H is for How They Come In - Chris - May - 5

And so to the military portion of the goodie-box from Chris Smith the other week, excepting that two ceremonial's have snuck into two of the preceding posts . . . Doh!

Traditions creep-up on you, and it's a fact that as these posts have gone from 'highlights' to 'most', the poopertrooping parachutist shot has crept-up to regularly occupy pole position, whether it's a Chris lot or a Peter lot, and they both send parachute toys, most times, so who am I to trash a new tradition!

The first on the left is of interest, I think he's the largest of the less-common pose ones so far, while the dark green one, forth from the end, is unusual in the smaller sizes, although common as a larger blow-mould in which guise he's still around. Note also how the orange Airfix clone is a disarmed version of the red one!

The rest are grist to the mill, but you can see the variation here, in a small sample, so you can imaging what's happening in their box or boxes - there are three now; Airfix copies, others and novelty/space, with a  larger tub for the boxed, carded and 'toob' samples. So with my own purchases at four shows since lock-down, the nascent sections of the Parachute Toys & Novelties page (posted or not) all require updates, which will be a while yet!

And Chris sent three for the novelty sections too; an original Poopa-Tooper (pre- or unnmarked- Imperial), the newer copy/homage which we've seen on the card a couple of times now and a Super-Pooper Man Bat (AHI I suspect), posed with the larger one from the previous shot, to give an idea of the size/scale.

Assorted combat types, a nice PZG running WWII Russian, another Rambo set figure in the huge-size, the rack-toy German figure in blue is a heat shrink, now shooting at paratroops, into trees or upper windows, while the stretcher man is new to me, sadly missing his oppo' and a stretcher/case.

The three kneeling Airfix paratroops have the HGL marking on the base, while the Navy guy; seated, blue, is the third now, in various states of play-worn (in fact I think this is the best paint so far) clearly removed from a larger - probably Hong Kong, probably mostly plastic - vehicle or vessel, but still no clues . . . and I do keep my eyes open?

These keep turning-up and this one looks to be the best so far, so is probably the donor for some of the others we've seen, and needs to be compared with the rest to see whether he's a colour variation of the other good ones?

Mostly generics to sort into the 'master' collection, but a - possibly Revell - kit figure; center below, whose paint points to one of the store display models, but there's not much between store-display and 1950/60's home paint stab-and-hope!

There's another kit figure hiding in the top row, on the right at the back, while the three flats; bottom left, look to be a brighter green than most of mine, which we saw here. Well, I seem to have one, the flamethrower, so now I have four - thanks Chris!

The strange doorway, is actually the gun-rest from the Corgi armored recovery-vehicle! Smallies, with a Starlux Para, Galoob pilot, another kit figure (kneeling) and some rack-toy fodder. the three in the foreground are truck troops who have been separated at the shoulders!

Jean's sentry box, a lovely thing which is in two colours by the cleaver device of having the red moulding slide under the white one, to provide a colourful plaything, and another addition to the side-collection, or sub-category of sentry boxes!

We've actually seen these ABC and clones recently in the 'matters arising' post after the Plastic Warrior show-posts, where is was actually Chris who spotted the white ones on Brain Carrick's table, although I then filled my boots too! And with the darker one I found the other day, at least one of these is new to those we looked at here, while with the white one, we are up to eight or more variations now, not forgetting Chris has found green and red-plastic examples.

These are fascinating, I'm guessing French? [British] Both missing plug-in arms, so now I know they exist I will try to find more, with arms, but what lovely samples to get free in the post; ceremonial/colonial period (mid/late Nineteenth Century?), and probably 1970's bazaar toys [1960's], they seem to be a cut above the usual types in that category, so may have another origin/explanation? There's something Poplar or Tudor Rose'y about them too!

Anyone know anything about them? Arab officer, or white officer of an Arab unit (red) and someone looking like a Balkan or Greek ceremonial type (blue), or even a Cossack? I have a feeling I should know, I have a feeling they were in Plastic Warrior magazine many moons ago?

The next morning -  from Mr. Paul Morehead the legendary editor of the aforementioned Plastic Warrior magazine: ". . . those two mounted figures with missing arms on your site are Thomas Toys Two-in-One figures. For some reason you get two figures and one horse in a box. I think they're in our old Poplar Plastics Special [publication]." As I replied to Paul; I thought I'd seen them somewhere and it could only be there! I now recall there was a cowboy/native American Indian pair? And possibly a third?

Closing with the medievals; two Kinder, incomplete, but again - they go in the relevant bag until the right bits come in and I can assemble a good one, the silver Knight just needs a base (I may well have) while the Samurai needs a torso with a sword intact, a tougher call as the RP (Res Plastics) figures of that era (mid-1980's) are notoriously brittle in the fine-detail parts.

And two MPC mini-knights, the red a mounted original, the black a Hong Kong copy I think, I can't now remember, and while there's not much in it, the copies tend to slightly less well-defined detail, but copied the same MPC colours, while the MPC originals have a numeral in one of the release-pin cavities.

Thanks as always to Chris Smith for sending all this to the Blog.