About Me

My photo
No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Friday, February 13, 2015

L is for Lone*Star's Liveried Lads

I have a soft-spot for these, we had a few in the figure toy-box when we were kids, bits of them reappear in the Giant oeuvre of small-scale Hong Kong piracies. also; when I was working for a toy dealer a few years ago I came to appreciate how many paint and plastic-colour variations there are.

I got a bunch in the big purchase a while ago,  the odd one has come in with bits and bobs and I  have Mike Melnyk to thank for the rest. We have touched on them before and the 'King' figure has been looked at in detail, next to the French copies.

So, on the top row we have 'simple' or reduced paint versions, these were late Lone Star and tend to get a wash (heliotrope pink one), or all over colour (black one) with a few highlights...the middle one's just 'been shown' a paint brush!

Middle row are early re-issues by Marlborough? Or Dorset? Or both? Then the figures found their way to Toyway who sold them in Gold (bottom row) under Timpo branding, with or without the stab-and-hope silver 'highlights'!

The 'High' period - proper paint schemes. Most of the figure-production was in a gun-metal/silver plastic with a painted base-coat of silver or gold armour, but other plastic colours were used (bottom rank). I wish I could get a tin of the metallic green used on the King figure, I've tried making it by adding olive to silver but it doesn't dry right!

Some fresh, clean, bright examples of the silver figures. The out-painters seem to have had a guidance sheet, but freedom to vary colours. The silver paint on these is nice and shiny. I can't believe I just wrote that line...this is becoming a rather banal post isn't it? They're self-explanatory, you know them...box ticked!

Like all early Lone Star these are getting quite brittle now and the spear-man on the right broke as I was putting them away...boo-hoo...hay-ho! Weird thing: No Archer? How can we celebrate Agincourt in October with no sturdy yeomen of the bow?

Variations on a theme - the last chap came-in the other day and is another plastic colour, but with poor paint. I'm not sure how many poses there should be - there are 8 poses in all, above - or if I have all of them? It's in the Plastic Warrior specials on LS, but mine are away at the moment, can anyone tell us?


Elsewhere on the blog;

Bagged from Cavendish
Fake Frenchies and More
The King (scroll to bottom)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very informative article.

Thank you.

Btw do you know how many different colours the King came in?

Hugh Walter said...

Not offhand Anon, but we know from Dorset/Toyway that it's a single runner tool, so he must come in every colour you find the other knights in so . . . Silver, Gold, off-gold, metallic green, white, pinkish-white, greyish white, purplish white, and . . . ? With the axe-version only in the early colours and the sword/Richard I in the later colours and re-issues?

Indeed, if you are to dedicate yourself to finding them all, you could tell us, through colours available, when the tool was changed and which colours lie either side of the change! Happy hunting!

H