Countdown to Halloween - 3 - Sainsbury's Creatures Bumper Pack

Next to Sainsbury's where we find a bag of mixed critters, some more familiar, so less, to those we have looked at in the last few days.

A better mix than previous sets, with some duplicates and some newer specimens! Orange spiders, it's one of the rules - Halloween = Orange, it's connected to pumpkins, not a particularly scary or ghoulish vegetable as they go, and not really grown here until about ten years ago, however now that the marketing machine has succeeded in importing the 'festival', they are grown in numbers, and the orange parallel now applies here, as in the States!

The scorpion is a copy of the rubber one which came in a mixed lot the other day while the flies are similar to those we've already looked-at along with the centipede, the ants and mice are more unique - although I'm sure you'll find similar copies elsewhere!

Comparison with the rats and scorpions; the orphan scorpion is PVC, the Sainsbury's one polyethylene, but the design is almost identical, while the rodent is - I think - slightly more rat-like with its shorter, fatter tail, big feet and wiry whiskers? This is - of course - ignoring the fact that they are both (all four!) crude infant novelties!

A second comparison between the Sainsbury's and Poundworld Plus centipedes, neither gets the biscuit as their legs are all over the place, and while they do add-up the same both sides they are not always opposite each other, some segments have two legs within their bounds (which would indicate millipede traits!), other segments have no leg on one side, other legs are at the junction between segments . . . another ten minutes effort with the master would have made all the difference, but the makers know 99% of this shite will be in recycling or landfill, or on the way there by next Wednesday!

If this stuff lasts an extra week for Guy Fawkes Night parties (the proper autumn festival here), it's all it can hope for and pretty-much as good as it gets!

M is for Mezquita

Apparently Mezquita are a minor make in Spain, I've only seen a couple of sets from them on feebleBay over the years, along with this set and some mention of small scale Pegaso Baraja lorries sold on similar blister cards - on one of the 1:87th scale websites - the sort of Kiosko priced just above Sobres?

This one contains a copy of a French wagon (with yet another source of Bergan/Beton-copy horse!), a Spanish-made Indian sculpt-copy in another scale and a boat more like those you find carved in wood, in Germany! Other sets have Comansi copies in the style of Montaplex.

It's a pocket-money, knock-off, rack-toy isn't it . . . if you are a six or seven-year old from Catalonia who's parents jump every time there's a knock on the door in case it's Franco's thugs or some Catholic church-funded goons come to 're-educate' them, this Mezquita set would be a cheap, fun way of taking your mind off life in a fascist dictatorship for a few hours!

There's only so many ways to photograph a sealed set in a hurry, and the first shot is it! I didn't think to take angle-shots at the time and while I can't remember where I shot it - it was a while ago!

The 'G' seems to have no significance beyond Mezquita stock/production coding of some kind; other sets having 'JP' in the same panel? The price is written in the German style with a long-headed figure-one, maybe an export to East Germany, we know the [Fascist] Spanish of the time had no ethical problems dealing with [the Communists in] Cuba?

The smudge (hidden by flash-reflection in the above-published shot) may be an artist's moniker . . . Ike, Ice, Iko, Ico or even 'Ibo'?

Countdown to Halloween - 4 - Back to Poundland - Meethes-to-peethes!

Poundland also got a late or second-tranche stock of additional Halloween stuff, mostly more crappy costumes, cobwebs, pumpkin-carving tool-sets (really?), face paint and all that malarkey, along with these glow-in the dark rodents . . . one assumes rats ('Halloween' n'all) but actually they make better mice in size and shape; I reckon!

In the bag and kept in the dark overnight they present as clear-plastic toy mice, pretty innocuous really? We have the same hyperbole on the packaging, no terror was experienced in this household, they aren't "Frighteningly Real" and they are made of a soft PVC; not " . . . from the dead"!

Activating the pesky critters with a pen torch, one at a time! As he/she 'heats-up', radiated light starts to activate the near neighbours; the funny thing is that photographing them wasn't easy, as what I could see, the camera couldn't - in the same light - while flash just glared them out. I had to switch the lights off and support the camera for a long-exposure, which the camera luckily does automatically.

The same exercise; but as a 'before-&-after' with a couple of the models and longer exposure to bright light (I held them up to a 100-watt bulb!), these will stay as part of the collection, but only the two, the rest go off to charity in mixed-bags.

M is for Maxxi Toys

Or D is for "Design is not stand for original product"! One of several odd bits of English syntax on this small set (donated to the Blog by Peter Evans) and the larger-set shelfie at the end of the post; also contributed by Peter.

I also have a feeling these may have a connection with the submission of a Mr I. Wraite to the most recent issue (No.167) of Plastic Warrior magazine, who was rightly "shocked and appalled" by the loin-cloth wearing methods of some Native Americans! At least mine has trousers and is presented with a strategically-placed arm! They also appeared on the PW friends Faceplant page a while ago.

Apache Clan Collection, it has a 99p graphic so must have been sold for that amount, whether it was one of the 'pound shop' chains such as the now defunct 99p Stores or one of its rivals or a more general store or supermarket I don't know, but for said amount I think it represents value for money; yes it's poor grade polymer tat from China, but it also a whole story in a box with all the props for a scenario or two

If you're wondering what the pack of rocks is for - they are the one serving of halal-foodstuff requiring a full nutrition panel!

So many toy horses have been made in the last 150-years they all now look like you've seen them before somewhere, it's a bit like marching guardsmen! This one is however probably reasonably unique, if anything it looks a bit like a rocking-horse or fairground ride horse with the quite carved mane and tippy-toe stance - but a rather nice sculpt nevertheless?

Coming in two halves clipped together and with an arrangement of five holes for either/both riders and/or wagons there is a cowboy saddle version and other poses (see last image below). Simple paint but two colours and no worse than more expensive figures, this is shaping-up to be a bargain at 99p!

First points against: The figures are only painted on the front side and are a little two-dimensional or semi-flat, while the quiver is oversized, but can be attached to the wagon-pole hole in the horses flank.

Palm tree and picket fence, Indian versus Indian; well OK, but we're still only talking 99p here and it's all about the imagination, or it should be!

The palm-fronds are a softish polyethylene, the horse are a hard material close to polystyrene, but I suspect something else; a hybrid or propylene, while the figures, fence and tree-trunk are a denser ethylene polymer.

The sweets are that same saccharine-sweet but otherwise flowery, flavourless sugar-candy you get in those large plastic capsule-eggs with no chocolate outer and the shite prizes, I know because I've tasted both!

"Completely new to come into the market", "convulsion enter" and "Wild the best West" are further examples of mangled syntax which tie these larger sets into the small one despite the lack of a Maxxi Toys logo being visible - and yes - I know they mean The Best Wild West Convulsion Enter, but that's hardly an improvement.

I was saving the small set's post for closer to Christmas, but looking around for something to run as a foil to the Countdown to Halloween posts (which I know some of you won't be so happy with, either due to their sparseness or their subject matter) I alighted upon the number of potential pocket-sized Wild West post stuff hanging around in Picasa or on the Laptop's desktop, when Peter sent me this shelfie as a follow-up to the mini-set.

You can see it has the same horses but with new horse poses, and cowboys . . . and wagons, I said to Peter that I vaguely recognise the covered-wagon with green woodwork, and have been racking my brain since as to where I may have seen them. I suspect it was the Toysaurus, about a year ago, where it was priced beyond my budget on the visit? Maybe TK Maxx a couple of Christmases ago?

The point is - while the construction is a bit clumsy with obvious screws, screw cavities and such-like, they are bloody nice-looking, original wagon designs with the covered wagon having the lines of a more task-specific wagon - a tradesman's or cook's wagon; something like that. While the Stage Coach looks nicely-different in the plain wood, rather than the glossy red (or other primary coloured-) ones a lot of people make, and probably far more realistic for the 'Wild' west, the glossy, painted ones being for the more gentile rides between the developed cities of the original North Eastern colonies. Both are probably the same polymer as the horses but I can't confirm that until I handle one!

Obviously these larger sets (the Faceplant page showed others) won't be 99p, but I bet they are only about seven or eight quid in some places; Peter's shelfie seems to show one (8 horses, 8 figures, two vehicles) for nine Euros?

And if you are a modeller, painter or lawn war-gamer these are definitely something to be looking out for - I know I'll grab the wagons if I see them again! Thanks Peter!

29-05-2018 - Now known to be being carried by Aliki on the continent and Liberty Imports in the 'States.

Countdown to Halloween - 5 - Poundworld Plus's Rubber WTF's

While I was getting the previous 'countdown' post's back of bugs from Poundworld Plus I also purchased these - so you don't have to!

These are not part of the Halloween range, and I have been studiously ignoring them in the toy section of the store since it opened back in the spring, they are basically shite; large blobs of poorly executed silicon rubber, vaguely representing generic species, three spiders, two beetles and an ant, except that the ant is probably not an ant and therefore the only really interesting item on the card.

The card claims both Toy Bank and Green Geko [sic] Industries as brands/brand-marks but are actually another ITP Imports item - here in the UK at least.

The 'ant' looks like a Velvet Ant, which is actually a wingless wasp and a worthy species to have as a model, but the beetles are poor and while the three spiders are all different and all resemble the outlines of real creatures, they are chunky infant toys of no real merit, fun for five-year olds!

I would add, that while I've been ignoring them for a month [and wouldn't have bought them if it wasn't for the fact that over the last few weeks what was going to be multiple posts on the 31st became an insect related set of rack-toy posts suitable for a countdown trope], I have as yet to find the other six of the advertised "12 realistic insects for you to collect", despite checking the toy section at least once a week. Now that I've weakened and bought these I'll have to get the other six - if I see them!

They look better . . . dead; now that's a proper bit of the spirit of Halloween, right there!

C is for Crescent Covered Wagon

I thought I'd already blogged this, but checking the dongles I couldn't find any used images, so there may be a follow-up post with another in a different colour soon as I think there's one in the attic, but it may be in storage, in the meantime I shot this one as a more realistic colour variant on Mercator Trading's table at some point.

Crescent Toys model of a covered wagon, usually seen with a pair of horses, there is provision for adding pairs to make a more realistic team. It's a wagon, which is covered; with a cover!

Errr . . . it's plastic, definitely plastic, polyethylene or my name's fuckwit, AND - get this . . . it fits-in well with 54mm / 1:32nd-scale figures and accessories. Ummm . . . it's . . . errr . . . it's got four wheels!

The wheels are different sizes, look, who'd'of thunked it? Different sized wheels, wow,  AND . . . the draw-bar pivots. Nice horses!

Something I can say a bit more about later!

Countdown to Halloween - 6 - Poundworld Plus's Scream Machine!

The week before last all the high-street retailers sort of ratcheted-up their offerings for Halloween (clearly a short season) and the rest of the Countdown posts will go through what I dredged-up over last week and the week before.

These were found in Poundworld Plus who now have a tenuous connection to Poundland (I can't remember what it is as I didn't take notes, but it involved take-over talks or something), there are also Poundworld's but in Poundworld Plus, some things cost more than a pound (another parallel with Poundland following the 99p Stores takeover!)

Scream Machine by Davies Products, there's little to scream-about and no mechanicals! As with the earlier set from Poundland; the skeletons went straight to recycling!

Basic semi-flat insects detailed on one side only; we have centipedes, spiders, flies and cockroaches in a cheap tinny polyethylene, the centipedes in oxide-red, the roaches in black the others in black or white.

The spider tool clearly has several cavities as they are different sizes and have slightly different leg poses; I kept about six and the rest will go to charity.

All the roaches have the full Greenbrier/DFSC consumer information panel we've seen printed on the header cards of US/Canadian stuff from Brian Berke, but incised into the mould-tool, so they (Greenbrier/DFSC) are somewhere in the mix here with Scream Machine and DP brand-marks and Davies Products a third/forth party importer.

We will be looking at similar insects for the rest of the countdown, but they all differ, and this is the Fly's comparison, it's hard to choose which is the original and which the clones, I suspect all three are copies of an older donor. Poundworld's has been re-cut with geometric panels, and Sainsbury's looks like it might be a copy of Asda's, but all three differ too much for pantographing, so will be from elsewhere and else-someone and there will be others!

A is for Ajax, Archer, Bergan, Beton . . . Not!

This pair was donated to the Blog by Brian Berke a while ago, he found them as old store stock ages ago, so many thanks to him.

Marked MADE IN HONG KONG down one leg, the horses are nicely finished but poor copies of the old Bergan Toys horse, although the riders are from Ajax poses, and a quick study of the horse - especially the mane - reveals it's a copy of the Ajax copy of the Bergan horse, specifically the Ajax 'Large Horse and Rider' range.

The un-carded bags don't have any staple holes or tape marks, being heat-sealed like old bread-bags! Therefore they probably [almost certainly] weren't mounted on a larger backing card either but rather; sold from a shop stock box, or transferred from a generic shipping carton to point-of-sale 'bin' type thing?

One of the bags wasn't sealed very well at all, and had opened itself with a little help from Royal Fail so the Indian can run free, his black Mustang carrying him majestically across the central plains his ancestors enjoyed; the cowboy will remain a prisoner where he will be unable to wave his 'legally-held' firearm about with quite the gay abandon he might otherwise claim a constitutional-right to so do!

Left over from a post a while ago (the shot was in another folder and I forgot it!), these are cheaper Hong Kong copies loosely based on European posts, the upper pair being found in a similar bag to Brian's two; it's a copy of the Britains Trojan horse with a swivel-waist Indian harking back to Crescent I think.

Below the 'mint' pair; are a few that appear vaguely related, from the right; a same size - as the Indian above - cowboy, again swivel-waist, but with heavier leg sculpts and factory paint. To his left are two smaller swivel-waist clones, following the pose, paint (and plastic colour in the case of the middle figure), these will be copies from a smaller firm of the larger figure, just to grab a slice of commercial-pie!

The middle guy being a direct clone, while the chap on the left only has paint on the upper half and seems to be an earlier version of the unpainted foot-figures we looked at here and which were carried in Baravelli sets Indiani e Cowboy - I noticed the other day that that's still 'Barabelli' to the PSTSM!

Countdown to Halloween - 7 - Miscellaneous Scorpion

Although - If you sat on one it couldn't be 'miscellaneous' in any sense of the word!

This PVC scorpion came-in in a mixed lot a few weeks ago, and although not necessarily a Halloween toy - per se - we will see later in the week that it belongs in the countdown.

The same charity shop gave up this old Hamlyn pocket handbook on insects, I have the tree volume and a few others, there's even one on uniforms I seem to recall, indeed I may have the insect one already but the library is in storage.

They are OK for their age but North American-centric with a few lines edited in by the British publishers to cover for Europe or the UK, which doesn't matter so much for the tree or cactus volumes, but is a bit of a hamstring-injury for someone relying on the book to ID UK insects!

Also, the artwork is a bit dated and simplistic, but; having made in sound awful, I would emphasise it's still a useful work, and with the Internet as a back-up, you can find the closest-match and then do a Google image-search for the others using the taxonomic info obtained and usually find 'yours' with little difficulty. Collin's 'Gem' and the old Observer's guide books make-up the triumvirate of small, useful, reference works.

Angle Shades Moth

It helped me ID this, a couple of days after I bought it! Found in the woodpile and saved from the axe; it was mentioned a few days later in the paper as an autumn visitor - pushed-up by the warm plume which preceded Hurricane Ophelia - to feed on ivy flowers.

We ought to have Halloween moths? A bag of killer, vampire Mothma's!

News, View Etc . . . Evil Empire Ephemera . . .

. . . again!

Well it's only about three weeks since the last post on the subject and we've already had a plethora of new ['news'] stories - mostly in the i - related to the struggling giant that is Lego!

Some of it has been more honest than most of the [subliminal] stuff i's carried this year, being more obvious promotional stuff for the Ninjago movie (critics are divided, but I think it's good-fun for kids), but they (i) have still managed to mention Lego on three other occasions in the last few weeks!

And even the tie-in seems to be more about selling the iweekend rather than the movie, given as how they put it up to 80p and the strong-willed stopped buying it, not even the chance of a free Lego key-ring got me to weaken - it's a rise too far!

Picture courtesy of Brian Burke - seen at a show 'State's-side'!

The other interesting aspect of the 'coverage' by the i-newspaper, has been the reporting of Merlin's quarterly figures - two separate stories the first talking-up the forecast; "...sales rise despite gloom...", the second concentrating on Pepper Pig licenses (after mentioning the Legolands!).

The Evening Standard redressed the balance with "Magic wearing off for Merlin as terror fears cause 20% plunge". The real news is - if you live in the 'States or Asia there may be a Pepper Pig Land coming soon, near you?

C is for Countdown to Halloween - 8 - Wilko's Pack of Bugs . . . seen before!

These were also (like yesterday's) bought a few weeks ago, and are a repacking of the slimy bugs we looked at a year or so ago, last time in The Works, but now with . . .

. . . added polyethylene ants! That's it, Wilko from Wilkinson's; another pound; more mag'gits and some ants!

Comparison shots with the previous lot from The Works, the new worms are a tad browner, and the maggots are a purer white, the unit-cost differential of extra ants is equalised by dropping a few pupae - six over the original ten + three ants!

Halloween - barely!

Scary - hardly!

Realistic - yes actually; the worms and maggots are!

Bargain - 11 critters for £1, yeah, I think so!

News, Views Etc . . . Shop Display

Just a quickie - SE Riordan's Halloween shop-display is worth a wider audience than the good burghers of the teeming metropolis of Fleet in Hampshire!

Big furry spiders, they were very effective, especially as the shop is in a set-back parade, and you come across them as you walk past a nearby advertising hording and get pushed toward the shop by a cut-in for buses and disabled parking!

C is for Countdown to Halloween - 9 - Poundland's Spine-chilling Decorations . . . not!

Arguably the best of these (there are eight more to come!), and the first I obtained, this set was from Poundland back at the start of the imported [within my lifetime], plastic-tat festival which will result in up to 40-million cheap, nasty costumes going to landfill, incineration (sorry . . . EFW . . . or RDF!) or recycling in eleven days time!

Shipped by ITP Imports, the bag contains various bits of ephemeral shite, all of it polymer but a mix of types; still, it was only a pound! The skeleton was so poor he went to recycling without a curtain-call!

The best bits? Finger-puppets of typical Halloween subjects; I think I've said before - because this was a US 'festival' for the longest time they've had loads of this stuff over the years and small figurals do appear on evilBay from time to time, a lot of them with some merit for collectors, but in the UK I haven't previously found much of this type of stuff, this year - as we shall see in the coming days - there has been a fair bit, but mostly insects and spiders, not witches and ghosts, I want more witches and ghosts!

They are in a softish PVC and with the orange proved a bit of a bugger to shoot, if you think these are bad images, you should see what I've chucked-out! Sometimes the mojo just breaks and you can't 'get it right'!

Far from being even remotely "spine-chilling", they look like they are dancing-together at a school-disco and yes, I know 'it's a bit of fun for the kids', but the hyperbole annoys me, they're not "extracted from the dead" and there's no "terror" involved, to misquote Monty Python, they're just slightly naughty toys!

There was also a larger spider in the same PVC as the 'finger bobs' and smaller spider rings in a tinny polyethylene which only fit very small fingers, but even then - not comfortably I suspect; so I cut the rings off two each of the two colours and chucked the rest straight in the recycling!

Interestingly; the novelty retailer Tiger carried small bags of the rings in the same colours (orange and black) but close inspection showed them to be slightly poorer copies and at £2 a bag (one colour per bag) common sense carried the day, rare for me I know, but I left them in situ, with just the mental note made! If I remember to get a shelfie, if I pass Tiger again, if it's before the 31st - I'll shoot them!

This was a semi-rigid PVC (or semi-soft ethylene, it's not clear!), and as rubber bats through the ages go; was a pretty poor example, but as far as Halloween poly-tat goes, an improvement on whatever/what little I've seen the last few years!

F is for Follow-up - Chinacars!

I managed to find vehicles from the big die-cast post in Rack Toy Month just gone three times in one day, all in Basingrad, but I forgot to shoot one, which was a five-pack of the commoner models . . .

. . . which were also in Tiger as single vehicles in simple boxes, with one of those silly fake 'skandie' titles; in this case Bil . . . or bil; the lower-case is everything - I'm not joking - some agency was probably paid £10-grand for that 'idea'!

They also have a simple one-colour finish, but all that simplicity of paint and packaging makes them more expensive at a quid, than some of the more decorated versions we looked at last time, most of which were either also a pound or only 99p!

While these less common vehicles (they were as common as the others about 10/15 years ago though and turn-up loose all the time), as StreetMachine are in Smyths superstores, there was a single-vehicle StreetMachine (imported by Kandytoys; I don't know the importer here) or two in the previous post.

P is for Pull-cords!

These (or at least the Humpty Dumpty type) were nearly added to the other esoteric stuff the other day, but I didn't have time, and I was lucky I just downloaded them and took them home; as the contributor (Brian Berke) sent some more a few days later; so they can have a post to themselves!

Is it a loo-chain or a light-switch cord? Is it Humpty Dumpty? These questions and others aren't going to be answered here, today! But they are fun, figural and one-dollar-forty-nine-cents each - Bargain! They look to be a poured polyurethane-resin?

A puppy, another Humpty Dumpty sculpt (with kippah or yarmulke), rabbits (or hares? Easter?), an elephant, a herd of moose and what looks to be a side of roast-chicken! They're all $1.49, it's a plethora of bargains.

I'm guessing they are designed to be held through the tire-hole; of course it will be a tyre-hole if it turns out you can get them this side of the pond, but I haven't seen them anywhere.

Closer to home and not for sale (because they are in use!) are these three, two vintage wooden acorns, one in boxwood - with rubber o-rings to stop it chipping the paintwork- and the other in stained pine with a rubber-band attached for the same job along with a ceramic cat I bought in a gift shop in the Channel Islands about ten years ago.