L is for Lone Star - Harvey Series 54mm Paratroopers (Helmets)

Continuing with the box-ticking exercise, and continuing with Lone Star and continuing with paratroopers, although helmeted not bereted and carrying different stock codes, these also differ slightly in uniform having a lose, un-tucked coat-jacket or jump smock, but are clearly by the same sculptor to a common design-style.

My two main sample-groups are a bunch of camouflaged home/re-paints and a bunch of rather tatty originals, mostly grey helmets, but one green (AFV crewman) and one very tatty UN 'blue helmet'. Some of these probably haven't been seen here before?

To go with them I have a quite nice quality stretcher team with white helmeted medics and a grey casualty. This is one of the better stretcher parties out there in that they do look as if they are carrying heavy weight, under fire - think instead; Britains or Timpo swoppets strolling along like they've got all the time in the world. Marx's was equally good.

Mortar-line; on the left the re-paints, with an original of the smaller 2" mortar-man on the right, his weapon's sculpting is so rudimentory or nondescript, he can be used as a gunner with the die-cast 25-lb'r

There is a fourth mortar, a smaller piece on a separate base without legs. Although posed to be operating a parachute printed on the backing/header card of some sets; the guy waving his hands makes a useful mortar-man, and may have been designed with the missing one in mind - it has a little flame (like the set's flamethrower), as if caught in the act of firing!

Colour variation in the plastic are the same as for the bereted eight, with paler herb green, a mid olive-drab and a more khaki colour, probably the earliest? There's also evidence of multiple cavities (or re-tooling); compare the bayonet/muzzle-end on the two standing firers.

Definitely seen before, and we looked at the [now known to be] Wellsotoy's sand-coloured one again the other day. Bren Gun Carrier crew are the smaller ones left and larger image (gunner) and right (driver) the third figure (middle) is used as a passenger in the rear of the Bren Gun Carrier and also driver for the DUKW and Jeep, and operator of the die-cast lorry or trailer-mounted weapons.

Comparisons between the larger and smaller scale versions, the smaller ones are usually found in UN helmets, with the Germans in red caps (as Communist Chinese forces in Korea), in the larger scales, the UN helmets are not as common as the green, which are also less common that the grey which are dirt-common!

The 54mm figure, far left, is actually a blue-helmeted UN figure, he looks to be the same as the grey ones, but he's just very dirty! If you take a line-up from the point of the collar, you can jsut see a bit of the blue showing; paler than the HO figures, but - if clean - distinct from the common grey ones.

Although they are almost the same, there are subtle differences all over from the hose rings to the trouser folds, so while one led to the other, it was either comprehensively re-worked, or a new copy. I think the helmeted one is the later version, his fuel-tanks are smaller and a bit lopsided or squidged.

There don't appear to be the unpainted Woolworth's versions of the larger ones as there are of the bereted eight, but I may just not have encountered any yet, remember I've only been collection this larger stuff for a few years! Also; while the eight with berets are numbered 1-8 consistently (if numbered), with these helmeted troops the marking and numbering is all over the place, suggesting cavity numbers only.