A is for ARMY Men; the People's Liberation ARMY Men!

This lot present the same moral quandary as some of that overpriced stuff coming out of a co-operative 'somewhere' in the Ukraine (several 'interviews' now, several brands; no location?), but as I didn't pay for them I'll desperately try to pretend there's no hypocritical conflict of interest here and/or a public service element to the posting!

Sent to the Blog by Peter Evan's - roving reporter for Plastic Warrior magazine and moderator of the Friends of PW Faceplant group - They are variously branded to Jeu, Jeunow and Vi!Kondo, these are clearly and best described (there's no clues on the packaging or online - it may be hidden in the Chinese characters) as Middle Eastern irregulars, but have the look more of 1970's PLO/PFLP, 1980's Lebanese combatants, Hezbollah or similar Levantine fores, rather than the looser-garbed modern terrorists of Al Qaeda, IS or the legitimate power of the [never listed as 'Terrorists' so OK for The Donald to do a deal with them-] Taliban!

These are the 'army-builder' poses, the bare-headed pair can be used anywhere that's had problems in the last 40/50 years from Ireland and Central America to Namibia or Burma! Their clothing is more Viet Cong, revealing their Chinese-centric sculpting. Top left has a Turban which could place him with Maoist Nepalese, or in the contested Indian-administered Kashmir? The others have cloth balaclavas of the Keffiyeh / Shemagh / Hatta type made iconic by generations of Palestinian fighters.

Slightly dodgy sculpting on the Molotov Cocktail here, but what a useful pose, cut-away the gun and we could be in Paris '69 now! The bases are separate and both plastics are quite hard polyethylene or 'propylene types and a single lug on the base locates in a hole on the figures, leaving some a bit off-center.

25-10-21 - For more on the poses see Craig's comments - below 

These two particularly; are both stuffed-up one-end of their bases by the parameters of the fixing system! The 2"/51mm generic infantry or foot-mortar is more of a VC thing than for modern insurgents, but some may have IRA style home-made mortars, however the limitations of the AN/FO explosive they tend to use makes them larger on the whole! Note Accessories.

Googling them to find-out more, I discovered my sample was missing a tenth pose, and he looks quite Mujahidin/Talib-like! The machine-gun's an oddity - looking a lot like the brand-new RPL-20, I suspect it's modeled on a Chinese copy of the old RP-46 LMG, or an FN Minimi LSW which is becoming quite ubiquitous now?

All-together a really useful set for irregular force-building.

On-line, they are Jeunow, and here are seen with 'Fritz'-helmeted opponents and various other items from the same source. Of interest is the variation of stock-quality, from the excellent (and probably HO-compatible) Opel Blitz, to various lumps of anonymous imagi-AFV, some of which are copies of copies, or have been copied, as I think we've already seen some in other sets!

Chinese WWII-era figures and Japanese invaders also exist, and integrally-based variants of both are seen on the right here. I was unable to find built-in base versions of the insurgents and US-helmeted troops, but imagine they all-four come in both types?

The Japanese have been given an accurate flag, the Chinese have been given one which can't be mistaken for any of the flags (CSR, Maoist, Nationalist or Imperial) they fought/resisted under! Quite deliberate I'm sure; Xi Jinping's regime is trying to re-write the history of the period to include the better details of Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang party, in part to weaken Taiwan's claims to that history/legacy!

A few hours later - never try being clever when you're tired! Both forces on the right have perfectly good flags, it's the Japanese on the left who have a generic printer's registration-mark! But the Wikipedia page (link below) is still an interesting read!

The paper header was a home-printed affair, although a subsequent one was in a glossy-magazine style, professionally printed on card-stock, so it may be someone ran-out on a Friday afternoon and printed a few copies off in the warehouse, to finish an order?

But this is where it all goes a bit sour, morally . . . that third logotype, is CCTV7, that is China Central Television [channel] Seven . . . the channel exclusively for the use of (and probably funded by or for-) The People's Liberation Army.

What I'm suggesting is that by purchasing these, you may well be financially supporting the army of the Enemy! Because, and make no mistake about it; A) That's how these things work in China (as they did in Soviet Russia), and B) despite the rapprochement of Nixon (another lying, narcissistic Republican with the gift of the gab, more interested in power at any cost, and profit over the best interests of most of the people most of the time), China were always the 'other enemy' and are flexing like never before . . . indeed through these toys! What do you think the wars in Korea, Vietnam and Malaya were all about?

Now, OK, if you're a simple-thinking, garden-gaming, kidult, you're not going to give such things a second thought as you squat in the yard going "piow-piow", but I served, and I served for a reason, with a sense of purpose, and I find it all a bit disturbing . . . this watching the American far-right getting into bed with Eastern-European disrupters and mercenary gangs in Donbass or Libya, on the Dark Web, watching Trump selling-out the Middle-East to Russian influence, hanging the Afghans out to dry next to the Kurds, watching Biden going along with it all while Boris kills 200,000 of us while banging-on about Vegemite!

We're fucking rudderless in the West right now, the only rock among all the self-serving wankers, populist liars and religious-Right nutters was Merkel and she's now just keeping the chairs warm for a few more weeks, in a caretaker capacity, while they sort out a new coalition.

Deep breath . . . these came (also from Peter) with the glossy card, and can be seen in the previous shot, I saw them on-line in other, wackier, colours - pink, purple etc . . . probably down to any end-user/customer's requirements.

As sculpts, these (or some of them, the two kneeling poses may be new) have been around for a while now (Ja-Ru, Soma?), and these might be 2nd or 3rd generation, but cut/re-cut to a good standard, and basic modern American troop types, usable for m-any forces who use Western/NATO equipment.

Many thanks to Peter for sending them, and I'm not meaning to be ungrateful or cast aspersions, but now I've uncovered the somewhat sinister link, please think twice before buying them. One man's freedom fighter, is another man's terrorist, another man's resistance fighter, another man's revolutionary, but one's enemy, is one's enemy, is one's enemy, and we forget that at our peril.

Here's a lovely 'Rabbit Hole' - go; lose an hour of you life!