A is for ♪♫♪♪♫ All-in-All, Theyyyyy're All Just Bricks in the Wall ♪♫♪♪♫

Definitely ticking the 'other collectables' Tag, these are a fun novelty which seem to have been with us forever, or at least the mid-1970's, when I got my first, but, being a magpie, I now have four! Fake sponge bricks!

 

The collection,

"More than two of anything . . . "!

 

My original Christmas stocking brick, one of the 'practical' gifts which were always included; novelty soap, toothbrushes, combs, wiggly straws, things which, however-much fun they were, were also meant to be used daily! It's a soft bath-sponge material.

 

This was my second, it's a harsher foamed polyethylene, still a batheable foam, but more like garden-game balls, or pet-toys, and was given away at corporate newspaper events, or even with a daily-paper? I can't remember the promotion now, but I dare say, given it's The Sun, that they were for throwing at 'Lefty' politicians, or foreigners?

 

Once I had two, the track was inevitable, and over a few years I picked up two of these, more modern brick design, and made of recycled foam-rubber granules, much heavier, and not so good for washing!

 

In the US, they remain a strong, current phenomena, with corporate logo's to the fore, I think they are for throwing at referees' in disgust at their decisions, although I've never seen a clowud of them hitting the pitch, so I guess, once you've paid money for one, your desire to retain your investment in bricks & mortar, mean you hang on to it and just shake it threateningly toward the Man In Black?

 

While this is Art! A design by Alexander May, for a concrete-block sponge!

 

There was a trend for mattresses made out of the same heavy, granulated-foam, of my third brick, but often in greys or neutral colours, and they were a favourite of early fly-tipping when they started to break up, and you'd see this stuff in the rubbish pile, odd-shaped lumps, which looked exactly like concrete!

 

A very commercial one here, from Milton Bradley (MB Games - that's almost like LB for Lik Be!), and hitching a ride on the trend . . . nay, 'craze' for all things Karate, back in the 1970's - "Ah, Soh, Grasshopper!".
 

Contemporary one, available, new on the Internet as I write, this is expanded-polystyrene, and looks to be pre-coloured, so a few chips or a knocked corner would only add to its aura of realism!

 

Also current, but a bit naff, and more of a face-cloth? There's a sponge-foam core, but it's covered in a printed-pattern fabric 'pillow', sewn-flush, and over-printed with crude holes, I'd leave this on the self, as the point of the collection is that they look vaguely like bricks, and this doesn't! Although, I guess it does, if you don't display the 'holes'!

S is for Shelfies - The Range

Shot these back in February, but like a lot of things, they got caught in the general malaise here at Small Scale World this year and languished, lost in Picasa! So, with a rather Easter flavour, here's what was trending in The Range, six months ago!

 

Paint your own Rocket, what's not to like - 

And the umpteenth cartoony-retro rocket this year!

 

I shot these out of a sort of nostalgic feeling, one of the first things I ever reviewed in PW was the encapsulated toys, imported, then, from the USA (circus, wild animals and dinosaurs), and facing stringent safety stuff, due not to the swallowing danger (the capsules melted in warm water . . . or throats), but because the foam would then expand and present a breathing difficulty, they are now around the place in several formats, with no hysteria! Although, these are larger and for print-stamp painting.

 

More paint-your-own!

 

Blobby infant toys, but might turn up in mixed lots in the future?

 

Again nostalgia bit and I bought these, reminding me of the old Pop-a-point pencils of my youth, I've since seen several other similar products, bears, pigs etc . . . as pencils, coloured crayons or felt-tip markers, so clearly another bandwagon trend this year.

 

I also bought these because while the main 'Iwako Eraser' fad, seems to have cooled off, pencil-rubbers remain a great favourite, and you do still get the odd set of Iwako clones or homage-copies, and with a section of them in the collection, it's worth adding to, occasionally, to keep a picture of the genre's trends. These are not direct takes on Iwako, and bent ears seem a defining feature of the set! Branded to i-Doodle, everything else was in-house for The Range or CDS Group.
 

C is for Contribution Season! - XV - Paratroopers from Brian

Well - There's a few more in the queue, and Brian's folder gets filled again before it's emptied, case in point is today's post, he sent some of these to the Blog while Rack Toy month was winding-up, some more at Christmas (after I'd posted 35 scheduled posts), and the others a few days ago, and together they make a post on one of my favourite subjects . . . parachute toys!

These were in the August image-batch, and are manufactured like inflatable toys, but I suspect heat-sealed over a piece of shaped-foam? They are also a second Funtastic, but with a capital T in the logo I will list them as Fun-Tastic to differentiate from the UK one.

This Jaru-imported trooper slipped-in under the radar at Christmas and might have languished with the others in the folder until next august, but gets to take a bow today instead.

He's sort of action-figure style, but a single-moulding so right at home here, and with his shaped card, seems to be a sign of a current Jaru trend for content-related, blister-card, shape-cutting - remember the two different rocket-balloons we looked at on Guy Fawke's Night?

Then this turned-up; earlier this week, or was it last week? I'm all a bit sixes-and-nines at the moment! How cool are these - we've had Amscan paratroopers from Brian before, and parachuting skeletons, now we have a pooper-trooping menagerie of lions, tigers, hippos and monkeys! These really are too cool for PJI School, that's how cool!

Thanks again Brian - if you keep finding paratroopers (or even and 'Yea Verily' parachuting wild animals!) - I'll keep posting them!

A is for Ahh!

Just a quick one this morning...Do you remember the foam promotional AFV's I got from Thales in Australia the other day? Well, look what turned up this week...

Obviously a Google search then presented itself as 'foam promotional car', which gave up the delightfully named Alibaba.com where there are foam models of heavy plant, agricultural tractors, railway carriages and far more besides little cars. I'm sure there are others, but that's enough on these for now!

T is for Thales

That's 'Tar-les' not 'Thailes'

About a year ago I was hanging around Newbury, with an hour or so to kill, and having outstayed my welcome in the local coffee house thought I'd do a quick overpass of the charity shops in the main square, of which there are about 5, as, despite there rarely being any major pickings in charity shops these days (not because there's nothing there, but because they mostly save stuff 'out back' for their local tame collector!) you can sometimes find the odd useful piece.

And in one I did indeed find something, in the little restaurant-style bread-roll basket of infants toys and squeaky things, there was this soft expanded-foam moulding of what was obviously a pretty modern item of military kit. Well, it was what it was (20p?) so I bought it and when I got home Googled the thing, found it was one of a family of similar vehicles and thought "Ah! Different versions of prototype must equal different versions of toy, surly?", and I was right, but must stop calling myself Shirley (if you got that - you're showing you age!).

So this is the beast I found, it's a very accurate model - given the material - and seems to be around the 1:50 mark, scale wise. Clearly an advertising premium, the underside has more basic sculpting than the upper surfaces but gets across one of the main selling points of all vehicles of its type these days - mine resistance, with a clearly emphasised blast-protecting/directing ridge running the full length of the crew cab and passenger sections.

Anyway - I then eMailed a couple of the people I found on the websites and sat back to see what would happen...not a lot...and for a year this collage sat in Picasa with me wondering weather or not to blog it as a stand-alone. So a couple of months ago I tried again, obviously got a different eMail, and the result was a small parcel all the way from Australia with the rest of the crew on-board.

At this point I must thank Julian Elliott of Thales PR/Communications down under for going the extra mile.

Not only did Julian help with the rest of the Bushmaster family, but also sent me two versions of the smaller Hawkie ('hawk-eye'), a small air-portable AFV and the I-Mast, an integrated naval radar system (with all the various electronic units in one structure), which is manufactured by the Thales subsidiary in Hengelo, Netherlands, although the foam model is made in the same place as the Aussie AFV models.

The other members of the Bushmaster family are an APC version of the armoured ambulance I'd found and soft-skin versions of a pick-up truck with short and crew-cab layouts (the ACSV?). The I-Mast just screams 'Dalek HQ' to me and with Doctor Who Adventures magazine giving us no less than 6 old-type Daleks last week in five colours there's potential there somewhere for a good scrap (HOTT rules?).

Indeed all these lend themselves as very hard-wearing pieces for a gaming table, and would go very well with the modern standard 28mm Sci-fi or fantasy figures, or - of course - any similar sized 'modern' troops, the Bushmaster being in service with several armies now.

I was also given a small koala bear! he's now on the Christmas Tree!!! For those who have more than a passing interest in AFV's, these are interesting vehicles, not least that the original Bushmaster design comes from an Irish company called Timoney who - I'm pretty sure - made an interesting AFV/APC for the Irish army in the 1970's that looked like a Big-wheeled Ferret on steroids! Also the camouflage on the Hawkie, is quite similar to the camouflage on a 6x6 heavy-weapons conversion of the Land-Rover Defender I saw at Farnborough airshow about ten years ago, which also came from Australia.

Detailed links for those interested;
I-Mast
Hawkie Air-portable Light Wheeled AFV
Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicle - Wikipedia