We like a bit of novelty stuff here at
Small Scale World - as you may have noticed! And two additions to the
collection have come in over the last week or so, both are pencil sharpeners,
but then I wouldn't have put 'pencil sharpeners' in the title-bar if I was
going to be showing you cocktail-sticks or bouncy-balls!
This was a charity shop purchase a week and
a half ago, and is a die cast moulding, similar to that PVC sculpt from 4M, but
that's more coincidence than design, this is a slighter model - with a heavier
sword!
The two arms, head and sword are a little
loose and wobbly with the body being in two halves once - the whole seems to
have been clamped and riveted in one action, from all 7 pieces (including the
base), probably under heat, before the/a generic, plastic pencil-sharpener was
slotted into place; once the product had cooled down.
Mining polymer beads at an ethylene seam .
. . what? Didn't you know? Oh god-yes; they're resting near the surface, up there
on the high plateaus in Fantasia Minor, as formally deep-ocean, pre-Cambrian
nuggets, now just lying-about in the deserts, regularly revealed by the
shifting sands and migrating dunes, the unicorns thrive on them, indeed it's
been said the golden-horn evolved purely to dig polyethylene nuggets out and
has nothing to do with mating or making flowers bloom at all!! Although, as
it's clearly a desert; the flower story is an obvious old-wives-tale.
You may still remember the Massy-Ferguson
look-alike I found a couple of years ago, well the same source seems to be
responsible for this JCB-likey . . . albeit missing a back-hoe, but aren't we
all! The title bar has already revealed it's a pencil sharpener, but it also
has a blue, finger-action bucket thing - Ooh Matron!
It also has a plug which A) helps keep the
sharpenings in the cab until you want to dump them somewhere, and B) keeps the
cab (now with snazzy smoked-glass effect) with the digger if it pops off
accidently.
A comparison with the previous find, the
tractor came in four colours I think (from memory; red, yellow, green and blue,
of which I chose the closest to Massy-Ferguson colours), I suspect the digger
does too, but this was the last one in my local Rymans, so I don't know, I do know it was reduced to 99p!
The wheel units and tyres (US, cryptic -
tires without getting sleepy) on both models are identical mouldings, so I'm
sure the same factory produced both, it's imported (almost certainly from
China?) by Strawberry Design & Marketing,
who also imported the tractors.
