Title says it all; Lone Star, 54mm,
paratroopers, they fit in with the helmeted para's quite well having been
sculpted by the same chap in a similar uniform although without the long
jackets of the helmeted ones, and sans the full-pack 'movement-order' webbing,
indeed the flamethrower is almost no more than a head-swap!
Looking at them I can see that several of
them DO belong on the Khaki Infantry page, even though I
chose to keep them off; as the set (as a whole) is not pirated from either the Timpo or Britains sets which that page is based on, but equally the kneeling
firing and officer are highly derivative while the advancing is 'after' and the
waving pose owes a bit to Britains
casualty? So I might have a 'similarities section, before or after the
HK/Unknown sections down the bottom of the page?
Plastic colours; The early ones tend to
shades of camel-dung or true khaki (elephant dung, where do you think 'kak'
comes from!) or a dark olive-drab, while later ones also come in the fetching
herb-green of the left-hand shooter. Note also that both the shooters have that
offset, double base you sometimes see with the medieval knights.
Painted as paratroopers or Royal
Marines/Royal Marine Commandos, most of mine (which came from a single source)
are either unpainted ones (Woolworth's) or had the paint stripped from them for some
reason? The beret is the floppy WWII one (despite the anachronistic EM2 - dealt with in posts passim) which seems to be part Tam o'Shanter
and part individual shelter (!), as a result the headgear could be painted
khaki as regular infantry, or other corps.
Base marking can include a numeral - same
for each figure - which may be cavity marks or figure/pose numbers but
certainly do for the latter anyway; versions also exist with no number and the
odd blank one turns-up.
Send
three-and-four'pence; we're going to a dance! A
rather simple heat-conversion on the unpainted officer's elbow has produced a
nice, effective variation which I intend to paint-up one day.
2 comments:
I enjoyed this post, thank you. Suddenly it was November 1960 and toys appearing in the windows of ironmongers. I would pause at Humphrey Jones (seedsman) on the way from school and weigh up the merits of Para Troopers or a box of wild west gamblers complete with table. I went with these paratroopers on Christmas morning. Memory suggests that the flamethrower had a plastic flame coming from it, but it probably didn't.
Happy to trigger the odd memory John - I've just posted the helmeted ones and hopefully a follow-up tomorrow now, courtesy of Terranova!
The flame is the helmeted one, and the Crescent ones - later in the week!
H
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