M is for Merched Cymru

Or 'Welsh Ladies' to the occupying English, while - "Formidable infanterie de ligne" to French invaders! And yes, we sort of had that gag before! Really an F is for Follow-up, as these keep coming-in, and of course they do, they were (are?) in one form or another, a standard tourist trope/souvenir, and there will be many around, some commoner than others. 

Indeed, it's one of the big gaps in the hobby's knowledge, these localised figurines/figurals, I do have a couple of Christ The Redeemer's from Rio, a few Virgin Mary's from the Vatican, Italy, Lourdes or wherever, the Tzar Gun from Moscow, and the Russo-Ottoman war gun from Bulgaria (Or Hungary?), but there are hundreds of these sites, statues, famous guns &etc., from all over the world, and the bulk of the touristy 'toys' from them, are missing from the bulk of collectors' collections!

For instance, I know I'm short of Irish Ladies/Irish Dancers, and Leprechauns, although some of the latter are repurposed gnomes, which I do have in the collection, sans the extra green decoration!

So, not strictly to scale; a new keyring, the previously-seen keyring, un-drilled in the hat, but with a hole in her back (for mounting to an egg-timer or something?), the old styrene one we have seen before and the one believed to be Cherilea (or Charbens)? I think someone was questioning it's attribution the other day, so 'believed to be' is the way for me to go!

 

It's funny, I have my critics, many of them, all waiting to pounce on the slightest error (or even just flat omissions), even as they ignore their own, or each-other's howlers, so I've learnt to be as careful as I can be, while still passing as much as I can on, to you, as accurately and comprehensively as possible!

 

The facts here, are that the figure has a base unlike those of other figure production from either Charbens or Cherilea, and as a commission from a tourist whole-seller in Wales, or serving Welsh retailers, could have been made by any one of several dozen other British figure producers, or several hundred, even thousand plastic injectors, not known for their figures. And - so far - I don't think it's turned-up in any of the reissues from either firms' mould-banks.

As I mentioned only the other day, at a point in around 1998, there were 3 injection-moulders within yards of each-other in the commercial belt between Frimley and Camberley, that they have all gone now, is a moot point, they were there, and they were only the ones I knew of, there may have been more - there are three or four still listed on Google Maps, none being the ones I knew back then, and in the 1950/60's there would have been twice as many.

And with those musings in mind, returning to the 'Hong Kong' not her usual keyring self; these items are used not only as key-rings and egg-timers (why I suspect she has a hole in her back), but also as/for attaching to pincushions, barometers/thermometers, note or calendar holders, key-cups, egg-cups, hooks, knife-racks, cruet sets, anything you can think of as maybe being sellable, to people from elsewhere, looking for a small, travel-friendly keepsake or memento of their trip to your neighbourhood, your attraction!

Now, I also think the vinyl one may have been in Chris Smith's last parcel, but in looking at that folder to ID it, I can't find it, so either I shot the pic's for this post (which has been growing in Picasa for a while) and forgot to include it in the plunder-post shots, or I ended up combining it with the key-ring I picked-up in a mixed lot a while ago, while putting-away Chris's stuff, but in any event Chris has sent some, and he definitely sent the reconstituted slate one we also looked-at here, so many thanks for everything he does for the Blog.