Something is for Something Else!

I couldn't think of a title! I rather lost the rhythm this week, alcohol was involved (75th; had to happen!), and while I managed to get these shot on Tuesday, I didn't text-up until yesterday and tidied-up this morning! There won't be much more 'till Mon/Tue; there's a show this weekend, firewood to fetch Sunday (before they ban it!), but - for now - here's some mini-mals!

We looked at these right back at the start of the Blog, in a roundup of the various food premium animals, but a few more lots have come in and I needed to do comparisons with the Airfix sets, so I had a bit of a photo-sesh'; the Olá ice-cream premium animals;

The whole sample, unwashed was about eight 'colours' but it was clear that some were so dirty it was hard to tell what was what! Not a large sample, but they now fill one of the small-scale sample-bags (inset) which is not bad since they've grown quite slowly in three small lots and a few odds over forty-years!

After cleaning and it's five colours; with a paler-grey rhino' and two distinct whites, one semi-translucent (and greyish in daylight), one solid, neither clear from the other in this shot, or any of the others I took trying to show the difference!

I have no idea how many are in the whole set, but with several singles in the sample, it's a fair bet there are more to find, and, if I've managed twenty-one so far, there's probably at least 30 all-in? Note the pairs of some animals;

I can't claim any of this is scientific or anything, but I suspect the elephant on the left is trying to be Asian, and the one on the right is trying to be African; going mostly on the ears! Likewise the two reptiles would seem to be a deliberate attempt to cover two continents, but I've only gone on snout-length, and they could be the other way round?

The two big cats could equally be other things, the one on the left a Jaguar, the one on the right a cougar? The wildebeest and water-buffalo (previous shot - top left) are pretty obvious, but why two different hippo' sculpts? That is a mystery!

The real reason I dug them out - Airfix comparisons reveal - if nothing else - a lack of scale consistency in the Olá figurines; the lion is vast while the giraffes are tiny, and while not in the Airfix shots; the pelican is some prehistoric man-eater of a bird!

I won't post links to those pages as this image is good-enough for now, but they're on the Airfix Blog if you fancy a 'plastic smalls' diversion!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Hornby - Other Makers Products

Hornby (as Hornby Hobbies or Hornby Group) is now one of the big six players in the global toy business (Hasbro, Mattel, Lego, Tomy-Takara, Games Workshop), and as such it probably wasn't a surprise to find 'rival' products on their stand, obviously as distributors, also ensuring they get a percentage of the hobby market their own products don't cover!

Warlord, Bolt Action, Osprey Publishing and Esci-Italeri all here, as thick as thieves, in the worlds of both licensing, and proprietary or sealed-system war-games and rule-sets. It wasn't clear if the diorama was connected to some of the displayed products or just for display interest?

They are also handling Dr. Who, Master & Commander, Blood Red Skies and Judge Dredd stuff, now I clearly didn't spot the Judge Dredd 'thing' as I didn't photograph it properly/separately and don't know what it is, if it's a game with figures . . . .wantone!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Hornby - Centenary

As the title suggests Hornby are celebrating 100 years of the brand, in actuall fact the 'firm' really died at the merger of Tri-ang/Rovex and Hornby, but such details are irrelevant when it's all about branding and the brand was founded by Frank Hornby at Binns Road in Liverpool in 1920.

The deal is supposed to be to have ten special or limited-edition items available, one for each decade of the branding, and reflecting some of those older logos or brands, but the salesman explaining it to me couldn't rationalise the display with that 10-total!

He did realise that one of the Rocket's (yellow box) is from the standard range, but that still/then leaves either 11 or 9 other items/groups on display?

Anyway, they are from the top, an

• ·         [Meccano] 'The Hornby' electric train set
• ·         Hornby-Dublo 'Sir Nigel Gresley' train set
• ·         Hornby-Dublo locomotive - stripped box
• ·         Range of Dublo-Dinky 'OO' vehicles
• ·         Tri-ang 'Stevenson's Rocket' (red box)
• ·         Tri-ang Hornby locomotive 'Evening Star'
• ·         2x Hornby Railways locomotives (different price points)*
• ·         2x Hornby [Hobbies] locomotives (different price points)*
• ·         Rovex train set

*I think they are also representing four different 'standard' packaging changes?

This was nice but also possibly the most disappointing of the lot, as it's obviously meant to represents the old burn-your-house-down before a zeppelin gets to it, bare-wire carpet-railway early electrictrickery train sets of the inter-war period, and while on one level it does so very well, especially if it runs on vintage O-guage track (?), on another level; it's a horrid colour/finish.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of maroon locomotives and treasure my Duchess of Southerland despite the fact it hasn't run for over 30-years and may need a complete overhaul, but semi-matt, or eggshell or whatever they call it . . . really? It should have been shiny-gloss, with broad black & gold pinstripes round the tank-case, surely?

These, on the other hand, are both lovely and interesting. Lovely because they are 'true' OO or 1:76 or 23/25mm-compatable vehicles of use to model railway fans and war-gamers everywhere, yet interesting because they are NOT the original vehicles, or reproductions of them (there was a sports car and a tractor, but not these) . . . which, loyal readers, might suggest that if they/their sales are successful through 2020, it could make them the vanguards to a new range (half planned already?) in competition with Oxford Diecast? Only thinking out-loud!

Already two of the vans would make useful (if inaccurate) vehicles for French Resistance units!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Hornby - Harry Potter

After one got over the lack of catalogues on Hornby's stand this year, one's eyes were drawn to a larger diorama they had in one half of the stand, which had a little train going round-and-round!

They had to go with a rival's fort because they've never strayed far from the trackside (a few cows and a set of pylons maybe!), I don't recognise it offhand, with my Walther's' in front of me maybe, but they've mucked the walls about to fit it in the corner!

There was a flying car (Ford Anglia?) which gives a clue as to the theme! Probably also bought-in, possibly Oxford Die-cast? The train - obviously - is the Hogwarts Express, leaving from platform something-&-a-half (thirteen?), I've never read the books, never seen the filums and only heard the first section of the first book read by Steven Fry (which was very good, I was laughing out loud as the letters spilled from the chimney-breast) on Radio 4 years ago!

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops; everyone knows . . . Hogwarts academy of geeky weirdoes!

Hornby still have a lot of support for the franchise, but how long that will last is anyone's guess as I think it's fair to say the popularity of Harry Potter is on the wane, and while I understand it's kept alive with stage-plays, 'Extraordinary Beasts' and DVD boxed-sets, that will only carry it (the franchise) so far?

The Hornby Group's subsidiary brand of Corgi also have Harry Potter stuff, I don't know if it fits in with the OO-gauge compatibility of the Hornby sets, but assume it looks the part, although I'm guessing the gauge on the Corgi locomotive is 'carpet-gauge' not a scale 4 feet 1½-inches (13.17mm to 1 metre) or an actual 16.5mm between wheels? It certainly won't be powered.

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Amerang / Smart Fox

I really only shot these as the Toy Fair 2020 show came a couple of weeks after I'd Blogged the various construction systems on display at the local (Fleet not Woking!) library this Christmas just gone, and it was interesting to see more Meccano-likey! There was nothing else of note on Amerang's stand.

Dr. Who licensed stuff, no one had tied to build the Dalek, so it was a K9-unit and a TARDIS which were on display, it's a good way to get kids into construction engineering, and if the original Meccano had read the writing on the wall and got into Star Wars, after their army-set had come out, they might have had a very different trajectory to the one they subsequently did have?

I've already seen these in Waterstone's book shops (which are increasingly Waterstone's books, games & gifts shops!), and they represent (olong with the previous) the domination of licensing in the modern toy industry.

There are now trade-magazines and whole 'expo's or shows devoted to licensing rather that the toy makers or sellers, another good example is the Natural History Museum dinosaurs we saw from Toyway the other day, K&M's Wild Republic are also carrying NHM stuff, but different stuff from Toyway, the museum is now a brand, in its own right, with some desirability, and once you've approached them, got the licence and supplied their gift-shops, you're free to market them as widely as you like.

Here it's the Imperial War Museum being used to shift some pretty crude representations of the marques on the box, but, still better than late Meccano - in both meanings of a deliberately pun-line!

Did I say there was a Dalek in evidence? There was a Dalek in evidence!

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Phat Mojo

I Don't think I've encountered Phat Mojo before, and while I'm tempted to say I'd never heard of them; I think there is a folder on the dongles, so I've probably grabbed something from somewhere at some point? Anyway, they had a few figural items on display at Toy Fair 2020, so let's cover them quickly here!

I'm guessing (safely?) that this (Bandlands3) is some sort of PC-game related thing, and guessing (less safely) it's a kind of rival, or similar to Fortnight? By which I mean you can get that much from the artwork! Random selection of odd-ball characters carrying-out tasks with a bit of ultra-violence?

A blind-bag system with 'limited-edition' gold versions of the figurines huh? We haven't seen that before . . . too often! One's a sort of Wal-E or Number 5, the other is clearly channeling Lara Croft, and there's so much of this stuff out there I can't get too excited by any of it.

It's the modern 'Soma for the masses', the equivalent of Bread & Circus; keeps the people from questioning exactly why Donald Trump is surrendering US Global influence to Russia, you see!

Baldi? Something else in the popular-cultural sphere I need to research, or ignore! They're action figures so of little interest to me, but some of you may be well-chuffed by this stuff? Looks like some early-learning/schools-programming shite?

Funko-look-a-like mini-deforms for Harry Potter; more blind-bag, self-referential, incestuous, pop-eating-itself, escapist, fantasy, nonsense! Highly-collectable for the five minutes it takes for the next 'big-thing' or just the next 'thing' to come along.

Apparently the 'K-Blings' make your cables look distinctively-unique to you . . . and every other dimwit who bought the same set! I haven't been kind to them have I? Heay-ho! It's just more 'stuff', killing the planet.

T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - House of Marbles

Taking up some of the slack from the demise of Ackerman, House of Marbles had a few nice things on display this year, we've seen the eraser-troops already, but here's the rest of the stuff I though all or some of you might be very or vaguely interested in!

They seen to be carrying two colours of this chap whom we've previously seen carded under the Tobar tag in green, I took more shots and he/they'll soon be on the new parachutists page, so this will do for now, I like the tag line; Shoot up, chute down!

This is lovely (I mean it's the poorest grade of ex-HK shite you can find, but its 'throwback/retro' existence is lovely to someone like me!), I know I have these with various HK-era marks, and you may remember about seven or eight years ago I bought the Farm version in a department store (Debenhams in Newbury?) at Christmas, also in HoM branding - so it should be on the 'tag'.

The best thing is the Black Panther; the rest are pretty standard old, much sub-pirated sculpts, half Britains Herald (Tiger, baby Giraffe, Pelican etc.), some Timpo (Llama) some more generic with an old cake-decoration pine-tree and some zoo fencing which probably owe more to Blue Box than the Britains originals!

But - despite the age of the sculpts/tools - it's hours of fun for a youngster, and they've packed a lot into a tiny box.

These are a bit 'deform', but could pass for fat little baby-saurs! Key-ring novelty dinosaurs; there sem to be four sculpts, a stegosuarus, a carnivor/'Rex type a Proto- or Tri- ceratopsian and a dimetrodon who looks like a cross between a Spinosaur and a  Baryonyx!

Finally, I couldn't pass this by without snapping a picture; we loved this as kids and managed to play it for years without breaking any of the pieces. These retro games are being carried by various brands and both sides of the pond, so you may find them in different graphics?

They are weird animals; the tongue of a butterfly, the antenna of a slug, the head of an ant, the body of Thunderbirds 'Mole' and legs removed from a trio of can-can dancers while their eyes seem to have been removed from the back of a washing-machine! Timeless toys!

The rule in our house was . . . you can build multicoloured ones but the legs, eyes and antenna must match the same components' colour!

G is for Gurrt Guards' Gathering!

I was doing  a bit of sorting on Saturday, and I thought this would be a fun shot, all the larger novelty or touristy items of a guardsman-like persuasion! I think we've seen most of them before - separately?

From the left; A wooden Christmas tree decoration based on the nutcracker trope, a poured-resin chap '© G•G.' (Gisela Graham?) from Peter Evans and the Toyway guardsman from Chris Smith (who remembered they were Toyway after I'd posted him the other day, the RHA figure, also from Chris was another one).

Then another wooden one, this is a push-button/drop-down strung-toy, he's actually almost the shortest, but with a 30mm plinth would have looked silly towering over the first three had I placed him to the left!

The fabric Guard I found last November/December in TKMaxx (made in India), and finally a stacking toy which I suspect is quite modern, but which resembles one we had as kids. I occasionally see it on evilBay (the vintage one) and keep meaning to get one, it's a taller, thinner model, and the larger-number of segments are tapered, so have to be stacked in order.

That would have been it, but - of course - in the putting away of the one lot, I re-discovered the others! So, from the left; The twin-LED torch who plays some god-awful rendition of the National Anthem, or Rule Britannia . . . or the other one? He's on the blog somewhere with his full consumer details!

Then the flat, probably from a wooden fort set of the early-learning type (and looking more Wellingtonian next to the others), another tree decoration, based on nut-cracker tropes, then another push-button/drop-down strung-toy, both being about the same size as their counterparts in the first image, the wobbly one being tagged to Wilco and finally the Noki washing-up sponge seen before, but I think all this second batch have.

Airfix sax-player for scale, he's approximately 23mm.