H is for Hausser's Homage to Half-n-Half's

A bit of a box-ticker today, a quick over-view of Elastolin swoppets or 'Steckfiguren' (stackable figures) as they are called over there; where 'The 27' will continue to forge competitive trade deals with the likes of Japan and China, while we get used to 96 new pesticides and chlorinated chicken - lovely!

It's only an overview as I have a mere eight figures myself and one of them's got a question mark over his weapon . . .

. . . the second figure from the left here. The 'European Theatre' figures, possibly meant to be NATO forces or US GI's, they have a mix of vaguely post-war weaponry, vaguely WWII German webbing and vaguely British 'Battle-dress', although the struggling German war economy of 1944 had adopted copies of the battle dress for their forces, so they can be WWII from that point, but these aren't Germans, we'll get to them in a minute!

Helmets are US M1/'NATO-standard', so I think of them as US, although the third guy along from the left is carrying something closely equating to the EM2, looked at here in the past. Of my eight, six came in their separate little bags, two didn't and the second figure here seems to have a non-Elastolin weapon and to have stolen his base from an Afrika Korps-man!

The 'German Infantry' looking a bit too-grey, and far too-Nazi; with their black helmets, of all the swoppets of the 1960's and '70's (these were late to the party), the Elastolin ones are among the least-accurate, but (as you would expect with Hausser) well engineered and quite animated.

The DAK get solar toupees (so we know exactly who they are and where they are fighting!) and red-brown webbing, the grenade is an odd design; very small and easy to lose, while both the grenadier and officer can hold something in their other hands but I forgot to borrow weapons from the others before photographing them!

I'd forgotten to borrow weapons when shooting the others to, and here we see the radioman given a Mauser rifle!

The rifle is a good representation of the original, while the 'EM2' is a bit long, the extra length being in the foregrip - I suspect it's trying to be a G3, but it's neither really! The AK-lookalike is obviously not Elastolin, but as I don't know - offhand - where it came from/belongs, and as it's needed by one of the figures, I keep it with him - for now!

The grenade is a 'pineapple' type fragmentation grenade, the bazooka and pistol are both simplified and the walkie-talkie is of US design-influence. Sold from shop-stock/counter-display boxes, each figure has a little bag to live in and they are clearly marked on the base-underside Germany which means - for the PSTSM's TJF - that they must be Italian (link) but not Nardi!

While I was photographing the GI's the DAK recce-patrol was laid-waste by a dessert rat, but a dessert rat who would happily eat real dessert rats for breakfast!

Secrets of Small Scale World's photography, number 347; Laundry day provides a range of new backgrounds prior to folding and putting-away - Elastolin Swoppets get the t-shirts; green-wash!