A is for And so to London - Forbidden Planet

After I'd visited Peter's workplace, which was an absolute Aladin's cave, but which I didn't think to photograph, I made my way back to Central London by ♫♪ London Transport, diesel-engined, ninety-seven horsepower omnibus! ♪♫, alighting at the top of Tottenham Court Road, to walk down into Charring Cross with a diversion off to the side to visit Forbidden Planet  in Shaftesbury Ave' on my way eventually - over the River.

Of course the first thing you see as a pedestrian in that part of the world is the famous/infamous (not a point of view; it is, and has been both, to most!) Centerpoint tower, the top of which is described by Old Bailey of Gaiman's Neverwhere as the one place in Central London where you don't have to look at it! But with the early autumn (second week of September), afternoon sun on it and a recent revamp, it was worth an arty shot!

And so to Forbidden Planet, which, to be frank - and you know I'm not backward at being forward - was a bit fucking shit!

I used to love Forbidden Planet; I discovered it decades ago, when it was round the corner in New Tottenham Court Road, a wood-floored warren of rooms and piles of boxes, mostly in the basement, run by a band of enthusiastic, aficionados (who probably took half their pay in musty tomes), with tens of thousands of old comics stacked tight in long, tatty cardboard boxed, imported graphic novels and sci-fi paperbacks in a mix of old 'brown-furniture' antique bookcases or splintery, pine warehouse shelving, with cartons, cages or flick-racks of posters, comic-art originals and other ephemera at the ends/corners of every isle/stack.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it; a nerdy bookworm's heaven and an early issue of Heavy Metal was a quid, or less, and I've watched it, slowly, over those decades turn into a monument to Mammon, supplying needy, pretentious Kidults with over-priced polymer shite of formulaic virtue, for signalling lifestyle choice to their acquaintances!

Gone are the old comics, gone are the old books; there's no paper on the top floor and in their place mountains of plastic most of which I wouldn't give house-room to if I was a millionaire! While downnstairs it's all new-issue and tame Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Titan.

The staff are friendly enough, and very helpful (I dealt with two), but they didn't have a clue what Heavy Metal was (it's not stocked anymore, despite still going), or it's role in ensuring they would still - or 'even' - have a job in 2022, and if I'd said Métal Hurlant, they would have assumed "The old geezer downstairs is having a seizure"! They are just employees, on shit money, with no emotional investment in the business they work for.

And, to add insult to injury, they didn't have Brian Heiler's Toy Ventures either; the wankers! Anyway, I took a few shots for Brian's Faceplant group, but realised the images were a bit shit too, some of them are a tad fuzzy or blurry, so I'm forcing them on you instead, with  few pithy remarks!

The only real bright spot was a couple of shelves of pop-culture books, among which were these three, I think I have the Tashen somewhere, and while I didn't buy either of the others, I will look for them going cheap on Amazon in about five years time, I bet I pick them up for less than six-quid each in a few years!

Pretty innocuous I suppose!

New generation of 'Micro Machine' stuff, now Hasbro
The only other bright spark!
I haven't got any for a while, I must check Basingrad - They'll be cheaper!

 

35 quid for plastic model kits? Madness!

26 fucking quid for a rubber fucking monkey!

You're 'avin' a laugh pal!

None of it's in-scale!

Urrruuh! Bleurgh! Ga-ga-ga-Wuurrrrp!

Take yer' Funko-pops and shove 'em where the sun don't shine!

Blind bags, blind boxes, blind packs, it's not fun, it's tedious and annoying and there's no central swap-hub, at least if you collect china shite you have the 'Bradford Plate Exchange' to help organise your over-priced idiocy and to get rid of it when the truth dawns!

 

Now, I can rant like a curmudgeon all I like, the fact is the core-customers (and - seemingly - the staff) love the place, and those of my generation who didn't 'put away childish things' are thin on the ground, and time moves on, one of the worst things about ageing is seeing your world disappear, first through cultural things like this, then the parents joining the grandparents in the hereafter, and eventually friends start dropping-off about the place, carelessly, it's the great tragedy of human existence - the inevitability of that existence ceasing to exist!

But come-on Forbidden Planet, you can carry Heavy Metal for fucks sake! And teach your staff what it means to the 'Hobby'!

A is for And so to London - Stopover

After we'd visited The Toy Project (previous post), we popped back to Peter's on the way to somewhere else, and I shot a few bits on Peter's 'bench' while he threw a small bag of goodies at me!

Following on from the mini-season of Supreme overview-posts in Rack Toy Month, here are a couple more, the rider is possibly from a Simba-specific set, but no doubting the horse or that rich, 'bright' gold as being Supreme's, while the foot figure (here oversized by dint of the collage process) is from the harder to find fantasy set, in the same style as the commoner pirates and skeletons (and believed roadworkers).

A semi-permanent feature of Peter's worktop was this rather fine Egyptian palace/temple frontage, with a mixture of Worlds Apart (Horrible Histories), K&M and what look to be Hachette and might be other resin partwork-type figures, Gods and artifacts.

Hong Kong originating mash-up of Britains/Timpo/Lone Star 'swoppet' style knight, I have some somewhere and meant to blog them but never got round to shooting them before they went to storage, I think we saw them in a larger image of stuff which came-in on the same day? I think the pair are ELC, or similar (Wilkinsons/Wilco have had a nice range on-and-off over the last ten or so years).

Peter also threw this lot at me; I particularly like the solid He-Man knock-off, while the footballer looks like a certain blubbing Geordie whose star shone bright, but not for long? Rabbits are from some 'in my pocket' line I think, or a kids comic/periodical, several titles have this kind of stuff on the cover regularly.

Star Toys Action Jack, next to a wrestler stamper, Kinder 'poppet' figure and some rack-toy wrestlers with a few useful PVC animals, which I'll hopefully make sense of in a single post or page one day, the blue fairies/Princesses are in close-up below.

In the style of or in-between the Blue Box fantasy set of a couple of years ago and that pink/purple set from Poundland or 99p Stores about eight years ago, I'm guessing some kind of rack-toy or cheapie-tub/toob, and it's always nice to get stuff like this which isn't the same-old Disney characters! Many thanks to Peter for this little lot!

A is for And so to London - The Toy Project

Back in September I managed a day up in London, ostensively to meet Peter and thank him in person for all the parcels he sends the Blog (two in the queue in the last three weeks!),  but also to visit The Toy Project's shop at Archway, I've blogged them before, so just enjoy the pictures;

A rather charming, oldy-worldy look to the shop, although it is a modernised building, but only to sort of 1970/80's standards, it runs right back and is filled with good things!

Details and contacts;

Shop: 81 Junction Road, Archway N19 5QU 

Opening Times:

Monday 11-6pm
Tuesday 11-6pm
Wednesday 11-6pm
Thursday 11-6pm
Friday 11-6pm
Saturday 10-5pm

Sunday–closed 

Email: j.garfield@thetoyproject.co.uk

Website: https://thetoyproject.co.uk/

Tel  +44 (0) 207 503 9590

And, because we have looked at these a few times now, it's a case of what can you spot, what do you like . . . 

Corinthian footballers!

Shopkin blind-bag and similar types

Bogglins on the left, 

Crazy Bones and similar on the right - in a home gum-ball dispenser!

A tub of Smurfs, a tub of Trolls

and more blind-bag and Kinder type stuff

Gormiti . . . or the other ones?

Another tub of Shopkin type stuff . . .

. . . and more Kinder and Gogo's!

Larger items, Britains farm

All sorts, I could half-empty this if I was feeling rich, 

just to top-up the novelty junk bags!

Ditto - a lot of Kinder bits here!

Big boys - Britains, Papo, Schleich, ELC, Supreme and Plastoy

More . . .

. . . and more!

My modest purchase; Papo pirate (bottom right), penguin-pirate, a few Phidal/Phidal-like's, a Kinder Robot, a 'funnimal' tiger and a small green alien/mecha', probably from a board-game, there's tons of this stuff on evilBay these days; originals, 3D-printed replacement parts and after-market expansion packs. I was most pleased with the mini coach - bottom, centre!

A 'thank-you'; one in every bag of bits!

X is for Xandria - Part Two

So a closer view of the little pile of Xandria (or related) loveliness from Theo, a while back now, and you can see a couple of the Thunderbirds one, Tracy was missing his gun, but Lady Penelope just needs a clean, her shoes have that gold paint made from brass-filings which goes green if it gets too damp, so they may need a re-paint!

The rest we are going to look at now, and apart from the two Gerry Anderson characters they were mostly quite clean . . . PVC does have a tendency to collect dirt in a way no other plastics do, Yogi needed a clean, but didn't get one until I'd shot them and there appear to be two grey boots or paws sticking out of the pile, belonging to someone who is in neither post?

I do remember one figure having a  loose component at buckle/belly level which I had to de-gunge and re-glue, it must have been put to one side and not shot, but it will re-appear at the other end, and can star when we return to these, which I know we will.

We've seen the policeman/dog yesterday; the comedy policemant Bromsnor  from TV series Swiebertje and the De Betuwe jam premium's Agent Bulderen  while the other two seem to both be from the Pixie line, the thin guy on the left might be advertising a local Dutch tailors, or just wearing a sticker to explain his Grimm's fairy tale character; Het dappere snijdertje (The brave cutter) ['Zeven in één klap'] (Seven at one strike); the tale of the tailor who kills seven flies in one go and gets dicked into tackling Giants by a dodgy King!

The fatter chap has lost a sticker (you can see some glue remains), so I don't know if he was advertising something, explaining his own character or just had some fancy paper undershirts, like one or two in yesterday's post! Indeed the sticker on Bromsnor's hat has mostly had it's detail rubbed off and is loose, some of the stickers are 'vehicle-vinyl' and the glue turns to a sticky liquid under the onslaught of the substrate PVC's free radicals, a problem with the Thunderbirds set too.

The Indian, I have a feeling Theo did explain him to me, and that he might be connected to the similar non key-ring ones from the donation posts the other day, but I can't remember or find the relevant eMail, so we may return to him at some point.

And while I said the clown probably wasn't Xandria, forgetting it was in yesterday's post (and below!) I then said I hadn't seen any Hanna Barbera ones, forgetting Yogi was here! As I said; I could forget something if it was glued to the end of my nose!

And; like the Disney Pete yesterday, fully marked but on his back not his foot, so the chances are other franchises got the Xandria, multi-part PVC treatment?

Not that he's necessarily Xandria, even if the rest are; his ring, chain and loop are all different, and his collar & tie are polyethylene, but so are Lady P's pearls, as other accessories on other figures also utilise the harder polymer!

These are all from the jam maker's Flipje Betuwe set, and from the left are; Klaas Ram (Claus/Klaus?), Sjoerd de visboer (Sjoerd the fishmonger) and Schoorsteenveger (chimney sweep), and again we see Klaas wearing a sticker to represent his nautical-themed jumper, while the sweep has a PE ladder.

These two are damaged, but interesting nevertheless, the clown is in the style of Xandria's output, but not configured as a key-ring, therefore without a central core and so all glued together rather than stacked like most of the others, while the Santa Clause is all polyethylene, and over-moulded just like Timpo figures. Again a very different loop/ring arrangement, and no chain, suggests a copy-cat/rival, maybe even in Hong Kong? Perhaps he was sold as a tree-decoration?

On the over-moulding; it would be interesting to know who did it first, now we know George Musgrave at Gemodels was wrestling with the technology, and swoppets came before over-moulding at Shotts (the cavalry/ACW were the first with true hot-polymer over-moulding I think), while some of these Xandria's are from the 1960's, it's more questions without answers!

These are lovely figures, rather opening-up a whole 'new' field to study (four winging their way here in the post as I write), and many thanks to Theo van de Werden who sent me to the Flipje Betuwe site (which has gone now, but I copied the two relevant pages), and for sending the Blog these for us to look at - Thank you, Theo - job done!