T is for Teeny-Tiny Taiwanese Trucks, Tanks and Tippers!

I picked these up a few weeks ago, as a cheapie on that there evilBay, I don't know anything about them, and the only clue is a small, uneven 'TAIWAN' on the underside of each vehicle/a single component.

I suspect they are [earlyish?] examples of what the Japanese call Gashepon, or vending-machine toys, but - obviously - Taiwanese in origin, and as we will see, very much 'box scale' and simplified, but charming for that. They are also quite idiosyncratic, so we'll start with the easy one!

It's basically a 6x6 Pinzguaer high mobility all-terrain vehicle/artillery tractor, or similar militarised 'mini-van' type vehicle, and comes in at around the 1:90th mark, which would make it an additional asset to a Roco or Roscopf army! It's even in a similar olive-drab colour, and consists of five parts; three clip-in wheels and two body-halves.

The Gepard-decorated box actually contains a late-mark (1A5?) Leopard MBT with a pair of carpet wheels for perambulation. As the build-instructions are for the same, I don't know why they went with a Gepard SPAAG for the artwork? But I did say the set was idiosyncratic!

An idiosyncrasy which continues with this pair, where each has the other's exploded construction view on the back of the box! The heavy ore-truck was lacking a pair of wheels, but they are the same mouldings as the 'Pinzgauer' so I nicked a pair of them for the shots, while the bulldozer will need tracks made-up, which I will do one day from old inner-tube and cyclist's rubber cement.

The final two are a really rather good jeep (basic wheels mind!) and what is best described as a simplified Stridsvagn 103 'S-Tank', but it could just as easily be an attempt at a Scorpion CVRT! It comes from the box with a Tiger I as artwork! You can see the underside is the same as the Leopard's.

The whole line-up, with the dump-truck retaining the spare wheels! The boxes shout 1970's at you, but at least two of the vehicles depicted are screaming 1990's, so your guess is as good as mine as to when/where these first appeared, and I suspect - from the limited number of duplicated parts - there are more to the full range.

G is for Gift Egg Updates - 5 - Tarco

We first looked at Tarco here about a year ago, but there is another set or Dr. Who out (actually the third - I seem to have missed one!), and other sets to look at.

So the Dr. Who Figures Part 3, flyer/insert and two figures with the K9 we looked at last time, this set is all new version characters and that's about all I can say?

This lot is more blurb-worthy, as they are also branded to Tarco, but were being vended from a standard, stickered Tomy stack in the local Sainsbury's? Whether this is a legit licence between Tomy and Tarco or an old machine being filled with locally sourced product by a supplier of easy ethics I don't know.

Give him a sword on a baldric and cut those pointed toes down and he'd make an excellent adventurer hanging around the bars in Riverdeep...do people still play proper D&D?

Now . . . I've had these for ten years or more, they were in the Galoob box, not because I thought they were Galoob, but because Hasbro ended-up with Galoob, and Hasbro issued new type Action Man licences, so it made sense to put unknown Action Man figures with the Galoob/Kenner/Hasbro stuff of similar ilk!

Also, Hasbro were responsible for the Subbuteo figures which appeared in Italian gift-eggs a decade or so ago (Can't remember if it was Zaini or one of the others now?), so these figures may be from those Italian eggs. However, the Hasbro mark is the same as the BBC and Disney marks on the other sets above, as far as size, font and the like, so Tarco are also a likely candiate?

G is for Gift Eggs and Capsule Toys - Part I - Last year or so...

Like gift horses...they sometimes have figures in, but won't sack your city or put everyone to the sword!

This one is very disappointing, unless you like stickers, fridge-magnets or jelly-beans...I like jelly beans so I was a third there, perusal of the sheet revealed that no matter how many you bought you would only have got a fridge magnet and a sticker! Which is why I only ever by one if the contents are unknown. This was from an independent sweet shop last Christmas, and they are probably still available from the Great Character Candy Company.

These packs of three are from the 99p Store chain, following the pattern of the original Kinder, they have the bonus of no sickly white-chocolate layer, made by Balaban Guida and imported into the UK by Gateway Sourcing, toys are a bit hit-and-miss, much like Kinder really!

Similar but not the same container as the Star Wars one, this was a bigger disappointment, a strange biscottii type thing, lenticular card and a basic rubber-disc pencil-topper! From Uno-Foods and/or Candy Planet out of Poland.

This was given to me at Plastic Warrior's 30th show in Richmond back in May by Peter Evans, he may have had it for a year or so, and it's from the Zaini family of chocolate eggs we've looked at before here somewhere. This is lovely, a dynamic pose being achieved by skirting the undercut problem with multiple clip-together parts. There are three other stand alone figures in the set and five looped for use as danglers, key-rings or charms.

They (Zàini) are currently doing a set of Frozen characters - see next post (below).

G is for Gift Eggs and Capsule Toys - Part II - Current or Recent

This would have been 'the last three weeks if I hadn't just lost two weeks to real life crap AND tonsillitis? At fifty-effing-one...what's that all about? The UN's 2011-declared planet-wide carcinogenic atmosphere, that's what!

Anyway penicillin's kicked-in and these are from late May-early June now, so all still findable!

£1 gum-ball machines (no chocolate!) at the moment, from Tarco International and of the choice, I got the one I'd have most wanted, first shot! It's (robots don't have a sex...not even sex-robots!) around 54mm compatible so I might try and get another for a UNIT dio/vignette with some Deetail or Airfix para's, although; with only 6 in the set it would be worth trying to get the set, I don't know how the maths works out on a random pull, but it'll be maybe as few as 11 purchases?

The others look to be more 30mm size wise, and the Tardis would join a growing collection of small-scale police telephone boxes! From the fact that the K-9 is 'exclusive' suggests the other five have been available previously or elsewhere, it's a very nice little model anyway.

Mimi is slowly collecting these and the first 6 had no duplicates (a baby Rottweiler has been added since the photo-shoot), they are also in sans-chocolate £1 machines, but it states they are series III and I haven't noticed series's one and two anywhere?

Imported by Idea Vending, an outfit called A&A Global Industries seems to be the master behind the throne, and they go quite well with the current Schleich puppies, size-wise.

Back to Zàini and chocolate; these are available about the place (One-stop convenience-store for this actual one) and again I was lucky to get one of the more useful figures, as again there are half-heads looped as charms and some less useful figures!

I feel this is my reward for getting through a Christmas day round my Brother's where small relatives had a doll which played the Frozen theme on an eight-second loop endlessly...and if you tried to sabotage the thing it switched to Spanish until the little ones used tech-magic to 'reduce' the torture back to English!

We looked at the Fravend Alien in a new production round-up a while ago, and I've since found a traditional yellow 'smiley' and this blue one and stuck them in the archive without testing them to destruction like the first green one!

And from the same machines we have that old 1960's perennial; Trolls, the licence is held by Russ Berrie, I suspect these via Brabo-CBG of Belgium are not sending many royalties back to East Rutherford, Nujoisey! Both these are in 40p machines (definitely no chocolate!), or were they 20p? I'll check next time I do the rounds!

V is for Vending Eggs

'Capsule toys' by another name, gum-balls in the States, because they are dispensed from the same machines that are also stocked with balls of bubble gum. Indeed the gum came first. Often very tacky little looped charms in plastic or plated jewellery, early ones came in base-metal. The same little trinkets were also used in early Christmas Crackers and there is still a cross-over with the lower priced crackers today.

They used to be a few pence when I was a lad, now they start at a pound, with the banks of Tomy/Takara supplied machines in the bigger stores being £1.50 or two-quid, I think. Obviously for those sorts of lost-deposits you want a bit more than a chrome-plated ring with painted jewels, so some of the toys are quite fun, and there's a whole sub-branch of collecting out there that caters to the gum-ball/capsule enthusiast.

Sometimes, the toys are figural, or other-ways grab my attention and this machine at the pound-end of the scale (The Meads, Farnborough) managed to wrestle a pound from me last Christmas!

This is a Beaver machine, resupplied by toys from Fravend, a company based in Kromstraat, Delft, Holland. As you can see I quickly tested the Alien to destruction, conclusion; destruction is easy!