C is for Cofalu

Well, the great all-scale collection begins, with strangely a French company, only because I already had the 30 and 45mm figures, and won a couple of French eBay lots in recent weeks.

Garratt with his usual love of plastics describes them as "Poor quality and obviously derivative.", and it's true that they follow a style common to a bunch of French minor makes, and if the carded Wild West set I bought the other day is Cofalu when I get a better look at it, they are mostly Lone*Star or Jean copies. But the military figures in this post resemble Starlux if anything?

The full range of their output is ably demonstrated in this first picture, a 30mm figure rubs shoulders with two closer to 65mm. He is ethylene, they have ethylene uppers (cowboy), nylon type legs (both) and over moulded heads, he is solid, the others are a form of simple (few parts) swoppit, a style also favoured in Italy.

The six combat poses, the grenade thrower on the right is a hard styrene plastic and I suspect an early moulding. The 54mm range is a bit small, closer to 50mm. The ethylene 30mm's were apparently given away as a food premium.

The basic range of poses was used throughout the Cofalu ranges, and here we see Foreign Legion (50mm'ish) and Marines (closer to 60mm) sharing pose with each other and the previous 'combat' set.

A single cowboy completes this photo, suggesting there are many more to find, and Indians too!

I think these represent Gendarme/CRS from the 1950's/early 60's, with the metallic blue ones being the earlier with factory paint, the green ones being a later attempt by Cofalu to turn them into soldiers (the CRS being very unpopular in France in the 1970's [Like the SPG in London around the same time]).