F is for Follow-up - Speedy Gonzalez

Just a quick follow-up to the Speedy Gonzalez from Res Plastics, which we saw in the Plastic Warrior plunder-post this morning, here compared to the relatively common, or commoner Kinder Egg steckfigure.

 

You can just make out the RP mark below the hole for a keyring or cord in the Res's hat.

 

That's it, Speedy Gonzalez from Res Plastics, on the right, Kinder on the left, a comparison! The Res is noticeably tailless. Both are polyethylene.

R is for Ravensburger's Rake of Role-Play Recreations!

And so to TKMaxx, where a relatively expensive (but cheaper than the toy shops) purchase (we buy this stuff so you don't have to) led to three board games currently on the seasonal displays, and all containing nice figure sculpts in that mid 40mm-50mm size bracket. Each licensed from a different studio.

 

From Universal Studios we have this game based upon the better known characters from the horror oeuvre, some of whom are not even Universal properties, but hey, who's nitpicking Hugh? From the left in the above line-up we have The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, 'Frankenstein and The Bride (obviously, actually - Frankenstein's monster!), The Mummy and the Invisible Man.

To which is added a sheet of card-flat 'standee' civilian victims/secondary players, I don't know for sure, as I haven't read the rules; I would hope by now, you know these game posts are about the figures, other Blogs do games better than I ever could! The coloured ones look like they could be used in Cludo!

The second game is from Warner Brothers, and takes us to the Emerald City via a pair of red shoes and a wicked witch! I was going to weave the Kansas gag in here, but it's on the box, which rather stole my thunder, there! I assume you don't need these Wizard of Oz characters identified, but they are quite accurate to the original movie, and Dorothy is carrying Toto!

Finally, a Disney vehicle gives us five named Gargoyles, a human helper and two baddies, reduced to standee flats! The Gargoyles are rather nicely done with little contrasting flecks in them to suggest stonework, while the human (Elisa) is flat red. You'd have to be a fan of the movie to ID the individuals, or read the rules properly, which - we've already established - I didn't do! But there's a Goliath, Brooklyn, Broadway, Lexington and Hudson, in there somewhere!

 

Feelin' blue - a sizer, with the Invisible Man, Dorothy and a Gargoyle, the Invisible man is touching 39mm with his base, the 'Monster' heading toward nearly 50-mil, but most are around 40/45mm. Out there now, two are £14.99, the other (Gargoyles?) £12.99.

W is for Wilton's Wandering Willbury's from Warner

I've always had a preference for Hanna Barbera (Scooby, Wacky Races), MGM (Tom & Jerry, which was originally Hanna and Barbera) or Warner or over Disney, it's not that I hate Disney, some of its output is excellent, some now considered classic, but I have never liked the Micky/Daisy 'Disnyland' Disney, and think Fantasia was ruined by the sudden appearance of the dratted mouse for the Sorcerers Apprentice sequence!

 

But Warner Brothers had quite a cast of characters for their Loony Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, and five of the best are featured here in this band of a band, of cake decorations from Wilton. Large scale and Polystyrene, like most of Wilton's output, but not all of it - Circus wagons, for instance.

Bugs Bunny conducts - from the left; Sylvester (oboe), Porky Pig (cymbals), Daffy Duck (saxophone) and Tweety (aka; Tweety Pie or Tweety Bird, bass-drum). And I hope that's a band-master's baton, because if Bugs is about to sing, I could quickly lump him in with that squeaky mouse!

 

The extra joke being that Tweety, the smallest of them all, gets to struggle with the largest instrument! They are glued to matching green disc-bases, fully marked-up with Warner and Wilton property messeging.

U is for Up! And Down! The Squway'ah!

This is as close to any Coronation bollocks as I'm going to get, so if you're wetting your kecks at the thought of all those gushing 'Royal Correspondents' on the flickering cod's eye this weekend, this is as good as you're gonna' get here! And Lizzy said Cam'ie could be Queen Consort, not "Queen"! They don't have my allegiance, inheritance-tax evading, promiscuous popinjays . . . and I'm certainly not muttering an oath at the telly on Saturday, like some slavish serf!

 

What's the actual fucking matter with people, find your balls, you sycophantic soap-dolls! We could be a secular democracy with a written constitution holding the government to account and a figure-head president of the type Italy or Germany enjoy, instead people are having paroxysms of wetness, at the inheritance of accumulated wealth, stolen from us!

Aaaannnnd . . . rant over! Well . . . it's all so silly and medieval! I have picked up a few novelty and other ceremonials since Christmas, most in a single purchase from someone thinning his collection, and one or two others, there was a newie in Chris's lot (yes, I thanked him elsewhere the other day, Chris Smith has sent another fantastic parcel of oddments!) but he'll appear separately in future posts, as he's paired with a policeman.

Here we have a pair of resin guards and a clicking-biro with flocked bearskin, a 'white-button' jumping mounted guardsman with two more resins; one cartoony the other a teddy-bear, which is the third iteration of Bear Guardsman I think, so well have to gather them together in a post of their own, one day!

 

He's called a 'Cugglie Wugglie' which is almost as nauseating as your average Royal Correspondent, but some marketeer though it was a good idea, even cuddly-wuddly would be an improvement on that massacre of the language! Branded to EPL, good luck finding anything about them on Google, English Premier League takes all the spots! There's plenty about CW's and plenty about EPL CW's, but nothing about the company?

The big guy seems to be some sort of powered-novelty, with a red light in his chest, but I can't work out how he works, his moving-arms, err, don't, and his flap (which hides a red light) just falls open, so I'll have to unscrew him at some point and look for a battery compartment . . . and possibly a broken spring or catch of some sort?

Two 40mm Spot-On Tommy Spot figures, one fully decorated in matt paints, the other half-decorated in gloss? Not from the Pomeroy stuff, so a mystery as to the reson/origin of the second one? And two Japanese blow-moulded celluloid 'doll' types, I have quite a few of these now, all slightly different, and never pass up on a cheap one!

I think we've seen these before, but they were here and got included in the photo-sesh' round-up! A pooping guardsman dropping a Putin and another novelty Biro!

 

Disney (and Warner) goes to London? Guys? WTF? NO! Dress them as US Marines, by all means, but we don't want you colonising our pomp and circumstance . . . the 'pomp being pomposity, the 'circumstance' being that William the 1st stole all the land, and they've held on to most of it! Another Coronation? It there no-end to them? Perhaps we could book-end monarchy with a pair of Williams' . . . now there's an idea! Yah-Boo, Sucks!

T is for Tha, tha, tha . . . That's not all folks!

Just a quickie to clear a recent acquisition; over in Farnborough a couple of weeks ago and found one of the charity shops had opened (they were weeks behind their Fleet compatriots) and scored a board game, a few days after the recent board game photo-sesh' (of which there is more still in the queue), it's a bit of fun and most of it went to recycling a couple of weeks ago!

Kids game, mechanism is best described as Ludo-variant, with four players trying to 'get round', the hook being four off-board characters trying to stop them. Warner Brothers cartoon characters provide the interest here.

Bugs, Daffy, the Road Runner and Tweaty-Pie (does anyone know why a grown man calling himself baby-talk became the 'biggest' thing on Youtube? End of Civilisation as we know it? Oh, OK, that makes sense!) are in the box to be collected by collectors!

In the style of Phidal's figures and in a softish PVC-substitute, they were worth the quid or so for a damaged box - the trouble with buying this stuff from charity-shops is it's not always all there, even if it says checked, but about nine-out-of-ten are complete, so it's always worth a punt!

So Tweaty's about 30mm and Bugs Bunny is a hare over 45! Eh? I shouldn't be allowed! His eyes need work though; he looks even more demented than usual! Mattel's Looney Tunes 4-Toon Race game - box ticked . . . that's all folk's!

N is for New Finds, Pt.4 - Sci-fi and Fantasy

These are all all less than a year old I think (the insects may be a slightly older purchase?), and again should all still be in the shops if not on the Internet somewhere.

Could have been in the Works post, as that is where they came from, but I was looking for ways to divide up all the pictures in the 'new stuff' folder in Picasa and a Sci-Fi/fantasy post seemed a good idea.

Really these are 'action figures' of the type I don't usually bother with, however I saw in the carry-cases a potential for Bamiyan Buddha/Petra style rock carvings for use with small scale figures,...a quick dry-brush, marbling and wash should have them looking like Easter Island monoliths in no time, or set them in a cork or plaster 'wall', so I grabbed the two when I saw them...they were also dirt cheap...they were also Blue Box!

These are still available all over the place, I bought two blind bags when they first came out and ended up with two of the better figures so stopped! Mainly because they will be turning-up loose for pennies in small groups at shows or on evilBay for the next few years - should I fell the need to get a full set.

The marketing ploy here is three different antiqued-metallics for each figure (gold/brass, silver/pewter and a copper-bronze), but that's no different to various colours, so hardly a whinge! About 60mil, the deep, plinth-bases make them awkward for playing with, but you could try to create a chess-set or something? I also think they'd paint-up nicely.

I've seen various versions of both these exact models (the same Poundland carried them a few months later is realistic finishes) and other brands of giant insect, but thought these - with their charcoal and chrome plastic - would make excellent robo-sects for my LP spacemen to battle one day?

Also - if you follow the blog regularly - you'll know my love of Stag beetles and Rhino Beetles meant I was never going to leave them on the rack....at a pound a piece? Not sure if Funtastic are the same as Fun-Tastic, but I'll give them the same label for now. [2016 - They are and I've changed them all over to Funtastic!]

D is for Dunkin, Disney and Deutschland!

Reader/follower 'Gerhard' of Germany sent me some interesting shots the other day and although he's missed my return email and plea below somewhere, I've cobbled together a couple of posts round what he sent.

This is entirely collage'd from Gerhard's images, and is very interesting as it shows the Tito logo on an Americana gum envelope. It also states MADE IN SPAIN when the Americana company is centred near Aachen south of the Ardens (although Munich is stated on these packs), so I guess they were all part of a bigger multinational that also involved Dunkin, Tylers/Mundi and Jopar...all part of the Sanchez group????! - In the end it does your head in!

Anyway - nice shots of the envelope and a full set of the Disney figures, as Gerhard stated in his eMail; these were originally Marx Disneykins, manufactured in Hong kong in hard styrene. At some point the Marx arm in Europe; Heimo got sets of moulds for a fair few of the TV, Movie and cartoon character sets in various sizes and produced them in unpainted softer ethylene's, even shipping some back to the states.

Somehow they - the 'kin' moulds - seem to have gone to Tito (and/or Olá?) where they were supplied to all sorts of bubble-gum, ice-cream and other food companies as premiums from the mid-to-late 1960's until the early 1980's, after which some (Tin Tin) ended up in Mexico, others got as far as Taiwan (Asterix) where some of the original Marx Miniature Masterpieces had been made!

I meant to knock-up the notes for this post at home and forgot so I can't remember the name of the show from which the characters in the two lower left shots come from! It was an European TV cartoon though! Some kind person chuck the name in 'comments' if you know it, I won't be back here till next Wednesday! Added 24th Feb 2013 - Jan Koolen has let me know they are from the European TV cartoon Nils Holgersson, thanks Jan.

The other shots are either colour variations from Portugal (Olá) or Spain (Tito) or other characters from the old TV Tinykins range, taken from the oeuvres of Warner Brothers or Hanna Barberra.

Although distorted by my collageing them together these are pretty much all between 25/40mm. Again - because I didn't pre-load the article, I'm sitting here doing it off the top of my head in the Library and will NOT attempt to name half these critters!

Marx originals; Top is a Swansea large scale ethylene Panchito and two colour variants of the Disneykin.
Below him we have various Peter-pan characters, again all Disneykins. The last shot shows Hong Kong and Heimo treatments of Captain Hook in both Styrene (small) and PVC vinyl (Large) respectively.

Larger Vinyls at top, these are mostly unlicensed HK copies of Schlich, Bully (Heimo's modern trademark) or Papo, Daisy Duck is Heimo to the left and Marx to the right, Gerhard mentions getting the Schlich ones every time he went to the Dentist, any other German readers remember freebies. Also it wasn't clear if he was talking about the larger vinyls or the smaller ethylenes?

Below are some more old Marx figures to the right and a Heimo character who's name I've forgotten, but she was a US TV cartoon from the 50's (Little Orphan Annie, Dagwood? - something like that!)

Pecos Bill - one of the most pirated figures in the history of toy figures; Top row are all Marx/Heimo (Swansea ethylene is the unpainted yellow one on the left), bottom row are all Christmas Cracker/Lucky bag giveaways, with various stages of remoulding or decrepitude from 4 different sources!