N is for November's Sandown Park - Sci-Fi &etc.

On to the odd-and-sods of the last show, and these are a bit of a mix, nothing exciting, but it's all grist to the mill, and there's always something new!

 

I think the devil is probably a rather naff Valentine's Day 'thing', but it IS a bendy! While the green chap, also a bendy, is probably more modern, and wasn't easy to shoot, but I decided to leave him in his crinkled bag for now. He has something of the Muppets about him?

 

Straight from a shop-stock / counter display box, three colours/poses of the Cherilea 60mm astronauts, interesting that the whole box, only had these three poses, the non-EM2 Bullpup armed chaps? And colours tie-in with the Tibidabo issues, so I think it's fair to say the Italians just bought-in the product, but never had the tools?

 

If there's anything exciting in this post it's the left-hand of these two from Yolanda, of Spain, being a large Anime/Manga type robot, Marked Toei, while the other chap is marked Troma I think, the US pulp-Video Nasty producer, and both are the earlier polyethylene, some Yolanda were later issued in a softer PVC-substitute.

 

Adrian gave me this, his head is broken-off, so will need pining at some point, but in the last few years several whole, and part, Cherilea Batmans and/or Robins have come in with one or two bases, so I'll sort them all into the best pair and Blog them again properly, one day!

 

'Gygax' spikey, one of the Crossbows & Catapults figures mentioned the other day, home-painted and play-worn, he needs a good clean, along with a Bandai Power Ranger's villain - I think!

 

What looks like a 1:48th scale aircraft kit's gunner, and one of the Aurora figures from the Lost in Space set with the rock-throwing cyclopean alien. He's lost his hand, but as a first sample, will do for now, although I may have these in white-plastic (Mobius) somewhere?

M is for Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir

Neither had I, but it's all here;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous:_Tales_of_Ladybug_%26_Cat_Noir

 

And I'll quote the first paragraph for the lazier among you!

 

"Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (French: Miraculous, les aventures de Ladybug et Chat Noir) is a French, animated superhero television series created by Thomas Astruc and developed by Jeremy Zag. The series is produced by the French company Miraculous Corp. (a joint venture of Mediawan and ZAG Entertainment), and co-produced with Japanese studio Toei Animation's European division, as well as several international companies."

 

Totally passed me by, yet seems eminently preferable to Paw Patrol or Bluey! It's an age thing, I know, but it's funny how some toy lines sink, and others swim? These were sent to me by Peter Evans about eighteen months ago, and PMI are known for cheapo' toys and sell though, so I'm guessing they were clearance, in one of the Poundland type store chains, or a North London independent discount store?

 

Ladybug ('Ladybird' en anglais, although technically it should be 'coccinelle' in French!) is the red lady, Cat Noir the black, and other characters are beyond the time I'm willing to spend researching this now!

 

The full range? If a toy doesn't 'fly' on first release, it doesn't get a second chance these days, so this is probably all there is; ten human characters and six anthropomorphic blobs of an insecty or feline nature?

 

Very much in the style of the more successful, but also sold-though Poundland (and The Works) on reductions, or as clearance, Fortnite stampers and/or keyrings, so probably sourced from a similar producer in China.

Many thanks to Peter for bringing these to a wider attention, by sharing them with us!

S is for Sometimes . . . I Can be a Fuckwit, Twice in a Fortnight!

When I published the Robots the other day, I had totally missed a much bigger folder with a shed load of mostly eraserbot shots in it! Anyway, I found it a couple of days later and after a quick "Doh!", cobbled the next two posts together (helped by a recent purchase) and chucked a couple of dozen -  mostly Internet - images back into the generic folder for another day!

I'd forgotten acquiring these a while ago . . . last year some time, even before the posts I did at the time, simple flats, but colourful, several sellers were selling them individually for silly money, but I found one who had the set for a reasonable collective price, we'd seen similar flats (or 'tiles'?) before, so it seems a new branch of the collection was calling!

 

Here the red one is compared with those seen in that/those previous post/s, and you can see these are toward the larger end of the spectrum, at around 60mm, but the fun is in adding six items to a growing sub-genre!

 

Spotted this set on feeBay, branded to Emson, can't remember why I left it at the time, possibly because there were only the two figurals, for a high BIN, or postage from somewhere else was ridiculous (global shipping program anyone?)? But they are interesting for having a semi-transparent polymer with flecks of glitter set into it.

 

I also saw these TV related ones online somewhere, probably an incomplete set, and, like all these: the artwork is waterslide transfer-printed straight onto the blocks of eraser rubber.

D is for Dere's More!

When I went to upload the images for the previous post, I noticed it had changed its name from Robot Erasers to Robot Erasers_1, and wondered what had happened to cause that? Cancelling the upload for a minute and going back to Picasa I put Robo- in the search bar and found these, under the plain Robot Erasers folder-title!

Apparently they date from early December, so I must have been planning some robot follow-ups then, or just found them going cheap? Anyway, they are interesting for being more of those eighties transforming type battle-suit 'vehicles' (some of which have pilots in one country or toy-line and full autonomy in others), and which I try not to get bogged-down in, they were a kids thing, from the generation after me and I just don't need to fill my head with more fictional details!

 

I know enough now to guess they might be Toei Animation-like Voltron or Manzinger types . . . maybe? From Japan, and might be the inspiration for the new Lootcrate one? You can see that they are much bigger than the standard eraser or pencil-top types (45/60mm) but smaller than the new one at around 80/90mm depending upon headdress.

 

I had to use the shaving mirror to hold them up, it happened to be at hand!

They also clearly have some age, and three have taken a fair bit of battle-damage, but I think my feeling, at the time, was to get them while they are cheap, in the hope I can pick up bits, when I spot them in the future, to complete the rest.

 

Obviously there seem to be six here, and while I could swap arms to make the left one whole, or the head to make the middle one whole, I suspect they are part-specific named characters, so for now this is how they stay!

That's enough novelty rubber or plastic sci-fi crap for a while, so something else later, I am slowly importing all the image-folders from problem folder to new Picasa, so I'll find something . . . Although I should get the Easter stuff lined-up as there are several in the queue I think, and Brian B sent some lovelies the other day!

R is for Return to Rubber Robots

From time to time, I tend to hit feeBay with a bee in my bonnet and grab a bunch of cheap BIN's and a couple of unfought auctions with a low start. So about a week later I start to get all these relatively economic packages arrive in batches (it also illustrates how Parcelfarce and Royal Fail work, not daily, but in batches); last week was one of those weeks!

 

These guys turned-up first, new packaging and two new colours of the one we originally saw from WHSmith as a clearance a few years ago here, I presume this Songyea from China is the originator brand for the stationers 'generic'?

With them arrived a set of printed, cartoony 'flats', which - as with the similar 'Dinorasers/Erasersaurs' - I collect for completeness rather than any realism in sculpt! They seem to be printed out of the same varnish-base'd waterslide-transfer stuff used for temporary tattoos?

The next day, this Toei 'Voltron' behemoth arrived . . . I had expected it to be much smaller; not, perhaps, as small as the others, but certainly as small as some I have, which we will look at next, but this six inch beast, who is really five earsers plugged-together, turned-up!

 

Branded to Lootcrate, from The Loot Company LLC, and further credited to/licensed by ClassicMedia; it may be a hark-back to other erasers (next post's lot), or just one of the many giant 'Bot toys which were around at the time (late 1970's-early 1990's)? This is actually dated 2021, so relatively contemporary and a 'retro' collectable for kidults.

 

Close-ups of the pop-together newbies, for some reason I shot the two colours we've already seen, although I had to shoot the blue one as his card/flap has different artwork.

 

And the flats, they are a bit too happy for my liking, but it's another six robot erasers to add to the pile, so . . . whatever! It's funny, you get fixated on something, because a few have come in by accident, and before you know it, you have a better sample of them than you have of 'proper' somethings, like Arab warriors or Japanese infantry! It's just the same with the Dinorasers, novelty guardsmen or any other 'side-collection'!

 

These two were a day or two later, the orange one has separate arms, but I think they still belong together; just that it was a chunkier sculpt, maybe test shots proved it wouldn't mould properly, so they redesigned it with separate arms?

 

Another size comparison, by the time these had all arrived I'd bought/won the large lot with the silver/gold stuff (and much else for another/other day/s), which gives us one more shot, also a sizer . . .

 

. . . being a couple more of the Macrobots pencil-tops we saw here, the three metallic ones from the mixed-lot and a couple of Diener's (one of which is an alien humanoid, not a robot!) which have come in separately over the last few months! All roughly compatible with the smaller three in the previous shot.