K is for Khaki Madness!

Which isn't very mad at all; certainly no madder than trolleys and a lot less madder than reefers, but there's a lot of it about at the moment! Mostly in PW, but . . . as part of a conversation which used to be 'These might be Trojan' or 'Are they Kentoy?', and which is now 'Could be BR'.

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'?!!

There were two reason for my investing in some heavy-metal tat on this occasion; the obvious being that I seem to have found [one of] the donor[s] for my plastic one, I won't add much as I think we've already visited it about four times in the last couple of years, but that's four sizes now, in two types, two materials and one games manufacture's name (Glevum Games 'Dirt Track Racing'; thanks to Adrian Little) associated with what is basically the same sculpt!

Returning to the conversation around BR and the other reason for purchase; the prone figures are of the most interest to us in the plastic's-wing, here compared with a couple of my 'Trojans', they are not exactly the same - the polymer-lots' prone rifleman for instance, has a straitened right arm and a reinforced left arm, simplified rifle and there are differences to the small pack and pass-pocket - but that's not the point I'm illustrating, just that these sculpts were common at the time, and there are different mould sources for a number of figures whether designed for white-metal or plastic.

I bid on this at the same time, but missed it - despite a broken bi-pod! Anyway, he's been discussed in the conversation, the Johillco Bren-gunner, with a variant at the front (raised head to compensate for higher weapon) but the same legs!

And here he is in a scan from the Shilham Miniatures catalogue, along with several of the others,  Shilham was operating about ten years ago when I picked the catalogue up from one of the London shows I think, but I can't find the firm on-line so they may have gone the way of all flesh, it could be longer (15-odd years?) and they were probably using old Agasee moulds, although - as I've mentioned before - there were a couple of mould (or mold!) suppliers in the US until quite recently (one may still be going?) and there will be others . . . have you seen what these moulds go for on feebleBay, it's all maths - "How much is the ingot-metal, what can I charge per-figure/per-set, how much have I made from the moulds I've already bought, ergo; I can bid this much silly-money!"

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!