C is for Crafty Sugar!

It's been a funny old day, my Northern friends are all posting pictures of 2-to-3-inches of lovely, fluffy snow on their Faceplant feeds, we've just had a shed-load of rain! So, plans to hoe the weeds on the drive have been replaced by a Picasa-clearing session! In fact I've done more to sort out the desk-top, but some other folders have been found/sorted.

 

As a result of the latter, this is stuff from several folders, and the above are, I believe Dr. Oetker (pronounced "errt'ker"?) edible cake decorations, although being made of a commercial royal-icing designed to produce figurines, I wouldn't suggest trying to eat them, if you value your teeth, they are rock-hard, indeed, probably harder than many rock types!

 

They were purchased (probably in Sainsbury's) and photographed back in 2020, and then lost and forgotten about in the sadness of that season, languishing in a folder I'd buried, only to resurface in today's shenanigans!

These were purchased and photographed in the last month or two, definitely from Sainsbury's, and look identical, but are not Dr. Oetker, being styled House of Cake, and because I didn't know when shooting the first lot, I would need the logo, I didn't shoot it, just memorising Dr. Oetker before they went-off to storage (they will last as long as chalkware, with the same care and lack of damp!), so while I 'believe', I can't say definitively?

 

Older ones.

 

Suffice to say that they are the same, except for the likely different card insert, and Dr. Oetker don't list them on their site any more, so the new brand-mark may mean both were bought-in from somewhere else?

 

Morrison's (and Waitrose/John Lewis) are both stocking these, under the Cake Décor branding, a nice set of three sugar craft figurals, with a very similar Santa, but a rocking snowman, along with a rather surprised penguin.

 

And Asda are carrying this pair, obviously from the same source, but branded in-house, and while the Santa is the same sculpt, they have gone with a companion Rudolf, although it should be Rudolfina, as male Reindeer lose their antlers after the Autumn rutting, the females retain theirs through the winter, so Santa's team should really be girls!

The three Santa Clauses together, the Asda one has a better red than the washed-out pink of the Morrisons' one, but I suspect that is down to batch? While the Sainsbury's one, which I'm pretty sure used to be Dr. Oetker has the better packaging, for a product which although as hard as rock, is as likely to chip as slate!

Tesco haven't had anything like this (a few 'button' relief-flats), on several visits to the big one in Aldershot, nor a shelf-gap or label for any, while Aldi and Lidl wouldn't stock something so specific and minority interest?

F is for Found Objects - Five of . . . Merchandise

Except there's only four, but the titles are playing their own game, as some of may have noticed!

 

Another thematic one now, to which I've added some non-found objects content to stretch the post out, and again we seem to be firmly in Christmas or Christmassy territory, although some of this stuff is all-year-round gift shop fayre!

 

Tins, specifically, tins which look like houses, or buildings, although, to disprove the rule the instant I establish it, one is just a couple of Pooh Bear images! But it is house shaped and both had rather old tea-bags in, which went on the garden some time ago; it's all good compost/soil conditioner!

The Pooh one, it is what it is!

 

But this, obviously commissioned by Waitrose supermarkets (part of the John Lewis group), almost certainly at/for the Christmas season is charming, showing something akin to the original store (Waite, Rose & Taylor . . . what did Taylor do to be excised?) as a wrap-around artwork.

Scaled around the 25/28mm mark, it would be a shoo-in for old-school wargaming, just plonk it down and declare the area built-up/the high street! I don't know if this had tea, chocolate or sweets in? Something else?

While I shot these in TKMaxx a year ago, both were tea containers I think, German? The same roof/lid but one a two-story Southern German municipal building (Rathaus Teabagg), the other more of a Wilhelminian town-house over three floors! That's it; a bit of fun!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Halloween Crackers?

I'm not sure if I should be castigating these as the devil-spawned, tradition trashing, obvious and overdue  move of some capitalist Mo-fo intent on destroying the world to push his profit margin up naught-point-five percent, or celebrate the fact that while most of the world still don't have Christmas Crackers we can now have them twice a year . . . Neah-neah Na-naeh-neah!

I'll play it safe and try to please both camps of thought . . .

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Post One

Oh-Em-Gee!! Can you believe these?!! Some pocket-lining, money-grubbing city-type, with more money than sense already, has done a number crunching exercise and decided to run a coach and horses through the lovely old tradition of Christmas crackers, by associating them with the horrors of pre-Christian barbarism, old-wives tales and the South American day of the Dead!!

For a few points on the top-end, the bottom line is now there's something else for hard-pressed, austerity poor parents to be badgered for by their kids, innocent of the strain on the family budget as their little eye light-up at the thought of a gift, snap and motto. There should be consumer laws protecting society from this kind of blasphemous corporate hegemony and I can't understand why the Daily Wail hasn't taken a stand!

I mean it's right there before your eyes in black & orange, you can't miss it, how could you fail to be outraged?!

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Post Two

How cool are these, Christmas crackers . . . at Halloween! Too cool for party-school I dare say and full of old favourites! The card (on the left) and my sample (on the right) differ only in the body of the insect and the species of semi-flat animal!

Both the spider and the octopus have been seen in a set of mouldings which have been around since the 1970's, while we saw chrome-coated versions of the beetles last time we had an insect round-up and I recently saw several of them on a kids magazine so another ubiquitous novelty doing the rounds.

It seems each set of six has two tricks/dressing-up accessories, two games and two toy figurines. Top idea, I hope the Daily Pail gets right behind this modern thinking, to bring colourful, affordable novelties to the suddenly brightened-homes of austerity Britain!

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I'm not sure; I think it's a bit naff, but I got two [proto-] posts out of it . . . and some stuff for the collection, but at four-quid; not something I'll repeat!

Although note that the person dotting the eyes of the beetle (with a permanent marker) was drunk when they did mine! And as with some of the claims made for the creepy-crawly sets from all sources last year - nothing hair-raising or creepy about them!

Time will tell if it takes-off and I know - hyperbole apart - that you have always been able to get crackers for other occasions from specialist suppliers or party-planners, such as for weddings or birthdays, so why not Halloween, but it begs the question, how long before some corporate back-handed junket-taking columnist tells us in his or her erudite fashion that funeral crackers are "Just de rigueur at wakes these days"! Remember; this is Waitrose, not Poundland!

Apart from the two variables noted above, I think it's a standard content-mix as the jokes are numbered 1 - 6 . . .

1 - What is a mummy's favourite type of music? Wrap

2 - Why do demons and ghouls hang out together? Because demons are a ghoul's best friend

3 - What do you call a witch who lives at the beach? A Sand-witch

4 - Why didn't the skeleton dance at the party? He had no body to dance with

5 - What happens when the ghost gets lost in the fog? He is mist

6 - What are ghosts' favourite kind of streets? Dead ends

. . . while the paper crowns are - of course - pumpkin orange!

Countdown to Halloween - Lift Off! - As Waitrose Glows in the Dark

Well, I got them, the funny thing is my subconscious had convinced me they were two-quid, actually I'd walked-away, last week, at one-fifty, I'm a real tight-arse! But when I took them to the till they were £2 the pair, with no reduced tickets on the rail?

Glow-in-the-dark or fluorescent spiders and cockroaches, apart from the higher advertised price, they are the same as all the others we've looked at in the 'Countdown to Halloween' posts this year, and it's almost as if all the retailers have got together to market a similar range, probably because their buyers got on the blower to their shipping agents, middle-men or manufacturers and said "What's so-and-so [insert name of rival here] carrying next October . . . really? Then we'll have ten-hundred gross of some too!" because that's probably, exactly what happened!

The spiders seem to be the same mouldings as the orange ones from Sainsbury's (who didn't have cockroaches) and Waitrose also seemed to be carrying the same little rings as Tiger, neither of which I've invested in on your behalf, as they are both poorer (in quality) than . . . and copies of - the Poundland one's we looked at on day-one, which were poor enough!

So concludes the 'Countdown to Halloween' [no it doesn't, more came in after I'd finalised the 'spreadsheet!], there's more to come through the day, today, thought and we'll see what turns-up in a year's time; anything small and novelty/figural should appear here at Small Scale World, then?