The fact that it was a sample was also
interesting as it may mean that it never got a release, or never got a
'Western' release? However here is one set at least and it says what it is -
villagers.
To be specific: South East Asian villagers
which could prove useful in choking roads with refugees if war-gaming the WWII
Japanese campaigns, Korea or Indochina-Vietnam.
You get - from the left in the lower image
- a guy sowing crops (carrying a rolled document in the header-card
illustration); an artist or painter/decorator artisan type; a chap walking with
a gravel-rake over his shoulder, off to make a nice Zen-garden (although it
looks like a hoe in the illustration); a man walking with his hat (or a
winnowing-basket) under his arm; a fisherman and an agricultural worker with bundles
of rice on a [too short] pole.
You also get two pieces of wall . . . I can
almost hear Peter Cook in the background "Four would be useful Mr Wall, but two? I have to say Mr Wall - two is
two too few!" Looking at the header-card artwork; it can be assumed
(or hoped!) that in some packs you got a arched-door/gateway piece, and that
multiple purchases - if possible - could at least result in a pig-pen or local
militia 'fortlette'! Age has curved them so they can at least be arranged as a
partial backdrop for photo-sessions.
Posed with a Japanese celluloid tourist
trinket, which is carrying us away from rack toys a tad, but sometimes you have
to follow where the subject leads you. The size of both is perfect for 1:76 /
1:72nd scales and would seriously slow your armour down if they were travelling
in the opposite direction.
Peter Evans as good as gave these to me back
in May with the Big Bag of 'Army Men' and I am very grateful as I have been
collecting these in ones and twos for as long as I have been picking-up the
Asian civilians and although I have a dozen or so, they are all in storage,
which will give me a chance to return to them in the future, but the three here
are a good flavour of the type.
I don't know anything more about these than
I can interpret with my own eyes, but they seem to have the look of craft
items, made by hand in small quantities rather like Bavarian/Tyrolean or Erzgebirge
wooden toys.
Some items are preformed-solids; the
passenger, the loads, the wheels; but the animals are vac-formed in two halves
and glued-together while the rest of the wagon is made from rod, tube, strip
and sheet materials.
Different techniques are employed by
different makers (again like Erzgebirge), some having the wheels
and axles fixed, some making tube axles for the rod to turn in while others glue
the axle but leave the wheels unglued so they fall off - if you're not careful!
Likewise the construction of the wagons,
wagon-roof designs and even the attachment of the draft animal differs (one of
these is removable, the other two fixed) and in storage I have paired teams and
four-wheeled examples along with a man-drawn rickshaw in the same scale
'Ivorene' style.
So I suspect a kit of parts, sent out to
lots of little crafters, collected in when finished and marketed from a central
point?
As well as the wagons there are other
common tropes in the same size and there are larger scaled versions of some,
particularly the rickshaws which can be found in 54mm-compatible sizes. Pastoral
scenes involving ornamental bridges, mini-dioramas or vignettes built in a real
or celluloid scallop shell, and more formal plinth-mounted vignettes can all be
found in this style, but it's the wagons I look-out for!
2 comments:
Fascinating little characters.
Aren't they just, Jan! Occasionally you can't beat Hong Kong as no one else came close, this is one of those occasions, crude, but painted-up; no worse than a lot of lead war gaming stuff!
H
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