O is for Outfield!

Following on from Subbuteo in the original post was the minor makes and novelty items, among which was Mr Musgrave's Gem cricketers; big, green cakes! I thought I'd done quite well with originals and Vinyl copies of 'all three' figures, albeit a couple were damaged, but it turned out there were two fielders I didn't have - or know about!

One reason for this will be the fact that Culpitt's (who will have handled the bulk of them) seem to have only offered the three man 'stumps' vignette we looked at last time, at some point - a still sealed baker's display unit pack is seen here.

Bowler, batsman and wicket-keeper with a pair of stumps . . . is it a pair; or six? What about the bailes, or are they bail's, does anyone other than Wisden's editor give an ess aitch one tee? I have had a couple of loose ones come in over the last 7 years as well; both the 'common' poses.

 However, I picked up one of the missing fielders (it requires a very big cake - see?) at PW and John of eBay's PTS52 brought me the other to the Sandown Park toy fair in May, so - when I get the rest out of storage, we can have a final visit to them and look at them all together.

There are various reasons for why Culpitt's might have been behind the pulling of these two poses, the most obvious being that they are both rather stiff poses, the reaching guy is a brave attempt at an animated pose, but he looks like a Tantric Yoga teacher, not a cricketer, while the other guy looks as if he's waiting for a reaction to a joke he just told - or looking for a fight!

And, for them to be useful, you'd need more than two, AND a very big cake! This may mean that there's an unused stash of them somewhere though . . . but they were both impractical; the three-man vignette could fit nicely on a small round or square cake, and be a nice surprise for a cricketing fan.

My brother and I got hedgehogs (made with chocolate finger biscuits) until we were old enough to get stockade-forts - made with chocolate fingers! The forts had Cowboys and Indians - Herald Hong Kong if I remember rightly . . . early-mid 1970's; Deetail weren't out yet! One year I rebelled against the hedgehog and asked for a ladybird!

While sorting spare stumps for a mate, I noticed two things; 1) they seem to have been cut from triple-stump mouldings (sometimes not terribly accurately - if you're going to glue them to/with cream or fondant icing; I guess it doesn't matter), and 2) that there are (were!) two generations, with narrower and broader base-depths.