F is for Fake Fops and Fainting Femmes!

Except they are not all fake, some are the Merten originals, but I think we did look at the originals before, so I've only shot a couple of the sets to compare with the interlopers from Hong Kong.

I took these a while ago, and they were sat in Picasa waiting for me to do something with when I picked up a few more the other day at the PW show, so now a post presented itself as being a bit more complete.

I always thought I was missing quite a few of the HK copies (a good 12mm larger at around 30-mil.), but it looks like the HK pirate took three of the adult couples from both sets as their Cake Decoration set. I don't know if Merten themselves did O-gauge versions - they may have been in the limited metal range?

The two sets I picked-up the other day, the one on the left had been mucked-about with, re-sealed in a too-small bag, with a shiny new staple and no parasol, so I opened it and added the contents to my loose sample!

I only have 'carded' in the tag-list, but these were sold like this from larger displays/dispensers, with no separate header or backing card.

The six poses; which I suspect are all of them now. There is some variation on decoration within the whole sample, but not stuff worth noting as it was probably dependent on the paint available on the day and/or the fancy of the painter/s.

I also managed to wiggle the parasol out of the sealed bag, get the photo' done and wiggle it back in without damaging the bag or the parasol!

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This is a bit of a small-scale Blog-fest today, as I have also posted the first article on the new Giant or What? Blog, and added what will probably be the last addition to the small-scale khaki infantry page, which may well see some radical surgery at some point, but may still get the missing entries as a simplified guide, with the fuller stuff transferred to the HK Blog as separate entries?