C is for Contribution Season! - XV - Paratroopers from Brian

Well - There's a few more in the queue, and Brian's folder gets filled again before it's emptied, case in point is today's post, he sent some of these to the Blog while Rack Toy month was winding-up, some more at Christmas (after I'd posted 35 scheduled posts), and the others a few days ago, and together they make a post on one of my favourite subjects . . . parachute toys!

These were in the August image-batch, and are manufactured like inflatable toys, but I suspect heat-sealed over a piece of shaped-foam? They are also a second Funtastic, but with a capital T in the logo I will list them as Fun-Tastic to differentiate from the UK one.

This Jaru-imported trooper slipped-in under the radar at Christmas and might have languished with the others in the folder until next august, but gets to take a bow today instead.

He's sort of action-figure style, but a single-moulding so right at home here, and with his shaped card, seems to be a sign of a current Jaru trend for content-related, blister-card, shape-cutting - remember the two different rocket-balloons we looked at on Guy Fawke's Night?

Then this turned-up; earlier this week, or was it last week? I'm all a bit sixes-and-nines at the moment! How cool are these - we've had Amscan paratroopers from Brian before, and parachuting skeletons, now we have a pooper-trooping menagerie of lions, tigers, hippos and monkeys! These really are too cool for PJI School, that's how cool!

Thanks again Brian - if you keep finding paratroopers (or even and 'Yea Verily' parachuting wild animals!) - I'll keep posting them!

C is for Contribution Fortnight - XIV - Silvercorn from Tim/Gisby

Closing Contribution week, and closing the Silvercorn sets! It was going to run to 18 parts, but I've pulled a few for 'later'! Thanks to everyone who's contributed, and there is more in the queue, but a special thanks to Tim for sending these; twice (is anyone else having problems with images in the 'new' Hotmail/Outlook?) after they turned up the first time as thumbnails!

They are the things I was thinking of, but I only have a few in storage, while Tim has sent all the different vehicle types and the case etc. I don't have the Pinzgauer looking ATV for instance and I think I only have one tank, so we would have been a long time waiting, even if I'd got everything out of storage!

A closer look at the soft-skins and LAV/Piranha types - they are all pretty generic, but the Hummers are pretty clear (except the Chines have their own copied version I believe!). Tim says he found a few more after the photo-session, but all of the same types.

The undersides with the teeny-tiny little wheel/axle arrangements which have to be fitted without braking . . . on my little sample I put green axles on sand vehicles and vice-versa!

Scale of these is constant with the tanks smaller than some of the other vehicles, but for war-gaming, they are a tad bigger than the 1::300th scale 'standard', although there were ranges of 1:260 or 285 stuff kicking around in the early 1980's - I seem to recall?

Close-ups of the tanks. There's one clearly taking it's turret design from Soviet equipment, and two have all (well; 'some'!) of the hallmarks of either the M1 Abrahams or Challenger series' while the fourth design (middle image of the three) is more interesting - looking like some of the smaller-run medium-tank designs coming out of Brazil, Argentina or Italy over the last 30-years?

The packaging brings this one to a close, and that seems to be all the Silvercorn 'Military Case's' covered on the Blog now, three of them due to input from other people so many thanks to all - Brian Berke, Uncle Brian and Tim/Gisby.

W is for Whoops!

Whoops!

Seven of you know what that means! Back Tuesday!

Silvercorn tomorrow...

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Well - now you're here anyway....random shot....

A week's acquisitions back in August 2014! What can you spot, most of it's been Blogged so I won't 'tag it up', just for fun after my boo-boo five minutes ago! Scheduling can be a pain!

News, Views Etc . . . PW Show Date

I can be a real horse's cock sometimes! I have the next article for Contribution Fortnight, but ran out of time editing it yesterday, so was going to have a big session today with the Blog (I've some Airfix up-dates as well!), but have just got here (Internet place!) without my power-lead's 'second bit', so I've fifty-one minutes (and counting . . . down!) to do all my eMailing etc...with a rather dark power-save screen!

As I had promised Paul at Plastic Warrior Magazine I'd post his news as soon as I'd finished the contribution 'season', and given that a hiatus is as good as an ending . . .

. . . the show dates for Plastic Warrior are confirmed and the poster has gone out!

Feel free to pinch and re-post! Full details are available and/or new information will appear first at the following places:

Facebook

Blogger

eMail; pw.editor@ntlworld.com

Or keep an eye on Brian's Blog - The old website is to be run-down/retired.

Normal service should be resumed tomorrow, but the 'best laid plans...' and all that; there may be a gap 'till Tuesday . . . Doh!

C is for Contribution Fortnight - XIII - Yoga Joes from Brian

Brian shot these in New York (Grand Central Terminal no less!) before Christmas, and while they have been flagged-up elsewhere over time, they are still needed to 'tick the box' here at the Smallscaleworld.

Also it's interesting to see both the packaging - which holds each figure in its specific pose - and the apparent size of them; they are around 90/100mm, putting them in a different class to the various civilian sets like Kid Robot's street kids or the Toy Boarders from AJ's

 

YogaJoes from Brogamats ; Brian reports they were 'pricy' and they do look displayed to temp the memento-seeking tourist rather than the toy fan!

C is for Contribution Fortnight - XII - Airfix Ready-made AFV display from Glenn

Glenn sent this from the other side of the world, literally, not figuratively as he lives in the land of the lazy parrots and a walking fruit with a long bill! Not, as I'd previously said; the land of the "...laast of the vee-ehyt inter'cepters" and where the mice can be 7-foot tall and box each other before breakfast - that's a land of a very different hue, many leagues hence from New Zealand - where Glenn lives!

It is quite the most perfect picture of a display of the 2nd version Airfix 'ready-mades' I've ever seen, with the modern over the WWII, the green over the grey, the biggies to the left, gun and tractors on top, it all fits, it all works, perfect!

Thanks Glenn!

C is for Contribution Fortnight - XI - Not Kinder Star Wars Chocolate Eggs from Brian

Here's a funny thing - not the subject of today's post; that's very serious, the destruction of whole planets long, long ago, far, far away! - But that several sources have claimed that Kinder eggs are 'banned', 'illegal' or 'not allowed' in the USA . . . yet these have turned-up in New York?

Main branding is to Disney 'Distributed by Galerie' from Hebron, Kentucky with a Kentucky logo hidden-away on the consumer data label, but both the manufacture of the chocolate and the packaging are attributed to Mexico, while we know Disney use various contract-manufacturers in China for their toy products.

Now it seems clear that the FDA do act against the import of Kinder and have arrested people for bringing them into the country, so how have these got 'under the radar'? It could of course - upon finding these - be seen as a bit of protectionism, along the lines of 'put Kinder off and we'll sort out a domestic product (in Mexico!) that will exploit the same market niche. How long the Mexico connection will last is under the new administration is anyone's guess, but 'not long' would appear to be the writing on the wall!

And I'm not joking, nor am I 'having a go' at my American readers - if there's one other western democracy in equal trouble it's bloody Britain! However, it's a fact that Donald 'fascist loon' Trump (that IS designed to upset some people!) is telling US companies (like Galerie/Kentucky (?) and/or Disney?) to move production back to the US, but you can't make novelties like this to a competitive retail price with profit margin, on US wage-rates . . . unless you use 'illegal's - but they all have to go back, oh yes folks, all going back!

The Kinder-like item in a Kinder-clone capsule; it looks like it could be used as a pencil-top, although it's not marketed as such. Torso-only is a bit outside the Blog's remit (like; as if  the Blog's got ANY remit!), but I know a lot of figure painters prefer a torso to a full figure and while these are on the small side they could nevertheless be painted-up to a higher standard and would look good on a shelf together.

They also look like those vinyl-record turntable, centre-point novelties you used to get back in the 1950's like the mop-headed Beatles or Banania's French pop-stars; spinning round like the demented inmates of some musical hell, or indeed, just like that pencil-top/eraser of the Batman; which Brian sent us - a while back! Thanks Brian!