N is for Novelty . . . Guards - Smaller

So, these were the ones that prompted the utterance that I would return to them nearer Christmas, with Peter sending some back in the Spring or early summer;

I couldn't find all the ones I know I have and I suspect some are in the minor-makes A-Z boxes, but there are enough to work with here and get the foundations across! This is the 'Hong Kong Guards' box, and from the small-scale only days it doesn't (and couldn't) contain the big wooden ones, the nutcrackers we’ve seen, the washing-up sponge one &etc.

This is the smallest iteration of the sample, placed in a snow dome above a pencil-sharpener, but it's one of those lame domes with lots of polystyrene 'bits' in. It's not product granule, that's larger and smooth, this is like they put some small off-cuts in an old Italian coffee grinder with the very fast blades and shredded them!

Next size up are these, originally earrings from a David Halsall (still in the tags as Hallsal! I will sort it! . . . Half an hour later - done!), and I think some of the missing ones are stored under Haswell, which was a sub-brand of the company now known as HTI. I removed the jewellery component to get two fat drummers!

These are the biggies, so far only the two poses have turned-up; sentry/guardsman and drummer/bandsman, whether they are all available in all three sizes or not I don't know, but they're clearly based on the lawn blow-moulds so popular in the US and spreading across Britain as if we have a better planet to go to when we're done buggering-up this one!

At this size you can get them as crafting accessories, earrings, cake decorations and whatever else anyone can think of for novelty guards! Added to the collection later, I left the earrings intact and on their card. You can still find these out there at this time of year, last year I think I saw the earrings in the British Heart Foundation charity-shops as factory-clearance/new stock.

Scaler!