And if you're wondering why some of my Rubenstein images are the same as his, it's becasue we took them from the same seller about a year ago!
Having mentioned the possibility that the two smaller figures in the round-up might be from a board-game, I can tell you only that it isn't Pirateology, because that's here, right now, and it has different figures!
AHH-Harrr! Mee'arrties! Anotherrrr Int'ernationaaal Talk loik a poirate day be upon us arrrlll, and despoite the storrm-clouds outsoid, we be ready with a foin selection o'piraty plaaasstik!
To be honest, each year I wonder if there'll be enough to find for the next year, but it always seems to accumulate through the year, along with donations of both figures and images the supporters of the blog always contribute. As has become the norm in the last few years, we'll start with the odds and sods.
While this is the rather poor rendition of what I suspect is meant to be a Douglas F4D Skyray, from Montaplex of Spain, it's in a different league, being soft polyethylene, chunky and simplified, it just reminds us of the breadth covered by these mini-kits as an oeuvre!
It was sold in larger multi-sets with three other kits, in little single envelopes (early iteration, I think) and as an accompaniment/accessory to some of the figure sets, pretty randomly in the latter case!
So, one of my earlier purchases did a get shot before I sent the box up the road, and it raises a point I didn't mention in my 'lots' of 'wrong' history the other day, but it was pretty obvious if you studied the photographs.
Note that this set has a set number/order code, most do, but some are on the fronts and some are on the backs, and the reason I listed them alphabetically is that I couldn't find enough images of both sides of the cards to build a decent list, I will, when I get my seven/eight out again, probbaly find them all. If you read anywhere "the card has a stock number which many of the other cards do not have", be sure - you are reading bullshit.
That's a question mark because I don't know for certain, it could be ten or more, I'm not sure, you see, Kent, Paul, Stadinger, Fuckwits Anonymous . . . if I wrote there were eight [as a fact], and they supplied them to Choco-tag-nuts in brown (because Choco-tag-nuts had them in brown), I'd be making things up as I go along, and I try not to do that kind of shit here!
Put in numerical order;
So, it's not 'many don't', it's all do! Stadinger was making it up as he went along . . . again! Hahahahaha, fuckin' unbelievable, isn't it? It's fuckin' unbelievable! But they keep doing it, in the desperate hope they may, one day, really catch me out!
The 1xxx's are probably numbered-in with other toys/novelties/playthings, the 3xxx's suggest other Italian/R&L type clip-together kits/funnies may still be to find?
They just can't help themselves, can they? I knew exactly what I was doing, and they have proven nothing other than that there are more sets than the 12? I think I suggested as much, when I said . . .
"which is not to say there aren't more"
. . . but twelve would have been neat, and ten seem commoner! TJF has practically had a real cum orgasm in public over a header-card for what are obviously trashy rack-toy clones! Is it any surprise that an import-export concern carried Hong Kong Stock?
Away from this still limited, but now 13-count toy line, they would have had knock-off torches, sewing sets, key-rings, kitchen gadgets that break the fourth time you use them, plant pots, macramé sets, cruet sets, shit scissors . . . you know what they would have had!
And I'd already confirmed they 'do figures' - I showed them!???? He then says, "So it is likely they did a header card Soldiers of the World" . . . why? Why is it likely? Because they sound the same? Simplistic tosh, the evidence (circumstantial) is they took multicoloured shite from anywhere or anyone except Tatra, the dullard!
He then claims the Tatra are R&L, which even the R&L experts don't! They have the lovely Aussie flats of Diggers. And the grandiose shite in his last paragraph is hilarious, I'd be embarrassed to be caught writing such narcissistic rubbish! Or having it written about me!
What I've said, and I will say it again, is that THERE IS NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that they ever carried the Tatra-for-Kellogg's/Nabisco/Peak Freans et al 'Soldiers/Warriors of the World/All Nations'. Nor any evidence for the link to silver/gold cereal premiums, beyond the hearsay present on Kent's site for years. I have never said they didn't 'do them', just that the evidence isn't there?
Now if Mr Specher is to send empirical evidence in his fantastic forthcoming article, then that query will be put to bed, won't it? And the whole hobby will know a truth, but as The Jabbering Fuck is relying on another card-top altogether, I suspect we'll be waiting a long time for that particular evidential revelation?
Is he going to show us the dogs . . . I haven't found the dogs card yet, either . . . let's hope for his sake they are silver and gold with no signs of the staples being tampered with, because otherwise he'll be adding nothing to what I showed/said the other day? Who bought the Dolls of the World on Tuesday, was that Kent? Oh, he could send those to the magazine, couldn't he?!
And wouldn't we rather an American collector tells us accurately, about an American toy importer, than have to wait for a Brit to come along twenty years later and try to undo some of the falsehoods and myths about cereal premiums! So I - for one - am really looking forwards to his article with a barely contained joy, indeed I think I might have fun going through it with a fine-toothed comb!
Indeed, I have had private conversations with (closes eyes and counts quietly), one . . . two . . . three . . . at least five/six people off the top of my head, over the last four or five years, some a decade ago, predicting this moment. So they won't have been any more surprised than me to see Standinger's arsegasm, nor even, if they noticed Kent's comments the other day.
He's always been conspicuous by his absence, it was notable how he almost seemed to start commenting on Shite Stuff more after the war started, so his associate membership of the PSTSM was always badge-clear! And he started adjusting his site to reflect things written on my Blog within months of my starting, never crediting, never acknowledging, even as I sent him traffic? Something I've also pointed out to people over the years. None of this latest skirmish is any surprise to those who matter.
So the question was only ever, is he going to avoid eye-contact forever, stay 'neutral', sit on his hands over on the verge? And it was beginning to look like he would, but for reasons known only to him, he lost the plot on Monday and fell off the wagon! And because - as you know - I was up on my high horse (it's almost like somebody else scripted half of this!), I couldn't help him up!
Far from Kent's "You got a lot of the history of Rubenstein International wrong" (I didn't even cover much history) or Stadinger's "....contained a number of mistakes", there was one error - on the status of a non-toy soldier charity-trust thingy! Nothing in Kent's comments on my post, nor in TJF's little turd of a piece . . . piece of a turd, corrects or contradicts anything I reported last Monday.
Still; Kent is going to put us all right, hopefully including his own site, which has always contained questionable details, as fact, on Rubenstien, with his future article, it's gonna' be awsome, let's all big it up - coming soon, the fundamentally stupendous, encyclopedic, vastly better than Hugh's, fuller than a full shit-truck's, history of Rubenstein, the article that will save the hobby!
Worth a re-read, as I knew exactly what was happening, and pulled no punches, while Kent was pretending he didn't, but read his words after seeing the Jabbering Fuck's post and it all makes a sort of gutless sense? And a rare link to the almighty arsehole's Shite Stuff, but given his posting rate recently, he needs the traffic!
Oh fuck!, NOW they've annoyed me . . .
Notice we also clicked-over the 4,500 posts during Rack Toy Month!
Who took to threatening fellow-Bloggers back at the beginning of this Blog, some 15-odd years ago, god knows what they will make of a completed work, but at least two people received take-down/cease-and-desist eMails, way back when, just for publicising their (Usborne's) products!?
I hid the join in the two base-boards with coloured pencil on the moat and some scatter material in the courtyard, and I built it as per the instructions, down to the cocktail-stick flag-poles. I still have the knights in a little tub somewhere, in fact we may have seen them here at some point? The wall above the portcullis gateway had no fixing flaps or tabs, so had a tendency to lean forwards!
And it struck me, while building it, that it would be very easy to make a much bigger castle, from several, identical, Make This Castle / Make This Model Castle sets, building a much longer perimeter wall with all sorts of towers, and leaving the keep in the middle rather than in one corner!
