B is for Bagged, Boxed and Blister-Carded!

Now, there's a title I should have, could have, aught to've thought of years ago, having decided to stubbornly stick with the 'A is for . . . ' trope. Especially when I could have dropped it the first month, after we got to zed, or the next month after we'd gone back up to ay? But, whatever, we've had it now!

 

February's Sandown resulted in lots of nice things being added to the pile, and these are all those - we haven't seen yet - which came/come with their packaging, there not being enough stuff for thematic posts, I'm finding other ways to run-off shots from the main folder!

 

This was an amazing find, on the nostalgia front, not because you can't probably find them regularly on feebleBay, but because I hadn't thought to look, having forgotten this for several decades, but this was my Brother's piggy-bank, when we were kids. I had the hard polystyrene 'pillar-box', with three black bands, numbered as a combination lock (which I have seen, but not while I was buying), from Hong Kong, while my brother had this, also from Hong Kong, imported by CODEG Productions (Cowan de Groot)

 

It's not exactly the same, as his was yellow plastic under the flocking, which came off quite soon, ears first! So our Rupert was plain yellow for years, probably until we moved house in 1980, while this one is actually red polythene, so at least two production runs for this.

 

We loved Rupert, and had quite a few annuals from the Church fête, it was all a bit Edwardian, prep-school and jolly hockey-sticks, but kids don't mind, same with the Enid Blyton stuff, prejudices are passed-on by grown-ups, kids just like reading that other kids are having adventures in a pirate cave with a pet mouse in their pocket, or - in Rupert's case - chasing a Bramble Imp with an Elephant in a suit!

 

Purchased purely for the card sample, we looked at the figure set a while ago, as I have them all loose, but at that time I only knew about the five or ten set cards, now we have pairs, for really poor kids!

 

Close-ups; Slinger (below) and Stinger!

 

Box-ticking, I now have complete sets of Romans, Greeks and Egyptians, and most, if not all the Wild West, but I only had one nurse from this set, maybe another figure? Although, looking at the card-reverse, I still haven't found the firefighters!

 

Unusually (especially when you consider there are ten firefighter sculpts), there are only six poses in this set, with four duplicate pairs and two 'uniques' for the ten-count?

 

Contemporaneous with all those magnetic novelties, was this, Falbala the Fakir, from Fairylite, who could be cut in half, yet remain whole, I say 'could', because his - probably - phenolic-based polymer has warped, and he actually falls apart rather easily and stays together only with delicate intervention!

 

When new, you would prise his two body-halves apart, enough to get the sword in, then, upon slicing downward, would push a locking key out of the way. There are three of the slightly curved keys on a revolving wheel (think the Coat of Arms [legs] of the Isle of Man), so as the sword pushed one out of the way, another would come round and lock in behind it, so the Fakir stayed together as the sword went right through him!

  

From the 'Empire Made', I'm guessing this was a Swansea-operation corner of the 'Kins universe, if it was the US arm of Marx behind it, it would usually be 'Made in British . . . Hong Kong, Crown Colony' and/or etc. The seller had several, some with two Fairykins, some with common window-box accessories like the dog-house, but I thought the semi-flat guardsman was a bit different, and needed to be in the master collection!

  

More Humpties here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/05/e-is-for-eggcellent-effigies.html 

 

100% sure this is Airfix, no pattern number, and no banner-logo, but in every other way mirroring other known examples of early Airifx novelties, plastic colours match the animal flat/building block/baby bricks, and the micro-aircraft I've also called as Airfix, while the card is very similar to the one the animal flats came on, and I bet those 'planes came from similar cards? I will add more imagery of it to the Airfix Blog, in a day or two.

 

Finally, a cereal premium Hulk, mint in 'food-hygienic' pack! Called 'Desktop Buddies' and issued in 2003 by various Nestle properties, including Golden Nuggets, it's actually a relief sculpt with a hollow back, but a packaging sample is always useful!

Q is for Question Time - Whimsical Lead

Again, not so much of a question, as I feel these are likely to prove to be Good Soldiers, but they came as a bulk lot of 'shop stock' with no packaging, which would be an uncommon escape from the garage concern that is Good Soldiers, I haven't seen them in Ron's immaculately-cut, foam-lined 'toy soldier' boxes, on his stall either, and they don't seem to be copies of other, older, plastic figures, as his more whimsical, or fairy-tale-TV-Disney stuff tends to be.

 

These are more 'Good Soldier' like, as the two larger bears seem to be taken from a commonish sculpt, both sides of the channel, and both sides of the pond, often found with backwoodsmen or other Wild West, not holding bowls or spoons, mind!

 

And the girl holding a straw boater behind her back also looks vaguely familiar, but as a group a rather nice Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I would add that Baby Bear is doing a pretty good impression of Mary Plain, while Daddy Bear seems to be a stretched Mummy Bear - owch!

Whereas these Rupert the Bear snowball fighters appear to be unique sculpts, in that they weren't cereal premiums or similar as far as I know, The Tournament Collection did a whitemetal set back in the 1980's, but theirs were smoother finished I feel, and all just standing. From the left Rupet, Podgy Pig and the mischief-makers, Freddy & Ferdie Fox, although how you tell them apart is a mystery to me!

 

So anyways, any ideas, on either set, gratefully received!

S is for Stationery

This is the last of the pencil top stuff for a while - promise (you don't want to see the recent Weetabix football shirts and shite like that, do you!?), and as we were looking at the TV related stuff last time, some more of them first;

From left, top row; Skelator and She-ra (I think - Teela see; Comments) from the Masters of the Universe franchise, I was busy playing big soldiers in Germany (providing real-time OpFor for a couple of Soviet Shock Armies!) at the time MotU was popular so know little about it, I think it involved a grey skull or something! Then a soft vinyl Flintstone figure and a Hello Kitty cat differing from Miffi only in the shape and size of the ears...and the marketing budget! Strange how not only is Hello Kitty so like Miffi and the boys of South Park resemble the earlier Mainzelmännchen?

The flying Snowman of Raymond Briggs, and figure I think is Lucy (or the other one!) from Peanuts and a knock-off stupid kid wizard like Harry Potter.

Two characters from Rupert the Bear but I think the old git is from Popeye? A non-stationery frog (in love with a pig...since when was that sort of thing to be encouraged on kids TV?) trying to work out how he too can get a pencil up his arse and two of the dreaded Trolls that were literally everywhere in the mid-1970's...and still come around on a regular basis, these days Russ Berrie exploit the franchise, the two here are - like most of these toppers - Hong Kong.

Not Toppers; 'Clingers' and 'Holders', all Kinder with K-numbers from 2000 and 2004, I had to use the lids to show-off the 'holder action' as anything more than about a third of a wooden pencil is too heavy!

Finally the old and the new, both figural; The pencil sharpener is marked 'GERMANY' and dates from the 1950's (if it's a day) while the Sports Relief chap is currently in Ryman's. The Cowboy is that much copied pose originally by Lido and the like, both the sharpener and the Harry Potter lookie-like'ee above are polystyrene.