B is for Big-Box Play Set

I've mentioned before that we never really did big play sets here in the UK, houses were too small, I think? The closest we got to such things really were the 'HO-OO' assault sets from Airfix, and a few similar things in the late 1970's from them in 1:32nd scale and/or Matchbox, who's were a tad poorer I thought, but this set from Supreme / SP Toys is of similar thought.

Scanned from an old Wilkinsons catalogue from the 2000's, these were piled high each Christmas for several years, and Index (the UK catalogue shop) may have carried one or two. Strangely, for what is supposed to be a publicity shot, this in the set with the poorest contents, most of th sets having fewer 'planes and more, better vehicles, but if you're a fan of 'planes, I guess this would have been the one for you?

 

We looked at the contents back at the start of the blog;

 

AFV's - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/s-is-for-supremesp-toys-part-1-armour.html

Soft Skins - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/s-is-for-supremesp-toys-part-2-soft.html

Big Rigs - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/s-is-for-supremesp-toys-part-3.html 

Combat Engineering - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-for-applause-part-4-armoured.html

and a few years later;

Figures - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2014/11/s-is-for-supreme-sp-toysand.html

 

And I suppose there were about six or eight different ones, as far as contents went, of which I maybe saw about five in person, plus this one, and one with more desert versions of the vehicles I only have in green, which I know existed, as a shop in Farnborough used them in a window display one year!

M is for Military Force from 'Mini Wheels'

The moniker used by a variety of sets from the small generics we looked at here, through this intermediate sized 'play set' to the big-box huge-box sets Wilkinson's (Wilco) carried each Christmas for several seasons around the turn of the century. Twenty years . . . this shite's been in the collection for twenty years; where does the time go!

In its entirety; there are 29 items, small and large, 32 if you count the tractor/trailers and rocket separately, and at half-price I must have paid £2.49p or - more likely - £2.50p! Which is no more than 8p per item . . . bargain!

Shipped-in by Ackerman, this is SP Toys/Supreme's sojourn into small scale, with decently scaled 1:72 scale AFV's (for the most part), but with oversized figures and undersized aircraft.

The whole caboodle came in sand (as here) or green plastics/paint-finishes and the jerry-cans are a triple-moulding (only useful for vehicle-loads or enhancing SAS jeeps!), but the oil drums are separate, both are more suitable to 1:35th scale modelling, while the figures are the poorest thing Supreme have churned-out to date and were only ever going to be box-tickers' in collector's lists!

Because we've looked at the AFV's (a long time ago, but fully; Tracked AFV's, Wheeled 'Softskins', Articulated Trucks and Engineering/Plant) and the figures (link at the start), and because I junked all the aircraft from the sets I broke-up (leaving the one above!) the only things left to look at are the street furniture (another day, there's a tub-full somewhere) and the low-relief building fronts.

The small sets got one of the little US-style 1930's urban 'station houses' with attached garage-door, with red and blue versions for fire and police sets, the medium sets all got the equally American-looking 'small-town municipal' town hall/public library type, while the huge trays Wilkinson carried had two or all three, which sometimes included the European barrack-style vehicle/MT shed or Fire Station with three garage units.

The flag is more often absent than present, I suspect that due to its propensity to break-off, it was discontinued? And note you get both unit command buildings and places where Henry VIII could store the cerebral body-parts of his victims!

An alternative inclusion in the larger sets was a ruined central-European farmhouse which came (as here) in dun and cream, or a more traditional black timber on white, with red roof. There were other buildings for the civilian sets, some of which we've seen, but there was also a larger service-station/garage type thing.

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Snake, Snake Skeleton!

When I first saw this I almost ignored it among all the other tat that gets piled-up for the three or four weeks of the short Halloween selling season, but then I though "Well, actually it's almost perfect for Games Workshop's skeleton warriors, or any other undead forces for that matter? So quite useful"

It wasn't a lot; maybe £1.50, something like that? Currently at Wilkinsons (Wilco - until the end of today at least) and might be on a clearance-sale between tomorrow and the weekend; if you're lucky?

Obviously a simple moulding (it's one piece with four sprayed, matt-black, stencilled blobs) and representing a quite short, fat snake, it's hardly going to scare anyone but could have its uses, not least as a cheap film prop!

'Crazy Bones' by Seasons, never seen or heard of the latter and suggests a range of the former, have you seen other Crazy Bones?

Tried it with both this morning's new addition and an old sculpt from the 90's, and both ride it quite well. Are you a gamer fielding a skeleton army, are you thinking 'Hell, that's what I need - right there!', or could it have a use even/just as a piece of scenery or terrain/obstacle.

R is for Regular Round-up!

Like yesterday's football/footballers; for many years we didn't really look at paratrooper toys here, but a couple of years ago I did  an overview of what I had here at the time, and since then with a lot of help from New York and keeping an eye-out, we've had quite a few re-visits.

I still haven't found the 'in storage' box, but I spotted a few buried the other day and it may be with them, so perhaps before Christmas I'll have united the two sizeable samples and we can have a better look or over-view of the genre - a favourite here, now.

How they come in! I bought these in Basingrad on the 9th, two from Wilkinson's/Wilco, the other (Phidal Peter Rabbit) from TKMaxx, the monster [snake!] skeleton was really for Halloween, but you've seen it now - it'll look great with skeleton armies though! Phidal are going to need a couple of days now, there's around ten sets, or part-sets in the queue, and anyway it's the paratroopers we're looking at now.

So, N is for Not That Unique Are They! We've looked at their 54mm solid paratroopers here and we've looked at the blow-mould poses as both a blow-mould and solid by other brands or under other brand marks, but under Unique - as I said - these sets of four are in Wilko's at the moment.

I have a set of 12 in the storage lot which I think also came from Wilkinson's but about eight or nine years ago (possibly the green-carded set), while an earlier set existed. The drop in contents reflects inflation, but a drop from 12 to 4 in one step has a whiff of greed too, especially if you were running the twelve for 15-20 years, prior to the sudden count-drop!

A drop to eight would have been a better start, and if you're dropping to four, why not issue one of each colour?

This is a make-weight for the post, the recent D&D Distribution catalogue shot showing the currently common figures we've seen here under several brands already, they are the ones with the closed canopy and single-shroud which I don't like very much! Also, someone needs to have a word with the copywriter!

We've also seen these several times but I couldn't remember if we'd seen a four-blister one, I know Brian B has sent shelfies of Jaru 3-blister packs and I've bought or shelfied two- or three-blister cards, but have we had a four? We have now! Kandytoys of Exeter.

From the archive comes Norton-Thomson's 1988 Lion Group 'Pocket Money Toys' catalogue, and a different take on the paratrooper toy altogether; they are fired into the sky by a long, rigid . . . err . . . 'member' placed . . . err . . . between their thighs, the . . . err . . . 'snake's head' engaging with a steel spring and catch mechanism . . . well endowed lads, but - ouch!

"Most inappropriate toy in INGERLAND EVER!"; he spittle-flecks down the 'phone to the Daily Wail's 'really important news' desk, for lesser bloggers to re-post! Also issued under TNT branding as The Sky Devils Paratroopers as code M7626A.

S is for Shelfies

A quick round-up of shelfies I've taken over the last few months and not used in specific articles . . .

Currently in The Works, there seems to be only the three variations and the only variation is the figure, so to get all three you need £18, and will end-up with a lot of duplicate stuff, so a Shelfie seems to be the answer for future identification when they turn up loose.

The figures are around the 54mm mark, with two subscale tractors and animals in various sizes. The square 'tube' is quite long - you can see about a third in this shot - as there is a play-mat in the lower section.

Going, going . . . fire sale at Poundworld will end soon, these are - clearly - a bit 'pink and girly' but they are solids, around 80mm, and again, should they turn-up in mixed lots in a year or a few; label them ITP Imports!

Twins! Vacuous-looking twins at that!

I think I shot these in TKMaxx and I just like the fact that other brands are fighting back against the hegemony of Lego with cool licenses of their own, Brian B has sent me a fantastic Bending Unit which will go in the next Lego-likey post!

Wilco-branded (Wilkinson's - the real reason Woolworth's died), these are large, mixed scale PVC type animals, and again will help ID them in the future.

Back to the closing-down sale at Poundworld Plus here in town, these were reduced to 80p so I got the blue one . . . motorcycle! The vehicles are really 'cheap and nasty' and typically - for these days - no military option, but a motorcycle is not to be sniffed at; for less than a quid!

These are statuette crayons, with a pointed-bit hidden behind the battlements of the catchy packaging. With a King, Queen, princess, wizard and witch; that soldier's got a lot of guarding to do! But they're figural! NPW, who's novelties have featured here several times in the last few years; these were shot in TKMaxx.

These . . . TKMaxx . . . I just don't really get? It's apparently a glass drying mat, but with four semi-flat ballet-dancers. How are you supposed to dry the glasses? If you catch the dancer as you place the glass over it with wet hands you may drop the glass, what about shallow glasses? What about narrow champagne flues, or champagne bowls, why only room for four? Or do you place the glasses between the dancers, in which case; why have them? And even if that's the case there's only room for about six, and no mugs, the handles will get in the way - the whole concept is just daft!

A triumph of farty-art idea over practicality, hundreds of people were involved in designing, tooling, producing, packing, procuring and shipping this Caca!

It seems to me to be a sublime example of everything that's wrong with consumerism, as espoused by Thatcherite-Raganomics and the mantra of 'market forces' for the last 39 years. A totally impractical, ill thought-out, relatively unnecessary product, packaged to appeal to a certain type of 'lifestyle' cretin or brain-dead fashion-victim! People with bows behind their family pictures, matching his'n'hers anoraks and pink loo paper! The same people who've been buying waistcoats over the last two weeks.

The figures have fully-round skirts and plinths, but chunky block-flat bodies, they are silicon-rubber (I think), around 50mm (not counting the base) and could be fun; taken off the mats and displayed with the Britains, Gem and other dancers, but they represent our need to keep consuming until there's nothing left, it's not a good sign.

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!

C is for Countdown to Halloween - 8 - Wilko's Pack of Bugs . . . seen before!

These were also (like yesterday's) bought a few weeks ago, and are a repacking of the slimy bugs we looked at a year or so ago, last time in The Works, but now with . . .

. . . added polyethylene ants! That's it, Wilko from Wilkinson's; another pound; more mag'gits and some ants!

Comparison shots with the previous lot from The Works, the new worms are a tad browner, and the maggots are a purer white, the unit-cost differential of extra ants is equalised by dropping a few pupae - six over the original ten + three ants!

Halloween - barely!

Scary - hardly!

Realistic - yes actually; the worms and maggots are!

Bargain - 11 critters for £1, yeah, I think so!

T is for Ten-pins and Terrasaurs!

For which spell-check is desperate for me to use Pterosaur! Clever spell-check, but no humorous intellectual, not that I would claim to be eye'ther . . . eei'ther but you know what I mean; these AI algorithms improve with every generation (which according to Moor's Law is not long), but they'll never quite grasp the finer nuances of human idiocy.

Anyway, we're back to rubbers, and as I've had had various 'follow-up's' and 'again's' for erasers in the past I needed another title and its explanation has provided the lead-in paragraphs!

From four-quid to two-quid to a pound, and it's probably been halfway round the planet, maybe twice! Novelty shite . . . in one image, you have all the evidence you need for the potential end of human civilisation, it's now a race between whether we will poison the planet before the weather does for us! House of Holland clearance via TK Maxx.

The reason for my purchasing them - given my above opinion - is that A) they were there already, nothing I could do about that and B) you may remember I showed a bunch of mostly Christmas cracker bowling pins a year or two ago, and while the bulk of them were the same size, there were a couple of others, and in various materials - with more than two being a collection; these have increased the scope of that 'sub-' collection!

In the meantime a far easier to justify set of erasers winged its way to Small Scale World Towers via Brian Berke; Imperial Toys being the ultimate culprit for the supply of this particularly pure stash of addictive substance!

They appeared upon initial inspection to be a better version of the Wilko ones we looked at a while ago, but after studying them I decided they are probably all of the same origin.

They proved impossible to photograph so here are two shots, neither is that colour-true, to be honest, but they are (with the exception of the - always hard to shoot - orange) quite muted pastels anyway.

Wilkinson above and Imperial below, the colour reproduction is a little better but the orange has burnt-out. The differences are numerous, in that the dino's are different colours, the egg is slightly different in its base 'dent' and both the mix of dinosaurs and their dino-poses is different.

However the orange carnivore is both the same shade and the same moulding,the ceratopsians are also identical, the two-each of four colours 'rule' applies and so I think the differences are down to batch/contract, rather than any indication of another maker's copying.

The question is whether Wilko are getting theirs from Imperial, or if that they are independently both going to the same factory gate or shipping agent - these days as likely to be an Alibaba wholesaler's page as any of the old firms?

I might suggest that there's probably an eighth pose to find (maybe more?), and I've posed them with Airfix's Boy the 'dinoheard' from the Tarzan set to give you some idea of how very small they are.

Thanks as always to Brian Berke for adding another piece of the puzzle to the whole, which reminds me; he also sent a couple of Jig Toys which I added to that page last Thursday, nothing new, but interesting colour-way on the helicopter.

S is for Something New

I picked this up in Wilkinson's Basingrad four weeks ago and can't remember how much I paid for it, but I know it wasn't much or I wouldn't have bothered; maybe a couple of quid? £1:50? Something like that, and it's fun!

 

Speedy Turbo Jet Wind-up Speed Boat, I've placed a figure in it so you can see that it's fine for 54 or 60-mil figures and would make a nice rigid-raider for your Airfix SAS or Vietnam forces! They had a speedboat as well, and both came in two colour-ways.

A wind-up motor so it'll run round and around the swimming pool - until you can sink it with an elastic superhero catapult!

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?