H is for How They Come In - Week 18 - 1 Overview & Army Men

Hot on the heels of Peter's lot (looked-at a couple of days ago) came another parcel, from Chris Smith and it's a cracker, which should have been published yesterday (or weeks ago!) but I was struggling with the Internet, or certain parts of it, yesterday!

I could get on Faceplant with no trouble at all from start-up, Hotmail was intermittent, YouTube was slow but trying to get on mine or any other Blog was not happening, and even getting Google's page up took forever, once I was there I could get to Blogs through their URL, but even then images needed to be reloaded and the blue-circle never stopped? Hay-ho, it's working now (middle of the night by the time I get these loaded!), so, onwards and upwards!

I think I bought my assistant off with some cheesey-dreamies as it was a trouble-free opening and this is a shot of the initial 'excitement sorting', it's just awesome, as every time you remove something, especially the larger pieces, you find half-a-dozen other things underneath, rapidly running out of room, you have to bring some order to the chaos . . .

. . . which is what has happened in this shot; like the last big lot from Chris, I started with thematic piles by subject matter which are;

1.      Trees & plants

2.      Robot 'set'

3.      Weapons, scenics and equipment

4.      Wild West

5.      Sci-fi / Fantasy

6.      Ships & boats

7.      Aircraft

8.      Ceremonial and historical soldiers

9.      Farm & zoo

10.  Ancient & medieval

11.  Prehistoric Hominids

12.  Dinosaurs & Chinasaurs

13.  Flags!

14.  Cartoon / TV/Movie-related

15.  Money box/bank

16.  20th century soldiers / 'Army Men'

17.  Civilians

18.  'Halloween' / Horror

19.  Sports

20.  Vehicles

And we can then meander through some of the piles looking at highlights and with both the above photographs it's a case of 'what can you spot', but we'll be looking at lots of them in close-up, the second biggest was the 'Army Men' pile which as it was closest to me, got shot first!

Again, mid-sort shows piles of like-figures being sorted from the main pile, although unrelated figures may end up in the same pile, this is because when they get further sorted into the main collection similar figures are often together; I know I've mentioned in the past the quandary over whether to sort alphabetically by makers or thematically by subject, it's bit of a hybrid arrangement at the moment!

Final 'exploded view', the blue rifle should have been in pile '3', but fell out of whoever it had got caught-up in as I was sorting them! It looks like a Christmas Cracker (budget range) novelty 'charm'.

Highlights not covered below include the two Aurora kit-figure Russians in shop-window display paint (I think, top right), some Matchbox Mega-Rig and Battle-King figures (centre) and a Corgi pair, various Airfix clones including some more Russians, Toy Story Tim-Mee clones (middle left) and another of those Spetznaz types I got all confused with a while ago, I think this is the other size, but I'll dig them all out and compare before I get it wrong again!

The pale yellow ones (middle top) are a new form or version of Airfix US Para-clones, and as I've now ID'd the third set I did have, I'll do an update on that Airfix page soon . . . ish (I must stop making rash plans as promises!).

Chris has contributed greatly to the parachute toy sub-collection and this lot contained six, the two blow-moulds on the right being different versions of a new (to me) variant, the Tim-Mee copy is possibly a Toy Story thing, but a knock-off I suspect, not a licensed one - which we have seen here. Next to him is a less common version of the smaller ones, while the two Airfix clones weren't duplicates of any I have here, and there are quite a few, but with about eight variants and many colours, there's loads to find!

Colour variations and mould variations of figures we've probably seen before, except the painted chap, who will get a full collage on the Khaki Infantry page, when I do the next update, as he appears to be A) an earlier, unmarked, better-quality version of the 'Empire'-marked one we looked at a while ago (from Adrian Little) with the scalloped-out base and B) possibly British? It's a hard call, the plastic could be HK'ish, or even South American, but it could be British, it's bloody-interesting anyway!

The figure on the left (a non-exact Airfix US Marine clone) is marked Macau which makes it quite unusual, then two larger figures one an HK copy of a US (?) maker and the other 'Rambo' probably Arco, they made the smaller Rambo set (see tag list) with bases, and I think these larger baseless ones were them too - plastic is the same and poses are similar? Finally a really nice, dynamic pose of sniper, who pulls DNA from the Airfix British paratrooper sniper, but is by no means the same.

Not from Chris, but currently on sale under the probably phantom-brand of 'Black Temptation', these hark back to the previous Rambo figure (and the mentioned smaller set) in that one or two of the poses here are taken from there! You get 12, six green and six . . . primrose! There's a bit of Marx and a bit of Bundeswehr in there too!

Back to Chris's donation to the Blog, and saving the best to last; Chris got a nice 'score' of Tiny Trojans, among which was one which hadn't been painted on the base and another which has a pod-foot effect caused by a short-shot on the tool and he kindly sent both to the Blog.

The significance of the unpainted base is there as all my brown weapon and/or black helmeted ones have plain bases, while the pea-green helmeted ones always have painted bases, as did the rest of Chris's substantial find, so it's not that it's an interim or crossover 'version' but rather a mistake!

All superb stuff and I can't thank Chris enough for sending this lot to the Blog, except by sharing it with you, the loyal readers and next-up we'll have the ceremonial/historical types!