F is for Follow Up - Chinese Nationalist Egg!

I know it's not Easter anymore (!) but I'd feel a bit of a fraud getting two years worth of posts out of one set (even though there are Christmas and ITLAPD perennials, but hypocrisy is humanities middle name!) so I'll get this out of the way now!

We looked at the figure a while back and I arbitrarily decided the figure was more Chinese than Japanese and more nationalist than Maoist, but I hadn't got the whole thing - now I have! Note that the silhouetted-figures in the artwork are Airfix Commados, Para's, German and Russian Infantry.

It was a 'design' piece by a Reiko Kaneko back in 2008 when it retailed for a tenner! The original publicity blurb going like this;

"Egg Soldier Eggcup

Battle On The Breakfast Table

It's early in the morning..... Having been for a dip, the EGG quietly prepares for another day. Suddenly, from the end of the table, an army of BREAD SOLDIERS starts to approach. The MODEL SOLDIERS, fearing for the safety of their EGG, close in. They work hard to protect the EGG but one after another, the BREAD SOLDIERS just keep coming....

How will it end?"

Yeah! I didn't have an egg to hand!

Now, if you want to buy real 'designer' stuff, say Fendi handbags or pool-side chairs by Renzo Piano you need to be awarding yourself Philip Green sized amounts of folding trouser-stuffing, so I guess a designer-thing for ten-quid is not to be sniffed at, but . . . it's a bit naff!

The plastic mirror base is very naff, the figures flexibility is naff-enough to annoy, as they don't hold the egg up properly, the lack of a definite nationality for the soldiers is naff to the sort of people who might be considered its main customers - war-gamers, modellers, toy soldier collectors, historians and the denizens of similar assorted geek-categories! While the construction - as a whole - is cheap, placky-tacky and err . . . a bit naff.

Then I got an egg-full of dinosaurs;

it was a bit small!

Which is not to castigate it completely; it's a fun thing, but I think less of the 'designer' in the original hype (several 'influencer' sites seem to have picked it up at the time) would have been a bit more honest, and a £6.99-point would have been fairer for what you got.

Was someone to do something similar again, maybe three or four figures a'la the Iwo Jima 'flag-raising' would be a better execution of the idea? You know - make it about the egg, not the toast soldiers, which they aren't really engaging with their swords anyway. Make it three or four US Marines struggling to hold the egg up and I recon you'd sell tens-of-thousands of units in the USA alone! Construction workers could work too, or firefighters; holding a ring to hold the egg?

Original publicity shots

We had close-ups of the figure last time, but at least the original shots have the right sort of egg to hand! I think some of that yolk has been photo-shopped? If my egg looks like that in the middle I've learnt to get it to the compost-bin before I find the dark feathery bit in the centre; proper 'free range'!

T is for Two - Catering Novelties

A couple of oddities from the collection now, both from what is strictly called crockery! One from years ago and the 'small-scale-only' collection-days, the other a pretty perfect 54mm and given to me by Peter Evans - the other day.

This came from a Euromark picnic set carried by Tesco supermarkets about 18-years ago (item dated 2001) and was rescued by me when it started leaking! Let me explain; they were double-skin plastic mug/cups with a twin-liquid filling and these roughly 20mm-compatible Simpsons characters in the liquid which sort of bobbed about at the boundary between the two liquids - one blue (heavy spirit?) below and one clear (water or light oil?) above, they are weighted with steel bearings to keep them the right way up.

Anyway, one of them started leaking on the shelf and I (night-shift!) offered to take it out to the skips after it was written-off, and left it to drain under my car in the staff car-park for later retrieval and recycling into the collection! I haven't the faintest idea what the three-eyed sharks are all about, but assume a specific episode of the TV cartoon?

There were other figure designs and other items of crockery involved; bottles, flasks &etc.

Previously seen - complete - in Plastic Warrior magazine, this Reiko Kaneko-designed chap seems to have been clearly based-on the old Britains Deetail Japanese office, but that's probably more of a co-incidence than an actual relationship.

He started life as one of a matching trio, all arranged in a ring facing inward as an egg-cup! The egg rests on the three fists and is held in place by the heads/swords. It should still be findable on the Internet, I'll try and find it and post a link. [Seems to be off the market, but this is it]

On the matter of the soldier's uniform; he's sort-of half WWII Japanese-looking (Katanga sword) and half Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces (belt-yolk and helmet), so it's a wonder he got past the checkers (he was designed in Japan, made in China), as he's more Nationalist than either revolutionary Mao'ist forces or Japanese invaders - just the sword . . . and water-bottle?