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.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

D is for Dinosaurs - Modern

Most of these have been sitting in Picasa for a year, or two, or more! So they may not all still be available, however the article will give you an idea of the sort of stuff out there these days if you have a hankering to start collecting - mostly small - dinosaurs! Or to identify some if they come in with mixed lots of something else....as is often the case!

The fad for hiding things in plaster must be more than ten years old now and most toy or gift shops have something like this in them most of the time (we looked at Pirates a while ago). and while there is some sense in putting plastic 'fossils' or plastic 'skeletons' in plaster; a whole - glow-in-the-dark - dinosaur? Anyway, these Geoworld digging sets were 99p in The Works a while ago and I bought one for the hell of it. I haven't got it out as they are all illustrated on the box and he/she is easier to store still in the box with a pile of other boxed things!

Paperchase had these for a couple of quid a year or so ago, although I think they are still available. While being rather rounded-off for their primary design-use of pencil-erasers,they are never-the-less reasonable renditions and most dinosaur fleshing-out is conjecture anyway! Indeed, in recent years they've re-invented the way they believe a lot of them moved and stood upright so it's a very movable feast!

Signature Publishing's Dinomite is one of those ephemeral 'comics' that come and go with print runs of - sometimes - only a year or so, I don't even know if it's still going, but there are several 'dinosaur'-titled kids periodicals on the self at any given moment and they all buy-in mass-produced Chinese manufactured bits and bobs as cover premiums, as this had two I bought it.

The contents (from Co-Prom) are common 'toob' toys which have been around for a while now, but this stuff gets marketed in dozens of ways, and they are quite nice sculpts.

Back to The Works for more clearance! Nicely finished with a matt coat, these are let down by being a bit wobbly, they're made of one of these new slightly 'crumbly' hybrid plastics like some of the HäT stuff which seems to be PVC with a bit of styrene in it?

The rest of the Dinowaurs (geddit?!) bumpf from One2play, the inevitable 'collectors/trading' card and a set of rules for a sort of three-dimensional 'Trumps'. These were down to 49p, so I grabbed a handful over a week or two, while they were available!

All the above are small figures, a few inches long at most (the Paperchase are the biggest), but then collecting dinosaurs in true scale at 1:7something or even 54mm would require a warehouse as a living space...

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