B is for Blow-Moulded Blow-Ups

Another one of the Rico Firenze relief 'posters', also marked up to Master Mount in the USA, this one was lacking the header-card, but is possibly the more interesting of the two, dealing with Reptiles & Amphibians.

 

Snakes, Lizards & Frogs!

 

Lizard.

 

Frog.

 

 

Snake-heads, no gangs!

 

O-Level biology!

Yes, the girls cooked a bit of eye-muscle on a Bunsen-burner and ate it! 

 

Digestive tract.

 

 Hearts.

 

The lighting at Sandown Park is not that conducive to photography, sometimes, it's bright enough, but I think it resonates at a different speed to pocket camera's shutter's and with shooting them through their polythene bags, they've all had to be contrasted and enlightened in Picasa to get them closer to what's actually in the bag, which is very colourful!

 

Many thanks again, to Adrian Little for these. 

V is for Voracious Verdite Vertebrate

An alternate title-idea was G is for Great Grey Green Greasy Limpopo River, but - although I can't find it - I think we did have that, many years ago?

 

A bit off the beaten track tonight, but a figural nevertheless, and a rather fine one! I believe it's carved from a form of stone known as Verdite (green-ite?!!), but something called New Zealand Jade can look similar, but should be much harder, this is quite a soft rock I think, not that I am any kind of expert!

Also known variously as Verdite Serpentine or Fuchsite, a group of rocks from Southern Africa, this was probably carved for the tourist trade, in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) by a member of the Shona tribe, and no, I didn't know any of the above until I started googling 'green rock animals' half an hour ago!

 

 

Crocodile rather than alligator, from the backplate and nose shape . . . and . . . Africa! I know you are supposed to know about teeth and stuff to really know what you are looking at, but this is a representative piece, not going for full realism, and as such I think the sculptor has captured it well?

I love it, it is a very characterful animal, with not a small amount of evil about its countenance, as it creeps-up on a wildebeest crossing somewhere on the veldt, waiting for a straggler, or a young fool to cross first!

It had an accident a few years ago, revealing a quite granite-like granularity to the unworked stone, which thankfully soaked up a couple of blobs of superglue and went back together perfectly.

The other thing I like about it, beyond the character of the sculpt, is the colour, or range of colours, which vary from deep olives and duns to flecks of malachite-green. During the resent Googling the last search was 'Verdite Crocodile', revealing this to be one of the better examples, sculpt wise, with modern ones being far more crudely sculpted/finished.

 

And it's about the same size as the late Britains beast (with moving jaw), so we'll probably look at them together with others (the Charbens is similar) one day.

U is for Unknown Paratrooper and Other Animals

Another lazy-post in that I don't need to do much more than post someone else's photographs, but of interest, if only in the hope that if anyone knows Lieutenant Cole, who served at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, probably in 1969, they might show him these (I can even let him have the originals) if he's still around, he'll be in his late 70's now, I guess.

Whether the snakes were unwelcome visitors to the base or a training area/range, or part of some survival course's training equipment . . . or menu (!) I don't know, but Lieutenant Cole seems pretty at ease handling them, although he's staying pretty alert in the second shot I feel?

Probably taken - as I say - in Fort Bragg or it's environs in 1969, but I don't know who by (so the LT may have had his own copies?), and showing - I think Eastern Diamond-Backed Rattle Snakes? In the first shot certainly, the other two . . . it's hard to tell in B&W! The shots could have been taken earlier, my father had several trips over there I think, helping Charlie Beckwith, so these shots could be from '66 or around thereabouts?

In 1969 Dad had a six month liaison-exchange at Ft. Bragg, and took Mum, they were billeted with a US army officer's family I believe, but my brother and I were left here, staying with friends . . . we got smart orange/black sneakers (early All Stars?) and army-green tank-tops with Staff Sergeants stripes out of the deal though!

As Mum had possession of these photographs; I'm guessing they are from that visit? Also as a young woman, she had had a pet Grass Snake (Jezebel) - which she wore round her neck - in London in the 1950's, so would have enjoyed seeing these.

That's it, a couple more curious 'tears in rain' among the many I've been unearthing . . . Gallipoli later.

S is for Spring . . . Sunshine!

I managed to photograph a trio of our most shy residents during this latest hot-spell, all keeping warm under the loose bark of an old oak, I replaced the bark after I'd troubled them with the camera!

A grass snake! I took a video, but while it looked nice on the camera's little screen, when i got it up on the laptop is wasn't good-enough to upload I'm afraid. I think she's a female, both from the dullish markings and a feeling I got from her, she fixed me with a look which said "I won't bite if you don't get any closer"! They will only bite if threatened, and aren't venomous.

Under the next log along . . .

A pair of lizards one of whom stayed around for a good shot or two, the other stuffed it's head under the bark and waved it's tail at me, which was a very silly thing to do, as if I'd tried to pull it out by that appendage, it would almost certainly have come-off in my fingers!

F is for Follow-up - Rubber Capsule Toys

When I popped into that party shop up at Clapham Junction back at the end of January, among the Henbrandt and other bits I grabbed were these two, who are useful only for showing how this stuff 'does the rounds'.

Silicon'rubber 'streatchimal' reptiles, one - a snake - in Henbrandt pack, the other - a lizard - in Giftworks packing, both animals were in both packs in the dispensing tub, but no other sculpts were to be found, although I suspect there is a larger selection in the whole 'set' somewhere?

They are both in that clammy, cold silicon which feels wet; but isn't, and both have the same metallic finish as the Henbrandt and/or Tobar/Hawkin's Bazaar stretchy robots and dinosaurs previously seen here at Small Scale World.

Below them is a spare Henbrandt alien I found in a box of something else for 50p the other day. The second time (previous was a blue egg-head with a squished hand) it's happened; but different venue - I suspect there was a bit of horseplay going on in a warehouse somewhere, and the aliens found their way into other stock boxes as 'incoming' in a surreptitious war between the 'Days' and 'Back-shift' or just between two packing-lines!

This has been sitting around for ages, and isn't all of them - as the other Henbrandt's are missing - the Tobar (top four) differ from the Henbrandt offering in having no paint, all four came from Hawkin's Bazaar.

Paint differences also show with the various smilies out there, some having only eyes - previously tested to destruction! There are also size differences, as these are all from 20p capsule dispensers, clearly some are slightly more value for money than others!

The image also shows how they are stored - with notes where similar figures are in the same bag - and it indicates how the capsule-toy stretchy-aliens and smilies are gathering for the invasion!

C is for Creatures / Créatures and Croissante

Some other Greenbriar/DTSC imports, all with no other branding; carded bags of insects, both courtesy of Brian Berke in New York, so available in the US (Greenbriar) and Canada (DTSC) and grow-animals.

There are at least two assortments, the left hand one being the better of the two, although these are at the bottom-end of rack-toy sculpting/quality - if you know what I mean.

Nevertheless; they make excellent 'Giant Insect' monsters with all scales of toy figures and can be painted-up.

Centipede, mantis, grasshopper/locust and fly, two of each with a minimal paint-job sprayed through stencils. You can never have too many flies!

Brian also sent shelfies of these un-ascribed cards of a crocodile and lizard. Now, there's a lot of these grow-toys around, mostly small (30/40mm) figures which grow to 60/70mm size; I'm sure you've all seen them: 'grow your own nun, girlfriend, hit-man' &etc. But these are huge! Judging by the holes in the hanging-hook plate behind they are about 12-inches to start with, if they're going to grow 600% they'll fill the bath and shove the kids out onto the floor-mat!

And they don't taste like croissants!

Y is for Yummy!

It's not often that I get a 'Y' in the header, and not often that we look at edible figural, so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone!

The only question is, why didn't I use that excuse to use a 'Y' on one of the previous occasions we looked at such things - the human mind is quite a retarded instrument n'est pas?

But then our brains have apparently got smaller, while Stegosaurus had a larger one . . . I'm 'binge' watching Life on Earth as a retro treat!

 

Haribo - who knew; they have names!

Anybody who's watched the movie, knew, Hugh! Due to vagaries I won't bore you with, I ended-up with a bunch of stuff intended for someone else after Christmas, among which was a bag of Minion jelly-chews - Actually the second bag of Minion jelly-chews I've imbibed in my few short years here on planet Earth!

They're a bit one dimensional really,

but very tasty, especially Bob!

Private Baldrick's moustaches! I also ended-up with a bag of snakes, they didn't have names but are probably a bunch of Pennsylvanians! They are a no-particular-brand, generic, type thing - the snakes that is . . . !

L is for Lizards Again!

So another post covering recently Blogged stuff, which has come around again in time for Rack Toy Month (yes - we'll get back to army men soon!), with more of the multiple connection thing we've seen in the last two posts (below).

In the previous post on lizards (back in June), we looked at an MTC set Brian sent picture of with six small lizards, well, the other day I picked-up the same six, with two others in a net by Unique at the same time as the similar insects. Then - last week Brian sent me a picture (top left) of the same in the Big Apple - which is why I suggested in yesterday's post that the MTC insects may turn-up over there in the Unique bag as well! Anyway, there's 3 poses in at least 8 colourways!

4 snakes and 4 snakes is eight snakes, but in a Rack Toy, not on a plane - phew! More MTC minis . . . put money on them turning-up in Unique packaging, or would they wiggle out of the bags! Also; take a 'sportsman's' on them turning up as glow-in-the-dark under Grossman?

Hunson novelties, but Rack Toys for Rack Toy Month! We had these when we were kids, there were lovely composition ones still around when I was a child as well, little lozenge-shaped lumps of 'olin' composition, formed either side of a canvas strip and richly painted, the head had a little red-leather tongue!

Also who remembers the howling snakes: long concertinaed tubes with a snakes head, and you whirled it round as fast as you could to get an eerie howling noise which was part air-raid siren, part Hawkwind instrumental and part alien battle-fleet attacking; it didn't sound anything like a snake!

Ooh! Are we doing reptiles again? Have I shown you this? Best Birthday present ever . . . I have? Well, they're here now, so they can stay! Isn't it brilliant?

C is for Chitinous Creepy-Crawly Carded Chinacritters

So - I am declaring August 'Rack Toy Month'. I'm not sure if the UN or HMG will add it to their lists of official days, weeks, months and cultural years, but certainly at Small Scale World, this August will be Rack Toy Month . . . and if Brian Berke keeps sending me images and examples at his current rate, it'll be Rack Toy Month for the whole of the second half of 2017!

As well as lots of images from Brian, I've collected a few myself recently and there are a few older ones in Picasa, all of which can be grouped, lumped or thrown-together violently in thematic posts, or as stand-alone posts.

We'll start with last week's little act of serendipidy or co-incidence; I had to go on an epic journey the other day involving 7 buses and several miles of walking, I won't bore you with the details . . . all frightfully parochial real-life shite involving a drive-belt for a garden chipper, but I had to pop into Farnborough for some vape-juice (over two years, no fag!) at the start of the day so popped round the corner to a party shop I check for this stuff occasionally and got more lizards, four key-rings, a bag of cats (coming soon) and a bag of insects!

The netted set top right, be they! One of the key rings was a snail, so the two purchases rather drove each-other. Two buses later found me in Frimley, where there used to be a shed-load of charity shops, some of them seem to have gone, but there were a few and with 20 minutes to kill for the connection, I flew round them and found the old tub of insects - bottom right.

As I'd seen, and rejected a set of large and not very good insects in The Works earlier, I thought "Well, 'it has to be' now!" and so, two buses later, shelled out the couple of quid for the set to the left in the above collage!

The contents of the three sets, you can see why I initially rejected the Works ones, they (upper shot) are big, rubbery, lacking detail and are not trying too hard to resemble anything known to entomologists - in all cases the legs/thorax rule is studiously avoided!

Below them to the left is the Ackerman charity-shop purchase, with 13 present I suspect a couple are missing? To be honest they're not much cop either but were only 50p! Finally the Unique branded bag's contents are a bit better, probably not that accurate either, but better sculpts and more subdued colours make them a reasonable set. They would respond well to a repaint.

Comparisons between the sets, you can see the sizes in the previous collage are pretty close to the actual size comparisons here, anyone who knows how Picasa collages work will know that's more by good luck than good judgement!

The un-branded key-ring which started the insect purchasing frenzy is probably a marine mollusc - with a shell like that, certainly something very foreign to the UK? I've removed the ring & chain for this shot, and looking at it next to the monkey and horse it came with, I suspect they were tub/toob items themselves once?

Supporting evi'dawnce! A few weeks ago I'd got the trick roach, also from The Works (59p, for a hysterical insect . . . bargain!) to add to the small number of novelty insects and invertebrates we saw back in December's novelty posts, now I'm well on my way to my first shed-full!

Several of these will be very useful as monsters in a secret dungeon trap! Although the best candidates for that are the scorpions who all need their tails bent up with hot-water treatment as they are all moulded flat. Indeed; the scorpions (count the legs!) can all be ridden by 25/30mm figures?

Again . . . from the I-buy-this-stuff-so-you-don't-have-to dept., a couple of day after I put this article to bed, I found these two, from H. Grossman (HGL) which I bought a while ago with next December in mind, bearing in mind last December's novelty 'season'!

The snake is vile, both sets come with a protective sheet to prevent them damaging the card backing and neither has the 'may stain clothes' warning of the 1970's capsule toy we looked at last Christmas. But, while the maggots are fun and quite realistic; the two larger black ones are more like leeches than maggots - the snake is a blob, which stained and deformed the first PE bag I put it in, which went soft and wrinkly - in hours?

I've now stored it in foil, rolled in one bag, in another bag, with a mental note to chuck-it if there are any more problems! Vile, I tells' ya; cold, slimy, probably radioactive, lump of sun-gelled, hell-spawn!

L is for Lounging Lizards or Lizard's Lounge

I feel a bit of a theme developing, there was the bronze one awhile aback which was itself triggered by a nice rubber one on another Blog (Jan's?), the pack of 12 the other day, and now these sent in by Brain Berke yesterday.

Current rack-toys from across the pond, they come in two sizes of which these are the smaller set. Two poses, three of each but given six separate colour-ways.

The larger ones come four to a pack, and they are four different sculpts, and like the mini-ones the other day seem to be well detailed and anatomically correct, although the paint-jobs are, I suspect, a bit, err, over-zealous?

Brian found a second set with four more colour variations. I know nothing about MTC, except to assume the TC is 'Toy Company' and that's it's a modern US jobber, rather than either of the MTC's I was confused by the other day...or is it?!

Have you any Lizards, old or new to share with us?

12 is for Lizards

Twelve of them, there are, Lizards, in a pack, that's twelve lizards - for a pound!

You see; I kid you not; it's twelve lizards in a pack, which clearly states "Pack of 12 Lizards", in The Works now, for a pound, that's less than 10p each - per 12th lizard*. They're cheaper than bites of a Mars Bar!

Joking apart, these aren't the crummy rubber approximations of a Dimetrodon without the sail you used to get stuffed in a capsule 20 or 30 years ago, these are well sculpted, well detailed, well made animals with a decent (if formulaic) paint job. Numbered 1-12 (top left to bottom right) there's definitely twelve of them!

I don't know if they are realistic paint jobs, or imaginary species? They also have relatively blank bellies, AND (while not being an expert in these things) some of them look like geckos (reptiles) and salamanders (amphibians) which would mean it's actually "Pack of 12 Geckos, Lizards and Salamanders", but I do know if Britains were still making their animals, they couldn't compete with this stuff - which is why they aren't!

But you have to ask how long Schleich and Papo can keep charging 4, 5, 6.99 for individual animals smaller than these (their puppies, cats and poultry for instance), when you can get twelve for a pound, even the capsule puppies start to look dear at a pound each.

If you're an animal collector; look out for them now, probably in other packagings elsewhere in the world.

*8.3-recurring pence per Lizard (about 12¢)

S is for Sets

Both from Christmas crackers, and both quite recent I think...well I sort of know, but I'll explain, I tend not to keep these in their sets...no, that's a lie; I was keeping them in their sets until the big lot came in, at which point I photographed them for posterity - er...this article - and broke them into the 'new' classification bags that resulted from the big sorting and bringing-together of the accumulated tat, kak, shite!

The upper four came together a few years ago at - I seem to recall - a works 'do', where cheap crackers are pretty-much guaranteed! The lower shot group were in the big lot of the autumn, The blue plastic and moulding style (3D relief with flat-edged, hollow undersides) tie them together well.

The ship is an old favourite as a cracker toy, although somewhere I have a bag full of them in red and blue with cavity bases from the Lucky Bag depot fire, insurance clear-out I did back in the 1990's. I keep expecting to find the original in one of the many sets of flat premiums from France, but which appeared all over as food freebies, but they tend to be better detailed, so I think maybe 'just' a cracker/novelty sculpt?

These were in those small tree-decoration crackers a few years ago, but I can't remember where, they were either in Tesco's about 2005/6 or Sainsbury's c.2009/10? or 2013? Anyway, we can be pretty sure there were other items and that they were all available in both colours.

Pretty crude; the highlight for me is the scale-down of the Kellogg's 'Tony the Tiger' keyring...someone in HK must have the original mould or master sculpt, 30/40-odd years after the original last plopped onto the breakfast table.

The rook was seemingly the only chess piece? I have a similar knight from the 70's...why not do a whole set with one of the paper boards we looked at a post or two below? Missed opportunity...set of 16 budget cracker with one back row and one front row piece in each cracker, board printed on the box...Bob's your uncle!

There's a hear-no-evil  monkey charm, so the other two may have existed? the rest is typical old gum-ball/cracker fare. Spinners aren't even numbered. The banana is a dolphin!

Eff is for 'Phibbeous Fellows

A small collection of novelty frogs and a reptile! Playing the banjo! He's quite common and I think I've seen similar sculpts hinting at a set, sort of Marx / Disney knock-offs?

Magnetic novelties are a good standby to keep kids amused for a while and these frogs do spin, frantically, so some clever use of the positive and negative charge there?

The height of mechanical novelty sophistication in the 1970's? Yeah, a lump of bitumen! Now replaced by spring-loaded jumpers, or the types with time-sensitive lick-suckers, these guys rely on the spring sticking to a lump of tar long enough for you to get your hands out of the way!

S is for Scary-Monsters and Super-Creeps

Sung in a nasal voice: "She had an horror of rooms...full of toys!"

The term 'Rubber Jigglers' tends to brings to mind small hideous finger monsters, usually made of a semi-transparent silicone- or similar-rubber in an orange, flesh or khaki shade, over-sprayed with blobs of colour, maybe with eyes dotted in, but they have a term of their own 'Finger Monsters'!

The jigglers label extending out to various other cheapie toys (confined to capsule/gum-ball machines and shop-stock boxes or cards, rather than the smaller cracker and premiums type novelty sources) made of soft, synthetic-polymer, rubberised materials, which jiggle as they are moved, played with or dangled from an elastic cord.

We looked at a bunch of the sucker-fitted ex-LP sculpt jigglers a while ago, a large ant/bug thing the other day and I'm working on a page for the finger puppets (just because I say they're hideous doesn't mean I don't collect them!), but there are also more realistic jigglers, these constitute a quick overview:

Spiders, lizards (or are they newts?), frogs (not illustrated) a frog-monster, bats, snakes, all firm favourites with the William Brown type schoolboy of any generation in the last 50 years. But; leave them in a styrene capsule too long and they'll eat it with the same power an Airfix Tiger tank's tracks had, to eat their host, in the same era!

This is an early window walker, quite a popular novelty now, they can be much larger with ball extremities to flick-over and walk down the wall. This one on the other hand moves very slowly, and has leaked an unstable fluid into it's instruction-sheet over time, yet remains as sticky as ever! It's also tiny.

Three snakes, one a modern ethylene one (small, pale blue, semi-flat/relief design), you may well find in your cracker in 11 days time, under him is a 1970's classic in stretchy jade-green rubber (the only true jiggler in this trio) and under him is a more realistic 1990's dense PVC model with a half-hearted paint-job. We saw the spiders the other day, but boy; could you get you mother/sister/aunt to scream with a well timed reveal of a jiggling spider!

B is for Bronze

Saw a nice model of a toy lizard the other day which was very good for the type of cheapie-rubber thing it was, in fact it was so good it reminded me of my mother's bronze, which was a great favourite with my brother and I when we were kids, to the point where I mused it might be a copy of the bronze and I commented to that effect...

...and went off to dig out the metal one and photograph it. It's not the same, the pose and detail are different but the treatment of the eyes is similar and they are about the same - true to life - size.

Probably German, I don't know whether it's cast solid bronze or a cold-cast bronzed-resin, it's heavy enough to be solid, and the quality hints at 'hot bronze' but the little holes in the underside [Between the front and back pairs of legs] may be for weighting with lead?

[Next day] Thanks to Paul's Bod's Paul I can now add that it's a Wiener bronze, and was also used by Alfred Dunhill for ash-trays, although this one would have been mounted on a block of pale marble (hence the two mounting holes with a darker marble sphere held in the crook of the tail (hence its odd angle). It is a solid 'hot bronze' not 'yer cheep'o resinous crap'!

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