N is for Not Serious!

A few more toy or figure related funnies, and a couple of cats!

 

I believe this is genuine? But not necessarily a retail thing?

 

Ours were old, fat, bald and tattooed, with their brassy tarts holding the ladders!

 

Sigh!

 

Heehee!

 

Rubber jigglers!

 

Let's make death fun! And phallic!

AI from a couple of years ago - it was poor!

Check-out the white lines, crushed cars and dwarf in a pram! 

 

Real, but I don't know which model village?

F is for Follow-up - Robot Pencil Tops

Except, these mostly have a person inside, as the originals, and are therefore 'battle suits', except that some transformers or autobots don't? I don't know, I barely follow it and haven't watched any of the movies, too loud and too reliant on CGI for me, bah-humbug! We looked at my smallish sample four-and-a-half years ago here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2021/03/u-is-for-ultrapenciltop.html

A sample which has since grown, not least with the help of Chris Smith, who not only sent that pair the other day (I think the brown one is less common), but who seems to send one or two in every parcel, and a few have come in from other sources, which is useful, as there seem to be quite a few to find altogether, either version type (soft erasers or harder pencil-top-only's), or colour, or post number.

What follows is some Internet scrapings, I've been saving, on-and-off, since 2010, which back-up a comment I made elsewhere a couple of years ago, mentioning the fact that they keep turning up in quantity.

Here's a bulk lot, branded to Treasure Chest, by Goliath-Hall Inc., but obviously imported from Hong Kong, of interest is that the whole lot are in one polymer colour, yellow, but are otherwise the same as all the others, usually sold as generics. There is a current Goliath Games, but this lot were formed in the 1950's and closed-up in 2005.

Four of the poses, possibly on the origianl pencils some issues came with, possibly Tom[y], reading at the top of the left-hand one? I'd like to find more of the green ones! I'm not sure how well this image will show, though, until I publish? It's behaving oddly in Picasa!

Another all-yellow set, no 'Masked Kamen Rider' (thank you Geofry Peeters) in this issue apparently, whether that makes him rarer, when they turn-up by the box-load is anyone's guess!

Blue'ies!

 

Blacks

 

A mix of colours, including a clearly off-white, or cream, as opposed to the snow-white seen in my previous post, It would seem that rarer colours are the two purples (deep and mauve'ish) and the brown, but that could simply be a question of what I've encountered, rather than any genuine rarity!

While this generic, counter-top lot, have been manufactured in an eraser rubber, with no paint, whether it's a good rubber, or smeary silicon I don't know, but it looks eraserble! Rider is back!

Autobots, Godaikins, Grandizer, Mazinger, Shogun Robots, or Transformers, you have to be a more dedicated fan than me, to know what you are looking at, but the toys and minis are plentiful, and fun!

T is for That Tortle, No, Turtapin, no, Terratoise . . . Doh!

Speaking of Holly musicians (as somebody might have been?!), here's a small orchestra of them from my own collection! I've mentioned this tortoise several times over the years, and I think we've seen him in a mixed-lot post, and this picture has been sat in Picasa since 2016! And, actually, he's got cartoon hands (four digits), so he's neither a turtle nor a tortoise, and definitely not a terrapin! While, maybe only two of these are Holly!

 

The two probably Holly are to the right, neither associated with the Gygax stuff we looked at recently, and not seen together, in a set, I mean, yet, nor do they have the 900-codes of some of the Holly funnimals. But on the left, are cruder copies of both, in the style of stuff by Diener or Imperial, but not marked to either brand, however, manufactured in the same soft silicon-rubber which makes for shite erasers, but excellent pencil-smudgers!

 

The pig will be a lesser-make cake decoration, probably a set of musicians, but maybe just three (the 'Little pigs'), I don't know, while the Topo Gigio character (another left-hooker!) could also be the Portuguese Balin, but I don't think so.

D is for Did I Mention Bagshot Garden Centre?

As well as the erasersaurs, I found a few other items of Rack Toy Month'able Blogging potential, up at Longacre's vast site on the old A30, and them be these . . .

 

Dimetrodon, one of several in the 'assortment', but obviously the one to come home with me! Quite a good one too, with the dog-like countenance which the better books tend to give this particular beast! Issued by an outfit called Free & Easy of the Netherlands

 

A colour variation of the freebie I got from the Keycraft Rep', back in February, which means (with the holy-cheese and pair of mice) that I've gone from none to three of this genre in less than six months!

 

Also keycraft (same display/dispensing 'tree'), are these, the latest edition of a set we saw a few years ago, in different colours, I hope, I think there was a yellow or blue one, but two yummy-mummy/trophy-wives were standing in the way of the stand, chattering away with three brats and a pram, five minutes from closing with no awareness of the rest of the world whatsoever, so I could only grab what looked to be one of each (it was!), without worrying about colours!

 

 

I also got these - Rex London, ostensively for the Jig-Toy page, but they can go here first, and I'll re-shoot them for there, another day. I did do a bit of an update of that page back in the spring, and can't remember if I said anything at the time, but there is a load more content on that page if you haven't visited it for a while!

T is for Two - Keycraft Novelties

While I was up at the Spring Gift Fair in Birmingham last week, I had a very useful chat with a rep' from Keycraft (among others), and while there are show reports to come, he actually gave me a couple of samples, both of which were figural and fun, so here they are, with a Brucey Bonus for a three count!

 

The first thing was this bendy-toy, astronaut, too cool for moon-shot flight school! To be honest, because NASA's spacemen have what equates to a fat-suit, by the time you've modelled it accurately, there is too much rubber compressing to allow the wires to move far, so he's probably the least bendy of all the bendy toys we've seen here, poses rather limited to Dr. Frankenstein's Monster in a flight-suit, but he's still fun!

 

He has the same twin air holes at various points in the back, as have all bendy toys since the year dot . . . Maybe it's to do with how they keep the wires spaced correctly, in the mould, for the surrounding substrate to be equally distributed, with the 'maquette' wires in the dead-centre of the cross-sections, if you know what I mean?

 

Well, well, well, really? Is he just using me for ideas now? That's tragic!

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-world-of-bendables-space-alien.html

 

The Keycraft chap also gave me this fun item, and as you can see, because both the cheese and the mice are made of stretchy silicone, you can stuff the meeces in one hole, and pull them out of another! This will provide hours of entertainment for little people of a certain age, or even excitable Aspergics of an embarrassing age!

 

I then found this, unlabelled, in the new toy superstore in Basingrad (Toytown), and a quick google suggested it may also be Keycraft, however the same Google results further suggest an outfit called The Senmsory Place issues them with grey, white or dun-brown mice, while Keycraft's issue are typically only the grey one, so this may be a Sensory Place one?

 

The purchase code, the only clue I have was KS, which could be Keycraft-something, or have a completely different meaning! You can see, however, it's almost the same size as the holey one, and there's another, similar novelty, in forthcoming posts!

 

I've since - this week - seen both the bendy astronaut and the holy mice for sale in Redfields, Fleet, so very-much out there now!

T is for Two - Keycraft Dino's

I actually had a good interaction with the Keycraft rep's at Gift Fair Birmingham the other day, well, a week ago today as it happens, but I'd already found some of these and shot them months ago, and picked the other one up at Redfield's garden centre the next day, where i saw both the items they gave me as samples at the show, which will be in a forthcoming show.

 

 

I actually bought these over I year ago I think, there were in the cheapie-bin by the tills in Hobbycraft, and I rather liked the Moshops type (green, another non-dino' synapsid), bought the salmon-red one because it was an equally unusual subject, and then the Steggie' for comparison with something more conventional.

Then I got this from the same store a few months ago (part of the Crimbo' toys reconnaissance!). Mentioned in a recent post, I consider them to be mid-range, in both sculpting and decoration, similar to the WHSmith set of a few year's ago, while they are also what I call medium-sized, and in the 2nd commonest 'group' of toy dinosaurs, after the very small 'toob' types.

The 'header card' has changed graphics over the time I've been buying them.

The newer is the upper card.

 

These came from Redfield's the other day, and are a bit of fun, which I didn't notice on the keycraft stands at either London or Birmingham, but I haven't done much with the images, yet, and they may be there, in one of the collective display-shelf shots?

 

Yes, they are daft, and very-much an 'infant toy' thing, but they are fun, coloured like all those 'Erasersaurs', and can be stuck all over the place, annoying Mum & Dad, so very-much a toy success in my books! There were three (same colour as their oppo') duplicates, so I'm guessing they are assortments, and a pose or two may be missing from the shot, or even/therefore a colour or two?

F is for Follow-up - A Splash of Paint

A pair of rather colourful Astronauts now. This could equally be a 'T is for Two' post, but we have looked at one in detail, and covered the other in passing, in a roundabout sort of way!

 

So, first, the eraser Macro Nauts we looked at here, I have now found a painted one, which makes sense as they were made of that silicon rubber which makes crap erasers, just smudges the pencil and eventually splits down the weak-points, so, selling them as painted playthings would be an obvious step! I don't have anything on maker/brand or set yet, but I'll be looking!

While this guy is interesting because when we looked at the Kinder version, someone, elsewhere (of course), made a comment to the effect he 'thought' they were Azrak Hamway (AHI), but they weren't, although they are clearly copies, here's an AHI original, and he's about 75/80mm to the Kinder's 35/40mm!

LB is for Licky Bottoms!

Continuing the series of follow-ups to the output of Lik Be and/or their imitators, and we're looking at mostly feebleBay stuff on the sucker-toys which are probably all knock-offs, both silicon 'jigglers' and the rubber erasers.

 

More of the erasers we looked at here, and with the 'Wotan' bot turning up we can assume the other two 'Vichy' and 'Rocket' are out there to be found, we also get another version of the Bike Cop, with two cup/suckers and more segmented arms.

These are obviously by the same source as the Lik Be copies below, but consist entirely of Deiner Industries eraser knock-offs, in this case as silicon-rubber sucker-toys. Taken from the robot/alien set and the horror set, there's possibly twelve or more sculpts to track down?
 

And you may find them with the LB piracies! These are - I think - the third generation of sucker knock-offs (the ones above might be a fourth, or end of mould, they're very poor quality), we looked at the better ones here, and consist of the poorer sculpts with a single spot of leery paint to add colour to the counter-display box?

 

 

Here's a bunch more, no Deiner sculpts, but a decent idea of the range of polymer colours and the range of over sprayed spot colours! Along with confirmation, they did the robots as well as the spacemen. All six robots seem to have been copied in all 3/4 sets/lines of sucker toys, I'm not so sure about all 8 spacemen yet, it may only be four or six sculpts stolen?

 

Comparison with LB originals

Seen one of these before, the fact that I've encountered several now suggests they aren't that rare and it's just a question of waiting until one without a silly-price turns up! These are the better quality sculpts with several colours, both brushed and sprayed-on.

LB is for Lik Be!

Because it's a B! More on that in a mo', first a quick reminder of the carded robot set I picked-up a while ago and showed briefly the other day;

 

The robot shape-specific blister means another set with the other three is a probable certainty, although that is itself an oxymoron, but you know what I mean! Wotan over at Moonbase has specialised in the chunky-monkey one, and I'm pretty sure he has one of these faux-vitreous ones, so the other three are out there!

 

But that logo . . . the clearest or 'best' yet; it's a B, isn't it? A 'B' for the Be of Lik Be, not Lik Pe, not Lick Pea, and definitely not Lick Pee!

 

I realised looking at this, that the two uprights are - roughly - centred, so the whole monogram is actually placed to the right, with room to the left (as we look at it) for the 'sun' rays in white, coming out from the centre to be visible, under the monsters arm. On the right you have the dark rays going in, but no white rays coming-out, because there's the bottom curve of a bloody-great B in the way!

 

It's a pain, it's always been a too-busy, shit-rendered, poor logo design, but get used to it, it's LB for Lik Be, and you read it here first, twice, several years apart; 'cos I'm calling it again!

 

The Robots; Police Motorcycle, well, that's how I've always thought of him, or 'Motorcycle Cop' but he could just as easily be ray-gunning, pressure-washing the streets or painting hoardings! In the style of the fake glass-animals which also came out of Hong Kong, he's moulded in clear 'styrene and overpainted in transparent yellow and jade.

 

I used to call this one Marcel Marceau, but now I call it Vichy (cheese eating surrender monkey) in homage to Mathias and his mob! Minimal decoration on an already weak sculpt, sums this one up!

 

Stern Gang! He's always wears a clear, definate, permanant frown, and one feels he should be the sidekick for the 'Darth' sculpt in the Airfix Space Warriors set?

 

I also picked-up a loose set of the ones I've already got in a bagged-set (seen here at Small Scale World passim), so they can stay there! The other three I call Lobster (obviously!) Rocket Robin and I can't remember what I used to call the fat one, but nowadays, it's just Wotan!

 

I've had two lots of the small scale versions come-in recently as well, all marked originals; gunmetal polyethylene above, and chromed hard plastic below (with a few knock-off spacemen), both samples having no Lobster!

 

A poor factory-paint version and another sucker copy have also been added to the pile, and I nicked the mustard-yellow image from eBay a while back I think, cropped-out of a larger image, The soft plastic large-scale are pierced for key-rings/fobs/chains, so must be later production.

 

The small scale Bike Cop has quite different arm sculpts from the larger one, who has 'cup and ball' hands and elongated upper-arm segments, against the smaller one's flatter-cup (potato masher!) and pointer (Biro!), with double ball-joint arms.