S is for Seen Elsewhere - Kinder Animals

I put these on the animal forum, in two tranches, some quite a while back, some more recently, but good to get them off the PC and onto an archive dongle! Kinder animals, older and newer!

 

1980's, I think these were from a set of four buffalo - African (black), Asian 'Water', N. American Buffalo and Wisent, but which is which (on the green one), and whether that's a true fact (set of four) are both open questions! Simple four-part clip-together toys.

 

Also the 1980's or maybe the 1990's, lift the tail and the head drops, push the tail down and the head rises - clever!

 

Deffinately the 1980's, I had one for a long time, which came with my packed-lunch egg! I lost a hoof, and it was years before I found another one! This is a polystyrene, ten-part, clip-together 'kit'.

 

A more modern take on the giraffe, his head also moves, but without the complicated hidden-gear mechanism.

 

These last four are more contemporary; since the late 2000's Kinder have had an almost constant series of animal sets, some more realistic, some more cutesy, some downright cartoony, but all under a theme-umbrella of wild-life, endangered, save the earth, kinda' stuff. The reindeer may be from a Frozen line?

CGB is for Cool Glassware Buddy!

Another box-ticker from the Gift Fair at the NEC, and we're looking at glass animals from CGB Giftware, who are clearly some kind of marketing outfit for a cooperative of smaller, artisan makers, with at least two brands visible, Jasmine and Fox Fern.

 

Some of these are so clever, you have to work very fast, with molten glass, to get the techniques to work, and while there's an element of once you've designed one, you can reproduce it quicker and quicker, the nature of artists is that they will constantly have new ideas, so they are always trying new things, I love the giraffe with the bent neck, these two kerthunkersaurs, and, the ducks must be incredibly hard to get 'right'?

L is for Lanzamisiles

To be specific, the Tente military set - 0753 Camion Lanzamisiles, and I know, I try not to do army/death stuff in December, but the queue says otherwise, this year! And this is exactly the sort of stuff you might have found under the Christmas tree in the late 70's, or 80's, especially if old Aunt Maud didn't understand about the vagaries of Lego-compatibility!

 

When we fire brightly decorated missiles at each other! Such marking goes back to the German V-Programme (Vegeltung - retaliation, retribution, revenge, or reprisal - like Trump, the philosophy that it's always someone's else's fault, if it's not going the way it was supposed to, when you started it!), and painting the test rockets in such a fashion, was to be able to tell (from the video [film] footage) how they performed, where or why they spun, and/or exactly where or how they failed first. Target drones are similarly decorated for visibility.

 

Lanzamisiles is simply 'Launcher of Missiles', or missile-launcher, and the toy, once completed, does not fire the missile which is locked to the launch-bar with a row of the more-complicated-than-Kiddycraft studs! I think the truck may be a loose Pegaso 3000 series?

 

When these came out, Lego were still producing pretty box-like, civilian vehicles with few specialist or 'cool' parts, and even when the space sets first came out, we only got a few new parts, dishes and hand-tools mostly. Indeed, when the ariels were added to the Lego space sets, they were far simpler and more toy-like than the one Tente had been using for some time.

 

Spain remains non-nuclear, so this would have been a tactical, battlefield artillery missile, to deliver a high-explosive, heavy-punch, with - hopefully - more accuracy, or devastation than fire-and-forget artillery rounds or heavy mortars!

 

Some ideas for alternate models which could be made from the contents of the box, the whole point of construction sets for kids, something lost on the Kidults, who can spend $1000 on a Millennium Falcon, which takes ten days to build and never gets touched again, except in house moves, or when the partner attacks it with a broom-handle upon exiting the relationship!

 

"I took the sofa apart, but never found the second air-tank in the smugglers' alcove, it's just not the same now!"

N is for November's Sandown Park - Erasers

And not just any old erasers, but that the bulk of them are probably Diener Industries, one way or another, the other factor being that they are also French premiums, but may, due to petroleum, also be British! I picked these up a few at a time, every time I passed the chap's stall, and wish now I'd hoovered up the last few, but they were mostly duplicates, I think!

 

These are probably not Diener, as they are proper eraser-rubber, but I thought they'd go very well with the Lik Be (that's LB of course!) and Holly anthropomorphic musicians, in a future comparison post / battle of the animal bands! They are also pencil-tops.

 

These are all clearly marked Diener Ind., with a '(C)' mark, and are a mix of generics, Disney, cute and a Fontanini clown-sculpt knock-off, along with an Easter basket of bunnies! And they may well belong to several sets, or even some of the sets below, as explained as we go.

 

These are unmarked, but are manufactured in the same smudgy silicon-rubber of all Diener's 'erasers', which were always shit erasers, as they just smudged pencil around the page, leaving everything looking awful! Again, they could be from more than one set, but the paint ties them into the premiums below. The red kitten is a slightly different sculpt to the yellow one in the previous shots - head moved to ease undercuts?

I can't work out if this is supposed to be some kind of anthropomorphic Viking, or a French TV character? Nor is it clear if it's damaged, poorly fettled or had a charm/key-ring loop removed?

 

These two, both Disney, are marked Esso and Disney Prod., and were a set of premiums, given away with Esso fuels, defiantly issued in France, the complete sets are to be found in the pages of Jean Piffret's book Figurines Publicities, but, as I think I've mentioned before, we had some when we were kids, not from this set, but from the set of woodland (or other) animals, some of which are in the upper shots.

 

Indeed, the slightly Beatrix Potter'esque pricklepin in the same flesh pink as the odd figure above, is one of the items on my nostalgia wants list, as it was in my pencil case until I was far too old to have affection for such things! And the three little pigs would also go with the other musical mammals!

 

While these are just marked (C) Walt Disney Prod., but you can see where the Esso has been obliterated on the tool, so there was probably a commercial issue too, at some point.

 

Therefore, I think a couple of the sets annotated by Piffret, as French, were issued here, also with Esso, at some point around the late 1960's or early 1970's, possibly without the paint highlights of the French and more commercial Diener issues. There were more sets issued as premiums in France, though?

 

Four other, non-Diener, non-Esso types, with, from the left a grotesque facemask pencil top, this was probably from the era of cereal-premium totem-pole funny-faces and the semi-flat African mask charm type premiums. Next is a vampire, or Dracula type, in his casket, and just waking-up, by the look of it!

The footballer is bigger that the Hong Kong painted ones, issued as either key-rings or pencil-tops, but may have been the inspiration for them, and he is a pencil top too! While the 'finger fright' rubber-jiggler just came with them to make a round-number! The first three being, again, 'proper' eraser-rubber.

E is for East of India

Another non-toy company whose products had a bit of a Christmassy vibe, also shot at the Birmingham gift fair, but crafty fun, and no polymer in sight, bar a few rabbit-sized, dungaree-buttons!

 

There's something of the primative votive about these.

 

Cake decorations?

 

Felt tree-hangers.

 

There were several displays of 'The Boos'

 

Nativity figures, so generic, you can't tell which is Mary or Joseph?

 

Boos . . .

 

Animals . . .

 

. . . and more Boos!

T is for Tente's Tactical Toy Troops

We looked at one of these many years ago, at which point I thought it was the only one, a bit of a casual thought, an accessory for the vehicle kits, but, it turns out, that like the spacemen, there were two generations, and with three poses in each generation, more to know, and more to collect!

Older at the top, newer at the bottom - I think?

From the left - Officer/Driver? - Vehicle Commander - Trooper.

 

Officer/Drivers.

 

From behind.

 

Not least of which (things to know/collect), is that there are two colours, and while I still only have the one pose in the sand yellow we looked at back in 2011, I seem to now have all six in this khaki-drab. I don't know what plastic they use, but I'll Tag them ABS and Propylene, as it's that type of hard-wearing polymer?

 

The newer (as I believe it to be) Tente figures, have better detailing, are slightly smaller, and have wider crotch-areas, so I guess are less likely to break at the point of articulation. In both cases, though, there are no moving arms, as we saw with the astronauts. Thanks go to Peter Evans for finding these at a car-boot sale.

CBC is for Church Bought Chochkes

It's stretching it a bit, but there you go! Shot back in February at Birmingham, here's an outfit who's own website make it quite clear they only supply gift shops and the ecclesiastical community, wholesale, rather than having any kind of ambitions to retail enterprise, and as they've been going since 1950, it's obviously worked for them.

 

Mostly Advent stuff, so relevant now, there are a few more general religious themes in among them, like the smaller metal items near the end of the post.

 

Wooden sets for kids.

 

Matt-painted bisque.

 

Fuller sets.

 

Stables.

 

Nativity trios!

 

Other religious iconography, including Easter.

 

Mary's and Jesus's, and some priests/monks - St. Peter?

 

That's it really - CBC Distribution; box ticked, and in the tag list!

 

Company webpage; https://www.cbcdistributors.co.uk/