A is for Another 'Lucky Bag', and Some Seasonal Stuff!

A few other purchases in the last few weeks, and after the blind surprise 'Lucky bags' we saw from The Works earlier in the year (October), I noticed similar bags in Poundland the other day, and again got the Dinosaur themed one as the best chance of a figural, and as a comparison with the disappointing inflatable of the last example.

 

A task made slightly easier by the fact that the contents are illustrated on the outside of the bag! Stickers, puzzle, skeleton, collector cards and a 'bonus' key-ring . . . if it's listed, pictured and included in every bag, it's not a bonus, it's a priced element of the contents!

 

A few minutes later I popped into the aforementioned The Works, and bought these, as apart from the fact I thought they would make nice additions to the wooden-trees subsection, they might also prove useful as photo-shoot accessories in the future?

 

To that end, here they are, both artfully arranged (!) in the fashion of an interiors' magazine shoot! You have to imagine they are on an immaculately-polished, white piano, with a recognisable supermodel, just out of focus and staring intently at a Hockney, on the wall!

 

Mostly duplications of one sort, or another, I also picked these up on my day's shopping in Farnham a few weeks ago, they sort of complete what Opie calls a cameo, in that we have previously seen the Santa's in individual bags the same as those the snowmen are in, here.

 

We have also seen the snowmen in the red and green scarves, along with a mauve version, so this blue one is new. And we saw a copy set of the Deer, red-Santa sleigh, snowman (red scarf) and tree, also from The Works, so that's pretty much all known versions of originals and copies, now, in several variations of packaging!

H is for Hoarded Hord of Halloween Horrors

Except none of them are remotely horrible, nor in any way horror inducing, which makes them all the more acceptable as fun figures/items you might use in gaming, or just chuck in the collection as box-ticking completers!

 

Indeed, if you want to hear something horribly frightening, or frighteningly horrible - I saw my first Christmas-lit house on Wednesday night, it's still October! And that's not including those few in our region, who have given-up taking their shite down every year, and just display a mawkish, illuminated-idea of a fantasy fairy-dell, 24-7-365!

 

I think we saw these a year or two ago, but I'm not sure if they went to eight colours last time? In The Works, and the only Halloween-related thing, of a figural nature I found there, worth a penny!

 

I shot these in Sainsbury's, but didn't buy them, as we did a whole bunch of these sets a few years ago, with various posts and comparisons between the contents, the differences between similar items, like the millipedes and such like, and I suspect these are re-issues of some of those, and I don't need them in the collection, nor the vast numbers in the bag, but I guess, for party 'scatter', they are good value. Credited here to a Rayland International.

 

But I did purchase this chap, about 6", so the top-end of the collection's range, and not very animated, he's a box ticker! The amount of safety information on the little card, for a single-piece moulding the length of a pencil-case ruler is daft, but that’s the times we live in!

 

TKMaxx gave-up this little gem of an eraser set, the ghost doesn't stand up, and could use a cotton-thread to hang him off something! In the Japanese, Iwako style, with multi-parts and ethylene inserts for eyes etc.

 

These are new, seen in The Range and too big a hole, for pencils, I wondered at the point of them, until I saw the boxes of glass straws! A sensible attempt to end the plastic straw problem, and invent a whole new genre of 'topper' at the same time.

 

The straws had year-round packaging, so I didn't shoot it - bad-enough I talked myself into buying straws I'd never use! - I thought, although I've since used one to get the juice out of the bottom of one of those prepared fruit-salads with separate compartments, so useful after-all, and luckily they also come with a useful straw-washing brush!

 

Also in The Range; figural 'pop-a-point' stacking coloured pencils, we saw a similar set earlier in the year, and there were others which were too big and or cartoony for the collection (similar in TKMaxx too), but these were figural fun in the smaller scale, or at least the ghosts are - box ticked!

 

Brian Berke sent these from New York, and they are definitely fun items from Forum Novelties, being those semi-sticky wall or window walkers, that jerkily shudder down flat surfaces!

 

I'd normally crop these sorts of images closer, but you can see pumpkin shaped treat-collection jars to their left, which are also quite fun, I've seen similar (in B&M I think?) but didn't shoot them.

 

I thought these were the same as the first item in the post, but bought them for the packaging variation, and the possibility there were colour variances too, only to find they were larger, but slightly less well-sculpted skeletons, in the style of, but all new mouldings. I guess the brand is Tell-a-Tale, but it's not clear, and I think I found them in a garden centre?

W is for We Buy This Shit - Magazines

It's been a while since we saw what's on the news-stands, which these days include precious little news, beyond the downright depressing, I mean, who had World War Three on their card, for before the end of the year?! So, here's three which caught my eye, to the point of purchasing them?!

 

Horrible Histories usually have complete tat-shite on their covers, but are worth watching for the odd occasion when there is something that fall within the collector's frames of reference, and for me, this was one such issue!

 

There's a side collection of skeletons, and a bag of generic rats/mice somewhere, so that was good-enough, but then there were two maggots for the insect pile! Skeleton key-rings used to be a standard fairgrown prize for the lower scores on sideshows, like the duck fishing, hoopla or shooting booths.

 

A frighteningly realistic tongue and faker soft eye were the other novelties, but I wonder if the ring-jointed skeleton isn't actually an old tool from the 1960's or '70's? It looks very similar to others I have in the collection, of greater vintage than a few months ago!

 

This is last year's mag, yet it still took him more than six weeks to scrape one off of that there The Internet . . . outstanding, Bushey! Keep it up!

 

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/10/horrible-histories-freebie-skeletons.html 

 

I have no idea about PJ Masks; I've not seen it, not Googled it,

but I know it's one of the 'new generation', alongside Paw Parol!

 

I bought these to pose with small scale space stuff in the future!

Shades of batman movies in these! 

 

BBC Swashbuckle magazine.

 

A bit too cartoony, but they're here now!

Take the faces off with spirits and they'd be better. 

 

All the toy cards were supplied by Kennedy Enterprises, presumably a wholeseller, as you often find similar stuff on other magazines a few months apart, or slight variations on the same magazine as we've seen here with the Dino'mags/Dino' offers. And I've covered the fact that there are donation bins about the place for moving these cards if the kids aren't interested - Libraries, charity shops and some supermarkets carry them.

P is for Post Office . . . Rack Toys!

Specifically, the Cranleigh Post Office!

 

For those loyal readers who aren't aware of the fact (which is probably most of you), Cranleigh is a rather smart villagey-town in an equally smart corner of Surrey Hills, a 'stockbroker dormitory' for those who 'come down' from London at the weekend, in their shiny, black SUV-4x4-Crossover wanker's tanks, and where they park their trophy wives and Eton-bound brats!

 

It also serves some of the smartest villages and hamlets you'll find, like Plaistow, and the 'folds (Ifold, Dunsfold (home of the Hawker Harrier*) and Alfold) and is known to describe the feeling of "A mood of irrational irritation with everyone and everything." from the little-black-book The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, a surprise, comedy, Christmas-hit, decades ago, now, which was contemplative reading in our loo for years, and rather sums-up those stockbroker residents! Indeed, the less kind might accuse me of suffering chronic Cranleigh! I would - of course - point to the bell-curve (and what's happening in America right now), and argue it's not irrational.

 

* I served in the TA for a while with a Mr. Boxall who was in the paint shop at Dunsfold, and used to do all the markings for Hawks and Harriers, new and refurbishments! I don't know if he did the Red Arrows, but he told of the flurry of activity during the Falklands crisis.

 

Anyway, I have been driving round there, for work, recently, and saw a sign behind the trees in the main street saying "Balloons & Other Novelties", and thought that sounded interesting, so made a mental note to return, on a day-off, when it (which turned out to be the Post office) was open, and did so! Finding a quite well-stocked corner of cheaper toys, gifts, craft work stuff and, yes, novelties!

 

This is what I found;

 

The latest iteration of the set of six largish, but cheap dinosaurs we saw here under several brands about eight/ten years ago (Poundland, TKMaxx, 99p Stores and others), singly or in threes. Currently wearing Kandytoys moniker, and I think this is one of the second paint versions, we saw last time?

 

This was actually branded TKM, so must have been a bulk purchase at some point, from, probably, Home Bargains? A nice set of larger animals for those who collect such things, the elephant is nicely sized for conversion to a 25mm war elephant, but I'm not sure why the lioness is a completely different colour from the lion!

 

This was HGL (Grossman), and goes well with my British Museum ruminant Sauropoda (future post!), it is what it is, but collaged poorly due to its dimensions!

 

This is the 'other' Alien illustrated on the card of the Whitehouse Leisure one I found in Stansted the other week (https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/r-is-for-recent-rack-toy-roundup.html), without the Elf's ears, and while I didn't look closely on either occasion, and got both sculpts out of two purchases by pure accident, I think it can be assumed both come in both brandings? This is also badged Kandytoys.

 

I left him in the slime for now, as it has a heat-sealed lid, like a milk carton! The cap, however, is a whacky, LED-embedded, screaming-loud, multicoloured UFO, which is operated from the button on the top, but with a sealed-unit battery, won't last forever! It adds to a growing fleet of mini flying-saucers!

 

It was mostly dinosaurs though, and here another from a set of, err . . . several, each of which has a mini-saur in a decorative egg! I only got the one, to help with future ID'ing, and it shares branding with both Kandytoys (the reused sculpt above) and 'Jurassic Era', but is a new sculpt as far as I know

 

As do these (share the brand/brand-mark), but which, again, I think we saw years ago, as generics or in Pucator branding? These were cheap as chips (not that chips are that cheap these days; even a child's portion can be a fiver!), so I bought two, and will un-dig one of these glow-in-the-dark dino-skeletons, one day!
 

Heading back, I dropped into Borden to check the Poundstretcher for those Supreme knock-off Wild West sets - they hadn't had a re-stock, so no Cowboys (they were in the bigger set we looked at a few years ago), and instead I left with this soft-vinyl, metallic dry-brushed, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, robo-stego-dragon, for something daft like 70p? Bargain! And ideal for figures between 20-40mm.
 

Right, I've got a week or so to fire out as much rack-toy stuff as I can, and will try to make an effort!

R is for Recent Rack-toy Roundup

Or, at least, pocket-money stuff I picked up in a gift shop the other day! So, to Stansted Mountfitchet, from whence the Airport down the road took its name, and more on that visit in subsequent posts, but specifically, on the efficacy of the gift shop for toy and model figure collectors.

 

A soft, silicon-rubber skeleton in slime, and another coffin for the sub-collection of novelty coffins! This one made/issued in the UK by Whitehouse Leisure International of Dublin and err . . . Basildon! It's a bit of fun and I think we've seen the 54mm'ish figurine, separately, in bags, previously?

 

Poured-resin pencil tops from Elgate, a name which has appeared in the Tag List a couple of times, but on whom there are a couple of more substantial posts in the Toy Fair/trade-show reports queue, which may have these too! Approximately 40mm if you saw them carefully off their, err . . . oil drums!

 

Glow-in-the-dark aliens, again a similar one [actually, the earless one with lizard eyes on the back of the card] is currently in the queue, only found on Thursday (in Cranleigh Post Office!), this one is also Whitehouse (the other is under Kandytoys), and while a caricature type big-head/super deform, will add to the growing sidebar of glow-in-the-dark aliens! His (or her . . . its?) oil-drum has already gone to charity!

H is for How They Come In - Recent Charity Lot

Continuing in the same vein as the Chris Smith posts, there will be a bunch of posts with stuff from Peter Evans shortly, interspersed with Toy Fair/Spring Gift Fair stuff, but we'll have a bit a change first, and before that change, I'll throw a few other bits up; this was a Charity Shop purchase a couple of few weeks ago.

 

Three bags, rabbits, dinosaurs and other animals!

 

We saw these before, the Ubisoft Rayman Raving Rabbids, or 'Rabid Rabbits'! Each has a costume or theme, they are blind-bag collectables, and the best way to get a sample is like this as I bet they're not cheap out there in retail-land! They are more fun that those Kid Robot Dunny Bunnys or Medicom's dead Bearbricks, but still look quite unsettling with their lack of rabbit nose, and bulgy-eyes!

 

I believe they are connected to a video game for the Nintendo Wii, and there seem to be hundreds of them! I thought the Rabbid in a rabbit onesie, with a toy rabbit in the pocket, was quite the existential conundrum, in the thought-provoking department, and judging by the look on his face, so does he!

 

Skeletal dinosaur bits, the two Stegosauruses, are so similar, one has to be a piracy of the other, but subtle differences and a more obviously bent tail, suggest they are not from the same house? The Dimetrodon is disappointingly Spinosaur-like!

 

A mixed lot, hard to say anything about something you know nothing about, one or two of them may be from the same set, and some are better quality than the others, but until they are sorted thought the rest in the stash, they won't make much sense like this. The Tyrannosaur is probably the nicest here, with the salmon-pink stretchy, possibly by Henbrandt?

 

I think the figure may be Kinder, modern and missing something? Likewise, the purple alien thing? The Panda too, looks like the recent/current ranges and lines of natural-history related sets from Kinder.

 

The sucker snow-bear will go in the novelty sucker zone, and the big blue chap is an unmarked soft silicon stretchy, knocking off the Panosh/Novalinea types, probably from a 1990's Lucky Bag or capsule? And two snakes for the snake bag, you always keep them in a bag, so you can firmly knot the top, or they get out!

 

I think we saw a large Amazon/Ali Baba set with two colours of the same octopus, so I should be able to attribute these to some sort of branding at some point, they came with the turtle which may or may not be from the same set?

 

Three (?) kittens and lots of puppies, I think most of these may be the ones which get given away with kids comics/magazines, I've seen loads but not purchased any as they are a bit off the Blog's beaten track, and were bound to come-in, in the end, in lots like this, but I suppose I should look out for them to get a title? Or even try to get the issuer's ID, off the card, but they tend to be quite firmly attached to the publications!

F is for Follow-up - Dippy Dino' Mags

We've had fair few overview posts on these kids magazines over the years, and they are worth keeping an eye out for, because they often have useful stuff on them as part of the 'freebie' element, which is not really a freebie when you see the price of the magazine, which varies from two or three-quid for the simpler infant ones to five pounds or more for the more substantial ones such as these, although 'substantial' is a moot point, when you would learn more from two pages of World of Wonder or Look & Learn, that you get from all the info-panels in one of these.

 

These look familiar, but last time there were six & six, this time we get a pair of sevens, and having purchased a sample, I shelfied a second which serves to illustrate that the dinosaur models come in other colours.

 

The Parasaurolophus, solid and skeletal! Each of the fleshed models has a stripped version, although the anatomical correctness is probably something which would give a palaeontologist apoplexy! As last time, the 'living' dinosaurs are PVC, the bones a rigid polyethylene.

 

A few weeks later I spotted this issue, with twelve dinosaur skeletons, and a quick look at the Parasaurolophus (bottom left corner) reveals they are all new sculpts, I can't see much play value in these - and there are many of them - but I'm not six, or twelve, so what do I know? However, it seems to me they would make excellent additions to Fantasy war gaming/role-playing skeleton armies, which is one reason why I post them from time to time!

 

We looked at the 'chomper' before, years ago, and, as then, it went off to charity. These cover offers do tend to come around several times, as we found with the Dr. Who Adventures mag's before they disappeared, and I haven't seen this for a few weeks so it too, may have gone now, the 'churn' with modern kids mags is far greater than it seemed to be in my childhood.

 

The most recent one I've found, which was a while ago now, had three medium-sized vinyl types, and a pointless plastic box with a button that went straight in the recycling bin!

 

I think I've mentioned before - some supermarkets (and libraries?) now have collection bins for these carded giveaways, so if the kids show no interest, or are so young they're only being read the contents, the toys can be passed on to charity. And, there are lots of others we haven't looked at, cartoon puppies and kittens, farm and zoo, doll type stuff, Thomas, Paw Patrol &etc.

 

But the animals are perfectly reasonable, and, as I've mentioned before, when I sit down to make more sense of the many tubs and boxes of these, and all the loose ones, I'm sure we'll discover the monochrome chaps will be found to have decorated versions, under other branding, probably in a more dense material? As far as I know, these are all issued by Kennedy Enterprises.

P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Sci-Fi and TV

We find ourselves looking at another favourite subsection of mine, the Sci-Fi/ & Fantasy stuff, although there's some media-related in here, there's also some in the final 'mixed' post.

 

Both seen before, I suspect, a Poundland Pterodactyl and an old novelty skeleton.

 

Ger'Nomes! A probably Euro-premium or Wundertüte, with a thick layer of paint to be removed and what I think might be the Tobar John Major jobbie in the middle, but either side is some even-more interesting fellows, if more pixy'ish! A multipart PVC one to the left which I suspect is another Xandria piece from the Netherlands, and, on the right, an ex-keyring chappie, who may have been a Leprechaun, but he's not really green enough?

 

Among the small-scale stuff were two totally new to me/Blog/Hobby astro-alien types (red and green on the left) which are probably small 1 or 2 ¢/p type gum-ball machine's capsule prizes? The 12-wheeled micro-rover is in the style of Micromachines, but from somewhere else I think (anyone know?), and the blue chap is another premium/gumball prize type, being a reduced-scale version of the old Manurba sculpts,

 

A handful of post-Giant stuff includes a red alien from the big bags issued by Novelty Headquarters Inc., and is a useful find! While we have one of the blow-moulded derivatives of them behind, the eyes are everything with these, and he has both! Strangely, despite being on the blog lots of times now, some people were struggling to ID them the other day despite being followers of-, and [occasional] commenters on- the Blog, almost . . . deliberate amnesia!

 

When they are that desperate to post the same thing days later, they are feeling threatened by you, plagiarism, even of ideas, themes or subjects is the sincerest form of flattery!

 

I know, but this was a half-full folder! Two modern takes on cavemen, and another of the small ones in polystyrene which turn up from time to time, I now believe they came as scenic accessories, with an Aurora type range of model-kits from Life-Like, which were actually inherited from Pyro, so could be either?

 

The mini blue 'superhero' came as companion pieces to larger ones on Pound Shop cards a few years ago (probably still a few out there somewhere), a Cylon Warrior from Mattel's 1978 Battlestar Galactica line, I have the Earth pilot somewhere I think, a lovely Terminator, sans arm, but possibly an unlicensed rip-off piece, and an MB Games piece courtesy of the Nottingham Mafia!

 

The Superman keyring was a very generous inclusion in the package from Chris, as I think I know guys on Podstalions who would swap an arm for something both vintage and DC! In the middle is . . . a dough/cookie cutter? Something like that, infant crafts of some kind, but figural, and apparently glowing with radiation! The Orange guy may be a racing driver, and I vaguely remember doing a show-repot on a company at Kensington Olympia who had a bunch of similar figures?

 

As well as the Giant knock-offs, there was a smattering of the Lik Be (still LB, for obvious reasons) robot/alien types, always useful, and in this early, clean/sharp state, possibly HG Buck Rogers fayre? Many thanks again, to Chris Smith, for sending these, for me to share with the rest of you.