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/ 

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Kinder Figures

Shown on a Facebook group a while back, and time to get them up here and out of Picasa, many of these Kinder figures have been seen here before, in mixed lots, donations or as bit & pieces! But these are all complete, as far as I know, and blurb can be kept to a minimum! These are mostly from the mid-late 1980's or early-mid 1990's.

 

Diver on the left, mostly polystyrene, an RP-sourced archer on the right, in a polyethylene, but they are starting (like a lot of RP stuff) to get brittle now.

 

Three musketeers, also Res.

 

Fencers.

 

American egg-ballers!

 

Alien, also Res Plastics, also getting brittle now, you have to be very careful of the joins.

 

Small-scale astronauts, and their means of locomotion!

 

Panthers, that are pink!

 

Wellingtonian . . . Enemy dragoon, I think?

 

Charley's, one's Kinder (soldier), the other Hong Kong or Italian copy?

 

Speedy Gonzalez!

 

Ice skaters.

 

Different set from the above, same trope!

 

Caricatures.

 

Two from the 1970's on the left, a later caricature figure on the right.

Le is for Noel, Figurines, and Max - Lemax!

I've tried, I've really tried, to stay away from poured resin, Christmas Village stuff. A fruitless task, as various donators, have, as Loyal Readers will've noticed, over the years, given me several of the things, while others have snuck in from mixed evilBay or Charity shop lots, so I crumbled completely this year and bought two Lemax figurines . . . Then another one! In my defence, they were much cheaper than the others on the pegs, and were clearly dated as old stock.

 

It was the Bavarian barmaid with six foaming Steins that did it for me, and with an equally cheap snowman, it just sort of happened while I wasn't paying attention, and suddenly, they were mine! She's dated 2014, the snowman's date is a little odder, and a little older, at 1099! Clearly, snowmen were a Norman practice, brought to these shores by William and his wicked Barons!

 

I went back a couple of weeks later, and this Lemax 'Mrs. Miggins' and her mince-pies (I think we're actually looking at Mrs. Clause!) had appeared on the hook where the Dirndl girl had been, a while earlier, and also older stock (2019), I thought she had to join the existing pair! For those not familiar with these, if they still look expensive to you, the surrounding others were starting at £4.99 and £5.99!

L is for Leifur Eiríksson

Another instalment of Brian Berke's shots from Iceland (he had terrible flu, and I think we're lucky to have these shots), and we're looking at Leifur Eiríksson, known to us as Lief Erikson, or Lief the Lucky, son of Erik the Red and as a famous Viking explorer, who hailed from the shores of Iceland, and is accepted to have discovered North America (for Europeans, probably where modern Canada is), some centuries before the European genocides and colonisation!

 

Struck by the strange, angled, sub-base, and identical pose, I assumed they must be depicting a specific statute, and a bit of a search, left me fully gen'ed-up on the statue created by American artist Alexander Stirling Calder, in Reykjavík, in the 1930's!

 

Obviously, available in a gilded or plain-metal finish, and probably a base-metal or tin-alloy of some kind, and issued in two sizes, it's definitely the sort of thing you might pick up in a charity shop at some point?