C is for Chevaliers - Les Chevaliers Mini!

I picked these up in a charity shop the other day and recognised them as those announced in Plastic Warrior a while back (issue 163) by Peter Evans in his London Toy Show roundup - 'What's new for 2016'.

Feeling very pleased with myself (99p) I snaffled them home for further investigation - after photographing the suitcase they came in, popping the rivets on the plastic handle-holder and leaving it all in my mates recycling bin - collect responsibly; the planets dying and it's down to us!

As I say; they came in a little tin 'suitcase' (well, you could get quite a few of Action Man's suits in it!) which had obviously lost some packing (probably a blister tray) at some point, and while there are definitely some shields and weapons missing, imagining them laid-out in a tray suggests the figure/horse-count is possibly correct, however trying to sort them into 'two sides' is not so easy or clear, so it may be that the tin contained more, or that they are the part-product/s of more than one set?

The horses are lovely although the lance is a fancy jousting one rather than a plainer, more warlike and likely pointed one, and it's been chewed! The rearing horse is particularly fine but the charging one is good too; I believe they are scale-downs of the 70mm chunkers.

You can see that the level of detail while smoothed-off in the way of PVC has been enhanced with paint to the same quality as say the Starlux knights (which then would go OK with), or higher as you can see from the images.

The figures are designed to both sit in the saddle and walk upon the earth, and look good doing either, while a set of weapons and shield were included, even if - as I suspect - most of them have been lost in the mud of a battlefield.

But checking the PW story, I noticed that mine were lacking the finer details of those figures and re-reading the article it became clear that it was announcing a 56mm range, while the chaps I've picked-up are only 40mm! Indeed at least one of mine is a different paint scheme (red with eagle helm-crest) from one of the blue ones in the PW announce.

I don't know when they came out and whether or not they pre-date or followed the 56mm launch, the tin looked new enough to be less than two years old, but clearly the Papo knights (and other lines?) are available in three sizes.

I've not seen them new, but look out for them if you have the older Elastolin, Marx, Merten or Starlux knights in similar sizes as they will go well together, but don't store them together, PVC (such as these) figures have a tendency to melt polystyrene figures such as the aforementioned four brands, if barracked in the same block!

Stop Press! - It wasn't the PW article I was remembering, it was Shaun's posting of them (much more here) and the subsequent comments from yours-truly over there, which I've just found through Google (nice to know it works!), and they do pre-date the mid-sized issue, they were sell-off in the US as early as January 2015!