News Views etc...31st Plastic Warrior Show, Cavendish, 99p Stores, Dunkerque, Shakespeare, New Blog

Plastic Warrior Magazine's Annual Toy Soldier Show
Two weeks this coming Saturday!

 

In its 31st Year, I know it's not exactly a 90th Marm, but it hasn't had the Royal physicians behind it at every turn! Same maps as last year; same blurb, same venue!

You can't miss it, it's the big inter-war style architecture pub on the bend just before (northbound) or after (southbound) the NEC DHL Harlequins ground.

There is FREE parking and a Premier Inn on the same site for anyone who wants to stay the night with bar, coffee, meals & snacks all day.

Details of the venue can be found here;

Winning Post

This is [still] not so accurate, I'll try [to remember] to sort it out with a better one, basically the venue is accessible from the A3-A316 main road into/out-of London heading West-south-west, through the Front car park there is also vehicle and pedestrian access from Percy Road.

For people coming by public transport; Whitton Station is 3 minutes walk and gets 8 trains an hour from Waterloo.

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99p Stores

This retailer, which I only 'discovered' as a source of cheepie figures about three years ago, has now been taken-over by Poundland, and the last store conversions (around here) were completed in early April, with both Basingstoke and Farnborough having two Poundlands (in the latter case: within sight of each other!), presumably with the demise of more household or high-street 'names' it's Poundland or nothing!

I will be doing a few posts on my last acquisitions from 99p - they reduced all their toys to 64p from Christmas until store-closure. Whether Poundland will re-brand the remaining stock or clear it elsewhere remains to be seen.

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Cavendish

John Breckon  emailed my earlier this month with some very interesting details on the origins of the Cavendish Nazi bands, his message in full;

"I have been reading your blog with interest regarding the above models and in it you write that you did not know where they originated.  I believe I may be able to help.  During the 1980's somebody commissioned QT (Quality Treasure) Models of Bridlington East Yorkshire to manufacture the SS figures.  I was able to see the casting in process and was instantly smitten by these figures, leading me to purchase unpainted figures for £5 approximately by post from the business CJB Models of Hull this appears to have been a home business as they operated from Kirkella and Willerby.

Later when I came into contact again with these figures Cavendish Miniatures had control of them.

It may be of some interest to you having googled CJB Models an article about C J Burkill appeared saying how this engineer made superb model vehicles having seen the figures that accompany these models I am in no doubt that this man sculpted the masters for the Third Reich Figures.

QT Models still exists in the form of Museum Miniatures of Driffield.

Questions

Do you know if it is possible to still obtain any of these Third Reich figures?
Do you know who has the masters and the moulds now?
Do you have access to any pictures of any of the models especially the bands?

I hope this information is helpful in some way and if you do know the answers to the questions I would be grateful of a reply"

My reply was somewhat sparse I'm afraid;

" Very useful...I can't help with your three questions, I will try the blog but with such a paucity of replies to such requests in the past (700 visitors a day but few of them admitting it...it's the Asperger's!) it may be easier to post something in the metal section of Treefrog Treasures forum?"

If anyone CAN help John with either the whereabouts of available figures, or pictures of the same, you can contact me and I'll put you in touch. Or check Treefrog's pages to see if a shout goes out there?

I know there is an image on one of the late Cavendish flyers, but mine is in storage so if anyone can scan that it would be a help. It is a two-sided full colour A5 sheet with the German figures on one side and the Dickensian vinyl-resin on the other, if memory serves?

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Dunkirk Spirit

I've also had contact with an ex-pat in New York; Brian Berke, who has sent some lovely pictures of an operation Dynamo diorama he made which will appear as a guest post, when I've got the images right, at the moment the Library computers are only allowing me to save them as pixellated .png's despite them clearly being sent as .jpg's so this is just a taste of things to come.

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New Blog?

I've been trying to sort the Hong Kong horses out for the page I planned (and have announced) and realised it's too big a job for one page, also the Khaki page hasn't advanced at the speed I had hoped, and will also end-up unreasonably long for slower devices to load so will be starting a blog just for the small-scale HK and Giant/Giant-like stuff, which will probably get the Khaki and Roman pages (above) broken down into posts. The circus sets, guards and things can go there as well and the tag list will allow for full cross referencing with Airfix, Britains &etc. for finding specific poses or copies.

It'll be a while though.

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Wavelance

PW's show and 'er Madge aren't the only things of age around here, some bloke who may or may not have been the playwrite some people think he was (and others: don't!) has been celebrated - in his absence - over the weekend...

...here at the library there was a Paper Toys free hand-out which would make an excellent 10 or 15 millimetre war-games accessory...it was downloaded from here, now also in the paper links list.