Jill's (growing) Collection [update 4.30.24]

Thank you, guys!

George wrote:

Really nice, these smaller sizes can easily get obscured or cluttered when using normal bookcase or cabinet style shelving, cos whichever are behind will always be more difficult to see than the front row, so having these shallow close-to-the-wall shelves which fit figures just one row deep is perfect!

It is the ideal way to display these tiny guys, I think, but risers also help with deep shelves. We're building some new ones and I intended to get a few because the tiny tube figures are taking over my house.

SUSANNE wrote:

The USA yowies was something I did not see comming , and it irritates me green and yellow that shipping has become so expensive, and the Danish import customs have gone bananas  

Oh that's so frustrating!! Shipping is such a killer!!

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To me, scale means nothing at all !
I adore yowies, EIKOH, Toobs ( when the paintwork is ok ) and the hundreds of others like margrine-models  etc

Haha, I (obviously) agree. I like them all roughly the same size, in fact, from invertebrate to pachyderm.

Jill wrote:

....
I like them all roughly the same size, in fact, from invertebrate to pachyderm.

It's a rainy cold weekend for me, so a good time to procrastinate on projects I should be doing and post some April collection additions. :)

This month's main theme? CATS.  [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I finished my Funrise cat collection (the first series - there are some more out there) which took about a month from start to finish, ha! I got very lucky and found five of them still in package, and the rest appeared quickly, too. Sometimes it seems like when I first start looking for something, I will see multiple lots of them for a little while - and then not again for a long time. It's only that I am only just then NOTICING them, but it's become almost a superstition anyway. That when I FIRST decide to focus on something, there's a little window of time when I can rake in a good chunk of them.   (I wish this were actually true and I could focus on some rare models and manifest them, haha.)
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Also got lucky and got a good launch for the K&M cat set. I love these guys, especially the ragdoll and the scottish fold. Also appreciate that Russian blue that looks to be plotting.
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A whole slew of New Ray My Best Friend cats, including the American shorthair tabby I've always liked so much and the kind of hilariously grumpy looking Himalayan.
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And most of a Safari set of cats! Cat army grows!
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But there were of course dogs and horses, too. K&M Dogs came with the cats. The pug is my favorite, reminds me of my childhood friend Otis:
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And these fun little Play Visions knock offs. I love the chow chow mold, and so even those these are really poorly painted, I think they are neat. I might even try painting one of the chows someday . . .
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A few more little horses to help with some ever-incomplete sets, including another Kid Kore mystery horse:
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And there is some wildlife, too! Besides the Yowies, of course. This is the rest of the lot from Paige, including a Funrise ram to replace mine from childhood. It's interesting that my old ram had removable horns, and is of course missing them, and this guy has them attached. I don't know if they were sold in different sets or just at different times.
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Last but not least, the W.N. frogs that are slowly forming a colorful and poisonous army:
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I have fun enjoying your additions and seeing how you complete your sets. I am more about bats and frogs than cats and dogs but the way you collect turns them equally interesting.
Also, some misteries are quite stubborn, how is it possible that we are a good number of collectors researching and nobody can find the meaning of W.N.?

Roger is right : It is a lot of fun to see what you found

But unlike , the dogs and cats makes me smile and wish I could do like you and just wish for them and...POW !
It is the first time I see that K&M made such fantastic dogs and cats !!!

Great and interesting sets again,especially the dogs and cats.Some of your New Rays cats have different paintwork from mine and I also remember getting some of them in sets under Animal Planet.

Wow, amazing new additions, and really interesting to see the PV knock-offs, have never seen these before!
But I was most amazed by the K&M dogs, that set is so rare these days but you have made finding it look easy, I think that's almost the complete set! I seem to remember we need the Jack Russell and Chihuahua for TAW, the ones that both Paige and I haven't yet found! I love the goldie of course but the jack russell is very sweet, and I love the different shades of brown on the basset, it really is such a nice set!

Impressive cats army and frogs fatal beautifulness!

Thank you guys! I do love the domestics. Something about the fact that one basic shape can come in so many colors.

Roger wrote:

Also, some misteries are quite stubborn, how is it possible that we are a good number of collectors researching and nobody can find the meaning of W.N.?

it's quite amazing really that it's so obscure a company or manufacturer or whatever it is. Adds to the excitement - find the frogs AND the origin.

Taos wrote:

Great and interesting sets again,especially the dogs and cats.Some of your New Rays cats have different paintwork from mine and I also remember getting some of them in sets under Animal Planet.

There seems to be a lot of variety of them out there, some better painted them others. Was Animal Planet a totally separate thing from New Ray?

Bonnie wrote:

But I was most amazed by the K&M dogs, that set is so rare these days but you have made finding it look easy, I think that's almost the complete set!

Only easy because someone else did the hard work!    The cats and dogs were an ebay lot from Fallon.

Quote :

I seem to remember we need the Jack Russell and Chihuahua for TAW, the ones that both Paige and I haven't yet found! I love the goldie of course but the jack russell is very sweet, and I love the different shades of brown on the basset, it really is such a nice set!

The Jack Russel and Chihuahua have been added to TAW.   I agree, it's a great set, lots of interesting sculpts!

Superb new additions! The k&m dogs and cats most especially!

I remember getting the New Ray cats and also a rabbit set under Animal Planet in the now defunkt Toys R Us.

Jill wrote:

Thank you guys! I do love the domestics. Something about the fact that one basic shape can come in so many colors.

Roger wrote:

Also, some misteries are quite stubborn, how is it possible that we are a good number of collectors researching and nobody can find the meaning of W.N.?

it's quite amazing really that it's so obscure a company or manufacturer or whatever it is. Adds to the excitement - find the frogs AND the origin.

Taos wrote:

Great and interesting sets again,especially the dogs and cats.Some of your New Rays cats have different paintwork from mine and I also remember getting some of them in sets under Animal Planet.

There seems to be a lot of variety of them out there, some better painted them others. Was Animal Planet a totally separate thing from New Ray?

Animal Planet is a Channel TV, many toys, mainly in big stores like Toys'r'Us sold their sets. though, they do not manufacture what means their figures were manufactured by other companies. We have currently Mojö Fun but many other manufacturers provided figures for Animal Planet, namely New-Ray, a Hong Kong manufacturer and maybe the most famous were the Chap Mei sets branded as Animal Planet. Those Chap Mei sets were always slightly different and more simplified than the original Chap Mei but the Mojö Fun models are the exact same.
We have the figures marked S.h: (Shing Hing) which are also sold by the Discovery Kids Channel trademark. You are our collector of multibranded toys.

Roger wrote:

Animal Planet is a Channel TV, many toys, mainly in big stores like Toys'r'Us sold their sets. though, they do not manufacture what means their figures were manufactured by other companies. We have currently Mojö Fun but many other manufacturers provided figures for Animal Planet, namely New-Ray, a Hong Kong manufacturer and maybe the most famous were the Chap Mei sets branded as Animal Planet. Those Chap Mei sets were always slightly different and more simplified than the original Chap Mei but the Mojö Fun models are the exact same.
We have the figures marked S.h: (Shing Hing) which are also sold by the Discovery Kids Channel trademark. You are our collector of multibranded toys.

Oh okay, that makes sense. So even the cats sold as Animal Planet would still be New-Ray cats.

Jill wrote:

Roger wrote:

Animal Planet is a Channel TV, many toys, mainly in big stores like Toys'r'Us sold their sets. though, they do not manufacture what means their figures were manufactured by other companies. We have currently Mojö Fun but many other manufacturers provided figures for Animal Planet, namely New-Ray, a Hong Kong manufacturer and maybe the most famous were the Chap Mei sets branded as Animal Planet. Those Chap Mei sets were always slightly different and more simplified than the original Chap Mei but the Mojö Fun models are the exact same.
We have the figures marked S.h: (Shing Hing) which are also sold by the Discovery Kids Channel trademark. You are our collector of multibranded toys.

Oh okay, that makes sense. So even the cats sold as Animal Planet would still be New-Ray cats.

Yes, at least those My Best Friends by New-Ray USA apparently were sold as Animal Planet. That's the reason why they can be found in many colors.

Nice additions

My dad and I (mostly my dad!) built some new shelves! He is such a good sport, helping me build custom shaped shelving for my weird living space.

We just finished putting them up today, and I got the last of the figures up. These spaces previously had pictures hanging in them or old, smaller shelves. It was time for a change, since now I have a lot of little creatures I'd like to be able to see instead of just having them under the bed.

While I do have larger wildlife figures, they are mostly holdovers from childhood and not figures I am actively collecting (with a few exceptions - hopefully they will find some out-from-under-the-bed homes soon!). So these shelves are my Horse-Dog-Cat shelves. These are not all new additions, of course, just newly put on display.  

Funrise Horses (and Toy Major Funrise-look-alikes)
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And everyone else! Breyer, Play Visions, Funrise, Wild Republic, New-Ray, Kid Kore, Toy Major, Safari, AAA, and some Chinamals! This shelf actually hangs at the foot of my bed (which is set into a dormer of the roof), so I get to wake up looking at all these faces.
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Tiny cat army!!
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Gorgeous new shelves! So great to see it all. And I am very happy my fee offerings now have a place on a shelf.

I am so glad your beloved figures are not anymore under the bridge and that they found a place to live in the White House. It is a dramatic move. Don't forget to say Good Morning to all of them tomorrow.

Nice cats and dogs collection

Those new shelves look beautiful! And the second photo was just amazing, so many dogs to zoom in on, and all really interesting/ unusual models I don't see much!

Beautiful displays!!!!!!!

Thanks everyone! I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I don't know where to go from here, of course, since it filled up immediately, but at least for the moment almost everyone is here.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

And I am very happy my fee offerings now have a place on a shelf.

Very nice shelves, they look very neat and smart, and suit the scale well, often small models look a bit lost under too much overhead space, but this is ideal.
And there's nothing quite like that satisfying feeling of having made room for everything with a section of extra shelving or a new bookcase. I miss that feeling

George wrote:

Very nice shelves, they look very neat and smart, and suit the scale well, often small models look a bit lost under too much overhead space, but this is ideal.

The risers made all the difference for the tiny models, but it was also nice to be able to customize the shelf height for the large models (large in my collection, anyway, haha).

Quote :

And there's nothing quite like that satisfying feeling of having made room for everything with a section of extra shelving or a new bookcase. I miss that feeling

It was a lovely and very short lived feeling.

Going to split May into parts, because there are pretty many little parts! I was going to get less this month, but then . . . I didn't.  

Up first are the two Kid Kore dogs, the collie and the "standard" poodle. I was surprised how small the poodle turned out to be! I love them both, though, just as nice as the afghan - though the afghan remains my favorite.
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I accidentally discovered the hollowcast series of cats by New-Ray while looking up different New-Ray cats, and I fell in love with them. I like the dog set, too, and have been aware of that for some time but had no idea there were cats as well. They are definitely not very realistic, but there is something so charming about them. I was very lucky to find five different ones for sale at one time.
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These horses were a set I was casually keeping an eye out for after seeing them on the same old catalogue page as the mini cat and dog sets I was collecting, and I found all but one being sold as a lot.
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Very excited also to add to my gremlin cat collection, haha. These are especially horrific!
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A close up a few wall-eyed faces and little webbed feet.
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I think this one is my favorite.
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Fast forward then to the arrival of two boxes from Kelly! They came as I was rushing out the door for a weekend away from home, so I only got to finally go through it all today, and it was like Christmas. Here is just the beginning:

So many herps! Several of these also came from Rogério, who is helping me track down and sort out W.N. frogs. These are mostly unbranded with Safari, Jah-Ru, and of course W.N. featured as well. I think some of them may become custom projects, if I ever get to that point, because they are pretty good knock-offs of good sculpts.
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And a whole bunch of invertebrates as well! All unbranded. I don't have much of an invertebrates collection, and I can't identify what most of these are meant to be at a species level (at least the sculpts - the colors are not very helpful, haha), but I do think the mantids and the beetles and the insects with clear wings are neat!
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One of the main things I was getting from Kelly was Yowies, and plenty of them (plus the bald eagle, which somehow missed photo day)! I think my favorites of these are the fossa, glider, and tortoise, but as usual I like all of them quite a lot. And I guess that sloth is not a Bites figure after all, even though it looks so much like the koala?
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And a few little Good Luck Minis!    More to come from Kelly's and other's boxes! Just got to get everything sorted and photographed!
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