Thought for the Day 8

For the sleepwalkers . . .

The only difference between a rut

and a grave is the depth

- Unknown

S is for Shackman's Sonsco Soldier Set

A nice set of American dime-store 'pod-foot' knock-offs from Sonsco in Japan, imported into the US via New York jobbing-firm Shackman who have imported just about every kind of toy and plaything over the years.

While British firms were developing Hong Kong's toy trade (with Lois Marx's help!), most of the US import firms, Cragstan, Azrak Hamway International (AHI) Shackman (along with Marx) et.al., were taking advantage of the cheap labour, broken economy and Marshall Plan's need for a resurgent Japan to buttress the West against bolshevism and the Chinese Communists by using Japan for the same thing Britain, the Europeans and Marx were using Hong Kong for - a good supply of cheap toys, but tending to lead, tin-plate and composition rather than the colony's polymers.

Japanese firm Sonsco are known to have supplied Shackman and this set's internal divider seems to have a section of Sonsco logo on, so I've called-it for Sonsco, I wanted the iteration anyway! TJF will - I'm sure - indicate if he disagrees in his usual dulcet fashion!

Although the quality was often poorer than the Western firms whose custom they were taking, they knew how to market and this colourful label beats the boring monochrome labelling of 1950's Britains or Comet into a cocked-hat - there might be a tank or charging cavalry in the box! The fact that these figures are a good as any Barclay (or the other lot . . . Manoil Manufacturing) to the eye, only seals the deal.

The code's probably 2450 or something similar, one of the hollow-cast sites used to have a set of Anti Aircraft figures with the same code (listed as 2450), containing 3xAA guns, 1 radioman and 1 charging soldier; it sounds like it was half the size of this set, so maybe the missing bit of the label is a ..51 or ..60, or even 2470, is that the tail of a seven coming down in the corner?

Thought for the Day 7

For cowards . . .

It is better to die on your feet

than live on your knees

- Emiliano Zapata

It is better to die as a lion 

than live as a sheep

- Unknown

P is for Pig!

When I said there'd likely be more chocolate in my diet in the New Year, I lied! I was so impressed by the improvement in the toys in that tray I found before Christmas I adopted a two-eggs a day policy for the rest of that week!

Yes, I'm a pig, but I get enough exercise to work it off and not have to worry about it in the same way some of my contemporaries might, I notice that having encouraged us to pig-out for the last few weeks the mass-media are now banging-on about exercise, fitness, gyms and loosing weight!

The first pair was more 'Katoons', a woodpecker whose tree section is stackable with three other toys to make a tree, the whole being poseable to present either a summer (green) face, or an autumn (orange/brown) face to the viewer. The other being a beaver and kit (cub?) that shelters in the curve of mum's tail.

The next day's was more of the same with a spring-mechanism snapping-shark and a peculiar hedgehog wearing a nappy made of leaves! He's part of a set of four similar nappy-wearers, but they are clip-on so can be easily lost . . . luckily!

After that it all went a bit downhill, with no more figurals, and not much of more than passing 'toy blogger' interest to me, but the custom chopper was a nice surprise, and the Mini is one of the hyper-realistic models ideal for HO railway layouts.

That the tray was empty after day four suggest's someone else was pretty impressed with the content's too, as it hadn't seemed to go down as speedily in the weeks before it's sudden diminution, partly at my hands!

The little pieces of track way that came with the two-seater racing car seemed familiar, and I found similar tracks in some shelfies of Cars movie tie-in bland-bag stuff I'd taken for the still in edit Moshlings post.

Made by Zuru, they are (or appear to be from the photo) actually a different design, not so much in the dimensions - where the similarity looks close - but in the method of connecting the pieces. Is this a 'play grounds' toy-trend which I've missed?

The Inserts;

I got them a bit wonky in the scanner; but you get the picture! That's five or six sets of four, each of which has some meme or trope; tree-section, baby, leaf-nappy, arctic, ocean or North American. One wonders how many are there altogether and how many are passably realistic?

The track is branded to Modular Toys Ltd., so the line may be available separately elsewhere? Although it seems to be a promotion for their larger Lego-compatible sets. You can see how getting all four makes a little race-way. 

The more useful/collectable of the vehicles; not that chopper-owners would be seen dead running 3- or 5-spoke mag-alloys, they'd insist on proper spokes that need adjusting one by one, tightening after a long journey and which display a tendency to snap with a twang when you least expect it!

Thought for the Day 6

For the unread . . .

You may not be interested in war, 

but war is interested in you

- Leon Trotsky

12 is for Days of Christmas - Day Twelve

That's it I'm afraid, we've come to the end of the images! On the left of the shelf are a few of the many animals issued over the years, then the Vikings with some of the less common and 'one-off' steckfiguren in front and the big goggle-eyed robots I remember from eggs in the late 1980's

To the right we have a nice tower, a Viking 'egg' and the Afro-Polynesian/Alien-Amerindian eggs! Another set which used the casing as part of the toy, these (the casing sections) tend to have holes, catches and/or slots specific to the contents of each toy so can be much harder to build from odd parts harvested from evilBay.

And - many thanks to Francesco Ferretti for sharing this set of images with the Blog, if you'd like to be swap-mates with Francesco get in touch with me and I'll pass your email on to him.

E is for Ends; Loose, of Christmas and the Year

Really it's 'L is for Loose Ends' but I know we've had that title before!

The last bits from Brian Berke's recent eMails, my last seasonal shelfie, last words on nutcrackers, baubles and chocolate advent calendars, presents, stationary, catering supplies and a glass animal . . .

. . . .my last present to you this Christmas is to drop all the crumbs left in Picasa or on my desktop into your RSS feed! If you get the Blog via such a thing - I've never really worked out what feeds are, how they work or where RSS's differ from other feeds!

Kicking off with Brian's last present to me . . . a shelfie he took in Connecticut recently of a Crimbo pullover, he suggested I might be able to say something nice about it . . . but I'm not sure I can!

It's got a nutcracker on it so it has its place in the pantheon of nutcracker related stuff we've looked at as a seasonal 'thing', and to be kind to it, it's . . . . err . . . distinctive; if people are found wearing one once I've become Supreme Overlord of Earth (and Emperor of France); it will make it easier to have them rounded-up and turned into pet food (it's for the good of the gene-pool not the pets), but I'm not sure it has any other redeeming features, it's lost its sleeves for a start!

And having seen the weather they've been having in Connecticut in the last week or two, the fact that this is still on its hanger says plenty! Thanks Brian!

Which brings us neatly to another tabloid head-fit over nothing (see yesterday-moning's post), the rink is plenty big enough and there were little two-handled penguins about 3-foot high for kids to ride/lean on if they weren't used to ice, the restrictions on numbers may have been a 'elf'und'safty' thing, but with the best of intentions behind it, (people in authority don't want to be sued because stupid people have hurt themselves doing things which have hurt stupid people since time immemorial!), nevertheless; the tabloids had a field-day of unnecessary outrage.

I have fond memories of both Lichfield and its neighbour Tamworth, being stationed between the two at Whittington for my basic-training back in 1984.

I just saw two more life-size nutcrackers! And the biggest yet at about 9 feet, but they don't beat . . .

. . . attack of the 10-foot-plus woman! I found this young lady looking lost in Woking's main shopping-precinct while delivering a Bah Humbug card in the week before Christmas (nothing to report in/from the Toysaurus), I don't recognise her, maybe advertising a forthcoming cinematographical or theatrical event of some sort?

Or did Woking Borough Council just leave a 10-foot, barely-dressed (hardly festive and definitely not 'for the weather'!) woman in the way to surprise unwary shoppers weighed down with Christmas gifts and/or flu? Does anyone recognise her? At about twice life-size it's a new one (2:1) for the tag list!

I shot these on Friday last (29th) in a charity shop window and I would have had them on Tuesday - just for fun - but they went over the weekend, the almost certainly Russian (or Eastern, ask TJF) equivalent of Erzgebirge, little wooden, lathe-turned, onion-towered orthodox churches, ringed for tree-hanging, aren't they charming? They'd make excellent village-markers in/for micro- or map- war-gaming!

Glass trees and the 'big bear' on the mantelpiece this Christmas, I can't remember if I've posted them before, but if I have; here they are again . . . It's still Christmas! The speckles on the mirror aren't dust, that's what age does to mirror-glass!

Most of the cracker presents this year went to the youngsters, but I managed to end-up with a mini pack of cards and a polymer paper-clip! We had wacky little hats this year, which were quite retro and looked more like something you'd see Laurel & Hardy wearing with stiff collars and kipper-ties!

While on boxing-day I lost the hat competition round my brother's as I wanted to go outside and suck on the vape, which entailed facing a raging squall which would have traduced my traditional tissue-paper crown to a piece of damp pulp, so I had to concede early!

My sister-in-law had lovely places set at table with 'merry festive napkins' (as Giles would have put it!) printed and folded in the shape of Christmas trees and Christmas jumpers, which while only ephemeral tissue were quite clever, I thought.

This year's seasonal kitchen roll was bears taking a stroll through the Crimbo-tree woods! A few sheets are saved each year for wrapping the new baubles and tree decorations when they go away with the others for another year.

My only figural present (other than the Peruvian chess set we looked at a while ago) was this little blown and rod-glass, Murano-style rhinoceros - it's OK; googly-eyed, cartoon rhinos don't attack Flying Fortress pilots! Although - that horn is not to be messed-with!

Collectable books didn't include much to interest figure-purists, and I think I have the Mechanical Toys in storage, but all three will prove useful. I also got the Richard Holmes/IWM D-Day book, which is a bit simplistic ('concise' is kinder), but makes a nice, easy-read, day-by-day account.

The Beswick is a bit like the Ramsey's railway and die-cast yearbooks, only not updated so often, but the old ones do turn-up cheap and I have three for four now including the Wade Whimsies one which is very useful, Lladro &etc.

The third Christmas tome is a treatise on Fossil watch tins . . .

. . . something that had completely escaped me, but about which I now know more than I will ever need to call upon . . . as I don't collect, and have no intention of ever collecting, watches, let alone their packaging! From the dates I guess Fossil took a leaf out of Swatch's book, where are Swatch now?

But it's a lovely thing with different years/model's tins arranged on pages with very nostalgic graphics or - as above - in equally nostalgic settings; a REAL 'Coffee Table' book. Come to Colorado 'The railway tree State'!

Brian B also sent these, a couple of weeks ago, the post had published and they might have waited 'till next year, but then this post started to accumulate in a spare folder! They look like the one's I couldn't find when I was whinging about them the other day; Confiserie Heidel chocolate advent calendars . . . proper ones!

I've since learnt that the local Bible-shop does proper ones with seasonal artwork (two designs), 24 windows and 24 different designs of chocolate so I've promised to buy them there next year!

In the meantime these two were in the 'News Views...' to-be-sorted pile, a bit late now, but I will try to work-up something next (this coming!) November, that's a bit timelier for finding them to enjoy over the important 24-days! From the Metro, on the right; the 'i' on the left.

This was the disappointing 25th and untraditional window's treat in my calendar. It's not that I don't 'get it'; everyone appreciates an extra chocolate; but it's a Christian 'event' and their rules say 24 windows, it's not like we are short of chocolates the next day! And nuts and cake and pudding and marzipan fruits, dates, figs, Turkish-delight, mints . . .

 . . . equally; I'm no Christian, but I try to at least pay lip-service to, or go along with the spirit of the thing, as I would at the Hajj or the Kumbh Mela, and it's a measure of how we are losing our souls as a species (to marketing) that we just accept a slide to godless consumption and the worship of the true God - Mammon - over retaining our cultural links with the past, even if we don't agree with the pan-dimensional mega-being element of the thing!

Or even - perish the thought - using education and intelligence to build a better, fairer, secular world for everyone, based on the rule of law and democratic principles.

On those cheerful thoughts (!) I'll wish you all a Happy New Year and hope to all the Gods - real or imagined - that it's better than the fractious, divisive one we've just escaped, but I fear that for many of us 2018 will be worse . . . the lunatics are [none-too-] firmly in charge of the asylum!