T is for Two - Cosmic Correctors!

 Or: P is for Poor-old Pluto!

 

Picked these two up on Wednesday of this week, so both are fresh in the shops, and shops I regularly check for such stuff, to boot!

 

The second find is on the left, the Legami set of Solar System erasers, while about an hour earlier I'd grabbed the Scribble Pop Shop set in Home Bargains (the TKMaxx vehicle). Google's AI answer-bot tells us "Legami was founded in 2003 and has their headquarters in Bergamo, Northern Italy. They started by selling book straps to tie your books together for easier carrying, and now they have more than 4000 products across all sorts of stationery types.", which makes more sense than they're having appeared out of nowhere, as they otherwise seem to have - presence at both recent product fairs, and more items in the queue, from a garden centre!

 

Obviously, it was the Iwako-style mini-rocket ships which attracted me, not the . . . 

. . . astronaught in a nappy (diaper)! The Scribble Pop Shop; an in-house branding, also responsible for a pencil case and colouring set in the same space theme, is presumably ('obviously' once you know the history/timings) aimed at countering the Legami set, or riding its boot straps (book straps!). And they seem to have got their generic planet from whoever made Legami's Saturn? The Legami set was in Ryman's, but they are also in garden centres, venue gift-shops and Claire's I think? Poor old Pluto!

H is for How They Come In - Recent Charity Lot

Continuing in the same vein as the Chris Smith posts, there will be a bunch of posts with stuff from Peter Evans shortly, interspersed with Toy Fair/Spring Gift Fair stuff, but we'll have a bit a change first, and before that change, I'll throw a few other bits up; this was a Charity Shop purchase a couple of few weeks ago.

 

Three bags, rabbits, dinosaurs and other animals!

 

We saw these before, the Ubisoft Rayman Raving Rabbids, or 'Rabid Rabbits'! Each has a costume or theme, they are blind-bag collectables, and the best way to get a sample is like this as I bet they're not cheap out there in retail-land! They are more fun that those Kid Robot Dunny Bunnys or Medicom's dead Bearbricks, but still look quite unsettling with their lack of rabbit nose, and bulgy-eyes!

 

I believe they are connected to a video game for the Nintendo Wii, and there seem to be hundreds of them! I thought the Rabbid in a rabbit onesie, with a toy rabbit in the pocket, was quite the existential conundrum, in the thought-provoking department, and judging by the look on his face, so does he!

 

Skeletal dinosaur bits, the two Stegosauruses, are so similar, one has to be a piracy of the other, but subtle differences and a more obviously bent tail, suggest they are not from the same house? The Dimetrodon is disappointingly Spinosaur-like!

 

A mixed lot, hard to say anything about something you know nothing about, one or two of them may be from the same set, and some are better quality than the others, but until they are sorted thought the rest in the stash, they won't make much sense like this. The Tyrannosaur is probably the nicest here, with the salmon-pink stretchy, possibly by Henbrandt?

 

I think the figure may be Kinder, modern and missing something? Likewise, the purple alien thing? The Panda too, looks like the recent/current ranges and lines of natural-history related sets from Kinder.

 

The sucker snow-bear will go in the novelty sucker zone, and the big blue chap is an unmarked soft silicon stretchy, knocking off the Panosh/Novalinea types, probably from a 1990's Lucky Bag or capsule? And two snakes for the snake bag, you always keep them in a bag, so you can firmly knot the top, or they get out!

 

I think we saw a large Amazon/Ali Baba set with two colours of the same octopus, so I should be able to attribute these to some sort of branding at some point, they came with the turtle which may or may not be from the same set?

 

Three (?) kittens and lots of puppies, I think most of these may be the ones which get given away with kids comics/magazines, I've seen loads but not purchased any as they are a bit off the Blog's beaten track, and were bound to come-in, in the end, in lots like this, but I suppose I should look out for them to get a title? Or even try to get the issuer's ID, off the card, but they tend to be quite firmly attached to the publications!

P is for Prehistoric Odds & Sods

That's enough dinosaurs for a while (there's more in the queue!), finishing off with a few which have come in recently worthy of a mention, and a quick follow-up on a recent post, so, in the order in which they were shot, which is pretty-much the order then came in . . .

 

These two came in with a mixed lot, possibly a Charity shop lot, several got subsumed into the whole without dedicated posts, while others only got the highlights shot - like these two? A couple of hatching dinosaurs, presumably from a larger diorama or vignette, painting is quite crude so maybe one of the larger generic window boxes you see in TKMaxx, B&M or Home Bargains?

 

I'd been looking for these, to compare with the other two sets when I Blogged them a while ago

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/12/p-is-for-prehistoric-party-packs.html

 

I think we have seen them, or a similar set before, and with the other two now buried in the storage unit, it's a comparison for another day, but there are four of these mini-monoblock party-favour sets to compare, in total I think, maybe five, and these are the pooest, being knackered multi-generational piracies of old US sculpts from the 1950/60's?

 

Shelfied in B&M the other day, I thought the painting was quite good on the six animal models, and with the seeable models not matching the artwork, worth shooting against future ID'ing of loose samples when they come in!

 

While I hope one day to do lots of ID pages, as I've mentioned before, firefighters, AWI/Marlborough, cats, whatever, there are so many dinosaurs, it will be difficult to get them all on one page, so I fear the 'Dinosaur' Tag, here, well always be a fall-back!

 

I got a third Depesche pencil-top to add to the two we saw the other day;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/02/d-is-for-deinos-sauros.html

 

Only, once I'd got it home I wondered if we've actually seen it before, and that was why I didn't get it when I got the other two, so I may have two of them now, but that might encourage me to force one off the pencil and see if it will stand-up!

P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Everything Else!

Sadly, all good things come to an end, and this is what didn't end-up in the other folders for whatever reason! Mostly because they were mixed shots, although a fair bit of the TV/Movie stuff ended up here rather than in the sci-fi post, but, well, it's another post!

 

A Phidal dome-headed 'Mysterio' (one of the things I hate about Marvel/DC is that many of the heroes and villains are named by five-year-olds, like 1950's cleaning products, shine'o, cleanrite, rinsit, floorbrite!), a pair of Fortnite figures, the one on the left is a stamper, the one on the right might be from a key-ring, hard to tell.

 

The Archer is The Archer/Clinton Barton/Hawkeye from Marvel? The other three still have question marks, Mobile Man ?. . . Or Cellphone Man!

 

The surface of the previous shot wasn't level and I could only get two of them to stand-up by turning them round! So here they are leaning against the backdrop the tight way round! I think the chap on the left is probably a 'solid' from Kinder, they have many of these hard plastic figures, a subcategory to the dedicated collectors, and this may be a specific character, or part of a set I'm unfamiliar with, and I could try looking him up, or not worry, if you know, you already know, I'll have a session in the future ID'ing all sorts when I label them up!

 

While the red guy might be a stamper or a keyring, or another source altogether, there is a lot of this Fortnite stuff in the queue, both Peter Evans and me have located a fair bit, and it was mostly shot some time ago!

 

An Anime/Manga schoolgirl keyring, the closest match I can find are free images, but named characters with green uniforms do exist, however with green, black or red bows? Her interest here, to us, is in the over-moulding of the different colours of vinyl. She's a relief flat - which should be 2½D, shouldn't it; not quite 2D, not quite 3D!

 

Somehow escaped the military post, becase it was mixed combat and historical, I guess! A cake decoration figure, seen before here, a copy of Airfix AWI, scaled-up, two dark green versions of figures more usually seen in dung/khaki, a Marx 50mm Training Centre figure, and a premium flat ascribed to Bonnie Bilt in the 'States, a Timpo copy who might be Polish, or a BR Moulds piece, and finally a US 'comic flat' also AWI.

 

Disney bits, including two princesses, one of which may be a knock-off, a large LotR Elven archer (presumably Legolas?) from McDonald's, who apparently came without a bow, even though he's clearly firing a bow, due to 'health & safety'? The martial-arts chap on the end will be from Mulan or something similar, I haven't followed the recent releases, just become aware of them through social media or Phidal!

 

The guy on the left here is probably a driver from an omnibus/tram/streetcar model kit, someone like Pyro maybe or a smaller maker, Palmer? Someone like that? Although he's also quite Parker'esque! The heavy chunk of ersatz PVC on the right is from Harry Potter, and is a statue which came to life at one point I think, again, I haven't read or seen any HP stuff, but did get Steven Fry's excellent reading of the first book, one Easter on the Radio, years ago!

 

The small scale here consists mostly of Galoob, from pretty-much all their lines, but there's a Mattel or two in there too (Action Man or Batman villain with pistol, and the firefighter), and a Bluebird Snow White sitting on her own, while a Zizzle Cap'n Jack stalks her!

 

Kinder bits, to go in the Kinder bits zone! I think that monkey may be another from the set which included my CAD-monkey mascot! The helmet is a soft polyethylene knock-off of Lego, while I'm not sure about the large lady, but she's certainly Kinder-like enough for the shot!

 

Also Kinder, but mostly mucked-about with.

They'll go in the future project zone!

 

And bringing us to a close on these posts, the 'Halloween' shot! The two ghosts are also Kinder I think, or one of these sets we looked at a year or two ago, the spotted mushroom is a Go-Go Crazy Bone I think, not so sure on the blue (robo-elephant?) thing, while two earlier novelty flats, probably from 1970's (or earlier) Christmas crackers, finish it all off.

As always, very many thanks to Chris Smith for finding, saving and sending all this stuff to the Blog. It's not just that we get all these posts out of each parcel, with something for everyone and lots to ID, but that in the future, there will be more in specific subject posts, a better picture of everything or anything, and I am very grateful to all those who save or send stuff to/for the Blog/Archive/Collection, especially where, like the probably broken cat flat above, it might otherwise go in the bin, a first sample is a first sample, whatever the condition, so, thank-you very much Chris.

T is for Two - Keycraft Dino's

I actually had a good interaction with the Keycraft rep's at Gift Fair Birmingham the other day, well, a week ago today as it happens, but I'd already found some of these and shot them months ago, and picked the other one up at Redfield's garden centre the next day, where i saw both the items they gave me as samples at the show, which will be in a forthcoming show.

 

 

I actually bought these over I year ago I think, there were in the cheapie-bin by the tills in Hobbycraft, and I rather liked the Moshops type (green, another non-dino' synapsid), bought the salmon-red one because it was an equally unusual subject, and then the Steggie' for comparison with something more conventional.

Then I got this from the same store a few months ago (part of the Crimbo' toys reconnaissance!). Mentioned in a recent post, I consider them to be mid-range, in both sculpting and decoration, similar to the WHSmith set of a few year's ago, while they are also what I call medium-sized, and in the 2nd commonest 'group' of toy dinosaurs, after the very small 'toob' types.

The 'header card' has changed graphics over the time I've been buying them.

The newer is the upper card.

 

These came from Redfield's the other day, and are a bit of fun, which I didn't notice on the keycraft stands at either London or Birmingham, but I haven't done much with the images, yet, and they may be there, in one of the collective display-shelf shots?

 

Yes, they are daft, and very-much an 'infant toy' thing, but they are fun, coloured like all those 'Erasersaurs', and can be stuck all over the place, annoying Mum & Dad, so very-much a toy success in my books! There were three (same colour as their oppo') duplicates, so I'm guessing they are assortments, and a pose or two may be missing from the shot, or even/therefore a colour or two?

P is for Polymer Plunder Package - Animals

The penultimate post on the wonderful Christmas package from Chris Smith finds us looking at the animals, large, small, and daft, vintage and current, prehistoric and more recognisably 'out there now'!

 

A nice, but play worn blow-moulded Tiger, I thought it might have been flocked, but there's enough evidence of painted stripes to suggest not, rather the sort of thing we've seen in Argentinian Tarzan sets, or similar jungle fayre? Behind it is a bendy . . . . Panther? It's a bendy, and it's brilliant, whatever it is; lioness maybe?

 

Slightly damaged (possibly removed from a larger vignette), the grey-pyjama'd chap in a fez, is an old bisque piece, possibly an Edwardian cake decoration, but I suspect from something larger? The chap to the right is a budget toy, aiming at Schliech or Papo I guess, maybe ELC or Wilko, both gone now!

 

While the other dude (assuming they are all male, for the sake of conversational blurbage!), is in brown plastic, which is unusual, and my immediate thought was Dulcop Tarzan sets, but he's not as 'wavy' as the Dulcop one, so I'm guessing Dom/Heinerle or someone like that?

 

Interesting handful, the Dimetrodon looks a bit earlier than the others, and has a very good head, while the big chap is a classic 'gape-mouth' Chinasaur! The other three may go together, but the blue (metallic blue!) sauropod is a little more catoony than the other two, smaller Dino's?

 

A mix of vintage and modern, some were marked I think, but I didn't take notes at the time, the two/four at the back may all be from one modern toob/tub, and at least two of the piggies are new to me. The larger bath duck is a nice piece, with some age, while the red one was usually found in sets of incrementally sized 'duckies'

 

After the jumping feet and FFL scale-down, this obviously 1960's (or even late 1950's) octopus is the third favourite, and a lovely survivor, he originally had green eyes, but all the paint is a tad play worn. The red stretchy lizard is an old capsule toy, similar to a very oily, leaching one we saw here at Small Scale World years ago.

 

The green lizard may be a companion piece from a larger 'pink/purple' action figure or fantasy play set, while the Sperm Wale and rather unusual shark, are probably from the same tube-type set?

 

Mixed bits, the green teddy almost certainly was flocked once, the lion is rather fine and the dark horse/pony is a Corgi job, I think. The small grey elephant is new to me, while the faux-ivory one with a charm-loop (probably Christmas cracker prize) still has both tusks!

 

Loving the shooting-game, target ducks! A home fairground sideshow! I think the big blob is an 'Angry Bird'? The last one on the right is a Yowie, and there are several posts in the long queue on them, which will be done, sometime! It's an interesting range, which has come and gone in fits and starts in different territories and with different issues, and there are some very unusual animals in there.

 

The next day! Does he think I'm an idiot? He's got a lesson coming, anybody can raid eBay/Worthpoint/Scalemates, for anything, even TV21!

 

Two cats from a relatively recent, budget set we may or may not have covered, there are quite a few! The middle dog is the Corgi farm dog, the pale one may be from the Blue Box hunter/cowboy/Tarzan sets' one, which is often separated from the base, being only attached by a portion of one rear paw! And another poodle, there are so many poodles out there, they may get their own page one day!

 

The small scale includes a piece of fence which could be from the Airfix Zoo, or a copy, quality is poor, but memory (and the stash) reveal that the fence sections got flashy very early in the run, so it probably is Airfix? The three animals to the right however, are further piracies of Airfix Zoo animals! A Corgi (Husky/Juniors) calf  and a small duck bring us to the end of the animals, thanks as always to Chris for sending them to us.

T is for Two - Dinosaur Games at Kennsington Olympia

Not necessarily a 'trend' but I did spot two new Dinosaur games at the Toy Fair a few weeks ago, and they both have plastic toy dinosaurs, for tactile play-value, so let's have a quick look at the shelfies.

 

Some of the images are a bit fuzzy, the lighting at these shows is not always conducive to photography out on the floor - the 'real' press have a set of booths where they can take stuff for filming, us mere mortals have to make under a variety of oscillating, flashing, digital lighting systems which can play havoc with the camera's own setting!

 

We've seen Tactic before, and this seems to be an everlasting, or ever-changing board, where new sections get laid-down or removed in order to keep play moving forward? With two duplicate dinosaurs visible, it may be that the contents are assorted and varied from box to box, but I don't know, they are the smaller size of PVC-like dinosaurs.

 

There were two other sets with similar contents, one of insects the other domestic/farm animals, and one suspects that all-three are bought-in and may appear elsewhere, or have already been seen under other, brands, in more conventional toobs, tubs or as bagged/blistered rack-toys?

Website;

https://games.tactic.net/en/

 

 

Max & Ivy are a totally new enterprise, and while there were other products, this was the only one with toy figures. Filling an early-learning niche, you get a story book, play mat and some better quality (than the Tactic) dinosaurs in the medium-small range, with excellent decoration - think; the sets from Keycraft or WHSmiths, The Dimetrodon is particularly nice, but I would say that wouldn't I?!

 

I wouldn't presume to the arrogance of thinking that corporate buyers ever visit this blog, but if you happen to be passing and have any connection with buying for toy shops, convenience stores, or some school/youth facility chain, the lady behind Max & Ivy is looking for buyers, outlets, or partners, and can be found here;

 

https://www.enjoywithmaxandivy.com/

 

It seems to be a one-woman concern, and it would be nice if it could succeed in a cut-throat world!