Tuesday 25 April 2017

Tiny Tuesday - Re-ment stuff


So, you know about my little Re-ment skeleton, but he's not the only piece of Re-ment that I got for my birthday. I also bought his house and a sword accessory set to go with him. (Actually I prefer the sword set as a standalone piece without the skeleton getting involved.) I also bought the complete Taisho Roman set from the Petite Sample series, partly because I suspected the furniture would work with the skeleton, partly because I wanted to check out the scale of the Re-ment pieces.
I've long admired Re-ment but never bought any in the past. It can be hard to get in my part of the world (I got my skeleton and his stuff from a Japanese seller on Ebay and the Taisho Roman set was ordered from this Hong-Kong based online store.) But also a lot of their stuff is food and for some reason although I love toy kitchens, I don't actually have much interest in toy food. But I've long been curious about the scale of their stuff. It's usually described as 1:6 scale but most of the pictures I've seen of it, it's posed with Sylvanian families toys which definitely are not 1:6 scale. I had come to the conclusion that the scale was not at all consistent and like a lot of toy lines, the furniture would be a far smaller scale than the accessories.

Anyway, I digress, because I'm going to start with the Pose Skeleton stuff I bought.
The room display that I got is Japanese in style, there's also a western room set available, and I think it cost me $17 including shipping. It has a sturdy plastic base, the flooring is textured to look like some kind of woven reed or grass mats with an empty square section in the middle.
An extra double-sided piece fits in the centre hole. One side up, it's an extension of the grass matting, the other way up, it's a little pit of sand with a place to have a fire.

It also comes with two cardboard backdrops. Both of these are double-sided, so you have a choice of four room scenes to display. These slot into grooves on the base, when I first got mine the grooves were extremely tight, making it difficult to get the backdrops in place, but with a little bit of play, they loosened right up.



One of my favourite things about these backdrops, is that where there are paintings on the walls that would normally contain human figures, the figures have been replaced by skeletons. I like the way this implies the Pose Skeletons actually inhabit a world peopled by skeletons, somehow in my mind, this makes them cuter and less creepy. But at the same time the skeletons in the art aren't immediately noticeable so wouldn't necessarily prevent you using this backdrop for non-skeleton figures.
Also included in this set are two hard plastic floor cushions to sit on, and a tiny metal kettle.
And of course everything is perfectly scaled to the skeletons.

The sword set is also scaled to the skeletons as it's also part of the Pose Skeleton range.
There is a "wooden" base with a decorated screen backing
A lantern and uchiko
A uchiko is a little silk bag on a stick, filled with powdered stone. It's tapped against the back of the sword so the powder settles over the sword, absorbing any oils, before the sword is wiped clean, polished and reoiled. . . well, not so much this one. This one's all plastic.

There are also two swords of different lengths, complete with sheaths, and a stand for them
The hilts of these swords have great painted details and I love that the sheaths are separate, the only slight disappointment is that the molded cords around the sheaths haven't been painted. The boys in my house tell me these are probably a katana (the larger one) and a wakizashi.
 All set up it looks like this
I don't have any pictures of the skeleton interacting with this set because I actually prefer it without him.

Now for the Taisho Roman set. I chose this set because I thought the furniture would work with the skeleton but I also liked it enough that I would still want it if it didn't. There are eight individual sets in this bigger set, unfortunately I was too excited to open this stuff, to wait until I'd photographed the packaging so I have no pictures of that. Actually I was so excited I (somewhat stupidly) opened the first box right in front of the Giant Baby who immediately seized this tea trolley, ran off with it and lost one of the tiny back wheels!
Anyway here are pictures of the sets. . .







All of the little details are amazing! The drinks are separate pieces that lift out of the cups. The fan in the first set can be removed from the fan holder. The cupboards of the side board open and close. The record in the last set can be removed from it's sleeve, placed on the record player and then the needle arm can actually be moved into place over the record!

 The only disappointing piece is the cake box in the fifth set, it's made of flimsy magazine like glossy paper and not folded anywhere near crisply enough. It looks messy.

As I predicted, the scale is all over the place! The armchair I would estimate to be roughly 1:18 scale. Here it is between a 1:12 scale dollhouse chair and a Shopkins Happy Places chair that I would describe as closer to 1:24 scale.
Yet the cup from set five looks completely different between it's dollhouse and Shopkins equivalents
 And if you tried to fill that cup with the kettle that came with the house set? It'd take a while
It looks nice with Frankie though so it would probably suit most dolls of similar sizes
What scale is used varies from item to item with no obvious reasoning but if you had a variety of dolls in different sizes you could probably find a use for everything. And each little box comes with a paper item as well - magazine pages, placemats and other things. I haven't cut any of these out yet but my favourite is this set of family photos.
And little Mordecai Skellington looks very happy with his new furniture

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