C is for Chris's Autumn Parcel - Ceremonial & Historical

Less fighty-bitey, but still fighting men! Dealing with the ancients, medievals, ceremonials and other more colourful types and there were several interesting things among them, not least a childhood favourite, but smallies first;

Seven Giant or Giant-like, the green 'loon' being a less common moulding to find, three items from Quaker Oats's premium line of Gladiators, a broken Marx knight from the Miniature Masterpiece range, I have a whole tub of these, and being hard, glueable polystyrene; I have every intention of having a conversion session in the future, chopping some to save others as all-new figures! To his right (as we view) is the rarer soft plastic version from the window-boxes, which - as they only had a few figures per set - are hard to find loose.

Now, these were awesome! I'd actually found two, a pair in this colour-way and another pair, on feebleBay a day or two before these turned up, while looking for something else, both pairs were chipped, so I left them but, it reminded me we had a drummer when we were kids, he broke once or twice.

Mum dutifully glued him back together with Araldite and rubber bands, this, back in the days when Araldite left a brown vein through the work to show the mend, like cheap Kintsugi (another one for NZ Paul to Google)!

Anyway, to get half a platoon in one lot, no appreciable chips or scratches was a lovely surprise, so a mid-post 'Thanks' to Chris for these lovely chaps, our drummer was yellow or yellow/blue if I recall correctly, so other colour schemes may well be out there. The 'Foreign' probably masks a Japanese origin, although West Germany earned the same moniker between the wars (and immediately after the second!).

Chris even sent the originnal gift- box! As you can see, with or without the packaging, there is a fourth, smaller compartment; I believe that's where 'our' drummer would have been found. A lot of these would have been broken-down and sold as single mouldings in gift shops, tobacconists, corner shops &etc., or eve as actual Fairings so our drummer may have come singly, that way?

But I have no idea if these are 1950's (probably, more likely) or 1920/30's, in which case our drummer may have been a junk-shop find, or part of a mixed auction lot of the type Mum used to bring back from Persons here in Fleet, from time to time!

These have only ended-up in this post as opposed to one of the later ones by dint of the slightly military/ceremonial type on the right, but he may be a bull-fighter/gaucho type, or a Camargue horse-catcher type (their traditional dress seems to be black), or is he a mounted member of the Vatican Guard? The sort of thing you might get from a broken snow-globe, but no sign of glue, so we may assume a set, somewhere, factory painted?

The horse may be from a circus set, while the dancer must be a decoration for cocktail glasses, but she appears to have no damage or missing part, so seems to have been attached to whatever piece of fruit or vegetable (those f**king olives; they taste of soap or armpits), via her pointed foot, or equally pointed hand?

Two sucker Guardsmen; too cool for the photo-bay, so they were attached to the mirror in the bathroom and turned though 90° to make sense - he's actually shooting the ceiling! The Highland piper is one of the - previously seen here at Small Scale World - PVC key-rings, his loop removed and a base added!

Finally the third chap (40mm Hong Kong swivel waste) arrived just as I was shooting some others for a post (I know, we've seen them two or three times already, but I like them!), and he was a colour variation (a more-orange torso, paler trousers) so quickly got added to that in-the-queue post!

My first 'putty' coloured Kulikovo example, his lance-tip is missing, but I have some old Testors body-filler somewhere which is almost the same colour, so with a bit of Plastercine I should be able to mould a new tip straight on, using one of the existing sculpts?

Above the Hun is a Jean knight (or Blue Box? I'll have to compare side-by-side) in a darker gunmetal to the usual silver and below him another of the 'brown' Tatra for Nabisco premium figures, with this Conquistador it's clearer to see the brown is actually a dark bronze/gold than it was with the previously seen Zulu.

And this one is another marked 'Made in England'; I'm still looking for a made anywhere else mark, and having tracked down most of the Rubenstein bagged sets now, have still to find one for these - in any colour - so am starting to question the [exclusively] American 'fact' that they ever had anything to do with them, either as themselves or for, or on-behalf of, a third party / Cereal company?

Cheers to Chris, lots of useful, interesting things here!