A is for A Tail of Six Dinosaurs

Tail - tale - dinosaurs . . . never-mind! Brain sent a bunch of dinosaur shelfies the other day without knowing I had just bought another from the range in Poundland Plus, nor why I had bought it, and it's led to my digging out a few other images for a post which - if nothing else - is instructive of how the toy industry works at the bottom end!

These are they (Mr. Berke's shelfies, that is!); three dollars . . .  is what; one-eighty? Something like that! And for that money you can't complain, nicely blister-packed with backing-cards and a decent level of decoration, my complaint - voiced before now - is the rather obvious joins where separate mouldings are fused-together to give the impression of, or allow for poses which would otherwise have proven difficult or impossible with only undercuts.

By the 'other' LP; Lollipop Toys (or Brooklyn Lollipops Import Corp. as they call themselves!), there are six in the whole line, and you may have recognised one or two of them, as they have popped-up on the Blog in the past.

This is the range in its entirety, the upper shot being from Henbrandt's old catalogue, the lower shot from the back of the Poundland one I bought and Blogged a year or two ago. You can see that both companies were (are?) getting the same colour schemes, which also those carried by Brian's shelfie herd.

But, I'd already bought my 2nd 'Dippy', this time from Poundworld Plus, and now in a different scheme (right) to the [common] previous scheme, as we saw with the Funtastic one on the left; Funtastic being what the industry calls a 'phantom-brand' of Poundland, I tend to call them made-up brands or imagibrands!

The new one is by Toy Bank another phantom-brand . . . of the same group! This time the sub-branding on the box is 'Little Fossil Toys', which has to be added to Green Gecko and Pirate Monkey in the ever spiraling-upward list of cross-referenced 'brandlettes'!

Packaging - clockwise from top left - for Lollipop, Henbrandt and Poundworld Plus, note however, that the counter display carton from Henbrant's catalogue is wearing the logo for Zhong Jie Toys, a company already supplying Poundland (or was it 99p Stores? . . . Aaaaarrrrrhhhhh!) with wild animal models!

Remember my paint-tray-guilt-stupid-Brit-thing purchase the other month? Well, it's from the same range, in the same (older?) scheme; Out of the Blue, probably a contractor rather than a phantom, and while I can't remember the counter display, I bet it was the same as the Henbrandt catalogue shot . . .

. . . and I'll bet there are other contracted and phantom brands out there carrying these six rather good, usually very cheap, foamed-PVC (or similar) dinosaur models, indeed, I think I mentioned TKMaxx having sets of three about two years ago, with different graphical packaging! In fact I thought I'd taken a shelfie, but I can't find it so I may not have!

More dino's - later today.

Q is for Question Time? Pig Parcel!

As we're looking at girly, civilian type, larger-scale stuff today, perhaps someone can help ID this weirdness - which came in for the princely sum of 10p the other day? It's a swine of a query!

It appears to be a (possibly . . . probably (?) still alive) piglet wrapped in brown-paper and tied-up with string!

It's a soft polymer, so not likely to be a Playmobile accessory; unmarked, and if taken as an adult pig; would be 54mm-compatible, if as a piglet; around 80/90mm-compatible, so possibly an action figure accessory?

I tried throwing it to see if it was a variant of Pass the Pigs, but it just keeps falling on a side, so I don't think Pass the Porcine Parcel's a line of further inquiry!

Anyone got any ideas, it's such an odd thing I feel it must be a known character or represent a memorable incident from some comic or movie scene?

It will fit the Horrible Histories pigapult!

 

Postman Pat playset, see comments, Thanks Anon!

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Interplay

As we were looking at pinky-purple stuff earlier, we might as well get these out of the way; although there was a bunch more of the same gear on Schleich's stand which is still to come!

Called My fairy Garden and coming from an outfit called Interplay (IP; which is lucky 'cos that's the title of the post!), you get real grass seed, compost and a flower pot or tray, along with fairy stuff for scenic diorama modelling. Sets are in different size-price brackets.

They're useful - for 54mm fantasy; if nothing else, and well modelled, with lots of little itty-bitty things of the sort you'd find in a Playmobile or Lego house set, but slightly more realistic and scaled smaller.

I didn't get to handle them, but I would imagine a PVC or PVC-like polymer for the horses unicorns (everything's unicorns at the moment!), larger mouldings and fairies, polypropylene for the buildings and smaller accessories.

There's a website and the pictures will further speak for themselves . . .

Ph is for Phollow-up to Phidel's Phormer Phollow-up

So; clearly someone failed to follow my detailed directions to Bracknell and hot-footed it over to Basingrad, so the other superhero set had gone, but I grabbed this one as it had looked useful in the shots Brian sent us, and even more so in the hand or 'in persons'!

We've seen the box/book already, here it is again! With the various super hero figures and the Frozen stuff already 'in the bag', I can see myself getting most of these in the next year or two just to 'complete'!

Again; £5.99 in TXMaxx, £9.99 in WHSmith's! That's the same WHSmith who just posted a profit-warning because their Famous Five and Ladybird parodies didn't sell well enough over Christmas!

The more useful figures - I'm assuming (again? What am I like!) the middle girl is Belle (by a process of elimination), despite the figure not being illustrated (in the modelled outfit) anywhere in the book. My lack of firm knowledge in the matter being worn as a badge of pride; in going some way as to prove I've not actually seen any of these pastel-hued, mawkishly sentimental, saccharine productions!

Marida is 61mm in total, Cinderella 67, as they are [all] youngish women, this gives a scale-size requiring males of at least 70mm, but that's not such a problem with all the Bully-Heimo-Papo-Schleich et al and Early Learning/Wilco/Blue Box knock-off stuff out there?

Looking for more round the charity shops the other day I saw something else with the Marida character, she has other names in other language-markets (at least three), and two equally flame-haired daughters and would therefore seem to be a referential-nod to Boadicea / Boudicca. Somehow I can't see Disney having all-three publically raped by Roman soldiers, but - like I say - I haven't seen the movies!

The slightly less useful figures - however the mermaid will go quite well with various others including Soma's and the Archie McFee/Accoutrements hag. Likewise the Mulan character would enhance a Samurai setting and Jasmine can be used with Arabian types. Even Snow White would be useful with a paint-job, as a medieval or Renaissance 'wench'?

Assuming (from the brown hair) that the middle figure in the second-from-top shot is Belle, that leaves two other princesses illustrated in the accompanying book; Tiana and Pocahontas (both black haired) but not represented among the models, even though they could have been instead of the two horses, or one of the horses and the idiot fish!

Speaking of idiot fish, this is the idiot fish! He's very small. Along with two markedly  different horses, one (Snow White's) being quite a reasonable sculpt (stupid expression and piggy-eyes though), and a useful mount for a 54-60mm knight, the other heavier and more cartoon-like, although a bit of surgery on the 'Disney' muzzle would improve him, and make for a half-decent heavy-horse.

The idiot fish seems to be called Flounder, rather than being a flounder, but maybe he's Flounder the floundering flounder! If these three had been dropped, you could have had Belle in her illustrated costume and the two absent 'princesses'; Tiana and Pocahontas while still hanging-on to a twelve-count!

And I'm sure it's pure co-incidence that it's two of the four 'ethnics' that have been dropped!

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Tactic Games

Continuing le theme du'jour! This was a new company to me, and they only had three or four games on display, two of which contained the figural elements Small Scale World craves, both of which will annoy anyone who groaned when they saw the snails earlier, but for posterity and completion - I'll persevere!

Alias; not a game familiar to me, but it has little men who are half-way between Rowntree's jelly-babies and Tony Hart's Morph! And that fact alone gets them onto the Blog!

Sadly the poses on the box are not repeated in the counters, who look even more like jelly-babies and less like Morph! Likewise the smaller 'children' on the box don't seem to have made it to the games contents, clearly a graphic trope to get across the family-friendly nature of the game?

They are very much a case of find-one-of-each-colour-file-and-forget as far as collecting goes, but they are figural, you get a 'free' sand-timer and they are probably fun! I'll be looking out for them in the charity shops in a year or two's time.

The same figures are included in the Junior Draw Out game seen in one of the background shots below. Also note how one of the red figures doesn't have the small disc-base of the others; earlier version left in the sales-team's display sample, or common variant?

They also had Cool Catch out on a table, this has . . . er . . . wooden flats I'd clearly forgotten about when I mention cows (or a cow) in the previous post (the problem of queuing these posts up on the laptop in random order!)

The reason I haven't collaged these is because I didn't crop them tight as they have some of the other games from Tactic in the background which I thought I'd leave visible!

A nice touch - especially for wooden flats - is the addition of a faux-fur fringe on the hoods of the Esquimaux's suits. And it looks from the box art as if the game was initially going to be for four players, but there are six figures; brown and yellow being included.

And a polar bear! I think (I hope - given the target age-range!) he only steals fish, and isn't in the business of eating Inuit! I only got  a bum shot I'm afraid, but he was more realistic (for a wooded flat!) than the cartoony inhabitants of the Arctic circle!

Again, it's not something I'm going to buy as a grown man who is supposed to collect Toy Soldiers, but if/when I see one going cheap I'll be getting it for completion, and to make sure samples are in the archive!

And if I attend the fair next year I'll try to remember to pay more attention to Tactic's stand and see what else they've come up with; of a figural nature.

R is for Ravensburger - Board Games III

Our third visit to board games today, brings Ravensburger into the tag list for the first time - I think? We're looking at two games, but I suspect some of you will raise an eyebrow at the second, but hey, figurals are figurals!

Picked this up the other day for three-quid I think, the fact that this is the fifth (?) game from charity shops in the last four or five weeks is a sign that the post-Christmas clear-out is now in full flow!

The board has 16 fixed sections of dungeon and then there are a number of others that get slid through the gaps, building the dungeon and constantly changing the pathways, while the icons on 12 of the moveable sections and all the fixed-elements affect the players as the battle-through.

The all-important bit as far as Small Scale World is concerned - the figures! Basically four practisers of magic, be they; wizards, warlocks, witches, necromancers or mages! From the left; there's a Gandalf-a-like, an eleven Queen, a Dwarven mage and a hagged witch!

Comparison shot with one of the Bilbo's Graham Apperley donated to the Blog a couple of years ago (far left), and a few other figures that were kicking around, close-to-hand; two chinatroops and two game-playing pieces - Wizard's clone trooper from Star Wars and TSR's larger Buck Roger's Battle for the 25th Century counter.

Each month, at the start of the month (or when I first need to scan something!) I reset the title-bar on the scanner to that month and zero, thus; Feb18Toys-001, and as the month progresses all sorts of stuff is scanned-in, mostly for the archive, but as you know, some stuff is cropped and included in posts.

Now the other day; scanning the instruction sheet in (for the archive) of this game, my scanner - struggling to provide a preview of a small black&white illustration on a high-resolution colour setting -invented some colour! And not just any colour, but the sort of gradated, neon-rainbow colours designed by the gods to appeal to an Aspergic mind!

So I took a screen-capcha, blew it up, took another and here it is! Pretty huh?! This existed, while not really existing, only for a moment, ephemerally, in some non-existent, side-room of cyber space . . . it makes you think . . . well; it makes me think!

What it looks like when it's not indulging in a spot of psychedelic self-weirding!

It also helps explain one of the main game mechanisms, not that I ever really dwell on them, it's about the figures!

Speaking of figures, this is also Ravensburger, it's actually been in Picasa for a while, waiting for a suitable post, as I don't try to subject the Blog's readers to ephemeral juvenilia for the hell of it, or to deliberately annoy them, but it's all got a place in the whole; it's all 'grist to the mill'!

See - It's all figural! They're snails! Flats! From Ravensburger! There's another wood flat in the queue . . . a cow . . . fresh-in . . . coming-soon!

D is for Diminutive Dinky Dino's - Board Games II

So the second game today, and - possibly due to the infant nature of its graphics - it was only 50p. Can't say no to that, especially when it's a box-full of dinosaurs, if; rather small dinosaurs!

The box, all very exciting! From Paul Lamond here in the UK, but the dino's are base-marked RBS (for BS Randal) so under license or a repacking? Originally developed in 2001, it claims to be the 'Classic dinosaur board game' which is either hyperbole or points to an earlier version? I suspect the former!

The game is still in the 2018 PLG catalogue, coded - as per the image - 5780.

The board, it's already gone to recycling, and the light was wrong, so I've had to enhance/tweak it in Picasa, which has left it looking a bit waffted!

But the best bit - which you will already know if you've got the game for your kids or studied the first picture - it has 17 sculpts, each player gets four different dinosaurs and the 'chaser' gets a slightly larger T-Rex! That's value for money, think of Risk; three identical sculpts for 6 different armies and it's probably only accident that they've changed the designs every ten years or so, the AWI sculpts seem to have been recently replaced with new Napoleonics?

They are not as small as the eraser/egg animals we've looked at a couple of times now, but still small enough, while to prevent tears (when one's favourite dinosaur gets eaten by the tyrannosaur) they just go back and start again - the winner being the first to get all four past the patrolling 'Rex

The lower picture contains a few other mini-saurs which have come-in, with odd-lots in the last week or two. Two rubbery/PVC types with cartoony countenances and a nicer-sculpted polyethylene sort-of-raptor in purple! And I've placed them with physically similarly game-tokens, which also shows they aren’t particularly in-scale, with the two sauropods not even the biggest sculpts!

In the upper picture Number 1 is on the left (T-Rex) and 2-17 are from back blue to front yellow, moving down the rows toward the viewer, left to right;

Dino Line-up

1. Tyrannosaurus Rex ('T.Rex')

Age: 65 million years old

Size: 12 metres (40 feet) long

Weight: 8 tons

Diet: Carnivorous

Habitat: North America and Asia

2. Styracosaurus

Age: 70 million years old

Size: 5.2 metres (17 feet) long

Weight: 2.7 tons

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: North America

3. Stegosaurus

Age: 150 million years Old

Size: 9 metres (30 feet) long

Weight: 2 tons

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: North America

4. Giganotosaurus

Age: 100 million years old

Size: 12.5 metres (42 feet) long

Weight: 8 tons

Diet: Carnivore

Habitat: South America

5. Deinonychus

Age: 110 million years old

Size: 2 metres (6.5 feet) tall

Weight: 80kg (176 pounds)

Diet: Carnivore

Habitat: The American mid-west

6. Protoceratops

Age: 80 million years old

Size: 1.8 metres (6 feet) long

Weight: 400 kg (500 pounds)

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: Asia (Mongolia)

7. Oviraptor

Age: 80 million years old

Size: 1.8 metres (6 feet) long

Weight: 20 kg (44 pounds)

Diet: Omnivore

Habitat: Asia (Mongolia)

8. Ornithomimus

Age: 70 million years old

Size: 4 metres (13 feet) long

Weight: 150kg (331 pounds)

Diet: Omnivore

Habitat: North America

9. Diplodocus

Age: 150 million years old

Size: 27 metres (88 feet) long- tail bones are 14 metres (46 ft) long

Weight: 12 tons

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: North America

10. Brachiosaurus

Age: 150 million Years old

Size: 30 metres (100 feet) long

Weight: 30-50 tons

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: North America Africa

11. Rioiasaurus

Age: 220 million Years old

Size: 10 metres (33 feet) long

Weight: 1 ton

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: South America (Argentina)

12. Wannonasaurus

Age: 85 million years old

Size: 60 centimetres (24 inches) long

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: Asia

13. Velociraptor

Age: 80 million years old

Size: 1.8 metres (6 feet) long

Weight: 25 kg (55 pounds)

Diet: Carnivore

Habitat: Asia- Mongolia and China

14. Iguanodon

Age: 130 million years old

Size: 10 metres (33 feet) long

Weight: 5 tons

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: North America, Britain & N. Europe

15. Minmi

Age: 115 million years old

Size: 3 metres (10 feet) long

Weight: 1 ton

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: Australia

16. Megalosaurus

Age: 170 million years old

Size: 9 metres (30 feet) long

Weight: 1 ton

Diet: Carnivore and Scavenger

Habitat: UK

17. Parasaurolophus

Age: 75 million years old

Size: 10 metres (33 feet) long

Weight: 3.5 tons

Diet: Herbivore

Habitat: North America

H is for Horsey-horsey! - Board Games I

Actually; I think that's another game entirely!

Bit of a board game day today, I lost the rhythm on Thursday, and was running around Friday thinking should I do this, should I finish that, what I'm I doing for Monday . . . and in the end I thought "Fuckit I'll have a few 'days off'!" Anyway; we'll get back on track with a board-game fest!

I'm not sure how familiar you are with this set, where you are - if you're not in the UK that is; for people nearer home it will be as familiar as the proverbial bad penny . . . although is a penny ever bad given that it’s better than no penny? Find a penny; pick it up, all day long you'll have someone else's penny!

A perennial favourite of mixed auction-lots (that box of shite which is 'offered' at a start-bid of five-pounds at the end of the auction "Can I see a hand please?" as people start wandering off to see if the refreshment window is still open), charity shops, car-boot and jumble-sales, I wonder how many have actually bothered to play it?

It's actually two games. Each of which seems to have more bits and pieces than a whole game of - its sort of namesake - Monopoly! First you have to play a two-dice Monopoly type game which leaves the players with more, less or little money, provides their [leased] horse-flesh with standing that may or may not help it in the final race, and establishes their training credentials in some points system, while also buying veterinary surgeries or feed wholesalers; or at least that what I got from a swift speed-read of the rules . . .

. . . then you have a single-dice horse race, with gambling (you can bet on your opponents horses!), on another board (actually the reverse of the two boards) which appears equally complicated, has as many 'chance' cards and can result in the best trained, richest, most points-holding horse coming last!

I guess it is supposed to be called/pronounced Toe-Top'poly (as in The Tote [based] Monopoly) rather than the ToT-op-oley I've always used, but don't take my word for it!

Whatever its pronunciation and however impossible it is to play, it seems to have sold well for many years, with the result that the horses can be found in lead, die-cast Mazac and plastic, and as such; regularly turn-up in mixed lots, bags, boxes or handful's of oddments, usually incomplete.

To add to all the other elements, mechanisms and compilations in play; the horses are weighted, with blacks most likely to win, blues least likely to win!

So when I saw this set going cheap in a charity-shop the other say, I grabbed the opportunity to have a complete run of twelve, to add to all the part-sets I have in storage. And yes, the missing black-leg is in the gluing queue!

We will return to this one day, just to compare the various other versions, and indeed; all the other board-game racing-horses, of which there are plenty!

S is for Sterwinwatch - Sir Talkedaboutalot

A brief one, it's getting boring now, at least fish in a barrel move a bit!

TJF said he felt others were wrong! Well, Jabber; I feel I know you're wrong!

Erwin thought it was Ivanhoe! Indeed - translating his usual strangled English he seem to be suggesting it was 'always sold' as Ivanhoe?

It actually depicts the actor and thespian; William Russel, playing . . . you've guessed it - Sir Lancelot, in err . . . the 1950's TV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot! Complete with the collar, gloves and a coat of arms that veered from the norm accepted of Lancelot, being of argent, three bendlets gules (three diagonal stripes of red on a silver [white] field), but which is reproduced quite clearly on the figure! What a couple of jokers, they really are too funny.

Incidentally one of the first British TV series filmed on colour stock even though we still didn't have colour TV - that's a [not very] rare fact, by the way!

Meanwhile the idiot monkey waxed ill-lyrical on Afrika Korps only for the artist to explain it was a hand-made one-off, which - it then transpired - had appeared on TJF's Stuff once before - it is painfully like watching Cheech and Chong trying to write War and Peace! And the bits I've greyed-out are amusing . . . 'That's a rare fact I got from someone-else's book, by the way' he's funnier that a clown in a suit of custard!

I'm pretty sure Hasbro's Indiana Jones Titantium Series are micro-machines to boot, he has to have an answer, he has to pontificate for several paragraphs, he need 'data' because he doesn't know anything, so he Googles, gets it wrong and publishes as fact, making it up as he goes along- again!

And a footballer! Fancy-that, you don't see many examples of footballers on Toy Soldier Blogs these days . . . oh! Doh! Hahahaha! Sat in my dust by the side of the road; the pair of them, should I just send them a list of my forthcoming posts - give'em a head-start!

I guess I'm setting their agenda whether I like it or not . . . it is too funny! And please discount the aluminium mould stuff, that was more bullshit than you can squeeze into a cider-press - although the other members of the PSTSM were supping heartily at the run-off!

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - GaleForce Nine - Own Products

As well as carrying the D&D stuff, GaleForce Nine also carry three gaming systems from Battlefront, but we'll look at them under Battlefront in a day or three, however they do develop their own games and they are rather special, 'cos they've got figures, and we like figures at Small Scale World!

These were the two on show at the London Toy Fair, Firefly and Dr. Who, you see those two on the same shelf and you know something magic this way comes . . . and you're not wrong - Sir or Madame!

Lovely, role playing 28mm, D&D style with shipping containers as the 'dungeons', lovely figures sort of Wild West meets Steam punk meets Blade Runner! Didn't enquire as to games mechanisms, it's about the scenery isn't it! And the figures!

Dead counters are card flats which is a good idea as it makes them less intrusive to continuing play, but they can build-up in  a gory fashion as the mayhem progresses!

Unit six looks like a rather unpleasant screened field-latrine I once knew in Kenya - yes - 'intimately'; the whole battalion was queuing-up for them, we'd been given some scaled fish when we landed in Nairobi the day before, which looked, cut (read 'sawed' or 'didn't cut') and tasted like gone-off, coelacanth might, I imagine!

Another shot and the catalogue 'flyer'. I've missed Firefly, and I think there was another mid/late-1990's late-night sci-fi serial along the same lines (sentient talking ship?), I'd catch the odd episode, but never stuck with the first and missed the other altogether, but I can see the appeal of this game, with its clear elements of several genres. It reminds me of a few favourite graphic novels too!

Ahhh! More NSD's and quite well detailed ones at that, along with that pesky K9-unit! If I understood the sales-rep correctly, there are four Doctors in the game box, with more planned as separate figures or figure sets, with other 'enemies' to be added or with extension-packs if this does well?

Again; the flyer from the catalogue, no inappropriate memories triggered this time, just me cowering behind the sofa while a giant spider clung to the back of Sarah Jane and a bunch of cultists taught me a Buddhist chant! Ohm-Mani-Padme-Hum, Ohm-Mani-Padme-Hum!

I don't think this was on show in London, but it looks fun for Trekkies (or are they Trekkers?), there even seem to be a few figures among all the micro-space ships, but not enough for me to get excited-about until I see it in a charity shop, and games like this never (or rarely - he says; remembering two Golden Compasses in two weeks!) turn-up in charity shops!