O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Sci-Fi, Fantasy, TV & Movie

As a complete contrast to Pirates, this is the stuff of a whackier nature I picked up at last June's Plastic Warrior show, not as much in this category as some years, but a couple of really quirky things, a nice box-ticker, and a rarity or two!

 

A T-Rex, on a skateboard, waving an axe? It doesn't get much weirder than that, except it's just about to! And while it may be Kinder, it could be a lesser make of capsule-egg, or even a gum-ball type thing?

 

The Heudebert marked copy of a Captain Video figure was a lovely find, and while the original is one prone to damage, here they've shortened the firearm into more of a pistol, and despite the fine barrel, it has survived! While the actually Kinder gnome, is standing front of the Lone Star toadstool house!

 

And no, this is not where it gets weirder, this is pretty weird, but not the real weirdness! A money-box/bank, made by the same division that was responsible for the rubber pet-toys and squeakers, this is a stable (non-weeping) PVC, issued under the Eaglet branding.

 

This is the box ticker, a set of the Toys R Us bucket set True Legends - Mythical Warriors fantasy figures, one of each pose, so someone was offloading their master set? I've seen them credited to both Toy Major AND Chap Mai, it's likely to have been one or the other, and with other True Legend sets having the Toy Major sleleton warriors, for now, I'll go with them. Brian Berke did send us a handful of these, a while back, but no one ID'd them at the time!

 

Weirdness, but still not the weirdest, the Alien is about seven inches, and while made of rubber, seems to have a very solid interior, like it's metal underneath, you could certainly use it as a cosh! UFO lawn-skittles maybe?

 

The Wonder Woman is a cord-tie type thing, I've seen others, for school-bags or whatever, sometimes they are a keychain type thing . . . I don't know, I'm blagging it, off vague memories of things seen, out and about, it was in one of the donation bags!

 

From the right . . . no, the RIGHT, we have another of the larger Captain Video space/GI figures from Lido Archer, then an unknown figure which looks both character-driven and a bit Phidal-looking, but probably not actually by them, maybe a Ben 10 thing?

 

In the middle is the female scarecrow, pencil-top, who looks like a line-up completer, for the John Pertwee era, Worzel Gummidge set; I don't recognise the character? I have three now, I think, and I assume there's at least four, so, with this and two Gummidge's, I suspect I'm still looking for a rendition of Una Stubb's Aunt Sally?

 

The monkey is a tea-bag premium I think, while on the far-left, is the real weirdness, it's so weird, it's been left-off the left of left-field! 

 

This was in a bunch of smaller bits from Adrian, and I looked at it and said something about 'fun' and 'homemade', and he looked a little hurt at my dismissal of his offering, and sure enough, when I got it home (my eyesight is getting shit! But I have got reading glasses now), it became clear that while, yes that is bread-bag ties for arms and legs, the whole assembly seems to have commercial thought, and actual design behind it?

 

Originally a cartoon dog keyring and pencil-topper, the green tie has been carefully designed to have the arm-and-leg twists run over the top of it, and down channels in the sides, so as it's pushed into the pencil cavity it holds everything tight. The boots are gum-ball charm, football boots, while the cartoon hands should have convinced me straight away.

 

Everything is PVC except the bag-ties, which are in a non-standard (for bag-ties) colour, and everything is filled/sealed with what looks like the plumbers-sealant I use for PVC mends. That someone ever thought this up, let-alone thought it might have commercial potential is extraordinary, but someone else looking at it, remembered something like them, in gum-ball capsule machines!

 

It's a commercially manufactured, 'homemade' bendy toy, gum ball prize! Of a dog, in a tie, with Mickey Mouse gloves, and football boots, with googly eyes!

 

A couple of Matchbox whatsit-2000 figures, an Aristocat cereal premium, an unknown . . . trash-panda? Kinder maybe? A phone-ornament/hanger, of Buzz Lightyear, an Autobot's fireable fist (?) and a Star Wars looking, action-figure sidearm!

 

Kinder either side, Daffy Duck as a plug-together 'Steckfigure', along with one of the cartoon 'deform' spacemen, but between them, in slightly marbled yellow plastic, too large for a Kinder egg, is a Res Plastic solid, of Speedy Gonzalez! And obviously punched for a key-ring or cord.

 

As I can never remember which of these Tinykins I have, I'll always buy them, if I see them going cheap, and these were reasonable, so I grabbed them. I think I have most of them, but the cousin-ducks are all different, and I don't know if I have all of them, and wasn't sure if any Thumper I have has both ears!
 

As before; thanks are due to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Many thanks to all.

A is for Answered - Box Ticking Toy Major!

The pre-Christmas question time was answered, they're Toy Major, I should have worked it out from some of the pirates, but they don't have the more comprehensive (or complicated!) marking of 'modern' or current Toy Major, so, anyway, that's what they are, and to be fair, I did suggest they looked like Toy Major 'stuff'!

Yes, the fourth from the left/third from the right Alien, is 'Mirrorman'!

And, no, they haven't really improved since we last looked at them here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/10/q-is-for-question-time-u-is-for.html

It occurred to me there was a bit of the Party Pig set of Star Wars knock-off's about them, but I think it was fanciful thinking based on the over-use of Wellington-boots in both sets! It's actually more a case of four 'Hoth' snow-troopers and two AT-AT crew!

Comparison shot with a few other puke-green figures!

Yeah, it's not very 'spacy' writting, but I haven't

imported all the stuff from the old laptop yet!

F is for Follow-up, R is for Return - Glow-in-the-Dark Aliens

Oh, we love a glow-in-the-dark Alien here! This post was originally a shot of the Toy Major's which had been kicking around for some time, along with a comparison we may have seen here already, but then I snaffled a Soma set, and it was 'Aliens are Go'!

That hanging-around image - I DID have notes on them somewhere - see glowing alien posts passim! It's not very good, and I've reshot them below, so it's just to get us started, Toy Major, glow-in-the dark 'UFO *Glow Power* Aliens', six poses and large'ish at around 70mm, a rigid polyethylene or polypropylene, which glows in the dark!

 

We saw a set of three figures when I ID'd a previously unknown group, and I was well chuffed to find a six-figure version, which obviously had more poses as I knew I'd only shown four or five in total, previously!

 

So I grabbed it while it was available, but have had to use the sales image on the left, as the shot I took was out of focus, and as you can tell from the scan on the right, I committed the mortal sin of opening the set, so I can't re-shoot it!

When I first showed these, I said I loved them, and that hasn't changed, I guess they date from the late 1980's or 1990's, possibly even closer to now, but they have an indefinable quality to them which reeks of the 1970's despite them not resembling anything from that time? I think it's the colour palette used, they are all sort of dirty, off-pastel shades of fruit-jelly or something!

 

We've seen these poses before, but glove-guy and three-fingers are new colourways, and I think even the grey is a different shade to the previous, paler one?

 

Here, the twin-armed one is a new, sixth sculpt, which will probably prove to be the extent of the sculpting, while the reaching-guy is a new colour, I think the other glove-guy is a duplicate of my original loose sample.

 

And the reason I committed the mortal sin of de-carding them is simply that I have a nice mint threesome, and the card was a bit tatty, while I will probably obtain more of these in the future, as I like them so much, and there are so many variations, a larger sample, whether carded or loose won't hurt!

Two colourways of the same pose, one I had here loose, the other from the set, so I now have five of this sculpt, in four different colours, and re. my previous comments on that, it looks like they will all eventually turn-up in all . . . ten (?) shades - light-glow, dark glow, greenish-glow, blue, light pink, dark pink, orangey-pink, orange, light grey and dark grey . . . that's eleven? We'll see, there may be more!

 

The upper-shot, which we did see a while ago, I've found it, but I think this was another from the sequence, shows the Toy Major, the modern/current pencil-top (yeah, even I think he's had too much publicity!), then a Soma, Imperial, US Toy (Brenner) and an unknown Chian-type novelty, not that they aren't all 'novelties'!

 

The lower shot shows the two sizes of Imperial, the Toy Major and the Soma, with one (also Toy Major - ID post forthcoming) who looks like he should glow in the dark, but is just screaming green!

Re-shot! You still can't really make out the faces, that's just the polymer-material/lighting/flash combining to thwart my efforts! They have large almond eyes orientated at about 45º, giving them a more sinister look than Manga-babes, whose almond-eyes are deliberately puppyish! The aliens' facial features/heads are also quite insectoid, a bit praying-mantis like?

An earlier shot of the Soma figurines was not so successful, I think my camera is starting to die, it will be the third or forth, this Blog has killed, but nothing lasts forever, and there are two to fall back-on, however they are both in storage, so I hope this one will go awhile yet, but it is starting to lose its edge, and it's not the constant reusing of the SD card, as there's a new 32GB one, put in there recently!

 

I should add that the two Nikon Coolpix have performed immeasurably better than the earlier pair of Fuji Finepix, there may have been a fifth, between the two pairs? While the two in storage are a cheap generic, and a minor make (Sony or AGFA?), so we'll see how they do, but they are all the same generation ('ish) and may see the Blog out . . . Although I do keep promising myself a digital SLR type, which can go on a stand and do the heavy-lifting, once I have a dedicated photo-bay/station?

It's an invasion!

Triple set - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2022/02/f-is-for-follow-up-glow-in-dark-bug.html

Loose sample - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/10/b-is-for-bug-eyed-aliens.html

M is for Many Moulded Malleable Mammals!

Part three of Jon's big box brings us to the Mammals, although a bird snuck-in under the radar while I wasn't paying attention, and the rest are definitely from the Zoo/Jungle/Wild zone, farm and domestic will come later!

Big cats, 1 of 3, cheetahs and leopard'ish critters, I like the big cats but there is a tendency to use the same moulding for different cats, or just not pay much attention to the things at all, so while the Britains one is a 54mm leopard, also found in black as a 'panther' (melanistic leopard), the pair in the next size up look more doglike, as does the orange one to the right, he has quite a hyena'ish head/jaw!

There was a bit of a comedy involved in this image, as I shot what I thought was all five Cheetahs, then reshot 'all' six, before finding another one under the dinosaurs! The big, dark, stretching one (lovely pose) is Triple-A (the 'AAA' mark), the others, all generics, for now.

A pair of colour variations of the same toob' animals, and a larger one which is actually a lighter-weight than either of the smaller brethren, being manufactured of some slightly-foamed polyethylene?

 

Big Cats 2 of 2; hunting! They don't often bring down any but old, infirm, or very young, lost giraffe's, who otherwise enjoy a relatively blessed existence. The larger lion is a China-marked newie, the other, a similar sculpt, is an older Hong Kong toy.

The giraffes are three old HK's, probably from different tranches of the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus giraffe carrier, and two larger modern chaps, one clearly marked KS in a similar oval to Toy Major, the other a generic for now.

 

Three generics here, and the really big one is a Toy Major, probably from a pick-box/counter-display. And when I say 'Generic', the hope is a fair quantity of them will be attributed in the near-to-medium-future?

 

Smallies; seem to match each other with plastic type, sculpting, size, China-mark etc . . . and probably came together in a toob or small-tub, but sometimes the small ones are chucked into tub-sets with larger animals to make-weight, or add to the item count

 

Big Cats 3 of 3; The big orange beast at the back is a Toy Major animal, marked Cheetah! The cub to the right is another AAA, while the flocked guy to the left is just lovely, but of unknown origin, with no dinks or worn-patches, he really is sweet!

 

Three generic elephants, one of which was marked ELEPHANTCHINA and for a moment, just a moment, I wondered if I'd left it out of the prehistoric animals post! And, all three newish sculpts.

 

Thanks again to Mr Attwood for sending us these, they make a nice change from 'armymen', Wild West or space/fantasy, especially as we head into the Christmas season - Fleet had its night market tonight, nothing on the council or Fleet BID Faceplant pages . . . of course!

D is for Dinosaurs, Lots & Lots of Dinosaurs!

And we arrive at the first post from Jon Attwood's latest and huge donation, which will be the last dinosaur post for a few days (already another one in the queue!), and because there are lots of animals to come in Jon's posts, I will try to alternate between donation and other posts for the next few days.

Because Dinosaurs are one of the unsung corners of the collection, which, apart from a few small scale and novelty types, have only really started accruing in the last 15 years, they all need a huge sorting and attributing session, likely to take a week or two, which won't happen for a while, and I can't pretend to be an expert on any of it, consequently I thought to do these as thematic shots, by way of an overview of what's out there, particularly of the Hong Kong / China variety, and to thank Jon properly for them by at least featuring them all here once, as while we will see them all again one day, they will be sorted into sets, by brand/maker . . . hopefully!

 

Here are me'fave's, the Dimetrodons, which, as I mentioned the other post ago, are not technically dinosaurs, but rather, to quote Wikipedia "a genus of non-mammalian synapsid that lived during the Cisuralian age of the Early Permian period, around 295–272 million years ago", in other words, among the first larger animals out of water, but not the first, and possibly warm-blodded?

 

Although there were also small ones, and two similar species - Edaphosaurus (large grey above), and Secodontosaurus are among the toys, which should be leathery, not scaled, but I just like them for reasons of childhood fancy and nostalgia! The pale gape-mouth/spotted pair which are a classic 'chinasaur', are actually dated 2001, but probably shot from old tools? the teeny-tiny one is marked Koka China which would seem to be a branding?

Triceratops, Styracosaurus and similar Ceratopsians, among other favourites from childhood, as there were quite a few different ones and they all looked suitably wacky, and of a mind to not be a carnivore's lunch, or not without a damaging fight! Always stand up to bullies! The blue one second from right is marked Chasmosaurus.

A couple of Protoceratops on the right and lots of Kerthunkersauruses, more formerly known as the Ankylosauria, I have always called them Kerthunkasaurs, because Ankee . . . ancky . . . Annekey . . . the real one is too hard to spell!

The bright green one looks like an infant or bath toy, could even be a pet toy, but no squeak, while the four small ones in the middle would look to be from the same maker, but two species, and have the look of erasers, but are polyethylene. The big Proto' with the red head is a lovely sculpt, well decorated, with a nod to modern birds such as the Pheasants? Or, yes, some monkey's arses!

 

Pterosaurs, when I was a little kid, there were really only two of these in all the books Pterodactyl (it's OK with this one, spellcheck gets it!), which all four of these are, and the dog-headed one with a parrots beak, now there are loads, but not many toys, and few really-good toys as they don't lend themselves to posing! But these are all quite good, compare with the various eraser Pterosaurs, which all look like comedy vampire-bats!

Stegosaurs, didn't we all have a soft spot for these, I'm sure half the reason we liked them was because they had a whole driveway of crazy-paving on their backs. You don't see much crazy-paving these days, but when I was young it was everywhere, the ultimate recycling of not so crazy paving!

 

The second largest (green with red plates) is marked SH, which I think is Shing Hing, still around, they did that four-nation tub of 'army-men' in Smyths a few years ago. While the dark one back-right, is called Tuojiangosaurus on his belly, but is using a classic Steggy' tool, the true Tuo' should have spikes or narrow, tapering plates?

 

Sauropods, due to their immense size, they are nearly always a compromise on scale/size, even from good, branded makers, and while the palaeontologists have classified loads of them, we tend to think of Dippy's, Brote's and the other one, and wasn't one banned, but has it come back again, and did two switch name or classification and, and, and, they are really big aren't they?

 

I like the biggest one (marked Apatosaurus) with the head turned on the horizontal. The two long ones are variations of the same tooling, and both also marked SH for Shing Hing.

 

Parasaurolophos, one of the duck-billed dinosaurs, again when I was a kid, the more normal duck-bills tended to be modelled, but now this one with its hollow trumpet is everywhere! And again the red-headed one is particularly smart-looking, while the one bottom-right, with a flap of connecting skin, clearly establishes himself as a different species/subspecies within the genus. he also looks related to the Silurian Sea-Monsters from Dr Who!

 

I couldn't remember what the bumpy-headed ones were called (like I ever knew!), but googling 'Grape headed dinosaur' gave an instant 'Pachycephalosaurus', and I think the various plate-heads are related carnivores, the double crest/crown one is Dilophosaurus, if Gooogle is to be believed!

 

It's confirmed by the bellies of the large green one (Toy Major) and the generic brown one next to him, if you won't trust Google! Face-on to their left is the peach/cream Corythosaurus,

 

You know my view on Spinosaurs, just cheap Dimetrodons! The two little ones look like they could be freebies from the Dino-mag we looked at a few posts back? And two paint-treatments of the same sculpt at back-left.

 

Carnivores; the two biggies at the back are marked Deinonychus on their Chinese bellies, and are paint-variants of the same uncommon, but quite realistic sculpt. And while there was T-Rex and Allosaurus when I wer't'lad, now there are lots of these Carnosaurs.

 

No names on them but various takes on Velociraptor, almost unheard-of in my childhood, they may have been in the books but I don't remember them, now made famous by the Jurassic Park movie-franchise, they are everywhere! They have also been bigged-up in other ways, by the filums, and were actually quite small.

 

Latecomers and oddments include a nice duck-bill (back-left) with an unmarked spiky-fellah in front of him, with a similar skeleton, a cartoony chap and another Pachycephalosaurus to their right, who missed his family picture!

 

Which leaves three dragons! The two larger just marked Made in China, the smaller green one unmarked, but looking like a Pokemon or Anime/Manga character of some sort, with very stylised spikes?

 

Sorting 2020

Just before they went in the car to storage!

 

Many thanks to Jon for all these, they will all be sorted into the master collection (shot above) at some point, and sorting was done as I went, as certain groups made themselves obvious, the gape-mouths with their '2001' mark, were a largish group for instance, so we will return to them as those groups, another day!

H is for How They Come In - Brian, Two of Two

Which is really post number three of the lovely things Mr. Berke sent to the Blog for me to share. And we will start with the other mystery suprise, and again we need an ID on these new to hobby-collection-Blog figures!

Who are these lovely ladies? Approximately 54mm, and two being more realistic (on the left), two a little cartoony (right-hand pair), really loud colour, but from whence and whom have they come?

 

If they were found here, I would assume a kids comic/magazine, they all have something on them these days (forthcoming posts, but I don't watch them like I used to when Dr. Who Adventures was giving away figures regularly!), but they've come from America, and I don't know if they have the same type of kids magazine freebies . . . Interesting figures though, and totally new to me?

 

Basically we've got: Dancer Babe, Royal Babe (fairy-tales for the use of), Superbabe and Rock-Chick Babe!

 

Equally, loud colours for these MTC carded rack-toy party favours, and probably quite recent production as they are sub-copies of common sculpts doing the rounds and probably seen here before in more 'normal' greens and khakis, but I prefer these dudes!

 

In with the micro-smallies we looked at the other day, were a whole bunch of other kit figures and these are they, I won't say much as they are all going to need a major session at some point in the future, but I think the two astronauts (top right) are Revell (1:48th kit?), while the six dark greenies are old-school from the 1950's.

The sandy-coloured panzermann and girl might be Heller or Italeri, they both included interesting figures, suitable for dioramas in their kits? While the two white pilots (bottom right) might be Cylons or Earthmen from 1980's Sci-Fi kits?

I know, I should save them for Pirate day, but I feel donations should be fully covered, I used to do highlights but when everything is this good? And these are all interesting, the lower - black - figures (poor shot I'm afraid) are the Toy Major originals, and they look bigger that the various copies we seen so far (we may have seen one or two of these?), so a decent comparison article of the three or four sets will be a definite feature here one day, but they are all in storage at the moment, so it may be a while.

 

While the yellow line-up are the Imperial ones I've been after for ages now, reduced-size copies of the larger Hing Fat figures, these are from the two-adversary sets, we have seen here as shelfies before, possibly from Brian, and I've now tracked down the Police & Skeletons, Zombies & GI's (ex-Tim Mee GI's) and these Pirates fought red Ninjas which I may still be looking for?

 

The base mark.

Now . . . MPC armaturtoise! Clearly marked, and I will have to go back and check those blue & green ones I picked up at the last London show, as I carefully avoided calling them MPC, and just said probably premiums, as I wasn't sure, and they didn't seem to be marked, but I'll check, and a new colour anyway!

Speaking of colours, there are nice, common-enough copies of Airfix Indians, but in an unusual colour way, and like a lot of the rack-toy figures in the stash, overdue for a sorting, I have ID'd several sets and makers for them, but it's a question of tying colours and base types to downloaded and catalogue images of sets!

Marked Hong Kong, and another genre needing a better sort one day, these may be the ones issued by Payton, but I think they went with other colours, copies of MPC's figures and seem to be limited to 5 poses only?

This is what Brian sent all the micro-figures in, and it's a carry case for C-in-C micro-amour, which was fitting for all those diminutive figures, but my first example of packaging, or C-in-C anything, so cleaned and saved!

And to wrap-up, some proper rack-toy army men, not some people's cup of tea I know, but they will all get sorted one day, and a lot of them will get some kind of definitive attribution, so the more, the merrier!

 

Again, I can't thank Brian enough for all this, there are some real treasures here, as well as in the two previous lots, and I'm very grateful. I hope you've enjoyed them too, and if anyone ID's those heliotrope-pink figures in the first shot, they'll be doing better than the 'group experts' elsewhere!