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.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

C is for Christmas Past

There are many thing's in Picasa (or on the dongles) that languish there because I've forgotten about them, or because I've forgotten exactly why I've photographed them, or that I haven't taken enough/suitable images to get a post out, or make a post work, there are even a few that have just lost their relevance...if I don't post these now - while I think about it - They will be joining the lost stuff in Blog limbo!

So, a round-up of the toys/toy related bits that came my way around the 25th, three months ago...

Presents from Mim were two cats for the Cabinet of Curious Things, including the Wade Whimsies kitten and a resin tabby, two antiqued metal examples of recent (but dated) technology, which I was expecting to have pencil sharpeners in, but they don't, so just 'trinkets' in the best traditions of the 'under a fiver' section of the museum gift-shop! Also destined for the cabinet.

And at the top; a set of Christmas decorations from Fiddes Payne, which - in heavy resin - are better used as cake decorations than tree ornaments and have already lost their gold thread loops!

Presents for myself; a dunny-bunny thing from a charity shop in Alton, there were two, but the other was hideous, this one was painless, if a little pink! having mentioned them on one of the pages I thought we'd better have one up here at some point, I don't know what series/make/type he his, but as a generic example of a Kubrick, he'll do!

I love Christmas for the buying of presents for the kids, and not having any myself, always look forward to spoiling those of my friends, in recent years blind-bag Lego and Mega Bloks have become a staple, and I always get an extra one...for me! Also shows how much bigger the Kubricks are. Finally an old Erzgebirge type tree decoration of a Santa-sleigh that came as a make-weight in a 5-for-a-pound charity shop bauble splurge in Basingrad.

This Giraprendi Madball water-squirter (called 'Fleabag') was found in the street after the Bin-lorry had done it's post festive-season round, making room for newer stuff no doubt, anyway, it made a bid for freedom and - for now - resides in the 'what the hell do I do with these' box!

From the same mentalities that produce designer toys and Kubricks, but aimed at kids, it really is a awful thing, without a redeeming feature (it's ability to wet someone?) and as a measure of human achievement would suggest we are entering either the end of days, or the period of decadence that - like Paris at the turn of the last Century, or Berlin in the 1930's - tends to presage a big war?

Saw this in...you guessed it...The Works for 99p, and had my mother wrap it for presentation on the day! Not much of use to toy soldier collectors, but plenty of nostalgia, two relevant entries and some useful company histories, particularly on Asian and 1980's electronic toy manufacturers.

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