D is for Donation - Chris - Animals

The backside of this pair (ooh missus!) is the recent parcel from Chris Smith and the animals therewith, and it was quite a fishy sample! But sea life seems to play fourth fiddle, to farm, zoo and dinosaurs, so it's nice to find what was available, over the years!

 

A couple of incomplete walkers, as with the Jigtoys, and cereal premium mini-kits, there is a tub for bits of these, and hopefully, eventually, enough parts will enable the reconstruction of some, I know I have a spare blue leg in there already, so the dog may walk again, but it has to be the correct leg!

 

On the subject of dogs . . . I love the blow-moulded celluloid effort from Japan, he has a tree hanger, and I hadn't even entertained the idea that such things might be used in that way, but with modern families throwing movie villains and Disny characters on their trees with gay abandon, I guess anything is possible in the non-bauble, bauble world!

 

Three! Looks like someone's fledgling collection of Octopi (and squid) ended-up in Chris's odds tray! I do have a few Octopuses and squids (fight among yourselves on the correct plural, spellchecker is happy with both), so, hopefully, we will have a post, or page on them one day.

 

Reptiles and anphibians, often got a shared set, or even shared book-space, when we were young, and with three 'rubber jigglers', there's plenty of nostalgia in this shot. The orange one, nylon I think, washed out by the flash, may be a place-card holder, it has a large, triangular wedge under his belly, which it's sitting on, and you could curve a place-card/name-plate through the slots of its arms, but then again, I may be over-thinking a game-playing piece?!!

 

The originals of the mini Elephant flat seem to have been US-available, US made, and hard polystyrene, these soft polyethylene ones which turn-up in the UK will be Christmas cracker novelties. Two squirrels, another favourite subject, the bisque one has lost an ear which would be hard to replace, but might perhaps be built-up using the superglue/baking soda method, and a file?

 

The plastic one may be from a kids comic/magazine set or something, while the little white lamb is almost certainly adrift from his/her small, cheap, Hong Kong nativity set?

 

These are very interesting, probably Hong Kong, and never to be ascribed a maker, they are a set of sharks, including some unusual ones, like the Thresher at the back with the long upper tail fin, which they use as a whip to herd small fish like sardines into a bait-ball! Or the Saw Shark, front left.

 

Pencil tops, they are mostly marked 1980 / 5p, as can be seen on the upturned Bowmouth Guitarfish, possibly by the collector who purchased them, as a lot, and recorded the price and date, as it's not something you'd find on a tub of them, back at the time?

 

 

Another shark, and several interesting fish, some copies of US originals, and at least three probably belonging to sets/part-sets already in the pile, so very useful, Chris was taken with the flying fish, and it's a lovely sculpt, while the seahorse is a scale-up of a similar one seen in a past sea life roundup, even to colour and type of plastic, so they probably belong together too?

 

Rubber jigglers of a whale and a lobster, I shot the whale from an awkward angle, but it illustrates the gape-mouth, a feature of many jigglers, from alien monsters through full Chinasaurs, to this chap, or chapess!

 

This is interesting, it's fully fired porcelain or fine china, as opposed to bisque or terracotta, and fully glazed in two colours, I suspect it might be a chopstick rest, but not the common 'Blue & White' ones normally found (post in the queue, and boat seen in the last 'brown water navy' post), so it may just be a French pudding prize, or more miscellaneous keepsake/collectable?

Again, many thanks to Chris for these, all new to collection and new to blog

Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish! 
A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh. 
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish! 
That went wherever I did go.

F is for Fishy Business!

Do you remember the B&M shark carry-case we looked at, not that long ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/12/s-is-for-shark-transporter.html 

 

Well, here's another one, this time courtesy of TKMaxx, apparently clearance from Code Red Novelties of New York, they've clearly seen the B&M effort somewhere in the pipeline, and thought "We could do that, cheaper!"

 

Cheaper means no little boats or submersibles, but in order to address the lack of vehicular action, the whole carry-case is a truck! And, just like the B&M one, it has inhabited compartments on one side, and empty compartments on the other, to be filled by the owner. The truck and packaging have already gone to charity and recycling, respectively!

 

I guess you always get one of the paired palm trees, along with a random selection of five from twelve of the sea life sculpts, I would have liked the octopus, as they are growing as a side-issue, but so are star fish and turtles, so I'm not complaining!

 

That's it, we buy this shit so you don't have to! Box ticking some new production - a couple of years ago it was all dinosaur-head truck carry-cases, now it's sharks!

L is for Last Ball

There are some follow-up or related posts, but this is the last of the samples of my figural inclusion-balls, with a summing up shot, comparing those we've seen over the last few days, and a non-figural 'also-ran'.

 

There were soldier balls!, At about 15/16mm, they were a tad small for compatibility with other popular scales (except 15mm war games stuff), but, being baseless would be really useful for filling open-topped vehicles, which are always short on space, due to overscale slab-sides reducing scale 'space'.

 

I don't know how many poses there were, as I found the last few, but I would imagine with three here, at least four would be a starter, probably eight or ten! And they are late-1980's US/NATO type,s in the then still newish, kevlar 'Fritz' helmets.

 

Using the left-hand of the 'mirror' as a key - on the left we have, at the top, the Keycraft Global dinosaur egg, with a plain red opaque background half, and the same issuers semi-transparent green ball. In the middle, a pack-ice/slush inclusion scenic Polar Animal ball, the footballer ball, with a half football as the other half of the ball and a full iceberg Polar ball on the right. While the lower pair are a skydiver ball with multicoloured chunks, and the soldier ball with camouflaged chunks. All branded to Hembrandt.

 

The FA ball (link in earlier post) was larger, and included a larger figure, a previously seen snowman Santa (with icing pick), had a clear ball with glitter included, while Keycraft were offering butterflies last year at the Spring Fair (I didn't attend this year, but may try the Autumn show), and wild animal balls, alongside the dinosaur eggs back in 2020.

 

While this non-figural, franchise-licensed, movie tie-in, came in with a job-lot from a charity shop (I think? Or one of Chris's parcels?), and you can see it's beginning to delaminate along the plain of the card disc, which would have caused it to fall in two if the previous owner continued to use it as a bouncy-ball! 

 

It looks to be a two-phase pour, like the dinosaurs, or FA ball, while most of the others would have required three phases to suspend the figures above the other inclusions/scenic discs.

A is for Animal Balls!

No, not a study of gynaecological gonads, so you can fuck-off, you weirdo! But rather, a continuation of the overview of inclusion toy bouncy-balls, through the imports of Henbrandt and their Harlequin lines. The guys who started it, as I found them first, and actually two lots, the Polar Animals, whose tub I kept, to keep them all in, and a set of cetaceans, which, with other issuers/carriers can be intermixed, either with each other, or with other sea-life, sharks or more conventional fishes.

 

There are three types of these, and, after the card disc type and PVC landscape type, represent three other types, of four really, being plain, large iceberg (upper-left), pack-ice-slush (lower-right), iceberg with snow (below) and half-and-half clear and opaque, with the opaque half providing the backdrop, which we have seen already, with dinosaurs.

 

Airfix Zoo size! But only if they are all juveniles! So small, so easily lost, and with probably 90% of them either incinerated or in landfill already, it's lucky I've got some to show, although they are still available, from Chinese wholesalers and importers like Ravensden.

 

Snow over iceberg, two seals, and unfortunately, the method of construction, or properties of the materials means that while I could extract the tiny animals, or figures, the other inclusions were fully melded with the clear ball material, and broke-up with it, instead of coming out whole.

 

Although described as PVC in the Tags (the animals and figures are) the balls are made of something else, like polybutadiene, or polyvinyl acetate (PVA (like white glue/woodworkers glue)) adulterated with borax, (sodium borate), or a silicon/cornstarch mix, and even when formed in separate layers, they become one entity, which I had to scalpel to pieces, to extract the inclusions of more interest!

 

Underside of one of the icebergs.

 

My full sample, less the cetaceans, a range of sea lions, seals and a walrus, with penguins and a polar bear, most of them not longer than the width of a thumbnail, yet really quite well-decorated. They would have been an absolute in our Christmas stockings as kids, but seem to be a late-1980's-onwards thing, unknown to the parents or kids of the 1960/70's?

 

Another sizer, 'ball scale', the penguin's maybe 10mm?

 

Tub sticker!

P is for Philanthropic Polymer Pile

I haven't been as quick or often through the Charity Shops, this last eighteen months or so, work commitments, eBay bottom-feeders and a couple of store closures making it a less lucrative quest these days, but I did manage two quick tours of Farnham and Fleet's charity shops last week, while I had some time off, and I found these.

 

This was a quick round-up in Fleet

 

Box tickers for the tubs of generic play-set accessories, but also a new figure, funny how, despite forty-odd serious years of this, there's still new figures, in every bunch of plunder, every donantion, even a random bag of charity stuff! Jame's Opie always asks - primarily of lead hollow-casts and solids - how many figures (actual pose mouldings/sculpting) have there been, and the answer, from where I'm sitting, is millions - one is including copies and colour or paint variations.

 

A couple of slip-cast kittens, with slightly 'Disney' or 'doe eyes', but a rather interesting glaze technique, I thought? And mostly because they are often in mixed lots of cats, or pets, I now have quite a side-collection of china, bisque or chalkware cats. These are priced 3/6 each (three shillings and sixpence, 42 old pence, about 16p in new money, at the time?).

 

A pair of Toy Major Dino's.

 

A right old mix here, with the Ray marked Smartstudy and Viacom 2021, I assume not a Finding Nemo thing, but some other franchise, maybe Baby Shark?

 

And then, the next day - to Farnham!

 

Given the cost of these new, or 2nd-hand with box, I'm guessing a tenner for the three, while a swallow, was also the best I was going to get for what, to me, are box-tickers, to compare with plastics in the future? Not 'Britians' but W'britian from the US.

 

Simply marked 'China' and probably from some toob, or tub type thing, but a nice sample of ocean or shore-dwelling mammals, from the left; a Sea-lion, Mantee, Seal and Walrus.

 

It's Christmas! A nicely executed bit of poured-resin, possibly from Italy, but I don't know, as they are unmarked where visible, and have green-baize discs on their undersides, hiding any clues which might be there?

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!

B is for Big Box of Bounty - Animals

The penultimate post of plastic plunder from Chris, and it's the animals, the least documented of the collection, simply because there are thousands upon thousands of them, and they've just never been a priority, and as the pile of unknowns grows, it gets, like any dark secret, too big to face!

 

But one day soon I hope to tackle it (there's realistic-sculpt Lik Be hidden in there, among other things), and when I do, it will fall into place, or at least some of it will!

 

A Dino-skeleton, a modern phenomenon which is contributing to that pile, although we have ID'd a few over the years, but they keep coming, and this one, one of those 'berry-heads' (Pachycephalosaurus) by the look of it, is larger than most and new to me, it's creeping-up on two arguing cave-men, who are now known (by me, other people knew all along!) to be HG Toys.

 

Small PVC jobbies, and a big job too, with many ID'd and many still to be, here I think we have examples of two modern/current'ish sets, a good [detail] and a not so good set, and one of more vintage, the green one with a splash of pink paint?

 

Not Dinosaurs in my Pocket (Matchbox and cereal premiums), but 'Dino Brites' by Happyness Express of New York (1991), originally Panosh, there's plenty on the Internet about them, this is a good précis on the subject;

 

https://www.littleweirdos.net/2012/02/dino-mites-dino-brites.html

 

 

Larger chaps, with an erasersaur, and one from my favourite rubber set, front right, in a bit of a state, but that state is interesting - it looks upon first glance to be a string, tied by a young owner, which has cut into the foot, but actually, upon trying to remove it, it became clear it was actually an inclusion, running through the leg, and exiting at two points, a piece of cleaning cloth, or hessian sack used to transfer batches of product around the factory floor, which got flicked into the tool? Amazing how it's survived!

 

Two recognisable Holly's (now we've had half a look at them here, as part of the Gygax posts), and the silver one is a nice, but unknown, moulding? Which leaves a softer, more 'Chinasaur' Stegosaurus, who may belong with the Protoceratops and red chap in the second image above?

 

I've seen this chap in mixed lots on evilBay and wondered if it was a copy of one of the Wild West charging/fighting bears, but I think it's a copy of an Elastolin (or Lineol?) composition model, perhaps for Roggatz's ZZ-brand, although not with those green eyes . . . a copy of a copy? Still a nice sculpt, though!

 

Two Airfix piracies, getting a good sample of these now, with and without painted eyes, two larger Hong Kong/China pieces, being a mouse/rat and copy of the Corgi farm dog, a Matchbox boxer-dog from the pick-up truck, and a Berlin-marked bear, with MAMPE, on the other side, a logo-premium for the 'Berlin Mule' kicker-spirit!?

 

A flocked kangaroo, believed to be a Hong Kong-supplied tourist keepsake, three Safari animals, another weakness in the collection, as I've concentrated on the figural sets, and a collectable-series monkey from Topps, who need a better post, along with those Yowies, still in the long queue!

 

Tupperware zebra on the left, chalkware lion from the Naturecraft Christmas crackers in the middle, and one of the two, or four, I'm still looking for! And another bath-toy swan (there was a blue one in the last lot from Peter Evans, and I think I have a pinkish-red one?), which is almost certainly an early post-war novelty, brightening the Christmases, and bath-time's, of the nation's baby-boom.

 

Farm stuff, the composition cow looks particularly interesting (Brent?), while piggy-wiggies and eeeps will need their own ID pages eventually, as there are many of them, and so many copies of known sculpts, it's a collection field in itself . . . Indeed I know a cow collector, who comes round the shows, and from just what I've seen him buy, his collection must be amazing.

 

Two modern horses, and a rather knackered, but still interesting (a sample is always better than no sample) wagon or cart horse, in a solid plastic, which may be Bakelite, or a similar phenol-formaldehyde resin / thermo-set?

 

A bit of fun on the left (but it's a sample!), probably from a modern kid's magazine freebies, and a more conventional beetle on the right, I have half an idea, one day, if I get the time, to mount them all in thematic, glass-fronted, deep frames, as if they are real entomologists exhibits, and ladybirds will be first, as I have a dozen, or more, already!

 

 

Vitacup premiums, mostly damaged, but 'styrene, so usefully glueable, and kept apart, against a future mending session! The baby elephant is more robust, and has survived intact.

 

Lego (?) fish, a Hammerhead, who is damaged, he's missing his lower 'gape mouth' jaw, but it actually, ironically, takes him from the realm of rubber-juggler, to something more realistic looking! A Safari White Shark, and a more generic . . . Mako? Marked China and 'Shark'!

 

Two stretchy 'rubber-jiggler' lizards, probably from two sources, the one unmarked, and flattish with fine sculpting detail, the other fully-round, with fuzzier surface detail (marked China), despite both being metallics, common on these stretchy toys.

 

The turtle is amusing, to me, as I have a blue one which I think is a childhood survivor, despite my not remembering the set, or occasion of its acquisition, it seems to have been in the toy drawer for forever, and nice to find his mate, in another fantastic parcel from Chris Smith.