T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Amerang / Smart Fox

I really only shot these as the Toy Fair 2020 show came a couple of weeks after I'd Blogged the various construction systems on display at the local (Fleet not Woking!) library this Christmas just gone, and it was interesting to see more Meccano-likey! There was nothing else of note on Amerang's stand.

Dr. Who licensed stuff, no one had tied to build the Dalek, so it was a K9-unit and a TARDIS which were on display, it's a good way to get kids into construction engineering, and if the original Meccano had read the writing on the wall and got into Star Wars, after their army-set had come out, they might have had a very different trajectory to the one they subsequently did have?

I've already seen these in Waterstone's book shops (which are increasingly Waterstone's books, games & gifts shops!), and they represent (olong with the previous) the domination of licensing in the modern toy industry.

There are now trade-magazines and whole 'expo's or shows devoted to licensing rather that the toy makers or sellers, another good example is the Natural History Museum dinosaurs we saw from Toyway the other day, K&M's Wild Republic are also carrying NHM stuff, but different stuff from Toyway, the museum is now a brand, in its own right, with some desirability, and once you've approached them, got the licence and supplied their gift-shops, you're free to market them as widely as you like.

Here it's the Imperial War Museum being used to shift some pretty crude representations of the marques on the box, but, still better than late Meccano - in both meanings of a deliberately pun-line!

Did I say there was a Dalek in evidence? There was a Dalek in evidence!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Phat Mojo

I Don't think I've encountered Phat Mojo before, and while I'm tempted to say I'd never heard of them; I think there is a folder on the dongles, so I've probably grabbed something from somewhere at some point? Anyway, they had a few figural items on display at Toy Fair 2020, so let's cover them quickly here!

I'm guessing (safely?) that this (Bandlands3) is some sort of PC-game related thing, and guessing (less safely) it's a kind of rival, or similar to Fortnight? By which I mean you can get that much from the artwork! Random selection of odd-ball characters carrying-out tasks with a bit of ultra-violence?

A blind-bag system with 'limited-edition' gold versions of the figurines huh? We haven't seen that before . . . too often! One's a sort of Wal-E or Number 5, the other is clearly channeling Lara Croft, and there's so much of this stuff out there I can't get too excited by any of it.

It's the modern 'Soma for the masses', the equivalent of Bread & Circus; keeps the people from questioning exactly why Donald Trump is surrendering US Global influence to Russia, you see!

Baldi? Something else in the popular-cultural sphere I need to research, or ignore! They're action figures so of little interest to me, but some of you may be well-chuffed by this stuff? Looks like some early-learning/schools-programming shite?

Funko-look-a-like mini-deforms for Harry Potter; more blind-bag, self-referential, incestuous, pop-eating-itself, escapist, fantasy, nonsense! Highly-collectable for the five minutes it takes for the next 'big-thing' or just the next 'thing' to come along.

Apparently the 'K-Blings' make your cables look distinctively-unique to you . . . and every other dimwit who bought the same set! I haven't been kind to them have I? Heay-ho! It's just more 'stuff', killing the planet.

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - House of Marbles

Taking up some of the slack from the demise of Ackerman, House of Marbles had a few nice things on display this year, we've seen the eraser-troops already, but here's the rest of the stuff I though all or some of you might be very or vaguely interested in!

They seen to be carrying two colours of this chap whom we've previously seen carded under the Tobar tag in green, I took more shots and he/they'll soon be on the new parachutists page, so this will do for now, I like the tag line; Shoot up, chute down!

This is lovely (I mean it's the poorest grade of ex-HK shite you can find, but its 'throwback/retro' existence is lovely to someone like me!), I know I have these with various HK-era marks, and you may remember about seven or eight years ago I bought the Farm version in a department store (Debenhams in Newbury?) at Christmas, also in HoM branding - so it should be on the 'tag'.

The best thing is the Black Panther; the rest are pretty standard old, much sub-pirated sculpts, half Britains Herald (Tiger, baby Giraffe, Pelican etc.), some Timpo (Llama) some more generic with an old cake-decoration pine-tree and some zoo fencing which probably owe more to Blue Box than the Britains originals!

But - despite the age of the sculpts/tools - it's hours of fun for a youngster, and they've packed a lot into a tiny box.

These are a bit 'deform', but could pass for fat little baby-saurs! Key-ring novelty dinosaurs; there sem to be four sculpts, a stegosuarus, a carnivor/'Rex type a Proto- or Tri- ceratopsian and a dimetrodon who looks like a cross between a Spinosaur and a  Baryonyx!

Finally, I couldn't pass this by without snapping a picture; we loved this as kids and managed to play it for years without breaking any of the pieces. These retro games are being carried by various brands and both sides of the pond, so you may find them in different graphics?

They are weird animals; the tongue of a butterfly, the antenna of a slug, the head of an ant, the body of Thunderbirds 'Mole' and legs removed from a trio of can-can dancers while their eyes seem to have been removed from the back of a washing-machine! Timeless toys!

The rule in our house was . . . you can build multicoloured ones but the legs, eyes and antenna must match the same components' colour!

G is for Gurrt Guards' Gathering!

I was doing  a bit of sorting on Saturday, and I thought this would be a fun shot, all the larger novelty or touristy items of a guardsman-like persuasion! I think we've seen most of them before - separately?

From the left; A wooden Christmas tree decoration based on the nutcracker trope, a poured-resin chap '© G•G.' (Gisela Graham?) from Peter Evans and the Toyway guardsman from Chris Smith (who remembered they were Toyway after I'd posted him the other day, the RHA figure, also from Chris was another one).

Then another wooden one, this is a push-button/drop-down strung-toy, he's actually almost the shortest, but with a 30mm plinth would have looked silly towering over the first three had I placed him to the left!

The fabric Guard I found last November/December in TKMaxx (made in India), and finally a stacking toy which I suspect is quite modern, but which resembles one we had as kids. I occasionally see it on evilBay (the vintage one) and keep meaning to get one, it's a taller, thinner model, and the larger-number of segments are tapered, so have to be stacked in order.

That would have been it, but - of course - in the putting away of the one lot, I re-discovered the others! So, from the left; The twin-LED torch who plays some god-awful rendition of the National Anthem, or Rule Britannia . . . or the other one? He's on the blog somewhere with his full consumer details!

Then the flat, probably from a wooden fort set of the early-learning type (and looking more Wellingtonian next to the others), another tree decoration, based on nut-cracker tropes, then another push-button/drop-down strung-toy, both being about the same size as their counterparts in the first image, the wobbly one being tagged to Wilco and finally the Noki washing-up sponge seen before, but I think all this second batch have.

Airfix sax-player for scale, he's approximately 23mm.

T is for Two - Tops

Just a quick one, posing a couple of recent acquisitions on their stationary of choice . . . my choice not theirs!

We saw this the other day in a lot of something or other which came in; I've seen them in The Works, and he only fits on larger, plastic-barreled pens, he slides down traditional wooden pencils like they're greased with melted butter!

No maker known, marked CHINA, and hidden in one of last Friday's dino-piles, this chap has the grip for all pencils of the old style. He has slightly babyish eye's which would be vastly improved with a dab of paint to make them more slitty or snake-like.

And it got me wondering; we have - within the mammals - many monkeys and apes, the squirrels, the lemurs, sloths and other tree-dwellers, there must have been some - smaller dino's - in the same niche in the ages of the dinosaurs, and might they have looked like this chap . . . or chapess; is it based on a real find? Hunted by Archaeopteryx perhaps!

I mean something more like giant Ghekos maybe, not the opposable-thumbed chap modelled here (with his prehensile tail!).

News, Views Etc . . . Parachutist Page

The next portion has gone up, it's gone atthe bottom of the page as it's mostly new-production, and I might put all the more novelty stuff down the bottom.

Except - of course - they are all 'novelties' on that page!

S is for Short & Sweet!

Cobbling the Torgano post together reminded me these had come in a while ago and while we've seen the sculpts before, and only five poses have turned-up so far, they are unusual in being apparently newish, unmarked and soft polyethylene.

The old Lido sculpts variously known as Captain Video, Winco Condar, Patrulla Saturno, Moon Shot, Exploradoes Del Espacio, Missile Patrol, Lunatics, Interplanetary Spacemen &etc.

It's clear there were several tools in various scales and on at least two continents over the years, and clearly some survive as we've had shiny re-issues from Reamsa here at Small Scale World already, but these have the larger bases of the old Lido/'Winco' figures and are - as I said - blank.

Also they may just be a near-mint but vintage shop-stock (they are a bit dusty in close-up) rather than quite as current as they look?

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Zimply Kids (Simba Group)

And so to the free sachet of 'stuff' I got at Toy Fair 2020, which I'm not going to experiment with; it looks like a prime way to piss-off the water utility!

This is Gelli Play from Zimply Kids, there is also Snoball Play (the above - colourless) and Slime Play (smooth consistency).Although, if you have kids or are looking to entertain the grandkid's on a sunny day, I recon a packet of wallpaper-paste (or bulk-gelatine for the slime) and some food dye is all you'll need, but god-help the goldfish!

But . . . the play-sets have figurines in them which may be of interest to some readers, although I think most of them are common'ish generics, but they may be unique sub-copies? For instance, here, the polar bears are an old sculpt from the 1960's and the penguin looks like either the Henbrandt one or the D&D Distributors one?

And - although I can only see one seal, it looks like you get two-each of four animals - these shots were taken at the end of the day and a lot of play had happened in my absence, the 'other' seal may have wandered off, or been wandered!

This is the slime gell, which as hinted at above, I suspect is a gelatine based product (which would therefore be unsuitable for vegetarians?) and again it looks like the items are paired although it's not so obvious from the pack's artwork, but artwork often differs from final contents and the pack is a Gelli pack not a slime pack!

Here we get an extra tree in the display, but not the artwork, so overall it would seem you get 2x4 items in each of some of the larger sets, and they are reasonable figures which even if you don' go looking for them, will soon start to turn-up in mixed lots on feebleBay or in charity/thrift shops?

Mucky stuff from Zimply Kids!