M is for Merehall's Military Mutineers

It's always nice to help the hobby with a solid attribution of figures which have until now, remained question marks, and with a lot of nonsense said, and confusion sewn about mostly crappy generics of the half-rubberised verity in recent years, it's particularly satisfying to tie-down some of the better, more 'collectable' versions.

Merehall (MH), known to me for a rather fine military hovercraft, and attributed to trucks and vans of the cheapie-shelf variety, are behind these reasonable copies of Timpo ACW, who are easy to ID with their heavy hollowed-out bases and the two pronounced ring-collars to the foot-plug receiving holes.

 

They also copied the Wild West, 'Armymen', Crusaders and generic knights too, and are marked with a neat HONG HONG, the one over the other, between the two locating holes. I can only make out three or four poses, but assume the box had eight-each of six, or six-each of eight for the reported 48 pieces.

Unethical dealers use these to flog old Timpo figures, as the flag can pass for Timpo (it's more equilateral than the Timpo standard yellow, but aping the 7th Cavalry flag) and the hats are very useful!

 

The all important empirical evidence! Many thanks to John Begg, who was sitting on the solution, for letting me shoot this back in the summer. The other identifier is that these are one of the piracy-types with the seperate plug-on boots. And what looks to be a nice date of 1971 (31st June, corrected from 32nd!?).