D is for Dinorasers

I'm sure we've had that title before, but I can't be arsed to think up something else! Not exactly a Rack Toy Month perennial, yet something we have returned to often enough, and probably during some RTM's, but it happens I've found four new (or newish?) Dinosaur eraser sets recently, and these is they . . .

 

This was the missing Iwako set, which we did eventually look at I think, but I can't remember if it was shelfies, sealed, a show-shot or the full enchilada, so I grabbed this one when I saw it a while back now (garden centre I think, early May?), so I'd know I had one!

 

We've seen the Pterodactyl, and the other four biggies in close up for sure, but this set (and another multi-animal set) also has the two smaller, single-piece Velociraptors, and a pair of Archaeopteryx (Archaeopteryx'es?) for a nine-model count.

Then, at the end of May, I found these Kiwi dinosaur pencil rubbers, and again I can't now remember where, but it was probably another garden centre, but might have been Home Bargains, the TKMaxx full-price but cheapo' off-shoot? They are straight copies of Iwako (with the exception of the green cartoony smallie, who's also a single piece moulding), but more obvious piracies for not following the colours of Iwako as other clones do, but making for a more interesting heard, when added to the existing Iwako/Hawkins ones!

 

The other day I found these in . . . yeap, a garden centre, but this time I know where! It was the big Longacres  one up at Bagshot, and they are familiar sculpts in a new packaging, this time branded to Deluxbase.

 

And one new colour - the red Spinosaur! Although the two greens are quite different too. We saw the Range/i-doodle set a while ago, but for comparison, you can see it's basically the same assortment. 'Back to school' season, can be a good time to look for these things!

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Four is for More

Back to Queens, New York, for the last few posts of Brian's rack-toy shots, an eclectic lot, but more figures and animals;

 

 

Modern Transformers!

Bumble Bee, Optimus Prime and Barricade. 

Mario, his box seems - from the illustration

- to fold into an overcomplicated display stand?

I think we've seen these Goo Jit Zu super-deforms, from Moose, here, I've certainly seen them in B&M, but might not have shelfied them, a sort of soft foam stretchy, which is also a squidgee!

 

The classic 'suck your drink through your glasses' novelty!

 

Probably similar mechanism to the rockets we saw the other day?

Sealed unit, movement activated, LED's?

 

Bubble-guns!

 

These Power ranger knock-offs were everywhere, here, about ten years ago, but seem to have disappeared now, over here they tended to come with five mini-figures, in the same colours, which we have seen here, passim. There are colour variations over time/batches, and I think I'm right in saying some issues have a gold figure?

 

Pull back and go!

 

Horses

 

A duplicate horse, so while the contents are otherwise very different and the cards seem to be branded differently (well; Ucok for the horse set, the mixed-farm more generic), the source would appear to be the same. Glued vinyl, there's a lot of this larger animal stuff around at the moment, as well as wild animals and dinosaurs, genres which remain healthy for the pre-teens, and something which will need ID'ing one day; thanks to Brian we have the cards!

G is for Gygax Monsters - Part IV - Enzinger & Co., via Holly

So to a German (I think) rack toy which is otherwise all Holly Plastics, and a better look at some of the marking, which all comes from the same stable.

 

Original sales image, this was from an outfit called CardboxDE I think, I had bought quite a bit off them, over the previous year or two, but after the full Boris Brwreakshit deal of February 2020, they got very silly about postage and selling'shipping to the UK (as did some US sellers), cancelled an order for 40-odd quid, didn't reimburse me and tried (against eBay's rules) to get me to re-order on another platform, so they got my forty quid, I didn't get the stuff, and they've lost hundreds in repeat orders, and get slagged-off for being thieving shits (I've still got the emails), here! All a bit stupid, and that 40-odd quid means I get to use all their images!

 

 

A full scan of the card as I decided to de-bag the set for this series of posts. Some of the images are dated 2020, some 2021, so you can see how these posts build on Picasa and why there's over 900 in the long queue, yet sometimes I'm stuck to post something, the [admittedly mild] OCD that comes with Asperger's means I sometimes need things to be just right, or I'm waiting to take a specific shot, or something!

 

And it can sit there for years, a bit silly really, as I can happily post absolute shite, without conscience, on another occasion! The vagaries of the human mind!

The contents from both sides, the suspicion with this set is that the contents were constant, from bag-to-bag, and needing more of some sculpts than others (in the more random offerings), may be one reason for the variations in Holly's output, and markings, and the likelihood that subcontractors or duplicate lines were used for some jobs/contracts.

 

Certainly the seller's open set, closed set, and my set, all have identical contents, with the plastic colour as constant as the species count! Not that all the species, are all that clear!

 

 

Enzinger stamp and the HP of Holly Plastics both present on the card, I can't decipher the centre of the Enzinger stanp though. One assumes Enzinger were in the same vein as Woolbro or WHC, over here, having their moniker added to otherwise generic rack-toys, only in this case with the Holly logo also left on.

 

The common bird-footed Tyrannosaurus Chinasaur!

 

Six bog-standard, dense polyethylene, chinasuar sculpts, and among the commoner of Holly's output, with this set, four of them have the dinosaur's name stamped into them and nothing else (I'd previously only found one in a similar vein), the other two having a rough MADE IN HONG KONG similarly stamped, the chonky standee, and the duck-billed dino'.

 

To which are added two prehistoric mammals, neither of which has any mark at all! Both of which are the ones copied by Lik Be/LB, in the set we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/m-is-for-monster-fantasies.html

 

Which were tentatively identified at that time as a Macrauchenia (on the left here) and a Dinocerata-like animal, whose odd horn arangement may be due to undercuts/the difficulties of producing in plastic, especially in the late 1960-early 1970's? LB also copied some of the Gygax Monsters, and some non-'Gygax' monsters, which we will see in the next post of this series.

 

 

But the definitely 'Gygax' Bullette, is the final member of this nine-count set, and again unmarked, which is unusual for this beast, who is usually marked with a neat MADEIN  HONG KONG, as three separate stamps, sometimes lined-up, sometimes a bit wobbly, but here, not marked; again pointing to multiple tools or cavities, or something! He is, though, in the 'standard' Holly paint-job. More on the markings in the last two posts of the series!

S is for Shelfies - The Range

Shot these back in February, but like a lot of things, they got caught in the general malaise here at Small Scale World this year and languished, lost in Picasa! So, with a rather Easter flavour, here's what was trending in The Range, six months ago!

 

Paint your own Rocket, what's not to like - 

And the umpteenth cartoony-retro rocket this year!

 

I shot these out of a sort of nostalgic feeling, one of the first things I ever reviewed in PW was the encapsulated toys, imported, then, from the USA (circus, wild animals and dinosaurs), and facing stringent safety stuff, due not to the swallowing danger (the capsules melted in warm water . . . or throats), but because the foam would then expand and present a breathing difficulty, they are now around the place in several formats, with no hysteria! Although, these are larger and for print-stamp painting.

 

More paint-your-own!

 

Blobby infant toys, but might turn up in mixed lots in the future?

 

Again nostalgia bit and I bought these, reminding me of the old Pop-a-point pencils of my youth, I've since seen several other similar products, bears, pigs etc . . . as pencils, coloured crayons or felt-tip markers, so clearly another bandwagon trend this year.

 

I also bought these because while the main 'Iwako Eraser' fad, seems to have cooled off, pencil-rubbers remain a great favourite, and you do still get the odd set of Iwako clones or homage-copies, and with a section of them in the collection, it's worth adding to, occasionally, to keep a picture of the genre's trends. These are not direct takes on Iwako, and bent ears seem a defining feature of the set! Branded to i-Doodle, everything else was in-house for The Range or CDS Group.
 

R is for Rack Toy Round-Up - North America - Three is Supernumerary

More rack toy shelfies from Brian Berke, he found all these in Dollar Tree I think, and all figural, with 'Action', stretchy and 'Solid' types to suit most tastes!

 

Wall Walkers, unusual, in being solid, swivel-waist figures, with the sticky 'walking' compound attached as blobs to hands and feet, rather than the more usual form of an all-sticky figurine!

 

Although not a bendy, this guy looks like a perfect foil for the stretchy astronaut we saw a couple of months ago from Keycraft!

 

Generics? Their names all begin with 'M'!

 

Another of the Power Ranger's we saw the black one of, in a previous post from Brian.

 

Disney!

 

I'm not sure how this would work as a Yo-Yo, and I've tried to avoid PJ Masks and Paw Patrol here, but the longer they remain popular characters, the more likely they are to creep into the content from time to time! And I don't know anything about them - are they some male version of Power-Puff Girls?

 

This would find a place in the collection; appears to be a sculptural solid? There's a lot of adults buying toys these days, more for lifestyle signalling/decoration, than pure collecting, and this sort of thing is very much aimed at them, for a mantle or windowsill, or a display cabinet in the hall Monster High!

 

Three-inch, four-inch? Look out GI Joe's, Barbie is looking for a husband and she has expensive tastes!

 

Peppa . . . removed from Douyin (China) due to her association with 'gangster' subcultures and the creation of subversive memes!

 

Many thanks to Brian for all these, there's more to come, probably two more posts, so nicely inside Rack Toy Month, while I think the Gygax Monsters will slide into September!