T is for Teutonic Tropische Toy Troops in Tunisia

Some more box ticking I'm afraid, it all needs to be done, if only because some people are only interested in the mass-produced stuff (shock-horror!) and couldn't give a fig for all the novelty treats I Blog! And, because it trips the nostalgia buttons . . . AND because it should have been in the tag-list years ago!

Charbens! The 'command' group includes a very busy mine-detector and officer with two broken arms* While the gun seems to have been captured from Timpo's 8th Army, even to the stuffing of the belt into the working-parts/trigger mechanism, rather than the feed tray!

 * I served with a chap who had arms like these, he'd got them both broken as a kid, trying to steal milk-bottles off the back of a milk-float when it drove off, dragging him behind it! He used to be jailed every Monday morning on Battalion muster-parade, the RSM didn't even look for him, he just marched onto the square and shouted "Jail that man Corporal Thomas!", and Tom'o would double him down to the guardhouse as he struggled to remove his belt! The crime - you could see daylight between his arms and his torso when he was stood at attention!

Once in the guardhouse he was given a cuppa, and instead got to avoid standing-around on muster, listening to some 'uplifting' crap from the RSM like the rest of us! It was a standing joke which was supposed to raise moral in the rest of us raw recruits - the Army's alright . . . even the RSM has a sense of humour? Really it was the singling-out of one man for a physical disability/abnormality!

The Charbens riflemen are a better prospect, four of them and all looking pretty enthusiastic, the weapons are rather non-descript, and let's face it; short trousers with jackboots is not a flattering look, but it would get you a drink or two down the Blue Oyster Club!

I have a heat-conversion, which came from the Portsmouth purchase I think, both elbows having been heated (probably with a hot pin) and moved, the pin-holes, or whatever marks, then smoothed over with a heated knife, from the new positions of the arms, one feels he's been converted to stand in a truck or half-track, possibly the Airfix or Dinky machines?

The central shot shows them both with the Lone Star version to whom they are very similar, however I think - given the differences between the other troops - it isn't a case of same sculptor, just co-incidence?

There's a small variation in plastic colour with some being a faded pea-green rather than the pale grey of most of my sample. Had I known how much the flash would wash them out I probably wouldn't have bothered, but you can still get some idea of the greener shade from these.