F is for Follow-up - Shing Hing's 'Army Toys'

Speaking to someone over the pond who has no charity shops like ours, and where the equivalent 'Thrift Shops' apparently don't carry the old tat I've been picking up, made me think . . . firstly that we're lucky to have such shops here, despite the existence of both feebleBay and the Car Boot Sale movement - and it is a movement now, with management companies organising the regular sites and magazines telling you where to go and when - and secondly that the luck extends to the current round of purchases.

I've been checking charity shops for years and this year has been a particularly good one for finds; no rhyme or reason for it, it just has! I used to get the odd bag here and there, through the 1990's/2010's but I was only looking for small scale, yet would only see - to pass on - the odd larger-scale bag of farm or dinosaurs, while occasionally noticing the Fontanini stuff which is a perennial staple of these shops; only the other day I let a couple - of poor-paint clowns - go.

Then I had a bit of luck when I started moving to large scale back in 2009/10, from shops in Newbury, but this year's haul has been quite sizable and varied, with something every week or two.

Back in Rack Toy Month I was discussing in one post the Jaru sculpts and their similarity to those of Ocean, Soma and Shing Hing's sets. In the case  of Shing Hing I was using shelfies I'd taken in Smyths' bloody-great, empty-hanger in Farnborough, and what do you know; they turned-up the other day, loose, in a charity shop!

I'll probably save the comparisons 'till the next RTM or the next time we look at all the figures together, but as a box-ticker on Shing Hing, let's add them to the tag-list! Four nations, German, US, British and . . .

. . . Japanese troops, all in the same soft PVC as those aforementioned makers and pretty-much run of the mill China-troops, but all worth a comment or two.

In the case of the Japanese it's worth noting that while four of the poses are ex-Airfix, the other eight (for a 12-count pose total) are taken from the Ecsi/Ertl poses previously copied back in the 1990's by Rado Industries and others as we saw here, previously in polyethylene, quite tinny in the case of the Ri-Toys, but a softer Airfix-figure style polymer in the case of the copies-of-copies.

The' enemy' for the Iwo Jima battle I seem to recall suggesting back in RTM, although six of the poses are the common 'Fritz helmet' post-Cold War China-troops common to many current Chinese manufacturers and their shippers.

The other six are good old Matchbox's US Infantry set, copied with little attention to detail, ironic as the half-dozen modern figures are among the better versions of these common poses.

The ambiguity of the US soldiers is not a problem carried-over to the British set, again 12 poses, but all taken from Matchbox; their 8th Army this time. Only missing the Monty character, the heavy-weapons and crews and the surrendering German DAK 'Schultz', I've also kept two pipers so I can paint-up one at some point!

These will need comparing with the Ocean Desert Sales figures to which they look very similar, but Ocean don't have the second figure from the left on the top row - as far as I know.

The Germans pull from three original Western manufacturers 1970's-set's; two Matchbox (Afrika Korps - 7 poses, and German Infantry - 2 poses) and one Airfix original; German Infantry which provides the three poses bottom left.

There is a small amount of colour variation among the figures, most noticeable with the paler and darker greens of the Japanese, who also had a miss-mould, shooting downward, as he's curled-forward a bit.

Every figure is marked with an 'S. H. MADE IN CHINA', following the newer trend we've watched unfolding here for Chinese and HK-Chinese companies to build brand, and brand-recognition in a way few used to.

S is for Seasonal Show Shots

Third year running I think, and clearly going to be an annual event, I'm only sorry if I missed the first few! I tried collageing them but I'm not sure if the collages really work, so I'm posting both them and the original shots.

Not much blurb, as the picture do speak for themselves and it's all someone else's efforts; as in previous years - Fleet Historical Society and their Christmas exhibition in the Public Library at the Hartington Centre. Upper-floor; and worth a visit if you're passing.

The first two shelves are showing the items on the recent set of Classic Toy postage stamps, Fuzzy-Felt was fun, and Action Man was boss, but I want a wind-up, clockwork, Spacehopper! That's too cool for the school playground . . . although I suspect it's less contemporary, but neither is the Action Man, that's a modern re-boot one.

The rest of the sets are rather crammed onto one shelf with Spirograph, Cindy, teddy bears, Stickle Bricks (I don't remember stickle-brick horses . . . or people? Are these from another modern re-hash?), Britains (showing zoo not the Trojans on the stamp) and Hornby, although I think that's the Airfix kit of Stevenson's Rocket?

Meccano gets a corner of the third shelf and then there is a farm feature with all sorts going-on, mostly Britains with the separate play base, but there's Dinky and Corgi among others.

I know it's for kids but I spotted the two 'things' - it's Christmas, you have to enter into the spirit of this stuff!

The final shelf is a village scene with all sorts of old favourites busily being busy! As well as the listed/numbered items I can see Merit trees.

The table-cabinet this year has a collection of craft kits and plans for making your own accessories for dolls and soft toys - check out the Wonder Woman; front, far right.

Seeing the multi-coloured wool reminds me of my favourite jumper when I was a kid (5 or 6), a friend of my mother's offered to knit me a jumper (birthday?) and said I could choose the wool, so we went down into Brecon, and there's all these colours, and I'm umming and erring over the predictable dark reds and greens when I spot this multi-coloured wool, it was very similar to the ball in the above shot, but the base colour was black not red (so red was one of the rainbow-section colours) and I said "Can I have it made with that?" . . . "Of-course you can" came the reply, and sure enough a few days later I took delivery of a woolly -jumper which looked like an explosion in a fireworks factory! Black as night but with all these flashes of bright colour; I don't think I stopped wearing it until I couldn't get it over my growing head (still growing huh . . . Vichy?), or it fell apart, I can't remember which came first now!

A lovely collection of nostalgic bits and bobs again this year and here's hoping they go at it again next year!

K is for Kinder Katch-up . . . Follow-up, News, Views, Bits & Bobs and Contributions

Or better late than never!

So, it's back to Kinder, with all sorts of stuff to cover, some of it covered the other day elsewhere, but as I pointed out earlier in the year; the more they try to be me, the more you all are the winners, and the picture is more complicated than their 'news, views'!

To the news from El Cheeto 'the orange Brillo-pad's' America that Kinder will be allowed, but only, apparently; Kinder Joy, although that's only as far as capsule toys are concerned, the edible-only's are also available as this American price list shows.

A price list which has Americans paying up-to - or more than - four-times what we pay for them? Given the amount the average American has been [not] paying for Levi jeans and petrol this past fifty years, they will forgive me for having little sympathy; they should've saved enough by now to pay through the nose for these plastic novelties!

The third image is of one of the still 'illegal', or 'still not allowed' original Kinder Eggs, which was bought in the same US store, literally (I am led to believe) from under the counter! Well, if you are dealing with say; a Canadian firm, and he has a plentiful supply of the eggs - legal in the more enlightened market north of the boarder - you may be tempted to have a few cartons tacked-on to the 'for retail display' portion of the order, for to err . . . not display!

The supplier of these images of FDA contraband must remain anonymous to save him from the gulag's of the rust-belt coal-seams El Cheeto is so determined to mine-out before the climate kills us all.

However - it shows the nonsense of a 'policy' being made on the hoof, with more of a nod to what's being said on the Wikipedia page than any real commercial pressures. We have this year and last looked at two products with no real, practical, or "Health & Safety" difference to a Kinder Egg, feely available in the 'States, with connections to Turkey and Mexico, so whatever the continuing problem with Kinder's flagship-product are . . .they are not the Health and safety reasons given by Federal spokesmen! Sorry; it's 'spokespersons' these days isn't it!

Meanwhile a certain Mr Berke of New York, contributor to this parish, legitimately bought some Barbie figurine Kinder Joys for his Beryl the Peril to worry, how cool is that Beryl?! To the right, another Barbie, this one sent to the Blog by Peter Evans the other day.

The toy has four parts and a sticker sheet which you are supposed to use to decorate the model's shirt, bag and base; frankly - they are best left on the sheet! The larger sticker is for wherever!

Here she is in all her glory, they are nice little toys, and now that Kinder Joy and Kinder eggs seem to be having a convergence of offered toys, they will not be rare, as there will be hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions!

The insert shows the set of eight to find in the current range, and they were first reported in Plastic Warrior magazine (issue 168) where Les White showed previous waves that are out there to be collected, and which have slightly different (Barbie 'B') bases, this one too is the 65mm of the figures Les showed.

Having mentioned Kinder Joy and the apparent convergence of toy contents between the two ranges, these were Joy-only as far as I know, and this little lot were part of a larger charity Shop purchase the other day . . . well a couple of months ago now!

They seem to be pulling from all angles of popular culture, with nods to custom 'art' figures, traditional monsters, anime/manga art, smiley-faces (now emoticons!) and real-life animals (in the monkey-face), even native-American/Polynesian tribal iconography; my favourite is the rather laconic-looking (or spaced-out!) triclops!

Francesco Ferretti sent this fantastic shot to the Blog, being an impressive collection of Res Plastic's robots made for Kinder back in the 1990's; the 'golden age' of steckfiguren as the Germans call them - and the best way to find them on European evilBay sites.

On the left we have a Kinder-like Minion, which I think IS Kinder (they had some minion-branded/tie-in stuff a while back), but there were/are other Minion things out there (the big plastic eggs), but I don't know for certain where he comes from.

To his right are a pair of . . . err . . . fairy-butterfly-teddies! Peter E also sent these, with the news that they were imported via Turkey or a Turkish wholesaler. Now; Turkey is behind a lot of capsule-toy chocolate eggs (and bears!) including some of those previously seen here at Small Scale World . . . being retailed in the New World.

And as we become an ever more global community (against the best efforts of the trumpundbrexitt 'iers), this sort of thing will become more common as smaller importers search around for the cheapest deal, or businesses run by immigrants go to/through their relatives 'back home' or contacts in the country of origin.

I don't have  a problem with this, anything which by-passes the big-boys and may increase my choice is all right by me, I disagree with the Orange Wonder on this point, and his walls will only prevent US citizens - living abroad - from facilitating reverse traffic. Ooh! A tad-more policticticticing there; but relevant, and pertinent - if your world-horizons extend beyond the Deleware.

A couple of inserts from Peter, we will look at the parrot below, and it seems Peter sent the Blog 2/3rds of the whole set of fairy-butterfly-teddies!

Lidl's in-house Mister Choc branding - who we've seen here before - have had a makeover in the packaging department with an animal-related junglie-scene, a theme sadly not carried-through to the contents!

Some of the above mentioned contents, a novelty windmill and a deux-chevaux with cam-operated jumping bonnet (hood) and a set of stickers which I haven't applied. Note that Mister Choc's inserts are sub-branded to Lotto, while rival Poundland's are called Toto? Toto-Lotto was the old German lottery, plastered on newsagents hoardings.

Even as I was starting to edit the folder for this post, I bought two generic Kinder Eggs (no Boy/Girl, Disney, Star Wars or/&etc graphics, just a tray of 'basic' eggs), and got lucky with these little slightly-cartoony animals, both with a minor kit-element; the whole 'egg-magic'!

The Bobcat is the more realistic of the two toys, the Bears having googlie-eyes!

There's a Black Panther! Both sets are Katoons (geddit? K for Kinder!), but the upper set is clearly aiming at a level of realism the lower set isn't? And I wonder how may sets there are in the total line? I suspect also different sources for the two sets as one had a separate consumer info. chitty, the other had the toy instructions and consumer panels printed on the one sheet.

With the Superheroes (we looked at the other day), various Barbie waves and these, there is clearly a move from Kinder toward stuff we haven't seen in numbers since the change in gift-management back in the late 1990's, and I think more chocolate will be on my menu in 2018!

Among the lot Peter Evans sent to the Blog was this loose, novelty ring, which has a flying fairy, she goes round and round and round and round and round and round  . . . . and round and round and round until she begs for death!

And while she's very small, she's neither my smallest figures overall - Preiser Airliner figures in 1:500th scale, nor my smallest Kinder (1990's-issued lighthouse keeper and safari guide).

Also coming in an odd lot was this handless Sylvester with both eye stickers, so he will donate vision to a more complete one in storage! Peter also sent a scale-down of the old pull-action UFO launcher and the parrot, who is supposed to be a finger brush, but - fortunately - for those of us with larger fingers than your average infant; he fits on pens and pencils!

It also reminds me that the last time I saw this kind of paper paint-pallet, it was as a child, at Christmas, when our Rupert The Bear annuals often had these pages which looked like rather dull cartoons in various dark pastel shades, but when you wet them with a watery brush, the encapsulated paint in the dots of the cartoon-colouring blossomed into bright colours and you then had to fill-in to the black lines without going over!

While these are the contents of a 3-pack of Toto's from Poundland (upper shot) and the Mister Choc from Lidl (below) with very different capsules, although I think we've seen them here at Small Scale World before?

The nodding head (and tail!) triceratops is fun (and figural!); the others are only plastic tat!

Finally Francesco also sent this shot of one of the shelves from his RP collection's display, these are all classic 1980's or early 1990's Kinder toys and hopefully we will see more in the future when Francesco gets some more images to me, but I'm proving a problem in the receiving of them with my luddite eMail-based ways of doing things in the cloud-age! My Bad!

Thanks to Brian Berke, Francesco Ferretti, Peter Evans and the will-remain-unknown; purchaser of smuggled, Canadian-contraband, eggs; for their contributions to this post and/or donations to the Blog.

From Wikipedia:

"Semi-legalization in the United States

In May 2017, Ferrero announced that the Kinder Joy (a variation of the Kinder Surprise) will be available in the USA starting January 2018. They will be partially released, exclusively at Walmart stores for 30 days after the official release nationwide, starting Black Friday."

So - even the Kinder Joys were technically 'contraband' when photographed! And the Mexican/Turkish Emoji and Star Wars eggs Brian has sent in the past are both still technically illegal?

J is for Just a Quick-one!

For 99p in a charity shop the other day . . .

. . . came this wooden fort; flat-packed like a piece of Ikea's best, but I think I saw them in The Works about 8/10 years ago? It's got two figures! Is there a category of Toy Soldiers for them - Multi-directional Flats; Semi-flat Slots, Pseudo-flats, Slotty-slot Slottingtons?!!

I'll not be getting it out of the pack for a while, hence the quick-post nature of this post! It'll go in the 'paper and card flats box' (currently in storage) at some point, but due to greed on the part of the storage facility; that may be sooner than even I thought, which will benefit the blog!

 

I think from the measurements on the Quay-branded packaging it will have the same 'footprint' as all the other small-scale forts at between 6 & 8-inches per side?

 

Running late this week, so tomorrow's post will be late posting and I don't know what it will be yet!

T is for Those Pesky Astronauts

I don't know where your collection stands with regard to theme or 'purity' or scale, period or type, but some of you at least - I'm sure - will be as uncontrolled and esoteric as me when it comes to amassing plastic tat, and one of the things you will have accrued in the 'unknown zone' is an assortment of PVC figures between 25/30mm and and around the 60/70-mil mark depicting NASA Astronauts.

Some of them you may have ID'd over the years (maybe even these), I know I've pinned some small ones down to Matchbox's Mega-Rigs, others to Safari Toobs, these came into TKMaxx the other day and frankly; twelve-quid is too much for the contents, so 'shelfie-cam' came out!

Brand-marked to Motor Max the rump of Zylmex now owned by Tai Sang's offspring Red Box (sibling of Blue Box - as we discovered, sorry; RE-discovered, a year ago!), this NASA-influenced play-set definitely contains some of the 45/50mm'ish 'unknown' figures from my storage sample, does it help you with any of yours?

Close-ups of the window box shows four or five poses among the six figures, but for some of you the moon-buggy may well be the bigger draw. There's also a piece of ground equipment and a shuttle and 'big-rig' with booster rocket, all in different scales!

S is for Supertastic Supernumeraries!

Or E is for Everything Else . . . there's no order to these, some shelfies from Brian Berke, some shelfies from me a couple of figures from Brian's collection, a couple from mine, a bendy follow-up which nearly got its own post and some other stuff . . .

Aisle-end display in a store who's logo I just can't quite make out but it looks like Cookies, Cowboy's or Coopers! Racks of what look to be 16-18-inch Marvel figurines flanked by a pair of DC statuettes about two foot (24-inches) tall? Superman's about to take off, then he'll have to book himself for shoplifting and hand himself in to the commissioner down at 'City Hall'!

From the left and we have Brian's Batman (one of Brian's bat-men) talking to Goofy and (is that?) John Wayne! And why not? In fact he looks like he's telling Goofy to wise-up, grow-up and start acting his age; Goofy looks like he's not listening, or - at least - not taking it in, and JW is studying the horizon in the hope he won't have to intervene in the on-coming fisticuffs!

Next to them are a couple of Cherilea crime-fighters I bought from Jim at the last Sandown Park toy fair, sans-bases, there are always one or two of these on feebleBay, so they must have sold like hot cakes in the snow, back in the day. Bases are red bat-signs and I hope they'll turn up in junk lots over time, while Robin's missing his yellow cape, but I have a sneaky suspicion I may have one attached to a Cherilea knight somewhere?

Lastly we may have had Spidey before, but he was kicking about when I was shooting some of the others, so here he is again, nice sculpt, nice 54/60mm compatible size, if only I could get him to stand up he'd be a star item!

These are new, sent by Brian the other week and solid die-cast metal, a tad under 54mm as we can see from the Crescent berserker - who's back on station! Manufactured in China for Jada Toys Inc.; there are currently 38 figures in the initial wave.

Follow-up to NJCroce's bendy-toys posts passim, classic Bat-Duo^TM, slinky looking Bat-Girl in her purple passion-suit, The Riddler and some bloke I don't know from Adam Sandler! TKMaxx - now; get them before they're gone!

The guy on the left came with that funny little farmers lot from a charity show a few weeks ago, I think he's a capsule toy, or blind-bag thingy but I'm not sure so I held him over for this round-up. On the right another of Brian's Man Bats . . . he's missing an arm because I've cropped him out of a forthcoming post where he was doing point-duty as a scaler, only I don’t know how tall he is, about 70/80'mil maybe? Brian?

Five Below shelfie from Brian on the left (DC by Hasbro), TKMaxx shelfie from me on the right (Marvel by Schleich) . . . Superheroes . . . they're everywhere!

D is for Deforms

If I'm a bit snobby about Action Figures it's because A) I have neither the income nor the space to collect them and B) I'm too old to have had them as a kid, so haven't made the emotional connection with them that leads to collecting as an adult, if investment isn't the driver, and it shouldn't be, this stuff is not rare!

However, the point is my snobbery around Action Figures is cursory and half in jest, but my feelings for these are not printable! Deforms and super-deforms . . . what the very, actual, fuck?

You want to make some toy figures, right? You get some sculptors in, have them talk to the CAD guys, send the whole product of their creative co-operation to the CAM guys, they programme the pantograph milling machines, meanwhile you purchase a lorry-load of vinyl pellets, cost up-front, have the engravers clean-up the tools . . . and spend a week churning this shite into the warehouse! You sir - are nuts.

A waste of an opportunity to make normal figures, that's what deforms are all about!

DC's Justice League, these are both deforms and simple action figures, having three or four points of articulation, and with three figures per pack and a single piece of a forth, you have to buy all of them the make the missing figure . . . that used to be called racketeering!

Another thing about 'Deforms' is that there is no consistency to the genre, some are big-heads, some have stumpy legs, others have giant hands, these have steroidal shoulders, some are funny (haha) looking, others are cross-over (Star Wars - Angry Birds), yet others are pretending to be cars or spaceships, I don't mind all sorts including cartoon characters, but deforms manage to be everything, yet nothing.

Marvel's much-loved gang (not by me I've decided that if I'm anything: I'm a DC man!) get it in the neck from Hasbro under the resurected/old Playskool label, I'm sure the bean-counters at Marvel are grinning all the way to the bank, but it's not progress! These have a big-hand meme, we saw a similar non-articulated 'Spidey' last time we looked as superheroes here.

Ohhhhgod's bodkins and lawks-a-lardey . . . there's play-sets as well, it doesn't rain but it pours this shite! This is like a scaled-up Micro Machines play set! And yes, I can see, it's aimed at little kids, but - to me - that just makes it worse! There's a moral cynicism involved, no?

Back to DC and to prove I'm not ungrateful to Brian Berke who sent-in the above shots, I took these shelfies myself, in WHSmith, where there's currently a part-work for DC characters (Batman and the DC Super Friends), now, choices, choices . . . they are £5.99 . . . each issue . . . or you can find a pink (for 'girly girls'!) Kinder egg and get a realistic figurine for 59p? You shouldn't need to think about this one!

And - just to prove what a hypocrite I am - if this was the bendy toy it half looks like, I'd have no problem with it, but it's not; it's a wasted lump-of-shite-moulding that doesn't look anatomically like the known character!

This one (also from Brian) is going for the Japanese Astro Boy look we were studying the other day, and while it's called a 'super deform' doesn't look that deformed to me, just a robot version of a human character.

Of more interest is that A) the main artwork-logo bears a striking resemblance to the Skylanders range of Electronic toys, while B) the wacky language points to those Wild West sets Peter Evans sent to the blog; "The Excellence Design", "Collect it All!" and "High Speed Soldiers" being all odd phraseology?

It also has the for-Arabic/Middle Eastern market consumer panels of those other sets . . . but no bag of chalky sweets! And - following a comment on those earlier superhero posts - looks to be of the same tinny plastic type and vaguely similar press-together construction as the horses from those sets?