T is for the Third Time of Asking!

I post steam, he shows . . . err, was it steam? It was far, far away! I post books, he posts books, I show football game figures, he mentions football game figures, I show a Pirate's mountain top, he does . . . Dinosaur poo? I mention Casdon, he namecheck's Casdon, it's childish! Invicta (original copy) for Invicta (feeBay scrapings!), you get the picture, well he does, usually from somewhere/someone else!

 

23,000 toy companies, millions of toys, but he seems glued to my Blog. Is he really that insecure, or does he think he's being funny, is this what passes for comedy up there on the Wirral? They do like to refer to themselves as Scallies, the little Wags! I must be missing something, but it's a game which can be played both ways, especially if you're going to copy me umpteen times a fortnight, or should that be Fortnite! He did Fortnite, so I'll do Fortnite!

 

Of the six Tagged visits to stampers, two of the most recent three, have featured the Fortnite stampers, and I did mention a while ago there was Fortnite stuff in the queue, so shall we get these out of the way, and do the key-rings over Christmas? See, that's a heads-up for him to go and scrape some key-ring shit off of evilBay!

 

The broken blind-bags (which aren't blind - it was a poor joke, the first time!)

Contents - predominately female.

 

Outer.

 

Flyer.

 

Comparison between the stampers and the keyrings.

65mm (75 with base). 

 

Three loose ones which came in a charity-shop, something else he seems to have picked-up from this Blog, where I was showing you the shit I took home, even if it is 'shit', from early-on, while he didn't use to do charity shops, and now shows us the shelves of shit he left behind! How many crushed boxes of Connect-4 or Operation do you need to be shown in a given period?

 

 Group shot!

 

When they were in The Works, back in 2019 (I guess stupid people have poor memories, or was he concentrating too hard on not recognising Buck Rogers erasers!), we saw the blind bags, five-figure 'pack' cards and two-figure boxes, and to be honest I can't remember where this four-figure set came from (in 2023), possibly Peter?

While my not-so Blind Bags, came from Poundland (store-closure program expanding), in 2021, so they've done the rounds for several years, if you've kept your eyes open, and had several formats of retail presentation! Note also, how both types seen here, state '36 to collect', yet we have a 37th?

 

The guy on the left is not in any of the artworks? 

 

Again, females are central to the gender-mix, so I was guessing Fortnite is a game played by both sexes, divided relatively equally, but AI (who we've discovered can't be trusted) says, no, mostly males, so I guess they must like dressing as 'Tank Girls', don't tell The Donald, he'll have it banned, and them, arrested and deported, for un-American, gender-bending, 'woke' activity!

 

You'll also notice, there are similarities with the clothing of the two women, this is even more noticeable with the key-rings (whenever I get round to them), and is probably a result of characters 'skins' being chosen from a menu, and populism, the default of the majority of humanity, dictating people keep choosing the same gear!

 

The stampers (red, blue and indigo ink on mine, so far, I've also seen yellow-orange), only give you the head of the character (like the Nina Turtle set), which when other stampers seen here (Thundercats, Action Man and bug-eyed Alien) have had whole figures - albeit, very small - seems a bit of a swizz!

 

Spare shot, slightly better colours!

Now, when you find this stuff going cheap in either The Works or Poundland, you tend to think 'end of line', but in fact, with these, I think now, it was more an exercise in clearance to make room for the 'Battle Royal' Series Two wave (red cards), and to get as many people as possible hooked on them by making them so available? They are now up to series three - purple cards.

 

And, as well as two or three series of key-rings, there are some mild 'deform' figures, a pair of whom will be seen here shortly, not scraped off the internet, but in the collection!

 

And, yeah, anyone can post anything on their Blog, and if you want to turn what was once the best space toy Blog on this planet, into a pile of shit internet scrapping, fine, fill yer' boots, after all, you were doing a fair-bit of that from day one, but we sort of ignored it, for the - in context - space toys, however, if you want to continue this constant niggling, point-for-point copying, I'll give it back in spades.

S is for Stampers

Just a quickie, although I'm trying to save my shekels, I had to go to Home Bragains (who, answering my own question of a week or so ago, may be the future slayer of B&M?), to get a couple of vape pens (nine years no cigarette), and checking the toy section, which usually has little to interest us, found these.

 

One of those annoying lines wherein there are 12 to collect, but they are five-to-a-pack, so you must collect/acquire duplicates to obtain a set, and I was going to take a shelfie and move-on when I noticed they were only £2.99 each (presumably clearance stock), so quickly investigated the packs to find there were only three variables, and bought all three, intending to open one, which is what's happened.

 

These are the two which remain sealed, for now, one day I may get them out, or once all the boxes have been ticked (future entries on the A-Z blogs, TMNT round-up &etc), they may be sold on to raise funds for future purchases? As you can see, they are more cartoony/stylised sculpts than the more realistic ones we've seen from Yolanda, Phidal and Playmates et al. And they are solids, not action figures.

The five who have been released from their vac-formed prison, vaguely 54mm compatible, albeit with the very thick bases associated with this type of novelty, you can see that Donatello is much fatter in this iteration, while the other three are much skinnier (two of each character, plus four other figures), and while I did Google the 'Rise of' era, I couldn't find a good explanation for this change, nor why they can be brothers when apparently they are four different species of turtle?

 

Dirt cheap rack-toys, out there now!

H is for How They Come In - Charity Shops

Just a quickie, there is a ton of Charity Shop posts going back to Lockdown somewhere in the heap of half-lost stuff in the 'User' folder, which isn't a user folder! But these are some of this year's more recent purchases!

The fourth of January, I ventured out to get essentials between Christmas and the New Year, only to find M&S were selling-off their mini Christmas puddings for 50p, so I filled my boots (I still have one, which is pencilled-in for my birthday treat!). At the same time I picked-up the three figures on the left, I think they are all from the current Fortnight craze, two key-rings and a stamper, all about 54mm.

To their right are the following Wednesday's ( the best day for toys in one of the charity shops) finds.

Which consisted of four apes in three sculpts, one is branded I think, but in the chaos of the moment I didn't note it at the time and they are away for now, but one day we'll look at them all again!

 

Not sure if these are more Fortnight, Laura Croft or some Barbie thing, but three TV/Movie (or gaming!) type babes in a vinyl-like soft polymer, looks like they should have separate weapons/accessories? Anyone recognise them?

 

Normally with these ceramics/fairings, I'll buy cats or the odd dog, elephants (see below!), and some branded stuff like Wade, but this caught my eye as it looks like Peter Rabbit. However, there was no branding and the colours are a bit off, so I suspect an unlicensed knock-off.

 

Nice PVC or similar bear, keyring, some age maybe, 1970's? Not much else I can add, if it was marked the above note about a lack of note-taking applies!

 

Small china elephants, probably from China! Consisting of a family group with matching graphics, in incrementally smaller size. They can be arranged to touch the tail of the one in front, with the tip of their trunks, along with one outlier who has different graphics and may have lost a similarly incrementally-sized family? He looks sad with his trunk down . . .

B is for Broken Blind Bags

They're broken because you can see the contents!

In the news all the weekend just gone, as there was a major competition in the US (New York?) with millions in prizes - I shelfied these in the Works, where the full range (including the 'really rare's) all seem to be on clearance, I don't know what they cost first time round, but they weren't cheap enough for me to 'invest'!

Five-packs, I think I've seen two different ones, but in different stores! Figures are about 75/80mm, I'm not farty enough to get the tape-measure out in a discount store . . . although as I don't carry a tape-measure that would be hard to do, even if I was farty-enough!

Two-packs are more affordable, yet more expensive at £2.50 per figure against the two-quid of the five-packs. I know nothing about Fortnight, but have seen various references of it in the media to know it's one of the big games (online?) at the moment, and presumably these are the better-known thirty-six or favourite download characters/'skins'? 

The single 'blind-bags' which aren't, are the most expensive way to purchase them, but the easiest way to fill-gaps, clearly the marketing model is for you to purchase the five-lots, then the pairs, then finish off with the singles, but - if you are tempted - I'd look for the 'rarest' first wherever they are (one is in a twin-pack), as they will be in smaller quantities, then grab the commoner ones later!

The whole set; the image embiggens to reasonably large - but a bit blurry - if you click on it! Epic-PMI/Kids Works-Sinco Creations, that's how it is these-days, with this stuff; licenses within licenses!

A word of warning though, if you are tempted, but are also an ethical buyer, these may be made in china and licenced to various intermediates, but ultimate profit channels-back to an Israeli firm.

S is for Stamping Thundercats

Licensed from Telepix by HG Toys (the same Harett-Gilmar who made that series of TV/movie related play-sets in the 1980's), I don't know how many were in the set but hope this is all of them - two good guys and a pair of baddies, bought together from an aged shop-stock box in an older corner-shop around ten years ago?

Good guys (fluffy-cats?) are the outer pair (red bases); Thundercats which I could look up but can't be bothered to, one's a lion/man the other a panther/person . . . I think! The bad guys (blue bases, smelly-cats!) seem to be based on a simian of some kind and an explosion of purple crazy-string!

Seven years in a storage facility's shipping container has somewhat dried-out the blue inc-pads - found in the cap - but the two red ones are still going strong (good always triumphs over evil!) and they produce 20mm paper flats . . . sort of!

As you can see - from the risks our 'Berserker' takes on your behalf - they are 65mm if you remove the stamp and stamp/ink-cap. And it won't have escaped your notice that their role as handles leaves them a bit statue'y - Oscars for kids!

It's funny - of all the stuff I missed gallivanting around as an adolescent farmer, soldier, ski-instructor and festival-goer (box ticking!), these were probably the one's I know least about, I caught the odd episode of He-Man, watched the rise of the execrable Scrappy-Doo, joined some late-night stuff sobering-up with a microwaved pasty occasionally (Serenity, Terrahawk re-runs), saw PC'd TMHT quickly revert to TMNT in the early nineties after I returned to UK, but never really had much awareness of the Thundercats (or the various giant robot ones!), yet I have managed to accrue quite a bit of it in the last few years, even the last few months - I scored a bunch at a charity shop back in September, in two scales.

B is for Bug Eyed Aliens

Or F is for Follow-up - Roswell (link)

There aren't many bug-eyed aliens suitable for use with 50-70mm figures, even allowing for the fact that they can [presumably] vary in size, and indeed do vary in size - according to the legions of 'abductees', most of who seem to be poor 'white trash' from the deserts and trailer-parks of the continental USA, rather than the 'victims' being randomly distributed around the world and from different socio-economic/educational backgrounds?

And this is not to ridicule them, I have seen a 'UFO' (tale told in link), it's just to register my suspicions as to the weighted nature of the - self identifying - subject group, and the levels of alcohol, other controlled substances or even a desire for 'five minutes of . . . ' that might be involved? Apropos the previously told tale . . . it's now obvious a [very fast] drone would fill all the criteria.features of our 'UFO' were they playing with such things in 1984!

Although - even as I write this (Wednesday night/Thursday morning) someone channelling synergy on the World Service has just stated the new head of world chess (and one of the organisers of the Russian World Cup) claims to have be abducted by Aliens!

However, I have digressed; there are not many . . . etc . . . etc . . . and we looked at examples of a few of them last time, so having brought the last lot together with the storage lot, the follow-up post is similar in coverage to the previous post, but we can spread them over more images!

There are others, the Mars Attacks cereal premium figures for instance, which will get a separate post some day.

When we looked at the skaters/boarders, I said there were others sets available, and I had most of another set in storage; these being footballers . . . and a referee? Clearly they have been watching too much terrestrial telly on Zargbalg IV!

The bases are much smaller, whether this points to two waves of all these sets (I'm still saying there's a set or two remaining to find!), or just that the boarders got larger bases for some reason, I don't know, but the soft semi-transparent PVC/rubber polymer, the shade of green, size and sculpting of the figures in the two sets otherwise matches.

I actually had three more of the - believed to be - capsule/gum-ball machine, prize figures, the two reverse-colour duplicates of the ones we saw last time in one place and the orange one somewhere else as he'd come in separately and I hadn't put two-and-two together or he came in at that moment everything was getting thrown into storage - anyway here they all are together! Note; the orange one only has three digits per hand, the others four, but they all have three toes! Now fully explained with additional manufacturers here - Soma!

The lower image shows a scaler with the stamper (below), a Galoob 'bug-eye' from the Trash-Bag Bunch and a couple of the above greenies. I love these figures and if anyone has any they don't rate/want, I'll be a happy recipient! Or even pictures, how many poses/colours are there? We will definitely return to them sometime.

Having mentioned him (or her, who am I to sex an alien?); here's the stamper! I always stamp the card in their storage bag so I have a sample of the stamp as they invariably dry-out over time. He It's a resin moulding, glued to a generic ink-stamp 'capsule' which is probably bought-in from a company specializing in such novelty stuff, and is of unknown origin/maker.

This is odd, around 70mm, it's hollowed-out in the rear like that battle-babe from the other day, or the cheapie royalty I mentioned at the time, and again it may be a cost-cutting measure, or an aspect of a known character who's escaped me?

He looks like he should be holding something above his head, and probably comes from a larger play-set of some kind, but as hinted; 'rack-toy' rather than big-name branded?

Anyway - it's another bug-eyed alien, it's in the collection, and it's finishing this post!

A is for Action Man

I imported the listing for these from the dead page the other day, so thought I'd better post the figures while they were still fresh on my mind.

Imported into the UK by 3D Licensing, these were a Hasbro product, and I have an idea a company with 'Strawberry' in the title may have been involved somewhere, but not the old Strawberry Fayre. 35mm factory painted poured resin figurines with a pre-inked stamp in the base producing 20mm images, you could regard as flats!

As far as I know there were only the 6 poses, I get a few of these 'Stampers' from time to time (Kinder often does rolling ones with a continuous/endless track) and always take an image for/on the record card that goes in the bag with the figures.

Sold as pocket money toys, the resin (Oh! Sorry - 'Polystone'...yeah, right, got real stone in it has it?!) is brittle and the ink wouldn't last a day in the hands of a kid, this is the shite-end of the toy market, and you'd expect a company like Hasbro to stay out of it...