About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

P is for Pipes & Drums

Am I right in thinking Lowland Regiments have 'Bands' and Highland Regiments have 'Pipes & Drums'? Something like that, anyway; Hilco didn't bother with marching soldier types, but gave us some nice Pipes & Drums, seen here, although there are some colonial 'combat' types; I don't have any.

Black Watch; Gordon Highlanders; Highland Bandsmen; Highland Pipes & Drums; Highland Toy Figures; Highlanders; Hilco Highland Bandsmen; Hilco Highland Pipes & Drums; Hilco Plastic Figures; Hilco Plastic Highlanders; Pipes & Drums; Pipes And Drums; Royal Stewart; Scots Highlanders; Scots Soldier; Scots Soldiers; Scots Troops; Scottish Highlanders; Scottish Infantry; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com;
The pipes come in three versions which seem to all be from hollow-cast moulds. Now, there is a rule of thumb with these paint-simplified Tartans which - as plastics collectors - I guess we take from Britains catalogues, but it goes back to the hollow-cast era, which seems to consist of two main parties - The Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders.

Above we have Black Watch 1st, 2nd and 5th figure, with something equating to the Britains Gordon's at the 4th stand. The 3rd figure is probably supposed to be a Gordon also, but the pale yellow, being almost a whitish hue, could pass for another tartan.

The Black Watch pipers actually wear Royal Stewart tartan for both kilt and plaid (the over-shoulder cloth), the soldiery wear the darker 'Regimental' tartan, which Britains did as a plain, darker (than the Gordon's) matt-green. If you get a bit of blue in the mix it's probably the Cameron Highlanders (the Sculptures UK figure we saw the other day?).

Black Watch; Gordon Highlanders; Highland Bandsmen; Highland Pipes & Drums; Highland Toy Figures; Highlanders; Hilco Highland Bandsmen; Hilco Highland Pipes & Drums; Hilco Plastic Figures; Hilco Plastic Highlanders; Pipes & Drums; Pipes And Drums; Royal Stewart; Scots Highlanders; Scots Soldier; Scots Soldiers; Scots Troops; Scottish Highlanders; Scottish Infantry; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com;
Two Black Watch on the left and three Gordons on the right. The Drum Major has an extra-long gold-painted dress-makers pin with the pin-head set into the little slot in his hand, for a staff/mace, I meant to put one in and photograph it before I posted these but forgot, I'll try and do it for the end of the (this!) 'Highlander season' . . . or next time we look at them - thematically by pose - but you can see how it should look, I'm sure.

I've seen these in an all-gold finish too, presumably as touristy items?

2 comments:

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said...

Britain's used to represent the Argyle & Sutherland sett with pale greenish yellow stripes, they also have the white hackle so the fellow with the pale stripe might be meant to be one of those.

Hugh Walter said...

Cheers Ross - I did wonder! There seems to be some proper yellow and some of the paler stuff 'meant' if you know what I mean, so that would make sense!

H