PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Meccano Tintin - 4x4

While I was looking around for more info and pictures on the Tintin nanoblocks sets I found that Meccano has a series of three sets that are based on vehicles from the recent Tintin movie. The jeep set has 270+ parts and costs about 50 bucks. I had some Meccano (Erector in some countries) when I was a kid but I never became a fan. There's just too many nuts and bolts to put together for me. I also feel that you can't quite create something that is elegant with Meccano. It looks patchwork and clunky with all the bolts sticking out of every surface. There's only a minimal amount of detail. Not something I can appreciate I guess. I do like the gas can.

McDonalds Ad from Netherlands comics again

 

I really enjoyed these McDonald's ads. Much more than the food. 

Toy Ads From Netherlands Comics

I think the only 'Win' going on here is me finding that ad for Super Dickmann's. I can only assume that they are little chocolate covered cakes. I wonder what name they would replace Super Dickmann's with here in the USA?  I always enjoy ads where the product is encouraging you to eat it. Perhaps I anthropomorphize my food too much but he seems like a traitor to his kind? I'm not a K'nex fan by any stretch of the imagination but some of these ads look interesting. I never felt that they gave me the kind of model building experience that I wanted so I gave them a miss. Same with building LEGO Technic. Just doesn't give me a model I appreciate, I use Technic parts with System brick and that's fine, but I wouldn't buy or build any of the sets that are out there.

Again, Super Dickmann's, pop 'em in your mouth.

 

   

MCDonalds Ads from Netherlands Comics circa 1985

   

  

Here's some McDonalds ads from Danish comics 1980's and 1990's. I thought some of them were kind of amusing.

Toy ads from Netherlands Comic books of the 1980's

  

I got a bunch of ads from the Danish Donald Duck comic series. They are from random issues in the 1980's. I was interesting because some were LEGO ads. These are all toy ads that I thought had odd art or goofy toys or were of some other interest to me. Odd art in the HeMan ad. Not a cartoon or toy that I was a fan of. I understand there are people who love these guys. Same for Construx, not a toy that I thought much about. Thought the space ad was marginally interesting. The Power Monsters have claws on their wheels. That's just goofy. I bet the kids liked it.

 

I don't remember the Playmobile space sets. I could have missed it or they were only out in Europe. I never bought any Playmobile but I've always liked their nice figures and colorful playsets. The train looks nice too.

Batteries Not Included

 

I was poking about the Internet Archive site in the Classic TV section and I found a few toy commercials. Burried in those few was this compilation called Batteries Not Included. It's 58 minutes of pretty entertaining commercials put together by Jon Behrens. As someone old enough to remember some of those toys, I thought it was a nice flash back to the past. I had some G I Joe's back in the day when they were huge 11 inch dolls. Dolls with flame throwers and hand grenades. We didn't swear so much back then but we liked our army men. Good for adventures. I did not have that Mattel Sonic Blaster but I knew a guy who did. I don't think he killed anyone with it. They took it off the market because it was loud and kids perforated their ear drums.

   
As a boy, I didn't have any Barbie dolls, not even to play hooker to the G I Joe's. Sad for those Joe's, huh? We didn't have any VD either, so I guess it's a trade off. What's really sad was the Stony Smith - Battling Soldier from Marx. He couldn't even take his uniform off. Molded right on. Shower with your boots on, that's some man's dream. It's a Sick Sad World! That reminds me. Daria - The Complete Series is due on dvd May 11. All five season's and both movies for 47 bucks on Amazon right now.

 
I did have a lot of Milton Bradley games. My mom usually gave my brother and I a game each Christmas. She started us on simple counting games and gradually we came to like the money driven games that were so popular in the 60's and 70's. At least they were popular in our house.

 
 

Monopoly is the one people usually played. We had that, and played it alot, as well as Dealer's Choice, Masterpiece, some I cannot remember the names of, and one of our favorites, Stock Ticker. Too bad I can't remember more of the titles.  Perhaps I'll stumble onto them one day while cruising about the internet. It could happen.

  
My old pal Mike actually had the Stock Ticker game. It was a game that needed a few players. Mike also had a Girder and Panel building set. Make modern looking office type buildings with girders and beams, then attach the decorated panels to finish the facade. That was back in the 60's.Read more about the building system on Wikipedia. Here's a few random pictures of early sets.

 
 
I don't know which set Mike had, neither of these boxes looks familiar. The facade panels in the picture on the right look more familiar than the panels in the picture on the left. Now a days I would think those are some poorly choosen colors for a building but as a kid I didn't feel that way. The panels on the left picture look better, more of a uniform theme to the color scheme. It might be fun to have one of these sets to build but if I got one it would go into storage after a quick looksee and I'd never get back to it. Sometimes a picture is better.

7595 Army Men On Patrol

 

I've picked up a couple of these guys since they came out. I'm not building an Army but I'm sure that many will. They were limiting them to 5 per person at the LEGO Imagination Center. I'm just adding a few good parts to my building stock. There are a lot of parts you don't normally find in green, like all the accessories and those guys heads. I like the minifigs bases too. Might be good for Micropolis landscaping.

New LEGO Harry Potter Sets

 
There's a bit of buzz about the new Harry Potter sets coming this fall. I'm probably more excited than some. Six new ones, beats the pants off the last release in 2007. Just the Castle set. Hard to find then and real expensive now. Most of the new sets are revisited previous sets. The Burrow is the only set that hasn't been done before. There's lots of newly revised figures and parts in these sets. The owls have changed quite a bit and Malfoy and Ron have new hair. They sure look nice, the owls that is, though they seem like they are even bigger than the previous owls. Three feet tall, eat whole rabbits. Here bunny, bunny!

    

Here's a list of sets and the figures in each one from Wikipedia.

Freeing Dobby 4736 - Harry Potter, Dobby, Lucius Malfoy. It's a different Malfoy, better hair. Always good to get another Dobby. Few bricks - nothing too special.

  

Quidditch Match 4737 - Harry Potter, Madam Hooch, Draco Malfoy, Oliver Wood, Marcus Flint. New characters in minifigs. That's good. Nice cup and those gold rings might come in handy. Average assortment of bricks and bits.

  

Hagrids Hut 4738 - Hagrid, Harry Potter, Ron Weasly, Hermione Granger, Aragog. I don't think that this is the best hut so far. Third out of three I think. New hair on Ron. That's a big spider. I hate spiders.

  

The Burrow 4840 - Arthur Weasly, Molly Weasly, Harry Potter, Ginny Weasly, Fenrir Greyback, Bellatrix Lestrange. More excited about the Molly and Arthur minifigs than the Bellatrix. I also like the Ginny figure. She looks rather grumpy. Her hair is cute. All their costumes are great.

    

The building looks pretty good. I like The Burrow even if it doesn't have the back of the building. It might not be tall enough, it's hard to get a fix on the building from the book, there just isn't much description. It probably should be 4 stories high or more based on the studies over at The Harry Potter Lexicon. There's always a bit of a scale problem with LEGO. Look at those wands! They're 4 feet tall if you peg a minifig at about 5 feet tall. There's a pig in the set, some nice med blue windows. There's some dark tan spikey bushes that look interesting. Another owl. I wonder if there's a ghoul in the attic.

  

Hogwarts Express 4841 - Harry Potter, Ron Weasly, Draco Malfoy, Ginny Weasly, Luna Lovegood. This is the fourth train set. One was motorized. This train is more like that train. It too had a coal car. The non-motorized trains where just locomotive and passenger car. This train also has a newly designed Ford Anglia. The previous car was from a set called Escape From Privet Drive. It's one of my favorite sets. That car is one of my few favorite LEGO cars. I have a slightly modified version sitting on my desk at work.

  

Nice to see a Luna figure and another Ginny. Those will be some hot figures. Hot price wise on BrickLink. Some of the women figures from the previous Happy Potter sets are going for crazy kinds of cash. Check out the gray owl on top of the car.  I think that shimmery cone of material might be an invisibility cloak. Just a guess.

   

Hogwarts Castle 4842 - Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Professor McGonagall, Argus Filch, Professor Flitwick, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape, Dementor(2), Knight, Lord Voldemort. Good bunch of minifigs, huh. This is the fourth version of the Castle. Lots of sand green bits here, as well as more tan.

  

 
Lots of neat stuff. There's a sorting hat in dark brown. Professor McGonagall's clothes come in dark green, as do Voldemorts. That should be popular. Some of the pictures came from a write up on Figures.com and some from FBTB's Flickr photostream. Check them out for more entertaining pictures.

LaQ Building System

 
At our last Friday Night Movie night Mike passed along a set of LaQ pieces to me. I'd never heard of them before. Mike had gotten it as a gift a few years ago and was passing it along for whatever reason. I often do the same. One can have too much stuff. I certainly know about that. The set has a 2005 date on it and the LaQ website still has it listed for 2300 yen. You get instructions to make the T-Rex above and a couple of other guys. There's a 5000 piece set that sells for 32,000 yen.

 

If you get the second Dino set you can combine them to make the large pterradon. There are only 7 types of pieces so you can see the obvious limitations that can come from a product like that. Still I thought they were interesting and will eventually fiddle about with them sometime. The first thing that popped into my head was using them to create textured backgrounds in some LEGO builds. The purists probably wouldn't like that but that's just too bad. You can see more products here. There's even an art festival with fan built models like that fish there. You can order them from this USA company.

King Kong

That's the old Aurora model on the left and a finished model from the new movie. I don't know when the Aurora kit is from, but I would guess the 1960's. That ape looks nearly retarded in the old model. There's something wrong with the new Kong too. That's life, huh. Here's a great Lego Kong.