N is for Nerfing Necrophiles!

Had a brilliant eMail from our roving reporter in New York last night, an enhanced shot of the Scully & Scully Christmas tree has been added to the bottom of that post, and he sent us these;

 

And, because they are Lanard Toys, they may well come to the UK, specifically Smyths, who carried their (Lanard's) sci-fi set for some years. Indeed, this may already be here, I had a disappointing visit to Smyths the other day, but I wasn't necessarily looking properly in the Nerf Gun section, so I'll head back there and have a look? Ideal xmas prezzie too! Many thanks to Brian for finding these.

W is for White Buttons & White Ghosts

I shot the first of these in Sainsbury's a couple of weeks ago, found the second a few days later, and Brian Berke sent us the rest a few days ago, and they illustrate one of this year's Halloween trends - short, fat, stumpy white ghosts with cartoon faces!

 

The white button toys in Sainsbury's, among the only Bloggable novelties I found this year (there is another post's-worth), and technically, well, factually, they aren't white-button, they are pull-back & go, so I lied there!

 

I then found this Ghost candle (right) of similar size, both about 70mm high, in The Range, and this design of short (height-to-width ratio), fat ghosts with -  mostly - silly faces, is a real trend this year, with basically this design, found as soft toys of pillow-size, large ceramics of the TKMaxx decor-types, blow-ups and etc . . .

And these - branded to Daiso (of Japan) - are white-button's . . . I suspect, from the left, a jiggler or runner (the ghost), a jumper (the pumpkin) and, obviously, a walker Zombie? Not seen over here, maybe next year, or maybe in another region. And, we find the same basic design of the ghost, possibly with flappy arms? Thanks to Brian for the shots of this last trio.

 

Daiso/Seria seem to be a chain of 100-yen stores, like pound- or dime-stores, but a different value point, in Japan, and also operating to similar values in the local currencies of South Korea and Singapore.

D is for Derivative Drivel!

We don't have many 'D's, do we, weird as there's plenty of words being with D, anyway, I was trying to find a synonym for Matter's Arising, which I know we had, not that long ago, and Derivative Drivel will do!

This arrived today from New York, I shot it upside down to hide all the personal stuff, but have since opened it and there's some good stuff coming to Small Scale World soon - many thanks to Brian Berke!

 

While I bought this from Peter Evans at the show on Saturday, and while I don't usually credit by name, when money changes hands (you could never remember everyone, and don't know half the people in the room!), Peter donates a lot to the Blog, and this was well below real value, so there will be a highlights post or two!

 

We looked at this rub-down set from Westair a few weeks ago, I think, but I forgot I'd shot it twice, and you can see the transfers in these shots, different to the old Lettraset or Patterson-Blick ones, but very much in the same vein.

This monstrosity was found when I cleared the weeds from the pond, I don't know why I was clearing the weeds from the pond when we have accepted an offer, and it's technically someone else's house, but there you go!

 

I would have cleaned it for the collection, but it was more than slightly-damaged and went in the bin! It's modern, a bead-soft or whatever they are called, so thrown over the fence from either side, by kids, or possibly stolen and then dropped by a Heron or one of the many Gulls on Fleet Pond?? It's not like I haven't had the water-lily out several times over the years!

I got these Fun Express zombies the other day, from an evilBay seller, we have looked at them before, but that sample was shite, although I may not have realised that time, how similar two of the sculpts are, or how much they differ individual-to-individual, due to shrinkage/heat (arms all over the place), so might have missed some that time, but here are all four poses in both colours, the snot-green is not glow-in-the-dark.

 

Peter also messaged me after the show-post to point out the guardsman I thought might be a Hong Kong copy of Crescent, is more likely to be a Hilco plastic-from-hollow-cast, which is sort of a better find, I checked him and the mark which I thought was one of those blobby Hong-over-Kong marks, is, in fact just a blob, so I bow to Peter's superior knowledge, and better eyes!

 

I found this on a hook in a small independent corner-shop somewhere in the Surry Hills the other night, when the thirst for a Rubicon fizzy-mango came over me, and as it may have been behind a six-hundred-quid card fraud I discovered tonight, I hope you enjoy it! Luckily I had the cash on me, as I'd just filled the tank, when my card was declined!

 

Credited to Asda supermarkets and claiming to be 8 snakes, it seems to be a bunch of previously-seen here, erasersaurs (10) and 2 of the original snakes, make of that what you will, but clearly I should have checked the label!

E is for Eerily Eatable Edibles

So, you need some energy to get through Halloween, cold nights and all that jazz, and certainly in the US, who have re-exported this nonsense to us, the bucket of sweets is everything, over here I think it's not been picked-up in the same way, we ARE a reserved lot, but I'm sure on the bigger coucil estates and affordable developements, the parents have lists of 'safe houses' or group tours . . . Luckily, the scrounging little bleeders have never come here . . . bah humbug!

 

We're not looking at normal brands with a cheap, naff, Halloween add-on wrap, but rather more dedicated stuff, which has been produced expressly for the season, and I only found two, there were larger things I wouldn't spend my hard-earned on, but these were both pocket-money, Halloweeny and figural!

So, the choccies were from Lidl, and had the taste of proper chocolate, not the veg-fat, plastic crap Mondelez are converting all our old favourites into! There were 16 figures, under the wrapper, all the same basic jelly-mould sculpt, and I assume you were supposed to get four of each, but I had a three (Dracula/vampires) and a corresponding five (ghosts)! One each of the wrappers was saved for scanning into the archive.

While these came from Morrisons and were all 'strawberry' flavour (a pretty innocuous tutti-fruity if you ask me), although the 'painted' detailing seems to have been dyed flour-paste and could be detected as bland moments on the tongue, before it was all chewed-up properly! And it was real tooth glue! Hey - we taste this shit, so you don't have to!

The bat failed to survive the unwrapping process and shot little bits of grey glass all over the floor of the flat, so that's a chunk of my deposit under threat! Fun, and given the lack of this kind of stuff, to be commended.

EMCE is for Effigy Manufacturer Confirms Events

Back in December I received a nice eMail from Joe Sena, on the subject of the little output/figure list I appended to one of the earlier EMCE posts, a subsequent back and forth of correspondence produced this pocket/potted history of the various brands I had been getting confused by, so - with Joe's permission - here it is for those who may be interested;

 

**************    *************** 

 

"After a 10 year period in Los Angeles, where I helped grow the merch side of a large Star Trek convention company in the early ‘90s as designer/creative director, I moved over to the New Media Group at Universal Studios where I went from writer/producer to Creative Director in a few months – largely because in the mid 90s, anyone who could spell “Internet” was an expert (also, I was the studio’s “Official Universal Monsters” expert because I was the only nerd who made it past the gatekeepers). A few years later, Universal was bought, I saw handwriting on the wall, started a web design firm with other Uni' ex-pats which crashed and burned within a year.

Moved back to NYC with my tail between my legs and went back to what I did for a living before the internet, which was to make merch. Most was of the apparel variety, off-brand and original stuff for fans of horror movies. I made a product called the “Zombie Outbreak Survival Kit” which exploded, and made me enough money to put toward growing the business.

My business’ legal name is SphereWerx, LLC, which I named after the Unisphere, the steel globe landmark in my hometown of Flushing, Queens, near the stadium where my poor Met's attempt to play baseball. After a few years of having to re-spell or correct the pronunciation of “Spherewerx,” I registered “Fourth Castle” as a “doing business as” name. I named it such because of the influence of your fellow countrymen – as with the King Of Swamp Castle in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, this was my fourth attempt at business, and it didn’t fall into the swamp😉

Coming back to NYC reunited me with an old high school buddy named Paul Clarke, who I was stunned to discover had a business called “Dr. Mego”, in which he would hand-make replacement parts for collectors of Mego action figures. If your Captain America lost a shield or Batman his cowl, Paul hand-poured them in resin, colored them and sent them off.

Eventually, he received a cease and desist from DC and Marvel, and asked me what he should do, and I said that I would put money into trying to get licences And bring back the Mego toys of the 1970s.

 

Through several partnerships with other license-holders, we successfully brought back Marvel, DC, Star Trek and other Mego-style figures, expanding beyond mere reproductions. I created the brand EMCE toys, drawn to look like the “Mego” logo, but pronounced “EM-CEE” or “M.C”, which stood for “Mego Corporation.”

Paul and I were handshake-partners, we never had anything on paper, but we agreed that we would split EMCE branded toys. Sadly, Paul’s “Dr. Mego” work was not enough to cut it professionally, so we hired out sculptors for heads and certain body parts, but I would sculpt small accessories or adaptations (Spock’s beard for the “Mirror, Mirror” set, Spider-Man’s webshooters and belt, etc.). I am not the sculptor of any of the major parts of any of our toys.

 

In 2008, the recession cratered sales, so even though Paul was a Mego fundamentalist, I said we had to do something to make a cheaper product. Megos were expensive to produce, so I focused on another old-school toy format: little green army men.

After a while, Paul stopped being involved in the toys brand, focusing more on his Dr. Mego business and coming back together with me for the occasional elaborate Marvel Megos we did with Diamond Select Toys.

 

I kept on with the army men and dubbed them “Nanoforce”, so I had a trademarkable name. Initially, the clunky sculpts were done by hand in the factory in China – we left them that way because a) they looked about as clunky as classic army men and b) it came free with the price of the production 😉

You pretty much know the rest, but I hope when my aforementioned presentation is complete and has made the rounds, I will send it to you as it does contain a pretty complete look at the Nano's we made from Day One. However, it’s so similar to your list as to be almost identical."

 

**************    ***************

 

So, to paraphrase the above, SphereWerx (legal), Forth Castle (trading as) and EMCE ('em-cee', line/range brand-mark) are the company name/s in the order they were acquired, Nanoforce is the brand-mark for the small 'army men' figures, and all the other names on the various sets or packaging generations are either the license-holders to the subjects depicted, or the contracting end-user (Diamond Select, Previews Exclusive/PX), even though EMCE's own branding is usually retained alongside as one or more marks. Toynk are the current distributor of the more commercial sets.

 

This is an updated/re-edited version of that original list, alphabetical;

• Aliens in Glowing Slime (figures from the below set, but glow in the dark polymer with a unique, oversized (in scale) 'Facehugger' sculpt. One figure per egg of slime, out of production and getting hard to find, old stock has now-solid, rubbery slime) - Diamond Select Toys / PX Previews Exclusive  / designed by Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - 20th Century Fox.
• Aliens -vs- Colonial Marines (35 figures, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - Diamond Select Toys / PX Previews Exclusive  / designed by Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - 20th Century Fox.
• Fallout 76 [bags, see also You Will Emerge - below] (12 or 24 figures per bag, 3 sets, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
• Fallout 76 [boxes] (13 figures per box, 4 boxed sets include a 4" figure and extra [blind pack] poses, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
  
• Gears 5 (Gears of War), (5-figures + droid, bag, glow in the dark variation, still around, affordable - Nanoforce by EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia) Licensors - The Coalition / XBox Games / Microsoft, UK retailer Toynk (?)
•  John Carpenter's Halloween (8 figures + 4 accessories and 1x 4" figure, very rare, limited edition of 2500 units, very expensive when found - Fright Rags / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys) Licensor - Compass International Pictures
• Night of the Living Dead (12 figures + 1x 4" figure, very rare, limited edition, very expensive when found - Fright Rags / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Image Ten)
• Star Trek - TNG (12 figures + micro-ship model, 'The Next Generation' boxed-set, newest, affordable, easier to find in UK - PX Previews Exclusive / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Fanwares a division of Fanwraps) Licensor - CBS Studios
• Star Trek - TOS (12 figures + micro-ship model, 'The Original (TV) Series' boxed-set, newest, affordable, harder to find in UK - PX Previews Exclusive / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Fanwares a division of Fanwraps) Licensor - CBS Studios
• Universal Monsters (planned/cancelled/next? EMCE / Mego?)
• You Will Emerge (24 figure 'Army Builder' bag of Fallout expansion, 23 common figures in 9 poses (twos or threes) with exclusive Jersey Devil flying monster, still around, affordable - Bethesda / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle, no Toynk) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
• Vault Tech Convention Exclusives (six figures from Fallout, in blind-bags, one per-bag, limited-edition yellow polymer, still findable/affordable - Bethesda / Toynk / Nanoforce by EMCE Toys / Forth castle) Licensors - Bethesda Softworks a Zenimax Media Co.
•  Zombies at War (35 figures, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - PX Previews Exclusive / Brilliant Novelty Co. / Diamond Comic Distributors / EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia, no 'Nanoforce')
• Zombies in Glowing Slime (as per above, but blind-bag model, in a tub of slime modelled as an oil drum, one figure per unit, glow-in-the-dark polymer, getting harder to track-down - PX Previews Exclusive  /  EMCE Toys) 
•  Zombies -vs- Zombie Hunters (35 figures, 10 poses, 3-each survivors, 4-each zombies, out of production, but findable, getting a bit pricey - PX Previews Exclusive / Brilliant Novelty Co. / Diamond Comic Distributors / EMCE Toys (a brand of) Forth Castle Macromedia, no 'Nanoforce')

In December, Joe was hopeful that more figures would come out this year, but I haven't seen/heard anything yet? Halloween was the last set issued, last autumn.

EMCE is for Every Mutha's Clearly Exanimate!

I had an interesting chat (more of which later) with the current owner (also originator) of EMCE Toys, back in the Autumn, just before the old Laptop died, and mentioned to him that I had not managed to find the early set 'Zombies vs Zombie Hunters', only to find one a few weeks later! So with the weather changing plans drastically in the last few minutes (the lawn needs it), here's a quickie on that set, by way of a box-ticker.

You can't miss the zombies! I believe these predate the WWII zombies, which were the first of the EMCE products we saw here at Small Scale World, and hopefully we will soon have seen all their output, or mentioned it tangentially.

Like everything, they've been off to storage for a while now, but if my memory serves me well, the count worked out at three-each of five hunters and four each of five zombie sculpts; you need a crowd murmuring their way up the street! That's it, box ticker, EMCE zombies and hunters!

T is for Two - Slime Zombies, or Rather; Zombies in Slime!

Sometimes I can be a bit scatter-brained, and this post is the result of a little moment of scattered brain! I've been tracking down the output of EMCE before they get too expensive or hard to get . . . there's a sweet-spot between new (a bit pricey for what are basically rack-toys) and when they are getting hard to get (also pricey), when people who've been gifted them and don't want them, sell them off for less than they are still listing for on Amazon "none in stock, we don't know when they will become available again" (half of Amazon is dead pages!), it's that sweet-spot I'm after!

I knew there were glow-in-the-dark Zombies in slime-bins, so when I had a moment I searched for them on feebleBay, and one chap had some up for auction in the 'States, so I popped a bid on and crossed my fingers!

But, in those lines of similar/sponsored stuff underneath the listing was another chap, offering three, for considerably less, BIN? So I quickly grabbed them, uncrossed my fingers and desperately started hoping someone would out-bid me on the first lot!

Needless to say no one else bid, and in the end the larger lot arrived before the by-it-now lot, not that I'm complaining they were both not due until the 19th and we're in the middle of postal strikes (I'm totally supportive of; having spoken to both my beat Postie and the parcel-van guy).

Anyway I started shooting them for the EMCE post, and scanned the box they came with (1st image above), only for the other three to turn-up a few days later, and they were something completely different! I hadn't bothered reading the blurb or studying the pictures, just saw 'slime', 'drum' and 'zombie' in the title-bar and hit Buy It Now!

But it was a pleasant surprise as they were more slime Zombies, just not the EMCE glow-ones! So, I took the first lot of images out of the EMCE folder (which is stuffed with other stuff, and may get further broken down anyway - gaming, horror, Star Trek?) and fashioned a quick T is for Two!

The late three being Dolgen (Dollar General Stores) Parts Alive, Spill & Rebuild Oil Can Slime, with a Lego-likey zombie figure! Here scaled with one of Berserker's mates who came in with a junk-lot the other day - he, himself, went to storage ages ago!

It was during this process that I discovered vinegar is the solvent for slime, I wanted to flush the muck away, only to find that neither washing-up liquid, nor TFR had any measurable effect! Although, when I say 'discovered' . . . I Googled it!

The seller included a loose figure which appears to have had a strange reaction to the self-seal/click-shut bag he came in, soaking-up more blue than the bag ever possessed, but I'll keep him like it, it works quite well!

Obviously the figures are the same as the standard WWII Zombies we looked at here, and with one per 'oil drum' I'll leave the rest for now, I just don't have the time to be wrestling with multiple slime and vinegar patties!

Forewarned (or previously experienced) is forearmed, so with this brown-black gloop, I just wrapped it in kitchen-paper and burned it on the stove! You can see it had invaded the packet the figure's parts were in, so it was still a messy business, but I rescued all his components.

There had been a leak from the 'sealed' capsule too, and like the EMCE Aliens egg-slime the other day, had set to a rubbery polymer which I could just rub off where it was stuck to the sticker-wrapper, rather than the cellulose outer wrapper.

So quite by the result of too much speed and not enough haste or something I ticked two boxes, and learnt more than I need to about the properties of slime . . . you can also make it yourself, but as most of the recipes seem to include white wood-glue/PVA, I wouldn't advise it?

The fact that the Dolgen 'kubrick' Zombie is the same as the one on the can-art, suggests they are all the same so I will keep the other two sealed as well. He seems to be a US policeman in a WWII German helmet? While the EMCE as well as sharing billing with PX / Previews Exclusive again, are further credited to the Brilliant Novelty Company.

News, Views Etc . . . SCS Direct

Looking for something else the other day (current Supreme stuff!) I noticed SCS Direct have a new set out, a variation of an old set and new formats of existing sets, so this is a quick update with all Amazon/SCS Direct publicity images.

The zombie set is now available in glow-in-the-dark green polymer, this is the large tube with 98 figures, so worth getting together with a  couple of mates and sharing out the contents, but if I remember rightly, this was one of the less evenly distributed pose-count sets, but with only the one colour, there should be enough for two or three of you to get at least one of each? Poor image but you get the idea!

They are now offering a set of dinosaurs under the Wicked Duels / WD brand-mark, only ten poses, they are 'size scale', i.e. no particular scale, all around the same size and no Dimetrodon, so they can sodding wait! They also come in the larger tubes or as a set of ten in a new, smaller packaging.

NASA style astronauts are also new, it looks like the accessories (shuttle, satellite and rock) are limited in number per set, but they aren't the more important element if you're a figure collector, but to be honest the figures are not terribly inspiring sculpts either. Nice touch are the pair (man and woman) with their helmets off.

The new smaller-format idea has been extended to the previously-seen monster and fantasy creature sets, again with one of each you're getting what may not be a consistent half-and-half as far as the two shades of grey go.

None of these (above) seem to be currently available, direct from UK importers, yet, but some of the US / China sources probably ship if you can bear the postage and shipping charges; I'll wait!

V is for Versus . . . Plants!

One single trope seems to connect the most of all the Zombie sets, the 'Zombies versus Someone', or 'Someone versus Zombies' title or set theme, usually as a 'vs' or simple 'v'. And these are no exception, despite my knowing slightly more than nothing about them.

Plants versus Zombies, I picked these up a while ago as they were going dirt cheap, and I haven't got the time to look into them right now, but I'll give them more time in a year or two and we'll return to them here with a full picture.

What little I've gathered from a few minutes on evilBay/Google is that they are quite a big thing, or recently were, possibly among the 5-10 age group, or 8-15's? Related to a computer game and dating back to around 2006 (game) / 2008 (toy licenses?) and the figures are made by Jazwares/The Zoofy Group (I think!).

Also there seem to be loads of them in various sizes of sets, with some commoner figures (most of the above ten?), and seem to have been around for five, maybe ten years? Fun things anyway, and although sculpted in a heavier style, and with some cartoonishness, are otherwise - at around 70mm - about the right size for the Accoutrements and Safari sets in the previous post.

I don't know if this chap goes with them but I think he does [no he doesn't - see comments], I thought he was a gardener, but he has three spanners hidden in his hair and another in his hand, so maybe the plants need the odd tune-up before they go hunting Zombies.

Also totally forgot Jan had looked at them a while ago; https://site-of-curiosities.blogspot.com/2017/07/plants-verses-zombies-toy-miniatures.html 

F is for Flesh-eating . . . Zombies . . .

. . . are there any other kind? Actually it should be T is for Two - Zombies, as the post rather grew somewhat!

The Glow-in-the-Dark Flesh Eating Zombies Playset from Archie McPhee's mate Accoutrements!

I've been after these for a while and when this one with a sun-fogged case/blister came-up cheap, it seemed like a good excuse to buy one I could open and scan etcetera, so that's what I did, would have been rude not to!

Nine figures at the larger end of the range (75-80mm'ish) and as well sculpted as any other Accoutrements' sets, with all the tropes we've seen since I started looking harder for these zombie figures a few years ago - devil-dog, fat bloke, rising grave-contents (why would they come to life if they haven't been bitten - the rising dead is another movie!), dressing-gown lady, holding his own limb bloke . . . boxes ticked!

All nine, they are made out of a phosphorescent polymer, the amount of painting dictates how much glows and both fat-bloke and dressing-gown lady score low, their eyes are painted-in bright-green fluorescent paint, so appear manic in bright light, or black in the dark which gives them a sinister look, either way!

Compared with the similar sized (some closer to 70mm), but not glowing Safari Tube figures, and again' rising bodies, fat bloke and crawling pose are all mirrored, along with a bunch of undead Karan's! The Safari figures also have the 'emergency green' fluorescent eyes.

This is where I pulled back one of the boo-boo's as I had not fully photographed the Safari, beyond the Accoutrements comparisons, but I managed to find them this week and brought them back, to take a few more shots and make the full T is for Two...!

I thought the grave/s in the previous images looked like they were in two pieces, so shot them again to prove the single moulding. Along with a group shot of the low-hanging fruit!

The eight upright poses are fifty-fifty male and female, with fat-bloke being so fat he doesn't need a base . . . some subtle social profiling there Archie'ments? Also while the two grave-risers are pink, the other ten poses are equally split between bruised purplish-pink and a dead-for-a-while greeny-grey.

The sales image from Amazon with the square 'Toob' (actually a prism . . . or a block!)* as I seem to have forgotten to scan the insert cards, although I know I've got them somewhere and will do another day - probably for the A-Z entry . . . when I get to it!

And did I say the Accoutrements glow in the dark!

 

* It's a rod isn't it, a rod with square-section! Comes to something when a graphic designer can't remember basic geometrical terminology!

BOZ is for Box O' Zombies

"Box O Zombies is owned by Immersive Realms, Inc. founded and operated by Shawn Recinto. The figures and artwork are created by a few Chicago artists who have a passion for zombies, figures, and just making things awesome."

A sadly short-lived project, which seems to have been half-garage or 'art toy' (in concept) and half-commercial (in execution), but for which/whom the website is dead and the Faceplant/Twittsphear pages have seen no meaningful traffic since 2014/15.

But it highlights the fragmentation of the hobby; with 3D printing at home or via commercial printers, up-scaling and down-scaling of existing figures by pirates (as we saw with the Chinese Army plundering Caesar the other day), the Russian/Ukrainian Co-Op's and home-design-&-print, or home scan-&-print it's getting so no one can follow all of it, let alone collect it!

And, while I said this morning that I'd corrected a few boo-boo's in the Halloween posts system, I failed with these! Although in the last few minutes I've pulled it back by finding the original images on the WayBackMachine! But this is here, so, it’s a reuse of a picture already seen here and elsewhere, but you get the idea, BOZ figures being herded by slightly larger Bonux spacemen!

Basically, although I scanned the box and managed to take this size-confirmer and pose the shot with the Bonux figures, I never took full set shots of the figures, except there may have been a couple more in the Bonux sequence, I must have deleted them . . . Doh!

The trade images from the dead website; they were available in puke green and a pale-purple which - going from my sample - are a very pale lilac-gray shade. There were plans for other figures (some nice humans in tan-brown seem to have got to master-sculpt stage) and if you go down the Google rabbit-hole, you will find all sorts of stuff (concept drawings, CAD renders etc) on the various sites once associated with them.

In the searching for info on the Box O's, I also found these from Spherewerx, they aren't findable at the moment (this is the old Amazon listing image, but there are a couple of dozen other Zombie-related items from Spherewerx or Previews Exclusive (the same people who did the WWII Zombies) in feebleBay, so they'll come around second-hand at some point, maybe for next year?

P is for Putrid Pirates Pal-up with Perennial Packs of Plastic Playthings

Brain again! Sent me these a couple of weeks ago, as it happened I had sourced a set on feebleBay, but didn't know if they'd get here in time (they did - just), so we'll run with Brian's for this year, and then next year maybe look at them all again, as we've had four or five iterations of these now, in four or five years.

Previously branded to Dolgen Corp. (Dollar General), this year they are credited to an Old East Main Co., but still found in Dollar General, and while for the last few years it's been two sets (mummies and skeletons), this year we have a new set, Zombie Pirate Army!

Like the other two sets a bit cartoony, but they can be used to fill the ranks of the Blue Box mob from a few years ago, being the same size and a very similar plastic colour! Eight figures in eight poses, again as the other sets, although I seem to recall one of them was ten-figures for the first couple of years . . . skeletons?

Skeleton army; seen before, so just confirmation of the new packaging variant!

Mine, like I say there have been three or four card variations now, figure-count anomalies, and this third set, so in a year or two, when there's less to post on the day, I'll try to return to them for a more comprehensive pulling-together/overview, yet we may see them again next year, as we've seen them for five-years on-the-trot now!

Many thanks to Brian for the images, I'll try to remember to open my Pirate set for next year whatever else happens!