T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Iwako Dinorasers

Timely or not, this stuff will be available in one form or another for some time, and has been around for a while already, but we like our regular visits to Iwako and/or erasers and/or dinosaurs here, or at least I do, so it's timely enough for me!

Seen briefly in the initial round-up of the Toy Fair last Friday, so he may as well go first . . . this was a sample of a new sculpt, but only new to me as round here the Iwako stockists have only had the four sculpts seen previously.

This is a Parasaurolophus, and there are three colour-ways to find, each in a pastel body with contrasting darker spine - yellow, pink and mauve. Paperchase haven't carried the dinosaur sets at all, while the pick-bins in Hawkin's never had this as a singly?

The sets on display were numbered 40 and 52, but the 52 is numbered 57 in the Iwako catalogue, which may be down to differences between the Japanese domestic and Euro/Western export markets, we don'r get the Lego-likey sets either.

Also, the large Brontosaur is only available in the carded sets, not as a single figure. Other animals not seen locally yet include the Spinosaur (also three colour-ways) and the Ankylosaurus (two versions). Of more interest perhaps are the mini raptors and Archaeopteryxes, both of which seem to be the additional animals in the little eggs we've seen a few times here now?

They must have been added as copies to those mini-micro sets after Iwako added them to these carded sets? There is a whole page in the catalogue on how to spot fakes, and in chatting to the girls on the stand I think both the Wilko and The Works' versions (including the Christmas set on the Blog this year) are knock-offs.

A small display on the stand at Toy Fair 2020, I think they are both being stalked by a large yellow & white monkey, but it might have been a chipmunk!

I knew there had to be a second Tyrannosaur colour!

They're not rare and they never will be rare, but they are fun, they are well made and they are a global collecting phenomena, with a vast number of official colour-ways, the many possible combinations . . . and the copies to find; it's box-ticking on a grand (but equally - quite small) scale!

The 'collection' now; the Dimetrodon (which we may or may not have seen in an update) seems to be a discontinued model, as I've never seen it in H's Bazaar and it's not in the current catalogue? I would expect at least one colour variation?

If you can't find them try Green Elephant Trading for your nearest stockist. 

E is for Eye Candy - Atlantic Boxes

Not much to this post, but Atlantic aren't a big-priority here, they're not as rare as some people make out, they're not as mysterious as some people think and they're definitely not as mythological as some people would have you believe, but these shots have been kicking around since 2014, so it's time they got off the laptop!

The four sets in the Wild West accessory or scenics range were an eclectic assortment of buildings and 'vehicles', with a chunky fort, small village of timber-frame commercial properties, a wagon train and some Gatling-guns!

The artwork for Abilene West-City makes the content look much better than they are, the wagon train (with misplaced comma and dodgy syntax) tends towards brittleness when found these days, which seems to be down to a lot of 'minters' coming back from the Middle East in the 2000's, it also has the same cavalry crew as the Gatling-gun limbers.

The fort paint's up better than the heavy moulding would suggest while god knows what's happened to the gun-battery, but they've lost a team or two, with one man crushed under the horses - dead horses - and corpses littering the battlefield, the remaining teams rushing in two directions and a last-stand happening in the background . . . how can you be having a 'last stand' with four Gatling-guns at your disposal, you should be destroying the opposition!

The backs of the boxes are very-much 'after' the pattern of Airfix's forts and play-sets with a basic assembly diagram in black-line, but on a 'scroll'; both Abilene and Riley (the earlier pair issued) also get their titles on the back and Riley benefits from some red arrows!

They suffer here from flash-reflection (one reason they've sat in Picasa for so long!), and next-time I'll scan them, but I need to source an A3 scanner with depth of field first!

R is for Reminiscent of Rambo the Rampaging Recce Renegade!

Dooooorrntpuusshhhmeeeeee! Brian Berke sent these to the blog the other day, and with some catalogue scanning and the Toy fair; I've cobbled together a rack-toy post even though it's not rack toy month!

I sort of recognised the TC-334 code-format and in searching for something similar, ended-up with the stuff for the rest of the post, but not the name of the maker/importer I think they may be from?

Anyway; as you can see, a carded bottle-bag rack toy with artwork from another source (Tamiya?) and a set of figures which are drawn from Airfix, Matchbox and modern (JaRu type) rack-toy sculpts.

When I say Ja-Ru, I think their large rubber ones were among the first with the 'Rambo' M60 pose and the guy with the little Uzi/Ingram's thing and radio, but there are so many of these around now, and who was first is a moot-point. Mixing 'Fritz' helmeted GI's with Matchbox's WWII Americans and Airfix's Rumanian-helmeted para's isn't that novel either as there are several versions of them around too!

Their size also places them closer to the earlier issues, but not necessarily; as the overall quality of the sculpts is screaming sub-sub-piracy! The weapon is best described as belt-fed combat-shotgun I think - for when you absolutely, positively have to kill every living thing in the woods!

Similar sets with similar sculpt-mixes are all over the place at the moment (we've looked at dozens in RTM) and a few have surfaced in the last few days.

The older (2017) Henbrandt (A) set is very similar to the unknown US set, and while the two images may look the same, the Ackerman set is clearly 'supplied by' as their image is 57KB to Henbrandt's 250-odd  megabytes, so it's been through the eMail system a few times to have got its file-size so reduced. Still finable on Amazon under a search for Ackerman, but rebranded to other phantom sellers.

In the middle is the current (or 2019) Henbrandt set, more poses, but same low quality.

The upper shot is the Henbrandt listing in full, while below is D&D Distributors (similar stock-code to Brian's set, but no banana as it's prefixed TY for 'Toys') catalogue image, of particular interest in that the figure-shot shows similar Matchbox clones, while in the toob-shot they are full of Hing Fat product (codes 1800/1860), but with generic packaging/artwork!

Tobar have been running with these for several years (and supplied Debenhams's a couple of Christmas's ago), they are also larger than 54mm , but stick with a better quality all-Matchbox clone selection!

While they are also in this year's Keycraft line-up; with the same bag and box, but different artwork. Both sets (Tobar and Keycraft) might be via-Jaru (three spellings - one post!) though; I seem to remember one of the original sets sent by Brian (or shelfied) was these figures? Actually - I think the box is thinner and the count's dropped from 48 to 32 figures!

Maybe after I've got the Paratrooper and Firefighter pages sorted it will be time for a rack-toy 'Army Men' ID'ing page? Many thanks to Brian for the shots, and past rack-toy clone stuff.

T is for Two - Cheapie Chinasaurs

Two recent purchases, both at the bottom-end of anyone's budget, but fun nevertheless and out there to be found!

On the left a set of Chinasaurs imported by Toys Mart of Southall, shipped by Yingxin Toys and apparently manufactured by Wangshu; how much of that is 'phantom' is open to further exploration I simply can't be arsed with, but the latter-pair are sharing an address!

On the right the 'World Animal Collection' or 'Museum Piece' phantom-branded gape-mouthed Chinasaurs imported by CJL Ltd., of Essex, which are actually from Toy Major's catalogue and dated 2009.

Both lots from the other sides, the Wangshu's aren't annotated so you'll have to christen them yourselves, some are obvious, some less so, but they are more realistic than the Toy Major's who are clearly gasping their last at the end of the great mass-extinction, or singing the anthem of the Valkyrie from Wagner's Ring cycle, it's not clear!

The Toy Major sculpts are marked with a full set of consumer information, among which the following can be ascertained;

Toy Major 2009

Set 111-P4

A - Dimetrodon

B - Tyrannosaurus

C - Dilophosaurus

D - Stegosaurus

Set 111-P5

E - Triceratops

F - Spinosaurus

G - Ankylosaurus

H - Styracosaurus

The Wangshu animals are made of two thin-halves (much thinner than say - the halves of an aircraft kit), probably a polyethylene but it could be something with higher properties like a propylene polymer? And, while they all needed pressing together properly when they first came out of the pack, they do look very good for cheapies when done, and it's all friction, no glue. They have the same hollow leg-insides as those farm sets we saw back in a Rack Toy Month.

Why they are called gape-mouthed Chinasaurs!

The Wangshu can almost be paired-up; by colour or type, the odd 'ones' out being the skinny green one and the triceratops, but otherwise there are pairs of kerthunkersaurs, meat-eaters, para-fersopholophdopolus . . . 'duck-horns' and the sauropods? . . . 'Big-veggies' - a sub-scale; as always!

The two sets between them give up a trio of kerthunkersaurs and three 'ceratopsians, and all make up what I consider the medium size-bracket of Chinasaurs, paint's basic on both sets (price-bracket!), and I think the Toy Major's are taken from older tools than the 2009 now etched in their tummies.

News, Views Etc . . . Vectis; Later This Week

The blurbs were in on all four sales yesterday, but I was running out of time - as always! - so here are the other three, the first (Thursday 29th - actually the second day of the four-day cycle) also contains the stuff covered in this post from the former Palitoy worker's archive/collection.

Lot no. 5027

"The TV and Film Related sale to be held on the 29th of January features Part 4 of The North West Autographed Memorabilia Collection, which includes autographs on displays, photographs, books and leaflets from stars such as Peaky Blinders actors, David Bowie, Elton John, Heath Ledger, Paul McCartney and many more. Further items in the sale include Action Man figures, outfits and accessories, Batman, Thundercats, Masters of The Universe and Gyper Man Accessory sets. Plus, Mark Gonzales Communion Priests, Iron Man Collectable figures, Star Wars figures, vehicles and accessories plus My Little Pony, Dr Who and Transformers. Additional items include comics, books and DVD's plus a unique ex-Palitoy employee history."

Lot 5056

"The Specialist Matchbox sale to be held on the 30th of January features a large selection of Regular Wheel and Superfast models. Lots include boxed and unboxed, single and group models, including road and racing cars, commercials, military, emergency vehicles, and Gift sets plus Accessory Packs, Superfast Racing sets, display stands, Disney series, promotional models, blister packs and many harder to find models. Further items include Major Packs, King Size, Super King, and Battle King. There are a number of model makers' resin pre-production prototypes, plus shop signs, display cards and ephemera including clothing, and collectors' catalogues."

Lot 7012

"The Matchbox Models of Yesteryear sale to be held on the 31st of January features predominantly boxed cars and commercials mixed groups, with many collectibles series, Fire Engine Series, Factory trade boxes, Holden Utility models and trial models, Lesney giftware range, reference books and catalogues. Further items in the sale include Matchbox the Dinky Collection, Matchbox "The Perfect Toy" Models; Code 2 and 3 groups, pre-production and colour trial models and chassis', plus Atlas Editions Dinky Toys boxed groups, Eagle Moss Opal Collections and others."

H is for How They Come In

Another box from Peter Evans, which he kindly brought to the recent show in London for me, and even more kindly; reported that some of the figures are from his late mother's 'cabinet of curious things'.

We'll look at them all in a minute but I'll just draw your attention to the Panda on a park bench as I rather cut his head-off without noticing in the second image - nothing lasting, just poor photography!

He's sitting on a park bench and reading a copy of the China Daily! Whether he represents the detent following Nixon's visit or one of the many baby-panda exchanges of my childhood, each of which, single or pair, used to generate more headlines and column-inches that Trump and the Windsor's do now, put together!

Equally he could be an early Beijing tourist souvenir, his China Daily has very Chinese stories?

If we work snail-round, anti-clockwise from the panda (you can see what I did there!) we have 'enry from Westair in a 70mm poured-resin with factory paint, another micro-racing car (we've seena  rather chewed pale-blue one in polyethylene, this one's styrene; cracker's the pair, I suspect) and a police-bear with Harrods on his tunic!

A safari bust from the Egyptian toob, two 'winterval' cake-decorations either side of St. Francesca Romana the patron saint of drivers, who has a dash-board sucker (starting to perish with age but still usable), and might be made of casein under the paint? Below the Iwako eraser (sample from Toy Fair 2020 in the wrong shot!) is a small vinyl, probably from a safari set or Jurassic Park knock-off in Matchbox 1-75, Majorette or Hot Wheel size?

A small carousel/roundabout from a funfair as a bracelet charm, a probably-Kinder penguin and then two characters from the Wind in the Willows. I think they are from one of those board games I keep bookmarking and doing nothing about, like that Dougle game, Chris sent some-of the other day! Anyway, there is probably a Mole and Badger to find?

Snow White and the six dwarves! . . . in terracotta; she seems to be a new'ish sculpt (with a very porcine face), but I think the little fella's are cast from Marx's Disnykins and I will track down the seventh . . . some day! One of my great regrets [now] was selling a set of all eight in Japanese blow-moulded celluloid, but they went to a good home and I didn't collect that scale at the time . . . hey-ho!

Three cartoonish Buddha-types, clearly enjoying life, in antiqued 'ivory' plastic take us back to the top where we find a rural or farm-couple spinning wool, a memento from Junin, Peru, they are constructed in the same way as the teeny-tiny worry-dolls, but much larger and obviously another touristy thing.

Finally another, new Phidal busy-book character; I have ceased to be amazed at the number of these, I'm pretty sure he's not a duplicate and I saw another (new) one on the Toy Project's stall the other day, so heaven knows how many sets there have been now? He's (Iron Man) standing over two of the 40mm Papo-Mini sea-monster/pirates in the centre.

Another fine sample of eclectic stuff, mixed toys and novelties, tourist souvenir figures, trinkets and mementoes in fabric, metal, various plastics and terracotta to filter into the pile, with some definitely destined for a return under one theme or another and as always; many thanks to Peter.

J is for Jolly Jeep

Picked this up on Friday in the local independent toy shop, it used to be called Fleet Toys when I was a kid (at one point they had three shops within sight of each other; FT, Fleet Cycles and Fleet Models!), but I think it's now part of the co-operative buying group known as Toymaster? Anyway, it could have gone in next Friday's H is for..., but as it was a retail purchase, it should have a post of its own!

This is it, they had about four of them, no counter-box, no packaging, around 1:32nd scale/54mm figure-compatible and looking quite Cararama-like (but they were mostly 1:43 or HO, made in China by Hongwell) in the manufacturing quality. Separate tyres and a tampo-printed plastic windscreen which doesn't fold down.

The small load-area is filled with two ammunition crates to hide the screw-fix construction, which is driven through from the other side.

It's actually made by another of China's prolific contractors; Welly, also overprinted to Peterkin (who we last saw on the blog, hiding-out at TKMaxx) and you can see the method of fixing the wheels is a bit odd, I guess it reduced the material used in a hidden section?

A couple of bonnet-numbers from the spares-box would help, and you may have noticed mine has caught the printing pad on the edge of the bonnet (hood), so could do with a bit of weathering to hide the damage!

V is for Empire Forces . . . or . . .

. . . is Empire Forces for V (is for Victory)? We just don't know, and if Adrian Little hadn't recued them for some mixed auction lot, we'd know even less! New to hobby, new to Blog and probably new to Internet, I don't think they are mentioned in the works of Garratt, Harris, Joplin or Opie, but we can at least look at them here, now;

The full-colour box-art holds some clues to dating the set with uniforms more colonial than modern-war, a tank from the 1920/30's and a paratrooper who looks more Soviet or German than British, both those nations (along with Italy) having done the early-work on parachute troops?

One of the figures seems to be a French colonial, but may be intended to represent our Indian forces in their 'best kit' . . . Delhi Durbar? The feeling is it's a war-time set, produced after the material rationing had been introduced, but before the Army had modernised to D-Day fitness, like most of these pumice sets?

Two sets have turned-up; No 125 Machine-Gunner Set and an unknown-numbered 'Paratrooper'. The inset holding-card is the same for both sets as are the contents save for either four prone Vickers' gunners or four parachutists in the same cavities.

Again, the paratroopers look more Soviet than anything else, even to the sub-machine-gun, while the tank is trying to be a mid-war, lend-lease Grant; sans hull-gun in sponson, while they all have the look of US dime-store figures.

If I had to choose a date I'd say 1942? Thanks to Adrian at Mercator Trading for letting me shoot these; the lighting was poor, so they've been worked a bit in Picasa to get the colours back.

News, Views Etc . . . Vectis Tomorrow

A quick press-release from Vectis on tomorrow's auction, the first day of a four day'er!

Lot 4005

"The Doll and Teddy Bear sale to be held on the 28th of January features predominantly Charlie Bears, and mainly from the Isabelle collection, there are also Mouseketeers, Scarecrow Teddy bears, Christmas stockings, prints and catalogues and Minimo Collection. Other bears include Pedigree, Merrythought, Chiltern, Artist Bears, Steiff and Kosen. There are also a number of Dolls in the sale; Vinyl dolls including Blythe, Strawberry Shortcake, Tiny Tears, and Teenage fashion dolls including Barbie and Sindy; plus composition, bisque and artists dolls. Further items in this sale include collections of gifts, ornaments, jewellery, gothic ornaments, pottery, annuals and books, plus much more. "

News, Views Etc . . . Paratrooper Page

The third part has been held-over as I ended-up with a load of stuff to add to the second part, which was uploaded the other day, so I've just added to that as an early update.

Kicked-off by some images from Brian, I added a few screen-caps of current offers and shots from the recent Toy Fair 2020 in London.

H is for Happy New Year . . . You Rats!

Courtesy of the free sample I received from Jonathon's, the designers/importers of Mojo animals into the UK (and Europe?) from China . . .

. . . here's wishing all the Blog's Chinese (do we have any?), Asian or Cinophile readers a Happy New Year of the Rat!

It's their standard rat - normally in white (lab-rat!), but now painted gold for the New Year and given a key-chain, so you can carry your 'luck' with you all year!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - D is for Dongles

Quick 'Stadswatch'

Untrained ventriloquist? Hahahahahaha . . . Priceless!!!! I was a [trained] machine-gunner once, do I get extra points for that? He's so far up his own arse he probably needs to be a ventriloquist just to communicate with anyone! Still he is posting more, better stuff now, so we're wining . . . a slow battle, not that his bursts of improvement ever last - too much effort!

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One of the changes over recent Toy Fair's compared to those I attended in the past has been the slow and steady uptake and application of IT to the whole business, most obvious this year with several big names not even bothering with catalogues, although I think that's short-sighted, as it is a tangible link with customers, helping maintain brand recognition because it's 'free' advertising which hangs around in the consumers own environment?

However, the biggest change I noticed between the twenty-tens and the twenty-teens was the provision of dongles (data-sticks, flash-drives, pen-drives, USB-drives, key-sticks &etc . . . yadayada!) with the press releases for both companies and the Toy Fair organisers - BTHA (British Toy & Hobby Association).

There were only three in 2018 (but I was late getting there!), while last year there was a shed-load (small, Playmobile shed maybe!), of which the best were the 8GB Pinstripe's from Verbatim of which I ended-up with two (black ones, bottom right), put straight to more useful work holding bits of the 'archive'!

They were given away by the Green Board Game Co., who weren’t there this year, and I wonder if their use of such large dongles had anything to do with any subsequent cost-cutting? Most use a half-gig' (512MB) or at most a 2GB drive.

I also thought the credit-card one from Mind Power in '18 was rather clever.

last year there were two uncommon designs which seemed specific to the companies, of which the Jumbo elephant was the best, although you can't use it on a multi-bus but why would you, I geep them as back-ups after copying everything to the archive dongles anyway.

This year there were less than last, and one (Gibson's) didn't happen, while another (Hornby) had to be asked for on their stand? University Games, an established US firm seem to have taken-over or merged with Paul Lamond, although both brands were on the stand, the corporate stuff was all UG, not that it affects figure collectors much, there are a few games from both with figures, and they carry the new Subbuteo.

Really, these dongles are minor curiosities as they contain little for the Blog, however they usually have an image folder with both this year's releases and some corporate or sub-brand logo stuff which will be useful on the A-Z pages in time, and who's to refuse a freebee, especially very small ones which take up little space and can be used for other stuff after formatting!

Already mentioned in the early (not dragged-out for six-months!) overview, the most interesting one this year was an ecologically-woke one, it's not to say you can dump it in the ocean, or any part of the environment, as there are still polymers in the actual drive part, but it has a much-smaller 'footprint' than the others!

And the accompanying press-pack is a throw-back to 1950's bureaucracy as well, with its card-disc/string-tie system, but we'll all be seeing more of this in the next decade, plastic has to be minimised and - indeed - limited to essential uses, while re-usability/longevity needs to be built-in to more 'stuff' . . . in the meantime; hats-off to the Paper Engine - practicing what they preach!