ITP is for Chinasaur Play Set

Although one of the last pieces to be Blogged from the now defunct PoundworldPlus, I actually bought them a while ago, I had been ignoring them for a while as they are real old-school crappy 'chinasaurs', but in the end I thought "Well, they are cheap, and a shelfie is awkward in this instance, so bugger it!" and grabbed a set, which was lucky as they then disappeared and didn't reappear during the fire-sale / stock clearance, and there was a little piece of luck hidden in the tub, we'll get on to in a minute.

The tub - as bought; A couple of the standard modern trees with soft vinyl pop-on foliage, there wasn't enough foliage for both boughs, so I chucked one, fully-leaved the other and sorted-it out from the dinosaurs before the photo-shoot, so we will have to look at it another day with other, similar trees! Yeah . . . that sounds like a thrilling post!

Meet the guys 'cos the gang's all here! They aren't that bad, but they are low-quality, low for today's output that is, they are better than half the dino-production of 1970's HK 'chinasaurs'! You may recognise the 'ceratopsian (front right) as having been the [reversed image] dino' staring in a recent 'Toys in the Media' advert!

They are that soft, foamy plastic I'm mentioned before and started tagging as foamed-vinyl, with the two-part construction and glued join-line you see quite a bit now with larger toy animals and dinosaurs.

There were two stegosauruses in every tub, indeed, the contents of every tub were the same, why there were two of one moulding is anyone's guess, my guess is that even with the two crappy trees the stipulated (by the client) container (for retail shelf-frontage) was looking empty, but still under target-cost, so they quickly ran a mould-tool again, gave the product a different paint finish to the existing ones - having fallen-out with whoever normally supplies them with those large blow-moulded rocks that usually join the 'filler' trees?

While is a fun musing, the one on the right is one-colour over tan, the one on the left is three, as all the others are two or three, I'd say that for whatever reason the yellow-orange one was a late addition as the budget stretched?

The others, I've already said more about them than the set deserves and I've still the next - important - bit to write, so that'll do for these - and I always hate the pterodactyls in dinosaur sets; they inevitably look stupid!

But, the little bit of luck; this was in the set - the sauropod wasn't glued properly, and revealed that what I've though is-, and tried to describe as- some 'fancy' new foamed polymer is actually just two 'hollow-cast' halves glued together with solvent.

It achieves the goals of allowing for more complicated poses (no 'undercuts') while reducing both material-cost and shipping-cost/weight, but I will have to remove the 'Plymr - Foamed PVC' tag from the tag-lists and replace it with 'Plymr - 2-Pt. Hollow' or something.

I'm guessing lots of kids have discovered this already through violence or chewing (!) but no-one seems to have clocked-it within the hobby and no one's corrected me, prior to my correcting myself - here! And I did use question-marks when I first started Blogging the material, so - Phew, that was close!

A is for A Tail of Six Dinosaurs

Tail - tale - dinosaurs . . . never-mind! Brain sent a bunch of dinosaur shelfies the other day without knowing I had just bought another from the range in Poundland Plus, nor why I had bought it, and it's led to my digging out a few other images for a post which - if nothing else - is instructive of how the toy industry works at the bottom end!

These are they (Mr. Berke's shelfies, that is!); three dollars . . .  is what; one-eighty? Something like that! And for that money you can't complain, nicely blister-packed with backing-cards and a decent level of decoration, my complaint - voiced before now - is the rather obvious joins where separate mouldings are fused-together to give the impression of, or allow for poses which would otherwise have proven difficult or impossible with only undercuts.

By the 'other' LP; Lollipop Toys (or Brooklyn Lollipops Import Corp. as they call themselves!), there are six in the whole line, and you may have recognised one or two of them, as they have popped-up on the Blog in the past.

This is the range in its entirety, the upper shot being from Henbrandt's old catalogue, the lower shot from the back of the Poundland one I bought and Blogged a year or two ago. You can see that both companies were (are?) getting the same colour schemes, which also those carried by Brian's shelfie herd.

But, I'd already bought my 2nd 'Dippy', this time from Poundworld Plus, and now in a different scheme (right) to the [common] previous scheme, as we saw with the Funtastic one on the left; Funtastic being what the industry calls a 'phantom-brand' of Poundland, I tend to call them made-up brands or imagibrands!

The new one is by Toy Bank another phantom-brand . . . of the same group! This time the sub-branding on the box is 'Little Fossil Toys', which has to be added to Green Gecko and Pirate Monkey in the ever spiraling-upward list of cross-referenced 'brandlettes'!

Packaging - clockwise from top left - for Lollipop, Henbrandt and Poundworld Plus, note however, that the counter display carton from Henbrant's catalogue is wearing the logo for Zhong Jie Toys, a company already supplying Poundland (or was it 99p Stores? . . . Aaaaarrrrrhhhhh!) with wild animal models!

Remember my paint-tray-guilt-stupid-Brit-thing purchase the other month? Well, it's from the same range, in the same (older?) scheme; Out of the Blue, probably a contractor rather than a phantom, and while I can't remember the counter display, I bet it was the same as the Henbrandt catalogue shot . . .

. . . and I'll bet there are other contracted and phantom brands out there carrying these six rather good, usually very cheap, foamed-PVC (or similar) dinosaur models, indeed, I think I mentioned TKMaxx having sets of three about two years ago, with different graphical packaging! In fact I thought I'd taken a shelfie, but I can't find it so I may not have!

More dino's - later today.

S is for a Shed-load of Shelfies of Saurapod Sets in time for Santa!

Both Brian Berk and myself have been busy since August taking shelfies of Chinasaur Dinosaur sets, which have been gathering in a folder with a vague aim of doing something at Christmas in the back of my mind, this is that something, it's nearly Christmas . . . so!

Starting to recognise the different shelving in Brian's shelfies I think these will be found in Walmart, 'State-side? Largish-looking scale/size wise and nicely decorated; since the Chinese started finding such well preserved evidence in their sedimentary beds, toy makers (and dinosaur artists generally) have got more experimental in their decorating of them, particularly the larger models.

Although tending to use snakes and lizards for their guiding-influence, rather than birds, as they probably should, true reptiles being a separate branch of the taxonomic tree - I believe - from dinosaurs; the two groups existing side-by-side for hundreds of millions of years.

The back of the box has the sort of info-panel kids' love collecting, cutting them out and keeping safe in 'their' drawer or a little folder or something! But spot the deliberate (not!) mistakes!

Ten out of ten for Kid Galaxy from this critic! Four more; the . . . Monoceratops, Multiceratops (? Front-horn's too long for a Styracosaurus) is particularly striking I think.

Meanwhile I was over in TKMaxx taking shelfies as well, these are less well decorated (or 'traditionally' decorated - blast from an angled airbrush both sides and brushed highlights in a contrasting colour!) beasts from HGL (formally H Grossman) being sold here as a four or five lot (check-out the blue one's neck for a bonus!), but also available . . .

. . . as a proper old-school play set! Twenty-nine dino's and a tree . . . and a volcano!

The volcano being filled with mini-saurs and - despite picking-up a lot of mini-saurs in recent years - not instantly recognisable - so possibly new sculpts, or new to me anyway. I was tempted, as well; 16-quid makes them just over 50p each, cheap as a bag of junk at a toy show! But it's a 'big ticket' at one swoop and they'll be in charity shops for less eventually, so I'll wait!

Back to Brian's snapping and we have this set of 55-pieces, most of which also seem to be Chinasaurs, rather than scenics or flimsy transparent volcanoes! Also in Walmart and the count is in part arrived at with duplication, but even if it's 24 sculpts and a tree, it's gonna'be good value for younger relatives this Christmas!

These come with a mildly amusing story of uptight British mannerisms - I needed to buy a small paint-tray, and no one in town had one (well, Baker's would have but it was a Wednesday afternoon so they were closed!) that wasn't part of a large set, every other piece of which I had no yearning for!

The chap who's recently taken over the odd & sods shop did have one, but it was less than three quid and I only had my card on me, so feeling guilty as we walked back to the till, I grabbed these two as I felt I needed to 'make-up' the amount; terribly British nonsense, but there you are - by accident of birth!

Anyway, they were 1.99 each and took the total over six pounds so 'honour' was restored, or achieved or whatever the Brit's think they are doing when they unnecessarily buy stuff to feel better about buying stuff from someone who sells stuff - for a living!

The orange one seems to be the least well painted of the set of six we've seen some of before here, sold singly in Poundland (or 99p Stores before their demise) and shelfied in TKMaxx last year as a threesome (I've seen them elsewhere in ones or threes) this one branded to Tobar.

The other is new and gives us another tag; Out of The Blue, a German importer, how he ended-up sharing a shop-stock box with the Tobar is something only the stock-keeper knows!

Another shelfie from Brian, but this one taken in a British seaside town during one of his visits to the homeland, and it's a seaside classic, baggy ethylene sack with flimsy card header claimed by Kandytoys and all ready to populate a sandcastle! They look to be older sculpts from the 1970's or '80's getting another outing?

I'm not sure 'Go Back To 180 Million Years Ago' is quite the message our tourist destinations should be broadcasting in these Bwreaksit times though? Although, maybe they're preparing for the end of tourism, the shackling of horses to cars and the re-learning the art of living off swede or turnip soups' when not waving two fingers at 'Johnny-foreigner' over the Channel?

Finally, some vintage 'Frankosaur' action with this charming Stegosaurus I shot on Adrian's table at a resent Sandown Park toy fair. Starlux (for it is they) did some lovely sculpting for their prehistoric range, given the age they were made and this is a little peach, if a tad miserable-looking, but eating tree-ferns and cycads all day without getting eaten by something bigger can't have been a particularly joyous existence!

D is for Chinasaur...and other Dippy Dino's

This has been in edit for so long, I've A) done several dinosaur posts since I uploaded it, B) referenced the carded set as if I'd published it (fuckwit!), and C) now have another in the queue, so this must 'go up'!

Rhaaarrh! Christmas present to a younger friend last Christmas - finger-puppets! I bought her story-cubes as well, so she could make-up stories and act them out with the finger puppets - she's only 8! Nine in January; she'd correct me!

Whoops! I referred to these in another post mentioning Fleetwood, thinking I'd published them, when I'd actually only uploaded them . . . Doh! Fleetwood's packing of my favourite rubber chinosaurs (see D-posts passim), although the one I like (Dimetrodon) is in a shit colour . . . white? How the fuck are you supposed to wax-lyrical about a white dinosaur?

These have been in Poundland for a year or two now, for a pound! I've also seen them in sets of three in TK Max in sets of three, and in other brand-graphics in Wilkinson's. That's over eight-inches of wallowing veggie-saur for a pound!

It's also going to lead to the first new polymer tag for years, as it's in this new soft foamed-PVC (plastisols) material which is getting more common with larger toy items, so needs a tag to itself.

Finally . . . ? I don't know for sure? I think they are Marx mini-saur remoulds, as issued by Marksmen a few years ago, but I don't know for sure? At least - I think they are Marksmen's small scale set as advertised, but Kent Sprecher's site credits no small-scales to Marx, so . . . ?