E is for Elgate - Spring Gift Fair 2025

As last, another image dump, but many more figural items on display, this year. With Scotland and Wales having a bigger presence in the various lines, and Paddington putting in an appearance!

 

Poured resin

 

Those non-sharpening pencil sharpeners again!

Not for the collection, but could interest someone? Christmas trees?

 

I've seen a boxing Kangaroo in the last few days, don't know if it was Elgate (didn't look), but they are a bit naff, fun for kids though, which is the main function of novelties!

 

 

 

Nothing of the 'piper' about them, just Guardsman on decorated pens!

 

Roman big 'ed!

 

Keyrings, might be one of the new soft/foamed rubbers? Rather in the style of the old Xandria keyrings from the Netherlands, but modern and made in China.

 

Metal keyrings, if I see the guardsman, I'll grab one for that novelty stash, but the rest can stay on the peg, being more bottle-opener than figural!

 

Egg-cups!

 

The resin parade again, and more egg-cups.

 

A 'Photoclip', what the novelty industry calls a place-name holder, when everybody likely to buy place-name holders have bought a set (or two!) of place-name holders! Also, selling them singly, results in a higher profit-margin per unit . . . and more packaging for a planet which just hasn't seen enough packaging yet.

 

The resin bears!

 

All, also seen before!

 

The big-heads have been replaced with rubber Leprechaun keyrings.

 

Nessie - die-cast Mazak/Zamak

 

Scottie-dogs and a bear!

Close-ups of the snow 'eggs', I think the thinner one is manufactured from poured-resin, the chubby chap may be plastic or a synthetic rubber compound?

 

Various Welsh Dragons in die-cast alloy or resin, mostly smallish, baby 'Game of Thrones' dragons (the die-casts), the larger poured-resin examples could be useful for Role Play, or fans of the Nottingham Mafia system.

 

Paddington!

 

Mostly novelty stuff and pretty ephemeral, but, that's given Elgate a decent presence in the Tag list, and covered most of what they have, which may be of interest, currently, but they're not the only purveyors of this kind of stuff, and we'll look at another soon.

E is for Elgate - Spring Gift Fair 2023

Having mentioned them the other day, in passing, and because their stuff is, if not actually rack-toys, at least within that pocket-money, novelty, touristy branch of the figural tree, I think it's time to clear the queue of the Elate pictures, call it an image dump!

 

The bulk of it is poured-resin 'touristicas' with a bit of plastic and die-cast in the mix, and the post is blurb-light, as it's all pretty self-explanatory. For some reason they've loaded in reverse again, keeps happening, but there's no narrative here so it doesn't matter . . . the Internet slowly getting worse, like everything else!

 

Small resin bears.

 

Bobble heads, no room for them in this collection, unless they are glow-in-the-dark aliens - nobody knows what aliens look like! And the guardsman would probably be allowed in, just because the novelty guardsmen is a side branch with a life of its own!

 

More resin!

 

Not so much pencil (or pen-) tops, as jackets or holders for replacement Biro-ink inserts, again poured resin, and when things like this come into the collection, I saw them off the long body and put them on bases.

 

Orks!

or Goblins?

 

 

Fairies, I know where a few of these ladies hang out, and they are very similar to the Pucator ones, which we saw here, when they were kicking around, about a decade ago.

 

Standard tourist fare, we've seen the pencil-sharpener figures (sans pencil sharpeners), at the time of the Queen's death, I bought a set of three, whilst navigating my way from the North bank to the South, avoiding the miles-long, whimpering queue of simple-minded sycophants.

 

The luck O' the Irish!

 

Snow-globes/snow-domes (and snow-eggs!) of Edinburgh Castle, Highland pipers &etc...

 

Nope!

 

Better! I think we've seen one in the collection now, and if not we've certainly seen several similar beasts, some courtesy of Chris Smith or Peter Evans.

 

There's a whole lot more to come on these, from this year's early Gift Fair, so I'll try to get them up tomorrow . . . .that's later today now!

B is for Brave Busy Book

I mentioned in another post over Christmas how TKMaxx didn't have the usual pile of Phidel Busy Books this year, and to be honest, the supply of them has been dwindling for some time, after trying to scalp a couple of extra-quid per unit, WHSmith seem to have stopped stocking them (locally at least) some time ago, and my last few trips to TKMaxx haven't seen any, but I have managed to pick-up a couple at Charity shops, and this in one of them!

Brave, a Disney Pixar movie which - like most of Phidal's choices - has totally passed me by! Not only that, I'm an old git, it's bound to happen; but I've never heard of it, despite it's having won lots of awards and sounding like I'd probably enjoy it (?) - I Googled it!

If the Mother turns into a bear (she does!) I guess the three little cubs are also the 'triplets', who might spoil the movie for me, I hate the annoying brat/comedy element (Daggit, I'm talking to you, and you Scrappy Doo, and yes Tweakie!), so three is just too much! But the mother/bear is a nice sculpt!

Most Phidal sets have rather naff play mats which consist of stills from the production, but this could have limited use as a pocket war games mat? Heavy cover, light cover and a quest/target to defend - the Henge!

That's it, box ticked.

N is for Novelty Highlanders!

Let's get the oddities out of the way first!

Alongside the Dewar's Drum Major we've seen recently and included for sizing, we have a rather nice Hong Kong piper, based on the Britains Herald pose (as most copies are) but with the novel change of headgear to a side-cap, his pipes are also further spread with a thicker connecting sash (which probably has a special name but I don't know it!) sans tassels.

Then there are three versions of key-ring, the one on the right being a heavier sculpt in a softer PVC to the other two, along with a mini-key-ring version approximately 1:72nd scale.

The three larger key rings with the Herald donor; I converted the first one years ago, although a full'ish 54mm, with no base he always looked a bit smaller and hung around even while I was a small scale 'purist', I used to always cut the key ring away, I now realise this was a kind of sacrilege (unless you add a base maybe?) so now I leave the key ring - or whatever remains of it, as it the case of the other two!

Bog-standard tourist items in the 1970's and 1980's there must be quite a few of them or things like them around the place and I'm sure that away from our branch of the hobby there will be key-ring (-fob, -chain...) collectors with lots of paint/plastic/sculpt-variants and/or different sizes?

As I'm equally sure the eraser/novelty-sharpener collecting people have a few more of these? I don't know where the head came from but it doesn't seem to have come from the earlier Zang/Herald chap, who has the long tapes or ribbons at the back. And his legs have veered away from the donor's design!

No branding clue, just a simple 'HONG KONG', and again probably sold as a generic tourist trinket from the kiosks of Central London or the gift shops of lesser or second-tier museums and visitor attractions.

I also have this in the collection, although I ask myself "Why?" every time I see it! I guess I like the clever impression of depth-of-field attained by the laser-cut laminate glued to its own background - they even line-up the shadows! A fridge magnet; it's probably still around, or quite contemporary, although I've had it for ten years or more?