News, Views Etc...Plastic Warrior No.166

Out for about a month now, so I'm slipping, but nothing to worry about yet! Issue 166 is a cracker, with all the following to tempt those living in the non-subscribing, PW-desert.

Articles

* Starting in the middle with Colin Penn's wonderful look at a medieval fort by Lone Star, which when you see it, finds you thinking "I've seen bits of that somewhere!"; but not the whole thing. He also mentions the rest of the Lone Star City range's wild west town

* 'Elastolin at 40' (part 8 - I thought it was more) gets to the American Civil War (ACW) with Alwyn Brice still at the helm

* Page 24 is the killer though; Joe Bellis has found the other [54mm] Trojan paratrooper, with card! A stunning piece in superb condition and one of the items hanging from a parachute in the card atrwork is particularly interesting . . . but you need to subscribe!

* Also of interest is Juan Martin Garcia's piece on Reamsa pirates and their relationship with MPC, which also serves to muddy the waters on those Plasticom and other premiums we've looked at here - again - subscribe!       

* 'Converters Corner' this quarter sees Les White outshine himself with a conversion that is simply sublime, described as 'Victorian/Edwardian Lady Adventurer', I suspect she's been seen defending a ranch near Dead Man's Gulch! But wait until you see what she's made of!

* 'New for 2017' by Peter Evans is missing, but then he accidentally sent it to a Blog first - you just can't get the staff! [I'm using PW 163 as a template!]

* Ashley Needham has sent in a fantastic thematic article on 'by-the-right' and left-hookers (or 'southpaws') which starts by looking at Guardsmen but manages to cover everything from Conte's Norman invaders to Airfix space invaders!

* Yours Truly's HR Production farm sets got their curtain call in this issue

* 'What The !&*$?' has no less than five question marks this quarter;

• A set of nice knights from Barney Brown (Russian copies/based-on Cherilea?)
• Eric Critchley is looking for an ID on a Hong Kong figure (which looks a bit like Joe Stalin?)
• While Brian Heaps has an orphaned pig, unknown bear (which I'll be following as I think I have one somewhere) and a rather unloved-looking, plaster-composition, prone, 1940's rifleman

* Tom Stark looks at the two recent sets of four [each set] smugglers from Replicants

* Joseph Svec shares pictures of a charming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea diorama he made for a local book store window-display in Jackson, California for Jules Verne's birthday. It includes a hand-made model of the Nautilus submarine and LP divers he found carded in fours and branded to Zenith

* A form of 'From The Archives' is this month's main editorial piece, looking at all the previous stuff on MG Southall's Dan Dare figure set, brought together in one place.

Regular Features

* 'NEWS and VIEWS and other stuff ' has a reminder of the show [see also below], which - at time of publishing this review - is less than a month away, and a reminder of the table price reduction if you fancy a go at selling your overspill spares!

Notes on the PW website, the purchase of Forces of Valour by Walterson's Industry (via Steve Weston) and the Airfix catalogue (via Jeremy Brook) are also mentioned, while Rick Berry of Michigan Toy Soldiers is advertising a new polyethylene glue/primer.

* 'Book Review' is busy this quarter with three new titles

•  'Toy Soldiers: War Games of Non-resolution in Western Sahara' by Simon Brann Thorpe is reviewed by Peter Cole of Replicants (I think we've previously looked at the website here?), it's deep stuff, but also it's guys pretending to be Toy Soldiers, a popular meme these days.
•  'The Greek Toy Soldier Scrapbook' by Markos Plytas does what it says on the cover! And John Begg will be carrying some at May's show.
•  'Soldaditos de Plastico - Reamsa' (Reamsa plastic toy soldiers) is an full update of the same title by Juan Martin Garcia originally covered in PW 157.

* 'Readers Letters' this issue cover

• A wants list of future articles from Patrick Broquet (hopefully busy writing some?)
• Britains palm trees from Peter Watson
•  Dave Clark's memories of Cherilea's Boudicca
•  The sad announcement of Harfield's closing sale, but happy for Andy and Jackie as they get to retire!
• HK rack-toys from PL Cunha
• HäT Industrie crowd-funding - Clayton Schweitzer
• Unknown Spanish Bullfight set - Colin Penn
• Takara Samurai - Mathias Berthoux
• Tom Smith / Thomas Christmas cracker spacemen from Eric Keggans
• Patric Brouquet, Juan Carlos Martin and Paul Stadinger all help ID the 'unknowns' from previous issues

* 'What's New' covers recent releases from:

·         21st Century - the WWII British swansong

·         CTS - North Koreans (ooh! A bit topical there CTS!)

·         Paragon - Alamo Mexican Regulars

·         TSSD - US Marines, Vietnam

·         TSSD - NVA

All brought back from the Chicago show by Steve Weston

Plus all the usual small-ads

Front Cover is a diorama of an Indian pow-wow from Jack Shalatain

Back Cover is a tad more grisly; a guillotine scene from David Stefancic

Remember also; for subscription details or to 're-up', for contributions, letters or queries, Plastic Warrior is now on-line through various platforms:

Facebook

Blogger

eMail; pw.editor@ntlworld.com

And they are on Paypal.

01483 722778

65 Walton Court

Woking

Surrey

GU21 5EE

UK

The old website is being run-down/retired.

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As we're looking at Plastic Warrior and as it's less than a month to the year's best polymer-fest, here's the poster again and don't forget that the table rates have been reduced!