About Me

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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.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

F is for Follow-up - Supreme / SP Toys as Halsall



I said I'd probably get one, and I went back for it the other day. I only bought the one, as Brian hasn't replied to my reply to his comment - There are three left and I'm over there next Friday if you want me to get them, I can bring them to PW, Brian?

Better shot of the carded set and a close-up of the two more anachronistic poses in the set, both actually taken from the Greek set, not the over-sized medievals. In the Greek sets they get slide-on hoplon shields missing from this issue.

The full set, painting is restricted to all-over silver and a moss-green on one side of the shield, which in the interior for three of the figures; exterior for the fourth.

The item which seems to have attracted Brian, and which I also quite like, despite being almost as anachronistic as the Classical Greek 'officers'!

It's a larger, early, banded medieval cannon, shoe-horned into the cradle of a catapult or ballista! Not as fanciful as it appears perhaps, as when these 'new tech's' first hit the 'high street' you're actual Robber Baron is more likely to afford one than the local Robin Hood, William Tell or Theiry la Frond! Consequently if the 'good guys' capture one, they may well need to house it in one of their old siege-engine frames! Hey - it's about imagination - they're toys!

You can see that as a toy it has been issued as a catapult as well, with mounting brackets along the back frame, and some sort of trigger at the front. It also had a 'recoil' pad in the centre of the cross bar to take the shock of a catapult's arm, yet the moulding also has the cradle for the gun, so was obviously designed with both versions in mind.

The other nice touch for such a dual-use equipment (where's the UN inspectors when you need them, is this a Matrix Churchill piece?!!) is that it's modelled as being mostly wrought-iron in construction, not the heavy timbers of earlier medieval or 'Ancient' siege machines - a surprising effort of design for such a cheap rack-toy, no?

If anyone has a picture of it in its catapult variant, that would close the chapter on it?

A re-shoot of the previous post's comparison/line-up, but with both the new set's figures and the ones I mentioned last time but couldn't find on the Blog. I still can't - so they must be tagged under some minor importer (I Blogged them about 3 years ago I think?), but they are the same as the Halsall set, only more poses and a more liberal application of paint in red and blue as two groups of protagonists.

There are so many now they over-filled their tub, so have left the 'Mixed Medieval' box and been given their own smaller box!

4 comments:

Mark, Man of TIN said...

I bought my sets at the Entertainer a few years ago and this bag seems to be still available on Amazon as Knights and Warriors Giant Battle Pack again by Halsall with black and silver figures. Again, a wonderfully weird set but with some Hastings 950 charm, Greek warrior weirdness etc. Wonderful!
Enjoying the blog.
Mark, Man of TIN blog .

Hugh Walter said...

Cheers Mark

There are so many sizes of them it's hard to know where Supreme ends and copyists begin, but at least the ethylene ones are obvious! They have a certain charm now, but then the original sculpts must be over 20-years old.

H

Brian Carrick said...

Hi Hugh, sorry I managed to miss your reply to my earlier comment and I'm just catching up on blogs now, after seeing your original post I managed to find a bumper pack on ebay with 4 cannons in it so I have all I need now bout thanks for the heads up and for thinking of me.

All the best, Brian.

Hugh Walter said...

Phew...by the skin of your teeth Brian...I've just (ten minutes ago!)arrived in Basingrad with the intention of getting them 'in case'!

H