HCF is for Hairy Chewbac'grilla Fella! . . . Filthy Ape!

I spent last week getting Rack Toy Month posts scheduled on the desktop 'till the 23rd, in the hope that whatever happened with the move and stuff, I'd be able to feed things into the blog irrespective . . .

. . . , a system you now know broke down two days ago! In the meantime while I have resisted the urge to start blanket-blogging everything sitting in the garage, I did spot this classic rack toy in the 'Minor Makes F-J' box this evening (Tuesday), and had to post it! And yes . . . I've cleaned my desktop since previous capcha's!

There are - among the grandees of the hobby (whose coat-tails I hope I'm increasingly treading-on!) - those who have suggested one or two companies did all the flocking, but in fact there were many flocking flockers both in the UK and elsewhere, while others bought the - relatively small - machines and did a bit of flocking themselves.

However, after the evidence of their sourcing Wombles, Paddington and the recent heavy/cart-horse, it's clear that as far as the colonies go, HCF (of Essex) were the 'go-to' for flocking-flocker's to flog flocked flockings to!

The process is actually quite simple, although there will be variations between machine-tool makers, with a glue-sloughed product (stencilled, all-over sprayed or cut-in by hand) introduced to a sealed-cabinet full of fine-fibres and given a shake, or blow, or a spin while a static charge is applied to the atmosphere in the space. War-gamers can attest to the simplicity of the tech' (if not its execution!), having affordable hand-held equipment for flocking flat areas, or even small bases?*

Too cool for film school! Excellent rendition of an M16 (which looks as if they were intending it to be threaded with a sling at one point?) and if the Planet of the Apes' movies weren't a few years earlier, you'd swear they'd used an old Chewbacca head!

Blow-moulded polyethylene with a solid plug-in head and the techniques are the same as for the cart-horse with stencilled, airbrushed highlights to jacket and boots, and paper stickers for the leather armband/gauntlet cuffs.

*Thinking out loud . . . has anyone flocked a Leopard tank kit to represent the carpeting someone in the 1980's (Belgium, Holland  . . . or Denmark maybe?) placed on them as a camouflage? You'd have to use very fine flock with a larger-scale model as the carpeting was that thin-pile, carpet-tile, type stuff, I seem to recall?