Small Scale World

C is for Cowboys (and Native Americans!)

2012-01-31T16:43:00.011Z

Well, I had a day to spare so I dug into the box I've been blogging the Giant Stuff from and had a half a sort-out of the Cowboys and Indians, at the same time because I needed the 40mm canoeist, I got the box of carded sets out of the loft and the result is a stultifyingly tedious look at the minutiae of Giant Wild West - if you are a casual visitor to this blog; or a decent overview of what is or isn't Giant to those who get so excited about this HK-production importer from New York.

These are the 6 Giant foot poses in the wild west range, apart from the canoeist (below) they are the only known poses used by Giant, all other foot figures (and there are many) were imported by other firms.

Even with these 12 there are question marks over when they are Giant (dealers premium - kerching!) and when they aren't (dealers description "Believed to be Giant"), more of that below, in the next part you'll find a explanation of the base marking changes with these guys, in the meantime, the simple rule is the better the quality the more likely they are Giant, however as with all rules there are exceptions.

The 6 mounted poses, there are as you can see three Cowboys and three Indians, in my articles for One Inch Warrior magazine I think I identified 40 or 50 mounted poses of hollow-horsed Cowboy or Indian, and only 6 are Giant. Again these poses are used by non-Giant brands and carriers, usually of a poorer quality.

In the Cowboy image, all three are on the horse I have christened 'Smoothie', in the Indian shot, the centre rider in on another Smoothie, while the archer to the right is on a 'Mexican Small' and the chap in the full war-bonnet (not necessarily a chief) is on a 'Mexican Large'. Along with the medieval charger these are the horses typically associated with Giant, but again there are exceptions, and again the other 20/30-odd hollow horses out there are not Giant...unless they are!!

From the left; Mexican large; Mexican Small and; Smoothie. Occasionally a smaller version of Smoothie appears in a Giant lot, usually towing wagons or artillery, he's called 'Pony'. The Smoothie seems to be based - loosely - on the Marx running horses, lacking the wave in the mane of the more common horse based on Crescent's running pose, but with the stirrups removed and a fatter tail, while the Mexicans seem to have something in common with both the Ajax 60mm horse and the Rel horse.

Colours of Giant horses are usually pretty reserved, being black, either a solid or slightly translucent white or many shades of brown, however as we saw the other day, there are exceptions and sometimes wild colours appear like red, green, pink, mauve, purple...in fact; any colour the figures come in.

Ideal would later carry a larger version of hollow Mexican it their Fort Cheyenne play-set.

The only other figure I've linked to Giant is this copy of the Thomas (US)/Tudor*Rose (UK) 'boy' paddling a canoe. It's hard to give him a scale as the original series was all scales for making box-dioramas from cereal packets, so in the bag with the others he looks like a boy, on his own in a carded canoe set (see 2nd post below) he is a 40mm adult.

It's not a terribly clear picture but it's the best I could do and I took dozens of shots with and without flash or natural-light and at all angles, but the plastic blister is old and tatty and very scratched so this is it. Also; of the four figures in the set he's the only one not damaged, it's rare for this HK stuff to get brittle, but it does happen!

An idea of the colours you'll find these figures in, it might look as if you can find them in any old colour under the sun, but when you look at a sample of Giant against another brand or unbranded set there are differences.

Typically Giant are matt rather than gloss, have a pastel hint/tint to them and are 'solid' colour - it's hard to explain but it's there! Indeed one way to tell late/post-Giant issues of these figures (as opposed to all the others) is that they get shinier the later they are dated - not because they're cleaner, but because the plastic is different

Top left shows the 'spruelette' as it leaves the machine, they survive like this as they were issued in a non-Giant branded Canoe set, with the long connecting pieces between the first and last pairs of figures wedged into slots on spigots in the base of the canoe. I should have stripped the home-paint from this one but I have others and was hoping to use them...but they are in the missing 'proper' boxes!

Below that is an interesting sample of Type II figures (see post below) is a limited colour range that all came together. To the right are a hot-pin conversion above and a sharp-knife conversion below.

I is for Indians (or Native Americans!)

2012-01-31T16:30:00.007Z

Carrying on from the post above I want to look at the markings of the cowboys and Indians in greater detail, as to the Giant purists this is everything; if it's marked Giant it must be Giant'. There are three distinct phases of marking on the foot figures bases, while there are dozens of horse types and the different horses have different marks while the riders have no mark at all, so we'll concentrate on the foot figures.

These are the least common, and best detail so by default - the oldest! It is a rule of thumb that the newer the toy soldier the poorer the quality, you only have to look at the Britains Detail Americans and how they slid to see that particular 'rule' in action! Likewise the harder something - originally mass-produced - is to find, the further back in time it was issued. Not hard-and-fast but a useful starting point in these things. A larger GIANT above a smaller HONG KONG, I call these; Type I.

We then arrive at the problematical one, a smaller GIANT on all the Indians and the odd Cowboy with the same HONG KONG, but with most of the Cowboys just having a HONGKONG with no space between the 'Hong' and the 'Kong' [and bloody difficult to capture on film!].

The reason these are problematical is that they are not that common so the above rules suggest this is a 'Type II', but the quality is poorer than the ones we will look at next? Yet for reasons we will come to the others pretty well have to be Type III, also these are sometimes mixed with the next type, but only occasionally. It is my view that these were a poor mould, hence the need for a third, and were phased out a bit sharpish?

These are the most common, sometimes with the colouring of typical Giant I tried to describe in the above post, sometimes shiny and 'new, sometimes in Giant sets sometimes not, sometimes not even with Giant horsed mounted figures, and they seem to have overlapped the Type II's, and gone on for a long time (a bit like the last version Knights - but that's for another day!).

The most important thing about the Type III is; No GIANT anywhere. Just a neat blocked MADE IN HONG KONG, this gets a little fuzzy on very late non-Giant product.

When I say quality is good or bad with these figures, I'm really talking about the level of detail in the tooling, the rifle of the yellow figure above shows that otherwise they suffer from all the usual problems of HK production - a lack of care in the finished article! One of the problematical things about the Type II is that the actual detail is poorer than I's or III's?

Direct comparison of the Type I/II 'GIANT' size differential, the bases are also different in outline and as I've said the figures are overall poorer with the Type II, almost as if they are copies of the I's while the Type III is a new or re-engraved mould?

Western wagons, the upper one is likely to be the later one with it's (P) conceit, while the lower one was typical for earlier sets. Note also that the early ones have no seat/footstep and are - apart from the marking - identical to many other non-Giant HK wagons.

B is for But is it Giant?

2012-01-31T16:21:00.009Z

So, are they Giant or aren't they? We'll look at all those Wild West sets in my collection with some element of Giant in them and try to make head-or-tail of them...

The upper set has properly marked Type II figures (you can see straight away the poor quality of them) and reasonably good Smoothies with a Giant-marked wagon, yet is clearly not Giant, nothing about Giant on the packaging (bought in the UK - along way from New York), not typical Giant packaging or layout, this is 19660's salesman's sample-case sell-through and nothing more.

Below we have a similar pack without foot figures but including Giant quality Mexican Smalls (post-Giant versions of this horse can get very poor indeed, these are good though), but again NOT Giant in my opinion, not least because one has been overprinted with W.H. Cornelius's (WHC) 'Success' label! [They were still taking a stand at the January-dated British Toy Show about 6 years ago, so should still be around somewhere, still shipping-in HK rack toys 48 years after they took delivery of the pictured card.]

These are all Giant-marked horses, with Giant type riders and the set to the top left has Type III foot figures,all in typical Giant colours, I would say they are contemporary with Giant, but again not Giant product, just production from the same plant/s supplying Giant Toy Corp Co Inc Ltd of New York, New York NY, NY! But it's just not the same thing...

Note the set bottom-left; yellow Indians on black Smoothies, green Cowboys on brown Mexicans (both large and small).

Here we have Giant product in Giant style packaging with Giant style graphics, but no Giant logo. I believe these are Giant, shipped over to Europe by Giant either from NY, or by pre-arrangement with the HK suppliers - direct from the colony? These are probably worth a premium to a dealer, but not the silly money people were giving for Viking sets a few years ago!

On the left we have a genuine Giant set with the logo and address and the whole nine-yards, but instead of the oh-so-collectable little 'one inch warriors' we have a poxy piracy of a Thomas/Tudor*Rose paddler! Notable for the brittle state of the figures - boats are OK but the figures are shot.

Which brings us to the last one, more brittleness, more Giant in a non-Giant set. It doesn't ever get more Hong Kong than this, two Cowboys and and an Indian on Giant Smoothies supported by a Giant wagon fighting six Giant-marked mediaevals who are - apparently - Crusaders!

Points to note with this mish-mash of a set; the card was never used, the chads for the towing horses are still in place as are all the other cut-outs; the entire contents of the bag were in a heap at the bottom with the shrivelled and crumbled remains of a couple of elastic bands, but nothing had been placed.A Friday afternoon job if ever I recognised one!

Secondly is the brittle wagon; the Coyboys's horse - same colour - is also brittle, while the wheels (different shade of brown) are fine (as is everything else in the set) and can still be bent double, which backs-up my theory re. batches and production problems with over/under or re-cooking leading to the flaws that heat, damp or - mostly - ultra violet then exploit to release the free-radicals that lead to the polymer breaking-down.

B is for Beton or the Bergan Toy Company

2012-01-30T19:52:00.005Z

These are late and common soft ethylene examples of a line of toys going way back, much better described on Ponylope (link to right) or in O'Brien's books than I could here. I like them because they ooze 'toy' charm.

They have had the original WWI 'Brodie' copy of the British 'piss-pot' - with which the early phenolic or cellulose figures were equipped - replaced with something resembling...?...err a piss-pot! Except the paratrooper who was a late addition to the set, he actually has a reasonable rendition of the M1 helmet. Also of note is that these late figures often release a coloured waxy deposit as the lower-right hand standing firer has, the other range with a tendency to do so is Matchbox!

That's it; small sample in poor condition but they are up here, tagged and ticked-off! Enjoy.

B is for Bowl...But is it art?

2012-01-30T15:51:00.003Z

For only three or four hundred dollars you too can be the proud owner of a bowl full of holes...

'Mosleymeetswilcox' War Bowl...$399.00 and more some more I think this is theirs too and still more here

or you can go with the budget alternative;

'Raw Design'...Less than $35.00!

or...you could get a wok, turn the oven up and...

Hey! Woah-there!...I will not be held responsible for any damage done to your better-halve's utensils, you're all grown-ups, I'm just planting the seed!

D is for Delhi Durbar

2012-01-30T14:31:00.007Z

A lot of Hollow-cast and 'New Metal' collectors have a bit of a thing for the Durbars that were held in India in 1877, 1903 and 1911, and one of the new metal producers has a whole range dedicated to those spectacles, that were such a display of Imperial power and prestige. If you are active on the Treefrog forum, you might like to bring this to the attention of those aficionado's...

This is the layout map of the various camps and compounds of the visitors and units involved in the Coronation Durbar of 1911, the last as it happens, the abdication putting off the next and WWII/Independence putting paid to what would - almost certainly (with hindsight) - have been the last if it had gone ahead.

In order to make it readable I've photographed each of the three folds separately and stitched them back together as a Picasa collage, and clicking on the image and clicking again should get the image about 6 screens big! As the book is 30 years out of copyright I can hardly claim copyright for the image either, so I suggest anyone wanting a decent printout;

Right click "Save Image to..." - Desktop, then cut or copy to disc or data-stick and take it to a reputable high-street print shop and get a high resolution print on an A3 or A2 sheet and trim the margins.

Elephants next.

[Well - it only enlarges to twice screen size, so may print A4 only anyway...if there is a demand for a larger image perhaps someone with better knowledge of imaging on PC's/for the Internet can suggest a way of improving the presented article!]

M is for Minimodels

2012-01-30T12:19:00.005Z

The Havant (Portsmouth suburb) factory of Minimodels was part of the Lines Group/Triang Empire, which means that at some point it probably supplied figures to any, all or none (?!) of the following; Almark, Capri, Corgi, Berwick, Frog, Pedigree, Penguin, Playcraft, Mettoy, Minic, Subbuteo, Triang, Waddington's and Wickets, with latterly; likely connections to Hornby and the Dunby-Combex-Marx group.

It seems to have been set-up in a new-build unit (I delivered too once! But sadly after it had ceased to be a toy factory...boo!) to consolidate the work being undertaken by several other factories in Tunbridge Wells, East Grinsted and (probably) the closed Merton works in London - but that is guesswork/assumption on my part based on previous sources of figures (and other product) to some of the above listed clients/members of the group.

These 54mm hard styrene polymer figures were first sold like this - factory painted - as 'Minimodels', before being supplied to Almark as unpainted kits, however the larger items don't seem to have been issued by Almark.

The Mortar is a clear attempt to compete with the - then con-current - Britains Swoppet British mortar team, and the bombs are almost identical (too long and thin for 81 mil/3 inch mortar rounds) to the Britains one. The sculpting style of Charles Stadden is self-evident in the figures, he seems to have done a lot of figural work for the Havant facility including one generation of Subbuteo figure for Waddington's.

The pack mule places this set firmly in the Pacific/Burma campaign or New Guinea, however they did use pack animals in the Italian mountains as well.

This is an exquisite model, very well executed and as good as anything Britains were doing at the time, the poor reception to these figures (and their relative scarcity today) must have been a portent to the changing tastes that would bring all these companies down as the seventies ground slowly and full of toy manufacturing bankruptcies into the eighties.

W is for Wellingtonians

2012-01-30T01:52:00.006Z

I may be neglecting the Airfix purists at the moment but I'm giving the Giant chattering-class a handful of Katzini's this week instead! As this is a non-box that should be split between the other two - missing - boxes, I have no mounted figures in this sample (they're as bad as the ACW ones - believe me!) and as their artillery is identical to the Civil War stuff we looked at the other day (C is for Copies) it's just a look at the foot figures...

..where we find the blue-force commander wishing - as the rounds wizz ever nearer - that he hadn't let his Godmother choose his new uniform the last time she went shopping in Paris.

They are really quite good for Hong Kong production, copied from the SAE figures of Holgar Eriksson, and with the detail so well preserved they may have used 54mm figures (or technically; 55mm if Comet/Authenticast's were used?) as donor models.

With regards to the officers - I'm not too sure how effective a light-sabre duel will prove to be once they are 20 paces away from each other?

A close-up of the kneeling firer, there's nothing in it between this figure and the various new production sets around at the moment from HaT or Strellets*R, indeed this chap is a darn sight better sculpted, proportioned and even detailed than some recent sets I could mention!!

U is for Unidentified Infantry

2012-01-30T01:10:00.009Z

It's been a year or two since I did a post of all unknowns so thought is was about time for another batch, especially as I seem to have proportionately more unknowns in the fledgling large-scale collection than I do in the small-scale stuff.

I think these are of French manufacture, and the paint is probably 'home-paint' to be removed - once that suspicion has been confirmed. I also wonder if they may have been either premiums or Sobre/Lucky-bag type product as metallics are unusual for everyday toy soldiers?

They are not that rare and I should know who they are by, I further think they are 1970's soft plastic (they are soft plastic!) copies of earlier 1950's hard plastic figures, possibly from two sources, the larger running and firing poses seem familiar (and are larger), from a book possibly? Can anyone help?

[I Should have mentioned that some of the smaller ones are similar to Tim Mee poses, Paul Morehead (PW's 'Ed.') thinks the larger ones might have originally been Clairet hard plastic poses, I wondered JIM?]

This guy is about 70mm or he would be if he stood up, maybe 80mm even, he's made of a dense Polypropylene or Nylon type polymer. The lower picture shows him next to a Deluxe Reading figure for a comparison of the base marks. The materials are different and the base marks aren't close but DR were quite a large 'general' toy company in the 1960/70's over in the states, and they would have been sourcing/buying-in from all over, so it's a possibility? Can a US reader help here or am I wide of the mark?!

[It's Remco, probably Star Trek, and thanks to err...me! For finding that one...looking for Tim Mee on Wikipedia!...Link]

My preferred suspicion for these two 54mm figures is Italian production; cheap bagged rack/dollar-tree toys? The bases would go on to be much pirated by Hong Kong usually with PVC copies of Britians or Timpo Wild West figures. But the figures themselves are similar to the Texas Cowboys & Indians also from Italy but they have deeper bases...can a European reader help us with these?

[Paul also thinks probably Texas, but not happy with the bases - unlikely to be original. They are like HK copies of the Lone*Star swoppets, but unmarked and of better quality? Should add they have only one foot-spigot/locating stud each.]

GI is for General or Government - Issue or Infantryman

2012-01-29T18:59:00.006Z

The American GI, turned up just in time to save us from a German breakthrough in WWI, turned-up a bit late (it has to be said, thanks Orson, no thanks Hirst) in WWII, became the villain of the piece in Vietnam for no really good reason and is now along with most of his Allies running around in the sandpits trying to get his head round whatever rules of engagement apply from whichever Blue, Red, Green, Buff or bloody Rainbow-coloured card he is supposed to be consulting on any given day prior to opening fire, so that if he has killed one of the people trying to kill him, it is at least Lawful to the folks back home with a big liberal chip on their shoulders!

I have already got 27 fast-food tubs in the large scale 'US Infantry and Marines' box, which covers all the WWII through to the 1970's figures, and while I'm going to blog some of them, an awful lot of the tubs are filled with Airfix/Marx/MPC or their many many copies, and they are a bit boring really, all green and common and stuff! So we'll be looking at the less usual ones...

When covering Americans; it's always a good idea to start with some Spanish Troops!! These are Montaplex 54mm copies of the old Reamsa figures (at least I think they are Reamsa poses!), and came in a little Sobre envelope they were fighting to get out of before they left the shop! While they are meant to represent the Spanish Army of the 1970's, they still look American enough to fit in here.

Atlantic's large scale were the same as the 1:72 (described by the maker as HO) scale figures, with various greens for the Americans, a fetching blue for when they needed to pretend to be French for a while or the 'had a run-in with a chocolate factory' set (crawling - front).

The flag-raising vignette is nice but easier to get together in the small scale, this one has a very heavy flag that kept slipping out of the men's hands before I got a decent photograph!

Modern production by BMC, these are a cut-above; very superior sculpting, casting and accuracy of detail have these up there with the best in white-metal connoisseur castings for the serious 'figure painter' types! The B.A.R. is particularly good and the animation is well done - I like these; can you tell?

News Views Etc...Bits and Bobs

2012-01-29T13:13:00.006Z

His Majesty's Imperial Cadet Corps
Mustering sometime in 1911 in the run-up to the Delhi Coronation Durbar

First I'd like to thank all the new followers to this blog, all traffic greatly appreciated and my hits have doubled since October, indeed my stat's make interesting reading and I may do a blog on them soon.

Some of you may have noticed I've added a lot of new links in the last few days and there are more to come, basically I've lost so many useful bookmarks in the various crashes on the old laptop, that I felt it was easier to get all the bookmarks I still have on it, this new one and the PC placed here where A) everyone can use them and B) I can't lose them (or can rant like crazy if Blogger loses them!).

On the subject of Blogger; Quite apart from all the other problems;
* Deleting and adding blog links.
* An apparent 300 blog link limit.
* Lots of "received invalid response" messages, causing loss of work.
* Lots of "Blog Not Found" messages, causing loss of work.
* The layout reset to one post per page the other week (I'm still not back-up to my 15 posts per page, despite saving it as a change to 20 - twice!).
* Problems with three-column blogs and the right-had widgets moving over the central column images last Wednesday evening.
* Some people having trouble uploading images from their PC and having to use Picasa.
* Some people having trouble uploading images from Picasa and being limited to their PC!
* "Memcache value is null for Form Restoration" messages when trying to comment from Wordpress....

...and adding all the problems with layout (automatic Div's and Para's in the coding leaving great gaps, and the problems I had on the Airfix page with the 'updated blogger interface') back in the summer, this all adds-up to a failure by Blogger to understand the philosophy "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"...

...there is also the new limit on Tags/Labels, which has been set at 20 words per post OR 200 characters in total, whichever is reached soonest. This limit is farcical....while I can understand the overall limit of 5000 words per Blog (if anything - over-generous?), the post limit means that some of my past posts have already 'gone over' the new limit meaning that I will never be able to edit or update them again as they will not save without me taking out labels that have been there quite happily for years!

Now while I realise that a lot of the problems listed above are due to the increasing complexity of the Internet, the introduction of another coding language and the fact that it's all being written (the coding) for three new operating systems as all this mobile technology speeds and spreads causing compatibility problems for all users, it is equally true that the post limit is down to Blogger and no one else.

If people have been taking the piss out of tags, shut them down or warn them or something, don't hit the rest of us. 30 words would be a far better limit, a lot of people don't even use their tag list, or produce minimal labels that don't help at all. This is a problem caused by the commercial guys using Blogger templates on their own-hosted web-pages, who are using as many words as possible to drive traffic to their clearance white-goods or whatever.

I sometime produce posts in which the products of several companies from several countries in several materials and scales appear together, and collectors following me need to find those figures under any of those headings (maker, nationality of maker, scale, material), along with nationality and era of the figures shown (or whether they are infantry, cavalry or sailors etc...) meaning a 20 word/200 character limit necessitates leaving out a load of valid tags.

So - if you go on the Blogger Forums, please fight for an increase to 30 tags or 300 characters - whichever is the larger, and better policing of the piss-takers.

The feeling is that Blogger provide for free and we should live with it, well yes...but they also make a fortune from the Adsence carried by some blogs, which is one reason I've dropped mine, why should Google (who own Blogger - and "will never do anything bad") and Blogger take two cuts while never actually sending me a penny? And if they didn't provide - someone else would.

The rant sort of over; I tried to re-tag the first month of my blogging the other night and ran into horrendous problems with the new limit (and once you've reached the limit on one post you can no longer edit all the posts with that tag, as the changes won't save!), and can see that I'm going to have to re-do the tags on 460-odd posts, taking out all plurals, extraneous (to Blogger) words and using abbreviated forms wherever I can. This will take a month or two, but should be worth the effort in the long run as it will be easier to find past posts on a given subject or theme.

So; some days that will keep me away from posting, however; coming in the next few days are American GI's in larger scales (already started) and Giant Napoleonics continuing from this odd box I've got. We'll also look at the Elephant pictures in the 101 year-old report into the Delhi Durbar from which the above image was taken and there will be more art links involving toy/model soldiers and things.

I also want to close down the 'Other collectables' blog and transfer the posts to this blog, I don't know how to do that so that they appear when they were originally published, so you may find, one day, four pages of shite from over there...over here!! But I'll soon bury them with new soldier posts! I will also ask blogger if there is a way round it using the 'Import Blog' feature I now can't find but which used to be there somewhere! I may also Bring the Airfix page over here as well...but don't know yet?

Thanks for popping-by, do keep checking back when you have the time, try requests - I may be able to help, do report dead-links and please comment or correct, it all adds to the bigger picture.

Hugh.

L is for Lost Patrol!

2012-01-28T19:28:00.005Z

When I covered my Brother's Detail from the attic back in December (D is for Detail) I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't have all the poses and that the Japanese I thought I'd obtained for my own collection weren't there...well it turns out that I do have some US Detail figures in the large scale 'US Infantry and Marines' box! So here they are...

At the top we see a comparison between the older and newer standing firing pose, the older one is so much better for a number of reasons...better paint in better colours, sensible sized bayonet, no over-blousing of the trousers and a very realistic M1 Garrand rifle (which I've used), unlike his replacement in the later sets who seems to have equipped himself with an 1880's Winchester, all right - after zeroing - for a target competition, but I suspect not much use on the 'Sands of Iwo Jima' (shouldn't that be 'Pumice of Iwo Jima' ?!).

In the middle are a couple of the missing poses and another kneeling firer and the lower shot has two new (left) and two old (one incomplete; right) advancing figures, showing various shades of green plastic, early and late bases etc...

At the end Britains were struggling, and painting them up as first UN infantry (upper shot) and then 'Attack Force' or something wasn't going to help. The colour scheme of the lower lot was also applied to the British Infantry from the Detail range and they looked even worse in it than the Americans...they look like they're dressed in pyjamas and wearing chocolate buttons on their heads!

The Bazooka I thought was a new pose is among these late ones and the advancing pose appears again, what with my Brothers figures in the attic we've got that pose well and truly covered!

C is for Chariot

2012-01-28T17:35:00.005Z

Paul over at 'Paul's Bods' has been treating us to a real nostalgia hit with his refurbished Atlantic Chariots in the last few days (his 'before' shot of the Roman chariot looked uncannily like mine of 32 years ago!), which seemed like a good excuse to roll out a couple of Giant chariots, not that I need an excuse; somewhere in the infinite universes - of the current string theory and CERN findings - I am blogging nothing but Giant ancients...every day, twice a day!

A poor angle this one, shows the chariot all right, but the horsemen are a bit hidden, Paul (Morehead; my editor at Plastic Warrior) is always telling me not to shoot too high!

But of interest here are the red and green horses, these are both clearly marked GIANT and came with this group, but in wacky colours is not normally the Giant way, there are bags of multi-coloured horses in the post-giant boxes, but Giant usually went with Black, solid or translucent white and a range of browns? Although I do have some more odd-coloured horses in the Cowboy & Indian box.

Main constituents of the Giant 'Ancient' range - fort was covered a while ago. Most of the figures are taken from the Britains Trojans, with a couple of Marx poses (standing to the right). The chariot was a nice little thing, with the decoration looping over the wheel-mounts.

Two-horsed variant/copy here; Lucky Clover

Larger sample here; Lazy Post

I'll be looking at the two-horsed ones in detail another day, and will find an excuse to return to these again!

P is for Pixies, Dancing Pixies!

2012-01-28T01:42:00.005Z

There aren't many companies who have made a concerted effort to take the crown away from Cherilea for 'Most Leery Figures Ever', but if anyone was seriously trying it was this lot out of Italy.

These figures from Nardi are barely earning the epithet 'swoppet' being only articulated at the waist and with a swivel born of the single plug-in feet. No matter; whichever torso you try with whichever legs results in some kind of anatomical shenanigans that you'd only expect to see in the freak show at the Zglmorg Bros. Circus "The Greatest Show Off Earth".

All that said though; still amoung my favourite figures and I wouldn't part with them!

G est pour la Guerre Civile

2012-01-24T22:51:00.008Z

Having covered both Cherilea and Timpo albeit not fully, it seems to make sense to look at some of the other swoppet types before moving on to pastures new. These are all small samples, and a lot are 'unknown', but they give a flavour of what else is out there.

Another British firm; Charbens, did a set of swoppets which are clearly Timpo rip-offs, as kids we always thought these were better Hong Kong production due to the ridiculous pistol holster/belt. The flag's a belter though, bit of paint and it would knock the Timpo guidon into a cocked hat! No Union yet - I'm afraid, but they were the same mouldings with blue shirts.

These are a common kind of Hong Kong pirate, again taken from Timpo and possibly some connections with Linda or Blue Box, but it's such a firm 'don't know' I'll not be putting either name in the tag list. I do have somewhere images of HK ACWswoppets - that could be these - under another name entirely, if I find them I'll update this post in pink!

Very similar - even to the plug-in boots, this chap is by Transogram. Several of these HK sources adopted the double belt-loop and over system in vinyl for the braces that replaced the actual leather or canvas belts used in the civil war, this was due entirely to Timpo's influence and lead!

This guy is actually quite a good moulding from the waist up. A small HONG KONG on the top of the base helps separate him from all the similar figures. The third hole in the base is for the running legs that came with some of the Cowboys and Indians in this range.

Of the four HK sets looked at so far these are the best, they also have the plug-in boots but are otherwise very good copies of the Timpo originals, even down to the guidon, leading some unscrupulous dealers to try passing it off as Timpo - it actually has much cruder stitching and an almost unreadable 'th' after the 7.

These may be by Enham for Cherilea, but I don't know so for now the same note applies as to the first lot (re. Linda/Blue Box) and once I've identified the Enham bases, it may all become a little clearer?!

This 45/50mm lot are more Britians based, with PVC vinyl-rubber torsos on ethylene legs. Origins seem to be half Herald (bugler) and half Britains Swoppets. At some point the torsos were used on larger legs making 60mm giants - far-left in the lower left image.

I love what they've done to the Britains lying firing pose, reminds one of the Airfix prone or mounted poses that Montaplex put on bases!

"Lookout! Observation balloon!"

"I'll poke you with my big stick!"

"Go on then...I'll get my sabre out while you ignore yours shall I?"

"Blame the Photographer for posing us like this"

"Hmm, all right, I blame the photographer...you're still a long time dead"

Elastolin Yankee waves a red-flag to a Giodi Reb-bull...ha ha - I shouldn't be allowed! I think he's one of a set made for Kinder in the 1970's. These are both good quality figures - as you'd expect from European manufacturers, although the Giodi figure has some disturbing similarities with some of the HK production?

L is for Large Scale!

2012-01-24T13:02:00.003Z

Fancy painting yourself green this weekend? It's safer than the TA and less vicarious than Paint-balling, but it's not really re-enactment either....

BBC Caption Competition

Costume Hire and Costume Design and Not Safe For Work - Fnar fnar!!

Stephen King Stage Show

Tumblr Photoset

Eurodisney Toy Soldiers

Real Toy Soldiers (Video with pop-ups)

College Humour Someone painted their mouths!

I've lost a bookmark to another one, it had a couple of Chinese or Croatian chaps painted as toy soldiers but in a trenched landscape with a bazooka, so a little 'closer to the mark' as it were, anyone got a link to it?

C is for Civil War, Cherilea and Confederation!

2012-01-24T11:52:00.008Z

These appear to have been sculpted by the same guy responsible for the infamous UN infantry and East African Rifles in the 60mm solids range, and while the 'swoppet' system has allowed him to break the surly bonds of his previous sculpting limitations, it hasn't prevented his desire to sculpt double-jointed dancing daemons completely - and it does rather show...

The 54mm swoppet Confederates, I only have the three, and these are not as easy to find as the 60mm figures, the one on the right of the line-up has a Timpo base which is something to sort out as and when, while the guy in the middle can only muster with the aid of some Union boots!

"Pri'vet Hawkins?"

"Sir?"

"Arr'you intendin' ta where'a them damyankee boots for the whole of this here waw'ar? 'Cos if you is boy - you'll be feelin' more than ma words across yow'a back see, I ain't havin' non of my men bringin' the Con'fed'der'acy into diss-repoote by warein' non-regoolation aparrell, you hear me Boy!?"

"Sir, Major, Sir!"

The 60mm figures, same sculptor - same pack-drill. There are two poses of Confederate soldier (possibly the two above) that exist in vast numbers, with dealers trying to off-load whole boxes of them for years now, the Union though have to be sought out as any other old plastics.

Earlier ones had the solid bases (green above) with holes specific to the figures, while the later issues had a generic base (sand above) with a choice of four holes and a hollow underneath.

As for the right-hand Confederate figure;

"Haww'kin's!"

"Sir?"

"Boots!"

"Sir, Major Sir!"

On the left a comparison between the two sizes of figure. to the right; Cherilea also made a set of solid cavalry with very heavy bases, these were around 50mm, but sit OK with 54mm figures due to the base, mine seems to have had his tail docked! And is a re-issue from Dorset or Marlborough from the 1980/90's.

They also made 60mm solids of both ACW and 7th Cavalry but I only have one or two at the moment, all Union/7th blue, so they'll have to wait a while before they appear here.

B ist fur Bürgerkrieg!

2012-01-23T17:53:00.006Z

Following on from the small scale last night, here are the big boys! Familiar to most - so not much waffle tonight - these are the much copied first issue Timpo American Civil War 'swoppets', I only have a couple of mounted so feast your eyes on the infantry!

Confederate revolutionary terrorist insurgents first! They were originally issued with a brown hat from the cowboy range, but in the end they were given a grey one, eventually as they geared-up for '2nd type' launch date; kepi's were issued. Sandy bases are also later (what the internet geeks would call 1.2!), while the guidon is from the medieval range.

Mounted Confederate, this is the charging horse I mentioned in passing last night as being similar to both the Crescent and Britains running posed horses.

Union foot; I suppose if I'm going to call the confederates 'insurgents' I should point out that these were the equivalent of fascist right-wing capitalist bankers wanting to federate everything and make money!

They also got kepis at the end and switched to sandy bases, but they got 7th cavalry guidons in four colours (red (illustrated), yellow, green and blue) these are considered uncommon, with the yellow being the easiest to locate. The guy holding the standard yellow guidon with the kepi also has the 2nd type neckerchief, which may not be right for these 1st types, but like the bases and kepis, they were probably phased-in?

My other mounted figure, again this horse is similar to both the Crescent and Britains galloping mounts, and all three companies adopted the clip-on base. Timpo are easy to tell with the over-moulded halter and stuff, but not the early ones - where each company had hand-painted leather-work.

C is for Copies, Copies and err...more Copies

2012-01-23T00:15:00.011Z

Thinking it was about time I did some more ACW stuff - I had meant to get more done last year, but the beauty of a four-year war is that we'll have the 150th anniversary for another three years! - I dug out the ACW box last time I was at the storage unit. I then thought I really aught to do the Airfix HO/OO ACW over on the Airfix blog, but that won't happen for a while due to the storage question, however I thought I could do the Giant ACW figures, as it's a while since I covered them in One Inch Warrior magazine.

Now; my Giant have been split into three in the move, with the box containing the Ancients, Mediaevals and Mongols along with all the 'stone' forts I covered back in the summer (Giant, Accoutrements, Lucky Clover) is buried deep in the storage unit (although I have a handful of Roman/Greek Giant originals here by a stroke of fate) so I won't be featuring them for a while. The carded sets might (big MIGHT) be in the attic here, and if they are I'll try and get some up here in a month or two. While the rest happened to be in sight when I picked up the large-scale ACW the other day (coming soon), so I can present them now...

Nine foot figures; one prone and eight upright, taken from the Marx 54mm range they come in various shades of grey and mid to dark blues. These are original Giant, and are of a reasonable quality and detail, some are a bit 'bent', sometimes this is curable with a little just-boiled (never 'boiling') water, however some are too far gone. This kind of damage is caused by removing the sprue from the mould too soon, leading to uncontrolled shrinkage - left in the mould for another second or two the figures would cool/shrink 'in pose'.

Six mounted figures (top image) are obtained by cut-and-shut of foot figure uppers onto a pair of mounted legs! This works reasonably well for all bar the 'Firing musket to the left pose' who remains one of the most ridiculous figure poses ever in any scale. There was an even more idiotic mounted pose in the Backwoodsmen range.

Their artillery seems to be relatively original in design, although - ironically - much copied by their fellow Hong Kong'ese! A rather clunky and slightly medieval carriage carries a piece of ordnance looking like an eighteenth century naval gun but - one suspects - wanting to be seen as a Parrot Rifle? A decent little limber comes between the gun and a couple of paired horse teams.

One of my samples (all Union foot figures) came with six Giant wagons, the covered 'GS', and both open and tarped stores loads. There were three with covers (all yellow) two red stores wagons and the single green tarpaulin covered wagon illustrated above.

As I wrote above, the Giant Civil War figures were much copied by other HK companies and here we have three samples by at least two different suppliers;

In the upper photograph the complete gun-team and all the figures in front of it are from one source/sample, the yellow mounted figure and the two foot figures in front of him are of another purchase (but seem to be late production of the previous source (?)) while the lying shooting in pale blue is a very poor sample from another maker entirely.

Note how the later producers have added red and yellow to the mix (I've seen mounted figures in pink), and also taken the Giant flag bearer from the Napoleonic (Wellingtonian) range - itself a copy of a Holgar Eriksson SAE foot miniature - and used him has a mounted cavalryman - Giant having mounted him in that other set which we'll look at another day.

The lower picture shows how the Limber has deteriorated; from the left (with the corresponding figure in front) we have the Giant original with a full Giant marking, the early and late production of the copies in the middle and on the right the copy of the copies, this last one (along with the late production 2nd generation limber) has a lot of mould damage to the interior walls and it would seem that the HK chaps were having problems with the male half of the mould?

I only have two prone infanteers and three gun-teams for this late/poor quality (?) sample, so don't know what their foot figures or cavalry looked like yet. The gun-teams however, for this set; were single-pairs like the Christmas cracker limber-less guns I looked at a while back (W is for Wagons ...again!).

Again; comparison/identification shots of the four samples I've so far identified, I have given all the HK horses names to help identify them and they were all published in a past issue of One Inch Warrior, so for now if the next bit loses you; don't worry - it's all farty, navel-gazing, rivet-counting, obsessive, hardcore-collector stuff!

At the top is the Giant original, this is the very best type of HK hollow horse I call 'Smoothie' as it's a well finished moulding. Next; the 'initial' copies have two horses, one sometimes associated with Giant which is used here to pull the gun teams; 'Mexican Small', the other - which the mounted figures came on (in several separate samples) is the horse I called 'Wavymane' because err...it's got a wave in its mane! This is actually a copy of the Crescent 54mm horse (which is itself similar to both the Timpo and Britains Hearald running posed horses) and is the commonest form of HK hollow horse encountered in the UK, usually with Cowboys and Indians and which are not Giant copies.

The later versions of the initial copy and the late/poor copies have versions of what I call 'Remould' as the moulding has had some serious re-engraving done, particularly to the mane and tail, the last one is barely hanging together detail wise!

There are also notable differences in the draw-bar/horse-furniture with the little locating-studs being the easiest way to tell them apart, Giant having quite heavy 'arrow-head' finials, while the late set are very lightweight.

Giant originals bottom left and then first (?) copies next to them and later ones above, as you can see the Giant figures are marked 'GIANT (P) HONG KONG', while the others are unmarked, but similar mould marks on both the flag bearers is the reason I'm linking both sets despite the different horses and lowering of detail to limbers and things, the foot figures - at least - were coming from the same producer.

It's likely that as the horse mould wore out, or the source/s of the two original horse types dried-up, they got the later horse from somewhere else, or maybe they just re-cut the mould themselves - it's very much swimming in the dark with the history and relationships between all these pocket-money producers from the New Territories!

It's all very well putting 'Giant' on everything for your New York office/partner/commissioning client, but it makes it harder to sell them where Giant (whoever they were really) don't operate (not that that stopped Giant-marked items ending-up in non-Giant sets as we saw with the D-Day sets (Barbed Wire) I covered a year or two ago!), some non-Giant, is actually late-Giant...sometimes, but not - I think - with these.

The 'P' is presumably meant to indicate 'Patented' or 'Protected' and is otherwise meaningless, further it was probably designed to resemble the (R) for 'Registered' used in the US sometimes. Otherwise the usual marks found on toys are; (C) for 'copyrighted' and TM for 'Trade Mark [registered]' worldwide or; Reg., Reg.Des. or; Regd. for 'Registered/Registered Design' here in the UK.

Finally the locating-studs on the legs of mounted figures are another good way of documenting and identifying Hong Kong horses and figures origins. Here we see that the Giant figures (top left) have some on the largest of all HK mounted figures with the exception of the officer illustrated, who has quite a pointed stud without the heavy flange of the other figures.

The rest are the early and late (?) versions of the better copies, with the earlier ones top right and the later ones below them, you can see the drop in quality on the silver flag bearer, despite the fact that the foot figures are almost the same.

The figure to the bottom left is a neat conversion done by the original owner (not me) to the 'Napoleonic' (or Wellingtonian) flag and makes a cavalry guidon by the simple expedient of cutting the flag-pole where it meets the flag, shaping the flag above the damage into a triangle and then threading the pole (no glue, no heat) through the loops made by the cords flapping against the pole!

J is for Jeep

2012-01-19T19:12:00.004Z

Having looked at the Britains Land-rover with it's nod to both the SAS 'Pink Panther' and the modern 'Technicals' I thought we'd better see what Hong Kong was doing at the same time...

No name on this one so no pack drill - knees aren't up to it anyhow! With a pull back motor and a sparking mechanisem that still works this is a neat little beast with shades of the Western Desert campaign and David Stirling (who once bought me and my brother a Coka-cola while we made a den out of large red leather club chairs!), this is around 30mm and when I saw it the other day it immediately identified two gluey figures from the 'Unknown, Military, Post 1900' box.

M is for Merry, Men, Mean, Much, Mischife, and Mayhem!

2012-01-18T18:27:00.054Z

So we get to the first post on this subject last (if you've been following the last week or so!), being an introduction to the world of Robin Hood, and his band of merry men...or criminal outlaws depending on your world view! Robbing from the rich to help the poor? It's just not capitalism...

This is by no means all of them and I'd urge you to get Matt Thier's Robin Hood special published by Plastic Warrior (PW Link) for a better guide to all things Loxley and Notts!

Rear Left to Front Right -

Tourist Copy of Britains Herald (see note below), Marx US, Lido, Elastolin (see note below).

Dulcop, Rubenstein, Britains Herald 54mm.

Britains Detail, Res Plastics, Crescent/Kellogg's, Speedwell (?).

Cherilea, Airfix.

The Lido figures from America, these will have been designed to tie in with a movie or two, this was a popular subject in the 1950's and '60's and Hollywood was at the fore. They are designed (badly) to stand without bases and mostly - don't! Especially on a carpet.

The figure on the left is an apparently quite uncommon soft ethylene figure from Elastolin, and is from the Norman range, so snuck in here without permission! Next to him is an equally uncommon figure from Res Plastics in Italy, two big to go in a Kinder Egg, this was Res' own label product.

The last figure is a re-mould of the Speedwell (?) Robin, I use the question mark as while I'm pretty sure he's Speedwell, he looks a bit limp next to the originals I posted the other day (two posts below), but this may be due to the material and lack of paint?

This is a clear copy of the Britains Herald Robin Hood character figure, made in a dense PVC material. He has been found on various tourist items from the Nottingham/Sherwood Forest area, and some believe him to be made by Britains themselves. Without either Matt's book or Peter Coles's books to hand I'm not going to say it wasn't as there may be good evidence that it was, but Britain's didn't use vinyl until they moved production to Hong Kong, and no HK vinyl versions of the original set were issued, so it's unlikely they would have shipped the master over there for a new mould - but they might have. Otherwise it would be a copy by someone else?

I think Plastic Warrior has shown them with round and square wooden plinth type bases, and I seem to recall a larger item like an ashtray at one of the shows the other year? He's around 90/100mm.

This lot - like the Elastolin above - has very little to do with the Robin Hood stuff at all, but they can all be used as King Richard, Prince John or the Sheriff of Nottingham. The Photograph stems from the fact that I had the right-hand figure in with the Speedwell figures as a possible member of that set, the base looked Spanish, so I took it round to Paul Morehead the other day and he put me right, then Brian filled in the fine detail yesterday (see post below)...the figure is a Norev copy of the Lone Star king to the left, it was re-issued a few years ago unpainted in a fort play-set by JEM of France, see comments in post below.

The other three are the two versions of the Lone Star 'King', with the earlier one to the left with leggings, a Lion and a battle-axe, with the latter version in a blueish grey and the gold re-issue (Toyway). The inset shows how the alignment on the base has slipped over the years and the flash got worse - pressure from the injection process at the weakest point.

Thanks to Paul Morehead and Brian Carrick (His Blog) for helping identify these and while I was faffing about with all this rebel alliance stuff I found this very useful website;

Bold Outlaw - A beginners guide to Robin Hood

News Views Etc...Action Man Auction

2012-01-17T14:58:00.003Z

Anybody got any money left after the holiday season?

Action Man Auction

Bound to be a few bargains and some rare pieces there.

B is for Britians British Heroes...and Villains!

2012-01-16T23:20:00.004Z

What IS the matter with Blogger? Having had us get used to loading images in reverse for the last three years, they suddenly decided to reverse them to the right order a few weeks before Christmas and have now gone back to reverse order...except the first image loads to the bottom of the stack after you press 'done' - it's enough to induce a coronary!

Right - this is arguably one of the best sets of toy/model soldiers/figures ever made in any material. Given that they are over 50 years old ('58 were they issued?) and had not the benefits of modern production used to such effect on some of the soft vinyl stuff coming out of china these days.

Sadly; there were only ever the five poses, Britains counting the horse as the sixth - they usually producing sets of figures in sixes.

Little John and Robin Hood, the Robin figure looks very young, a bit of a boy in fact, probably why Maid Marion fancied him - she just wanted to mother him!! There were at least two moulds for Robin (and probably the others), the most obvious way of telling them apart is to check the feather in his cap, which I did with an old archive photograph, here; Link to Post

I suspect that most of the mass-produced figures of that era had more than one mould for a number of reasons; expected take-up of initial release, popular figures, mould damage to previous mould etc...and Britains often left clues to the different moulds, the Rabbit Family - for instance - come as either a thin moulding or a thick one (with more bunnies ears). Hand finishing of the mould cavity by the engraver would be one way the tell-tale signs could appear.

Little John from a different angle and the Sheriff of Nottingham on a fine medieval charger, there were no other enemy figures and one suspects you were meant to use the Swoppet Knights as a supply of baddies!

Maid Marion and Friar Tuck make up the rest of this set and the detailing on Tuck with the swinging crucifix, fat belly, 'dressing-gown' cords, belt and such like is superb. Marion would make a good Cathy, wandering over the moors, hair swept back by the rain, cloak billowing in the wind and starey, dead-eyes!

They weren't so much replaced (gap of a decade or so) as followed by these guys, and I have to apologise for such a poor sample, I though I had a complete set of these with a paint variant of either the sheriff or Guy, but suspect it is a false memory of the time I got some sets together for customer orders when I worked for a dealer. Any way this is all there was in the box so it's all I can show, Robin and Will are damaged and the other two are missing their staffs (I think the Friar Tuck from Cherilea next post down has the remains of one!!). I shall replace the photo if I ever get a decent set.

They are not that hard to get and I did contemplate looking on evilBay when I took these shots a week or two ago,but time hurries on. The full set was seven figures (to compensate for the original five!), being; Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marion, The Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy de Gisborne...or is it 'du Gisborne'...da...die, dei, der, das...who cares - some poxy village in the depths of Normandy he thought he had regency over, where you can buy cheese on a Sunday and everything's closed on Monday - no doubt!

Alright already! He wasn't from over the channel at all; Sir Guy of Gisbourne, Gisburne, Gisborne, Gysborne, or Gisborn

This set was a well sculpted set, and while most of the Detail range was likewise, you get the feeling looking at them that the sculptor himself felt the weight of the heritage of the previous set as he sat down to produce these?

U is for Usurpers

2012-01-16T20:17:00.008Z

No, not King/Prince John, he was a regent or 2 i/c! I mean Speedwell and Hong Kong, who both took liberties with the originality of their sculpting - if you know what I mean! But we'll look at the Cherilea set first;

Robin's gang consists of the man himself, Friar Tuck and a Little John type, there is - I guess - a sixth character in this set, but I suspect it's more likely to be another man-at-arms than a member of the Sherwood woods lot!

This set - already rareish - is becoming so brittle they do command a premium when tracked down, of my sample (7 figures) only Little John is complete. The friar has had another tool inserted in place of the original staff, which has again broken while one hand is splitting from the previous surgery. Robin's bow broke during the photo-sesh despite my treating them all with kid gloves.

The man-at-arms with the patented half-a-cross-bow (TM; Waltii Industries - we didn't just make TC Gunships!), and the Sheriff of Nottingham doing everything in his power to convince you the viewer that his sword isn't held on with luck and a micron of plastic filament!

I have another Friar and another sheriff, they are both no more than bits in a bag!

Friar Tucks from Speedwell and Hong Kong (bagged). Speedwell borrow from Britains (err...and Sontara!) while Hong Kong soak it up!

From the lack of evidence of staples on the bag (which would point to there having once been a header card) it must be assumed that the HK figure was either destined for Christmas crackers or for use as a cake decoration, as both groups of products often got to the end user in such bags. Given that HK pirates of the Britians ethnic dancer/musician pairs were issued in the same fashion, I favour the cake decoration theory.

The Speedwell sheriff has been to the HK school of originality and is a clear usurper although his horse seems to come from America? Ajax?

Speedwell also lifted the Maid Marion almost exact and here are two shots of their entry..."Tonight Mathew - I'm going to be..."!

The King/Prince/Sheriff is a different-kettle-of-ball-game-fish altogether, covered above (in a day or two!!) this is the Lone*Star figure as good as, and while I thought it might be Reamsa or a similar Spanish figure (from the base), Paul Morehead from PW [Subscribe - you know you keep meaning to!] recalls them being part of a reissue fort play set from France about 10/15 years ago, originally by a company called Gem or Jem, neither connected to Gemodels over here?

News Views Etc...Action Figure anyone?

2012-01-15T17:51:00.006Z

Please Sir; can I have a toy soldier modelled after me?

Canada's Hero's

You Tube - Canadian TV News Item

Yeah! Sure, a short-arsed, scruffy Gloster, hanging round the less salubrious bars of 1980's Berlin...why not!

G is for Giveaway; Cresent for Kellogg's

2012-01-15T16:53:00.005Z

The Crescent/Kellogg's figures were (or are) my second favorites after the Britains Herald set, Robin looks like he means business, the Sheriff is clearly an evil chap and Friar Tuck is up for a fight and no mistake - to much sacristy wine methinks, begad!

My examples are not complete for either trademark, with Maid Marion missing altogether along with one of the medieval knight figures, also they are mostly Kellogg's which I remember from my time as a dealers assistant were always more common than the Crescent marked figures. Crescent are painted, Kellogg's not so.

The Robin character figures, these are both for Kellogg's although there are definitely two moulds, one with a bigger base but slightly smaller figure, mine are also from two production runs so are different shades of green.

Alan a'Dale and Little John, the colours were the same for both runs, unlike the knights in armour who were given completely different treatments, with silver for the Crescent originals and blue or white for the Kellogg's set.

Friar Tuck goes Mano-a-Mano with the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, the truth is the poor old sheriff was trying hard to raise one or other of the two massif ransoms we had to pay to get the awful King Richard out of hock, a man who hated Britain (or England as it would have been then), never learnt English and only visited his realm twice!

Three of the medieval knights, with a crescent original in the middle, flanked by the Kellogg's versions either side [That's what 'flanked' means - you idiot!]. They were not actually given away by Kellogg's at the same time as the Robin Hood figures so aren't 'technically' The enemy at all, but I don't know who else you'd use!

The medieval archer, the difference is so marked between the two in both size and sculpting, I'm keen to complete both sets to compare and contrast. it's almost as if Crescent have 'pirated' their own figure as previously supplied to Kellogg's?

A is for more ART

2012-01-15T00:47:00.009Z

Check this out, it is;

A) Awesome

and

B) The only thing this quality of figure is good for

Mr Joe Black - Made in China

If you like the work; pass the link on - Art enriches human beings, war diminishes them.

Here's another one;

Dan Cohen's 'Patton'

Is there a piece of software that allows for the pixellation of images?

H is for Hood - Robin Hood

2012-01-14T19:36:00.006Z

Dulcop were another foreign maker to have a stab at the iconic British hero Robin Hood. And as these figures were still available a few years ago are relatively easy to find, although I don't think I have a full set and with my Plastic Warrior check list/guide (authored by; Matt Thier) in storage, perhaps some kind Italian reader could let us know what's missing here...

From the left I'm assuming these are Robin himself, Little John (who needs to be taller!) and Will Scarlet, they are not particularly nice figures, being a little wooden or stilted, however the sculpting - in itself - is quite detailed.

Much the Miller's Son (?) facing-up to the Sheriff? This second, mounted figure is styled in a more European fashion and would maybe make a better El Cid or someone like that, indeed- he may very well be meant to be such a character?

Their 'enemy' are a bunch of knights in armour from a much latter period, and with only 5 poses in my sample/the photograph; I'm assuming again that there is at least one more to find?

Mounted figures from the same set, again I have no idea whether this is it or there were several more to collect, Dulcop are strangely under represented on the Internet!

L is for Loxley; Robin of Loxley

2012-01-11T15:50:00.011Z

These are the Marx figures in both sizes, side-by-side, while I say 'Marx', my 54mm are all the later Rubinstein issue of the 'Canada' marked cereal premiums, believed to be copies of the Marx set.

The Robin Hood figures are the two in the middle, the blue figure being Will Scarlet and the left hand figure - although looking like a vague scale-up of the 54mm Robin - has no name, so should be a 'man-at-arms' or Merry Man!

Little John and Friar Tuck are represented in both sets , I prefer the 60mm example as the 54 mil one is not fat enough! Come-on guys...he needs another couple of stone before you can put 'Friar Tuck' on the base!

The Sheriff - bad at being good, good at being bad! And Mr Loxley's paramour; Maid Marion, although the suspicion is - she was no 'maid'; snuggling up in the woods with a sweaty hero? Please!

The only other figure in either set to have a title is the 'Minstrel' (technically 'Alan a'Dale') from the 54mm set, a useful pose for many a 54mm medieval project, not least King Richard's boyfriend (Blondel) hanging around outside castles!

Merry men including two horn blowers, there is a pairing between the two sets up to this point, and while they are never the same some are quite close, Maid Marion for instance and the sculpting is similar enough to suggest the same sculptor, but a few years apart as while he has returned to the old set for inspiration, there is an improved skill shown in the smaller set best seen in the better animation of the figures...

...and the extra four poses. No equivalents for these four were to be found in the larger set. I tend to think of the falling pose an an alternative Robin.

Missing as named characters are Much (the Miller's son) and Nazir/Azeem (the modern PC additions) for the good guys and Guy of Gisborne for the baddies.

P is for Probably...the Best Toy in the World, ever

2012-01-08T16:40:00.008Z

[To be voiced by Orson Wells's gravelly tones!]. Or; Probably the Worst Lager in the World! ((c) 1989 Hugh Walter - I hope to sell it to an advertising agency one day and make my fortune!).

This has been on my brother's shelf for a few years, and was a sort of late Christmas present to me, although I've said I'll clean it and put it with the Detail stuff we looked at a while ago. Made by Britains, it predates the Detail range and the figures aren't compatible, neither did they go that well with the Herald figures, but are - at least - made of the same dark olive vinyl.

I genuinely think this has to be up there with the other contenders of best toy ever, if such an award could ever ignore the broad sweep of something like 'Lego' or 'kits' and look at each toy issued on it's merits.

It was a tad dusty when it arrived two days after Christmas, and needed to be stripped down and cleaned. Due to all the stickers that come with it and the fact that it seemed to be surface dust only, it was better to do a dry clean with a paint brush. Illustrated - bottom right - are three brushes typical of the type I'd use for a job like this, from the left; a chef's pastry brush (soft bristles that can get up a nice lather if 'wet cleaning'), a 1/2 inch decorators brush which is a bit stiffer and was the one used this time, and a stiff craft brush of the type kids in playgroup/kindergarten use for poster paint and glue, which is the best for getting years of grime out of detailed mouldings with doing the damage something like a nail brush or scrubbing brush can do.

The model carries a UK civilian license plate, with the 'F-Reg' dating it to an issue date (in the real world) between 1 August 1967 and 31 July 1968, and (without being an expert on Lanny's) seems to represent a late Series II/IIA?

So why is it the best toy ever - in my humble opinion!?...Independent suspension on all four wheels, front wheels steer from the spare, turning the steering wheel at the same time, two fully articulated crew-figures (with separate helmets), two-position co-driver/sentry's machine-gun, opening doors, opening bonnet (with a good stab at a Solihul engine-block), dash sticker and cab-details, pivoting twin pom-pom type weapon with removable, revolving mounting, locking towing-hook cover, radio set...

There are downsides; it's British Racing Green, not the army green of the wagons I knew (although Her Madge' always used to get a Review-vehicle in this colour when inspecting large units or parades), the main armament is totally fictitious and the bonnet tools tended to be broken by people thinking they should be removable (because everything else was!), but it was a toy, and as a toy it had shed-loads of play-value and preempted the modern irregulars 'Technicals' by a decade or two..Rock-on!

All cleaned-up and put back together, I gave the crew slightly more jaunty angles to their helmets at the same time! They're singing "There Was a Gloster Soldier" as they swing wildly between termite-hills and wart-hog holes looking for Mau-mau!!

Various aspects of this moulding (or the wheels!) produced a quite wide range of long and short-wheelbase farm and military versions right up to the early 2000's, with and without soft or hard-tops, drivers, crew or loads.

Go-on then...tell me what's better than this? Must be a single set or box not a generic like 'Action Man', what's your all-time best toy - not favourite; 'best', all-round and viewed with judge-like neutrality!

News Views Etc...Another year dealing with a human-designed world!

2012-01-07T11:36:00.009Z

Yah, Boo, Humbug!...I hate the New Year as passionately as I love Christmas...

I won't tell you how many figures I have or have not painted in the last 12 months, nor what that equates to as an average, or how it compares to the year before, I'm not going to tell you my plans for 2012, nor how 2011 failed to live up to any previous plan, I wouldn't list my scenic accomplishments - if I'd done any! And can assure you my only 'New Years Resolution' is to not make any New Year's resolutions...However, I will make a prediction or two;

There is a 60% chance white 'Western' civilization will collapse completely.
There is a 40% chance America will drag us into a war with Iran in the next 12 months.
There is a 30% chance we will have a 'conflict' with Argentina before Christmas.
There is a 20% chance we will have a 'conflict' with Argentina before the Olympics.
There is a 10% chance of a multi-faceted, who's-on-what-side, global war that could go Nuclear between Israel and Iran and/or North and South Korea and/or on the Indo-Pakistan boarder in the next 12 months.

To cheer you up after all that, here are a couple of links to arty-farty pages that are both - at the same time - beautiful, odd, weird and uplifting yet slightly disturbing. They also both leave you thinking "I wish I'd thought of that first".

The second one is definitely not safe for work (NSFW), so if you don't have the intellectual compass to deal with the March Hare taking his bunny-girl from behind; don't click on it!

Sebstiano Mauri

Cathie Pilkington

If you like the works; pass the links on - Art enriches human beings, war diminishes them.

B is for Buried, Better, Burger King, BMC, Brent, Bandai and Benbros

2011-12-27T13:32:00.013Z

As this is the season for getting as many things on your plate as possible (without letting the gravy flow over the edge!) I thought it was the ideal moment to cover a few minor makes or smaller samples from my collection, so here are some minor 'B's'.

On the left (and marked "MADE IN ENGLAND") is a pawn from the Buried Treasure ice cream (?) chess set. These were also sold in the states both as Buried Treasure (?) and Sherbet Surprise. The question marks are down to my not knowing if Buried Treasure was ice cream or some other edible product, and not knowing if they were available in the states as BT or just Sherbet watsit!

On the right and dateing from 1949 is a joke/stag-novelty of a naked woman from Better Novelties Inc. of the US of A, who will only stay in her bath for the person who knows the secret - a sliding magnet. I have similar toys of naked women in [on] a bed and the kissing dolls I think I've covered somewhere in the 450 posts now gone below?

This is apparently a very early Burger King toy from the 1950's or 1960's and consists of the King (himself!!? Who knew or remembered he originally existed?) riding an air-powered go-cart/cartie. Coming as a kit of 4 parts in a nylonish plastic, maybe a polypropylene? His only mark is the R in a circle so favored of Giant - this must have been an American thing, we had the Copyright 'C' and the Patent 'P' but the Registered sign was never of legal worth in Europe and didn't appear on our products.

Above are two bits of hollow-cast I've ended-up with; a Benbros calf and a 30mm BMC penny-toy of a mounted Life Guard, with below; the only other 'volume' producer of composition figures in Britain (we looked at Zang the other day) was a company called Brent, who produced these generic WWII British types with picture-frame nails as weapon barrels/muzzles.

There were about 3 sets of small scale Pokemon, these are by Bandai, I think I've also got smaller unmarked ones and same sized ones by Tomy probably from their gumball machines.

As these are yesterdays 'fad' now, and space needs to be made for Ben10 stuff, there might be good pickings for this sort of stuff at car-boot sales this year.

C is for Christ's Mass

2011-12-25T02:15:00.005Z

Just finished listening to the midnight mass on Radio 4 (Oh...; I'm an old softee really, curmudgeonly and intolerant but a softee!) as I got the tree dressed, this is the old 'Family' tree at mums and some of the decorations are over 70 years old, been to India and back in the 1940's!

And it got me thinking...dangerous - I know - but stick with it...I've been doing this blogging lark on and off through a difficult period in my own life, and a strange period in the life of the wider society for the last 3 years, and while every year a few people do some sort of 'Happy Christmas' post before they go off for the holidays, in past years it has been only A FEW, this year not only have most people done some kind of 'seasonal' post, several people have done a few, often quite nostalgic ones.

Now I'm sure this is due to the credit crunch (a dreadful expression for the beginning of the end of white western capitalism), in that it seems to me that it has concentrated minds a bit more than normal.

I have a little book in which - since I was a pretentious teenager - I have copied sayings and quotes which grab me, sometimes well known, sometimes not, and I don't always know (or note) the source and one of these is;

"The best time of your life is that to which you always return [to - in your mind] when the present proves too unbearable"

Now; I'm not suggesting that we are all finding right now 'unbearable', but just that you don't remember past birthdays on your birthday the same way you remember past Christmases at Christmas...you don't remember the dead on your birthday the same way you do at this time of year...you don't cast your mind back to childhood birthdays, school birthdays, birthdays with lovers, drunken birthdays in Berlin, other peoples birthdays ON your birthday in the same way you remember these things AT Christmas EVERY Christmas.

We mark the passing of time...by Christmases! Yes; it's close to New Year, but how many drunken New Year's meld into each other in our memories? But Christmas...from the first one we can remember at 3 0r 4 or 5 years old to last years, all the 'big' presents for most years, the disappointments, the snowy Christmas in Bishop's Stortford, tobogganing down residential streets and being hauled back up by your godmothers dog! The first Christmas you could buy your parents things with your own money, Your first Christmas away from home and family because of a new job or new partner, drowning your sorrows in alcohol with your mates stuck in Berlin on Christmas Duties, phone calls home on Christmas Day, jobs that gave you two weeks off, jobs that gave you a day off, early or late 'Christmas Day' with a lover - in secret, unhappy or happy, we mark the passing of time in Christmases.

The point I'm getting to is that this year more people seem to be giving more thought than usual to Christmas Past, and I think it's a valuable lesson as it shows that no matter how commercial the bean-counters try to make it, despite the MacWendyKing's Cranberry Wrap two-for-one offer, it comes down to family, to lost loves, lost innocence, absent friends, family traditions, daft rituals, stupid jokes in cheap crackers, memories - some painful, some to make you smile, some that leave a roomful of people laughing at the re-telling, others that produce a groan...every year, but would we have it any other way...?

I'm a cynical atheist, but once a year I think I'm allowed to waver!

To all the followers of this blog, to any casual visitors, to the several contributors and all commenters, thanks for dropping by and taking a bit of my wittering away with you, and wherever you are, whoever you're with - have the best Christmas you can and may 2012 be an improvement on 2011 for all of us.

A is for Action Man

2011-12-25T01:54:00.006Z

I imported the listing for these from the dead page the other day, so thought I'd better post the figures while they were still fresh on my mind.

Imported into the UK by 3D Licensing, these were a Hasbro product, and I have an idea a company with 'Strawberry' in the title may have been involved somewhere, but not the old Strawberry Fayre. 35mm factory painted poured resin figurines with a pre-inked stamp in the base producing 20mm images, you could regard as flats!

As far as I know there were only the 6 poses, I get a few of these 'Stampers' from time to time (Kinder often does rolling ones with a continuous/endless track) and always take an image for/on the record card that goes in the bag with the figures.

Sold as pocket money toys, the resin (Oh! Sorry - 'Polystone'...yeah, right, got real stone in it has it?!) is brittle and the ink wouldn't last a day in the hands of a kid, this is the shite-end of the toy market, and you'd expect a company like Hasbro to stay out of it...

B is for Boys Toys

2011-12-24T02:26:00.004Z

This is in my mothers attic, I don't know or remember when it was given to us or how long it was in the games drawer, as both my brother and I were not 'football' kids. I have a vague memory of playing it once or twice but as to who gave it to us and when I haven't a clue...

...but if you were a Football Kid, this would be the best under the tree on Christmas morning, a big box printed in two colours with the magic word "soccer" writ-large!

From the late 1960's judgeing by the hybrid tin-plate/plastic construction, although I think it soldiered-on for most of the 1970's pretty much as an unchanged design, however, the box got more colourful with each generation.

Close-up of the players, the ball - if I remember correctly - was a Subbuteo-sized thing but of lesser quality in a browny-orange? Chad Valley was resurrected a few years ago by Woolworth's, I don't know what happened to the trademark after Woollies demise?

B is for British - British Made, British Infantry

2011-12-21T15:08:00.005Z

I haven't included Lone*Star in this round-up of modern or modernish British Infantry as my sample, while being of a fair size is to say the least a real mess, with a lot of repaints from the big purchase of last autumn, or hardly any paint's from evilBay or charity shop/car-boot buys.

So these are the other British made figures of the 19500's and 1960's, half of which will be re-blogged over on the Airfix page when I get round to spending some time on that page!

Upper image shows the Taffy Toys (probably part of the Thomas/Poplar Plastics group) figures from the big play set we looked at some time ago, they are 65/70 mil, and about as big as they get in British plastics after the Marx 6" figures. As far as I know this is all the poses, but there may have been others in other sets, or even sold loose? The EM-2 is again in evidence; see my note in the Crescent post below this one.

Lower shot shows the Cherilea 60mm paratroops, not all eight poses, and in various styles, this set ran for a while and comes in various single and mottled plastic colours and with various paint treatments, this picture gives only a hint of what's out there to be collected in this set.

Airfix chucked out two modern sets toward or right at the end of their true reign. 7 poses per set the British infantry are the earlier of the two and are a nice set, I looked quite like these guys during my final training exercise at Depot Lichfield, but; firstly, I remember the Karl Gustave 84mm being larger (and heavier!) and we all used the rifle sling all the time, a serious omission. The only exception being in Northern Ireland where troops tied the butt-end of the sling round the wrist to prevent the loss of the weapon in a riot situation.

The SAS were only issued in the smaller 14 figure boxes right at the very end, and while all sorts of otherwise intelligent people will tell you all sorts of urban myths in their desperation to convince themselves they MIGHT have existed in the HO/OO range, for at least one day...there is no evidence to suggest they were anything more than a dream in the marketing departments eye, transferred to paper in one catalogue as the company missed its arrester-hook and disappeared headfirst over its own flight deck to reappear as a marketable trademark/brand for the half dozen or so companies since associated with the Airfix name!

H is for Half-moon!

2011-12-21T12:44:00.011Z

Crescent to be precise, and as there is a detailed history of the company currently being serialised in Plastic Warrior magazine (you are subscribing...aren't you!) I won't touch on the company much here, except to say that unlike their rivals they never produced Germans, not even to fight their own 8th Army figures, whether this was because Arthur A. Schneider - one of the founders - was a refugee from Nazism or because the Luftwaffe bombed the toolroom is unknown? So we'll just look at the 4 figure sets in 'Modern' garb, that's 1950's/60's so; half a century ago 'modern'!

The beretted 1950's infantry in 60mm, I'm not sure if they actually produced them in SAS berets, of if the guy in pale green plastic with the Stirling SMG is a home paint, having handled many of these when I worked with a dealer, I don't remember seeing them with this colour beret, but then I didn't remember seeing them in that colour plastic either, so it may be a factory attempt to tie-in with the actions in Malaya or on the Indonesian border regions?

The two insets show both base types and both the smooth and the 'sand-blasted' sculpts. The finish that looks like sand-casting, is true for all poses and extends to the Guards, Cowboys and others from Crescent.

The 54mm helmeted troops, the blue ones are really unusual (even 'rare'; a word I try not to use about mass-produced plastics), being the closest they (Crescent) ever got to Germans, as they are 'enemy' from a game or boxed set (possibly an artillery set?).

The standing firing guy has the experimental bull-pup design known as the EM-2 which was trialed at Warminster by the Demonstration Battalion of what would become UKLF (in my time) alongside the FN Fal and Armalite AR-15 (later adopted as the M16), as a result there is a whole family of Toy Soldiers equipped with it, despite it's never being taken into service - ignoring what various combat-wombats have written on the wikipedia page devoted to it; I knew someone who worked with the troops at Warminster in the 50's, and well remember reading the Soldier Magazine article on the 'end game' and decision following the trials; which were won by the 7.62-chambered FN (licensed as the SLR) and got the story from the horses mouth as it were.

As toy soldiers go these are really quite common, so I apologise for the poor quality of my sample, but as you know I'm relatively new to collecting the larger scales and will 'upgrade' over time! Much copied in smaller scales by the industrious of Hong Kong, they will be covered here one day...promise!

60mm with helmets, the radio operator from this set has been pirated as often as the 54mm set (and the 8th Army) but the other five haven't been. Again the insets below show both base types, colour variations and the moulding variance of the kneeling firing figure, who appears to have an M1 carbine/Ruger Mini 14! The other two rifle-equipped troops have FN/SLR's while the 'Tommy-gunner' seems to have a grease-gun?

The 60mm range with beret could also come with a US style MI helmet, which looks OK on the flamethrower, but doesn't go very well with the '58 Pattern webbing of the other figures! The plug-in heads bring to mind a small range of similar figures from Cofalux, who could be Para's, FFL or regular infantry with a head swap, one wonders which set came first? I only have these three, I think there are 8 poses? One is on evilBay at the moment but it's not matched - colour-wise - head to body.

The Blue figures are meant to be RAF Regiment (who secure and guard airfields) and were going to be more prominent as the Hawker Harrier came into service...they could - of course - be used as enemy, and lose - badly...bloody 'Crab Air'; not real soldiers! Having worn this garb daily in the late 1980's I can assure you the kidney pouches of the kneeling guy are too far apart, but the webbing is otherwise very accurate, for 'skeleton order' - lacking all the extra pouches we tended to add, water bottles etc...

L is for Let's hear it for Lidl

2011-12-16T01:00:00.007Z

Not quite as cool as jelly Daleks, but getting there, and they compensate by being tastier than any Dalek!! From the current Lidl's Advent calender, and to celebrate the news that Lidl and Aldi have moved ahead of M&S in food sales!

Santa Clause, Clown and Snowman, edible 'flats'...nuff said. More free advertising, I don't know whats wrong with me...must be something in the food!

News Views Etc...New book...sort of?

2011-12-15T02:23:00.006Z

Well, you have two choices, and under capitalism 'choice is good' (like four legs, or is it two?), you can go to WHSmith and pay £19.99 or thereabouts - maybe you have a something% off voucher from you last visit, they seem to be giving them away like sweeties at a kids party, in fact they'll give you a voucher even if you only buy sweeties!

Or you can go to The Works and pay £6.99? As the previous title in this series of almost identical tomes was also remaindered to The Works, I held on and er...didn't go to 'Smiths' whom I'd happily see bankrupt tomorrow!

At seven smackeroonies it's worth it for the new photographs, there's not much else new in it! However also at The Works are some tins covered in Airfix and Hornby Logos, I think they contain cards or something, one had Spitfire artwork and the other the Evening Star (I think), some licensing thing that didn't grab me at all, but some Heller/Humbrol/Hornby addicts somewhere might want one of each for the downstairs loo.

What with clip-together puzzle tanks, lead figures and a constant stream of HK/China dinosaurs, construction workers, farm, zoo and emergency personnel The Works has had better pickings this year than either the pound shop or poundstreacher!!

I have not been paid for this blatant advert!!! And yes; I've photographed it on wet, gravelly, concrete, and no; I'd not be found using a similar 'studio' setting for the rest of my library!

Z is for Zang - Zang for Timpo

2011-12-14T19:26:00.005Z

That's the last of the Lines/Triang/Minimodels and Household Cavalry for now, I actually found the Corgi-Mettoy box today pottering about in the storage unit, but Spot-On have their own box and it's buried somewhere, so Tommy-spot will have to wait - probably a year or two, in the meantime here are the Zang composition as promised the other day, and I'll start on large scale modern British troops in the next few days.

The Civilians - as far as I know I'm missing two; the third mechanic from the set that included the pair to the left in the photograph above and a Chauffeur, who can be seen on the Timpo solids site to which there is a link on the right of this page or go here for the pic; http://www.timpo-solids.com/solids4sammelgbiete.htm I had the chance of one of them years ago at one of the old PTS auctions, which I failed to bid-on (it went unsold!).

There is also a question mark over the New York cop, as he seems to be of a higher sculpting quality, although it's the same pumice mix, and Adrien over at Mercator Trading thinks there may have been an American police car in the old Timpo slush-cast car range, which is where these figures originate?

All 35/40mm to go with 1:43'ish cars, although the kneeling mechanic will be 8 foot tall if he stands up!

The military figures known to exist with the exception of...again the Timpo link above gives a helmeted version of the WWII Infantryman I have yet to locate. As with the civil figures these were all made by Zang for Timpo in the late 1940's/early 1950's - probably before they (Zang) were working with Britains. Makes you wonder what input Zang had to early Timpo polyethylene production...perhaps that whole family of Britains Household Cavalry and clones can be traced back to the Timpo hollow-cast with his orange jacket!?

The small pilot is 20mm and came with the lead Flying Fortress, the Highlander 35mm and suspected to be a whiskey mascot/givaway, while the rest are around 54mm. Thanks to Paul Morhead for the Highlander, John Begg for the grey (German?) pilot and Adrien Little for the other 54mm pilot.

G is for Gold; Spanish Gold!

2011-12-14T11:59:00.009Z

I first came across these at a Plastic Warrior show in Richmond about 15 years ago, only three poses, but quite a bunch of them, with the base studs removed, and a quick factory paint job I imagine (with the benefit of hindsight) that they had been sourced from an outpainter or factory worker in the Portsmouth/Southhampton area and used as a war gaming unit.

The three to the left and the contents of the bag are that original find along with a few more that have turned up over the years. I have thinned the bag out with the odd swap from time to time.

Having found them and had the odd older collector say things like "I think they're from a game called Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe or something like that", I turned to Board Game Geek and searched endlessly for the game, trying (in no particular order), Treasure, Island, Robinson, Swiss Family, Pirates, Tall Ships, Sailing, Naval, Navy, Armada, Raleigh, Drake, Nelson, Trafalgar, Sea Battle, Buccaneer, Privateer, Caribbean, Smugglers, Conquistadors...and anything else I could think of! No luck, nada, ziltch, not a dickey-bird of a clue...tons of games though; umpteen versions of Buccaneer (which a lot of people thought aught to be it - it has no figures), all sorts of ship related stuff, more versions of Battleships by more companies than you can shake a big stick at, but no game with the pesky figures in it...

By this time I had obtained the various sample saved for posterity by Brian Knight and/or David Pomeroy, and this shot shows them laid out in no particular order,

The top two rows were one sample bag, with all poses in both colours, the next three rows were each a different sample, middle row have been reversed so that you can see the pin-release marks prominent on their backs (click next to the image to get it up in a separate page), these had been dealt with by the time the figures were issued with the game.

The next row had a pose missing and a duplicate, will never know the significance of that! A final all red sample rounds them off. Both the all red sets are two shades of red and they were obviously playing with what shade to use, they went with the lighter shade in the end.

The content of the bag from a game, also from Mr Pomeroy or Brian. A few years ago I carefully unbent the staples, photographed them with my old 35mm camera, and re-bagged them, the two images to the right are the result.

The game when I eventually found it was Spanish Gold by Triang! There should be some little ships and a dice cup as well, but they probably have their own place in the box.

With the heavy bases these go well with the Revell Conquistadors and not badly with the smaller Merten and Preiser HO Renaissance figures - if you sand the bases down. The two shipmates/men-at-arms (bare legs) also make bloody good Scots insurgents! They can also all be used in ECW war games.

S is for Star Buy

2011-12-14T00:09:00.004Z

What with all the moving and legal crap, lying baronets and two-faced housekeepers this Autumn, I never managed to do a report on the Birmingham show, and while I have some shots they are on the PC which is very unplugged at the moment. However this chap got left on the side of something and ended up in the car touring the watering-holes with me so here he is...

These are not that popular with collectors, gangly, late production, garish colours, inaccurate historical detailing, blah, blah, blah...I - being typically difficult - have always liked them and even when I was collecting small-scale only, delighted in sorting my mates out for him. They are easy to find; Cherilea late version knights that is - this guy however had not been seen before by anyone I showed him to at the Birmingham show.

Or at least the dragon banner has not been seen before, the rest is quite common, and I can't check my back issues of Plastic Warrior to see if Matt Thier covered it in his Cherilea knights round-up. The shield is not as common as the geometric ones either, thinking about it?

The beauty is he was only a couple of quid or so and with me being a tight-arsed skinflint a bargain methinks? Now; if only I can find a shield with a dragon on it....

H is for Havent

2011-12-13T18:30:00.014Z

The Minimodels plant in Havent, near Portsmouth is responsible for lots of the figures that turn up in mixed lots of small scale and the hand of Stadden with his angular folds is everywhere in the sculpting. These are mostly more game playing pieces, but there is a Spot-On 'Tommy-spot' figure or two as well.

Some of these and some of the Wild West and - forthcoming - Spanish Gold figures were saved from the factory by either Brian Knight (artist on the Lettraset/Patterson Blick rub-down booklets) or David Pomeroy, all came into my possession before I met Brian, so I don't know who saved what, but thanks to both of them for having the foresight.

Triang's game Helmsman provides the little yacht with a plug-on base at the back, the divers are from the 'Underwater Battle from Thunderball' James Bond tie-in board game, with all air-tanks missing, the painted one is from an actual game, the other two are factory samples.

The 40mm Guardsman is from the Rolls Royce by Spot-On, one of six on the grey plinth-like bases the Tommy-spot figures had. The two cartoon characters obviously come from a board game aimed at younger players, I don't recognise the characters, not do I know from where in Lines/Mettoy/Corgi or Triang/Spot-on/Pedigreee empire the game will be found.

The other figure with the similar base I did find in a Corgi (or Spot-on?) catalogue and I had his name and everything, but it's lost in the depths of a shipping container!! Although he looks like a Diddy-man, he was in fact a mascot for whichever catalogue or product it was? His sloppy shoe-painting points to an outpainters guide/master rather than an issued piece [See comments for all three names].

The Sweeny was a popular TV series with a spin-off movie or two here in the UK, and these are from the Omnia game of the same name. Taken from the Tommy-spot range, but given sensible bases there are two each of the photographed figures in a full set.

Unpainted Subbuteo, possibly just undecorated samples, but might be from a board game, the player on a conventional base pointing to the latter, but there was a 'sub' warming up in one of the accessory sets I think?

It's almost certainly through Waddington's and their connection to Subbuteo and the factory at Tunbridge Wells that Stadden came to do all this sculpting for the Havent works. He was already known for his sports trophy figures as much as his military work.

Couple of scans of old film-camera shots I took years ago giving a different angle to the Triang/Almark figures I posted the other night.

Next I'll look at the Spaniards...

B is for Britains...and friends

2011-12-12T20:30:00.011Z

Well, this is the rest of the contents of my less than comprehensive Household Cavalry box, and consists in the main of Britains and their clones, one of the downsides of being THE household name for toy soldiers was that everyone else wanted a piece of their pie, a situation not helped by Britains then moving their production to Hong Kong, a place where if you give a man a Lee Enfield at breakfast, he'll give you an identical working copy by teatime!

Britains Herald, Top shot, left to right; UK black-based x2 (made by Zang but marked Herald?); a green-based one from after Britians had bought-in Zang/Herald; six HK for Britains with earlier and later (deeper) bases, and two with integral bases which predate the six separate-based ones.

Below them are some of the mounted from the range, they are a mess and I don't know which figure belongs on which horse, whether the brown horse is correct, whether any of the saddles are matched-up with the right rider....all I can say is that the horse far left is a UK made piece with the Herald mark, the rest are 'HONG KONG FOR BRITAINS'

Top are the Eyes Right Household cavalry, again I don't know if the saddles are correctly matched. Third from the left is the band-master from the Lifeguards mounted band and slightly rarer as he only came in the larger boxed or trayed 'full band' sets. However Cavendish Miniatures had sell-through on the remaining stock of a lot of this stuff and may have had tons of bandmasters for all I know!...?

Below we go from the sublime to the ridiculous, an early Zang for Herald mounted Horseguard (incidentally my favorites over the Royals) with next to him two of the New Metal figures that were just coming into production when my brother and I were turning to other things, Camel, Guinness, and girls if I recall correctly - I don't know what the horse looks like but from the vicious arse-spike on the rider I'm guessing the horse was metal too?

The inset shows how the little plastic sword has blown away a scab of hip, on a figure getting so brittle I was afraid to photograph him at all! The horse is a two-part hollow moulding with glued on saddle, probably all made of cellulose acetate, but the lack of shrinkage suggests some form of early styrene polymer.

Near clones and true clones; Top left is the Timpo lifeguard from the touristy range of little boxed sets they did, his jacket is always a bit too orange in the scarlet. Next to him we have the common HK copies in blue and red, I've never seen the trumpeter in this range, but he may be out there. They also copied the Herald khaki infantryman standing at attention, and the old hollow cast RAF regiment/marching with rifle, along with all the highlanders.

The figure on the end - very play worn - is a bit of a mystery, he has some of the hallmarks of the Speedwell Japanese officer (which could make him Kentoys or Trojan...VP, Paramount or...) and I'm hoping some expert like the 65th follower of this blog might be able to help identify him! Thanks for 'following' Brian - any ideas?

The bottom row are equally lost on me although I feel I should know, they aren't Gem, I have them somewhere else, likewise they're not Charbens or Cavendish for the same reason. They seem to be early British although very shiny-glossy, and have no HK marks, yet the obvious missing make (Hilco) usually mark at least some of a sample? Again any of the five in the previous paragraph could be in the frame.

M is for Marketing

2011-12-12T20:22:00.011Z

Continuing with the whole Triang/Lines thing down at Minimodels Havent, with Mr. Stadden in tow, we come to these chaps, four poses in approximately 25mm from the master sculptor, made to go a long, long way by the fellows in the marketing department.

All the variants in my collection, with the bog-standard shop-stock boxes. The Orange-brown ones were Culpitts, as we had them as kids, and I remember getting them for a birthday cake in little packs of two - foot or mounted.

On another occasion we hunted for them in a garden as 'Party Favours', although I don't think they were called that then...just prizes or presents? That lot would have been Minimodels from Webb's newsagent in the - then - tiny village of Hartley Wintney (home of Denzil Skinner, Hart Models and another guy who's name escapes me!)

They are such fine castings that getting them - the Indians particularly - intact is a bit of a miracle, and with plastic colour and paint versions it'll be a while before I stop hunting them down!

As well as shop-stock and a supply to Culpitts, they were issues in at least three board games, two by Triang (Warpath and Wild West Checkers) and one by Omnia (Geronimo) and these are various bits from some of them.

Top right sees the Wild West Checkers [Draughts] figures with the same type of spigot mounting as the Battle Game variants of the Almark British Infantry, allowing you to remove one to make 'king'.

Below that is the famous wagon 'square' used by trekking pioneers heading West, to protect themselves from herds of wandering wildeersloth, all that rubbish about wagon 'circles' being white-mans propaganda. Taken from the Warpath game which seems to bear some similarities (in game play) with Waddington's 'Battle of the Little Big Horn'.

Bottom left are figures from Omnia's Geronimo game, along with an unpainted sample of a Culpitts figure. Above them are some factory samples either colour tests for the Checkers game, or a set for another - 4th - game entirely?

They also seem to have appeared in two boxed sets, the contents of the other being unknown. James Opie is to thank for saving this one; 'Ambush at Yellow Rock', for posterity.

The Omnia game pieces complete, scanned from old 35mm images I took for Plastic Warrior. This is a game with an unusual mechanism as you have to build a 'ladder' of collected cards, to get to the top of the box tray and secure Geronimo's treasure before the other three players.

News Views Etc...Magazine Articles

2011-12-12T11:51:00.006Z

W is for 'Well, Fancy That'...as Private Eye would say!!

Actually I'm sure it's a complete coincidence or a bit of synergy, rather than the close relationship between my posting and an appearance elsewhere, that the article below has appeared so soon after I covered them, not that I haven't influenced some other's output; Subbuteo cricketers and Midgetoy space cars springing to mind - as fast as they follow my posting them here!

As a further act of synergy a reader in NZ brought the article to my attention the same day the issue was issued over here, so it's nice to know that a magazine gets launched at the same time everywhere!!

If you enjoyed my 7 or so posts on the mini-trucks based on the Dinky 1-Ton Humber, you really must get a copy of this months Model Collector magazine, where Nigel Robertshaw gives them equally full coverage, but very much from a civilian point of view, and including the metal I omitted. Some of the body types are new to me, including lovely construction vehicles and tanker-trucks, while it was interesting to see my childhood Christmas cracker fire engine ladder-truck carded with a pumper, cherry-picker and others.

He also has a decent shot of a restored radio-shack bodied Humber with expanding side-canopy. Lovely shots of both boxed and carded HK examples and civilian versions in the larger sizes from both NFIC and Sam Toys made this a fascinating read for me and I'd already bored myself to death with the things!!!

The real gem in the article is a Military 'Services M.T. Garage' which he suggests is HK, but I suspect is Kleeware, it's a dead-ringer for their civilian 'Service Station' with the three little ex-Pyro cars. Do try to check it out, these magazines so rarely cover plastics; anything we can do to encourage them...

Also; and at the risk of being accused of blowing my own trumpet, some of you may have noticed that I'm 'Letter of the Month' in the January issue of Toy Soldier and Model Figure (TSMF), only by dint of happenstance, however; the first I knew of it was the arrival in the post without warning of an American Minuteman - British colonial insurgency, not stray ICMB! - from W. Britain.

As someone with the level of cynicism that never quite believes media announced prizes ever get given (why are they aways won by an elderly couple from oop'north?), it was nice to see they actually do! Although he's already been lost in the move, it's a temporary 'lost' to a TBS-box [To Be Sorted], and when he turns up again I'll blog him with some Britains and Marx, as I have so few 'New Metal' figures in the collection - in any size!! So - many thanks to the Editor; Stuart A. Hessney for the award.

My insurgency 'dig' aside; there's also an irony in that the rump of Britains, a British company who made - among other things - the lovely Eyes Right AWI are now wholly American owned - the very people who broke away from their governance at Westminster - now making Revolutionary War figures...history huh? Makes you glad not to be French...

Right; that's everyone plugged or insulted! Back to toy soldier blogging!....

News Views Etc...

2011-12-11T02:15:00.002Z

Well, I said I'd be getting thematic and the two posts below (Household Cavalry and Almark) are from the HC box and the Triang/Minimodels/Omnia box, so more of the two subjects in the coming days as I've dragged them both back from the storage unit, I've also got the Zang box for Paul Morehead over at Plastic Warrior to look at so I'll be putting some quality composition on here in a day or five.

I also updated the Almark and Silverlit text-only imports I loaded on here the other night, and added a text only on Armtec as it ties in vaguely with Almark - immediately below.

I've updated all links to other blogs in and out, as Blogger seems to have lost half my links to other people back in the summer when they were 'improving' things. I've also dropped the AdSense, complete waste of time with traffic at the levels you get on a collectors site, and makes the page slow to load for anyone without Broadband, anyone on dial-up, anyone with a mobile-Internet dongle etc...The Internet - like 'Western' Civilization - seems to be coming to a slow halt!!!

As stated the other night, the Manufacturers A-Z blog (which never really got started) is no more and all the relevant entries are now here with their tags in the index, and a more general cross-reference list is starting to take shape at the bottom of the page, this will not just be cross references here, but all the cross references you might come across in the hobby, helping with research, google searches etc...it will take a while to get to a useful size though, so be patient please - I'll 'News, Views' when it gets major additions/updates.

If anyone can think of anything else I can do to improve the blog let me know, I'm 41% into my Image allowance, so you've got about 4 more years of my pontificating to look forwards too!!!

Cheers - H

A is for Armtec

2011-12-10T23:19:00.007Z

Armtec, 5 Belinda Lane, Enfield, Connecticut 06082, USA
Polystyrene kit accessories/detailing parts lead to marketing deals with Crest and Canuck, resulting in a nice range of subjects available by the time their illustrated catalogue was published in 1976, two updates would also be issued and the three when combined with the early advertisements have lead to a bit of confusion re; set numbering! Carried by Almark and laterly Micro-mould in the UK.
Product listing
Accessories 1:76
Set № 1 - German Machine Guns
Set № 2 - 10 Jerry Cans
Set № 3 - American AFV Tools
Set № 4 - German Pioneer Tools
Set № 5 - German Spare track Section (swaps numbers with 7 in the 1976 catalogue)
Set № 6 - German Vehicle Breakdown Equipment (also; OVM – Outer Vehicle Material!)
Set № 7 - 70 Scale Feet Length - Tow Chain (swaps numbers with 5 in the 1976 catalogue)
Set 8 - Hetzer Road Wheels
Set 9 - 15 Sandbags
Set 10 - British Tools and 7 gas-tins ( ‘Flimsies’?)
Accessories 1:35
Set № 8 - 35 Scale Feet - Tow Chain (renumbered 1976; Set 1)
Set № 9 - German Machine Guns MG34 (renumbered 1976; Set 2)
Set № 10 - German Machine Guns MG42 (renumbered 1976; Set 3)
Set 4 - Tow Cables (72 scale feet)
Set 5 - German 81mm Mortar
Set 6 - British Weapons (Bren gun and Boys A/T-rifle)
Accessories 1:48
Set 1 - Tow Chain
Set 2 - German Gas Cans
Accessories 1:72
Set 1 - US .50cal. Aircraft Type and Accessories (also; AA1, became; Set AC-1)
Set AC-2 - F101-B Conversion Kit (canopy, nose extension, tailpipe extension and rockets)
Vac-formed conversion kits
Conv.1 - Cast Hull and Sand-shields for Airfix Lee/Grant
Conv.2 - Cast Hull and Sand-shields for Airfix Sherman
Crest Reproductions - Artillery (“manufactured exclusively for Armtec”, metal)
Set#1 - German 105mm Howitzer
Set#2 - German 150mm Nebelwefer
Set#3 - German Pak.40 Anti-tank Gun
Set#4 - German 8.8cm Pak.43/41 Anti-tank Gun
Set#5 - British 17lbr. Anti-tank Gun
Set#6 - German 7.5cm Pak.36 Anti-tank Gun
Set#7 - German 3.7cm Pak.36 Anti-tank Gun
Crest Reproductions - Artillery (“manufactured exclusively for Armtec”, metal)
Set M-1 - German 20mm Solothurn
Set M-2 - US .30cal. Air-cooled Machine Gun
Set M-3 - US .30cal. Water-cooled Machine Gun
Set M-4 - US 75mm Recoilless Rifle
Set M-5 - German 2.8cm sPzB.41 Gerlich
Crest Reproductions - Vehicle kits (“manufactured exclusively for Armtec”, metal)
#A1 – Jagdpanzer 38t Hetzer 1:76
CT1 - Cast Hull Sherman Conversion (1:76)
CT2 - Cast Hull Lee Conversion (1:76)
CT3 - M4A1 Sand Shields (available for Sherman and Lee – probably the same as; Conv.1 & 2 above)
CT4
CT5
CT6
CT7
CT8 - L-33 Tankette
CT9 - L-35 Tankette
CT10
Figures
#FC1 - Boar War Highlander (using Airfix 1:32nd Napoleonic Highlander)
#FC2 - WWI Highlander (using Airfix 1:32nd Napoleonic Highlander)
#IT1 - Tank Crew Member (1:35th Italian tank crew)
#IT2 - Tank Crew Member (1:35th Italian tank crew)
Decals (transfers, by Canuck Decals)
D-1 - RCAF Sheet

WD is for War Department...

2011-12-10T20:02:00.009Z

...the precursor to the modern Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the title of the range of WWII figures Almark produced in part from ex-Minimodels plastics moulds and by returning to the original sculptor to expand the range with Germans (small scale) or fill gaps (54mm range) in metal.

Two sets of British Infantry were issued and two packaging types appeared, always sold on the sprue there was an 'infantry' sprue and a 'support weapons' sprue. Much anticipated and covered after release by Military Modelling, they appeared [1970/71?] several years after the Triang Battle Game [1968'ish] that had first featured them.

It must however be assumed that the idea was always for someone to market them, as the Set WD-2 sprue was never utilised for/in the earlier Battle Game? Maybe the Battle Game was dreamt-up for Christmas while they ironed out teething problems with the mould for the second set?

Poses and contents - Set WD-1 to the top left; WD-2 - top right. Below them are the Triang playing-pieces with their locating studs/spigots, and right at the bottom; a couple without helmet paint which probably came from an outworker somewhere in the Havent area, being bought at a car-boot sale on the A3 out of Portsmouth.

The helmet paint code was dealt with on the Battle Game post, but I'll repeat it here, green is troops, brown is engineer, red were the NCO's and white the Officer.

The latter [1972/3?] German 'foe' were available as 5 poses each of regular infantry (early war uniforms) or paratroops, sculpted by the same Charles C Stadden who had designed the plastic figures. Initially sold on the same (now sticky) vacuum-sealed cards as the plastic figures, they soon moved to the more common type of shop stock-box that Minifigs, Hinchliffe and others were using.

It has to be said; these knocked the socks off Airfix 1st version Germans and Combat Group, and probaly led directly to the Airfix 2nd versions being released a year or three later [1974-77'ish].

H is for Houshold Cavalry (Blues and Royals)

2011-12-10T19:25:00.008Z

It is I'm sure no coincidence that all three of the 60mm'ish sets of ceremonial foot figures of the British Army's Household Cavalry seem to be rather similar to each other. Produced by (alphabetically); Cherilea, Crescent and Marx - Swansea.

The fact that they mostly come in several variations of paint, plastic colour or plastic type means that with little effort and a bit of judicious feeBaying you could get quite a display of these together in a short time should you wish?

Top we have 'Marching with Sword' and from left to right they are;

Marx, white hard polystyrene plastic, possibly a repaint.
Marx, cream, polyethylene, factory painted
Cherilea, white with green base
Cherilea, red with black base
Crescent

Note the mould variation in the two Cherilea figures shown in the swords and the breast-plate straps. The middle photo (again from the left) is showing 'Standing with Sword';

Marx, cream, polyethylene, factory painted
Cherilea, red with black base
Cherilea, red with green base
Marx Nylon/Polypropylene (?) re-issue (Marksmen?)

Note - again - how the two Cherilea's are different heights/moulds. Finally we have trumpeters, three from Marx, all cream ethylene and a Crescent.

This guy is quite problematical; he appears at first glance to be a factory painted Marx figure, but closer inspection reveals that A) he's made of the same nylon'ish plastic as the re-issue above and B) the painting is 'clean' yet of poor quality, so he would seem to be a more recent tourist item sourced from China, or a re-issue painted by someone who (to be kind...) had little experience of such painting?!!

Finally we have the other member of the Household Cavalry produced by Cherilea, in the chunky-based mounted range,half his sword is sadly still in a Russian gunner somewhere in the Crimea!

These come in various plastic colours and paint schemes, but I've never seen one painted as a Horse Guard ('Blues'), as indeed I've never seen the Crescent figures as anything other than 'Royals', excepting those re-painted by their owners.

B is for Blitzkrieg

2011-12-09T22:05:00.011Z

It is one of those perennial questions, often leading to heated debate; Why the interest in German 'Stuff', if you add SS/NAZI party organisations to the mix it gets even more heated, but ever since I have been reading or buying modelling or wargame magazines there have been regular debates on the subject.

And it can't be argued that when it comes to AFV's or Figures (the formula doesn't carry over to warships or 'planes), the manufacturers will tell you the Germans out-sell the rest of the combatants 3 or 4 to one. My brother's Detail was no more an exception than my Airfix kit stash; as could be seen from the box shot the other day, and here they finally are...

Sorting them out lead to 4 piles; Filthy with no stickers, dirty with stickers, needing a wipe and on the right - almost as good as the day they left the factory.

I have read all sorts of complicated suggestions for cleaning vinyl/PVC, and have learnt the hard way not to use paint-stripper (they just blister), there is no great science to it and I've just used a dollop of shower-gel in a bit of warm water, soak for a minute and clean with an old toothbrush.

Before (above) and after (below), they clean up very well, and while the 'wash' finish on the early British Infantry, Wild West and 7th Cavalry did tend to wear-off, the solid colour used here was itself a kind of vinyl, so is pretty much 'welded' in place, and a quick clean brings them right back.

A few years ago Andy Harfield actually sourced some vinyl paints, but there was a poor take-up at the time (I believe) and he only carried them for a year or three. I once did some work for a corporate entertainments company and we used large tins of the stuff to make 'It's a Knockout' (Jeux sans Frontières [JSF]) type structures and I can only tell you that it runs at two to three times the cost of equivalent emulsions or oil-based household glosses.

There are only one or two decent arm-swaps in this set, while my Brother converted (through necessity) a broken MP38/40 guy into a Mauser armed NCO or dismounted AFV crewman? The butt being explained by the fact that a clip-on rifle type stock was available for the Mauser!

I realised while cleaning them that the officer is the only figure from the Afrika Korps set repainted by Bro to fit in with his early-war temperate theatre guys, while one of the missing helmet-stickers turned-up on the rear stock...where I have a vague memory of placing it many years ago!

Notice also how our mother (My MUM!), ever resourceful - has taken the sidecar in for a service and sent it out with an aerodynamic wheel hub...she'd used a domed upholstery pin to mend the broken axle! I can report that it still works perfectly and is neither stiff nor loose, 30-odd years later.

His whole collection putting in an attack supported by an emplaced gun and the Sd.Kfz 215 from Dinky Toys. Between those shots is a pose line-up, missing being only the radio operator from the 2nd pose issue. Broken mortar's teams providing crews for both the AFV and the Britains artillery piece.

The third figures along (in both rows) are often described as having MG34's or 42's (even the wikipedia entry for Detail makes the mistake) when it is in fact - in both cases - a close representation of the Panzerbüchse 39 (PzB 39) anti-tank rifle, why Britains would produce such an obscure weapon (for a toy figure to be equiped with) not just once but twice is a bit of a mystery, although with the early-war uniforms, such weapons would have been common at company if not platoon level.