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.

WHS is for Flying Tiger!

We last saw this in another colour-way, from WHSmith's, it's now turned-up in a set in Tiger, who have renamed themselves Flying Tiger. However the set's mini 'sandwich-box' container is identical to those used by both WHSmith and The Works, so they could turn-up anywhere, being obviously a 'jobbed' generic from some importer or wholesaler and it's getting harder to tell when you're looking at Iwako originals or when you're looking at copies?

Set with contents; it's as close to 'war toys' as some companies will go these-days, brightly coloured rubber tank, reasonable rendition of a Browning Auto' .45 pistol and a pair of binoculars, or should that be a set of binoculars, a pair (when they are already 'Bi-') would suggest two whole units (four eye-pieces) surly?!

Seen before, and I have now got three! Two in WHS colours and this one, a whole squadron under Terry Wise's rules I think! I do have a bunch more erasers in the queue but they will be amiable posts over Christmas - if I remember!

H is for How They Come In - Wednesday's Purchases

Posting will be intermittent and bitty for the next couple of weeks as I've got this 'getting everything out of storage' thing going on, with little plan for it and no time! But I sometimes work better under pressure!

And so to the teeming metropolis of Farnborough for a month's supply of vapeing ancillaries, and a swift visit to a couple of charity shops they have there . . .

This lot owes me the grand total of £4.50p! and the most expensive item was the board-game from Ravensburger with the four fairies at two-quid! The Carrara/Fontanini (Italianate Fusilier?) from the other shop was a pound-and-a-half which even I'll concede is a bargain; I usually have to pay 4-7-quid each for them, while the Supreme Indian was thrown in with the two dinosaurs for a quid; back in Fleet later the same day.

The Fontanini was in the window along with about 9 ceramic ones of similar size, from two sources, one having better paint, the other thinner bases. I didn't look at the prices as I know I would have bought them all if they were a similar price to the plastic one, and while it may be a bargain, I can't buy everything!

Also the Fontanini has a shop-sticker on his base saying Rotated - Week 18, which means he's moved shop [unsold] at least three times - stock tends to get four weeks in one store? As is own sticker is off-centre and there's a chip to the other side of the plinth, I may remove him from the marble and have him as a stand-alone 160mm figure - with plinth and headdress plume he's currently 190-mil' in total.

The fairies - from the game Disney Fairies Magical Flower Garden Game - all look similar but are different poses and I've already christened them 'Hot Pants' (white), 'Miniskirt' (pink), 'Twin Set' (yellow) and 'Grecian Wrap' (blue), although they are almost impossible to photograph in that semi-transparent/translucent 'jelly-baby' vinyl!

The Protoceratops was interesting as he/she seems to be a pre-WHSmith version of the ones I was buying from the same store a couple of years ago . . . last year? Anyway, the previously purchased one is the left of each shot, and you can see the new addition has better definition in the moulding, different eye treatments and marginally better (or 'less lazy') paint.

I was buying them on-offer, occasionally, in a three-for-a-fiver deal - I think - but can't remember if I posted them all? I only got the nine, leaving a pterodactyl and plesiosaur that I remember - probably a couple of others that didn't leap out at me - and which will come in over time anyway, like the most recent recruit to the 'herd'!

C is for Carboniferous-crayon Correctasaurs!

Another quickie here, I found a quid's worth of polymer dinorasers in The Works the other day and thought I'd better grab them, as these things disappear if you don't buy them when you see them - ironically though; if you do buy them they often then hang-around for months!

While I had them in front of the camera I sorted the Dino's into new boxes and took a couple of comparisons of the existing eraserpods. At the same time I bought another quid's worth of puzzel-ball eraser in Rymans which has gone on the jig-toys page.

These are the newies, somewhere between the minis and the 'standards' in size and some new colours with - from the left - a sauropod, spinosaur, meat eater (fore-claws are too big for Tyrannosaurus) and ceratopsian.

Here they are with the previous effort from The Works we looked at a year or two ago, the strangely fully-round 'flats'! You can see the new ones are quite a bit smaller, but better sculpts, However; both these sets are at least original designs, all the other dinosaur erasers we've seen here at small scale world are from the same eight sculpts . . .

. . . as can be seen in this rubber round-up.

Front left are the Imperial minis Mr. Berke kindly sent to the blog last year, with the Wilco ones to the right. Immediately behind them are the four new ones and then the four older ones from The Works with a mix of WHSmith's (blue & red) and Paperchase's (orange & green) at the back.

The thing is - all four of the WHSmith set are reproduced in the orange quartet from Paperchase, whether this means there is/was a second set of WHSmith ones mirroring Paperchase's green ones or not I don't know. Further to that though is that the later mini's are also aping seven of Paperchase's eight sculpts.

This also suggests that an eighth pose (spinosaur) may be in some of the Imperial sets, if not the Wilco ones, or, given the Wilco ones were paired more carefully than the Imperial ones, that there was a whole second assortment in the Wilco eggs?

Hawkin's Bazaar have some lovely, well detailed, bi-coloured, puzzle-eraser dinosaurs at the moment, but they are  not so cheap, so while I have looked upon them with admiration - several times; I have yet to shell-out any shekels for one!

I knocked this up at the end in case my descriptive prose was more confusing than clarifying!

Comparison of the packaging - I stress these are all contemporary or should at least still be findable, there are older erasers in storage including some Dino's (I think) so a return to wrangling rubber is inevitable!

Ph is for Phollow-up to Phidel's Phormer Phollow-up

So; clearly someone failed to follow my detailed directions to Bracknell and hot-footed it over to Basingrad, so the other superhero set had gone, but I grabbed this one as it had looked useful in the shots Brian sent us, and even more so in the hand or 'in persons'!

We've seen the box/book already, here it is again! With the various super hero figures and the Frozen stuff already 'in the bag', I can see myself getting most of these in the next year or two just to 'complete'!

Again; £5.99 in TXMaxx, £9.99 in WHSmith's! That's the same WHSmith who just posted a profit-warning because their Famous Five and Ladybird parodies didn't sell well enough over Christmas!

The more useful figures - I'm assuming (again? What am I like!) the middle girl is Belle (by a process of elimination), despite the figure not being illustrated (in the modelled outfit) anywhere in the book. My lack of firm knowledge in the matter being worn as a badge of pride; in going some way as to prove I've not actually seen any of these pastel-hued, mawkishly sentimental, saccharine productions!

Marida is 61mm in total, Cinderella 67, as they are [all] youngish women, this gives a scale-size requiring males of at least 70mm, but that's not such a problem with all the Bully-Heimo-Papo-Schleich et al and Early Learning/Wilco/Blue Box knock-off stuff out there?

Looking for more round the charity shops the other day I saw something else with the Marida character, she has other names in other language-markets (at least three), and two equally flame-haired daughters and would therefore seem to be a referential-nod to Boadicea / Boudicca. Somehow I can't see Disney having all-three publically raped by Roman soldiers, but - like I say - I haven't seen the movies!

The slightly less useful figures - however the mermaid will go quite well with various others including Soma's and the Archie McFee/Accoutrements hag. Likewise the Mulan character would enhance a Samurai setting and Jasmine can be used with Arabian types. Even Snow White would be useful with a paint-job, as a medieval or Renaissance 'wench'?

Assuming (from the brown hair) that the middle figure in the second-from-top shot is Belle, that leaves two other princesses illustrated in the accompanying book; Tiana and Pocahontas (both black haired) but not represented among the models, even though they could have been instead of the two horses, or one of the horses and the idiot fish!

Speaking of idiot fish, this is the idiot fish! He's very small. Along with two markedly  different horses, one (Snow White's) being quite a reasonable sculpt (stupid expression and piggy-eyes though), and a useful mount for a 54-60mm knight, the other heavier and more cartoon-like, although a bit of surgery on the 'Disney' muzzle would improve him, and make for a half-decent heavy-horse.

The idiot fish seems to be called Flounder, rather than being a flounder, but maybe he's Flounder the floundering flounder! If these three had been dropped, you could have had Belle in her illustrated costume and the two absent 'princesses'; Tiana and Pocahontas while still hanging-on to a twelve-count!

And I'm sure it's pure co-incidence that it's two of the four 'ethnics' that have been dropped!

Ph is for Phollow-up to Phidel

Eager to see what TJ had taken delivery of, the other side of the pond from TK, Brain B took himself-off to the local outlet, and was sadly disappointed - no Marvel, no DC! However, he took his usual plethora of shelfies and fired them off to Small Scale World Towers, and it is them we are going to meander through now.

The Disney Princess is a sort of collective sub-brand, bringing various otherwise unrelated young ladies together under one heading, and there's some useful items in this set. The Mermaid looks familiar, although I don't have one here, and I didn't think Phidel had been doing these for that long, but . . .

. . . since the TKMaxx purchase and subsequent Blog post the other day I have been seeing them everywhere, or when I say everywhere, there have been at least five in the various charity-shops in town in the last week or so.

Some of which have been these, semi-flats with suckers on, that can be attached to the glossy board pages, also while looking on feebleBay I think I've seen magnetic versions as well? There's also the added element of a board-game included.

New one on me, assuming from the Nicolodeon flash that it's a kid's TV thing; less of use by the looks of it, but when they come in - in mixed lots - at least you'll know where they came from!

Also missed this, but from the number of MLP things in shops at the moment I'm guessing there's been a recent movie!

Squeeky-voiced mouse and friends, take'em or leave'em they will enhance all those 1970/80's Heimo, Schleich, Comics Spain and latterly Applause, Bully & the French Poly-whatsit figures!

And! Because it contains both Pluto and Goofy, you can arrange your own anachronistic vignette on the bookshelf, of an anthropomorphic, talking-dog in human cloths, leading a dumb-idiot dog around on a lead!

I bought one of the sets I encountered this week, incomplete it looks like a shotgun-wedding photograph for a very strange coupling! "Well; OK, I'll marry you, but only if our kids can be page-snowmen!" They were only 50p! Box went in the recycling before it was photographed and there is a second, different Frozen set out there - That's 14 different snowmen!

I've also discovered WHSmith are carrying them - they had a really nice Spiderman set, but they want £9.99 ($12.50'ish?) for theirs against the £5.99 (8-odd dollars) of TKMaxx!

I don't know why anyone actually patronises WHS, they are pricier on everything than their rivals, here we have WHS and Ryman's next door to each other and you can compare in seconds; it's not that WHS are a bit more, they are 10, 25, 50% more - every time! From books to Biro's, calendars to Christmas-cards, Ryman's, Clintons, Partners - all cheaper . . . probably not Paperchase though!

The next five images are further-cropped close-ups of the 'goody' trays from Brain's above imagery.

The woman with a bow & arrow looks very useful for fantasy stuff, and as they all have flowing dresses they may all be useful for those Napoleonic ballroom scenes which used to be de rigueur in modelling mag's a couple of decades or so ago!

Flats - with suckers . . . sorry; 'suction-cups'!

Is the peacock a worthy addition to a poultry collection, or a daftly cartoonish sculpt? The others seem to be half-Aladdin, half Powerpuff Girls!

I think the foxy-gentleman is my favourite in this lot.

Chipmunks! Donald Duck! Some other stuff . . .

Cheers Brian! We're really getting the hang of these now and they're good value for money, there are about five Superhero-sets out there, hopefully we'll get them all on here in the near future?

R is for Robot Follow-up

Having added that set of five eraser-robots from a charity shop the other day, I popped into WHSmith in Basingrad on Friday, and a year or so after I bought the pink-bot in a sale, I found they had three more at 50p each, one was damaged but the other two were fine, so the quid was parted-with

Here's the two new - rather frowny - miscreants, one arm's fallen-off but they are a bit loose anyway and there's nothing wrong with it, the one I left had the receiving-stud broken-off, two for a pound; you can't say no!

With apologies to Ray Winston - I know he's the Daddy really!

Droid Army - a round-up of robots, all previously Blogged here I think, bar the BraveStarr Galaxy Rangers robo-Wild West figures from Hing Fat et al - not sure about the silver PVC chap, have we had him? I've more of that type in storage so we'll return to them again; I'm sure. Droids come in all shapes and sizes!

Three pens and eight erasers; office-bots!

R is for Roaring, Roaming, Regulars

There are some folders I could leave permanently in some corner on the desktop; Daleks, motorcycles and 'poopertroopers' are three obvious candidates, but increasingly insects and dinosaurs are appearing on a regular - if casual - rotation here, and today we're back to 'Dinos', all these having come in since the last lot we looked at - less the couple of specifics that appeared over Christmas!

I can't remember when I showed the first three of these (looked it up), but they were cheap for what they are and I've been back for two more 'sets' of three, although I think that's enough, I'm not sure I can get another three out of the choice remaining (actually I don't think I've seen them the last couple of visits) as I tend to avoid the pterodactyls and plesiosaurs - all that flapping of wings and fins might be fine in the sea or the air, but it looks dumb on a shelf or table!

Brian Berke sent these from Big Lots Stores Inc., a while ago; of similar size to the WH Smith (Keycraft) lot above, I quite like the look of them, they have an old-school paint style, blocks of brighter colours, yet the set includes some less common types and seems to be modeled in scale, where most dinosaur sets are same-size or 'box scale' - there's a particularly small one, half-hidden by the flash in the centre of the upper deck. I love the hedgehogosaurus, top left and the little green 'land-plesiosaur' to the bottom-right.

We looked at the cats before Christmas I think, and there are dogs or puppies, but today it's the day of the dinosaurs, courtesy of Wilkinson's (Wilco) and their non-blind 'make sure you've got all three different four's before you pay' bags!

These ARE box-scale and also roughly the same size as various other mini-saurs we've seen here, so; when I get the old ones out of storage we'll have a dino-fest comparing all the similar mini-saurs!

I had more shots than needed so you get more shots than needed . . . hey; it's Google's servers not mine!

The two main shots are also from Brian, but he actually donated them to the blog! I haven't got them out yet as they are leaching that PVC-residue stuff the mini lizard capsule toy is, and until I find a better storage solution for such items I thought it best to leave them in their blister-cave, with the backing-card soaking up the unknown solvent.

They have a finger-tip sized hollow under the throat and can be fired with force at your enemies by pulling the tail back (I haven't the finger-strength to get them as far as Pennsylvania, but I'm happy to try alternative power sources!), indeed; while there is a 'choking hazard' warning on the dual-language (Greenbrier/DTSC - US/Canada) packs, there isn't one warning of little-brother's likely eye-damage!

The other set appeared on Moonbase Central [link] the day after I photographed them, but in Wilco packaging (I think?), I shot a shelfie in The Works as they really weren't worth a pound, being copies of piracies of copies of piracies of copies of old US sculpts from the 1950's or 1960's, and they will turn-up in mixed junk lots a few years hence!

These shelfies are from Brain again, and although the colours appear brighter in the right-hand lot, I think that's down to light-levels and they are the same products, on the left badged to Bely and on the right unbranded and imported into the 'States by JPW.

I also can't tell if they are new sculpts or older moldings, they have the look of vintage dinosaurs about them, also the language on the packaging suggests the same factory - in need of a better translator!

'Animal series design for the children all are fangled and in the high quality welcome you use our products'

'Collect all the style - be more fun' and 'The best welcome gifts for the children'

Another shelfie; I wish I'd bought it now - as I have a thing for Dimetrodons , but I think I was feeling particularly skint that day, they are nice-looking models, and the already relative cheapness of the magazine makes them freer than 'free'!

All the D's - A couple of recent charity shop buys (50p each) meet on the bedcover! The dastardly Dalek has appeared here before I think, but I can't remember the brand - Bluw? While the Dimetrodon dinosaur reinforces the paragraph above! Another nice sculpt from an otherwise anonymous chinasaur manufacturer, anyone recognise the set/brand he's from?