[News] News of August

 Here are the News of August and the first days of September:

• The Lord of the Rings set from New Zealand finally has a new release date, which will be the 7th September. Like for last year's set there will be six stamps issued both as single stamps and in souvenir sheets. In the meantime the Portuguese set was issued according to plan on 2nd September. There are four stamps in it plus an additional souvenir sheet. 
• The Slovak Post revealed its stamp programme for 2023 and there are three stamps about childhood themes planned. As every other year there will be a stamp for the Bratislava Biennial of Illustrations. The other two stamps honour authoress Krista Bendová and cartoonist Viktor Kubal for their birth centenaries.
• The British Transformers set was revealed during a thematic fan event. It comprises of eight stamps plus a souvenir sheet with five Dinobots. By now they have already been issued. Surprisingly the set is not aimed at the toys or movies, but depicts comic characters. Most of them are unknown to me, but Optimus Prime, Megatron and Bumblebee are at least among them. Those three also got special fan sheets. 
• Images of the Chinese set about Black Cat Detective can now be found on the Internet. 
• Hungary once again issued on 2nd September a souvenir sheet about Hungarian children's characters. The theme of this year is Mazsola és Tádé, a puppet series running from 1969 to 1973.

The only new issue of August were the Buzz Lightyear stamps from the USA. That however is just the calm before the September storm.

To my own collection I added in August a Sleeping Beauty postmark from Germany, but by now I also already have the new German "Helden der Kindheit".