G is for Gold Gargants and Great-'kin-shields

Possibly the worst version of Deetail knights came Blasting out of Britains' Hong Kong factory in 1986 (while I was off being a grown-up!...I totally missed these at the time), the Shield Knights, also known as the 'Gold' knights or 'Golden Shield' knights even though there was no gold involved with the shield or the shield-designs!

Chunky lumps of fully-armoured beefcake, or at least the foot figures were...

...and none chunkier than this chap, clearly on illegal anabolic steroids, the worn examples show that the underlying PVC could be a creamy white or flesh-pink. The shields were ridiculously large and they all had a plug-in black plastic sword hanging at the belt along with whichever of the standard weapons they had in their ring-hands.

The right-hand figure in these line-ups are the latter ones who get black helmets and 'panzer' grey mail highlights. They also lost the additional belt-hung sword.

The right-hand line-up is about the best figure of the six as far as anatomy goes and he had a nicely dynamic pose, based on one of the older silver knights.

Two more poses, again the latter issues to the right in each frame, both poses are also chunker-monks! The orange split-crested guy looks like he's wearing a nappy of some kind (early version) or cycling shorts (late version) - unknown member of the Village People?

The final pose and a shot of the various shield designs, the shields were poorly finished polyethylene mouldings. The lower image shows what the shield designs would look like if they missed the colour phase of the printing process, as the six were probably on one sheet, the others are likely to be out there waiting to be found with the blue artwork only?

Mounted figures - the majority were based on the pop-together figures (which will appear above in a day or two!), although some were based on the standard silver knights. The horses caparison got a little slit to take the lance/standard, and the earlier versions of the figures were adapted to take the giant shields and the waist sword.

Horses were limited to black or white and the standards (or pennants...or whatever!) followed the designs of the shields, but you didn't necessarily get two matching with each figure. Also - as the group shot shows - the pallet was limited for caparison colours as well.

Mercifully these had disappeared by the end the 1980's. I know - they're only toys...but these are rather tacky toys! Still it helps you to understand that not all the reasons for a company's demise can be put down to demographics or changing taste...sometimes low sales are a result of not following descent tastes!