K is for Khaki Madness!

Which isn't very mad at all; certainly no madder than trolleys and a lot less madder than reefers, but there's a lot of it about at the moment! Mostly in PW, but . . . as part of a conversation which used to be 'These might be Trojan' or 'Are they Kentoy?', and which is now 'Could be BR'.

But as these are metal, I thought they could go here, I have sent some of the polymer stuff to Paul at PlasticWarrior Magazine where the conversation has mostly taken place, and there will be more here and/or there.

I saw these going for a song back in September (if the photo-dates are anything to go by, sometime in the late summer/early autumn anyway!) and got them for the initial bid, they look to be a set of home or 'shed industry' soft-metal casts, given a commercial twist, probably around Christmas time . . . at some point in the 1950's?

They were rather dirty and the card had 'had-it' (seems to have narrowly avoided immolation!), also by the time they got to me several figures had broken free, so I determined to remove them all.

The card (which may have lain in a long-gone box) had been cut from a crate of Chivers canned fruit! For those with better research tools than me this may help date them as while I think Chivers are still around as a brand-mark for set-jelly deserts, and have vague recollections of them being behind a range of jams and/or marmalade when I was a kid, I certainly don't remember them producing canned-fruit?

And even if they are still around (I haven't looked in Sainsbury's) they will be no more that a trade mark for a subsidiary of some global behemoth like Nestle, working through a subsidiary like Mondelez or De Monte, out of some anonymous carcass-rendering plant on the edge of a rural market-town somewhere!

Cleaned-up they were quite shinny! Twelve poses/items, and all pretty recognisable, with the slight incongruity of a colonial-era highlander in a kilt with neatly blanko'd webbing and solar topee!

You get eight combat poses and four guys in more base-area or sentry-duty type attitudes . . . almost a 'Home Guard' line-up! I think Crescent are the origin of most, although - believe me - these are lumps of solid stuff which probably contains more lead than was healthy then, let alone now! And not the hollow-castings of the donor's figures.

When mentioning these types in the past I've muttered Agasee under my breath (only because I happen to have a copy of their catalogue somewhere), but there were several makers/suppliers of this kind on home-casting mould, and people are always quick to 'correct' with the German originator of most; Schneider!

Where these differ from others is in having a sort of waffle-pattern to the bases/undersides, which I suspect might be a hinged plate closed on the hot metal to force material into the extremities with excess liquid squeezing out of the waffle channels? It would make a hell of a mess wouldn't it?

Scratch-that, I'm over thinking it!

But it's an oddity nevertheless and does point to a three-part mould, as you'd have to lift the 'waffle-plate' before you could remove the figures from the other half of the main mould OR hinge both halves away leaving the figures on the 'waffle-plate'?!!

There were two reason for my investing in some heavy-metal tat on this occasion; the obvious being that I seem to have found [one of] the donor[s] for my plastic one, I won't add much as I think we've already visited it about four times in the last couple of years, but that's four sizes now, in two types, two materials and one games manufacture's name (Glevum Games 'Dirt Track Racing'; thanks to Adrian Little) associated with what is basically the same sculpt!

Returning to the conversation around BR and the other reason for purchase; the prone figures are of the most interest to us in the plastic's-wing, here compared with a couple of my 'Trojans', they are not exactly the same - the polymer-lots' prone rifleman for instance, has a straitened right arm and a reinforced left arm, simplified rifle and there are differences to the small pack and pass-pocket - but that's not the point I'm illustrating, just that these sculpts were common at the time, and there are different mould sources for a number of figures whether designed for white-metal or plastic.

I bid on this at the same time, but missed it - despite a broken bi-pod! Anyway, he's been discussed in the conversation, the Johillco Bren-gunner, with a variant at the front (raised head to compensate for higher weapon) but the same legs!

And here he is in a scan from the Shilham Miniatures catalogue, along with several of the others,  Shilham was operating about ten years ago when I picked the catalogue up from one of the London shows I think, but I can't find the firm on-line so they may have gone the way of all flesh, it could be longer (15-odd years?) and they were probably using old Agasee moulds, although - as I've mentioned before - there were a couple of mould (or mold!) suppliers in the US until quite recently (one may still be going?) and there will be others . . . have you seen what these moulds go for on feebleBay, it's all maths - "How much is the ingot-metal, what can I charge per-figure/per-set, how much have I made from the moulds I've already bought, ergo; I can bid this much silly-money!"

Indeed, when you start looking, there's tons of it around, one bloke is charging lottery-winnings for old Johillco and Reynolds pirate re-casts, and he'll get the money from the same guys shelling out 60/70/80-quid for a new metal radio-operator! I only bought this set because it was so clearly dirty and with a card on its last-legs; it had to be genuine!

M is for Military Mystery Men

I really, really, REALLY thought I'd posted these, in fact I thought I'd posted them more than once, but I can't find them anywhere on the blog (except a relatively recent distance shot, in a 'Forthcoming' post) under the correct tags (Comet, Eriksson, Spencer Smith and/or Timpo, nor 'Motorcycles'!), so without further ado; let's get'em up'ere!

I think I must have thought about posting them once or twice and written the blurb-bits in my head, leaving me with a false memory (or false memories!) of having posted them, when I hadn't?

Anyway, here they are and they are brittle, polystyrene 'kit' plastic, in a much darker colour than the flash has rendered them here! Most of the other images are truer to the eye, but not the last one (bottom) which was taken in the same circumstances as this one.

They are relatively unusual and an odd mix as we have a semi-flat running G.I., a fully-round kneeling firing Tommy Atkins and a very generic motorcyclist who's more civilian racing scrambler!

The sources are therefore as eclectic as the finished group and we'll go from the left in the previous image, which means the kneeling firer here first; he's taken from Timpo's WWII figure, and may well have been taken from the original hollow-cast rather than either of the later plastic issues we looked at here, they having copied they own hollow-cast moulding!

The running chap is taken from a common (and much used) pose/sculpt (or should that be sculpt-pose?) from the famous figure-sculptor Holgar Eriksson. Seen here compared with the diminutive Spencer Smith's, but also used by Comet-Authenticast, Comet-Gaeltec, SAE, Tradition and probably others, it can be - and is - many nations with head/webbing swaps, or the addition of a frock-coat and bi-corn hat, and the match illustrated isn't completely identical.

The third member of the 'set' which I had remembered as four (they've been in storage for a while) and may be more, it this motorcycle, again it seems to have been a common design back in the 1950's (or even late 1940's), predominantly for board-game pieces? Luckily I have found all three 'junk' lead and unknown Hollow-cast boxes in the garage!

You'll see the best match for the front-forks among the smaller trio, is the green one, but the head of the pink one is closer - they are very play-worn, very soft lead. A lack of fettling has led the larger red one to look like one of those Bisque imp-devils for cake-decorating, but closer study reveals several similar key-signatures . . . actually closer study suggests he is meant to be an Imp? Pointy ears?

Further I have a note to the effect that the trio are 'similar; to an Agasee home-casting mould (166? I've already put it away!), which is important for the rest of the narrative, and as I haven't found the Agasee catalogue yet and the red one has come in since, we may find it (Imp), or the plastic one, are actually closer to - or from - the Agasee mould?

Now known to be from Glevum Games 'Dirt Track Racing' game.

These were sent to the Blog by Chris Smith the other day (prompting the fruitless search for the originals on the Blog!), I think they are all polyethylene and we find, as the fall-out from the BR Moulds revelations in Plastic Warrior magazine gathers momentum, that there are lots of these figures out there, who have come, not only from that set of moulds, but from other, poured-metal or hollow-casting (?) sources.

Off the top of my head we have here an ex-Agasee bren-gunner based on the Hill/Johilco pose (inset - from Joplin's 'Big Book of Hollow Cast') of the same hollow-cast pose; another of the Eriksson runners, but this one with an apparently different base; landscaped and wearing the Authenticast 'ears' and a sling - but mine may be a short-shot version of the same tool, I don't think so though; more likely Chris's was the donor for my simplified cop-of-a-copy? While the MG gunner is ex-Britains too, I think, with that ammo-box sticking-out the side?

The point being made here is that a lot of the figures previously credited by some in the Old Guard to Hilco, Charbens or 'Early Cherilea' . . . err . . . aren't! They are in fact taken from either the newly discovered BR moulds, or home-casting moulds, or pirated from Hollow-cast figures/production, either by smaller commercial outfits, or industrious individuals/hobbyists.

The three (prone MG, rifleman and Kneeling GI) I put on the Khaki Infantry page (and sent to PW (issue 156) are now looking more likely to be Trojan than when I first suggested it, while the ex-Airfix para' almost certainly is, as Trojan probably helped themselves to a set of BR's moulds! To them it would have been investing petty-cash to write-off against tax . . . ?

The mould for Chris's Bren-gunner, it's a home-casting mold, but if jigged to fit a single-shot hand injection-moulder (as still used by Peter Cole at Replicants) it could produce a number of figures without distorting as the pressures built-up by such an appliance are no greater than the weight of a body on a bottle-jack, the trick is probably more to keep heaving until the extremities have formed, to prevent short-shot 'blob-ends', than to be releasing the pressure early to prevent damage to a solid-metal mould!

I believe some of these moulds were Zamak/Mazac alloy, so pretty tough, and while a modern six-second-cycle, fully automated injection-moulding machine would probably blow-them apart in less than a minute; that's not how they were done back in the day. Some however were softer whitemetal, and wouldn't last long before deformation? So, yes, it's in the Hill catalogue, but that doesn't make it Johillco.

I don't know if it's specifically an Agasee mould, and seem to remember being corrected last time I mentioned them as they were mostly importing someone else's moulds, but there were other mould-makers supplying home hobbyists (Gilbert and Schwarz spring to mind), often with variations of the same sculpts - the modern home-casters use the output to melt-down for new lead and few of them are in Joplin's big book - the 'BMSS & OTS guys' just don't rate them.

The bases of mine, there are no marks on mine, nor on Chris's, nor the commoner prone/kneeling figures, nor the guards and highlanders now attributed to BR, nor my funny little Highlander or that larger prone highlander and lifeguard we looked at a couple of years ago, nor the 'Trojan' paratrooper.

And don't think I'm attacking the Old Guard, they've always used the caveats of 'believed', 'thought', 'might' or 'could' be . . . assumed, presumed or 'seem to be', so arses were always covered, but it's clear there was much shenanigans going-on back in the 1950's-early '60's to produce all these more esoteric toy soldiers!

Thanks to Chris again for his images and for the second time this month - the more we know, the more we know we need to find out! That's five or six figures - new to the blog, new to the Internet (except evilBay!) and new (ish) to the hobby . . . oh, and thanks to John Begg and Steve Vickers for my three, which came to me from a fruit-box on a tailgate in a car-park back in 2009, some of my first large-scale purchases!

B is for Brown Shirts

I don't really have a 'wants' list, as the dozen or so 'big ticket' items I'm still looking for are obvious, while the list of things I still haven't tracked-down probably runs into the tens, or hundreds, of thousands, so a list would be pointless, although I do see people going round the shows holding thick wodges of A4, with double column lists in what appears to be 8pt. text, so clearly some do try to list them all!

However, this was definitely one of the absentees...only I had hoped to get it in the smaller pack as I have the 'other' four sets in the little packs, but beggars can't be choosers!

The artwork...like a lot of Atlantic stuff; this set is surrounded in myth, and while I'm sure it wasn't on display in every country it was available in, I'm equally sure it wasn't a universally 'under the counter' item, being one of the first of the Atlantic sets and running for some time...however, the nature of the subject and it's treatment by sellers and collectors over the years have made it undeniably hard to get.

This was my final purchase at the Plastic Warrior show, and I nearly lost it to one of the chaps up from ACOTS in the antipodes, but luckily for me he was tempted by an Airfix play-set instead, and I was able to take it home and then settle-up the following week at Sandown Park!

The two different frames (the only difference is an additional character figure of Hitler with the resultant snuffling down the runner of the other figures), from both sides.

It is another of the oft-quoted myths that Atlantic put anything in a box - I've handled many sets in all scales over the years, my own collection, a collection bought-in from the States and a dealers stock, and can say that actually with the odd exception, the contents are usually pretty consistent.

If there are anomalies, they tend to be the total sprue/runner count in the larger HO play-sets, or the figure count in the later 1:32nd scale blister packs. There is also a problem with the two artillery sets in the red 'export' series, in that the box-packers couldn't get their heads round the two variations, so both sizes can appear in both boxes! (that will be a future post!)

However, while the sets content are usually consistent, there is the problem of the contents not matching the given contents as stated, here the six frames are way off the advertised contents of "94 pieces"...

...so back-of-a-fag-packet maths was called for! The closest are the five runner combinations, specifically the 1 Hitler-runner and 4 others combination, but it's not quite there.

The six runners (3 of each) included in my set make the box bulge, so can't be right, and with one a little less opaque than the others I decided to 'de-sprue' it for a photo-session, my lose examples being in storage. I suspect this is one of those cases where the artwork was signed-off with a typo, as there is no way you are going to get the maths to tie-up, no matter how you cut it? Later boxes did away with a contents total!

So here they are, I will post better images of the large-scale versions one day as they came in the big purchase in 2010 but are also in storage.

The 'jeep' looks more like one of the post war Iltis/VW Safari vehicles than anything that rolled into the land of the Rus in 1941, and unlike the 1:32nd scale set where the windscreen clips in, with this set the pantograph has reduced that clipping-in detail to the point where it just 'sits in', and is therefore easily lost.

B is for Blitzkrieg

It is one of those perennial questions, often leading to heated debate; Why the interest in German 'Stuff', if you add SS/NAZI party organisations to the mix it gets even more heated, but ever since I have been reading or buying modelling or wargame magazines there have been regular debates on the subject.

And it can't be argued that when it comes to AFV's or Figures (the formula doesn't carry over to warships or 'planes), the manufacturers will tell you the Germans out-sell the rest of the combatants 3 or 4 to one. My brother's Detail was no more an exception than my Airfix kit stash; as could be seen from the box shot the other day, and here they finally are...

Sorting them out lead to 4 piles; Filthy with no stickers, dirty with stickers, needing a wipe and on the right - almost as good as the day they left the factory.

I have read all sorts of complicated suggestions for cleaning vinyl/PVC, and have learnt the hard way not to use paint-stripper (they just blister), there is no great science to it and I've just used a dollop of shower-gel in a bit of warm water, soak for a minute and clean with an old toothbrush.

Before (above) and after (below), they clean up very well, and while the 'wash' finish on the early British Infantry, Wild West and 7th Cavalry did tend to wear-off, the solid colour used here was itself a kind of vinyl, so is pretty much 'welded' in place, and a quick clean brings them right back.

A few years ago Andy Harfield actually sourced some vinyl paints, but there was a poor take-up at the time (I believe) and he only carried them for a year or three. I once did some work for a corporate entertainments company and we used large tins of the stuff to make 'It's a Knockout' (Jeux sans Frontières [JSF]) type structures and I can only tell you that it runs at two to three times the cost of equivalent emulsions or oil-based household glosses.

There are only one or two decent arm-swaps in this set, while my Brother converted (through necessity) a broken MP38/40 guy into a Mauser armed NCO or dismounted AFV crewman? The butt being explained by the fact that a clip-on rifle type stock was available for the Mauser!

I realised while cleaning them that the officer is the only figure from the Afrika Korps set repainted by Bro to fit in with his early-war temperate theatre guys, while one of the missing helmet-stickers turned-up on the rear stock...where I have a vague memory of placing it many years ago!

Notice also how our mother (My MUM!), ever resourceful - has taken the sidecar in for a service and sent it out with an aerodynamic wheel hub...she'd used a domed upholstery pin to mend the broken axle! I can report that it still works perfectly and is neither stiff nor loose, 30-odd years later.

His whole collection putting in an attack supported by an emplaced gun and the Sd.Kfz 215 from Dinky Toys. Between those shots is a pose line-up, missing being only the radio operator from the 2nd pose issue. Broken mortar's teams providing crews for both the AFV and the Britains artillery piece.

The third figures along (in both rows) are often described as having MG34's or 42's (even the wikipedia entry for Detail makes the mistake) when it is in fact - in both cases - a close representation of the Panzerbüchse 39 (PzB 39) anti-tank rifle, why Britains would produce such an obscure weapon (for a toy figure to be equiped with) not just once but twice is a bit of a mystery, although with the early-war uniforms, such weapons would have been common at company if not platoon level.

S is for Still Sitting There

Reconnaissance is supposed to lead from the front, these have all been left behind!

I've posted these before, on my imageshack, but to prove how bad I am here they are again a year later - no change! Some may end up in the sleigh diorama, piling up in a ditch and leaping over the bank to look for partisans? Mostly HaT with Airfix horse and bicycle

One of my favorites, the Matchbox Sd.Kfz.232 Armoured Radio Car. I built the kit (radio) version of this years ago and fancied a GS version, so filled the holes in the roof, added the MG/grab-rail and some more stowage boxes, covered the spare wheel and...er...I've sorted out some transfers! Although one of them is an Afrika Korps palm tree and they never had these, Doh!

Italeri have brought out a kit of this vehicle and while I haven't managed to compare them yet, there were several body-types in real life so one day I might try the same thing with the new kit, then I'll have three unfinished 6-rads on the table at once!

Like artillery and trailers, small 'jeep' types seem to breed on the work bench while your backs turned, there are two Eidai ones somewhere and an unmade Renown metal kit from Phoenix.

M is still for Motorcycles

These next three are all by or connected to Eidai also marketed as Grip, all are also German army, WWII.

This first shot is of the first version motorcycle and side-car, the nearest is strait from the box, the second is after a bit of a clean-up, extra tyre and a new head, the third has been given the head treatment and will be left without side-car...if it's ever finished!

This is the second version by the same company, it comes with the MG, and a proper helmet on the rider, but he still has semi-flat arms and the spare-tyre has a mudguard?

Finally - This is a cardboard flat I made by cutting the - in scale - artwork off the side of the box the above came in.

M is also for Military Motorcycles

There are so many motorcycles it was hard to know where to start, so you're getting a few military ones first!

This is the Kettenkrad - not really a motorcycle! Rather a small tracked vehicle with handlebars. I think this is by Fujimi or Nitto (now the same company) but I can't remember. The Airfix para was painted by me in about 1980, and was always the last man standing in my Pontoon Bridge river crossing assaults! Thinking the older guys cut the bases off (with no evidence), I cut his off, which is why he ended up ankle deep in mud - if he wasn't he'd come off the stand!!

The Matchbox Motorcycle and side-car combination, built strait from the box (it was the only thing worth having from the box!) in it's three colours. I can't think of a single kit for which the two/three colour thing actually worked, but I guess if you were 10 and you 'planes wings were a different colour from the body you wouldn't be too bothered?

Roco-Minitanks little DR rider, you got two to a pack, this was painted when I was about 10, then repainted when I was about 13, I was more interested in my ACW!!

The US Harley is from Fujimi and I lost the windscreen so had to make a new one, this was only made a few years ago, and it's surprising how awful the painting looks in the harsh light of a digital camera.