F is for Follow-ups - Various Recent Posts

A few bits and bobs pertaining to previous posts; we'll start with the recently seen African native set ID'd by Peter Evans the other week;

Chris Smith had one with three colours, the shorts and red-clay'ed hair of my better sample but with the addition of silver for the spear tip, studying mine under the looking-glass I can find no hint of silver and I think it really is an example of how the paint was slowly reduced to cut costs, perhaps dating the set to the midst of the oil crisis?

Chris also has this lovely marbled rhinoceros which came in the same lot/sample, whether they go together or not is still a question-mark, but it's a fine beast! It is also however a bit Asian-looking, rather than an African black or white?

Which leads me on to the wheeled crocodile, I don't know why I didn’t spot it at the time, but there are little spigots on its tail and little dimples on the roof of its mouth and on its tongue . . . it's only from a crocodile 'train', or crocodile 'crocodile'! How cool is that? Too cool for first class!

I dropped into the party shop at Clapham Junction when I was up in The Smoke for the Toy Fair at the end of last month and they did have some blue teams left, the shop-assistant had to go in the basement for them, but I stole-away with one . . . after passing over the requisite shekels!

Giving me six team strips from three brandings, and enough figures for an interesting five-a-side competition. There must be some war-gaming style rule-sets you could use for such a venture, maybe some of the board-games with footballer figures could supply ideas for a skeleton rule-set without a board? Playable on a Subbuto pitch maybe!

Chris also sent in the autumn parcel a soviet-bloc, flat figure for which I already had a clone (seen before), but mine is a poorer quality copy; something which sometimes happened 'behind the curtain' as we saw with all the versions of Progress cavalry, and as it did here in the West.

The new one has been mended with a combination of an Evostick-like snot and some fag-lighter, heat-melting, so cowardice has decided me against trying to clean it up for fear of doing more damage! It’s a new colour anyway, and as I say - a better sculpt - Thanks Chris!

As a follow-up to an older post, I recently got another bunch of Merten copy Victorians/Edwardian (Wilhelmian?) civilian cake decorations (from Peter Evans I think? Cheers Peter!), with a colour variation of the pink lady we looked at before.