B is for Battle Dressed Combat Soldiers!

When this post was in the queue for Rack Toy Month last year, it consisted of about 20 appallingly bad shots of the contents of the bag, with tons of reflection, in which I was trying to shoot at least one good shot of each pose, for collaging into groups, but I ran-out of time to crop and edit them.

There weren't all the poses in the bag which was another spoiler of the project and then, when getting toward the end of the garage emptying, I found their box, and managed a whole new shoot with loose figures and a few silver 'plated' ones!

The oddity with this set (and the reason I had them stored separately in two 'zones'), is that the ANZAC clones are, generally, a tad bigger than the 8th Army clones (both from the Airfix 1:32nd/54mm figures), so, for years, I thought I was seeking two sources! I still am of course, but now it's to find the chromium-guys set, rather than two nationalities of set!

 

How many officers? You can see here that the ANZAC Officer with pistol (converted from the Airfix Commando) is heading for 45mm, the other ANZAC's being around 40mm, with some of the 8th Army no more than 35-mil! And they go very well with the Rado Industries/Ri-Toys, definitely not Blue Box ANZAC's! Which means they could be used with the actual Blue Box too!

The mark shows up better on the metallic-sprayed set, and err, that's it for now, currently an unknown originator's 'generics', I'll return to them when more comes to light! I aught to add that I think the two chromium ones here were from Chris or Peter, as the officer wasn't in the storage lot and these images were from the old folder, so thanks - as always - to both.

ABC is for Another Building Collection

Just a quick follow-up to the previous post on the WWII copies from Hong Kong's ABC, I managed to get the officer in Sand off to Chris and he kindly shot them all together for us, so this is the ABC '8th/14th Armies', as they are currently known to exist.

Not that there's any empirical evidence for them being sold even as 8th Army, and almost certainly not as 14th, but . . . it's the shorts stupid!  The big question now (as it was last time) remains how many poses were there in total, and what poses remain to be found?

Chris is rather hoping for the Timpo/Kentoy (et al) Vickers machine-gunner to be among any missing figure poses, I rather hope someone (whoever was responsible for the known four) might have added shorts and an Infantry beret to the Monogram bazooka-team?

Which figures would you like to find loyal readers? I think it must be limited to one or two of the poses already in the Timpo 'solid', Crescent 8th Army or Monogram/Revell GI sets? And do you have any of the missing poses?

And many-thanks to Chris!

S is for Some More Bloody Desert Rats!

The trouble with doing a thematic 'mini season' even one which jumps between theatres and nationalities is that you start to get a 'writer's block' on suitable titles, and having failed to start the blurb on this post twice because I couldn't come up with a humorous, alliterative or otherwise mildly erudite title, I gave up! It's just some more bloody 8th army! Charben's this time . . .

. . . and I'm missing the flamethrower. To be fair these seem harder to find than some of the others, and with brittleness become a factor on most of them now, particularly the chalky early British production of Timpo, Lone Star and these, the long, sticky-out bit of the flamethrower has probably rendered good ones few & far between.

But I'm relatively new to this large-scale malarkey (as I like to keep reminding you-know-who), and a flamethrower will come. It's like the Hilco 8th Army/ANZAC's, I've seen them, but they were outside my budget - stupidly I don't think I photographed them when I had the chance!

There seem to have been three generations, following (or followed by?) Timpo's set in the first instance with a change from/to black or brown weapons and a further issue in green plastic which may be supposed to be the 'Forgotten 14th'?

And following-on from the other day's comments - these chaps are definitely wearing 'footy-bags' rather than the shorts stipulated-for in Kings Regulations, Clothing, Troops, For the use of!

Yellow-tan on the left and greenies on the right, the Vickers MG is another of the family of mouldings with the ammunition feeding into the trigger mechanism - as earlier hollow-cast MG's had been more accurate (exception below!) - this has to be a case of lazy cloning by sculptors, the question is - who's came first; Timpo, Lone Star or Charbens? Both Timpo's water-cooled Browning (which lead to all the Kahki Infantry clones) from the ex-hollow cast US G.I's/W. German solids, and their later Swoppet Vickers were more correct.

I have late unpainted (or Woolworth's?) figures in the green and the grenade thrower seems to have the same leachate (is that even a word?)/leached deposit as the much later Matchbox figures would suffer from; some polyethylene Bergan/Beton were also afflicted with the same phenomena.

I have very few hollow-casts, good examples are way outside my budget, but along with a Crescent (or Timpo?) sailor, the Timpo launderer and the odd knight, cowboy or guardsman (I got two nice ceremonial hollow-casts at the last Sandown Park show), I picked this slush-cast lump of playfulness up at some point. It fires matches, or fishing-line weights, or gravel or inky-paper blots . . . bargain!

A is for Antipodean and African Action Men!

More box-ticking and I still haven't found a hunter! Two sets in one with this mob, as they got themselves a second paint-job at some point and jointed the King's African Rifles, but they got their start as ANZAC's, although I think they were called Australians by Lone Star, the two national contingents of the Corps were similarly dressed and equipped and usually served side-by-side, so I'll go with ANZAC!

Ten ANZAC's from Lone Star, showing a variety of paint in hats and webbing and all the standard 'toy soldier' poses covered except 'casualty' where some makers are keener than others to represent the negatives of making war, although LS's khaki infantry have a lovely stretcher-team as we saw last year.

The KAR (King's African Rifles), same figures but with darker skin-tones and a typically; a darker green for hats and socks than the ANZAC's. Although - as he's snuck into the shot - the prone'ish Bren-gunner (front left)is an ANZAC with the darker greens of the KAR's. I don't know how he ended-up in the shot, there is a dark-skinned gunner, but clearly I wasn't paying attention!

Closer comparisons; showing typical Lone Star base-type variations. I suspect the larger bases are a later change to the tool, it's easier to make a component larger than to reduce it? However it's not totally clear as while the larger bases on the unpainted figure and/or KAR might suggest logically a later issue . . .

. . . here we find the KAR is the smaller base! A situation mirrored in . . .

. . . the kneeling firer. Assuming the grey-green bases were even later, would leave the conclusion some bases got bigger, while some got smaller? I know this has been pored-over elsewhere in the past, with an equal lack of a firm-conclusion, so I'm not going to try calling it, suffice to say there are a lot of variations out there!

Also I suspect the officer on the right-hand end of the rank has been home-painted/re-painted, but it's not clear.

Some more comparisons (they're not rare!). Black grenades seem to be less common and may be earlier, but one gets the impression Lone Star's out-painters had a freer hand than say Britains' did?

I have two unpainted figures in the sample; this advancing chap and the officer above, who (or which?) may have been stripped of paint by previous owners, but are more-, or as-likely to have snuck on to the market from factory-filches or old, forgotten, out-worker's stock?

Recent re-issues, these aren't the softer PVC of my Toyway stuff, so I guess Dorset or Marlborough? The colour of polymer chosen however (un-pigmented neutral granules?) is bloody insipid and hard to photograph! Although the kneeling Tommy-gunner is a better shot with more substance to his 'mass'.

Lower shots reveal that these Afro-Antipodeans are a bunch of big boys, with a buckshee Hong Kong copy, Airfix's Gurkah and a French Indo-Chinese (or Algerian campaign?) soldier from JIM (it's all in the hat!) all dwarfed by Lone Star's chap, although the usually larger (in shots of this type) Atlantic machine-gunner holds his own . . . a couple of six-footers if they are an inch in 54mm!

E is for Eye Candy

Naff expression, naff title - I know, but sometimes it's easy to find a title; sometimes it 'aint! I'm no Shakespeare! This is the last of the non- 'Khaki Infantry' ( there's more to come on that page, from Barney and me) shots Barney Brown sent me, and while we have looked at the figures before, it's always nice to look at them again and the scenic items are new-to-blog.

The Speedwell Germans, some repainted, some original, some damaged, but collectively a nice sample with all eight poses and a nice flecked-green figure. Compare him with the similar pose in the damaged group and you'll see they are two different mouldings, common with these, most noticeable with the Trojan Germans and Japanese, there is some thought that it may be indicative of more than one maker (almost certainly true with the Japs).

We looked at them 3 years ago with the dying camera Here.

Trojan German Infantry and the 14th Army/Australians, of interest here is the Panzerfaust operator moulded in pink and then all-over painted. I don't think I have more than one or two of the jungle troops, but we looked at the Germans Here.

The 14th Army/Aussies are larger than the others at a reasonable 54mm, compared to the 50mm of both sets of Germans and the Japanese and in sand plastic are believed to be 14th Army, with the khaki/drab-green being the plain 'Australians' in the catalogue.

Scenic items, these are issued/included in sets by at least two of the 'khaki infantry' makers; Speedwell (who usually marked, and therefore are probably the originators), and UNA, Trojan and VP may well have put them in sets too?


Thanks to Barney for all the images in this post.

S is for Speedwell

Because the Trojan figures only fill half a box in the archive, they share space with the Speedwell Germans, these are called Afrika Korps in the catalogue and wider collecting world, but 'Field Grey' versions were made, although they remain uncommon, so I tend to just call them Germans! In common with the Trojan's, these are around 50mm.

All eight poses, one damaged, they always had silver helmets, but these might have been re-painted? The officer has a plug-in moving arm, and like the Lone*Star ships officer we saw back on Trafalgar day (spanking the surrender-monkeys!), this suffers from 'early-English chalky-plastic syndrome'; that it's usually been separated from it's owning shoulder! There is a thinner slim-calved version of this moulding, see the Plastic Warrior 'special' on Speedwell (ISBN: 1-900898-20-9) for a good image of him. Indeed, the aforemetioned publication is definite reading for any student of these figures.

Although sculpting on these is marginally better than the Trojan set, it must be said; the animation is pretty abysmal. The grenade thrower seems to be hurling a piece of 1940's fitness equipment, or a detachable whisk-head, while the machine gun has clearly been liberated from a fireworks-night 'Guy', having been made from three sticks and a gift-wrapping card tube! But they were ONLY toys! Not much else to note, the different treatment of the bases being the only obvious point and very much in-line with the evolution of Trojan painting.

Far right is the greenish 'Field Gray' version I mentioned above, a mate of mine has quite a few of these and the helmet camouflage is both standard and the same as the Speedwell copies of the Timpo GI's. To the left is the multi-coloured granule moulding that is so common in early plastic production, going right back to the very early days of Bakelite and Ivorene ashtrays and pen barrels! Unpainted examples in sand and multi-colour turn up with only slightly less frequency than painted, but the green/grey ones always seem to have at least the remnants of a paint-job.

Behind is one version of the stretcher team, taken from Timpo, via Kentoys and spread - with variations - throughout all these early British producers; Kentoys, Speedwell, Trojan, Una, VP and possibly/probably Benbros and Paramount. The reason I've included it here is that despite the British Guards Brigade/post-war Tommy Atkins' 'piss-pot', I suspect this is meant to accompany the desert version of these Germans. [No - it's the 14th Army stretcher team from Trojan!]

I also have the same multi-maker British-helmeted mortar No.2 in sand yellow plastic, yet I've never seen other 'Allied' figures in that colour. Also, the same mate has boxes of all these makes figures, with a similar dearth of sand-yellow, so the guess is; the sandy Stretcher and Mortar teams were included in one of the bigger German boxed sets by Speedwell to increase play value? Maybe one of the Coronet series in the above mentioned PW 'Special'.

Close-up to show the distinctive base on most (but not all) of these figures. Indeed in the lot that came-in in the Autumn, from which these are taken, were large numbers of the multi-coloured figures (badly painted in a black scheme, probably home-painted) with flat bases, which may well have been sold as Trojan or Kentoys, or included in boxed sets by either, or Una/VP?