F is for Follow-up - Fearless Floppy-hatted Fellows

It's one of the Toy Soldier rules that being in possession of a soft, broad-brimmed jungle hat is a sure sign of ANZAC credentials! The exception to the rule being the Airfix Ghurkha's! We looked at a few of these a while ago, and this is the contents of the 'Aussie/NZ' tub in storage.

Timpo swoppet figures, only the first version got these hats, with squared locating studs, I'm not sure you can even get them to fit the last version Brit's or US Infantry? And it's only the hats which differ from the 1st version British Infantry, Armoured Corps, US-import 'Green Berets', Para's or - possible - SAS.

We saw a few of these Trojan's last time too, but I DID have a few from the 'Big Purchase', I was practically giving away the Germans at the last (2011) Birmingham show (in fact I did give a handful to a mate), but there were only the four ANZAC's and I'd forgotten them! The third figure seems to have a kukri, but they would have had the long-bladed parang or heavy, issue, jungle knife for clearing the thicker secondary and lower, shrubby/grassy, tertiary jungle, as modelled by Airfix's officer . . .

Much copied by Hong Kong's finest (upper shot - dung-yellow examples) and err . . . cut'n'shut by Rado Industries (lower shot, field-grey green), that is; Ri-Toys, funny, I have a whole tub of them in one of the Blue Box crates which we looked at here, but I had these five in the Antipodeans tub!

Having proven that my Blue Box were in fact, actually Blue Box and not the 'Ri-Toys' Erwin 'makes it up as he goes along' Sell stated they were, a couple of years ago; I think it's only fair to prove that his 'Blue Box' are in fact the Ri-Toys I had stated they were several years earlier! They'll learn, but it's beeing a long, drawn-out, hard lesson.

The Enemy! I dealt with the small scale twenty-odd years ago in One Inch Warrior magazine, and looked at my small sample of larger scale ones back at the start of the blog, and after a flurry of activity it hasn't grown much (couple more Tim Mee blobs perhaps and some extra Airfix), but these two came-in just before everything went into storage, indeed, as it was going into storage, the show being in October and my move being two or three weeks later! I don't know if the yellow one is Trojan or one of the others in that group of five or six early British companies? There is a third, but it's the standing pose, duplicated - with very poor paint!

Bye-the-bye; Chris Smith sent 3 Blue Box Japanese in the summer donation, and I picked-up the officer's horse (in one of Jim's donation lots I think!), so we will look at them again at some point, but right now I am literally drowning in Stuff . . .

. . . 'Storage stuff' photo's, contributed/donated stuff, other photo's, shelfies (mine and contributed), News & Views stuff, archive scans, charity shop stuff, gliders, a Viking long ship, flats, paratroops', circus, Lledo, 'Mocherettes', Funimals, cereal-premium kits . . . I just spent an evening combining the Starlux lots and sorting the 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50mm Rocco, Crescent, Hilco and Cherilea mounted (with a couple of 54mm Charbens!) and discovering four more Disneykins, a Japanese APC and a ceramic cat. . . it's all coming, Small Scale World can't be built in a day; but I'm not complaining, just panicking slightly in a "whatever!" sort of fashion!