Z is for Zàini

First post of 2024, let's hope it's a better year than the last four, because people have literally given-up on the funny-how-awful-this-year-is memes, as they get steadily worse, you don't want to tempt fate!

So, I bought these in Lidl while purchasing mini-stollen before Christmas, and thought to eat them and photograph them while I listened to the few fireworks, if New Year's 'Moment' said anything about the coming year, it's that poverty will bite, as hardly anyone bought fireworks this year . . . no bad thing for pets and the environment, but, Tory-sponsored hunger and evictions hover.

They had two choices, I can't remember what the other one was, but it was 1-in-3 of something 'girly', so I chose the Scoobie-Doo one as I've always been a fan of Scoobie, although you have my permission to turn Scrappy into lion-meat.

It's the same with Tom & Jerry; who's the stupid kitten, who's the idiot different-coloured mouse in a nappy? Phuq-em off, out of it, we want the old characters doing what they do, to each-other, over and over, and over again, we don't want mawkish juveniles intervening after some focus group's been talked round to liking some new characters!

 

I was on a focus group once . . . not only did they try to convince us to 'choose A', but went with A after we'd explained why it was a bad idea, and then disappeared without a trace. A toy soldier thing, I'll have all the bumf in the archive somewhere, they paid attendance for the day, London-parking and mileage, coffee and biscuits, there may even have been a buffet lunch, I can't remember, but, still, it was a good breeze!

So, we've got the cam-snail, an old novelty, which Kinder have done a bigger version of, over the years, an over-moulded pencil-clinger and a figure in 40mm polystyrene from the Train Your Dragon franchise, which was (with the exception of the figure) a bit disappointing!

 

The guide says not all surprises are shown, so while there are more figures, there are also more lame pencil decorations, but the Zàini (apparently founded in 1919) are less than half the price of Kinder, so luck dictates that if you buy enough, you should get what you are looking for.

It's the same with the Scooby-Doo stuff, the inner sheet has two 'Mr. Saunders' dressed-up as haunting monsters, so the range is worth the collecting, if you've got kids, I'll look for complete sets on evilBay in a year or two!

News, Views Etc . . . Out There Now!

Quick run of some domestic and contributed shelfies;

I shot these in The Works on the 30th January, might be of some use to ship war-gamers, I'm guessing they are old 1960/70's tools put-back into production for the express production of a cheapie toy and three-quid's not a lot for a ship kit, even a small and perhaps dated one, anyone recognise the original from the instruction diagrams . . . or the artwork?

40-odd parts and can be finished as waterline, and while I suspect the artwork on the side of the box is the whole [four-kit] line (and my local store only has New Jersey's), they are all large capital ships with class-sisters who could be modelled from duplicate kits? Anyway, out there now, try the website?

These were TKMaxx, 6th February, more from HTI (Halsall)'s Teamsterz, a three-deck boxed set of approximately 1:48th/50th die-cast emergency/first responder vehicles with two more figures which will start to turn up in charity-shop bags soon and in rummage trays at show in a year or two!

Indecently - the card shipping container/port-a-cabin is an old Blue Box trick! Tom of Finland's got his truncheon out; he must be a special constable! But what's with the peaked, chef's hats! Out There Now!

Kinder egg's, pink, nom-nom-nomnivore for the use of; have a new series of Barbie's, I've lost count of how many lines there are in the range now, this must be the fourth or fifth line-up? Film Director Barbie, Doctor (or vet?) Barbie and . . . err . . . cage-fighter Barbie?

Figures are quite nice but idiosyncratic, with two clipping firmly into their bases and the other having no fixer and constantly falling-over! And they all have some kind of card interactive or backdrop, which are hideously bent from their time in the ovum and just get in the way, it's not even clear what the left-hand ones do, some sort of game I think, but multi-lingual pictogram instructions leave you with no real idea!

Each also comes with a mini sticker-sheet, but they are those paper ones Kinder have always used, which curl, dry and fall off over time. I wish they'd go over to the vinyl type that Lego use, if you get them straight and rub them on with a finger-nail; they stay-on! Out There Now, don't eat them all at once!

Sticking with capsule-eggs, but switching to contributions, Brian Berke found these Disney toy eggs in the 'States back in the late autumn, you can find Zàini in the UK, usually smaller independents or the sort of General Post Office/stationers which are becoming an endangered species in the South East!

I do have a few interesting Zàini-LZ (Luigi Zàini), Maraja, Metro, Zepter, Partizan (et al) capsule toys so one day we'll have a 'mini-season' on the minor-make capsule toys here, once the box turns-up in the garage! Although; Peter Evans gave me a bunch of Maraja last May, which are in the queue somewhere?

Brian also shot these at the end of December last year; really quite good-looking copies of Matchbox Afrika Korps in a nice sandy-coloured plastic, branded to Arcady from DA Toys Group, in the 'States Now!

And having mentioned Peter; he shot this set somewhere in North or Central (?) London (I guess) on the 14th of January. The fort - an apparently unbranded generic (there may be something on the back of the box?) - looks to be a solid, stackable modular thing, in a soft rubber or faom-plastic of some kind, while the figures have DNA from Starlux (archer) Cofalux (pole-arm) Timpo (mounted jouster) and Supreme (swordsman) among others!

He didn't say exactly where he'd found it - in an (un-named) discount store of some kind, but I've not seen them locally (we have 'Stepford' universal-brand high streets round here!), so try larger inner-city or out-of-town clearance places? It's bit pricy at £12.99 (for tight-wads like me) but very useful and a bargain at 2-for-twenty-quid; if it is in your budget. Also two forts would make a very substantial piece of baronial real-estate! While a single one would be equally useful for small-scale gamers. Out There Somewhere!

D is for Dogs

I'm not particularly a 'dog person', I'm a cat person, I find dogs to be a bit simplistic, slavishly sycophantic and/or bad without the character of cats, I was fond of our Red Setter when I was a kid, but that's the thing, the brainless befriending the brainless! Nevertheless, when dogs come-in to small scale world we will show dogs, and two lots of doggie-doo came in last Tuesday, so; let's revisit dogs!

Peter Evans donated these to the Blog last Tuesday morning, and life being what it is; I then found another canine candidate later in the day!

Perfect Moments (who we have looked at recently) have marked their moniker on the package, they look a bit like the Henbrandt dog, but seem to be a different set, although painted like the Henbrandt set of wild animals (in the above-linked post), so possibly the same factory, however there are several sets of these small animals doing the rounds at the moment.

These are also smaller than most of the dogs in previously canine-themed posts, and would - with a bit of a re-paint - go well with 54mm figures; maybe better with 60 or 70mm figures?

But to argue for the other side; you may remember that both Perfect Moments and Henbrandt use the Oker cellulose-bag packaging?

As you can see they are all reasonably recognisable breeds, under the poor, glossy paint-job and even the poodle is bearable (I hate poodles with a vengeance - horrid little cotton-balls of flouncy ponce!).

Then (Tuesday) on the way 'back to the sticks' I popped-off the travel network at Clapham Junction to check the cheapie-discount stores I remembered being there in the 1990's, and while they had all gone (as I suspected) there was a larger 3-unit party-shop roughly where a couple of them used to be sited, and I managed to get a small bag of novelty stuff, which we will be looking at over the coming days.

Among those novelties were these capsules, none of which had any clue as to their contents, and after I'd opened a few I realised they all had the same thing (which I have in storage - green with a blue collar . . .maybe, red collar?), so I grabbed one, not knowing I already had the Perfect Moments dogs in the bag I was carrying!

Marajà are one of several brands connected to the capsule toy company LZ - Zàini from Italy, which is how I came by the first one, about 15/20 years ago! I think he/it was in a hollow-chocolate bear with a Christmas style foil wrapper, but clearly someone (there's no branding on the toy) had a warehouse stillage full of the things, and here they are, many years later, the other end of Europe, being sold at 20p a-pop, no chocolate!

So; thanks to Peter's gift, a bit of synergy and a global glut in polymer novelties, and we have a dog-post . . . and we all know what dogs do to their posts - another reason to distrust them!

G is for Gift Egg Updates - 1 - Overview

I didn't know whether to use this as a last post roundup, or a first post intro, but guessing a lot of the die-hard 'Toy Soldier' purists will quickly get pretty sick of little novelties (and it's not December so I can't use that excuse!), especially five posts of them; I figure if we start with the bits and pieces, we can end with a short post...with proper figures!

In the beginning there were gift eggs, and they were egg shaped and full of gifts! Originally these were made of waffer-thin wood, by the inter-war period tin was common (and is making a comeback as trinket storage/jewelry boxes) with papier-mâché and heavy, pressed card also popular, but by the 1970's it was another item of human construct ripe for a plasticisation!

Kinder themselves (still the market leader) have made two changes to packaging in the last year or so, firstly the wrap-around was changed to two foil halves (of which one is shown flattened above) joined pole-to-pole, and more recently they've been turning-up with two moulded plastic halves or 'clamshells' like a lunch-box snack-pack dip! Because when the world is knee-deep in plastic waste; let's find more things to make out of plastic!

The Ziani Frozen we looked at a year ago (I got the little dwarf thing, you may remember) but I've since had a session of scanning the paperwork into the archive, while these two Trolls (one of which I think we looked at in the novelty posts last Xmas) are both imported by CBG of Belgium (not Minot!) from WF Industrial of China. The paper slip of the earlier being replaced by, yes, you guessed it...a printed plastic sheet - that's not going to find its way into the environment between the sweet-shop and home/school is it!

The drag-racer in the upper shot was broken, some of Kinder's suppliers in the 1980's used a silver plastic which was very frangible, and is almost impossible to glue, however I have a method...I coat both halves in a cyanoacrylate 'super-glue' gel, then put a blob of that plumbers-sealant between the two and wedge them together.

The sealant evaporates away to nothing in minutes but bonds and fills nicely, being mixed with the super-glue gives the whole thing added robustness...or at least I like to think so! Time and chemistry will tell if it's a busted-flush?

Below is a bunch of Kinder motorcycles and such-like (pedal trike!) from the 1980's and 1990's.

From that same lot (I got at the PW show back in May) came most of the ships, I've left them in the bags as they are a real bugger to set-up for photography and I have a bunch-more in storage, so one day we will come back to them and do them justice.

Below them a selection of lorries and vans, we looked at a couple of them with the other novelty mini-trucks in December-last, sorry! Another racing-car for the project...but I think I already have the yellow one, so it can stay on its low-loader.

This is brand-new, bought last week for a quid in Wilkinson's (Wilco) and branded to them; it's an egg full of rubber dinosaurs no bigger than a fingernail! Four poses and four colours, packed as two each of two each, I suspect you would only need two eggs for all four of all four, but one's enough to give you the idea. Same new crumbly rubber as other things we've looked at though.

D is for Mar...mer...err...not DC

While clearing a few DC bits out of Picasa around the submissions by Brian, I also thought to clear these out, but they are the other lot - Marvel! It's funny, when I was a kid the impression was always given (or that's the message I got) that Marvel were all powerful, and DC the 'also-rans' or 'smaller party'.

But actually it's clear that it's the other way round, Marvel have the Spider Man (a copy of the Man Bat) and err . . . the Hulk? Thor totally escaped me and Captain America was . . . an American! Likewise; Collectively the Avengers are a warped mirror of the Justice League?

DC - on the other hand - have Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, Super Girl . . . a whole bunch of big characters, but anyway, that was my take on it then and my opinion now, however; some people prefer Marvel and for them: a quick round-up of current gift-egg contents . . . and a few other bits.

These are all out there at the moment, the Zàini 'Ultimate Spiderman' ones have reappeared with a greater choice of contents and next to them are a set of 'Avengers' eggs from the same source with various characters on the wrappers, I got a Hulk, but I saw Thor and a Captain America one.

This figure is becoming a bugbear for me, I was given one by Garth Morgan years ago as thanks for helping him with his Blog, then I bought one from Peter Evans in a mixed-lot, and finally when I bought one of the eggs I got him again! And I've forced you to share [suffer] the same disappointment . . . because he's been on the blog before!

It is nevertheless a nice sculpt, with a dynamic pose attained through the use of multiple clip-together parts to get round the problem of undercuts. I probably said all that before too, if I was you; I'd ask for my money back, this is duplicate copy!

The new changes in the gift line-up, between issues 1 and what - going on the information on the safety leaflet - seems to be issue 6; namely; the addition of three pencil-rubber/erasers.

I actually got one of the looped 'charms' - of interest as it is an over-moulding; using the layered over-moulding Italian military badges were using long before Timpo had a go. Which is not a dig at Timpo, their form of over-moulding was a far more technical achievement that this one-layer-over-another style, but you can see where the idea came from.

Also I got a pencil-rubber, but from the Avengers egg, not the Ultimate Spiderman one. As there are nice figures in the series I will try again, until I've had all the wrappers and scanned them into the archive, but these will all turn-up in mixed lots five or ten years from now, if experience is any guide! It's worth noting that the disclaimer/'small print' down the bottom of the paper slip hints at a wider range?

Bonbon Buddies are offering a much wider range of gifts, but no figures, so I won't be returning to them in a hurry! This is real 5p / 10¢ vending machine stuff isn't it!

These came from The Works quite a while ago (2011), and were clearance from a larger line coming from Hasbro Canada; reasonable figures in around 54mm I think - they're in storage now and might have been closer to 60 or even 70mm.

I picked these up in the same The Works about three-weeks ago, for a quid each, and I can't remember the handling brand, but I will get more when I see them (they've disappeared but should reappear) as they are really nice figures, and we'll get the brand then.

The Disney Princesses are the 'new movie' style which is semi- or near-realistic, especially when turned into a 3D figure, while The Hulk is a solid chunk of PVC; these figurines are/have real value for money.

The Hulk was funny . . . every week he'd lose his temper, rip his shirt 'clean ahrrrff' (to quote Dirty Harry), somehow maintain his trousers at the waist but shred the turn-ups? Tip a pick-up truck or car onto its side, not kill a bad-guy or two, stop a digger, let the bad guys run off, calm-down, find a woman to fall in love with, do something in the bedroom with her (which we knew involved kissing a girl...urrrh), have a shower, get new clothes from and then leave the woman - citing his crap life and at the same time next week, be found losing his temper again, in another set of clothes altogether! And where did his little rucksack go between the temper-loss and the end credits, when it always reappeared? Maybe his rucksack was like a Tardis, waiting somewhere out of shot to be called when needed, filled with a thousand sets of clothes . . . and shoes . . . and a toothbrush!

Calling the curtain down on Superheroes of all types for a while here on the Blog are an unknown 'super-deform' Spidey that must have come-in with a mixed lot at some time and the set of Mon Desir figures we've also seen before.

G is for Gift Eggs and Capsule Toys - Part I - Last year or so...

Like gift horses...they sometimes have figures in, but won't sack your city or put everyone to the sword!

This one is very disappointing, unless you like stickers, fridge-magnets or jelly-beans...I like jelly beans so I was a third there, perusal of the sheet revealed that no matter how many you bought you would only have got a fridge magnet and a sticker! Which is why I only ever by one if the contents are unknown. This was from an independent sweet shop last Christmas, and they are probably still available from the Great Character Candy Company.

These packs of three are from the 99p Store chain, following the pattern of the original Kinder, they have the bonus of no sickly white-chocolate layer, made by Balaban Guida and imported into the UK by Gateway Sourcing, toys are a bit hit-and-miss, much like Kinder really!

Similar but not the same container as the Star Wars one, this was a bigger disappointment, a strange biscottii type thing, lenticular card and a basic rubber-disc pencil-topper! From Uno-Foods and/or Candy Planet out of Poland.

This was given to me at Plastic Warrior's 30th show in Richmond back in May by Peter Evans, he may have had it for a year or so, and it's from the Zaini family of chocolate eggs we've looked at before here somewhere. This is lovely, a dynamic pose being achieved by skirting the undercut problem with multiple clip-together parts. There are three other stand alone figures in the set and five looped for use as danglers, key-rings or charms.

They (Zàini) are currently doing a set of Frozen characters - see next post (below).

G is for Gift Eggs and Capsule Toys - Part II - Current or Recent

This would have been 'the last three weeks if I hadn't just lost two weeks to real life crap AND tonsillitis? At fifty-effing-one...what's that all about? The UN's 2011-declared planet-wide carcinogenic atmosphere, that's what!

Anyway penicillin's kicked-in and these are from late May-early June now, so all still findable!

£1 gum-ball machines (no chocolate!) at the moment, from Tarco International and of the choice, I got the one I'd have most wanted, first shot! It's (robots don't have a sex...not even sex-robots!) around 54mm compatible so I might try and get another for a UNIT dio/vignette with some Deetail or Airfix para's, although; with only 6 in the set it would be worth trying to get the set, I don't know how the maths works out on a random pull, but it'll be maybe as few as 11 purchases?

The others look to be more 30mm size wise, and the Tardis would join a growing collection of small-scale police telephone boxes! From the fact that the K-9 is 'exclusive' suggests the other five have been available previously or elsewhere, it's a very nice little model anyway.

Mimi is slowly collecting these and the first 6 had no duplicates (a baby Rottweiler has been added since the photo-shoot), they are also in sans-chocolate £1 machines, but it states they are series III and I haven't noticed series's one and two anywhere?

Imported by Idea Vending, an outfit called A&A Global Industries seems to be the master behind the throne, and they go quite well with the current Schleich puppies, size-wise.

Back to Zàini and chocolate; these are available about the place (One-stop convenience-store for this actual one) and again I was lucky to get one of the more useful figures, as again there are half-heads looped as charms and some less useful figures!

I feel this is my reward for getting through a Christmas day round my Brother's where small relatives had a doll which played the Frozen theme on an eight-second loop endlessly...and if you tried to sabotage the thing it switched to Spanish until the little ones used tech-magic to 'reduce' the torture back to English!

We looked at the Fravend Alien in a new production round-up a while ago, and I've since found a traditional yellow 'smiley' and this blue one and stuck them in the archive without testing them to destruction like the first green one!

And from the same machines we have that old 1960's perennial; Trolls, the licence is held by Russ Berrie, I suspect these via Brabo-CBG of Belgium are not sending many royalties back to East Rutherford, Nujoisey! Both these are in 40p machines (definitely no chocolate!), or were they 20p? I'll check next time I do the rounds!

P is for Premiums

There have never been so many premiums around as there are now, they fill the gap left by the old 1960’s Hong Kong rack toys, or 1970’s Lucky Bags, so here is not so much a round-up, as just a quick over-view of some of the toys currently available.


Corinthian are responsible for several of the current crop, as well as Ben10 (which has totally escaped me, something on TV I think…shows my age!) and the Gormiti (Below) they are producing Zoo’s, Pets, Marine Animals and other “…in my pocket” toys, the brand-name originally produced/issued by a MEG/Kellogg’s/Matchbox consortium in the mid-late 1980’s as larger single colour or ‘dab-painted figurines around 40mm in a rubberized vinyl material.

These are around 50mm, in harder vinyl and follow the trend started by Galoob and Co. in the 90’s. The packaging talks of larger sets with more figures per box, I haven’t seen any so I’m guessing Toy Chains like The Entertainer or the ubiquitous Toys’R’Us?

The Gormiti have the added ‘bonus’ figures in unpainted gold or silver and being smaller (25mm – ideal for role-playing) come two per the smallest container. Like the Ben10 you get a small bag of cheap, undersized jelly-beans and a leaflet with some of the others in the range.

Zeta (Barcelona), Zàini (Milan) and a third company beginning with Z which I can’t find right now (all from Spain and probably all the same firm) have aimed at the Kinder market, with cheap toys from China in the Christmas Cracker mould, sometimes rip-off or direct copies of Giodi or Res Plastics (both Italy) or Bruder (Germany) products.

The subject of the egg (or other object, the ‘other Z’ did hollow-chocolate Bears a few years ago) has no relationship to the contents as you can see from the jet-fighter that came from this ‘Flintstones’ egg! Pink Princess gift-eggs were in Poundstreacher a year or so ago, probably the same set-up?

The current set of Lego point-of-sale collectables, in the style of trading cards, Character Options are fighting back with a Dr. Who set, the Dalek for which I have added to the ever-lengthening Dalek post, while an overview of construction-block figures has gone on the Other Collectables blog. And I mean ‘Fighting Back’, there’s been a ‘Free-Figure!’ war in the red-tops for a week or a few now!

Not illustrated here today are a set of Superhero eggs with 30mm hard styrene figures currently doing the rounds of local shops, and the endless out-put of Tomy in their shopping-mall dispensers…no chocolate with those but they’re the cheapest at a pound a shot!

W is for While I was away....

Well, while I've been off-line, the trickle of bits into the 'master collection' has continued, if not apace, at least with a pleasantly surprising occasionalness! Here are a few bits that have come in over the last 4 or so weeks.

The day the Internet was lost I actually managed to get to the Post Office in the morning and send little parcels off to various souls, among whom were the boys over at Moonbase Central (see bloglist - left), and Paul call-me-Woodsy liked his parcel so much he sent me these Polish Flats by return.

I suspect the bottom two may be Russian, but as I have similar figures copied from Russian flats but made in Sophia, and carried in a Bulgarian box, there's every reason to believe they are Polish. The silver ones above will definitely be Polish, probably Centrum, the stands are similar to a lot of production from Poland. Thanks Woodsy!

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, his blogging partner Bill call-me-Wotan seems to have emptied every drawer in the house! Those racing cars and the little plane are definitely 'Kitchen Drawer' stuff!! There are all sorts of nice bits here to be sorted into the right pile of boxes in the next few days, not least the Cherilea UN machine-gunner, who, apart from belonging to arguably the worst sculpted set of toy soldiers ever made, anywhere, ever!...is also rarely found in one piece.

Likewise the Cherilea 8th army guy is usually missing the end of his Bren-gun, while other items of note are the Hong Kong copy of a Timpo 8th army man marked HK, but probably from the same stable as ABC, the Corgi Rhino and the hard plastic seated US sailor/Coast Guard-man who I've encountered before but not managed to obtain, and who must come from a motorized toy, probably a boat, he has a locating slot on his bum! Thanks Wotan!

From the Dennis Murry collection I mentioned this afternoon, comes this exquisite combat bugler! Already one of my favorite pieces in the whole collection, I have a couple of these European cavalry (posted as part of the Plastic Warrior show report back in May) and some smaller 50mm Spanish plastics in khaki, and they do have a certain undeniable charm about them.

As can be seen there is a similarity to the Britains teenage show-jumper, but it's not a direct take, and with the rider moulded on, the similarity is equine only! Can anybody give him a makers name? The collection contained a lot of French figures and a few Dom Plastik paratroopers, but I would have said this guy looks Spanish in style and therefore - origin?

Finally, feeling rich for half a hour about three weeks ago (I'd just got paid for a painting job and was still a few hundred yards short of the bank!) I grabbed a couple of these as samples, very tasty samples. They are by Zàini (LZ mark), and are clearly rivals to Kinder, about 7 years ago they did a set of Chocolate bears. And I saw some pink 'Disneyesque' eggs in some store the other day which were probably Zàini as well.

If the opposition have the product recognition of Kinder it makes sense to attack on a dozen fronts at the same time in order to get as many 'curiosity' sales as possible. These use toys imported from China, and the Flintstones graphic gave-up a jet-fighter!! Hay ho!