About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

I is for Insects Again!

So the multiplicity of sources for the same figures I mentioned in yesterday's monkey post, is highlighted again with today's post (most supplied by Brian Berke), which looks at insects again, had I known I'd be running Rack Toy Month I might have held over that first post, but it's all grist to the mill!

So these are the same insects as were (are being) issued over here by Unique, except in the 'States they are under the MTC branding. Although, tomorrow's post suggests that the Unique set should be findable in the New World too. A few days after the original post (couple of weeks ago), I found the same set of insects as glow-in-the-dark novelties, in the same net-bag as Unique, but branded to H.Grossman (HGL) - one of our oldest surviving importers (although recently sold; I seem to recall reporting here a while ago), which is two types of product from the one set of moulds in three formats from at least three brands on two continents!

These 'Souvenirs de Fiesta' (must put that in the foreign terms section!) from Amscan are larger and what I consider novelties rather than model animals (but then so were the The Works insects!), and it's nice to see that something (or a version of something...) which is 30, 40, 50 years old can still be bought by - mum's and dad's who enjoyed them then - for their kids to enjoy today.

I think it's 3x12 and the list looks like (from the top); dragon fly, bristle-tail, millipede, mantis, scorpion, ant, fly, earwig, grass-hopper, caterpillar, spider and cockroach?

These seem much cruder than the Unique/MTC beetles, more like the older Ackerman bugs we looked at the other day, same softer rubber in black, with basic paint-job in a contrasting colour. Don't show them to my mother, she'll be off up to Baker's hardware to by a packet of magnets and some glue . . .

. . . for her fridge door! Thanks to Brian for the pictures in the first three images.

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