RTM is for Return To More - Wing Lung

Looked at these when I first ID'd them even though my sample here was rather pathetic, and despite the bulk still being in storage, enough have come in now to give a better picture and confirm better the base marking which makes these easy to sort from the chaff of all the other clones!

RTM is the best place to do that and having mentioned them in the previous post now is the time! With thanks to Chris Smith and Peter Evans as the latter sent the on-runner examples, while the former sends a few in each of his donations to the blog, to be shared here with you!

Starting chronologically; the Wild West are all Airfix clones and come in the same colours they used for their WWII stuff, six poses each of foot cowboys and Native American Indians, gives plenty of play-value from a rack-toy. I haven't got a bagged or carded set yet so I don't know if they got accessories or what they may have been, maybe a Tee-pee/Tipi or one of the smaller-sized Britains Herald totem-poles, which do come in oxide-brown?

American infantry; before and after cleaning! Im not sure what poses are missing, Matchbox bazooka and Airfix running Marine clones; is my best guess! but it's not that simple as we'll see next:

The Afrika Korps; All Matchbox piracies, but with the British officer giving commands instead of the original German, in a larger scale sample of Brit's in oxide red I have the other pose, clearly in a clean 'British' sample, but I suspect that the larger missing samples will have loads of this chap in the wrong bag! The running chap - bottom left on the green baize - looks a bit suss' too!

The British; Again all-Matchbox clones, with the conversion Tom spotted years ago, the prone Bren-gunner is also ex-Eighth Army, while the crawling guy is taken down from 54mm.

In all four cases they seem to have gone with ten-to-twelve poses (as per the 20mm), being the non-support-weapon/accessory-needing poses. Which is easy with the Brit's and Yank's, a mystery as to the missing DAK officer though, while the German Infantry however . . .

. . . get three Americans - MG-gunner, grenade thrower (Matchbox Germans had their own Airfix-likey - seen opposite him on the runner) and the platoon commander with walkie-talkie! And so little effort has gone into converting the helmets, there will be a big ol' sorting when I do get the others out of storage/the garage!

But this is why I'm reticent to commit to more than a guess on the two Americans missing from the runner above, until I get the whole lot together (there's loads of these in store, including metallic green ones and chocolate brown ones in a very small sort of 15mil who may not be Wing Lung) there are still questions to be answered.

However a small sample of the 20mm's (one of each known pose) does suggest the two missing figures might be taken from Airfix, as Airfix seems to have been the No.1 donor in the smallest size. And the German para's are a rare beast in rack-toy circles, not as common even as the US para's where I think we've ID'd three with two still looking for a surname.

Confirming my previous wittering on base mark, the real giveaway is not the marks themselves but the fact that the ovoid cartouches are pretty constant between sets and/or lines/scales.

I think I've only found the Wild West in 30mm, where they go well with the various cake-decorations, Lines-Waddington/Rosas y Malarat and Gulliver clones. The WWII might also be in a 50/54mm size, but I've not found any and someone (early Rado Industries?) has similar Airfix 8th Army clones in the larger size, with similar bases, but the are not so uniform in their geometry, and the marking is different with a 'made in-' prefix.

So - as a final aside - to answer Tom's question of a few years back, I think the Matchbox poses were limited to the 30 and 40mm sets, while the Airfix were confined to 20mm, with the odd figure (Airfix US officer) in all three sizes?

We will return to these, probably twice (three times with the A-Z entry), but for now that's a quick overview!