and sounding like I'd probably enjoy it (?) - I Googled it!

If the Mother turns into a bear (she does!) I guess the three little cubs are also the 'triplets', who might spoil the movie for me, I hate the annoying brat/comedy element (Daggit, I'm talking to you, and you Scrappy Doo, and yes Tweakie!), so three is just too much! But the mother/bear is a nice sculpt!

Most Phidal sets have rather naff play mats which consist of stills from the production, but this could have limited use as a pocket war games mat? Heavy cover, light cover and a quest/target to defend - the Henge!

That's it, box ticked.

Ph is for Phollow-up!

A couple of few other Phidal or Phidal-like bits and bobs which have accrued since we last looked at them, and pretty-much covering the gamut of subjects the Busy Books visit.

We looked at these in a previous round-up, but as a part set and added the cat in another post, here we see the whole set in one place, those missing previously are the first fairy on the top row, the yellow one on the bottom row and the ladybird.

The Thor is definitely Phidal, so is the little Ice Troll chap (as we've seen him before - 'in set'), so the fact that they all have a third marking type from those we looked at yesterday may therefore be an indication of intermediate production, I may - of course - be reading too much into it, but it seems to be; . . .

© xxxxxx DIS1301      -      [early 2000's]

© xxxxxx      -      [intermediate - mid 21stC, so far]

© xxxxxx (s18)      -      [current, from s13 - 2013?]

. . . but they have already outgrown their container, so when I re-house them (I've just done the Fontanini) I'll try to annotate them a little more accurately and do a better overview.

I think I may have shown the other two before, but they're here now anyway! Action movies, cartoons, superheroes, princesses, idiot fish, square-panted Bob-sponges, Peter Rabbit, ninja reptiles, Peanuts from Schultz, Shimmer & Shine, fairies, Minions, a well-behaved dinosaur, Transformers, DC, Disney, Marvel, Pixar . . . the Phidal stable!

News, Views Etc . . . Out There Now!

Quick run of some domestic and contributed shelfies;

I shot these in The Works on the 30th January, might be of some use to ship war-gamers, I'm guessing they are old 1960/70's tools put-back into production for the express production of a cheapie toy and three-quid's not a lot for a ship kit, even a small and perhaps dated one, anyone recognise the original from the instruction diagrams . . . or the artwork?

40-odd parts and can be finished as waterline, and while I suspect the artwork on the side of the box is the whole [four-kit] line (and my local store only has New Jersey's), they are all large capital ships with class-sisters who could be modelled from duplicate kits? Anyway, out there now, try the website?

These were TKMaxx, 6th February, more from HTI (Halsall)'s Teamsterz, a three-deck boxed set of approximately 1:48th/50th die-cast emergency/first responder vehicles with two more figures which will start to turn up in charity-shop bags soon and in rummage trays at show in a year or two!

Indecently - the card shipping container/port-a-cabin is an old Blue Box trick! Tom of Finland's got his truncheon out; he must be a special constable! But what's with the peaked, chef's hats! Out There Now!

Kinder egg's, pink, nom-nom-nomnivore for the use of; have a new series of Barbie's, I've lost count of how many lines there are in the range now, this must be the fourth or fifth line-up? Film Director Barbie, Doctor (or vet?) Barbie and . . . err . . . cage-fighter Barbie?

Figures are quite nice but idiosyncratic, with two clipping firmly into their bases and the other having no fixer and constantly falling-over! And they all have some kind of card interactive or backdrop, which are hideously bent from their time in the ovum and just get in the way, it's not even clear what the left-hand ones do, some sort of game I think, but multi-lingual pictogram instructions leave you with no real idea!

Each also comes with a mini sticker-sheet, but they are those paper ones Kinder have always used, which curl, dry and fall off over time. I wish they'd go over to the vinyl type that Lego use, if you get them straight and rub them on with a finger-nail; they stay-on! Out There Now, don't eat them all at once!

Sticking with capsule-eggs, but switching to contributions, Brian Berke found these Disney toy eggs in the 'States back in the late autumn, you can find Zàini in the UK, usually smaller independents or the sort of General Post Office/stationers which are becoming an endangered species in the South East!

I do have a few interesting Zàini-LZ (Luigi Zàini), Maraja, Metro, Zepter, Partizan (et al) capsule toys so one day we'll have a 'mini-season' on the minor-make capsule toys here, once the box turns-up in the garage! Although; Peter Evans gave me a bunch of Maraja last May, which are in the queue somewhere?

Brian also shot these at the end of December last year; really quite good-looking copies of Matchbox Afrika Korps in a nice sandy-coloured plastic, branded to Arcady from DA Toys Group, in the 'States Now!

And having mentioned Peter; he shot this set somewhere in North or Central (?) London (I guess) on the 14th of January. The fort - an apparently unbranded generic (there may be something on the back of the box?) - looks to be a solid, stackable modular thing, in a soft rubber or faom-plastic of some kind, while the figures have DNA from Starlux (archer) Cofalux (pole-arm) Timpo (mounted jouster) and Supreme (swordsman) among others!

He didn't say exactly where he'd found it - in an (un-named) discount store of some kind, but I've not seen them locally (we have 'Stepford' universal-brand high streets round here!), so try larger inner-city or out-of-town clearance places? It's bit pricy at £12.99 (for tight-wads like me) but very useful and a bargain at 2-for-twenty-quid; if it is in your budget. Also two forts would make a very substantial piece of baronial real-estate! While a single one would be equally useful for small-scale gamers. Out There Somewhere!

L is for Loose Ends - Phidal

An odd 'season'; I have been storing these posts and bits up since we last looked at Phidal back in June/July (?) meaning to have a day or two day mini-season, but due to non-existant plans going AWOL over the last few days, they haven't even appeared in a block when I finally got rung to them, so they might as well have been published when they came-in or were ready, but such is sod's law when it comes to the aspirations of pink monkeys!

These are the current 'believed to be' Phidal pile, with a Marvel 'babe' (top left) we may or may not have seen in one of the sets we've looked at.

To the right; a bunch of Monsters Inc., including a 'woman' (I don't want to upset its sensibilities!) in purple furry moon-boots which I know is in a stash of unknown vinyl somewhere - when I get round to them; I know I'm going to find a pile of Phidal in the stash.

The lower line-up is the Disney set Brian Berke sent us shelfies of, back in the spring (or even late last year), I don't know what that Mickey Mouse outline thing with a wheel on a stick; it could be a record player? It could equally be a whacky unicycle or an instrument of torture!

Brain has responded by sending shelfies of another Disney set! For those who collect these as a separate 'field', they all fit in very well with all the old Comic Spain, Bully, Disney Store, Heimo, Mattel, and Schleich stuff, except they are new . . . and cheaper!

Shot as dated, both in TKMaxx. I think I've reported on WHSmith's reduceing their rip-off prices to something closer to 'max's? They now seem to phasing them out as stock-items altogether?

TK' however have carried more and more as the year progressed and the last time I was in there, they had moved to an aisle-end downmstairs with the Crimbo food, chockies and 'smellies' gift sets.

Note also that the lower shelves have other interactive books and similar packaged 'play-sets', while about 10% of the Phidal's are the magnetic or suction-cup things. The tins are mostly colouring-book (or other paper-media) sets, while the Zoomers look fun and the Frosen set seems to contain Lego-likey, compatible with the origianl Hestair-Kiddycraft Kiddybricks I'm sure!

The missing 'fatty-cat' from the Tinkerbell Fairy set the other day, I knew I'd seen it somewhere and with the delay to getting the Phidal posts published, it turned-up, and got shot!*

*No cats were harmed in the making of this post . . . but one got shooed-off the PC . . . twice!

D is for the Day of the Dead

2017's Halloween movie of choice for the younger audience was a strange Orpheus in the Underworld-like tale, re-told with guitars and re-located to Latin America! Coco; Phidal has a set about that too . . .

Front and back covers, I always shoot the internal pages, but there would be real copywrite issues if Ishowed you all those, and anyway they aren't terribly exciting being - for the main part - cropped movie stills with a simplistic paragraph or two to re-introduce a few - but not always all - the sets characters. In  addition I'd have to find a load more blurb!

Contents; they don't seem to be terribly in-scale with each other, but having not seen the movie, I can't be sure it's not meant! The really tall skeleton needs a hot water straightening session, one day!

It's a problem I've noticed with these, and I'm not sure why; they have to be painted so any post-mould distortion should be weeded-out there; they are always loose in the compartment so it's not squishing at the packing stage; there must be a moment where they are subjected to a lot of heat, maybe up against the wall of a sun-drenched shipping container? But around one figure per every three sets needs some work, usually those with bases, or thin parts.

A few close-ups, as I'm not familiar with the film (centred on the Central / Southern Mexican festival of The Day of The Dead), I didn't really know what to shoot, so you get the demented Scooby-like dog and it's . . . what . . . underworld version . . . doppelganger, opposite number? A madi-gras decorated party-dog!

By far-and-away the nicest piece in my book (and in my opinion!) . . . and in every Coco book (!) is this jaguar/ram griffon/cockatrice hybrid hell-cat in a metallic blue/green rainbow with purple and orange bits - to cool for fashion school!!

Returning to the contents point, this animal is not explained in the text at all . . . but if I was twelve this would be on my desk at school!

F is for Phour More Phidal Phat-Books with Phigures

Most of this has been sat in the queue since before the PW show, and is one of three related posts, as this stuff - a complete mystery to me until last autumn - is everywhere, once you know what you're looking for, which is; fat-spine books in the children's section, whether that be a book-shop, newsagent's, TKMaxx or a charity shop!

More Disney Princesses, we've looked at another set already and two of at least three Frozen sets, the beauty of this set being that they are approximately 54mm, and apart from the costumed Snow White, all can pass for regency ladies.

Comparing the contents (usually incomplete if found in charity shops) with the artwork above, there's a green fish/frog/gecko thing missing, a grey blob (donkey?) and two girls, the one in gold and one of the newer Disney Princesses with ethnicity (other than white) in a green dress.

One can't complain at the missing items, as these charity shop sets are usually 50 or 75p, if one does have a 12 count they tend to be a quid though!

This was a 50p one! Incomplete, but only missing the little cave boy, had I known they were cartoon caricatures; I probably would have left it, but there you go - another piece of the puzzle.

This was the full whack! All £5.99p of it from TKMaxx! I done did a video di'unt I!

Watch, enjoy, hear my evil laugh at my secured plunder! Yeah . . . I'm still learning the movie thing, each time I watch it I see another error, or niggle I'd change, but this is the third edit (I think) and each one takes a while to get right, and involves looking for folders that hide themselves in the system!

I like the Killer Croc character as it's a straight-lift from Marvel's Hulk, but with knobs-on! 

Here's our Graham, chooks - with a quick reminder! They are the smaller size at around 50mm (Batman), I don't know what Robin thinks he's wearing, but it was Pride the other day, maybe he is trying to tell us something we've already guessed!

Another day; another charity shop; another Phidal; another license! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with up to six enemies (which is unusual for TMNT toy lines!), the trope with this set is that the play-mat is also a board-game with simple mechanics. Other sets can be puzzles, magnetic flats (fridge magnets!) or sucker-flats.

Note also, that it points to another source of these sets (as yet unknown to me) selling at £4.71p (with VAT), that's more than a  quid less than TKMaxx and over half the price of WHSmiths, yet crooks on feebleBay are selling them BIN for 12.99-a-set (plus post!) with no book! It's criminal, but that's capitalism.

Given the locations of both me and the found object (Basingrad) it may be a Reading Warehouse (Tadley) thing, but it's been years since I was last there.

I can't work out if it's missing a green tentacle-armed humanoid, a larger black, white and yellow monster or a small turquoise rolling-die, but the eleven-count is wrong. A slightly older set (dated 2014), it seems the figures with bases are newer, while the older sets (I've found dates back as far as 2006/7 now, I think) tended to be baseless.

While I had them all out together (new container, for a growing sample pile) I did a quick scaler or two, although they are marked (by me) and measure up as 54mm, the princesses are a tad smaller than the Lone Star sailor, due in no small part to his chunky base and hat!

The thing with these Phidal's is; there's no rhyme or reason to size, I thought it might be due to cost, but with one set having twelve 60 or 65mm figures and another have 12 45mm figures (or their cartoon equivalent) it seems that the only 'rule' is that within sets figures should be in-scale, but even there; two DC sets, or two Marvel sets, two Frozen sets, two Disney Princess sets can be completely different scales from each other!