About Me

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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.

Sunday, January 25, 2026

G is for Gashapon - Bandai Namco - Samurai Warriors

Some 'proper' toy soldiers types, here with medieval warriors, followers of the Bushido code, and one time powerhouse in Japan . . . God! I over-egged that pudding, didn't I? I like them, a nice 54mm, albeit with thick, plinth bases.
 

Paperwork! Note they are manufactured in the Philippines, China is slowly losing that crown, I've seen several toys made in Taiwan, Vietnam or Korea (South, of course) recently, as people try to divest themselves of exploitable links to the next Superpower, while still  looking to follow labour-costs below their own!
 

The simplest figure had a two-compartment bag, with the whole figure and a base (ABS), along with the long, thin paper.
 
While this chap gets five compartments!
 
As with the golds in the Shogun Palace line, these had polychrome or all-black versions, and I got one of the latter, but left it in the packaging for now, having the full colour one to show and look at.
 
The three of them, the guy in the middle will benefit from the old hot-water treatment at some point to get the separate rear of his pole-arm/weapon (a Kara/Jumonji Yari) to line up with the front, and a touch of WD40, or a pin drill may help the front locate in the hand a little better.
 
Left; Kanbee Kuroda      Middle; Yukimura Sanada      Right; Hideyoshi Toyotomi
 
Kanbee (also Kanbei, Kambē or Yoshitaka, December 22, 1546 - March 20, 1604), was a mighty Samurai of the late Sengoku and the early Edo period. Yukimura (also known as Nobushig Sanada, 1567 - June 3, 1615) was famous from the siege of Osaka, while Hideyoshi (27 March 1537 - 18 September 1598) was a famous Samurai from the same period, who came up from the peasant class to become one of the major Daimyo's and an Imperial regent, as the 'aristocracy' lost its tight-grip on things.
 
Western sites reverse the names, I've copied the paper for the middle line, as the Japanese fashion is to place the 'surname' or family name first - Walter Hugh, obviously I wasn't a Samurai, but once I was a warrior, and Donald J. Trump; you can go fuck yourself, you bone-spured, shirking, gobshite, wanker.
 
Close-ups; the decoration is exquisite, presumably some kind of tampo- or pad-printing, the detail is like ink-jet quality, or three-dot magazine colour of the 1970's. And I assume they are all based on surviving or replica sets of armour from Japanese museums - like the Artesania figures from Spain's Royal Armouries?

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