M is for Many Ways to Make a Medieval

We're looking at the figures I lost (the images of) and which in the searching-for, managed to lose a near finished article due to my inherent fuckwittery . . . and the fact that Lenovo gives you half a split-second to cancel a shutdown, and even if you manage it, then overrides your [two] instructions and shuts-down anyway!

Cherilea's small scale (50-mil-odd) knights in armour, they come in at least two sizes (small and smaller!) and various versions, plastic colours and paint-ways. The figure top-left is a metal original, and the reduction in size between him and the larger plastics isn't down to a pantograph, but just that plastic shrinks more than metal as it cools - from the same mould.

The smaller ones however, may well be the result of copying by pantograph? Although a quick study of the plumes will reveal there are at least two cavities (or tools) in each size, possibly more.

My arranging of them has no real significance, but from this angle you can see further variations in base-shape and mould release-pin marks, while painted and unpainted on various colours of plastic are to be seen. The jade green pair are a more modern reissue, but still - now - fifteen to twenty years old?

The Crusaders; The two on either end of the upper row are the metal ones this time and the one on the right doesn't seem to have been carried-over to the plastic line. Again, two clear sizes (visibly three for the standing pose actually) and a variety of finishes including gold mail, but no coloured plastics - bar the re-issue. I think the fifth and sixth from the left on the top row have suffered at the hands of their owners' artistic callings!

The cross on the metal one's shield is much broader so it must have been re-cut when they prepared the mould for plastic-production, or they went straight to new tools . . . or I haven't found a plastic one with a broad cross yet?

The 'enemy', especially if you are a Kurd cut-loose by the Orange Loon! These are all brittle and I have a sample as large as the other two sets, but most are damaged. A third pose existed in metal (carrying standard), but I've not seen it in plastic, and it's usually broken when you find it in metal!

And, clearly a different sculptor, these and the other two metal poses are far more animated and anatomically different from the more relaxed or statuary knights and crusaders. The metal range was all together bigger with the four Saracens, four crusaders and three knights that I know of.