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!

S is for Slimy Slime From Slimesville, Slimesylvania!

I bought this back in the autumn, can't remember where, possibly B&M or even Smyths, but, I know it was inexpensive?

 

The turtle is not what I was expecting at all! It's an actual turtle, and I assume the other three would be similarly rendered, each is his own shade of green? But I'm not intending to try finding-out, as the slime is like fortified washing-up liquid, it's the vilest stuff you ever encountered, woe-betide any carpet or clothing this come into contact with! Co-branded to Playmates and Nickelodeon, it's pure weirdness on several levels, out there now.

T is for Two - Slime Zombies, or Rather; Zombies in Slime!

Sometimes I can be a bit scatter-brained, and this post is the result of a little moment of scattered brain! I've been tracking down the output of EMCE before they get too expensive or hard to get . . . there's a sweet-spot between new (a bit pricey for what are basically rack-toys) and when they are getting hard to get (also pricey), when people who've been gifted them and don't want them, sell them off for less than they are still listing for on Amazon "none in stock, we don't know when they will become available again" (half of Amazon is dead pages!), it's that sweet-spot I'm after!

I knew there were glow-in-the-dark Zombies in slime-bins, so when I had a moment I searched for them on feebleBay, and one chap had some up for auction in the 'States, so I popped a bid on and crossed my fingers!

But, in those lines of similar/sponsored stuff underneath the listing was another chap, offering three, for considerably less, BIN? So I quickly grabbed them, uncrossed my fingers and desperately started hoping someone would out-bid me on the first lot!

Needless to say no one else bid, and in the end the larger lot arrived before the by-it-now lot, not that I'm complaining they were both not due until the 19th and we're in the middle of postal strikes (I'm totally supportive of; having spoken to both my beat Postie and the parcel-van guy).

Anyway I started shooting them for the EMCE post, and scanned the box they came with (1st image above), only for the other three to turn-up a few days later, and they were something completely different! I hadn't bothered reading the blurb or studying the pictures, just saw 'slime', 'drum' and 'zombie' in the title-bar and hit Buy It Now!

But it was a pleasant surprise as they were more slime Zombies, just not the EMCE glow-ones! So, I took the first lot of images out of the EMCE folder (which is stuffed with other stuff, and may get further broken down anyway - gaming, horror, Star Trek?) and fashioned a quick T is for Two!

The late three being Dolgen (Dollar General Stores) Parts Alive, Spill & Rebuild Oil Can Slime, with a Lego-likey zombie figure! Here scaled with one of Berserker's mates who came in with a junk-lot the other day - he, himself, went to storage ages ago!

It was during this process that I discovered vinegar is the solvent for slime, I wanted to flush the muck away, only to find that neither washing-up liquid, nor TFR had any measurable effect! Although, when I say 'discovered' . . . I Googled it!

The seller included a loose figure which appears to have had a strange reaction to the self-seal/click-shut bag he came in, soaking-up more blue than the bag ever possessed, but I'll keep him like it, it works quite well!

Obviously the figures are the same as the standard WWII Zombies we looked at here, and with one per 'oil drum' I'll leave the rest for now, I just don't have the time to be wrestling with multiple slime and vinegar patties!

Forewarned (or previously experienced) is forearmed, so with this brown-black gloop, I just wrapped it in kitchen-paper and burned it on the stove! You can see it had invaded the packet the figure's parts were in, so it was still a messy business, but I rescued all his components.

There had been a leak from the 'sealed' capsule too, and like the EMCE Aliens egg-slime the other day, had set to a rubbery polymer which I could just rub off where it was stuck to the sticker-wrapper, rather than the cellulose outer wrapper.

So quite by the result of too much speed and not enough haste or something I ticked two boxes, and learnt more than I need to about the properties of slime . . . you can also make it yourself, but as most of the recipes seem to include white wood-glue/PVA, I wouldn't advise it?

The fact that the Dolgen 'kubrick' Zombie is the same as the one on the can-art, suggests they are all the same so I will keep the other two sealed as well. He seems to be a US policeman in a WWII German helmet? While the EMCE as well as sharing billing with PX / Previews Exclusive again, are further credited to the Brilliant Novelty Company.

S is for Solid Slime!

This'll be the seventh post on the Aliens franchise this year, so clearly 'the year of the Aliens' here at Small Scale World . . . purely accidental, or coincidental! These are another iteration of the EMCE 'Nanoforce' figures with an additional Alien sculpt and no Colonial Space Marines!

Further branded to both Diamond Select and Previews Exclusive (PX), who have been associated with a lot of the EMCE 'toy soldiers' stuff, the slime has, over time, set solid! The material is a sort of bouncy-ball rubber now, so I had to break them out physically, rather than just pull them gently away from the gloop!

The solvent for slime is apparently vinegar (discovered for a forthcoming post!), but I'm not sure it would succeed in re-hydrating these lumps! I kept a few of the larger lumps as a 'might be useful later' addition to the 'spares box'!

Of the six possible, I managed to end-up with four sculpts, which is not bad going, when I already have the standard ones, but there is a surprise here, in a sixth pose (a 'Facehugger'), as the previous issue only had the five adult Xenomorphs. It's not a very good sculpt, and out of scale (unless you collect Action Man/GI Joe dolls) but may - therefore - remain uniquely in the glow-material, as far as being a collectable goes.

The Facehugger is not on the press image (left), probably because it's a bit shit, but the box clearly states "collect all six Aliens!". The box is shown as being apparently a 24-egg double-decker, while mine only has the one layer of 12 eggs, which also calls for a shout-out to eBay seller 'silver-acre' (Darryl Jones, Silver Acre Comics) who sent me the whole box with a multiple purchase even though it wasn't part of the offer - cheers dude; got a post out of them!