C is for Crescent - 60mm British Commandos

On to the helmeted infantry in 60mm from Crescent, often catalogued as Commandos I've shot them separately and can't be arsed to invent much blurb for each one, so I'll touch on the 'bits & bobs' first and then load the individual figures below!

As with the other two Crescent sets we're looking at in this batch of posts, there are two main versions of base; flat-bottomed or with a slightly raised rim, marking is consistent and numbering - figure-specific. The 'K' is probably for Khaki, and some bases are painted on the underside (or all over) others aren’t painted at all.

Figures on the other hand are always painted, I don't think these were used for premiums anywhere, so unpainted ones don't seem to occur (unlike the Para's), and the same generations seem to exist as we saw with the paratroopers, namely a - probably earlier - surface-etched or gritty sandy look, with finer-detail to weapons, and smoother figures with chunky weapons.

The three upper figures are an old eBay lot from ten years ago (I listed them all at 99p, can't rememebr what the went for), while the far left firer in the lower shots seems to be an interim design (as we saw with the three weapon variants in the Para's) with a medium thickness barrel!

On the right camera-flash has highlighted a slight colour variation, also seen with this morning's 'SAS' chap. Several of these figures (mainly the first three) have been/were copied (quite crudely, but with 'Toy Soldier' charm) in various plastic colours (and equally leery paint-jobs) by both Turkish and Greek brands of the 1960/70's.

Poses are - in no particular order;

K30 - Officer - running to the Lone * Star advance-dance, by the looks of things; I hope he's got three-and-four'pence!

K28 - Throwing grenade with SLR (although it looks more like a Bundeswehr G3!).

K31 - Firing US M3 'Grease-gun' SMG from waist.

K32 - Signaller/Section-runner with an SCR-536 walkie-talkie and another SLR-FN-G3 abomination! A much pirated figure in Hong Kong, particularly in small-scale.

K33 - Flamethrower, both the Crescent flamethrowers get three-fuel tanks, they were determined to out-fry the opposition, who always got two, or one!

This was one of my favorite figures in our heavy Frey-Bentos 'Christmas Selection' cheese-biscuit, biscuit-tin of soldiers when we were kids - he came in a mixed bag of other early British figures from a church fête and he looks like he's stripping paint off a barn-door, but I loved the pile of rocks!

K29 - M1 Carbine/Ruger Mini-14, I've fired them both, so have a liking for this chap, but - like the rest of the set (less the radio operator) - his legs are a bit small, it's like they had one guy sculpt the legs and another do the arms/heads/torsos!