R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Three is Supernumerary

More rack toy shelfies from Brian Berke, he found all these in Dollar Tree I think, and all figural, with 'Action', stretchy and 'Solid' types to suit most tastes!

 

Wall Walkers, unusual, in being solid, swivel-waist figures, with the sticky 'walking' compound attached as blobs to hands and feet, rather than the more usual form of an all-sticky figurine!

 

Although not a bendy, this guy looks like a perfect foil for the stretchy astronaut we saw a couple of months ago from Keycraft!

 

Generics? Their names all begin with 'M'!

 

Another of the Power Ranger's we saw the black one of, in a previous post from Brian.

 

Disney!

 

I'm not sure how this would work as a Yo-Yo, and I've tried to avoid PJ Masks and Paw Patrol here, but the longer they remain popular characters, the more likely they are to creep into the content from time to time! And I don't know anything about them - are they some male version of Power-Puff Girls?

 

This would find a place in the collection; appears to be a sculptural solid? There's a lot of adults buying toys these days, more for lifestyle signalling/decoration, than pure collecting, and this sort of thing is very much aimed at them, for a mantle or windowsill, or a display cabinet in the hall Monster High!

 

Three-inch, four-inch? Look out GI Joe's, Barbie is looking for a husband and she has expensive tastes!

 

Peppa . . . removed from Douyin (China) due to her association with 'gangster' subcultures and the creation of subversive memes!

 

Many thanks to Brian for all these, there's more to come, probably two more posts, so nicely inside Rack Toy Month, while I think the Gygax Monsters will slide into September! 

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Two of . . . a Few!

Continuing to look at the stuff Brian B has sent to the blog in the last few weeks, these were all shot in a Target Store in Connecticut I believe, and mostly TV/Movie related licensed characters.

 

My Little Fawn?

 

There is, somewhere in Picasa, a multipart 'miniseries' which never got published (it will, one day!), which Brian contributed to, on the subject of those figurines you see in the windows of game-swap shops, which are interactive, electronic playing pieces, for/from several modern gaming systems, these seem to be similar, but are more music oriented I think? Can't knock The Muppets!

 

Superstuff!

 

Also a bit big for my parameters, but I know from the Plaid Stallions crew, that there's a massive fan-base for GI Joe, Stateside, with the guys telling each other where certain figures have popped-up! Same with the 'new' Mego's!

 

Even dog-food is promoting the new movie! It launched with much hype as the summer's big movie, and a sort of reset for the brand, but it's gone quiet now, so I don't know if it's good, OK, or a bit duff . . . Has anyone seen it?

 

The two boats are halfway between the rockets and the rubber-boats we saw yesterday from B&M, and it looks like the two boats are wind-up workers.

 

Plastic flat, gravity floaters?

Thanks again to Mr Berke for going out and finding these.

Ph is for Phidal Phalls Phlat!

It's been fun following Phidal since whenever, and they are mostly fun figures, so hopefully I will continue to do so, but in the best traditions of We Buy This Shit So You Don't Have To, I purchased a couple of the Tattle Tales (see previous post), even though I had a certain sense of foreboding, but not being able to get the Blog up in store to check the previous posts, I had to take a punt . . . for you, Loyal Readers!

My suspicion was that the contents were existing figures from the standard My Busy Book range, and in that I was correct! I can't tell you if another box has another four poses, as the original set they're taken from - which we saw here - had twelve poses?

But yeah, if you've got the older sets, don't get these small ones, they're duplicates, I've checked the Princesses too, and I also bought the Lightyear one, which I haven't even included in this post as we only saw the ten-figure version recently, and you may have worked out the duplication from the box-shot in the previous post . . . So, disappointing, but if they become the norm and start to get new sculpts - I'll let you know!

A is for an Army of Arachnids!

A year ago I was still getting excited about these Phidal's as a discovery (by Spectrum), but now they've become a bit of a box-ticker, also, they are coming out with a frequency that Airfix would have envied back in the 1970's and - as such - prove there's nothing wrong with the market, just that tastes (and brands!) have changed.

Picked-these up back at the beginning of August and - Spidey fans excepted - who knew? Who knew there were at least half-a-dozen of the little serum-contaminated blighters! There's girl ones, future ones, kid ones . . . they're everywhere! ♪♫♪♫ Spider-Man, Spider-Man . . . how many of you in the Clan? ♫♫♪

Boo! Shout the panto' crowd! It's the Phidal bad-guys, and they're in front of you! How come all these spider-things don't have eight legs or eight eyes? Just sayin'! Rhino looks more like a Blood Bowl player, although I think that particular piece of Nottingham's real-estate was nicked from something published earlier in 2000AD, or am I thinking of Rollerball?!

The best of a bad-assed bunch! I wrote the names on these as I guide for myself, 'cos I don't follow any of this, There are two movies out this Christmas, I think, I won't watch either of them, even when they come on DVD!

I've recently been catching-up on stuff I did half-intend to see, but was pretty disappointed; Will Smith's After Earth was unadulterated, self-indulgent, shite, with Cruise's Oblivion a better movie but so full of plot-holes and continuity/logic errors it was a poor excuse for Sci-Fi.

District 9 was actually better, but all three had week endings with the first two very 'Hollywood-mawkish' in the last minutes! I also watched Elysium, the sort of [not-a-]follow-up to District 9, and while it shared the earlier films gritty realism and production values, along with a CGI budget to match Oblivion, it also shared the Elysium plot . . . man with X-hours/days to live puts on armoured body-suit to [successfully] defeat baddies!

What was new with this set was a 'blind-bag' element which may be to prevent pilfering? I've seen a couple like this now (with the figure compartment covered), but most are still viewable, there's a nice set of Transformers out there at the moment with robots that look just like 1980's gum-ball capsule prizes, or pencil-tops - without the hole!

M is for More Monopoly 'Movers' - Miniature Metal Marvel Mocherettes

Yeah! Formulaic take on the story of Achilles; Spider-Men, as die-cast statuettes around 28mm for yet another version of Monopoly, I didn't even shoot the box!

That's it, three Spidey's, three enemy (?), the inventor died the other day you know, if you missed the 1000's of column-inches in the press, the hours of TV and Radio coverage, the hundreds of blog posts and the sudden plethora of faceplant memes!

Remember, Judge Dredd didn't fall-in-, get caught in the ray of-, eat, drink, sniff, suffer a spill of-, get shot, bitten- or injected by anything radio-active, diseased, secret or alien - just about everyone in the Marvel and DC universes did!

And they all have an Achillies' heel, kryptonite, "You won't like me when I'm angry" and err, Spider-Man's got fifteen! Dredd just knows he's right!

N is for Never Mind! Better Luck Next Year!

If you haven't made it to Twicker's for more pressing reasons, but want a consolation nearer home there is a Comic Convention in Cardiff today and there are toy shows in Nelson Treeharris (I can't believe that's a 'place'!); Llancaiach Fawr Mansion (model railways, Contact Martyn Parry - 07990 752102) or Oxford; Exeter Hall (general toy fair, Richard Atkins Toy fairs - 01869 347489) that you may be able to sneak away to for an hour or so!

No news on any new PW 'Specials' this year? If there are any I'll let you know ASAP!

Stop Press

As I was loading this (in a rush on Friday), I got an eMail from Terranova with the best plastic-warrior ever - for Plastic Warrior Day - of course!

Marvel and DC on the same packaging, with a light-sabre and no license! Knock-off's don't come much more sublime than this, cheers Brian!

Details / Links

Richard Atkins Toy Fair
12/05/2018 - 12/05/2018
10.30am - 3pm Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, OX5 1AB, United Kingdom
01869 347489

Welsh Toy Show

Cardiff Film and Comic-Con

I is for I hate to admit it . . . but . . .

. . . the Marvel figures are just as luscious as the DC ones!

It's funny how these things come together, first we had a random shelfie (TV Batman) in the autumn from Terranova, then a Toy Fair '18 report (there's still a few in the queue!) with a couple more shelfies from Terra', which was a sort of gradual ramping-up, then the other day we had the more synergeous sending of more shelfies by Brian the very same day I bought the Supergirl from a dying Toysaurus, and today (Wed. 26th) we had coincidence strike, twice; first when I found some more being cleared for a bargain price and then minutes later when I popped into the Asda (Walmart) next door.

A third coincidence could be said to be the fact that I was only in Smyths to gauge the impact of the nearest two Toys w'Я Them closing earlier in the week - it hadn't had any noticeable effect on the relative emptiness of the aircraft-hanger that is Farnborough's Smyths; almost equidistant between the Woking and Basingrad carcases of the recently deceased behemoth that predates Smyths and set the model of business Smyths follows.

I wouldn't give you eight quid for five 40-mil-anythings, but at a fiver they are pretty-much the same as any run-of the mill single figure at a show! And they do have that luscious, deep lacquered finish that renders them a small joy to handle.

Also - as the gods clearly want them on the blog - it's nice to have a closer look at a slightly larger sample and the first thing we find is that bases vary with no, slight or marked-step undersides. The second thing is they are bloody hard to get out of their vac-formed tray!

But, to the other coincidence; you see - on the card-back - the two 'exclusive' figures? Three minutes after paying for these, I saw both Guardians of the Galaxy exclusives, in exactly the same paint, single-packed in Asda for . . . hummmm . . . should have shelfied them . . . £1.87p, I think? It may have been eighty-nine pee? The point is - there's nothing exclusive about them whatsoever!

It's the same fake news, marketing hype & lies we get from everywhere we turn these days, the media, the internet, politicians, local authorities, charities, web-giants, corporations, the orange Brillo-pad, TJF, no-one's being straight with anyone any-more!

In passing, the importer Jaz Toys is the same as had supplied the DC figure to the Toysaurus, but I didn't check the Asda card-backs.

The rears of the figures against their own liner-card, I don't know if Spider Gore is a 'Goodie' or a 'Baddie', but I suspect the later with a name like that, and is a Black Costume Spider Man a not-a-good-thing?

Still prefer DC - Supergirl will sort this lot out before breakfast!

S is for Spidey Light

. . . ♫ ♬♪♩ Spiderlight! Spiderlight! . . . it can do any'thing a real-light might . . . ♬♩

♬ . . . . Spiderlight! Spiderlight! . . . dada-dada-dada-dada daar da-daaar! . . . ♬♩

♬ . . . Spiderlight! Spiderlight! . . . fighting-crime at-night with a tooor-che's light . . . ♬♩

♬ . . . . Spiderlight! Spiderlight! . . . dada-dada-dada-dada daar da-daaar! ♪♪♫♩ . . .

This came in with the three flashing key-ring toys we looked at earlier this morning, whether someone was starting a nascent key-ring / mini-torch collection, or not I don't know as Dave pointed out a while ago, the ladies probably save this stuff out t'back until they have enough for a bagful to go out-front or 'shop-side' . . . retail-side? They'll have their own volunteer-ladies jargon, I'm sure!

Spidertorch! Similarities with the other lot include LED fitted as a light source, a flush, sliding switch and key-ring function, albeit as a key-chain not the proper rings of the others.

Differences include shape - obviously, design aspects of the sliding switch and the fact that it's screwed-together not sealed . . . oh, I'm just waffling now, there's little to add to the photographs and I just want to get to the last shot, because when I put it down on the bed I noticed . . .

. . . it was a coloured light? A bi-coloured red / blue light to boot, and while they seemed to be side-by side you can't see anything by looking down the lens, whether while it's witched-off, or switched-on which just blinds you temporarily!

In the end I did manage to see it by shining another pen-torch through the thin casing, it was possible to see the little artwork and even get a fuzzy picture of it . . .

. . . but pointing it into the dark recess of the chimney-breast revealed . . .

..."Agonised Arachnids! Batman - it's the Spidey-signal!"

It is of course the same image as is presented on the side of the torch, although, why it's the shape it is, is anyone's guess, a sort of three-fingered knuckle-duster effect?

"This Spider light is dirty Soldier!"

The rather fuzzy look down the barrel reveals a little transparency set above the LED which produces the 'Spidey-signal' when it's switched-on, without a near target-surface and near dark conditions, it just acts like a slightly weak pen-torch.

Marvel though - bunch of twerps . . . is 'twerps' acceptable or is it unprofessional? TJF'll know, he knows everything; he has a little black book with his legend in!

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Schleich - Superheroes

As with Papo I've broken the Schleich (or Schleich-S as I think they are aiming to be called?) down, but not into the same number of posts as Papo, simply because there wasn't much to see! The display seemed smaller than Papo's despite the stands being of equivalent size (they were only a few yards from each-other as well!), the move seems to be toward scene-in-a-box play-sets, fantasy (of a pinky-purple type) and the dreaded licensed stuff (the target of this post), but don't be put-off be my wittering, the animals are still about the best out-there.

And they are big, some of these a four-and-a-half-inches (120mm) or taller.

Marvel superheroes, being - if anything - a DC guy, I tend to just shake my head and move on, they have Spidey and the Hulk I s'pose, but it's not enough when the enemy have . . .

. . . Superman, Batman and the babe in a basque! Now she's in an armoured-basque I may have to be more respectful! But DC has its duffers too; who the hell's Shazami? Don't all write-in at once - I don't care; he looks like a hippy dance-guru, or a cheaper Flash! Cheap flasher? Peter Stringfellow's going to a Toga Party?

It's nice that there are different generations of the Batman, although the TV one isn't shown and he's the one I like. There may be other versions at the website (link www.schleich-s.com) where we are invited to "Discover other superheroes at:...", you will find that following the link will take you to a local (US, UK etc...) hub.

It's funny; the Man Bat gets all these upgrades with each movie (as does Marvel's Iron Man really), Wonder Woman has gone all Spartan-Amazon on us, but all Superman's got out of all the Hollywood attention is slightly fancier boots!

Thought for the day - why do the comics (or the movies) never show us Superman, at the end of his adventure, sewing-up his wreaked civi's at the speed of light, presumably in the same telephone box where he left them, all torn and ripped, so that he looks like he's just been to the water-cooler when he steps back into the office?

News, Views Etc . . . Month's Round-up

Nerve Centre - Stomm und Zajazz!

I thought I'd share this image of Tuttle's (or is it Buttle's?) desk-top in Central Planning here at Small Scale World, you can see how he has used the latest in dynamic-portal, on-line, digital, smart-tech, file-sharing to produce a multi-layered, computer-aided, interactive, predictive/responsive spreadsheet, making is easy for the other staff to place and manage future-posts between the 21st and 31st, he even managed to provide separate data-layers for the three recent comparison shots and a graphical-interface extension, carrying-forward to the 4th of November! I only employ the very best technicians here!

Halloween

Flat Metal

Nursery Rhyme/Halloween themed modern, commercially-painted, whitemetal flats from Scully & Scully's window display in New York, image courtesy of Brian Berke, and we will return to this company in a while.

Plastic Waste

Already touched on in one of the 'countdown' posts; the environmental charity Hubbub issued a report estimating that last year's Halloween sent 7-million costumes to the rubbish bin. This year it's estimated 150-million people worldwide will spend £510m-quid on these costumes, volumes of which will have been trashed by the 6th November. (Stop Press - the figures given out on R4 last night (25th) were worse)

Now I don't know if you've studied the vast racks of these things (which have mushroomed in the last few years) in supermarkets and discount stores, but they're not a bit shite, they're 100% shit. It has to stop, or we will destroy the planet. If you have to celebrate death, at least re-use costumes, share costumes around a circle of friends each year, or make costumes from recyclable stuff you would otherwise throw-out.

Ask what your grandparents' did, not what a mile-long plastics factory in Guangdong can do for you!

Stamps

This is the third 'News Views...' in a row with a substantial section on stamps, but they are collectables, have been featuring toys recently and additionally do come within the whole feebleBay/postal aspect of the hobby.

Stanley Gibbons

Losses at Stanley Gibbons have worsened ('widened' in the language of the traders really responsible for most of our problems!) an £8.8m trading-loss being posted, an £18m revenue drop and loan-repayment defaults also being announced.

Harrington & Byrne

However, adverts like this - from a rival I've never heard of - which has been running for several months now, in several papers; may have something to do with SG's problems? Having been a stamp collector in my youth, I remember how surprisingly numerous Victorian stamps actually are (few designs, long period of issue, per stamp), and it seems to me that with three 'penny-reds' and three ha'penny greens in the 14, it's probably not actually worth twenty-nine of your smackeroonies!

Star Wars Stamps

The next set from Royal Fail is a set of Star Wars stamps, given the last few sets, it's clear that the privatised company is not issuing needed stamps, nor even particularly worthy celebrations, but rather stamps which will generate the most revenue and therefore - in the future - be of little value to collectors, a phenomena most 'commemoratives' since the 1980's are guilty of!

Stamp artist

Peter Mason got the i's page-three treatment on the 16th but the piece didn't make clear that he only uses definitives, inflation producing so many postal charge changes since the 3½p (olive?) of my childhood, and each change requiring all new colours, for the postal system to recognise instantly that there are now hundreds of colours in his 'palette'!

Paddington Bear

Everywhere

There's a new movie coming out for Christmas! The last one was brilliant, superb animation and CGI techniques with the humour of the books writ-large and little 'Hollywood'isation'

New York

Apropos a previous mention of Mr. Bear here on the Blog, Brian Berke sent this picture of his wife's original Paddington with all his tags, and a few additional ones - 'cabin baggage' . . . how very dare they!

Duchy of Cambridge

Paddington Bear - approved by royalty . . . apparently - some lush bird from Lunden Taaan wiv 'er bloke and 'is bro dancin' wiv Mistah Bear init!

Hayday Films . . .

. . . are trying to get out of a distributions contract with the Weinstein Company for obvious reasons, I suspect the Weinstein Co. won't be around long enough to defend the action, or even care!

Thomas the Wank Engine

Some pox-jockey of an arsewit called Jia Tolentino (is that her Star Wars name?**) has ripped into our favourite little blue tank-engine Thomas on the New Yorker's website [no; I'm not posting a link - it's clearly the digital equivalent of arsewipe] making out that the stories are some sort of fascist polemic/allegory for Empire Building and slavery! Coming from an American Publication; that's a bit fucking rich! "Authoritarian rule through disinformation" on the Island of Sodor . . . I kid you not; this Kia-ora Tarrentino woman would be better employed investigating her President's philosophies - I humbly suggest!

Off the Rails - Hornby Chug-on

Hornby Hobbies (or are they Hornby Group these days? Notes elsewhere!) have issued another profits warning, lost another - interim - chairman and announced a new plan . . .sorry 'strategy', which will involve '...maximising the value of our brands including Scalextric and Airfix...' (call me a big-head; but that's probably something they ought to have been doing all along?), this will include less discounting of existing stock.

Now, as far as Airfix is concerned; they have already cancelled all the potential WWI money spinners, put several other projects on hold and slowed the release of new stuff, now they seem to be saying the website offers will also go? Doesn't leave much for the fan-base!

I wonder if the new chairman is the chap/shareholder who started the bloodletting back whenever (last year sometime?) and had so far been kept at arm's length, but I've not got the other cuttings in front of me, however there has been such good coverage (with more on the Internet for those who want to follow-up in depth) that I will at some point do a fuller report on all the machinations . . . perhaps when the dust's settled a bit!

Hobby Show

You can only report on hobby shows beforehand if you are told about them beforehand, and sadly a lot of reportage is 'after the event'.

This is a case in point; The Annual Exhibition for Model Railways, Creative Arts and Play (I'm sure it was more catchy in German!), held in Leipzig which ended on 1st October but was only reported on 30th September (i Weekend). Now we used to have the annual Model Engineer Exhibition (MEE) at Earls Court after Christmas, but it's so long since I saw any publicity for it I couldn't tell you if it's still going? I'll check!

Our hobby - in all its branches - is very poor at Internet penetration, except the big retailers with their mountains of polymer shite and their fifteen versions of the same board game, and all their lookie-likey bollocks.

Toys in the Media

Sainsbury's

Bit of a cheat as toy sale ads are common as muck, and don't really qualify for 'Toys in the Media' but this one is a more 'designer' graphic with a minimalist artiness to it - so I shot it.

Halifax

This one's not much better, but Scrabble is a board-game, so I thought it qualified for inclusion with its pile of recognisable tiles!

Toys R Us

The Toysaurus here in the UK is now struggling to get stock from some of it's suppliers in time for Christmas, as they have been "spooked" by the news from across the pond. Firms including Worlds Apart (I know) and Tutti Bambini (I've never heard of!) had stopped resup's while they tried to find out what was going to happen to the UK stores, but all parties are hoping to have everything running normally again in the next week or so.

Meanwhile - Character Options (better than Lego figures!) are worried about the longer-term fall-out of the TrU bankruptcy on the whole industry and report that effects are already being felt by them - seriously; now might be the time to open an independent, The Toysaurus is dying, Hornby and Lego are desperate for sales, so must be looking for new outlets, new customer models . . . maybe we will see a rebirth of local hobby or toy shops?

The 'They don't come much bigger than this' Department

This was the scene at the launch of Hamley's Christmas campaign, if Mummy & Daddy are very rich, you too can have a life-size menagerie! Hamley's predict Lego, Hatchimals, Barbie and Nerf Guns as the big sellers . . . does this mean fidget-spinners have already gone the same way as loom-bands? I bloody hope-so!

Merlin

The parent of Legoland here in the UK (along with Alton Towers, Pepper Pig Parks, Madame Tussauds et al.) posted worse figures than expected in previous 'News, Views...' with the blame being put firmly on terrorism (by both Merlin and the wider media) and somehow managing to ignore a larger number of Theme Park accidents and deaths here and elsewhere in the last 12/18 months! Not necessarily Merlin's I hasten to add, but that won't prevent the general public putting 2 and 2 together and getting five, they're like that; poor, frightened, stupid little sheeple.

Again?

The coastguard called out a Lifeboat to rescue Spiderman from the ocean, after a helium balloon was mistaken for a parachutist in difficulties. When superheroes need recuing it's time to get rid of them, surly!

Now I get sick of seeing the remains of helium balloons in the woods, in fields, hung-up on fences . . . and the bloody things must be singlehandedly laying down the anthropocene-layer, worldwide! This shit's got to be banned eventually; the law of unintended consequences dictates that just because we can - doesn't mean we should.

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** Mine's Core Novawar - A wanderer from Ampliquen!