T is for Terra by Battat - 2020

Back to the 2020 Toy fair in London, and what was already a looming global health crisis, if you were paying attention to the news over Christmas, which I was, but funny, with nearly everything else cancelled that year, the Toy fair went ahead as normal and would actually get cancelled the following year, just as the world was coming out of its multiple-lockdowns!

 

And this lot didn't get posted at the time because I'd posted quite a bit in the preceding few years, since Brian Berke brought them to our attention in 2017, and this was (still is, on one level) repetitive of those previous mentions, but let's get it and two smaller updates out of Picasa and the Blog up-to-date on the subject!

 

Giant tubs, or 'buckets'!

 

Various packaging formats.

 

Larger Dinosaurs, nice models.

 

Smaller tubs of smaller figures, with duplicates - early learning target?

 

The wild and domestic animal families are really very good.

 

More Dino's including play sets

I think there were farm play sets' as well.

 

Small Dinosaur set.

 

Further displays.

I can't remember if these were shot on an agents stand, with or without a Battat representative, or on an actual Battat stand, usually I shoot them on other peoples stands, and if they had a stand that yera , it wwas the only year they've done so?

I is for Insect Lore - Archive

I thought I'd posted these guys, literally years ago (these are from 2020), but they are all still in Picasa! So I'm posting this here, and then I'll combine the smaller numbers of shots from '23 and '25 in a single post later. This was from the London show, a couple of months before the Covid lockdown, which - time has, I think, shown - changed all our lives, more than we thought it was doing, at the time?

 

!!!! Effing annoyed when the images loaded in reverse, which seems to happen quite often these days and I don't know if I should be blaming Windows 11, Blogger/Google or Lenovo! But in fact, it makes sense to use the poorer images (which were going to be at the end) for the introduction to the company, then look at the figural products!

 

Insect Lore are a kind of 'early learning' schools-support / craft outfit, where you buy the kit, and/or any supporting products, then sent away for the Butterfly (or Ant?) eggs, so you can raise them to adulthood, learning the egg-pupae-lava-adult cycle along the way, and then release them, or do an ant-farm?

 

In 2020 they were raising Painted Lady's (or Ladies? No, some of them must be men!), which - while not native to the UK - are a regular summer visitor around the Southern and Eastern coasts, and with nowhere in the UK further than 51 miles from a beach, it means you can find them pretty-much anywhere in a good year, and also means that after any release, they can complete a typical life-cycle.

 

The kit here consists of a jar of feed, instruction booklet with details on how to raise them and find the food plants, along with a jar of the special feed etc . . . and the 'butterfly net' netting cage, in which to observe the metamorphosis of the chrysalis phase and emergence of the adults.

 

Blister carded life-cycle sets of rubber (modern PVC-substitute) polymer animals are also sold, and these may be bought in or commissioned specifically, I don't know, and am no expert on toy insects, but they look a little different, so may well be exclusive to Insect Lore?

 

Toobs of mixed Insects and Butterflies are also in the catalogue, along with all the expected stickers, booklets &etc. Again I don't know if these are unique to Insect Lore, or bought-in generics, they look more familiar, so may be the latter, however, they are both reasonable samples with about 18 Butterflies in the first image of this sequence - Insect Lore, box ticked!

 

Websites -  

US https://www.insectlore.com/

UK https://www.insectlore.co.uk/

 

K is for Keycraft - Keycraft Fumfings

It wasn't the 2020 show report which got posted, it was a cross-reference to that spotted-dinosaur in the Tobar show report! These are the 2020 London pictures! And it clears up a few of the things already mentioned under the Keycraft Tag label!

 

Firstly, that the - illustrated on the box - yellow one was there in the stretchy monsters!

 

Note the mice (green box, top right) were already on the scene in 2020!

 

 

 

I obviously came close to posting the Keycraft report, as I'd scanned the catalogue for this image, if I recall correctly the catalogue was a vast tome rather like some of the old combined Hong Kong Toy Development Council ones. In the style of the mice, with holes in the 'moon' (very small asteroid!) for the stretchy astronauts to weave in and out of!

Likewise with Kittens and a ball of wool, Unicorns and a cloud.

 

Metallic stretchys, we've seen the similar dinosaurs (below) as part of the stash.

 

The rack-toys were also carried by Tobar, without the Fumfings addition to the card, it was in that guise we saw them here at Small Scale World previously, and as they may be in the stash, via Hawking's Bazaar in Basingrad or Camberley, before their demise?

 

Very-much in the vein of K&M (Wild Republic)'s toobs, these are cheapo-dino's from China, and are still in the inventory, indeed, I think they are in both forthcoming posts!

 

The Dinosaur balls and eggs! In point of fact, the balls are mixed animals, there is a post coming on these, as Henbrandt, from the 1990's, so we will be covering the whole 'inclusion' range in the fullness of time, although I think we did have a brief look at them back at the start of the blog, including digging a few out of their balls, to find they are teeny-tiny, even over their look in the balls, as the balls have a slightly magnifying effect on the models buried within!

 

Again, yellow, the obvious colour for the Smiley, was missing from the previous post, but is out there, I think I have one in the Bendy-toy tub, but a vintage one from the 1970's, not this chap? Along with the mini 'emoticon' one, from the capsule toy Brian Berke sent to the blog a few years ago.

 

Since obtained, Blogged and Tagged, with more images in the Parachute Toy page's queue! And seen in several brandings I think?

 

Those stretchy dinosaurs, I thought one set (the smaller ones on the right) was the same as the Henbrandt ones we looked at years ago, but I think they turned out to be subtly different poses. The slightly larger ones can be considered Keycraft / Fumfings originals, until they turn-up in other branding/s!

There's a possibility that the oddly-spelt Fumfings sub-brand, is as such, due to the fact that there was a previous Fun Things, which was part of the 1980'90's marketing of the small-scale Supreme/SP Toys stuff by the likes of Ackerman, Titan and co., in the researching of which, I seem to remember finding the name Fun things had been registered by a jewellers (?) by the 2010's?

 

Link - https://keycraftglobal.com/

T is for Two - Show Reports - Oxford Die Cast Military Railways - 2019 and 2020!

When I posted the Timely Manner thing the other day, I was - of course - only throwing back at The Jabbering Fuck, that which he had thrown at me a few years ago, if only to highlight the hypocrisy of the turd. Obviously I don't really, and prior to his intervention, had never given cause for anyone to suppose I give a shit who posts what, when, or why, unless they are A) plagiarising me, B) competitively 'following' me or C) attacking me, then - of course - I take umbrage!

 

Although I notice he then stated "sorry for the slight delay in my report, but I had various other commitments that demanded my attention", what, like when I was saying goodbye to my ailing father, or a month or so later, burying him? Or more important than that, because he thought it was fine to attack me for not publishing 'in a timely manner' on that occasion, so whatever he was committed-to recently must have been really, really important for that excuse to be anything more than the pathetic whine of a self-justifying hypocrite!

 

No matter, I have the measure of the man, and to prove how little I give a shit about Timely Manners, here's two, part show-reports, from the London Toy fair from 2019, and 2020! Specifically the military train stuff, which I think we had already glanced at, and therefore flagged-up previously.

2019

The rail-gun which had previously been seen in a neutral greyish-green, was on display with a camouflage scheme and mock-up box, although we were told it might not get to the shops like that. In front was a military 0-6-0 saddle-tank locomotive in the colours of the Railway Operating Division (of the WWI-era Royal Engineers).

 

While the well-wagon with Sherman was back again, along with a weathered flat-wagon, suiable for stores or smaller/soft-skin vehicles. Both had only previously been seen as catalogue images.

 

2020

 

The final production version of the rail-gun, which - for a while - had looked like it might never happen was revealed, and while the same moulding as the WWI 'big push'14" howitzers, previously announced, was now going to be sold as a WWII-era, home-defence 13.5" gun, of which three were produced, and never [were] actually fired in anger!

The unweathered flat-wagon put in an appearance and I got to shoot the Sherman from different angles! And that was them, then, nothing time-sensitive about it, if you want the stuff, you go and buy it, if a Blogger doesn't cover it (and they can never, none of them, cover everything) you go to the company's website, I did, and we'll look at mine, shot in 2022, next!

 

It was pompous arseholery for TJF to bang-on about timely manners like a self-righteous, god-appointed guardian of the hobbies, in the way he did, when he did, and nobody cares (except apparently him) who posts what, when or why. Although other points have come to the light, so I shall be returning to his recent sojourn in the leafier suburbs of the post-industrial Ruhr, soon, but at a time of my choosing, which may or may not be timely!