Nerve Centre - Stomm und Zajazz!
I thought I'd share this image of Tuttle's
(or is it Buttle's?) desk-top in Central Planning here at Small Scale World, you can see how he has used the latest in dynamic-portal,
on-line, digital, smart-tech, file-sharing to produce a multi-layered,
computer-aided, interactive, predictive/responsive spreadsheet, making is easy
for the other staff to place and manage future-posts between the 21st and 31st,
he even managed to provide separate data-layers for the three recent comparison
shots and a graphical-interface extension, carrying-forward to the 4th of
November! I only employ the very best technicians here!
Halloween
Flat
Metal
Nursery Rhyme/Halloween themed modern,
commercially-painted, whitemetal flats from Scully
& Scully's window display in New York, image courtesy of Brian Berke,
and we will return to this company in a while.
Plastic
Waste
Already touched on in one of the
'countdown' posts; the environmental charity Hubbub issued a report estimating that last year's Halloween sent
7-million costumes to the rubbish bin. This year it's estimated 150-million
people worldwide will spend £510m-quid on these costumes, volumes of which will
have been trashed by the 6th November. (Stop Press - the figures given out on R4 last night (25th) were worse)
Now I don't know if you've studied the vast
racks of these things (which have mushroomed in the last few years) in
supermarkets and discount stores, but they're not a bit shite, they're 100%
shit. It has to stop, or we will destroy the planet. If you have to celebrate
death, at least re-use costumes, share costumes around a circle of friends each
year, or make costumes from recyclable stuff you would otherwise throw-out.
Ask what your grandparents' did, not what a
mile-long plastics factory in Guangdong can do for you!
Stamps
This is the third 'News Views...' in a row with
a substantial section on stamps, but they are collectables, have
been featuring toys recently and additionally do come within the whole
feebleBay/postal aspect of the hobby.
Stanley
Gibbons
Losses at Stanley Gibbons have worsened ('widened' in the language of the
traders really responsible for most of our problems!) an £8.8m trading-loss
being posted, an £18m revenue drop and loan-repayment defaults also being
announced.
Harrington
& Byrne
However, adverts like this - from a rival
I've never heard of - which has been running for several months now, in several
papers; may have something to do with SG's
problems? Having been a stamp collector in my youth, I remember how
surprisingly numerous Victorian stamps actually are (few designs, long period
of issue, per stamp), and it seems to me that with three 'penny-reds' and three
ha'penny greens in the 14, it's probably not actually worth twenty-nine of your
smackeroonies!
Star
Wars Stamps
The next set from Royal Fail is a set of Star
Wars stamps, given the last few sets, it's clear that the privatised
company is not issuing needed stamps, nor even particularly worthy
celebrations, but rather stamps which will generate the most revenue and
therefore - in the future - be of little value to collectors, a phenomena most
'commemoratives' since the 1980's are guilty of!
Stamp
artist
Peter Mason got the i's page-three treatment on the 16th but
the piece didn't make clear that he only uses definitives, inflation producing
so many postal charge changes since the 3½p
(olive?) of my childhood, and each change requiring all new colours, for the
postal system to recognise instantly that there are now hundreds of colours in
his 'palette'!
Paddington Bear
Everywhere
There's a new movie coming out for
Christmas! The last one was brilliant, superb animation and CGI techniques with
the humour of the books writ-large and little 'Hollywood'isation'
New
York
Apropos a previous mention of Mr. Bear here
on the Blog, Brian Berke sent this picture of his wife's original Paddington
with all his tags, and a few additional ones - 'cabin baggage' . . . how very
dare they!
Duchy
of Cambridge
Paddington Bear - approved by royalty . . .
apparently - some lush bird from Lunden Taaan wiv 'er bloke and 'is bro dancin'
wiv Mistah Bear init!
Hayday
Films . . .
. . . are trying to get out of a
distributions contract with the Weinstein
Company for obvious reasons, I suspect the Weinstein Co. won't be around long enough to defend the action, or
even care!
Thomas the Wank Engine
Some pox-jockey of an arsewit called Jia
Tolentino (is that her Star Wars name?**) has ripped into our favourite little blue tank-engine Thomas on the New Yorker's
website [no; I'm not posting a link - it's clearly the digital equivalent of arsewipe]
making out that the stories are some sort of fascist polemic/allegory for
Empire Building and slavery! Coming from an American Publication; that's a bit
fucking rich! "Authoritarian rule
through disinformation" on the Island of Sodor . . . I kid you not;
this Kia-ora Tarrentino woman would be better employed investigating her
President's philosophies - I humbly suggest!
Off the Rails - Hornby Chug-on
Hornby
Hobbies (or are they Hornby Group these days? Notes elsewhere!) have issued another
profits warning, lost another - interim - chairman and announced a new plan . .
.sorry 'strategy', which will involve '...maximising
the value of our brands including Scalextric
and Airfix...' (call me a
big-head; but that's probably something they ought to have been doing all
along?), this will include less discounting of existing stock.
Now, as far as Airfix is concerned; they have already cancelled all the potential
WWI money spinners, put several other projects on hold and slowed the release
of new stuff, now they seem to be saying the website offers will also go?
Doesn't leave much for the fan-base!
I wonder if the new chairman is the
chap/shareholder who started the bloodletting back whenever (last year
sometime?) and had so far been kept at arm's length, but I've not got the other
cuttings in front of me, however there has been such good coverage (with more
on the Internet for those who want to follow-up in depth) that I will at some
point do a fuller report on all the machinations . . . perhaps when the dust's
settled a bit!
Hobby Show
You can only report on hobby shows
beforehand if you are told about them beforehand, and sadly a lot of reportage
is 'after the event'.
This is a case in point; The Annual Exhibition for Model Railways,
Creative Arts and Play (I'm sure it was more catchy in German!), held in
Leipzig which ended on 1st October but was only reported on 30th September (i Weekend). Now we used to have the
annual Model Engineer Exhibition (MEE) at Earls Court after Christmas, but it's so long since I saw any
publicity for it I couldn't tell you if it's still going? I'll check!
Our hobby - in all its branches - is very
poor at Internet penetration, except the big retailers with their mountains of
polymer shite and their fifteen versions of the same board game, and all their
lookie-likey bollocks.
Toys in the Media
Sainsbury's
Bit of a cheat as toy sale ads are common
as muck, and don't really qualify for 'Toys in the Media' but this one is a
more 'designer' graphic with a minimalist artiness to it - so I shot it.
Halifax
This one's not much better, but Scrabble is
a board-game, so I thought it qualified for inclusion with its pile of recognisable
tiles!
Toys R Us
The
Toysaurus here in the UK is now struggling to get
stock from some of it's suppliers in time for Christmas, as they have been
"spooked" by the news from across the pond. Firms including Worlds Apart (I know) and Tutti Bambini (I've never heard of!) had
stopped resup's while they tried to find out what was going to happen to the UK
stores, but all parties are hoping to have everything running normally again in
the next week or so.
Meanwhile - Character Options (better than Lego
figures!) are worried about the longer-term fall-out of the TrU bankruptcy on the whole industry and
report that effects are already being felt by them - seriously; now might be
the time to open an independent, The
Toysaurus is dying, Hornby and Lego are desperate for sales, so must be
looking for new outlets, new customer models . . . maybe we will see a rebirth
of local hobby or toy shops?
The 'They don't come much bigger than
this' Department
This was the scene at the launch of Hamley's Christmas campaign, if Mummy
& Daddy are very rich, you too can have a life-size menagerie! Hamley's predict Lego, Hatchimals, Barbie and Nerf Guns as the big sellers . . . does this mean fidget-spinners
have already gone the same way as loom-bands? I bloody hope-so!
Merlin
The parent of Legoland here in the UK (along with Alton Towers, Pepper Pig Parks,
Madame Tussauds et al.) posted worse
figures than expected in previous 'News, Views...' with the blame being
put firmly on terrorism (by both Merlin
and the wider media) and somehow managing to ignore a larger number of Theme Park
accidents and deaths here and elsewhere in the last 12/18 months! Not
necessarily Merlin's I hasten to add, but that won't prevent the general public
putting 2 and 2 together and getting five, they're like that; poor, frightened,
stupid little sheeple.
Again?
The coastguard called out a Lifeboat to
rescue Spiderman from the ocean, after a helium balloon was mistaken for a
parachutist in difficulties. When superheroes need recuing it's time to get rid
of them, surly!
Now I get sick of seeing the remains of
helium balloons in the woods, in fields, hung-up on fences . . . and the bloody
things must be singlehandedly laying down the anthropocene-layer, worldwide!
This shit's got to be banned eventually; the law of unintended consequences
dictates that just because we can - doesn't mean we should.
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** Mine's Core Novawar - A wanderer from Ampliquen!
