But as these are metal, I thought they could go here, I have sent some of the polymer stuff to Paul at PlasticWarrior Magazine where the conversation has mostly taken place, and there will be more here and/or there.
I saw these going for a song back in September (if the photo-dates are anything to go by, sometime in the late summer/early autumn anyway!) and got them for the initial bid, they look to be a set of home or 'shed industry' soft-metal casts, given a commercial twist, probably around Christmas time . . . at some point in the 1950's?They were rather dirty and the card had 'had-it' (seems to have narrowly avoided immolation!), also by the time they got to me several figures had broken free, so I determined to remove them all.
The card (which may have lain in a long-gone box) had been cut from a crate of Chivers canned fruit! For those with better research tools than me this may help date them as while I think Chivers are still around as a brand-mark for set-jelly deserts, and have vague recollections of them being behind a range of jams and/or marmalade when I was a kid, I certainly don't remember them producing canned-fruit?And even if they are still around (I haven't looked in Sainsbury's) they will be no more that a trade mark for a subsidiary of some global behemoth like Nestle, working through a subsidiary like Mondelez or De Monte, out of some anonymous carcass-rendering plant on the edge of a rural market-town somewhere!
Cleaned-up they were quite shinny! Twelve poses/items, and all pretty recognisable, with the slight incongruity of a colonial-era highlander in a kilt with neatly blanko'd webbing and solar topee! You get eight combat poses and four guys in more base-area or sentry-duty type attitudes . . . almost a 'Home Guard' line-up! I think Crescent are the origin of most, although - believe me - these are lumps of solid stuff which probably contains more lead than was healthy then, let alone now! And not the hollow-castings of the donor's figures.When mentioning these types in the past I've muttered Agasee under my breath (only because I happen to have a copy of their catalogue somewhere), but there were several makers/suppliers of this kind on home-casting mould, and people are always quick to 'correct' with the German originator of most; Schneider!
Where these differ from others is in having a sort of waffle-pattern to the bases/undersides, which I suspect might be a hinged plate closed on the hot metal to force material into the extremities with excess liquid squeezing out of the waffle channels? It would make a hell of a mess wouldn't it?Scratch-that, I'm over thinking it!
But
it's an oddity nevertheless and does point to a three-part mould, as you'd have
to lift the 'waffle-plate' before you could remove the figures from the other
half of the main mould OR hinge both halves away leaving the figures on the 'waffle-plate'?!!
Indeed, when you start looking, there's tons of it around, one bloke is charging lottery-winnings for old Johillco and Reynolds pirate re-casts, and he'll get the money from the same guys shelling out 60/70/80-quid for a new metal radio-operator! I only bought this set because it was so clearly dirty and with a card on its last-legs; it had to be genuine!
2 comments:
Hello Hugh
Correct re the Home cast suggestion, I have home cast moulds for some of these khaki poses.
Cheers Mark
H
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