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About Me
- Hugh Walter
- No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
- I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Saturday, August 13, 2022
A is for Ancient Wars, C is for Castle . . .
. . . except they are medievals, not
ancients and there's no castle! These are the latest iteration of figures from Supreme, previously carried-by Toy Major and supplied to various
others, they are currently being hawked by dozens of phantom brands and
jobbing jobbers all over Amazon, evilBay and Alibaba.
I'm sure you've seen them and will
instantly recognise them, and if you shop around you can get good deals, these
cost me less than a tenner, delivered, I think (it was a while ago, this is another one which has been in the queue for over a year!), and to be
fair to the premise of the title, there are many, many retail variations of
these, from small bags such as these here, to huge castle play-sets with multiples
of siege weapons and scores of figures.
The foot figures, I would describe these as
Eastern European in overall look, the Livonian Crusades or the wars with the fledgling
Russia, but painted-up they can slide into a late Dark Age; Norman, Anglo-Saxon
or early medieval/Middle Age army, they all had a few 'spangen-helms' or
Asiatic-looking pointy-pointy head-protector anointies!
Some pretty crude siege engines of the
interactive hand/eye co-ordination infant learning type are included in the
'infantry' bag, nothing like other Supreme stuff, they may be bought-in, but I
suspect just aiming at a different unit-price for a different price-bracket, as
I've hinted, some of the all but anonymous sellers are practically giving the
stuff away . . . changed priorities in China . . . in the end it's all
politics!
The horses; three variations of the same
basic sculpt and another rearing beast, all bearing a resemblance to other
Supreme horse-production. Riders plug-in and also come as multiples of four
different sculpts, but with only two colours each (more on that in the next
post) the idea is to keep black-off-black, which limits the combinations
slightly, especially with a small sample.
The locating hole in the horse, the
ammunition basket/sled for the balista, the catapult fires a witch's broom! And
the batch in the 'cavalry' pack were a much glossier plastic (two right hand
figures) than the ones in the 'infantry' pack.
The back of the 'cavalry' pack's header
card actually shows the older, painted, PVC version (the figures in this post
are all polyethylene with - probably - polypropylene horses and siege
equipment) as supplied to various end-users by Toy Major (among others) more on
this in the next - and final - post in this sequence.
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2 comments:
These knights do have an eastern vibe. They also resemble some western knights of the mid-14th century - take a look at the effigy of the Black Prince.
Yes Dan, the Princes helmet had to take a coronet though, the 'spangen-helm' was disappearing in general use this way (especially for a whole army), but I get your point, and poorer guys from the shires might well have had Grandad's helmet!
There is a very good map/graphic of all medieval helmets which I downloaded a decade or so ago and could post here, but I suspect it's copyright and still up on the internet somewhere . . . I'll try to find it again and post a link.
H
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