T is for Two - Ceremonial Castings

I'm trying to clear some of the nascent posts in 2022, '23 & '24, which are now making-up a bulging 2025, that's how I roll! And Brian B from New York sent these to the Blog back in the autumn of '22, so well overdue for an airing.

It's one of life's quandaries that after a successful armed insurgency against their legitimate government, the newly independent Americans would spend the next 250 years utterly obsessed with their former parent, its royalty, its Parliament, its Capital, its 'pomp-and-circumstance', and its ceremonial troops, consequently, a lot of 'Royal Guards' figures have appeared on that side of the pond!

 

London Bridge is one of those makers, and with the old London Bridge having been situated in, errr . . . London, England, and it's now residing in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, the company seems to have named themselves in homage to the Mother Country, rather than for any geographical connection to either site of the eponymous water-crossing infrastructure!

Compared with the Britains Deetail figure, we can see the castings are closer to the old Britains 'Standard' 54mm (1:32nd scale), which is as it should be, the Deetail were heading toward the 'new' size of 58/60mm.

 

I'm not sure if bearskins have changed size over the years, but they are now 18 inches tall and over a pound in weight, built on a bamboo frame, I've handled one, at an auction-house, and they are very floofy! But older model soldiers and paintings seem to indicate one of around 12/14 inches prior to the mid-20th Century?

From the archive, and to make-up the image numbers, comes this flyer from Reb Toys' 'Castings' division (I believe they recently [last ten years?] changed their name to Miniature Moulds, and are now defunct?), and we see the same 'traditional' toy soldier lines in the sculpting, but you have to cast them yourself.

 

While they also supplied the ex-Schneider semi-flat / demi-ronde Prussian marching band, which you often see on feeBay, sometimes as ratted old damaged rubbish for re-melting, sometimes as nicely painted sets, often for a daft amount of money, for essentially homemade figures in an odd scale; about 40mm.

 

Many thanks to Brian Berke for his 'work in progress'.