D is for Dinorasers - 2 of 3

The second part, which is really of two pairs, or a T is for Four! Looking at the full sculpt/more realistic ones first, as a carry-over from part one, then a pair of 'flats' although 'slabs' is a better description!

Loving these anonymous types; two obvious dinosaurs and two, clearly Kaiju monsters! These are large for Erasersaurs, about the same size as the Strawberry ones, but I'll sort the sizes out in the final part.

 

While after the Taiwanese set in the last post, we are off to South Korea to find the Popcorn Fancy factory these left, however long-ago! They have a lot of surface detailing, but it's a bit odd, and was either early CAD-CAM machining, or the masters were 3D-printed when that tech' was, itself, still new, as the texture consists of lots of little rod-like structures, arranged in what appear to be similar to Fibonacci 'spreads'?

Flats, in that they are flat! Waterslide transfers applied to shaped cartouches? Blobs? Clouds! Barely figural, but look below, at least these are trimmed to a vaguely figural-shape! And we've got a couple of mammals, but as the oldest sets of Dinorasers have Woolly Mammoths in their line-up - that's practically tradition!

 

And yeah! These are just blocks with dinosaurs on them, but once you have established a 'side collection', completist'ism clicks-in, and any dinosaur eraser is a good eraser. It's the same with robots and spacemen, where 'flats' and blocks now feature!

D is for Dinorasers - 1 of 3

Clearing an old folder which was going to be one overview, but in the end it sort of made sense to break it up into three parts, so that's what I've done, and this is the first of those parts!

 

These are imported by Strawberry Design & Marketing, I don't know if they are the same as the more commonly encountered Strawberry Group (Saffron Walden, CB postcode), but CO9 is a Colchester postcode, so the suspicion is the same firm moved to larger (or smaller) premises?

 

These are quite large and well detailed for Erasersaus, so they may have been moulded from tools usually used for actual carpet-play dinosaur models? And - as far as I could tell - there were only the four sculpts, in all four colours.

Modern'ish erasers, which I think we've seen before in other branding's (the Asda and Paperchase set), here is the Chinese (?) parent - Shangxin? And new colours, arguably more realistic, the red one excepted!

These are older, and more mono-horned dino's, who would normally have pairs!  A little smaller that the previous set, and simpler, but still some nice surface detailing, no brand but claimed for Taiwan, which is less usual?

 

Very simple and taken from the 'rubber jiggler' set I've sung the nostalgia-praise of here, in the past, as my favourite childhood set, I think this was an eBay shot from years ago, and looking at it, they may be the smudgy silicon-rubber which makes for crap erasers!

These are credited to Rex London who we've previously seen here importing unpowered (or hand-powered!) gliders, so a consistent novelty importer then! Smaller than all the above, but really nice sculpts. More to come!

R is for Rubbed Out

I know, but I'm in a hurry and they did all go extinct! Back to the Iwako 'Dinorasers' or Erasersaurs, and I did manage to get one of the new 2020-launch sets back in 2021, so as a bit of a box-tick, here they are, and the backing cloth really seems to be that colour, I can't remember what it was, but the erasers are all relatively colour-true!

 

Packaging

 

Parts count

Assemblies;

Spinosaurus (poor man's Dimetrodon!), Sauropod and a Kerthunkasaurus!

 

I think this means I have all the known Iwako dinosaurs now, but not knowing if the Dimetrodon I found, or these above, will have other colourways, while knowing I still have two colour variations of the Paralophosaurs to find, means the search goes on!

I is for Iwako - Toy Fair 2020

Yeap! 2020, because, despite TJF's protestations about "Timely Manner" 's, most of what I shoot at the toy fairs is non-toy soldier, or non-time sensitive, or both, and is as much for my own records as anything else! Particularly with a novelty item like Iwako, who regularly get pirated by Chines producers, so it's as useful to have the record of the right colour-ways to help filter out copies, as anything else!

 

And I did post the new dinosaurs at the time, so this is a sort of bonus post! But to presage the next post, here's what I shot a few weeks before Covid started to visibly undermine capitalism and our trust in capitalists, if we had any?!

 

The main display; showing how this stuff is never actually rare, a row of modern injection-moulding machines will churn that lot out in ten minutes, and they can run for days, weeks or months - if you want, so people getting excited about late-production Starlux or Britains Deetail is just not something I can really get my head round!

Wacky/non-realistic colours were the thing that year!

Larger Paperchase stores had these point-of-sale displays before their recent bankruptcy. Smller stores may have had one of the others above?

That's it, just a bunch of images I took as much for my own amusement as anything else, and with some 45 folders still in Picasa from the 2019, '20 & '22 seasons, and '23's not even sorted/broken-down yet, I'll be bleeding the stuff onto here and the A-Z Blogs for years to come!

T is for Two-Dimensional Terrasaurs!

I think we've looked at these before and I explained my lack of a decent sample, but I've picked-up a few interesting bits on them, or related to them, in the last few years, so time for a better overview despite the lack of samples! Nabisco's Dinosaur Flats.

 

Except they aren't Nabisco, and there are only twelve of the 20, and I don't think they are even the Aussie issue, in fact, I think they are quite recent manufacture, (possibly from older tools), and came in this red and a mid-blue (below), and in the slightly chalky polyethylene of some really cheap rack-toy 'Army Men'.

As we can see from this comparison they are slightly smaller copies of the original set, but are otherwise quite good, sculpturally, with minimal loss of etched detailing, and no more than a millimetre smaller, overall, with thicker bases.

 

Most notable is the loss of depth to the mouldings, making them even flatter flats! The UK issue came in various shades from almost pure white to an 'ivorene' shade of clotted-cream!

 

Wagner in Germany also carried these - possibly first? And I'm pretty sure some of the base-names were Germanised, so they are something to look out for, but those with the same spelling can't be told apart, unless they have a Wagner sticker, which you don't usually get on the cavity-based issues.

 

Another comparison shot.

 

I am slowly picking up the set, but at my current rate I'll need at least another 30-years! The red polyethylene one on the right, is a modern copy, possibly from the same source as the animals I got from The Swagman's Daughter (and which were used as window-missile prizes, on feast-days in Malta), a few years ago, of a second, nicer set of Euro-flat premiums, where each animal comes with a little bit of prehistoric landscaping! Here, it's probably from a Christmas cracker?

From Cluck 1, and I can't find Cluck 2 right now, which had a better image of one of the kids-comic advertisements for the series, but, it's a checklist, and Cereal Offers have the whole set and more here;

http://cerealoffers.com/Cereal_Partners/Shreddies/1950s/1/1.html

Those data rings from the end-of-promotion mail-away, are very hard to find!

R is for Regular Rubber Rampage!

Eraserbots and Erasersaurs, two of my favourite side-subjects, oozing childhood memories, Christmas spirits and Nostalgia by the handful! As a follow-up to the Charity shop Dinosaur pencil-rubbers, and as a draw-up to Jon Attwood's latest, huge donation, we are going to have a bit of a Saurian season for a day or two!

Today we're looking at those which have come in recently, mostly Charity Shops or donations, and it was three lots, but as we'll see, it is now four, I think! Of which these are the most numerous, and we've probably seen some of them before, Hong Kong marked copies of the Diener poses, or based on them, the other closely related set are 'China' marked.

 

Mostly reasonable sculpts, for what they are, but the green one has a definite Godzilla vibe going-on down that spine, and I'm not sure about the Cycloceratops (or Uniceratops?) bottom right (common for that species with this material), or the stretching brown Arzach at the rear!

 

These I think we've seen twice, under different branding (Asda and Paperchase (now defunct)), so just a loose trio, for colour variations if I haven't already got them? I'm going to have to go through the 'eraser' Tag soon, adding Dinorasers, or Erasersaurs, to all the relevant posts to seperate them from other eraser posts and get them all on one Tag!

 

The Charity shop ones again, the blue chap (or chapess) won't stand up, so I have to lean it against another, each time!

 

Comparison shot of similar pairs across the three lots which have recently come-in, the new charity ones are a mixed bag, with three blobby ones and three quite good sculpts . . . but when I was putting them away, I noticed . . . 

 

. . . the kerthunkasaurus is actually in two parts, which after a quick inspection . . . 

 

. . . revealed that I had three each from two sources, with the two-part dino's being better sculpted, larger models of smaller dinosaurs, while the other three are mini's of larger or 'box scale' animals, which we have seen before, again under more than one brand (The Works and Poundland), as both capsule-type and six-to-a-card toys, respectively.

F is for Follow-Up - MPC GI's

I was putting away all the nice things from Brian Berke, and I found the bag of MPC bits which have come in over the last year or two, and picked one of each, old & new, 54-and-60mm and took a line-up for the family album!

 

I also checked with the original post on the subject, and except for a couple of the above pale-green 54mm's, they are all new colours or poses, or colour of an existing pose, and as I thought, the four darker-olive ones here (from Brian) are all additions!

 

The other day I mentioned the similarity between some of the European gum-premium figures (Americana, Boomer, Dunkin, Mundi, Ola and/or whoever including Montaplex piracies!) bore a close resemblance to the MPC figures, and as you can see - the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or just seeing! Even down to the AT-rocket in the dust/mud by the bazooka-man's knee.

H is for How They Come in - Charity Shops Again!

I picked up a couple of bags, just after the last post on the subject, then managed to find a couple more shots I'd missed (which aren't in the big folder of stuff waiting), so here's a few bits, some of which we may have seen before?

 

Two-quid for a very mixed bag, several of which pieces will go back to a different charity shop in the next donation from me, but from which a few useful pieces were sorted into the collection, and well look at the better pieces below.

 

The dinosaurs will feature in a forthcoming post on erasersaurs, for that is what I think they are! The two lady bears are 'In My Pocket' toys from Morrison, while the red stuff is a right old mix, Nabisco Dougal, the unknown premium elephant we looked at years ago next to the Kellogg's-Raja-Dunkin ones and a bear previously shelfied in pastel shades as Baby Shower rack toys, AND found in the street in yellow plastic.

 

The ball, soft-foam, which is increasingly turning-up in these mixed lots, is from some rival to Nerf Guns, which I did see the name of the other day, but forgot to note!

I picked this up because it was cheap, and the basket was undamaged (along with all those ears!), so it was a rather fine example of a new name - Avon 'Forest friends' - for both the Tag list and the A-Z blogs - eventually! Probably meant to post it at Easter, may have, but found these images anyway!

 

The other recent bag - I seem to have veritable herds of these in dozens of sizes, sets, plastic types, because obviously it was a very successful movie, and got heavily covered, even until now, and I will have to sit down at some point in the future, and sort them all out, for a proper ID session/disambiguation post! Disney's Frozen!

 

While this was a 50p purchase a year or two ago which we may have had here, real borderline as far as taking the term 'figural' goes, but fun, and the sort of home-made stuff gift-shops still carried when I was a kid and Hong Kong's tsunami of polymer had barely started to flow!

B is for Before & After - Cleaning!

Quick one from the photo-archive, the Auburn Rubber half-track, before and after cleaning, the lighting also changed slightly, but I think the job still shows itself to have been a good-un!

Not terribly realistic/true-to-life, but better than Marx's efforts, and around 1:48th scale? Manufactured from a synthetic PVC-rubber, rather than the earlier vulcanised tapped-rubber, of which Auburn had done a few military vehicles, but not a half-track, I think Sun Rubber did a very crude vulcanised half-track?

 

I put a little touch of WD40 on the axles too (hidden carpet-wheels behind the track-units), just to stop them getting any worse, after I'd given them a wet-polish with a bit of wire-wool, while it was in the sink for its once-in-a-blue-moon valet!

K is for Kitchenalia!

All sorts of stuff has come out of the woodwork, or the kitchen cabinets over the last three years, some I've photographed, some has gone to storage, some went to charity and some went in the bin. Here's three pieces of kitchenalia which may trigger the odd nostalgia button or two?

 

I can half-remember the birthday party where these were used, and they were 'dead posh' and modern, bring plastic rather than waxed-paper/card (how times have changed!), but it has left them brittle. They did have matching Magic Roundabout paper plates and napkins/serviettes, and I think the cake was Mum's rendition of Dougal dog!

 

Every 1970's kid appreciated a curly-wurly drinking straw, didn't they? I think they did, even if they didn't admit it! I seem to recall these were Christmas stocking presents one Christmas morning, and would have been christened with milk or tea . . . possibly milk with food-dye in it, as "It's Christmas"!

Kiddy cutlery, the cat was usually mine, the snoopy was my Brother's and I think we shared the Disney knifes, depending upon who grabbed which first! I should find some kid/s to pass them on to, but all my friends' kids have grown-up and gone to collage! Maybe a hospice for kids would be a thought?