#200 TFTP NEWS!

I like to publish from time to time entries with the news of the blog, new ideas, stats, and more, so here they come, all together.

First news is that we have now 200 entries and over 60.000 visits! The last 6-7 months the blog received over 5000 visitors/month and TFTP is still growing fast. I was amazed I made it to 100, now I am amazed I keep writing, and I always have a good time preparing each and every new entry... up to 200 entries now. I hope I can keep the pace of 11 entries per month for a long time.

Again, I’ll make a short review from my blog stats, as I did in my entry number 100.

Top Ten Articles:

Not many changes here since the last review, as predicted, Hero Quest entry reached number 1. The second (and last) new entry in the top ten is the article about Bunk Beds from the Action Force/G.I.Joe line, but only because somebody posted a link to it in a very popular forum, so I got like 500 clicks in 2 days. This entry should be out of the list by the next review. During a few days, the entry with the Ecto-1 deplaced 007's Aston Martin from place 10, but at this moment, James Bond is again in place 10.

Entries that could actually make in the top ten are by the next review are: #117 (Hasbro's WWF) and #141 (Repro boxes for Matchbox, Corgi, and so on)

Top Ten Countries per number of visitors:

No surprises here, the United Kingdom is slowly climbing to the second position, while all the others remain more or less the same. Only change: Russia substitutes Argentina.

Top Labels (most used):

I created this list at the right side of this window to help people recognise the entries with the most published articles. This are the list at this moment.

Histogram of label “year”: I tried to balance a little bit the articles, but toys from the late 80s and early 90s are still ahead. This won't be presumably changing...

I guess you have already noticed, that after each entry, now appear a few "recommendations" of similar entries. This great app is called "LinkWithIn" and can be downloaded for free here: www.linkwithin.com. It is easy to install, and is working great. Reduces a little the bound rate, increases the average time on site and "freshens" your old entries. I would recommend it to all of you that also own a blog. It is difficult to measure the real impact of that (and to say something like: "X percent more visits!"), but you will see much traffic coming each day from this application in blogger stats. Give it a try.

Another interesting point, is that I have been reading a bit about Google Adsense and was tempted to include it in my blog, does anyone have it? Are you receiving any money? I like my blog clean, as it is now, but, on the other hand, I would’t like to be missing good dollars for the contents I have uploaded. Many blog-gurus recommend to “monetize” blogs when they are over 5000 visits/month. I am investigating a way to include ads only for people coming from the searching machines (google, bing, yahoo…) but not for the people who come by regularly, which I consider is the fair way to do it. If somebody can give me a hint on this please comment below or send me a private email.

Thanks a lot for coming by, reading my blog and also for the comments and feedback! Much appreciated!

See you!

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As an annex to this entry, a list of articles that have been updated since the last TFTP entry. If you liked it when it was published, you might like to check what's new...

• #49 REAL GHOSBUSTERS – H2 GHOST,BUG EYE GHOST and BAD-TO-THE-BONE GHOST (1987) – Now with an comic image of these ghosts and some others.
• #52 MATCHBOX – CABLE TRUCK (Nr. 26), MERCEDES CONTAINER TRUCK (Nr. 42) and SAMBRON JACKLIFT (Nr. 48) (1981 and 1976) - Sambron Jacklift added to the review
• #56 MASTERSOF THE UNIVERSE – ZOAR & SCREEECH (Ref. 4014 and 4713) (1983) – Now including instruction sheets!
• #57 POLISTIL – FERRARI 312 T5, ALFA-ROMEO 179 and LOTUS 80 (Ref. numbers: 122, 121and 119) (1980) – Lotus 80 added
• #70 MATCHBOX – CAR TRANSPORTER K-10 (1976) – Now including catalogue image
• #81 GUISVAL – COLECCIÓN RÉPLICA I(1985) – Now including Matchbox catalogue images from the cars that “inspired” Guisval.
• #95 PIATNIK– BLUMEN QUARTETT & TIER QUARTETT (1955) – Added the “Tier Quartett” to the entry
• #117 HASBRO’S WWF – HULK HOGAN #1, ANDRÉ “THE GIANT”, “MACHO MAN” RANDY SAVAGE #1and ULTIMATE WARRIOR #1 (1990) – Now with a backcard catalogue!
• #149 NOREV MINI JET – CITROËN VISA, VOLKSWAGEN GOLF and RENAULT FUEGO (1982) – Added a new Renault Fuego model in yellow
• #168 TRANSFORMERS – MICROMASTERS SKYHOPPER (1989) - Added a catalogue image from Toys'R'Us Catalogue.

#133 TFTP’s 1st ANNIVERSARY!

This same day, one year ago, the first entry of this blog was published. I never thought I would come to publish 133 entries in this time, but I got it. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it, the increasing number of visitors, followers and friends are the reward to all those hours spent in writing and publishing the articles, and also taking the pictures for them. 

It is also very fulfilling to see how that what I have written is each time better positioned in Google, and receiving many visitors. Some of my articles have been referenced in other blogs, and I have achieved an important number of followers until now.

The most interesting thing is, in my opinion, that I have discovered what it is to be a blogger, and I have (virtually) met other bloggers that are also great people and very learned on toys, with which I can share opinions and knowledge. 

Thank you all for your support and comments!

#116 TFTP UPDATES!

The following articles have been updated with new pics in the last two months. If you liked them, you can visit them again!

#2 MERCURY - AGUSTA M.V. 350 cc. GRAN PREMIO 3 CILINDRI (around 1973)

#7 TRANSFORMERS - MICROMASTERS OVERLOAD (1989)

#8 MATCHBOX – MERCEDES BENZ ‘BINZ’ AMBULANCE (1967)

#13 SCALEXTRIC – PORSCHE 917 (Ref. C-46 or 4046) (1972)

#21 REAL GHOSTBUSTERS – FRIGHT FEATURES’ EGON SPENGLER and WINSTON ZEDDMORE (1988)

#28 MADELMAN 2050 – DARMAN, BRAN and KARSAN (1988)

#54 SIKU - LAMBORGHINI 400GT ESPADA and VW-PORSCHE 914-6 (Ref. V317 and V312) (1971 and 1970) - This entry had disappeared for some reason I don't know. Now it's available again, however the quality of the pictures are much worse, since I had to "recover" them from a word file.

#62 MICRO MACHINES – TRAVEL CITY PLAYSETS: BODY SHOP (1988) and CYCLE SHOP (1989)

#85 PAYVA - CLOCKWORK TANK (Around 1968)

#103 GUILOY – CHOPPER SPECIAL “WILD CAT” (Ref. 274) (1975)

#105 THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS – FEARSOME FLUSH and FULL SPEED AHEAD GHOST (1989)

#111 MATCHBOX vs. JOAL – TAYLOR JUMBO CRANE/ CANGURO (1961/ Around 1968)

The toys for trade section has also been updated with new things I'd like to get rid of.

#100 TFTP: 100 ENTRIES, 10.000 VIEWS and TOYS FOR TRADE

News regarding TFTP!

First is that the blog is going great, and receiving many visitors each day. We are already over 10.000 visitors from all over the world. We have improved the quality of the pictures, keeping most of the times it original size, so you can really zoom on them to see the details.

Something else, that you probably have noticed, is that I publish 11 articles each month. This was just a coincidence the first two months of the blog, but I then decided to keep it so, publishing an article each 3 days, plus one or two shorter ones (book, continuation of a previous one, or this one) randomly. This will remain this way, since I think it is a good average for a blog written by only one person. The last article of the first year is number 100 just by chance.

I bring a few stats that no one will care about, but maybe some of the most “loyal” readers.

First is a graph, showing how many articles have appeared so far in this blog sorted by year. The highest peaks are located in 1988, 1989 and 1970. This is so because I was born in 1981, and most toys I had were released around 1988. The peak in 1970 is just a chance. Figures tend to appear after 1975 and cars before 1980, but there are exceptions.

Another interesting graph is the “cloud” of labels in all articles published until today. Most recurrent labels are "U.S.A.", “figures”, “car” and "Spain". U.S.A. is the country of the most important toymakers, Spain appears because I'm writing about many toys I had in my youth and Figures and Cars are the most generic labels for my articles.

And probably the most interesting stats from any blog, the top 10 articles and the top 10 countries by number of visits.

Among the top articles, it is surprisingly high the article about Kidco’s Key Car Knight 2000. I didn’t expect it to be so popular, and even more surprising is the high rank of the Hero Quest article in just one month and a few days.

The top 10 countries by number of visitors list show no surprises: 1. United States; 2. Spain; 3. United Kingdom; 4. Germany; 5. France...

(All stats were registered on the 18th December 2011, )

And finally, I have started some kind of market to trade the toys I have doubled. It has been working for around one month now. Check it here: Toys for Trade.

I prefer to exchange toys, rather than sell them, although if you don’t have anything to exchange, but you're interested in something, you can always ask me if I would sell this or that. Contact email is on the right side of this window.

I tend to value those toys according to Ebay auctions: I search for finished auctions (or “Buy it now” listings) that have ended recently. I think this is the best indicator of the price that is being paid for a certain thing.

As you can probably deduct from this blog, I am interested in many vintage toy-lines. I have “want-lists”, but they are long and need a lot of space, if you have vintage toys you want to get rid of, I might be interested in them.

By the way... Happy 2012!

#22 1000 VIEWS!

This blog has already received over 1000 visits! Thanks to all who made this possible! I have already published nearly 20 toy reviews and this is (hopefully) just the start. Much more reviews are coming.

Stay tuned for what’s coming next!

By the way… articles #10 and #13 have been updated with new pictures.

#19 TFTP LOGOS!!!

I just created a few logos to mark my pictures. I'll use them from the next article on. These are the first three logos, in orange, purple and red. I pretend to apply them randomly at the pictures, or choosing the one that stands out better above the rest of the picture.

I'll probably make more in the future, all with the same style. Hope you like them.




Remember that all the pictures you see in this blog (with very few exceptions) are made by myself; and the toys I'm showing are toys that I actually own, so if you want to use my pics, please ask for permission first.