M is for More from London, Second of Three Plunder Posts

Continuing with the look at Peter's late summer car-booty, and we're looking at sports figures and civilians in this post, with several useful examples of this and that, the odd oddity and some old friends!

 

Two Chad Valley and a Peter Pan Playthings footballer's, similar to the Palitoy push-heads, but having different mechanisms, I don't know if the Chad Valley's have been home painted or badly painted, while the Peter Pan can still be found in larger stores, or some of the mail-order novelty catalogues.

 

Note there are subtle differences between the fixing arrangement, of the Chad Valley players, to their bases, the significance of which I don't know (slightly different ball-kick characteristics?), while the Peter Pan player has a push button attached to a lever system like Palitoy's heads, Chad Valley's have a flicker on their upper shin, and (I think) a hidden spring. Similar figures were issued by Subbuteo as strikers or goalkeeper accessories.

 

Another bunch of the current cake decoration set, so far linked to three or more brandings, and several three or seven-a-side team strips, they will be added to and compared with the growing sample.

 

A humungous ice-hockey player, with a massive, chunky base, whom I assume is from some kind of table-game, akin to Table Football? I think he's polyethylene, but he could be a softer 'styrene, or some kind of 'propylene? Discolouration is probably from direct sunlight, and can probably be cured with an ultrasonic cleaner and some bleach solution?

 

The Gem golfer seems to be a Hong Kong copy, but it is in a soft polyethylene, rather than the usual (for Cullpit-Wilton commissions) hard polystyrene, and very-much in the ABC paint-style. Two of the HK mini-clones of the Olympic figurines and a key-ring, fat-footballer kid, conversion - loop removed and base glued on.

 

A lovely, current/new white-button Disney Princess knock-off from Rex London, another Disney-like in the Bully-Phidal-Safari style; I can't remember if she was marked, but one day we'll have to have a look at all of them on one page/in one post as there are so many! The cake-decoration dancer is missing her base, but can probably be wedged into one of the Charbens-Crescent-Marty circus horses, as some versions of the same sculpt are, by Marty!

 

And the bride, also a cake decoration is a better example of quite a few in the stash, who has her lace head-covering, 'posey' and silk ribbon intact. They come in a range of sizes and base marks, in various pastel colours and with different add-ons, and I do have a few complete variations now, so should blog them properly one day.

 

The key-ring looks like another variation of the Commonwealth sculpt, but I think it's more a case of the  dancers all being dressed in a grass skirt (the pāʻū) and draped in the floral-garland necklaces (lei lāʻī) associated with Hula, which is also about hip-movement as much as the hand gesture/language, so I think it's more a case of similar look, rather than crediting everything to Commonwealth!

 

Hong Kong (Wilton?) copy of the Hawaiian ukulele player, who is 'styrene, a Marx linesman, not clear, as he's on is back rather than up his ladder, but a set we'll look at properly another day, and two MPC civilians, in yellow (reissues?), the red one is new to me and the other two are different scales of a vast range of figures, seemingly from the same source, who were available to and issued by Tesco-Welly-Woolworth's/Chad Valley and others in the mid-1990's/early 2000's.

 

From the left, Cofalu, unknown 'China', Matchbox and Corgi, the long arm of the 'Leuwah' as Inspector Clouseau would have put it! And PVC-rubber, polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene respectively.

 

Thomas on the left here, I think, PVC, with an unknown and new-to-me, but interesting rider/driver next to him. A civilianised version of the common seated figure we saw in black, in part one of these posts. A Benbros-Kemlows type motorcyclist is next, with a pair of what I'm sure are novelty firemen, from a larger beach/garden toy.

 

One of the cross-over's with the forthcoming Chris Smith plunder posts is this nice hard plastic, possibly phenolic or urea-formaldehyde type, possibly an early 'styrene? And basically, a novelty, floating, bath-toy, there were also swans.

 

A collection of horses, with the larger one Britains for Tri-Ang if it's the one I think it is, two of them in contrasting colours came with a large tin-plate horse-box. Papo girl on pony, with another Papo to her right, a damaged Vitacup and two coach/wagon horses complete the group.

W is for Wax Wildlife!

Wax novelty-shaped crayons, a staple of Kinder for many years, but other people do do them, from time to time, and these were picked-up in The Range and TKMaxx, months apart, but they were figural, so . . . Small Scale World's latest wax wildlife!

 

Not very gummi-bear'ish, their arms and legs are too 'formed', and they have proper faces! Pretty sure these NPW were in The Range, back in April, but I'm not as sure now, as I was a few minutes ago, and they may have been TKMaxx clearance?

 

These (Rex London) were definitely in TKMaxx, last weekend!

Gotta' get your ducks in a row!

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!

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!

D is for Dinorasers - 1 of 3

Clearing an old folder which was going to be one overview, but in the end it sort of made sense to break it up into three parts, so that's what I've done, and this is the first of those parts!

 

These are imported by Strawberry Design & Marketing, I don't know if they are the same as the more commonly encountered Strawberry Group (Saffron Walden, CB postcode), but CO9 is a Colchester postcode, so the suspicion is the same firm moved to larger (or smaller) premises?

 

These are quite large and well detailed for Erasersaus, so they may have been moulded from tools usually used for actual carpet-play dinosaur models? And - as far as I could tell - there were only the four sculpts, in all four colours.

Modern'ish erasers, which I think we've seen before in other branding's (the Asda and Paperchase set), here is the Chinese (?) parent - Shangxin? And new colours, arguably more realistic, the red one excepted!

These are older, and more mono-horned dino's, who would normally have pairs!  A little smaller that the previous set, and simpler, but still some nice surface detailing, no brand but claimed for Taiwan, which is less usual?

 

Very simple and taken from the 'rubber jiggler' set I've sung the nostalgia-praise of here, in the past, as my favourite childhood set, I think this was an eBay shot from years ago, and looking at it, they may be the smudgy silicon-rubber which makes for crap erasers!

These are credited to Rex London who we've previously seen here importing unpowered (or hand-powered!) gliders, so a consistent novelty importer then! Smaller than all the above, but really nice sculpts. More to come!

R is for Rack-Toy Gliders

Quick apology to Mr. B - our support in New York; he sent a set of the Superhero gliders we looked at last time to the blog for closer inspection, but I've misplaced them in the attic somewhere so they aren't here. What we do have are some more of the 'traditional' or bog-standard, pocket-money ones in envelopes and a 'pack of three'!

These are in the local pop-up discount store, and you get three colourful jets, two with vaguely Asian or Asian-reminiscent markings (South Vietnam (orange) and China/North Korea/North Vietnam (blue) ?), the other even more generic in yellow and all three the same die-cut design. Red Deer - it's the fourth or fifth item from them, found by Peter Evans or myself in the last couple of years, so some importer's nom de jour!

I shelfied these awhile ago, but they still have them and I may purchase one (for the life-changing amount of a whole quid!) for next time, as when I was putting everything away in the garage a year ago I found the storage lot and - as I mused before - there is a four-prop Lancaster! . . .  and several older promotional/advertising freebies/giveaways in balsa, so another post due on these in a year or so  . . . got to top-up the tag occasionally!

I was so intrigued by the FW Trainer on the pack-back listings last-time, when I saw them together somewhere, I bought both to compare, as with the others (about five brandings now, these are Rex - London (Rex - International)) the printing as been allowed to deteriorate with age and the change in material they are printed on - they used to be balsa but have been expanded-polystyrene sheet for a couple of decades, or more now.

You can see where the original German crossed have been Photoshop'ped out (although that probably happened before 'Photoshop' ever existed) which is odd as it's the swastika that has the cultural-association problems attached; not the cross?

The 'A-4' looks like a Focke Wolf, I fear the 'TA 152H' trainer (an Eocke Wolf!) is using the same dies as the Japanese Zero!