Still, as least he probably knows we didn't
have an RAF in 1776 . . . that Trump huh? What a card!
Anyone looking for toys of Washington's
airborne glory will need a Toy Fair and sadly they are in short supply this
week, but there's a four-day Vectis
sale to make-up!
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Toy Fairs
Sunday 4th August 2019
Porthmadog - Chris Dyer Fairs
Y Ganolfan Community Centre, High Street,
Porthmadog, North Wales, LL49 9LU
Web. - www.chrisdyerfairs.co.uk
Tel. - 01643 702 757
Mob. - 07966 694 579
10:30 - 15:00hrs
Admission £2
(used to be a couple of really good
army-surplus stores in Porthmadog High Street; all my German-army shirts came
from there and a Russian t-shirt with a darned-hole and slight stain that might
have indicated the demise of its original owner in Afghanistan?!)
Burton-on-Trent - Burton Railway Society / Chris Eaton - 4th Annual Toy &
Train Collector's Fair
National Brewery Centre, , Horninglow Street,
Burton upon Trent, DE14 1NG
Tel. - 01283 532 880 (National Brewery Centre)
Tel. - 07877 346 371 (Chris Eaton)
10:30-15:00hrs
Admission £4, children £1 - includes entry to Brewery Museum
Falkirk, Scotland - McLaren Models
Tel. - 01324
624 102
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Auctions
Tuesday 6th - Friday 9th August 2019
Stockton-on-Tees - Vectis Auctions (4-day
sale)
Fleck Way, Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees, TS17
9JZ
Web. - www.vectis.co.uk
eMail - admin@vectis.co.uk
Tel. - 01642 750 616
Tuesday 6th
" The Specialist sale on the 6th of
August starts with The Andy White Collection of Smaller Diecast, over 240 lots
of Matchbox Regular Wheels, Accessory & Major Packs, King Size & Super
Kings and Superfast. Plus Corgi Rockets, Husky & Corgi Juniors, Benbros,
Morestone, Lone Star, Fun Ho!, Dinky Toys and Miscellaneous Items.
The sale also features further Matchbox models including Regular Wheels,
Superfast, and Super Kings, plus others, and over 200 lots from an Ex Matchbox
Employee. This collection features predominantly models from the 1980s-90s and
includes many rare, never come-across models, the ones that collectors knew
existed but people rarely kept! One not to be missed for the Matchbox
collector."
Wednesday 7th
"The Specialist sale to
be held on the 7th of August features five private owner collections plus Dinky
Toys, Corgi Toys, British, Continental & Foreign diecast and TV & Film
Related. The Swiss Collection features boxed and unboxed cars and commercials
from Dinky, including French models. The French Collection offers 27 lots of Corgi
Chipperfield Circus models plus TV and Film related vehicles, and The Dinky
Military Collection features over 30 lots of French Dinky. The Hampshire
Collection features further Dinky models including French Dinky and The North
London Collection offers Pre-War Dinky (Hornby Series), John Hill & Co
aircraft and road vehicles, Tootsietoys and cast-iron vehicles. Further items
in the sale include Dinky and Corgi empty boxes, Haulage, Military, road and
racing cars, buses, French, trade packs, pre-war and Dinky (Nicky Toys), Corgi
Rockets, Corgi (Husky Models), pre-production vehicles, Gift Sets, ephemera,
shop displays and awards."
Thursday 8th
"The Specialist sale to
be held on the 8th of August starts with a Private Owner Collection; over 90
lots of predominantly Matchbox Models of Yesteryear, including Code 2 issues,
plus Matchbox Collectables. Part 2 of The Ex Matchbox Employee Sale
offers a further 115 lots including Matchbox games, ephemera and novelties,
plus Superfast, including Gift Sets, Action System, Pack Sets, team
Collectables and promotional sets. The collection also includes Matchbox
originals, Premier Collection groups and shop displays. Further private owner
collections include The Kent Collection, - large groups from Hot Wheels, Corgi
and mixed diecast, and The Pontypool Collection, original and re-painted groups
of Triang Spot-On, Corgi, Dinky and others plus lorry, truck and haulage
groups."
Friday 9th
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Wednesday 7th August 2019
Warrington - Warrington & Northwich
Auctioneers & Valuers
551 Europa Boulevard,
Westbrook, Warrington WA5 7TP
Web. - www.warringtonauctions.co.uk
Tel. - 01925 658 833
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Friday 9th August 2019
Spalding - M&M Auctions
Unit 4, Plover Court, Stephenson Avenue,
Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 3SW
Web. - www.mm-auctions.com
eMail - info@mm-auctions.com
On-line (www.the-saleroom.com)
Tel. - 01406 422 848
Viewing - 29th May and mornings of sale
days from 08:30hrs
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Other Events
Saturday 3rd - Sunday 11th August 2019
Ropely - Mid Hants
Railway/Watercress Line - Day Out with Thomas
Mid Hants Railway/Watercress Line, Ropely, Hampshire,
SO24 0BL
Web. - www.dayoutwiththomas.co.uk
Tel. - 01962 733810
Admission £20, child (2-16) £14, family
ticket (2+2) £60
Ticket includes; train rides with Thomas, meet
the Fat Controller, temporary tattoos, entertainment show, vintage [fairground?]
rides, etc...
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Saturday 3rd - Sunday 4th August 2019
Beeston - English Heritage -
Legendary Joust
Beeston Castle & Woodland Park, Chapel
Lane, Beeston, Cheshire
Web. - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/whats-on/beeston-castle-legendary-joust-3-4-aug-2019/
10:00-17:00hrs
Bury - East Lancashire Railway
- Day Out with Thomas
East Lancashire Railway, Bury Bolton Street
Station, Bolton Street, Bury, Greater Manchester
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Sunday 4th August 2019
Biggleswade - Shuttleworth Collection
- Family Airshow
Old Warden Aerodrome, Biggleswade,
Bedfordshire
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Minor Stuff
Some sites mention aToy & Train fair in
Morley/Leeds on Sunday, organised by Dualco,
but as far as I can tell it's a proper vintage/antiques fair and unlikely to
have more than the odd piece of overpriced hollow-cast or tin-plate novelties? Morley Leisure Centre, Queensway,
Leeds, LS27 9JP
It's Beaulieu
Supercar Weekend 3rd/4th, down there on the edge of the New Forrest, if this is
anything like the big auto-jumble meet I went to about fifteen years ago, it's
great for plastic vehicles (and die-casts etc.) up on the hill between the
venue-proper and the car park. I filled-my boots with cheap, esoteric tat over
the week - on that occasion! I suspect this is a more prestige event -
www.beaulieu.co.uk
And there a children's bookswap in Newcastle for those of you with more
bookish offspring, up that way - the National Centre for Children's books, Line
Street, Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle-upon-Tyne - www.sevenstories.org.uk
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Overseas Events
Saturday 3rd August 2019
Dallas (Texas, USA) - North Dallas Toy Show
Dallas
Events Center, 4343 Sigma Rd, Suite 600, Farmers Branch, TX 75244, Texas, USA
Web.
1 - www.northdallastoyshow.wix.com
Web.
2 - www.northdallastoyshow.wixsite.com
Facebook
- www.facebook.com/northdallastoyshow/
Tel. - +12 148 937 726
09:00
- 15:00hrs
Admission
$2.00, children under-12 free
Located between Midway Road and Welch, take
'Welch Road' exit off 1-635
Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th August
2019
Concord (North Carolina, USA) - CCC - Charlotte Comicon Summer Show
Embassy Suites Concord, Charlotte-Concord
Convention Center, 5400 John Q Hammons Drive, North West Concorde, NC 28027,
North Carolina, USA
Admission $5.00 per day, children under-9
free
10:00-18:00hrs - Saturday 3rd
10:00-16:00hrs - Sunday 4th
Comics, toys, collectibles, cosplay etc...
Macungie (Pennsylvania, USA) - Das Awkscht Fescht 2019 - Outdoor Toy Town / Indoor Toy Show
Das Awkscht Fescht, P.O. Box 193, Macungie,
PA 18062, Pennsylvania, USA (organisers)
4062 Brookside Road, Macungie, PA 18062
(parking)
Eyer Middle School, 5616 Buckeye Road,
Macungie PA 18062, Pennsylvania, USA (Indoor Toy Show)
Shoemaker and Macungie Elementary Schools'
Parking Lots (Outdoor Toy Town, behind and accessible from Eyer Middle School)
Web. 1 - https://awkscht.com/ (main event
pages, starts today; Friday 2nd)
Web. 2 - https://awkscht.com/toy-show/ (toy
shows)
eMail - info@awkscht.com
Tel. 1 - ++6109 672 317 (hotline)
Tel. 2 - ++6108 235 033 (flea market)
10:00-17:00hrs (3rd - Outdoor Toy Town)
07:00-14:00hrs (4th - both events/toy show sites)
Admission charge unknown
Sunday 4th August 2019
There's supposed to be a Hotwheels show in Chicago (USA), but I
can't find anything on it* so while it may well be a Mattel toy-related convention, it may equally be downtown
gang-bangers playing with souped-up 1970's sedans to loud music and the smell
of melted-rubber, while oiled, tattooed-babe's in hot-pants, hang-out (in all
senses of the word), either way; sounds like fun!
* This is not an insult of all Mattel Hotwheel sites, just an aside! That
Standinger, he's as daft as a brush up a badgers arse, how is my not finding
something an 'insult' to anybody? Stoopid man!
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If you are
an event promoter/show curator/auctioneer and you want your toy, model,
collectable or popular-/youth-culture type sale/exhibition/event listed here - FOR FREE - or linked to; please eMail me -
maverickatlarge[at]hotmail[dot]com
- stating
the date/s of the event, address of event, contact details, opening/viewing
times, admission pricing and any other relevant facts/details or features -
parking, travel notes, disability access, availability of refreshments, event
subject matter &etc.
And please
mention any flyer-art or poster-/leaflet-scans but send by separate eMail, in
case they go to the 'junk' folder,
from where they can be recovered and marked safe, but only if I know they're
there!
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Hestair Kiddycraft Brick-News
Art
Tate
Modern in London has an interactive art
'installation' in the main turbine hall at the moment consisting of a ton** of
white Lego, with which little fingers
(or bigger ones) can make what they like, the aim is to construct elements of
one's ideal 'future City' but expect to see various attempts at space-ships and
genitalia (or genitalia-shaped space-ships!) left in the pile, still, I suppose
that by limiting it to one colour they have greatly reduced the chances of rude
words also being left!
** It's not clear if it's a literal ton or
a figurative one?
Comedy
From the Evening Standard (28th June) by 'Adams' and summing the
situation up a month-ago nicely I think! Lego had just been voted most annoying
toy to step on . . . toy soldiers came-in at number 7 I think? Number 5?
Entertainment
Lego have bought-up Merlin
Entertainment, clearly realising that the writing is on the wall for their
ocean-filling polymer-product, it looks like they might be planning to get out
of toys and into theme parks?
The purchase brings them Madame Tussauds, the London Eye, Thorp Park, Chessington World
of Adventure and Sealife . . .
among other well-known and successful attractions. With the Legoland theme parks the new group (Kirkby) will be the world's second
largest high-end, low-brow, event-destination, tourist-trap operator after
Disney.
Not so Entertaining?
Yet today's paper has Merlin reporting a drop in sales at Legoland after the last Lego movie failed to deliver, or drive enough customers to the site . . . you win some, you lose some!
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Toys In The Media
Have we had this one before? Another
example of the kit-runner trope, illustrating an article on 3D-printing in
medicine I cut-out, but rather spoiled by the components being 'painted' on the
trees! And why would you be made to glue every bone of the hand together if the
spine comes in long-section mouldings - and a different scale!
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A wooden car being used to promote public
transport over privately-produced pollution
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Argos took it's toys to 'PRIDE' the other week!
My question is - why the f**k has the
potato-head family been given a plastic potato? Surely the whole point . . .
the whole fun; is in finding an odd-shaped root-vegetable to make a funny face,
with four-eyes and multiple hands. Or, ruining a banana or courgette, an apple
or a water-melon for a Mr Bloody-fat Head? Mr Lemon, Mrs Orange?
The plastic heads have set holes and
therefore set positioning and a limited number of configurations, once you've
tried all the obvious ones and placed the ears where the hands should be and
vise-a-versa, there's nothing left but to get bored? Never mind PRIDE . . .
"Down
with plastic potatoes! Freedom for funny fruit! Vary the vegetables!"
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Other News
Hassenfeld Brothers
Hasbro have posted strong second-quarter
results which they have credited on sales of Marvel Avengers and Magic The
Gathering licensed merchandise. I though MtG had died a death, I still have an un-played-with set of the
original two-pack card set somewhere!
Revenues are up 9% on last year, by they
are warning that if the Trumpton puts tariffs on Chinese imports; prices will
have to rise, that's from their no-shit-Sherlock department - which Trump
clearly hasn't spoken to!
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Danger Mouse
Is to return with fifty-two new episodes
from next year, on BBC (CBBC) rather than ITV, but Brian
Cosgrove (originator) will be consulting with Boulder Media who have the gig.
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Follow-up to Foreign Fellow's Fate
That skandie-carved Lewis chess man I
mentioned a while ago in a 'News, Views . . .' sold for £750,000
in the end, I don't know who bought it or whether it will join either of the
bulk samples at the British Museum or
the National Museum of Scotland? But
I do know if any of the other - still missing - four ever come-up for auction,
they won't be joining my collection!!
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TJF
His post today is priceless and will be responded
to in due course, but there is now a queue of rebuttals of the nonsense coming from
that stable of 'tards, so it may be a while before I get round to his latest
fuckwittery. 'John' - yeah, he's a real person!
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Links
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H is For How They Come In
Busy week this week; I'd already found two
lots by the time I posted last week's News, Views Etc..., since when three
more purchases have been made, all of them charity-shop buys.
A simple rack-toy, probably seen (and
ignored) a few years ago in the now-defunct Poundworld
or 99p Stores (PMS? I think that was 99p
Stores?) and probably originally for offer at the same money! But now the
deal is - I save two each of the figures and the hanger-card/labels for the
archive and send the rest to recycling.
As mentioned it's a PMS import, the Wizz Toys
being a short-lived phantom-brand, new to me and probably only used for a
season, to graphically tie various disparate toy lines into a 'corporate'
range.
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Minutes before the rack-toy bag, I'd
shelled-out the grand total of 50-pence for this 'light & sound' Panzer IV, around 1:50/60th and getting
the lines of a late spaced-armour vehicle (Ausfklarung M/N?) quite well for a
cheap toy.
I needed to remove the silly, out-of-scale
M1 helmet from the turret because A) it looked bloody silly and B) kept
setting-off the tinny machine-gun noise (which seems to be the same as that
used on Lego Space-ship bodies and Tiger Electronics Star Wars toys back in
the 1990's). A few screws later and a small hole left in the turret and the job
was done. I removed the batteries while I was at it.
Posed with those figures we've seen several
times now (and ID'd now I think - but I can't remember where/when!), which
happened to arrive in a lot from Chris Smith the same day and to be roughly the
correct scale - about 28/30mm.
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A day or two later (Monday?) I picked up
this rather fine kerthunkersaurus for pennies, it's marked China - 1992, which is pre-handover (1997) so an early example of
the marking and it's as good as any Euro-saur (Schleich or Papo) and
sized to match their output (quite 1:32nd compatible), lacking a bit in the
decoration-department maybe?
As an aside, all five photographs were
taken with the same settings against the same book-cover, the camera may never
lie, but it struggles with the truth too! The middle-right shot is probably the
colour-truest, with two washed-out and two over-warmified.
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This came in yesterday, but will get its
own post, I didn't even know it existed, nor that Peter Pan lasted 'till the 1990's, needless to say - it has
figures, nine of 'em, including a Ripley, but with long hair! Did she have long
hair in 'II'?
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Finally; this bag turned-up in the same
Farnborough charity shop as the bag of Germans the other week; £3.49p, I don't
think they belong in a CTS bag? Six
complete Revell DAK machine-gun crews;
with tripod, MG34 in an SF-cradle with long-range sight, gunner, Nº 2 and base, times-six for less than four-quid beats those current Russian
figures' pricing into a cocked hat . . . bargain! One of the guns was a
different colour though!
***********************
I've
just picked-up two 50p vehicles - pictures next week!
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Why was I in Farnborough? Because B&Q are selling Venus Fly Traps for
£4. And not the tiny little disappointing ones I saw at Kew Gardens (or Wisely?)
a few years ago, but proper ones with clampy-pads bigger than a tuppence! I
figured it was just what was needed for these tiny little black fruit-fly
things which are becoming such a problem (they've made it onto Radio4, so it
must be serious!), especially in the winter - global climate-change problems
require global bio-solutions - It's already eaten . . . "Feed-Muh' Mama!"
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