R ist fur Rote Teufeler

Apologies for the German grammar!

I have one box with all the GI's in, and another box for everything else (non-German), and we are into that box now, although I have an article in the queue left over from the GI box, it's stuck in Piacasa while I faff-around wondering what to do with the images, not that it's that important, they're the Tim Mee/Proctor and Gamble figures and I may bin them for now!

So instead I present the Red Devils in all their finery courtesy of Timpo, fine purveyors of toy soldiery! These are the basic six poses of the first series and are relatively easy to obtain. Armed with the LMG, a Sten/Stirling type thing (with a magazine of about 95 rounds!) and the FN Fal/SLR.

Although these are the first type Para's they are - within the Timpo Swoppet WWII range - technically type II figures as the Americans and Germans had had an earlier cruder incarnation with moulded-on weapons.

These are a bit of a mystery, they are either sun-faded Para's or figures so rare no one has got round to mentioning them before this moment? I have tried to re-produce the effect by leaving a spare red-beret in a jar of bleach on the window-sill in direct sunlight for about 6 months, but with no luck, so for now I'm assuming an SAS test-shot? Although the one on the left has been given a set of late-production legs, they come from a collection that could be dated from the 1950's to the early 1970's - both in conversation with the seller and by the contents of the rest of the stuff that came with them.


Second type Para's (third generation WWII figures), these along with their helmeted brethren are subject to extreme brittleness and will get rarer and rarer in the years to come as they succumb to fiddlers, being dropped and the vagaries of a global postal system!

The stabbing guy usually comes with a pink head and the proviso that you assume he's wearing brown gloves, I've given him an American Indians head as the Para's have had black soldiers for as long as I can remember. Also he's gone back a ways by swapping his SLR for a Lee Enfield SMLE!! While the officer has been watching too many old movies..."You Doity Raaat!".

The working parachutist, as kids we would replace the plastic 'chute with a white hankie and Mum was forever taking the staple out of the back-pack, sorting out all the little shroud-lines and putting it all back together again! The parachutes come with concentric circles in - the illustrated - green or blue and both black (definite) and white (I think), possibly also red but I'm not convinced.

The same moulding was used on both the German and American paratroopers with late versions of the Germans having moulded-on headgear, while the Brits and Yanks stuck with the plug-in beret or helmet - truth be told I'm not sure Timpo ever issued him with a British helmet but as there were two in the lot I gave one a 'head-swap'!