N is for Nearly the Nativity!

It's the 20th! I don't know where that month went in such a hurry, but it did! I haven't shot any Nativity sets this year, nor have we had a chance to clear any of the unused stuff from last year, or the years before, all sitting down the bottom of Picasa at 1968! But, to prevent anything else joining them, there are still a few bits from this year to get up here, and this is Brian's Nativity finds in a store in New York.

 

The Archangel Gabriel getting busy with Satan! Two sizes.

 

The family shot, then they were off to Egypt as asylum-seeking refugee migrants!

 

OK, got it!

 

But did they pay?

 

13 pieces is a fair count, and beautifully presented in gold silk!

 

Quite a few styles, from the super realistic miniatures through to the mawkishly sentimental cartoonish baby-faced stuff, but nice that you can 'pick and mix' off the shelf, or slowly add items, year to year. Mostly resin, but it looks like some may be china? Many thanks to Brian as always, for sending these into the Blog.

S is for 'The' Shark!

It's been a funny day, I awoke convinced it was Tuesday (so I got most of the right letters), but as the day progressed I sort of grudgingly admitted to myself in a sub-concious manner that it was Tuesday yesterday, so came to accept Wednesday as the day, only for someone to start announcing special programes for the Radio tomorrow, and the dawning realisation that a long weekend starts at midnight and if I wanted milk I'd better get my skates on and get to town!

Image courtesy of The News Elephant

So I don't know where the week's gone, but half of it snuck-by while I was doing something else! Anyway, what I was going to post at tea-time took a back seat, and, as I'd scanned these last night before their box went to storage, we'll have a bit of self-indulgence!

Back around '98, I had cause to design a shark, the main parameters being that A) it had to be executable on a vinyl-cutter and B) no one in the studio would show a mere fitter (for that is what I was!) how to use the CorelDRAW software! The irony there being that now I can 3D in Autodesk and the studio bods are probably still doing 2D signage!

The above are early efforts to 'get' a shark, not as easy as I'd thought it would be when I started, also - an additional parameter - I was trying to get there from the Christian fish, but sharks 'aint fishes! As you can see, far left bottom; I got closer to barracuda and tuna at one point!

Using the tracing-over-the-previous-image technique, a seven stage process lead to something I was happy with, although the final stage (with teeth) is missing, it must have been lost in the final scanning-to-PC and cutting phase, where I did get help from Jason in the studio and when the gills and eye were added from punctuation.

Once I was happy with the design, I had 12 printed-off in three colours, of which I have six left, the others having gone on various vehicles I have owned over the intervening 25 years . . . never mind this week, where the fuck has my life gone?!! Anyway, it became 'the shark' among my friends, and when I got a new vehicle it was always "You haven't put the shark on it yet then?"

In case you're still wondering . . . this was going to go on the opposite side of the boot/tailgate, but I never got round to finalising the design or getting it cut! It's alright; they raise again on the third day, apparently, although the way I'm counting days at the moment, that'll probably be next Saturday!

B is for Bisque Basket-Bearing Bounty-Bringers from Bari

One of the towns associated with Saint Nicholas, who I think may be the central figure in these shots! Held over from last year, this is a quickie, the lights are up in town now, the crimbo stories are starting to creep into the news, and, heay, what the hell; let's get festive.

Bisque figures around 4½ inches, so a bit big for cake decoration, but also not the thing for a nativity, so I guess fairground fairings with a seasonal twist. Charity shop purchase and they had a whole box of them, the sort of box traveling showmen might have under the hoopla counter to replace those won, or damaged in the trying to win!

As I said, the chap in the middle has more the look of a Bishop, and while not a medieval one, certainly a historical one, so I guess it's meant to be St. Nick the Real, rather than the four minion santa's he's flanked by, each of whom has a basket full of gifts and are obviously St. Nick the Sintered Fictional!

They're nice, mint (I went through the whole box to make sure I had one of each available and that they were good) and were not many pennies!

O is for Oi, Oi, Oi! What's All This Then?

[All in squeaky voice as small firefighter enters stage left] "We'll not be having naked-flames round all that Gunpowder young Guido, take him away gents".

A lesser known moment of history which escaped O-level studies as Micky Mouse carries the day, also courtesy of Brian Berke (see yesterday's post) our roving reporter from New York who was on hand to capture the truly historic occasion.

I can't add a lot, so I won't! It's Micky Mouse, with a hose!

It seems you wait ages for a firefighting Micky Mouse, then two come at once!

Cheers Brian . . . I think!

R is for Remember, Remember . . .

. . . The Fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot

I see no reason why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent

To blow up the King and the Parliament

Three score barrels of powder below

Poor old England to overthrow

By God's providence he was catched

With a dark lantern and burning match

Holloa boys, holloa boys

God save the King!

Hip hip hooray!

Hip hip hooray!

A penny loaf to feed ol' Pope

A farthing cheese to choke him

A pint of beer to rinse it down

A faggot of sticks to burn him

Burn him in a tub of tar

Burn him like a blazing star

Burn his body from his head

Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.

Hip hip hooray!

Hip hip hooray!

 

(Traditional English Rhyme - 17th Century)

Many thanks to Brian Berke for sending us a very seasonal post, figures by Peter Cole's Replicants available here from Steve Weston's website.

F is for Follow-up - Place Marker / Glass Hangers

Remember those two figures Peter Evans sent the Blog around Christmas-time and my tale of woe in trying to get some surfer-babes only to find you needed to remortgage your house to purchase them? Well Terranova sent these and judging by the price sticker, it's the same story the other side of the pond!

Now these are hard to make out, the one on the far right seems to be giving a thumbs-up sign, but number three looks to be 'flicking the bird'. Far left may be thumbs up, while 2 would appear to be giving a Papal-blessing! I suspect they are all thumbs-up and it's just my imagination? Inspired anyway - the sort of stuff Archie McFee used to do!

But these are NPW, previously associated - here on the blog - with cheapie-budget stuff, yet the four come in at a frankly eye-watering . . .

. . . $15! Which is around the same price as that I baulked-at in Basingrad's new M&S back in the January sales, I guess they're aimed at the sorts of Trumpundbrexit 'eer celeb-culture types who will pay to have the 'right stuff' at their party?

'Men in Uniform'? I think we're talking a Village People tribute act at the Blue Oyster Club here, aren't we? Not so much publicly-spirited, uniformed professional types, nor heroically serving Blue Watch night-after-night while the nation sleeps, but rather baby-oiled,  semi-dressed, hen-night heroes - pumping to the beat!

Cheers Brian - has anyone else seen these, what others are out there, we've seen Her Madge The Twoeth, Surfer Dudes, JC and the above, I know there are bikini-girls (keep the surfer-dudes happy!), but there must be others? They're 54mm give-or-take!

H is for Heudebert'y Christmas!

It's bad isn't it...hopefully it's as bad as a cracker joke! Well...stuffed (or well-stuffed) to the gunnel on roast duck and tangerine sauce, started on the liqueurs, saved this - from the flats Brian practically gave me in May - for today!

There are a couple of pieces missing from the set, an angel, another camel and a donkey I think, and they didn't photograph well, but it's a seasonal post, so there it is! Makes you wonder why no one does this sort of stuff now, electronic toys, the Internet and smart-fones might have replace elder kids toys, but I'm sure younger kids would collect something like this if it was in their favourite cereal, sweet or biscuit brand in the run-up to Christmas?

T is for Toys in the Tabloids

The 'Easy-reads' like a toy story, so do the toy companies, they sell papers and they sell toys! here are a couple of recent puff pieces from the 'i' (little brother of the Independent)...

What intrigues me about this 'news story' is the little blobs at the front of the image...I suspect they are 15mm (or thereabouts) figures. Just like the figures Megabloks designed for use with their submarines and warship models about 15 years ago! The Chutzpah of Lego is really quite staggering...let's recap with a dateless time-line;

Lego 'acknowledge' (without credit!) Airfix with a very similar-looking Ferguson tractor

Lego steal the design from Hestair Kiddicraft

Lego lose a court case on that matter, to Hestair Kiddicraft

Lego pay a large amount of money for the intellectual property of Hestair Kiddicraft

- hiatus -

Lego copy Playmobil for their Minifigs

Lego spend years suing Mega Bloks and others all over the world

Lego lose the majority of those suits, and where they win; often see the win overturned on appeal

Lego drop their 'no war toys' policy (they'd actually dropped it years earlier, with knights, Cowboys and US Cavalry v. Indians, Pirates v. Revenue soldiers, space ray-guns &etc)

Lego FOLLOW Mega Bloks with a wider range of more interesting and realistic colours, after purchasing the rights to make Star Wars toys (I think Lego followed Mega Bloks with licensing as well?)

Lego FOLLOW Mega Bloks with Dinosaurs

Lego FOLLOW Mega Bloks with Arctic Explorers AND a Yeti

Lego copy the micro figures of Mega Bloks

From Wikipedia: "The Lego Group has filed lawsuits against Mega Bloks Inc. in courts around the world on the grounds that Mega Bloks' use of the 'studs and tubes' interlocking brick system is a violation of trademarks held by Lego. Generally such lawsuits have been unsuccessful, chiefly because the functional design of the basic brick is considered a matter of patent rather than trademark law, and all relevant Lego patents have expired. In one of the most recent decisions, on November 17, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Mega Bloks' right to continue selling the product in Canada. A similar decision was reached by the European Union's Court of First Instance on November 12, 2008 when it upheld an EU trademark agency decision following an objection by Mega Bloks against a trademark awarded to Lego in 1999"

Conclusion: Buy your kids Mega Bloks, they are cheaper per ton, and lead the field in the innovation of a universal product...even Hornby-Airfix are using the Kiddicraft design now! (this is a drum I'm going to keep banging!)

I Thought this was good news - a non-warlike figure wiping the floor with his armed companions! Although I supose the millions of deaths in the wars of the reformation could be laid partly at his feet?

One day I will do a proper post on these toys as their history and the number of brands involved is even more interesting than the 8-stud building-block story!

H is for Happy Birthday

Might I - in my well-stuffed, slightly alcohol-steeped state, and before midnight turns over to the 26th - take this opportunity to wish the Little Baby Jesus a Happy Birthday.

It happens than I am not a follower of Christ, nor do I believe in his father, nor their (shared?) holy ghost! which - as someone like Bernard Shaw (?) pointed out; suggests a sure-fire place for me in this mythical Heaven as I have given all three of them a great deal more thought than most of the people who will have been popping down to their local church in the last few days, or who will be doing so in the next few days, for the first time in twelve-months!

However I do believe in him as having been a historical person of some substance and I also believe he was a man who meant well, and had the knack of taking a crowd with him using only oratory, even when the message was one they wouldn't have liked...

* Be nice to people who are not the same as you, whether or not that difference is one of income, skin colour, religious belief or mental or physical state.
* Be generous with what you've got, whether that is in talents of money or talents of the mind, and expect nothing in return, but show gratitude for the generosity of others.

I'm sure that were he alive today he would have something to say about keeping guns in the closet too, but that's for another post, although the 'Give unto Caesar' rule would let the Swiss off the hook; they do have a mature attitude to them after all!

Indeed, all in all - for a non-believer I seem to believe quite a bit! The thing is though, this birthday thing we celebrate today and which has been so usurped by 'Big-Business' and the media, by politicians and the movie industry, was only ever the party we all need in the depths of winter, being earlier usurped by the Judeao-Christian lot from the Romans, who had usurped various aspects of it from the 'barbarians'.

We have bits of the Roman Winter Solstice, Scandinavian Sol (or Yule), Saturnalia, and others included in some of the traditions we think of as 'Christmassy' and hundreds of festivals ancient and modern from Halloween in the Autumn through Valentines to Walpurgisnacht in the Spring have risen and fallen in popularity, morphed, evolved and been subsumed over the years to the point where the truth of any of them has been lost in the need to eat mountains of food, buy truck-loads of manufactured 'stuff', drink a small brewery and light fireworks!

But there is one truth: that we need to stop, in the middle of winter, let of a bit of steam, fatten the bones and contemplate where we've been and where we're going, who we love and why.

And if they want to do that in the name of the Little Baby Jesus, sobeit, maybe calling it Winterval (C)/(R) Sponsored by Pepsi-corp/Lego TM would be more honest, but...hey? When did those at the top ever do anything honest to us or for us, be they priests, phat-cats or politicians?

Look to those around you, and be nice to them, it's all that matters in the end.



Thanks go to Dario (from Venice, not Italy! - see; keep it small and local) for the figure - maker unknown.

And the Lord sayeth unto you; "Yey, thou art a gullible fool"

This is the little 'affirmation' sayings booklet that helps a 'born-again' Christian get through not a day but two whole months! Ahh...bless. Of course - to obtain it - money had to change hands on the steps of the temple...

It contains little sayings from the elders of the religion, bible quotes, modern language edits of the parables, dates in the ecumenical calender, that sort of thing, and it really helped some of them get through January and February of 2009...Great!

But what's this? It's been "...previously published 1996"? So the sayings from the little-baby-jesus that helped them through '96 are good for '09? This is no better than the Horoscopes in the tabloid rags.

These people simply aren't Homo Sapiens, they are Homo Almostsapiens, able to conform to the model of a human being while having less intelligence than a hungry squirrel (or even just a greedy squirrel!), after all they still believe in a Pan-dimensional Mega-being! And the people who preach to them, who sell them these booklets at the coffee mornings - charlatans!

One hopes that Selwyn Hughes and Mick Brook come to a sticky end...