K is for Kanhȗ's Kung-Fu Killers!

Picked these up the other day, more erasers! These Kanhȗ erasers though, are pretty good 54mm human figures, an excellent addition to the collection, and will make a fine foil to the larger Power Ranger capsule and cereal premium toys, we've looked at previously here.

 

Two per pack, so you can get them fighting from the off! Something seems to have been lost in translation with 'Yosoken' probably being Yoseikan budō, a form of combined martial art, and 'Shorinken' probably meaning Shuriken, or fighting stars, those two being on the fronts of the cards, I didn't pursue the exercise with the five on the back! Equally, with the seven black & white sketches not resembling the four figures, it could be a set in excess of 12 sculpts?

M is for More - R is for Rubbers!

I've been rather too addicted to 'Reels' since Facebook started posting them on our feeds about six-months/a year (?) ago, and one of the common themes seems to be younger Brit's and Americans comparing each other's food, language and culture, often disparagingly, or at least comically, and one of the words which keeps coming up is 'rubber' for eraser.

 

Now, I deliberately chose to use the word 'eraser', from the off, and as the Tag, back at the start of the blog, or when I first covered them, as even if you're not chasing clicks, it behoves you to at least help the search-bots, which are, in the English language, mostly American in origin or location. But yes, we use rubber in everyday lingo.

 

And the various European forms of Spanish 'goma', the French 'caoutchouc' (cow chew!) or German 'gummi', all refer to rubber, as in the latex from rubber trees, while the word erase belongs in the group of words that includes destroy, obliterate, as in to wipe out or cancel. Although the fact that in Hollywood movies, the mafia are often rubbing people out, suggests that the connection is there, and that American English has evolved away from English, and 'rubber', with the adoption of 'eraser'?

 

I'm not sure that we've learnt anything there, or prevented future giggling on dreadful teenage influencer's Tick-Tock's or Instagram's, either side of the pond, but I've got a substantial intro', without much effort! As a follow-up to the eraser's seen in the 'London loot' post yesterday, here's a few more which have come in recently.

 

These are by Rex London, who we've seen before, and I can't remember where I got them now, but it was only a few weeks ago? more Iwako knock-offs, and more marine subjects, the whale with the fountain-spurt found in yesterday's Symex set is here, but the others are a bit more toward the realistic than the cartoony?

 

We did look at some of these in a previous post too, with their little black plastic eyes, and I wonder how may of them ever actually get used as rubbers, the bulk just building as a combined weight of collected novelties on the planet's surface, with the occasional clear-out sending some to landfill?

Dinorasers! We have seen these sculpts in WHSmith packaging before, but I think we have new colours/shades in this set, which is branded to i-doodle, one of the in-house brands of The Range, for their stationary lines, suggesting a third party contract-manufacture for both lots, and further brandings likely, away from these shores!

50p in a British Heart Foundation charity shop here, fundraisers for the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), another charity, and a flat lifeboatman was the attraction! There have been quite a few lifeboatmen figurines, and other relevant items from the RNLI, over the years, and they will get a page on the A-Z's one day, as I have several flyers of their fundraising items.

As an addendum, because I also chose to set my PC to proper English, every use of eraser above, has a blue line under it asking me if I want to switch spellchecker to American-English! And yes, we use the other 'rubber' too! Although there, the nationalism switches to our 'Auld' enemy', where we also call them French Letters, and they call them English Overcoats!

B is for Bellona Bell Tents

This is a long-planned follow-up to someone else's post, and really only to confirm my comments there, at the time (2015) and to look more closely at a comparison between the two versions of Bellona product and try to work out how they are related from a technical point of view.

The inner pair is undecorated, latex rubber; the outer pair is from the later vac-formed polystyrene-sheet which also contained a set of pup-tents (so crude I threw them away I think, or were they on another sheet?) and a more medieval-looking marquee or staff tent. I opened the 'doorways' with a sharp knife!

Holding the slight squeeze out of them, by counter-squeezing; when I obtained these about eleven-years ago (one of Andy Harfield's shows down in Kent I think) they were pretty-much pristine, and remained-so when they went into storage in 2011

However they have suffered slightly from the conditions in the shipping container, getting slight blemishes of shiny perished latex where they were touching each-other and the holding bag (that squeezed them out of shape slightly), yet otherwise they are still flexible and will need to be painted in the near future to protect them further, finding a paint for latex, or that is latex safe might need to be a consideration?

The more interesting thing about these latex items is that while they conform to the later vac-forms in both shape and catalogue codes, they are otherwise very different items, however, the one clearly lead to the other.

Above - not the best image (I've stopped-it right down), but the best I could do (try tipping your screen back slightly, or dipping your head, to see the vac-form's marks clearer), you can see how the three lines and the arrowed dink/blemish are carried on to the underside of the vac-form, from the surface of the latex moulding

The vac form has - like all these large sheet vac-forms - the better detail on the underside, as it is pulled onto the mould by suction, but that detail matches the finer detail on the surface of the smaller latex mould, as if it had been removed from the vac-form.

But it's not as clear as someone taking latex moulds from Bellona vac-forms and passing them off as Bellona (the cynical- or suspicions-thinking behind my original comment on Clive's post), because there is extra detail on the rubber versions; with these tents it's the air-flap 'barb' at the apex of the bell, and the overhang between bell and skirt-sides.

Likewise on the cottages over at Clive's blog, you can see the dormer windows on the rubber versions have an overhang to the roof which were smoothed back on the vac-forms. These features had to be removed from the tool/moulding to allow for the release of the vac-form, after cooling; a similar problem for the tooling engineers to that of 'undercuts' on dynamically posed figures.

How the one became the other is only to be guessed at, but must have involved taking a more substantial moulding from the tent's tool, to get a solid lump resembling the hollow latex product, removing all the overhangs, joining them together with the other tents on a level 'sheet', taking another, negative mould of that, and producing the metal final-tool as a third [positive] from the second [negative]?  .. . . . . ...  . . I think!

As an aside; there is a 12-panel 1930-50's British army bell-tent in the attic, my brother and I would spend a few weeks in it each summer, as kids. I keep meaning to get it out and set it up to see if the moths have been kind to it . . . or not.

It's interesting in being fully reversible, white on one side for winter-warfare and a non-standard camouflage on the other. By non-standard I mean it's not a WWII Micky-mouse black/grey cloud on green, nor sweeping swathes of contrasting colours, not a Denison smock type, nor a 1970's DPM, and will I suspect (I'm sure there are various labels on it and its canvas carry-all) date from either the inter-war period or the Korea era?

But it is a dead ringer for Bellona's little beauty, even to the air-flaps creating a spear's-head at the top if it's breezy!

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Here's one I made earlier!

As a Brucey-bonus, I knocked this up from a piece of cartridge-paper years ago, then added some slivers of weathered plywood for poles and coloured-it-in with art-markers. I think the 'eyes' were Tippex and another - green - marker!

If I did it again I'd run the poles all the way down and make them from something stronger as they have mostly broken-off and the smoke-hole now looks like Hannibal Lectors' mask! I'd probably also wet the paper after shaping to produce some sag between the poles; colouring-in after it had dried?

I took the pattern from something commercial like Fiddler's Green or Usbourn, or even a cut-out freebee in White Dwarf? It's basically a cone with the tip cut-off and it's a bit too geometric!

Q is for Question Time - Mary Mother of God!

This is the figure I mentioned the other day, and it's an odd one, not because I don't know what it is, not because I don't know where it came from, but because I'd like to know who handled it!

She's been smacked-to-life with an ugly-stick I'm afraid and in the hollow of her whole (an unfortunate phrase - I'll grant you!), she is clearly marked TALY (the 'I' miss-registered) and 2/6. She is a soft latex rubber, even a PVC or an early silicon-rubber, and is clearly a Precepi (Nativity) figure of Mary, mother of the Little Baby Jesus.

Now . . . here's the thing; the 2/6 can't be two-of-six, as she isn't holding the LBJ, so with a Joseph that's three? Which, if the count is six leaves room for either three wise men, or a shepherd and two something's? The minimum count of a nativity is seven - if Mary holds the LBJ or eight if the LBJ is in a manger, basket, beer-crate or shoe-box.

While as far as I can remember from my trips to Italy pre-Euro, they didn't have a sub-coinage, they only had Lira? Even if they had a sub-coin, two Lira and six-something's wouldn't buy you a sneeze at the time, while this figure would have cost you, what; 25 or 30p (?) in the UK in the seventies?

Go back to the sixties and the Ⱡ2.06-something's (cents?) won't buy half a sneeze, but this figure might be two-shillings-and-sixpence in Britain, which - following decimalisation - would become 25-30p in 1970? The evidence would appear to suggest this figure, although clearly Italian was mould-marked - exclusively - for the UK market?

Anyone know who carried it? Have you got this set, are they all priced individually? Anyone recognise the Italian maker/sculpt? Did they go elsewhere with other mould-marks? Was there an unpriced version? The rubber seems too-soft for Landi or Chromoplasto types, so any info gratefully received.

P is for Pocket-money, Pack-Presented, Putt-Putts and Plastic-Fantastic Tupperware Crotch-Rockets!

Continuing where we left-off yesterday (cheap rack-card motorcycle toys/novelties from the Far East!); this is what's come-in over the last 12 months, half of it from across the pond courtesy of Brian Berke, the other's from closer to home; lets 'av'a'luke . . .

These have collaged pretty-much in relation to each other as you can tell from the pattern on the bed-spread! I think maybe the one on the right has ended-up slightly bigger than it should be in relation to the others? From left to right we have - rubber eraser pop-together street-bikes from Shalom International (SI Corp.), a new name in the tag-list - and MTC's real cheapie party-favours, but with riders! Both from Brian.

The Ackerman set we've looked at before, but the shop had one set left so I bought it back in the summer with half an eye on rack-toy month! Five of the bikes are the same as last time, but three of them are different colour-ways. Finally a set of smaller bikes with those little pull-back motors Lego use these days, Poundland, a few weeks ago.

The rubber bikes aren't really puzzles, certainly won't go on the jig-toy page, but obviously have a fun element, although with only three parts, there's not much to do beyond have a half-and-half coloured machine! I suspect from their website these were entry-level 'test the toy market' import items, as they are now developing a more corporate range of infant toys under a separate New York-based brand: Kid-O.

MTC's are pretty standard fare for what the are, Chines rack-toys, aimed at the cheapest end of the market, but like a lot of the old Hong Kong toys of similar ilk; such as those we looked at yesterday, a bit of paint could improve them no end!

Top left is the four types together for a sizer, while the other three images are of the Ackerman bikes I left on the card last time, I've also done a bit of part-swapping on the duplicate moulding, to make them a little more sensible-looking or a tad-less garish!

R is for Remember, Remember, the 5th of November....

How cool are these? Too cool for space school, that's how!

Brian Berke sent me these, and it's not so much that they're balloons that's the cool thing (although rocket balloons are pretty cool), it's that the backing-card is rocket shaped, you don't often see novelty-shaped packaging - perhaps you should!

And they are brought to us from Ja-Ru, which means . . .

. . . These (image also from Brian) almost certainly are as well, as the artwork is clearly from the same studio!

With this set you get more balloons and a pump, instead of the little inflation-tubes of the carded set. Don't think Ja-Ru actually made these; they just wheel and deal them about the place on behalf of an anonymous Chinese manufacturer.

It's been years since I saw balloons like this, when I was a kid they would be sold by vendors in the street, filled with helium, so they hung 'up', there were wobbly ones and the standard tear-drop as well, and giant, black ones with swirly-patterns on them like the page-end blocks of old books, but they had weak spots and would inevitably burst on the train on the way home.

It's a bit late for this year, but given the fear fireworks engender in some family pets, maybe seek-out some for next year and have your fireworks in the warmth and comfort of your living room!