P ici pour la Population Plastique!

One of the last photo-shoots I did before everything went into storage was to cover my small (and mostly small-scale) collection of Starlux. As I didn't know when I'd be using the PC again I put the shots on the 'S' dongle and forgot about them for a bit, then when I did Blog them a while ago, I forgot to transfer the civilians over to the Laptop, so; a bit late, but there you go!

These are actually from the 54mm range, and are even older shots, taken of John Begg's collection ages ago (2007) and archived. The upper shot shows various farm workers, while the lower shot shows how they differ from batch to batch and out-worker to out-worker!

John also has a wheelbarrow! My measly two are to the right, and compare the 35mm with the 54mm, and she is my only 54mm civil figure - unless you count a few damaged Cowboys & Indians, and a couple of RCMP from Samwise!

These are the earlier versions of the 35mm range, with the rounded bases (a rule that's true for the military figures too), and while four police in three poses might look like a decent sample, there was a shed-load of poses in the set and I've a fair way to go yet!

I think the chap in 'prison garb' is actually a railway worker? And the chap with the bucket is not a '69 student, but a bin-man! The girl waving the 'umbrella' is sometimes shown as being from the farm range, so I guess she's scaring crows off something, or yelling at Peter Rabitt?

The lower shot are few more recent acquisitions, and the guy shovelling is another older figure who's gone . . . sticky! He was with the firemen, and it may be that his red shirt reacted to the two failing firefighters, as he's otherwise OK and seems to be styrene.

We've looked at these before, but this lot came-in in May, and again from the earlier sets. Several of these are pre-styrene (upper picture), in a phenolic resin and two have gone sticky, so have to be kept in separate little bags, the middle lot are stable polystyrene and the lower shot compares two later ones (middle pair) with two phenolic ones (on the ends).

As well as leaching noxious fumes and depositing paint on things, they are slowly shrinking away to nothing, eventually they will crack, like some JIM's I have photographed.

More 35mm, old and new (chamfered-lozenge/oblong bases), with a carded set of road-workers and a few loose ones, a small group of mechanics, a cyclist and a bunch of circus workers, the damaged ones can be seen complete on the circus post.

Because I took these several years ago and can't remember why I shot these separately, I can only suppose that the ones on the right are HO, while the ones on the left are 35mm, however they may be the less common 40-mil, as I think the two standing figure's pose are to be seen in that size lower down? Gives us an excuse to revisit them when they come out of storage!

It's like the spiv in the spats and burgundy-trousers knows the Secret Service agents (or are they from the local crime boss?) are coming for him, but he's going to coolly enjoy his last drink, the waiter is bricking-it, waiting for it all to kick-off, then he'll dive under the table shouting "Not the face, oh god, not the face, anything but the face!"

The three unpainted 40mm's, presumably sold with/as/for die-casts (VReM or Solido?) or railway figures?

And a late set of unpainted HO farm workers, the bag seems to have been cut to take whole runners from various scales and is therefore far too-big for this set!

The whole sample of HO stuff, they are issued with or without bases (for fixing onto railway layouts) making them either 18 or 20mm! As you will have noticed, all poses in all scales are from the same 'set', and if you click on the Starlux tag, you'll find a line-up of military figures in all scales, and other comparison shots.

The boxes contain 12 based-figures, but the later (?) bags contain 6-based and 6-unbased.

While the civilians come in HO and 35mm, the standard 'small scale' military range are closer to 30mm for some reason, and with more having come in, we may look at them again in a while?

Also two animals which were added to the collection a few years ago, we have actually seen the elephant before, but I felt the giraffe needed someone to talk to in the bag; although they look like they don't get on!

A couple more additions to the collection are a 54mm Alien who looks a bit like the LP robot, and a small-scale Totem Pole which is a different design from the larger one, but clearly marked Starlux.