About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label S. Show all posts
Showing posts with label S. Show all posts

Thursday, December 11, 2025

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Kinder Animals

I put these on the animal forum, in two tranches, some quite a while back, some more recently, but good to get them off the PC and onto an archive dongle! Kinder animals, older and newer!
 

1980's, I think these were from a set of four buffalo - African (black), Asian 'Water', N. American Buffalo and Wisent, but which is which (on the green one), and whether that's a true fact (set of four) are both open questions! Simple four-part clip-together toys.
 

Also the 1980's or maybe the 1990's, lift the tail and the head drops, push the tail down and the head rises - clever!
 

Deffinately the 1980's, I had one for a long time, which came with my packed-lunch egg! I lost a hoof, and it was years before I found another one! This is a polystyrene, ten-part, clip-together 'kit'.
 

A more modern take on the giraffe, his head also moves, but without the complicated hidden-gear mechanism.
 





These last four are more contemporary; since the late 2000's Kinder have had an almost constant series of animal sets, some more realistic, some more cutesy, some downright cartoony, but all under a theme-umbrella of wild-life, endangered, save the earth, kinda' stuff. The reindeer may be from a Frozen line?

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Kinder Figures

Shown on a Facebook group a while back, and time to get them up here and out of Picasa, many of these Kinder figures have been seen here before, in mixed lots, donations or as bit & pieces! But these are all complete, as far as I know, and blurb can be kept to a minimum! These are mostly from the mid-late 1980's or early-mid 1990's.
 
Diver on the left, mostly polystyrene, an RP-sourced archer on the right, in a polyethylene, but they are starting (like a lot of RP stuff) to get brittle now.
 
Three musketeers, also Res.
 
Fencers.
 
American egg-ballers!
 
Alien, also Res Plastics, also getting brittle now, you have to be very careful of the joins.
 
Small-scale astronauts, and their means of locomotion!
 
Panthers, that are pink!
 
Wellingtonian . . . Enemy dragoon, I think?
 
Charley's, one's Kinder (soldier), the other Hong Kong or Italian copy?
 
Speedy Gonzalez!
 
Ice skaters.
 
Different set from the above, same trope!
 
Caricatures.
 
Two from the 1970's on the left, a later caricature figure on the right.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

S is for Seen elswhere - Siberian Tigers

Well, some of them were, which was useful as Taos managed to ID one for me! Not an overview, there are dozens and dozens when you know what to look for, not all mine, a few more have come in, and some were still / are still in storage, and no real narrative of any consequence making itself obvious, so enjoy the eye candy!
 
It's huge!
 

Nayab from both sides.
 
About 1:10th scale? Too big for Action man?
 

Chasing tails!
 

Needs a meal too!
 
Unknown recent addition?
A bit bigger than the Schleich cub. 

Monday, December 1, 2025

S is for Shark Transporter!

Because you need to transport your sharks, of course! I've been umming-and-areing on this, for most of the summer, whilst waiting fruitlessly for weeks, to see the helicopter set arrive in local stores, which it did, briefly, over a month after being announced, only to sell-out before I could get a second one, to average out the poses*. But, I kept seeing this, is the same line of '2-for-£20' sets, and I kept not investing, but equally, kept forgetting to take a shelfie!
 
B&M website, Shark Transporter corporate shot!
 



Getting very pissed-off with this quite expensive, especially when compared with the old cheapo' Fuji Finepix and Nikon Coopix's I've been using since the start of the Blog, Olympus OM System camera. Too big to shoot in my bedsit, I couldn't get the flash to trigger, under any setting!
 
The case is already in the recycling system!
 
One item of road transport, and in the end I forced the fixed 'tank' off, to get a half-descent shot of the baby shark being transported, although, when I say 'baby', it fills a lorry, it's just smaller than the loose ones in the set!
 
Two deep-sea submersable exploration types.
 
A pair of more conventional tourist/sightseeing submarines.
 
A couple of surface vessels, including a quite chunky hovercraft.
 
It's not Stingray, it doesn't want to look like Stingray, it's never seen Stingray, it has no idea what Stingray's fins look like, or the configuration of Stingray's rear-engine vent, it's not called Stingray, doesn't want to be called Stingray, and look - it has a blunt-nose! It's the bootleg Stingray!
 
Four vinyl-like sharks, from the left a Hammerhead, Basking, Swordfish and Great White . . . in scale with the one on the truck, these are about 30-feet long!
 
The reason I gave-in and bought it, apart from getting a Blog-post based on actual 'stuff', was in part for the five animals, but also because everything here's plastic, so the vehicles will go very well with the Bruder and Kinder types, in future overviews.
 
This Dinosaur Transporter, is also in the line, and has four of the smaller-size dinosaurs, I think this has been shelfied here before, as a future 'mixed-lot' animal ID aid, and we've seen and shelfied similar dino-trucks from/in B&M, Smyths and TKMaxx.
 
* The fact that the only decent set of small soldiers seen in any of the big stores this year, sold out so quickly, is possibly a message the stores have failed to recognise. More toy soldiers please!