M is for Mundi Toys . . . Dunkin, Montaplex et al!

A proper return to one of my favourite sets of small scale, technically intermediate scale at 30-35mm, toy soldiers, the 'Dunkin' bubble-gum premiums, and while I will show you all of them, I think I may still have to find one?

We looked at my then, small collection, near the beginning of the Blog, 2010, and at the time it was popularly considered that Dunkin were the primary source, with the other sources being secondary.

 

But I now suspect that Mundi Toys might have been the first/major user, with the various gum-manufacturers dipping-in, in turn, among which we know Mundi were themselves one, Dunkin was another, Americana probably had a pop (although I have yet to find an envelope for them), GC (General de Cofiteria S.A.) 'Boomer' and Wikö among others, as and when there was available production-time from the supplier (who may or may not have been Mundi or Dunkin), or a gap in their own promotions schedules.

Above, we see the Mundi bubblegum 'Sobre' on the right (Soldados en Accion - 'Soldiers in Action'), containing one piece of Tyler's chicle and one figure. On the left is a blister-set with a pair of vehicles and the Dunkin pack (Hazañas y Combates - lit: "Feats and Combats") in the middle. The Mundi are different colours, my - mint - envelopes contained yellow Americans, while you can see the blister has a number of metallic-blue ones, the figures we are looking at below are probably all Dunkin.

I actually had some trouble, shooting these, so we have two sets of photographs for both the Americans and the Russians! Here they all are on the carpet, which they rather shrank into, and I had to play with the light and contrast to render them viewable! 20 poses/sculpts, common to all three nations, for a total of 60 unique figurines.

 

Above are the grunts, I thought I'd sorted them into riflemen and tommy-gunners, but I notice there's a tommy-gunner hiding in the top row, so it's four and eight, not five and seven! Below them is an obvious officer, the command/support trio and some heavy weapons with the third grenade thrower.

 

I've seen these - rather ridiculously - credited to Airfix as the influencer! However I think the author was just looking for an excuse to get them in his tome! In point of fact they are mostly after MPC (54mm and 60mm) and the Marx 54mm, if you need a second source, but it's MPC poses and 'after MPC' in the main. The grenade thrower without weapon, though, is ALL Britains, as is the being-shot character! It's true, the kneeling radio operator looks vaguely like the Airfix HO/OO paratrooper one, but he also looks like a reverse sculpt of an early (1950's) kit figure!

 

The Russians, there's only 19 of the 20 present here, with the sentry and guard dog absent, we've seen him before, in green, and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of red-ones in the storage sample, now. Last time I divided them into summer (tunics and helmets) and winter (greatcoats and fur-hats) uniforms, this time I grouped them thematically as the US troops.

 

With five standing about, five fighting for their lives, five moving-up/advancing, and five miscellaneous! Being red plastic, they were the worst to photograph, and I ended-up in the bathroom, shooting them against the mirror, where - of course - the point of focus shifted to 'imaginary space'!

 

Now, I've said before, when I first encountered these, it was with a couple of the diggers, and I thought they might be Afrika Korps, but I notice Dunkin have them as Chinese, with the Mundi sobre envelope showing a sketch which is more British-Commonwealth? I guess this lot are your flexible friend! I tend to think of them as Japanese, especially now I have the swordsmen - top row, 2 & 5.

 

Although without 20 Germans, and in an odd scale/size, this set has always been a bit problematical, and it's their charm rather than their usefulness which has me staying loyal to them. If they are Chinese, then we could assume we are looking at the three main powers in the Cold War, which makes more sense?

The rest of the 'stuff', clockwise from the top left. The missing Jap'/Chinese pose is a prone shooter, he looks familiar-enough for me to think I may have one somewhere, but, equally, he may be the still-elusive 60th pose for my samples?

 

Colour variations on the Russians in red, when we looked at them last time, there were a bunch of green ones which may well have been Mundi issues, or Montaplex, who did all these, in various colours, some quite whacky, but whether from the original tools or as lower-grade copies I don't know yet.

 

Then the missing guard-dog from the above line-ups, and another colour-variation shot. Below them are the typical base marks which may or may not be mould-release pin-marks, and are something in common with lots of the output of Olà (ice cream premiums), Raja and others (in addition to those already named above), some of which output is believed to have come from the Heimo works; I don't know why?

 

Bottom right has the recipient of some wargamers snack sticker, rather than a national army identity I suspect, but whether it was a clementine, mandarin, satsuma or tangerine is currently unknown; intensive research, however, remains ongoing! Finally, slight colour variants of the US Machine-gunner.

 

There is still a Mundi Toys (they exhibited at the New York toy fair in September), but they are SRL, not SA, and are somewhere in Bolivia nor do they seem to carry this kind of stuff.

 

And this is one of those posts where everyone has given me a few figures over the years in addition to my own finds, so thanks, alphabetically to; Graham Apperley, John Begg, Andreas Dittmann, Peter Evans, Tony Harrington, Mike Harding, Adrian Little, Gareth Morgan, Trevor Rudkin and Chris Smith.

A is for Addendum

Well, I don't think it's technically a 'Follow-up' and it's not really a 'More On' (far too much input from morons this week as it is!), so addendum will do! Just a couple of pieces from Picasa which add to things said in other posts this week.

We saw these in a show-report back in 2018, when I bought a few from the seller at the Plastic Warrior show in Wilton/Twickenham, SE London, now as it happens when I got them home, they'd been mucked about with, so I don't have all the correct contents of all the boxes, and while I said - at the time - they'd get their own post, they never did!

But I'd forgotten I'd shot the rest, on the seller's stall, in case the five boxes weren't 'all of them', so here's a perfect example of the Italian output of Food Premium style novelty mini-kits. If I recall correctly, they had no branding; packaging or product.

 

But they are not R&L, they are not Rubenstein, they are not Tatra, they are not DS Plastics, or Siku, or Manurba, they are Italian. I think a fair few of us are familiar with the CGGC motorcycles (and the lovely figures - some of which would end-up in Kinder-eggs a decade later), also from Italy, and I have seen lovely N-gauge train kits in smaller boxes (something like 'Eppi', but I forget the actual name), one of which is very similar to the R&L animal wagon.

 

The frames are relatively unique and assemble into a fancy base after you've made up the kit, and they are manufactured in a dense polymer which is a nylon/rayon type or possibly a hybrid propylene of some kind, sold two kits to a box.

While this is the rather poor rendition of what I suspect is meant to be a Douglas F4D Skyray, from Montaplex of Spain, it's in a different league, being soft polyethylene, chunky and simplified, it just reminds us of the breadth covered by these mini-kits as an oeuvre!

It was sold in larger multi-sets with three other kits, in little single envelopes (early iteration, I think) and as an accompaniment/accessory to some of the figure sets, pretty randomly in the latter case!

R is for Roman Bums

Look, we need to get this straight now . . . every time we look at the output of this strange half-resurrected Montaplex, half resin-pirate, we will make a joke out of their name, because they want us to! They didn't call their track-racing system Bumslot for nothing you know; I'm sure there's at least one British ex-pat' in there somewhere!

I think I intended these to go on the Airfix Romans page, where they are still an obvious absentee, but I seem to have shot them without any comparisons to the aforementioned UK-made figures, so we're having them here, now, and I'll re-shoot some comparisons for the other page another day!

Very crude copies, they get round-tipped (Republican?) shields with Imperial-era uniforms, so . . . Spanish mercenaries? And most of the Airfix figures were copied, but - mercifully - not the running-waving-pilum guy, who was quite idiotic enough first time round, although, the marching chap hasn't been cloned either and he was one of the more useful ones, along with the Persian archer type.

The chariot has had a complete redesign in Ed Roth's workshops and now looks more like a field conversion of a Celt's muck-cart! And it has been reduced from 4hp to one, often the way with those custom jobbies, lots of noise and a fancy paint-job, but as soon as you join 'Run to the Sun' they burst into flames . . . some summer weekends that A30 South looks like a technicolor, smoldering, retreat from Moscow!

There was a 'big box' set as well, but I think the vessel-kit was bought in, I haven't studied it but would imagine it's probably from Academy rather than the older Aurora or the Heller/Směr ones? The same single runner of figures won't provide much in the way of useful crew though and the transfer sheet (there's another in the first image) looks like the bastard-child of Revo and Games Workshop . . . on acid!

Bum Slot is for Montaplex!

We might have had that title before but I think it's worth having again! I was looking for something to make it a thematic day and thought about the smallies, but we've seen them once or twice over the years, except the Atlantic set (which was the other obvious absentee in this morning's post, but I should leave something for you-know-who to dust-sit with), when I found these whilst looking for something else in the garage!

BuM got hold of the old Montaplex sobres (surprise [bags]) moulds back in the 1990's, or - at least - they got hold of enough surplus product to start churning-out boxed sets, I'm not sure as to the full history; I think it's all been on Akala's Kiosko Blog, but my Spanish isn't good enough!

Anyway, this is two ex-Montaplex sets in one box; British Commandos (ex-Airfix) and an original-design (?) submarine.

The commandos are unremarkable, the two grappling-iron guys being notably poor short-shots, but the ladder is a whacky thing and possibly more dangerous to the user than climbing the enemy cliff-face naked except for a pair of mittens and some bedroom slippers!

It also ironic that Airfix-Heller were churning out the same old set (having apparently 'lost' not one but two new tools in the previous decade!), at the same time, in the same shit-brown polymer!

But this? Now . . . hold on a sec' . . . over here we had to wait for Birthday's or Christmas for pretty-much anything in the past, but the Spanish were getting these brought back by Mum or Dad, uncle or granny . . . with the morning paper!

It's a whole submarine! OK, it's a bit simplistic and there don't appear to be any holes for the two missile-things, but how much fun could you have over breakfast with this dropping out of a little envelope . . . it's a WHOLE SUBMARINE . . . for pennies!

L is for Lucky - A Lucky-bag from Lucky Dip not Mr. Lucky, Luckily that's Lucky!

Or; I is for I Knew I'd Seen Them Somewhere!

It's a Lucky Bag! An Olde Fashioned Lucky Bag 'Sweets and Toys for Boys' from Mr. Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe, contents put-together or supplied by Lucky Dip of Nottingham (parent - Crème d'Or).

I don't know if this is actually the one I thought I'd seen when I last mentioned it (err . . . a 'while ago'?), I thought that was a more colourful one, like the original Mr Lucky bags, but finding one's better than finding none, and it means they are still out there! Google revealed several including Mr. Lucky, now Mr. Sweets!

Quite a downbeat artwork compared to past lucky-bags, and particularly the aforementioned Mr. Lucky lucky-bags, but well in keeping with the corporate image of this mall and airport type 'upmarket' or 'precinct' sweet shop, and not cheap at four-quid, so I won't be buying another for a while, if only to give the supply-chain system time to change the contents' line-up!

The contents are disappointing, but only in so far as adult figure collectors go; no figures - no knock-off wrestlers, He-Man clones, Grandizer- or Transformer-erasers or dinosaurs, no Yolanda Ninja Turtles, ant-soldiers or Russ Berrie key-ring trolls . . . no poopa-troopers!

But, there are four 99p items - all from Henbrandt - and two 50p lollipops (which were bloody-nice!), along with the de rigueur 'activity book'! It's just nice to know that kids today can still enjoy a timeless little treat - the UK's version of a Spanish Sobre or the German Wundertüten.

And, let's be hopeful - Henbrandt do carry small dinosaurs, paratrooping-aliens, wild animals, frogs, and other figural toys, within their 99p lines (we've looked at some here), so they may turn-up in another tranche . . . I'll try again at Christmas; the chap in the shop said they shift loads then - kids buying them for each other, parents buying them for stocking-fillers, seniors buying them to 'have something in' when people go visiting and turn-up suddenly with three bored kids in tow!

By the way; 'lucky' is one of those words that by the time you've written it a dozen or so times, starts to look a bit weird; you think you must be misspelling it!

C is for Cavemen - 3: Questions and Queries

I know we've had one question-time today, but here's another! Cavemen are a periphery interest, I certainly don't go looking for them, but they come in one way or another, and these are toward the small-scales, so were grabbed from mixed rummage trays or came in with mixed lots over many years.

I'm guessing these are Spanish (so the dismal-duo might have something to say about them!) or Portuguese, and Sobres of some kind, but they could be bubble-gum, ice-cream or cereal premiums?

The bases are reminiscent of early Pech or Jecsan, with the irregular clipped-corner rock-look, which is not that surprising when you realise they are near-copies of the larger Jecsan set! These are around 35mm, I don't know how many are in the full set but I know I like them; particularly the colours!

I would put money (not a lot, but some!) on these being Paul Lamond, if only for their similarities to the Pirate Ron Chiasson ID'd years ago. I have looked for them but only a cursory look and how many potential search-terms are there from Jungle through to Conan via dinosaurs!

Definitely a board-game though, all the boxes are ticked; standard colours, 40-odd millimetres, disc-base and a dense ethylene or polypropylene, anyone got the game?

This is a real mystery, I have two or three now (one may be lost between the coming together collections) so it can't be that rare, each came singly, with nothing that looked like it might 'belong', so first guess is it's from some play-set which was otherwise a big plastic fold'y-out'y thing for die-casts?

He/she or it may be a monkey or ape, a caveman or cave-child, a baby Wookie or a yeti in a helmet and seems to have been designed to clip-into something and swing about? Anyone recognise the creature? The plastic is similar to some Corgi stuff - the later, non-PVC stuff.

Whether he/she or it's an ape, an ape-man or a pilot in furry overalls, he/she or it was around long-enough, or was popular-enough (as a toy) to be pirated by someone - the plastic is similar in style/colour to Rado copies of Airfix 8th Army or Russian Infantry?

The other is more obviously a soldier or parachutist, seems to be of a similar design or from a similar toy and is in a hard polystyrene, over plated with a chromium-finish. There are small dinks in either hand in-line with the 'bar', so he probably clipped into some kind of swing, or frame that allowed for a 'swinging-action'?

P is for Prehistoric Animals

And rather anachronistic, cave-dwelling, humanoid types! Each of which is marked HONG KONG on the handle/shaft of his axe, spear or club. Kent Sprecher credits some to Tim-Mee via either Sinclair gas stations in the 'States or Cracker Jack, but all mine were sourced 'over here'.

I picked this little lot (right-hand image) up over many years in one's and two's and a couple of larger lots that came with the plants, I'm pretty sure that at some point they were issued with the plants (copies of Marx Miniature Masterpiece accessories) but it may be a weird co-incidence? And with the paint and HK mark must be assumed to be Tim Mee copies - a safe assumption!

From the artwork I think we are looking at - clockwise from; Labradoodle Rex, Penguinman, Dimetropuma and Kuthunkacow! They certainly didn't come with plants when issued in the little header-carded (left-hand image), rack toy Prehistoric Animals poly-bags, of which I have . . .

. . . two examples, the contents of each are separately shown in the two images above. You get the three poses of caveman (around 32mm) and six dinosaurs/pterosaurs drawn from a known list of seven sculpts (Kent shows nine from Tim Mee), but with each set adding a new sculpt to my loose sample - there may be more?

They reappear as slightly smaller (30mm), gum-ball machine's capsule prizes (upper row) or Christmas cracker novelties, unmarked, unpainted and with sub-scale animals including something more mammalian (a unicorn-gazelle-goat!) for the cavemen to hunt!

While the lower row are smaller-copies still (28mm) and were all bought in Germany over a couple of years, so were probably wundertüten, or something similar from elsewhere in Europe; sobres/kiosko (Spain), bazaar (France)?

These were bough at the same times as the five smaller ones and from the same sellers, but may not/probably don’t go with them, the figures are a soft polyethylene (as the other two types were), while these animals are a harder polypropylene or ABS type material.

Finished to a better standard and with finer engraving, they are larger as well; the plesiosaur is around 60mm, but I suspect they are some kind of premium, or perhaps an early blind-bag collectable? The dimetrodon though is a distorted moulding, probably from too-early removal from the tool, causing shrinkage-fattening and a blister.

F is for Follow-up - Army Men

This is actually two follow-ups and a fuck-up! It could wait 'till Rack Toy Month, but some of it's been hanging around for a while now, and it's in the queue!

Firstly; courtesy of Peter Evans and one of the lots he sent in the Autumn, these are a follow-up to a post I can't find! Which was imaged on the hoof 9and clearly not tagged properly!), losing the little bag on the way so here really for completeness - and I know it's not everyone's 'cup of tea' (I'll be the first to call is shite!) but it all deserves full coverage if it's figural. The above is the outer of the 'lucky bag' style blind-bag from Poundland.

Colouring-book and crayons and the little inner-bag with a set of the figures, minty-mint . . . contents - as pointed out last time are not what's on the packaging artwork"

Sticker set, writing this up at home I can't remember what I posted last time so apologies if there's too much duplication with the above link, but that's how the cookie crumbles here sometimes!

This is a follow-up to the more recent HTI post. I was in the local toy shop the other day (I asked about the Phidal books - "No!") for some liquid-polystyrene glue and noticed they had several sizes of set with the figures from the set we looked at a while ago, but mostly larger contents and with accessories, or different header-card graphics, but they were pricey so I made a mental note (I almost certainly would have forgotten!) and then this lot turned up a couple of days later in Blue Cross for 99p!

Info' on the base points to 2014 for this batch and instead of green/grey, the mix is green/yellow, specifically that odd yellow of late-war German AFV's base-coat! I keep one of everything for the 'archive' and the rest goes back to charity. The grey flag (another identical one turned-up in the bottom of the bag) is almost certainly from some other toy.

Comparing to the previous post on these we can add poses to the previous base marking differentials, and I've since seen a set with the old 'My Toy/Time For Toys' packaging in the full Halsall logo, where the figures are in a washy 'Airfix' desert-sand and charcoal-grey.

Here there are four distinct batches, with the two greens having a different base-marking distribution, the yellows just pale and dark-shade runs. As with set 3349 (link above) there is only one figure with the full Quality Assurance/tracking information printed on the base, in the whole (possibly incomplete) sample.

This is the fuck-up! It should have been in the four-part overview which overran RTM in August, but it had been picked-up by accident and transferred to the Airfix 'pending' section (American Paratroops 1:32!), so missed it's slot, I now can't remember anything about it and as they have all been put away, it's just get-it-off-Picasa time!

I'm pretty sure they are either Poundland or the now-gone 99p Stores from the last four or five years, may be connected to some of the (Bely?) figures Mr Berke sent us and which were in those four posts, and indeed as one colour, may be in the posts anyway, but I can't be arsed (away from RTM, '28' in Part II?) to do the legwork!

I also think they may have come from several sources, Peter Evans and/or Brian Carrick, my own purchase and oddment bags-from charity shops? They are poorer versions of the 'lucky-bag' figures above (but missing the Matchbox officer and pulling in figure-poses from other sources), it's a pose/colour shot; end-of!

AMX is for Blobs of Plastic

Another quick Montaplex box-tick...or envelope-lick! They actually produced three of these AMX-13 a'like AFV's, which is strange as Spain was never (as far as I know or can find) a user of the type...maybe one of the colonies? The third model is a micro-blob in - I think - two parts and not shown here, the others are workable with a hot glue-gun, sharp knife and application of advanced painting skills!

The earlier version is the white one on the left, it's very crude and has a tendency to fall-apart as soon as you've [nearly] finished putting it together! The later one (shown on the envelope as a Pz.II 'Luchs' - Lynx) was a more realistic sculpt, but still fails to model the canvas cover of the oscillating-turret, or indeed the turret; terribly well at all.

Comparison between the two construction systems, ironically the track-units on the fall-apart version have a better profile than those on the re-design. They both have a poor excuse for the flash-eliminator!

T is for Terrible Tommies

Really just a box-ticker, I've put them on the relevant post on the Airfix blog, but I had a bunch of photographs left so they can go here as well!

Dangerous mission, pack, frame/runner (sprue')..."I've lost an eye taking out that German Renault-Sherman hybrid but I've got ammo left godamit!"

Jeep with twin pom-pom and A4? A5? A-Somthing...

L is for Loose Ends

This was loaded two days ago and I meant to publish it yesterday, but Vodafone (the princes of digital-darkness) had other ideas and an Internet Interregnum imposed itself on me for 24 hours...I swear Vodafone couldn't organise themselves out of an old paper bag with a sharpened, flaming, sledgehammer! But they'd still charge you!

The thing about this stuff we've been looking at for the last three weeks or so is that it's universal and never-ending. I popped round Mr. Morehead's yesterday (bit of in-hobby name dropping never hurt!) to pick-up the Hilco special which is available agian after selling-out at the show back in May, and he gave me a bag of bits with some flat charms (same source, three sets) I could add here, or use as a follow-up and that was just after I'd picked up a rubber alien catapult (you can't make it up when novelty shite's involved!) a few minutes earlier for a pound at a charity shop. It just never stops.

But there will be plenty of time to return to Aliens, flats, charms and etcetera! We haven't looked at the mass of Little Rubber guys who come in Gum Ball machines, larger animals, Ninja's, sea creatures, we've looked at some of what's out there, and rather than follow-ups, we'll look at the few bits I've got ready here and call it a day on these for now.

Musical instruments that don't play, one blow-moulded the other styrene, a mini whoopee-cushion, lucky horse-shoes (useful if GI Joe/Action Man is thinking of retraining as a blacksmith!), another chess piece, again - appearing without any of the other pieces - needed to make a game - having ever turning up!

Mirror, yo-yos, another rattle, soft plastic version of the metal wire-puzzles and soft plastic scissors! A magnet...another 'theme' we've not covered in these 50-odd posts, but we've looked at them elsewhere on the blog in the past.

The Quantas suitcase is interesting as presumably it was a re-packed rack-toy of dolls stuff re-branded to Quantas, given to kids to amuse them on long flights? Without the sticker it's just a cheap novelty suitcase, with the sticker it's a branded premium/giveaway!

More plastic tat, more rattles, another lenticular; this time just a very small picture - it's neither a badge nor a charm. A Britains flower-pot: plagurised, a polyethylene bat/gargoyle ring, more charms...The woodpecker toy, which normally comes as a finished toy with a stand and wooden pole was a gum-ball givaway..without instuctions or a  pole, but is made to fit a pencil!

A tourist item, really outside the scope of these articles, but it was in the big lot and is a source of a plastic figure that - without it's die-cast mazak base - is just another piece of plastic kak. It must be quite common as it's the second one into the collection now, which is useful as I always hoped to get a second, so I could remove the figure and use it in some Ray Harryhausen type setting with some Greek Hoplites or a skeleton warrior? Statue of Liberty.

[Later the same day - Andrew Boyce suggested it might be from the Triang-Minic waterline ship range, and it is, so it doesn't really belong in these posts at all! But it's the second one I've seen displayed or sold as an ornament, so that's clearly it's fate...to be unrecognised as a toy, and written-off as a keepsake! I does however mean it's quite common and track-downable!]

Award cups...again we haven't looked at the various 'collectable' sets you could get, [American] football helmets, miniature baseball pennants and the like, I'm sure these come with lots of messages (here; 'golfer' and 'father'), and similar objets existed, but that'll do for tat, shite, caca for a while!

Well...for a day or two! I picked-up some nice figures in the 99p store the other day coming to a blog not a million miles from here in the next few days! Also got some contributions to come, some news, some follow-ups, a PW review, still got those bloody French articles in 'edit' and still got thousands of shots in Picasa, which I seem to add to quicker than I clear! And my 8-gig 'unknown' dongle has red-lined as I file these novelty images, so I need a 16-gig before I can clear the desk-top!

I had plans for a premium article with contributions for tomorrow, but Vodafone's upset the plan (like I ever have a 'plan'!), so we'll see, if I have a day or two off: may I extend my wishes for you to have a happy Christmas and thanks for watching! Now I'm a TV announcer!

You want more? Here's more!

M is for Micro Menagerie

As we saw with the supermarket set the other day, the mini tree crackers sometimes contain mini-novelties, and animals are one of the tropes that go way back to the little Scottie-dogs, poodles and black cats.

Top - Rockers, you get an animal, and a rocker, two-for-one and it came 'free' in a cheap cracker...bargain! Although you may remember when we looked at the dogs the other day, there was a rocker, that was an animal AND a charm, rendering these a bit of a swizz! Britians piracies for the most part?

Middle - With the exception of the yellow running horse and blue zebra-looking thing, these all seem to be Marx sculpts, from the various Miniature Masterpiece play sets with one of the 101 Dalmatians we looked at about a month ago.

Bottom - a few baksheesh ones, the sea-lion is a particularly good sculpt. The duck (with capsule) is also good - for Hong Kong.

Upper - A couple of Nosco or Nosco-knock-offs in a larger size bracket with a reasonable camel in a fetching pink polymer, the camels ethylene (as per all the previous), while the other two are styrene

Median - Mice

Lower - Cats, big cats. in different scales. The Sabre-tooth is a hollow moulding in the style of Hong Kong horses of the distinctive type that came with small-scale Cowboys & Indians, I have a Dimetrodon and a 'monster' in the same style somewhere. The orange one is another - albeit larger - Britains copy.

S is for Stationery

I fear we've had that title before, hey-ho!. Small sample here today, if only because the various elements of stationery-related stuff gets sorted into other areas of the collection, and are mostly in storage.

Nevertheless - there are a few interesting items in this little lot, the carded rubber pencil, small enough for the cavity of a Christmas cracker, the early Gameboy style electronic game with lenticular artwork (which is almost as effective as the graphics in those early games!), the cassette-tape and record player erasers are also rather good, but both are marked Japan, not Hong Kong, which makes all the difference for the era we're looking at here.

I don't really get the key/pen/Biro, but then given some of the novelty pens we got in our Christmas stockings: it's par for the course! The T-shirt eraser is in a very fine rendition of an Ariel box, which would go well in a dolls house and raises the problem of do you 'file' it with the erasers, or the Ariel premiums, or the bag of doll-sized bits!

T is for Tossing Tossers!

Found the Jacks! And a few more came in, more of a cracker thing, but they are in larger capsule machines and were always one of the items in the pocket-money bins...

...like the ones in the long tube to the right here. The chrome silver loner may well become the new radar-gizmo on the X-30 Spaceship I was pondering on mending a while ago.

The clay ones came from a little gift shop in Saffron Walden 40-odd years ago and while washed-out by the flash, are nice pastel ice-cream shades, while the wooden one my be a building block or game-playing piece, not a jack at all?

Ring toss and tiddlywinks, classic Christmas cracker fare, the tiddlywinks doubling-up as counters for the paper board games sometimes found in the same sets. Some ring-tossers are scale-downs of garden quoits, the others are enclosed dexterity puzzles.

G is for Getting There!

We've still got a few animals to cover, but these are the last of the figural sculpts, although...mostly animals, but in the cartoon or caricature styles of semi-human anthropomorphous!

When trolls get too small for hair! I think I have some of these very small ones in storage WITH hair, but these have eschewed hair for charm loops. The mouse has painted eyes, and is another common 'trope' with capsule toys at the cheap end of the market.

The capsule market has two parameters, first the size of the capsule which used to be in inches (1", 2" and 3" etc...) but is now in mm's with 30mm equating to the old 1" capsules and so on. The second variable is the target price, even now they start at 20p here in the UK (approximately E0.30 or ¢), so something as cheap as these would be in a 1"/20p mixture.

Long, long before Kinder did their little families or sets of catoonish animals, these had come out of both Hong Kong and Japan, carded in sets as well as singly from gum-ball machines, and other sets included dogs, pandas, brown bears etc... These cats are loosely referential toward earlier cats in animation such as Felix, Fritz and Figaro.

Couple of complete Res Plastics (RP) / Kinder figures and one of the most copied of all figures ever, the Britains farm hand, I have this figure in a dozen or more sizes and herds of versions.

Animated playthings, Marx had a set of Disney characters in this style and Britains briefly had the Twizzle Town figures, who's were first I couldn't say, but the bear on the left still turns up in cheap crackers, while the elephant-headed Mickey mouse (gloves/boots?) is from the 1970's and probably based on the Marx set. Kinder have produced similar 'anima[not]tronics'!

T is for Tops

Spinners, spinning tops, tops, scorers, spinning dice, diablos...

The large red one with the clip-in clear dome is heading for the unknown space-ships tub eventually. Round spinners are a pain if they 'fall' or stop between numbers, the pale one is only marked 1-4 which makes it a bit easier and suggests it is from an actual board game which only required low numbers?

Likewise the gold one which has nine sides but only 3 scores: 1, 2 and X. It also seems to be missing a grab-point which must push into the recess? The rest are standard gum-ball or cracker fare. The packeted one is a proper diablo with a draw-string and launching handle.

T is for Trains and Boats and Planes

"Trains and boats and planes are passing by, they mean a trip to Paris or Rome, to someone else but not for me. The trains and boats and planes took you away, away from me."

I'm not a great fan of regular 'pop' but some can give you the same nostalgia-hit as old toys, especially at this time of year...cheers Burt!

Again, in storage I have a lot of this stuff, in various sizes, and a whole tub of Kinder railway bits, but this is what's cone-in in the last couple of years. The three little ones at the front are from a Noddy board game and a green one is missing, while the Kinder loco with pantographs is missing a set of horns.

Veering away from thoroughbred cracker and capsule stuff I happen to have these two carded sets kicking about, both The Round House and the Grace Toys brands being made-up-names, I'm guessing; hooks to hang cheap generics on - like Grandmother Stover's, SSCO or Interesting Toy?

Because we've done both micro-vessels and micro-planes to death, there are only a half a handful to look at, and these are they! Kinder airliner, a polyethylene, hollow-underside version of the catapult planes for the dime-store aircraft carrier we looked at a while ago, a micro-ship from mini/decorative tree crackers (maroon), two pleasure cruisers (there are a few in this chaos!) which are cracker toys but were also sold as carded set 'bath toys', along with a modern tug in propylene, similar to the Giodi/Bruder stuff, but unmarked and only two pieces.