A is for All Hallow's Eve

So All Hallow's Day must be the 1st of November? Which makes sense as the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) is traditionally the 1st/2nd of November, although, apparently - depending on the church calendar (?) - the 31st of October can fill in, as can the 6th of Nov., or any other day between the two . . . a bit like Easter then!

 

But in America, the sweet, chocolate and toy fest chose a more rigid 31st, and that's what is slowly ingraining itself into the UK, courtesy of godless marketeers! I just wish we'd get more figures, and less straight-to-landfill-on-the-first nylon and rayon, LED-wired crap!

Although all the above is a bit of a legal technicality, as it's only just gone midnight, I'd suggest All Hallows Eve is a good twelve to eighteen hours away!

This was shot back in February, and may have been a purchase from the Clapham Junction shop I visit every Toy Fair evening, on the way home, but it might have been a donation or in a  mixed lot, I really can't remember, just a [-nother] stretchy skeleton!

 

The recent parcels from Jon Attwood had several Halloweeny things in them, among which were these superb novelty jumpers! Technically I should only collect full-figure jumpers, but once you have a few, they get a momentum (and zone within the archive) of their own, so gratefully received, and the bat is a whole bat, if hideously over-fed! One feels there's probably a pumpkin somewhere?

 

We looked at the left-hand one on ITLAPD, but I thought it also belonged here, and if I don't include the crown it will probably never be seen, and, well, Halloween is for dressing-up, why not a barbie princess! Jon repoted these were from Rinco.

 

These might also have been Rinco, Jon got them at the same time/from the same place, horror-themed erasers and/or halloweeny subjects. Although, I don't consider black cats to be anything other than normal!

My first purchase this year was a few weeks ago, it's Claire's, who have their own chain of stores for women's accessories, but this was in a supermarket, only I can't remember which one, Morrison's I think? Glow-in-the-dark skeleton earrings, too cool for seminary school!

These only came in a few days ago, courtesy of Peter Evans, about 40/45mm, and I don't know anything else about them, semi-rubbery and they would go well with the based ones Dolgen and others have been issuing these last few years at this time, but they are better sculpts, both a higher level of detailing and more realistic.

 

Peter also sent this peachy little undead parachutist fellah! Brilliant!

 

These were in The Range, and appear on the receipt as 80 Toy Spiders which is a commendable level of accuracy! We looked at some similar ones a few years ago and on that occasion all but two went to charity, this year I kept two of each, and the rest have gone to Blue Cross.

 

They have the type of bread-bag closure I used to use as Thunderbird 2 when I was a kid! Like last time, I'll cut the rings off and add them to the spider master-collection. I think the previous lot were in two colours, while these were 20-each of four.

HTI is for Halsall is for Welly is for China

Welly are more commonly a now China-based, previously German toy importer and now die caster, rivalling Carama for shelf-space in the cavernous Smyth's and reborn Toys-R-Us's of this world, at some point Halsall toys - now HTI - got hold of this circus set and shipped it into the UK.

 

 

Quite a boxful, for what wouldn't have been a great amount, being no more than a glorified rack-toy, as far as the toymen are concerned, although the Welly moniker would take it up a pricing-rung! 

From the bases one is forgiven for wondering if the figures came from Pioneer, another die-caster, but, as we've seen here before, often including figures, which usually have largish oval bases?

This time we get a seperate ringmaster and another white-dove producing magician (see today's earlier post), a clown and a performer who seems to have been designed for a piece of apparatus which didn't survive the planning/design stage of the set, having two arms which might have slid-down or clipped into something, now absent?

In addition to the loose animals above (tigers, elephants and a lion), we get two lions in a cage-wagon clearly influenced by earlier vehicles from Matchbox, Corgi Juniors or Majorette (see now, below), and it's demountable, more for ease of construction on the factory I'm sure, but it does mean you can drop them and their cage near the 'Big Top'!

 

The Big Top, is actually a big cage! But quite well modelled for such a set at such a size, with entry and exit points and some big-cat guide rails, which as we shall see in a minute, all go on a lorry!

 

Obviously the set is aimed at toy-car fans rather than circus aficionados per se, and as such contains a nice variety of vehicles, some carrying the logo of a fictional 'Circus World'. If the tigers go in the blue trailer, and the lion in the horse-box, that leaves the artic' below for the elephants!

 

"The artic' below' is now above! Two US style long-nosed articulated trucks, which technically should be called semi's (or sem'eyes, but there's me, being 'racist' again!). There aught to be a rubber-band, holding everything on the lower wagon.

 

A Majorette set as seen on evilbay a while ago, a smaller set, but from the image on the back of the box, part of a larger line of Pinder-branded stuff. Pinder are still going, France's main circus I believe, although originally Anglo-Scottish in origin. Also note that the two articulated lorries nearest the viewer in that image seem to be a larger 1:64th scale or thereabouts.

 

It's interesting that the three sets looked at today, Lidl/Padget, and the above pair, all appeared around the turn of the century, as animal circuses were going rapidly out of fashion, yet all three reley on animals to give them a circus feel?

BB is for Monkey Buisness!

Blue Boxes from Blue Box! Someone (a friend) drew my attention to these a few years ago, and while they were outside my budget I grabbed a few shots of the two sets at the time.

They mostly seem to be the standard zoo/jungle animals, as carried in a variety of sets/lines by both Blue Box and Redbox at various times. Of minor interest is that the mini-farm set flagged to both Elgee (overprint) and National, between them, also carries Blue Box product, as also carried by Marx.

 

However, the gorilla posed carefully with a blob of glue, on the dolls' furniture being used in the left-hand set, seems to be a set-specific sculpt, based on the standard walking on all fours model, but with his arms moved?

Likewise, the elephant-rider here seems to be based on the walking monkey with swivel-arms you find in the Noah's Ark sets of Blue Box, Holly, New Maries and others, where it's usually grey plastic with a more gibbon-like head? I have no idea how many other sets there were in this line, but they are fun!

C is for Camberley's Carnival Carousel

I don't know about your local 'hood, but here in Fleet, one of the many empty retail units has been filled with a sort of community-hub, information centre and whole-food promoter, which may or may not be run by the local authority or the local business body?

 

Back in 2021 I spotted a similar enterprise in Camberley over the ranges, which seemed to be more a combination café and outlet for the local library, or given that the Tories have closed more than 500 libraries in the last 13 years, it may have been a replacement for the library? 

 

Anyway, it was closed, but in the window was this rather fine scratch-built fairground scene which I shot against some harsh reflections, these are the best shots that I managed to render viewable with a bit of cropping and some contrast work!

 

If you missed it, the history of the piece in on the sticker attached to the glass or acrylate cover in the first image. A couple of the figures look vaguely familiar, but I can place them, so they have probably been heavily works to turn them into young civilians! And that's it blurb-wise, just some pictures of a beautiful thing!

P is for Playset of Polymer Performers!

A small victory for my research efforts with this one, as I've had the cutting in the archive since 2005, but have only recently found the set, badged to someone else, but I suspect they are one and the same, certainly the carry-case/tub-graphics seem to tie in, but more globally it may have been a common contractable 'generic' at the time?

 

 

On the left we have the original cutting from Lidl's weekly flyer, so my handwritten date would probably have been the due date, the following week, rather than the date I got the flyer.

 

For those whose countries haven't yet encountered such stores, they started life in Germany (there's a similar-sized rival 'Aldi'), where I knew of them from my time there, not as a kid in the 1970's, but as a soldier in the later 1980's, although I think the one local to Wavell Barracks was another store brand altogether!

 

They pile-high with a basic range at low prices, and enhance their offering with bulk-ordered household furnishings, goods, tools, toys and the like which are announced the week before in the little flyers or pamphlets which in a quiet week might be a three-page gatefold, and in a busy period like now might run to 16 stapled pages, with occasional extra flyers/validation periods (of a few weeks, or 'while stokes last') for meats, wines & spirts, or - now'ish - toys and sweet treats/cheese etc.

 

It is from one of those flyers that this page came, while on the right, we have a Padget marked tub, which seems to have the same graphics. But the label goes on to say Padget Trading Limited C/O [care of] Padget Services, so apparently not our more commonly seen here, Padgett Brothers (A-to-Z), but probably a similarly-named, similar importer, who 'got the gig' to supply these to Lidl at the time?

 

Obviously, our interest is in the figures, which are of a mixed quality, around 45/50mm, and PVC, the dancer/performer figures, being based on sculpts going back to at least the 1960's are quite good, and the magician (who has to double as ring-master) is passable I suppose, as are the clowns if you assume they have papier-mâché heads, and take into account the giant shoes, but the pair of acrobats are bloody-awful sculpts of some hidiousity! I suspect I got an extra figure, but luckily of the better sculpt!

Anatomically incorrect, clumsy-looking and as un-athletic as it's possible to be, she still managed to get across the high-wire while I changed films; Hee-hee! The high-wire consists of three parts, so you can have a single span (as here) or a double, they locate into the crossbars with little spigots, and the trapeze uprights can be two heights.

 

The animals are really more tub-fillers than anything else, with an inordinate number of tigers, given the lack of a big-cat trainer! Most of the baby giraffes won't stand up and have a completely different paint-treatment to the adults, and all are in a very stiff PVC-alike. The adult elephants would make very nice war-elephant conversions in the 1:72nd to 28mm range.

 

The stands combine into a half-circle, so two sets would make a full ring, but leave you with a lifetime's supply of rather leery tigers! And the all-male lion family in two sizes are hardly going to jump that burning hoop! As I'm sure you can see, scale is all over the place!

 

 

The stands are all in a 'styrene polymer, but the other accessories (and the shrubs) are polyethylene, so the fact that the clowns' cannon looks like it might be the same as Hing Fat's pirate cannon, probably suggest an origin for those (polyethylene) parts, certainly I think the shrubs are theirs too, and possibly the zoo-cage pieces, with the [softer] animals & figures, and [harder] stands possibly from another/other source/s?

 

In total there seems to have been six sets in that week's 'assortment', and this poor quality image should help ID jungle (larger animals by the look if it) and sea animal (mixed sizes) sets in the future, although from time to time one would expect one or the other to turn-up in some sort of played-with condition.

 

 

Thought for the day

If you write - the animals and figures, and stands, it reads clumsy, but if you write - the  animals & figures, and stands, your brain reads the ampersand as 'n or un, so; Animals n'figures, and it reads better? I don't know if it's something unique to English, but it's purely psychological, both lines are technically correct, however one scans in the brain as acceptable the other doesn't? Is there a word for this, or is it a known 'rule'?

H is for How They Come In - Sandown - September, Part 2

Continuing/completing the plunder posts from the last Sandown Park toy show, from BP Fairs (the next one is on the 11th of November I think), with the other half of the purchases/acquisitions!

My third Cherilea Dalek, I think I have a black and a sky-blue now (or was it silver? It's on the Blog somewhere!), so with this one a reasonable 'sample'! Although I've read that the plug-in tools are being reproduced, so I'll have to check their quality against the older ones, as it's very clean!

 

Now . . . we've had the above figures before, I think I have more than a baker's dozen now, and with colour variations! Each time we've seen them I've stated I know the game but can't remember it, well, it's Alibi, or "Dennis Wheatley's exciting new game Alibi", published by Geographia Ltd.

 

Below them are three Wardie/Mastermodels OO-gauge figures and two larger figures which will be from British minor makers wagons, carts or milk-floats, still to be attributed, but that will be for another day, there are lots of them!

Odds and sods, including a Timpolin mechanic, original Ral Patha 'fantasaur' and the metal chap, top left, who often turns up (I have a bagful somewhere!) and is a Tootsietoys soldier from the sets with the small die-cast trucks which are the same as the (Charbens?) lorries we saw here years ago - button-searchlight, pom-pom gun or etc.

 

Adrian Little of Mercator Trading found this for me! Having wanted some for years, i've had three come-in this year! Another Milwaukee Zoo marked Mold-a-Rama figurine, this one of a T-Rex, I've seen a similar crested 'Duckasaurus' about the place!

 

I paid over the odds on this and got laughed at by Adrian and Gareth, but I rather liked it, and don't mind, something is worth what you pay for it! Britains village pond, I have the swan and some cygnets for it, I think, so it's got a purpose!

 

And this was dirt-cheap, but seems to be 'all there', a future project will be to finish it/rebuild it, and I'll scan the box in, so next time we can look at it in more depth. But I'm not sure if I'll stick with the fiddly foil-covering the previous owner had embarked upon!