M is for Mounted Malleable Mouldings' Men

Shot on Adrian's stall (link) back at the March Sandown Park show, sat in Picasa for a while, found them at the last minute and I was going to add them to the previous post, but though it would only complicate, so they might as well go here as a 'follow-up' kind of thing, especially as I've also found some other ceremonial type mounted's for a third post; make a day of it - it'll be tomorrow now . . . the time's slipped this week!

Royal Horse Artillery I think; they could be some esoteric Yeomanry regiment, but I don't think Malleable offered such rarities in their exhaustive, but complicated - to follow -  list (which I have somewhere and will post one day), so RHA until I know otherwise.

The figures appear to be hollow and have had their headdresses drilled to receive their hackles as very small slivers of plastic. Note also; the two very different bases, one; an integral moulding, the other; a glued-on piece of sheet material which appears (from the distortion) to be a phenolic or acetate of some variety. A situation which bears reflection;

There were other, earlier makers of plastics of interest to us, Bergan and German WHW types being the obvious, but Malleable were trying to invent a technology (or applications thereof) without the support the Nazi regime might have given their plastics industry before the war (IG Farben, polystyrene - 1929), or the booming economy of post-war America, but in an economy broken by the same war which had proved such a boon to the US.

Consequently, the fact that they produced such a variety of figures and figure types; whole mouldings, assembled kits-of-parts, integral bases, separate bases and soft polyethylene figures, hollow and solid; in such a short life and from both ex-metal and original moulds, in stable and unstable paint finishes, should come as no surprise to us now, and the work they did must have benefited those who came after . . . all of whom (Zang-Herald, Timpo, Charbens, Cherilea and Crescent) adopted the polyethylene Malleable were using at the end, but most adding chalk for paint adhesion!

And if you think that last point is a bit off-the-wall, keep watching this space.

A Life Guard or 'Royal', I've always preferred the Horse Guards or 'Blues', they are one unit now, anyway and that's him; blurb done!