Countdown to Halloween - 6 - Poundworld Plus's Scream Machine!

The week before last all the high-street retailers sort of ratcheted-up their offerings for Halloween (clearly a short season) and the rest of the Countdown posts will go through what I dredged-up over last week and the week before.

These were found in Poundworld Plus who now have a tenuous connection to Poundland (I can't remember what it is as I didn't take notes, but it involved take-over talks or something), there are also Poundworld's but in Poundworld Plus, some things cost more than a pound (another parallel with Poundland following the 99p Stores takeover!)

Scream Machine by Davies Products, there's little to scream-about and no mechanicals! As with the earlier set from Poundland; the skeletons went straight to recycling!

Basic semi-flat insects detailed on one side only; we have centipedes, spiders, flies and cockroaches in a cheap tinny polyethylene, the centipedes in oxide-red, the roaches in black the others in black or white.

The spider tool clearly has several cavities as they are different sizes and have slightly different leg poses; I kept about six and the rest will go to charity.

All the roaches have the full Greenbrier/DFSC consumer information panel we've seen printed on the header cards of US/Canadian stuff from Brian Berke, but incised into the mould-tool, so they (Greenbrier/DFSC) are somewhere in the mix here with Scream Machine and DP brand-marks and Davies Products a third/forth party importer.

We will be looking at similar insects for the rest of the countdown, but they all differ, and this is the Fly's comparison, it's hard to choose which is the original and which the clones, I suspect all three are copies of an older donor. Poundworld's has been re-cut with geometric panels, and Sainsbury's looks like it might be a copy of Asda's, but all three differ too much for pantographing, so will be from elsewhere and else-someone and there will be others!

A is for Ajax, Archer, Bergan, Beton . . . Not!

This pair was donated to the Blog by Brian Berke a while ago, he found them as old store stock ages ago, so many thanks to him.

Marked MADE IN HONG KONG down one leg, the horses are nicely finished but poor copies of the old Bergan Toys horse, although the riders are from Ajax poses, and a quick study of the horse - especially the mane - reveals it's a copy of the Ajax copy of the Bergan horse, specifically the Ajax 'Large Horse and Rider' range.

The un-carded bags don't have any staple holes or tape marks, being heat-sealed like old bread-bags! Therefore they probably [almost certainly] weren't mounted on a larger backing card either but rather; sold from a shop stock box, or transferred from a generic shipping carton to point-of-sale 'bin' type thing?

One of the bags wasn't sealed very well at all, and had opened itself with a little help from Royal Fail so the Indian can run free, his black Mustang carrying him majestically across the central plains his ancestors enjoyed; the cowboy will remain a prisoner where he will be unable to wave his 'legally-held' firearm about with quite the gay abandon he might otherwise claim a constitutional-right to so do!

Left over from a post a while ago (the shot was in another folder and I forgot it!), these are cheaper Hong Kong copies loosely based on European posts, the upper pair being found in a similar bag to Brian's two; it's a copy of the Britains Trojan horse with a swivel-waist Indian harking back to Crescent I think.

Below the 'mint' pair; are a few that appear vaguely related, from the right; a same size - as the Indian above - cowboy, again swivel-waist, but with heavier leg sculpts and factory paint. To his left are two smaller swivel-waist clones, following the pose, paint (and plastic colour in the case of the middle figure), these will be copies from a smaller firm of the larger figure, just to grab a slice of commercial-pie!

The middle guy being a direct clone, while the chap on the left only has paint on the upper half and seems to be an earlier version of the unpainted foot-figures we looked at here and which were carried in Baravelli sets Indiani e Cowboy - I noticed the other day that that's still 'Barabelli' to the PSTSM!

Countdown to Halloween - 7 - Miscellaneous Scorpion

Although - If you sat on one it couldn't be 'miscellaneous' in any sense of the word!

This PVC scorpion came-in in a mixed lot a few weeks ago, and although not necessarily a Halloween toy - per se - we will see later in the week that it belongs in the countdown.

The same charity shop gave up this old Hamlyn pocket handbook on insects, I have the tree volume and a few others, there's even one on uniforms I seem to recall, indeed I may have the insect one already but the library is in storage.

They are OK for their age but North American-centric with a few lines edited in by the British publishers to cover for Europe or the UK, which doesn't matter so much for the tree or cactus volumes, but is a bit of a hamstring-injury for someone relying on the book to ID UK insects!

Also, the artwork is a bit dated and simplistic, but; having made in sound awful, I would emphasise it's still a useful work, and with the Internet as a back-up, you can find the closest-match and then do a Google image-search for the others using the taxonomic info obtained and usually find 'yours' with little difficulty. Collin's 'Gem' and the old Observer's guide books make-up the triumvirate of small, useful, reference works.

Angle Shades Moth

It helped me ID this, a couple of days after I bought it! Found in the woodpile and saved from the axe; it was mentioned a few days later in the paper as an autumn visitor - pushed-up by the warm plume which preceded Hurricane Ophelia - to feed on ivy flowers.

We ought to have Halloween moths? A bag of killer, vampire Mothma's!

News, View Etc . . . Evil Empire Ephemera . . .

. . . again!

Well it's only about three weeks since the last post on the subject and we've already had a plethora of new ['news'] stories - mostly in the i - related to the struggling giant that is Lego!

Some of it has been more honest than most of the [subliminal] stuff i's carried this year, being more obvious promotional stuff for the Ninjago movie (critics are divided, but I think it's good-fun for kids), but they (i) have still managed to mention Lego on three other occasions in the last few weeks!

And even the tie-in seems to be more about selling the iweekend rather than the movie, given as how they put it up to 80p and the strong-willed stopped buying it, not even the chance of a free Lego key-ring got me to weaken - it's a rise too far!

Picture courtesy of Brian Burke - seen at a show 'State's-side'!

The other interesting aspect of the 'coverage' by the i-newspaper, has been the reporting of Merlin's quarterly figures - two separate stories the first talking-up the forecast; "...sales rise despite gloom...", the second concentrating on Pepper Pig licenses (after mentioning the Legolands!).

The Evening Standard redressed the balance with "Magic wearing off for Merlin as terror fears cause 20% plunge". The real news is - if you live in the 'States or Asia there may be a Pepper Pig Land coming soon, near you?

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!

News, Views Etc . . . Shop Display

Just a quickie - SE Riordan's Halloween shop-display is worth a wider audience than the good burghers of the teeming metropolis of Fleet in Hampshire!

Big furry spiders, they were very effective, especially as the shop is in a set-back parade, and you come across them as you walk past a nearby advertising hording and get pushed toward the shop by a cut-in for buses and disabled parking!

C is for Countdown to Halloween - 9 - Poundland's Spine-chilling Decorations . . . not!

Arguably the best of these (there are eight more to come!), and the first I obtained, this set was from Poundland back at the start of the imported [within my lifetime], plastic-tat festival which will result in up to 40-million cheap, nasty costumes going to landfill, incineration (sorry . . . EFW . . . or RDF!) or recycling in eleven days time!

Shipped by ITP Imports, the bag contains various bits of ephemeral shite, all of it polymer but a mix of types; still, it was only a pound! The skeleton was so poor he went to recycling without a curtain-call!

The best bits? Finger-puppets of typical Halloween subjects; I think I've said before - because this was a US 'festival' for the longest time they've had loads of this stuff over the years and small figurals do appear on evilBay from time to time, a lot of them with some merit for collectors, but in the UK I haven't previously found much of this type of stuff, this year - as we shall see in the coming days - there has been a fair bit, but mostly insects and spiders, not witches and ghosts, I want more witches and ghosts!

They are in a softish PVC and with the orange proved a bit of a bugger to shoot, if you think these are bad images, you should see what I've chucked-out! Sometimes the mojo just breaks and you can't 'get it right'!

Far from being even remotely "spine-chilling", they look like they are dancing-together at a school-disco and yes, I know 'it's a bit of fun for the kids', but the hyperbole annoys me, they're not "extracted from the dead" and there's no "terror" involved, to misquote Monty Python, they're just slightly naughty toys!

There was also a larger spider in the same PVC as the 'finger bobs' and smaller spider rings in a tinny polyethylene which only fit very small fingers, but even then - not comfortably I suspect; so I cut the rings off two each of the two colours and chucked the rest straight in the recycling!

Interestingly; the novelty retailer Tiger carried small bags of the rings in the same colours (orange and black) but close inspection showed them to be slightly poorer copies and at £2 a bag (one colour per bag) common sense carried the day, rare for me I know, but I left them in situ, with just the mental note made! If I remember to get a shelfie, if I pass Tiger again, if it's before the 31st - I'll shoot them!

This was a semi-rigid PVC (or semi-soft ethylene, it's not clear!), and as rubber bats through the ages go; was a pretty poor example, but as far as Halloween poly-tat goes, an improvement on whatever/what little I've seen the last few years!

F is for Follow-up - Chinacars!

I managed to find vehicles from the big die-cast post in Rack Toy Month just gone three times in one day, all in Basingrad, but I forgot to shoot one, which was a five-pack of the commoner models . . .

. . . which were also in Tiger as single vehicles in simple boxes, with one of those silly fake 'skandie' titles; in this case Bil . . . or bil; the lower-case is everything - I'm not joking - some agency was probably paid £10-grand for that 'idea'!

They also have a simple one-colour finish, but all that simplicity of paint and packaging makes them more expensive at a quid, than some of the more decorated versions we looked at last time, most of which were either also a pound or only 99p!

While these less common vehicles (they were as common as the others about 10/15 years ago though and turn-up loose all the time), as StreetMachine are in Smyths superstores, there was a single-vehicle StreetMachine (imported by Kandytoys; I don't know the importer here) or two in the previous post.

P is for Pull-cords!

These (or at least the Humpty Dumpty type) were nearly added to the other esoteric stuff the other day, but I didn't have time, and I was lucky I just downloaded them and took them home; as the contributor (Brian Berke) sent some more a few days later; so they can have a post to themselves!

Is it a loo-chain or a light-switch cord? Is it Humpty Dumpty? These questions and others aren't going to be answered here, today! But they are fun, figural and one-dollar-forty-nine-cents each - Bargain! They look to be a poured polyurethane-resin?

A puppy, another Humpty Dumpty sculpt (with kippah or yarmulke), rabbits (or hares? Easter?), an elephant, a herd of moose and what looks to be a side of roast-chicken! They're all $1.49, it's a plethora of bargains.

I'm guessing they are designed to be held through the tire-hole; of course it will be a tyre-hole if it turns out you can get them this side of the pond, but I haven't seen them anywhere.

Closer to home and not for sale (because they are in use!) are these three, two vintage wooden acorns, one in boxwood - with rubber o-rings to stop it chipping the paintwork- and the other in stained pine with a rubber-band attached for the same job along with a ceramic cat I bought in a gift shop in the Channel Islands about ten years ago.

D is for Display

Some of you may have noticed I rescued some of the Impact rock formations or 'mountain-piles' from that Drummond Park/Idea Shop/Seven Towns board game I blogged earlier in the year . . . I actually dove back into the recycling bin for one each of the three, as it occurred to me they'd make useful little display bases!

The locating-studs that anchor the pieces to the card holes in the original playing board have to be removed which is done first with side-cutters, then finished with a scalpel - and kids . . . if there are any kids reading this; never, ever, ever, EVER cut toward your exposed thumb as in the picture above . . . it's a posed shot!

Or at least never, ever, ever, EVER cut toward your exposed thumb until you're old enough to take responsibility for your own stupidity, as I am!!

The finished objects can them be used to display all sorts of things, adding a bit of visual interest to otherwise formulaic images!

Seven Towns on Seven Towns as PET Aliens clamber over the rocks.

E is for Elfie's Elfy Elfish- Shelfies!

Actually; Elfie had nothing to do with it, I don't even know an Elfie - stop following me crazy woman!

Couple of quickies today, both shelfies, not because they don't have some merit - I wouldn't photograph them if there wasn't something acceptable about them - but because they are still a bit pricey for what they are, and what they are is that difficult 65-70+mm size of all this modern PVC and it's not something I'm tripping over myself to garner in quantity; it'll all turn-up in mixed lots soon anyway!

Disney's Frozen, in TK Maxx now, Bullyland clearance and sized to go with all their other stuff, paint out the 'Anime eyes' and they'll mostly make half-decent medieval-folk wandering around at some jousting tournament!

Not the snowman; don't be silly, he needs to be added to the cake-decoration side-collection's snowman zone!

Dodgy close-ups; dodgy focus, dodgy lighting, and that's after cropping and cropping again!

This was also in TK Maxx, but a few months ago; Simba's range of Magic Fairies, the figure is lovely, very Tolkienesque, but the accessories are double-plus Barbie shite in metafleck transparent plastic with battery-operated messaging!

There's no place for imagination in any of this type of stuff, there's a corporate-approved storyline and a talking boat/bird/whatever making sure you stay on that line! Fussa-russa . . .

Y is for YM which has become YC, could be used as YG and might pass for YFNX, YFU or YRST?

So, following-on from the two Gilmark AFV's the other day, the 'meat and two veg' of the parcel from Ed Berg the other day (which - incidentally - took about two days and five minutes to get here from Nevada and cost about half the postage sending similar mail the other way - and we're not even in full Brwreaksit mode yet!) was this . . .

. . . it's the Pyro Dredger! It's missing a crane (apparently), so becomes more of a miscellaneous lighter or harbour utility vessel, but having blogged the Kleeware version of the Ferry Boat a while ago, when Ed indicated that he was not that enamoured with it when he Blogged it last year, and given we were looking for a swap; I said "I'll have it!" . . . and here it is, it's brilliant!

The two compared, the hull is identical - with separate superstructure mouldings, glued-on to make the different vessels. Unlike the water-fast hull of the ferry-boat, with the dredger the doors above the rear wheel-well and crane hole 'forward' of the dredger both allow some water in, so it sits lower in the water than the ferry, but the cargo compartment still displaces enough water for it to float happily.

I have no idea which end is aft, or forwards, but I'm guessing the location of the floor/carpet towing-eye is my permission to assume! Crane forward, bridge aft. The ferry boat has one (towing-eye) at each end, presumably because it's a roll-on-roll-off configuration and the idea is for you and your sibling/friend to tow it between each other!

Comparing the marks; it's a straight mould-swap between the US and UK . . . there will be a separate metal drum or rod that slides into the female half of the tool, which can then be replaced with the borrowing-maker's own mark-stamp.

With the crane absent I experimented with a bit of weaponising, the 'Brown-Water Navy' needs some more firepower! Twin Bofors 40mm from the Tudor Rose truck and a turret from the same maker's Churchill Tank both fit nicely.

I wonder if you can get 3D-printable D-Day type rocket units, put one of them in the hold, and 'Old School' beach-landings would be sorted! Go earlier and I reckon this could pull 60/100-odd troops off the beach at Dunkirk each visit!

Quality 'Dime-Store' boat - thank you so much Ed!

"Your mission Captain Willard; is to draw-out two Tudor Rose artillery pieces,

and proceed up the Nung River in a Navy Lighter.

Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it, and shell the

living-bejesus out of his compound of neh'kid, druggie-hippy wackos."

=================================================

YC - [Open Lighter],(non self-propelled)

YFNX - [Lighter], (special purpose, non self-propelled)

YFU - [Harbor Utility Craft], (self propelled, lighter)

YG - [Garbage Lighter], (self-propelled)

YM - [Dredger], (self-propelled, miscellaneous)

YRST - [Salvage Craft Tender], (non self-propelled, miscellaneous)

F is for Follow-up - Henbrandt

Third post today and we're back to Henbrandt, and the current cheepie-bin stuff from The Entertainer, I went again, I saw more, I purchased . . . 3-for-a-pound! I buy this shite so you don't have to . . . but they're paratrooper-aliens, and jumping monsters, why wouldn't you?!

Plunder; I popped in as I thought there might be other colours/poses in the parachuting aliens box; when I went there last time I DID dig around, but the box was full, and it's the same sort of box Bic Biro's used to come in; tall but with a small opening at the top, and as it was full, I couldn't dig too far down without spilling paratrooper aliens all over the shop!

So, it was slightly less full, and I had a dig, found two new poses and a new colour and was going to make a six-lot when I happened to look across at the jumping monsters box, now; I dug to the bottom of that bugger last time, double checking with what was in my hand and mentally wondering if I should get another multi-eye - just in case it was different from the one I'd found in the road - but no, I missed one! Thus: I left with five aliens and one monster for the six.

After I'd taken the group shot on the right and was putting them away, I noticed there was a third pose (four in total now), so we have a guy in a waistcoat holding his head, a guy with boxing gloves and a girl in a Tutu or Ra-Ra skirt, and I'm going to have to go back and dig some more as it's such an eclectic mix there's bound to be more, while in the meantime a metallic aqua-blue has been added to the colours.

The sixth Jump-up Monsters pose is a smiling, red Cyclopean, or should that be cyclopean, red-smile?

F is for Follow-up - Fish!

I know I said it'd probably be a while before we returned to fish, clearly I lied - one should never assume! Nor 'do' policicticicic . . . Apparently! However; it's nice when you're proved wrong if it means an earlier return to something!

And with the Wade / Not-Quite-But-Probably-Irish-Factory-Wade Leprechauns fresh in the mind when I saw these in a charity shop for 50p-a-piece, it would have been rude not to!

These are definitely Wade (Whimsies) and - guessing again! - Brown Trout (Oncorhynchus) and Common Carp (Cyprinus Carpio)?

F is for Follow-up - Nibariki

I still haven't looked these up on the wibbly wobbly way, but I have picked-up another, I assume it is connected to the little girl running gaily through the skull-strewn medow we looked-at the other day, but it might be another Anime / Manga thing altogther?!

The new addition is basically two sort-of-Moomins, with short-to-no-legs sitting on an upturned toadstool while a little black worm burrows out of it's umbrella, if it is related to the other Nibariki item I really want to find out more about it because Moomin-likeies  and skull-strewn meadows are a pretty off-the-wall mash up!

Four views turning anti-clockwise from the left; that's it, follow-up!

PS 1 - They are called Totoro from Studio Ghibli {straight into the tag list and we'll return to them when I know more}

PS 2 - While uploading, or at approximately the same time I can report Brian Berke has eMailed me something equally esoteric I still have to process - I was going to add it to the bottom of this post, but the sky's gone dark-orange (Caribbean sand?) and I must get back to check if we still have a chimney as the remains of some oh-no-not-human-caused-global-climate-change-related-storm-and-that's-a-Donald-fact hits the British Isles! Ironic; we only started naming our storms a couple of years ago and already we're adopting someone else's - out of sequence . . . still, look on the bright side, if it didn't have hundred-mile-an-hour winds it would have taken AGES to get here!