B is for Best of British Bandsmen!

Over the next few weeks I will be trying to put up here as many of the guardsmen available as I can and hope to publish both company specific sets like tonight's and thematic posts on individual poses, or at least that's how it's supposed to work. First up - the reasonably easy to find Crescent Guards and Musicians and the Crescent-for-Kellogg's versions.

From left to right we have the unpainted Kellogg's, which were definitely given away in breakfast cereal, then a set marked Kellogg's but apparently painted to the Crescent scheme with black bases but with yellow instruments, followed by a similar set with silver instruments also marked Kellogg's, the final row shows the Crescent marked versions with gold paint and black bases and tucked away in an almost invisible fifth file is a Crescent tuba (?) player with an unpainted base.

These four main variants seem to show up all the time, so I don't know if there were a lot of fathers faithfully following painting instructions on the packet sides to the point where they all ended up the same all over the place, or whether Crescent used the mould with the wrong base-plug day-in day-out? Maybe there was a set of paints to send away for, or some were issed (in a foodstuff) painted before the modern approach to food hygine got off the ground? Whatever the truth; all four seem to be valid 'variants' for the purposes of collecting.

Also worth note - the plumes on the 'standard' paint Crescent figures are on the same side as the moulded-in plumes of the non-band figures shown below, while all the 'Kellogg's' (?) paint variants have the plume on the other side - thinking about that; perhaps the (inordinately large quantity of?) unused Kellogg's went on to some clearance house type outfit who did the painting...

The last two shots show a whole band in standard Crescent paint and a couple of lousy shots of the base marks - it is very hard to do macro-photography of red anything, especially shiny red plastic! The 'true' Crescent sets have smaller, smoother Bearskins, suggesting that the change from a Kellogg's base to a Crescent base came with a re-cutting of the mould?

A closer look at the five variants listed above, the unpainted base of the fourth (Crescent marked) figure is unusual, but apes the silver painted bandsmen with Kellogg's graphics. The trupmpet and trombone are the two most likely to suffer damage and I must thank Mike Melnyk for the examples shown today.

Crescent also produced a set of six ceremonial or 'fighting' Guardsmen, these were never issued with Kellogg's bases but I say that with a caveat I'll explain below. The upper shot shows the full set in the rarer (less common!) dark red in the 'standard' scheme.

Below are a few different types. On the left is the 'sandblasted' moulding, which due to it's usually haveing poor paint I'm placing as the early version with - next to him - a slightly 'redder' sand-blast with surprisingly good paint.

The next one is my 'caveat', you find really clean/paintless figures which look like they should be Kellogg's, but they are marked Crescent, can anyone over fifty'ish (!...I won't tell) remember if these non-band figures were issued by Kellogg's...or someone else...Peek Freans?

We then have the 'standard' in dark red plastic, another with a seemingly factory-painted green base (they do turn up occasionally so would appear to be genuine) followed by the guy in green 'trews' with a painted jacket. Again I have seen this paint style before once or twice in a dealers stock so it could be a Crescent 'thing', or just a common home-paint? If it was a company originating paint-job, the presumption has to be an experimental finish, perhaps for a Canadian or Danish market - I'm no expert on Guards uniforms but I know some of you are!?

Again; close-ups of the main differentials, from the left - Sandblasted, dark red, unpainted base (like the lone tuba player) in a pinkish shade of the common red and 'clean'. The 'Sandblast' finish/phenomina also exists with the Romans, Combat Infantry, Wild West and others, so was something to do with the production of the early moulds...some kind of sand-casting or mould cleaning?

The sandblasted one and the unpainted one both have thinner bayonets and no trigger/trigger-guard which is a bit odd? The sandy chap having the finest moulding, the pinkish guy being probably the worst.