About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

B is for Bristol Bloody Missile Crew!

It's not often I get that excited about a figure or bunch of figure's rarity, all this stuff was mass produced, and even these do tent to turn-up from time to time, not just loose; but in unmade or part-made kits, so even they . . . aren't that rare, but still it's nice to find three together, which happen to be the 'missing three'!

I thought we looked at their officer - as an ersatz boat/landing-craft commander - way back at the start of the Blog (but can't find the post/image), these are the other three, issued with a large, box scale (approximately 60mm/1:30?) polystyrene model kit of the RAF's air[field]-defence Bristol (BAC) Bloodhound missile by Frog-Penguin (Triang-Lines subsidiary) and apparently manufactured for them by Poplar Playthings.

I don't know if there is any empirical evidence for the link, but PW have interviewed some of those concerned and they certainly have some of the same 'hallmarks', the flat, baseless feet being an obvious link with the Thomas/Poplar Spacemen, Cowboys & Indians and Romans, the large size and clumsily-casual, or laid-back posing being another link with the latter charioteers, although these guys are chunkier.

Described as being "Accurately detailed from official prints" - referring, presumably, to the missile - the crew figures actually look more like members of Dan Dare's space police than any RAF 'erks I've met.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bristol_Bloodhound_missile.jpg

I remember coming into RAF Wildenrath half a lifetime ago and seeing dozens of Bloodhounds out of the window in batteries of maybe 6, arranged all around the end of the runway and out through the fields to the tree-line, not white, or silver or any of the colour-schemes you see them wearing in both old books and modern museums, but matt green and black, like squat little Dalek combat-stations!

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