P is for Polythene Plastic Products

Another 'best of day' from Plastic Warrior's show in May, the chap had three or four of these but this one had a nice selection of figures. Some time ago I did a massive photo session which sits in Picasa in a folder called err...photosesh! It was all the European combat infantry (no German, US or desert figures) in the larger scales, all the Hong Kong carded small scale with a bit of Giant hived-off and all the mediaevals and crusaders.

But because I came to collecting large scale late, there tend to be some quite small samples of common figures/makes for some of the sets, so I'm always looking for ways to make a post or two out of them. Spotting this has allowed one of those posts to happen, and the pictures can now go off the laptop to moulder on the relevant dongles!

It's an odd set, 80% card and bag! but nice nonetheless...three foot figures and a mounted figure, some of the other sets the seller had had foot only, poor colour mix or tatty cards, so this was the better of the bunch. I suspect it was a seaside-booth seller for sand-castles?

The card has two slots in it which may be for a rubber-band to hold the figures up (no visible remains), or may be arrow-slits as part of some folding backdrop feature of the card/fort which is not obvious, although the door is also operable?

Note: "The Tudor Rose" and "Almost Indestructible"

The figures are copies of the Marx first type 54mm mediaevals, and are probably piracies rather than licensed, Tudor*Rose did do a lot of licensed mould/swapping along with their sort of sister company Kleeware (who they took over and would eventually merge with), but those deals were with their other relatives in the Islyn Thomas stable, not - as far as I know; Marx.

They are a well-copied set and here are a few more (bottom left), with various small samples of Marx originals from the 'photosesh' images.

I've labelled them pretty effectively, so I don't need to bore you too much with the minutiae, but note the Hong Kong figure is in a dense polypropylene, I don't think much of the paint in any of the images is factory original, but it might be (a hard plastic painted issue has some like the crusader type), and; a couple of Vikings have snuck into shot!

The four Marx first type (top right) have the deep illegible engineer-stamp style base-mark which is shared with the red plastic Indians (wild west type), which are - I think - Swansea production. The two silver ones and the blue chap (bottom left) may be Marx or Tudor*Rose but are unmarked, as are the HK one and the figures in the bagged set.