L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Military Figures

On to the second post of the plunder from May's Sandown Park (the next show's on Saturday), and it’s the military stuff, which was a quite eclectic assortment from across the ranges of scales, materials, and eras depicted.

 

This was a lovely find, a very, very clean Kentoys guardsman, with the correct (for purposes of identification of several vertions ) Sentry Box, in a near mint box which also shows how the stretcher-party was sold from the same carton.

 

And, speaking of stretcher teams, this Starlux set came home with me, I know I have the small-scale set in several configurations of base-type, paint, or plastic colour, but I'm not sure about the big one, I think I may have a stretcher, but no casualty or orderlies?

 

And these were a nice find, despite being the less loved of the company's output, they are every-bit as historical (as artifacts) as their earlier Nazi brethren, being instead, the East German, collectivised Lineol factory's production of Volksarmee Cold War soldiers, with both the Soviet-influenced helmet and side-caps. The sculpting is much more 'wooden' that their pre-war/wartime stuff.

 

This came with them; I always like a bit of scenery! But I have no idea which side of the border, or even which side of the war, this was made! The pack suggests West, the quality post-war, so probably Elastolin, but unmarked.

 

 

Grist to the mill with these, and the foot figures are a bit bashed, but it's all useful stuff, and these Culpitt/Wilton cake decorations are polystyrene, so paint and glue is probably in their future? It would be nice to do a few of the French/Hessian uniforms.

 

I can never resist these smaller-scale, early British mounted subjects (here, Cherilea 50mm'ish), as there are quite a few of them (Cherilea, Crescent, Rocco & Hill), they tend to come in various plastic and/or paint colours, and are often a bit play-worn, so making sure you have the best sample, means grabbing them whenever you can!

 

A soap guardsman! Needs a careful damping to lose the white bruises, but I'll save that job for a day when I have the time, space and tools for the task, as you don't want to wreak it! I tried an Avon search, and he doesn't seem to be one of theirs (which were normally ' . . . on a rope'), so a minor make, a seasonal or touristy novelty!

 

Chess set figure, seen before, I think, but all need bringing together and comparing.

 

And from Adrian's cheapie tray I got some nice, hollow-cast lead samples. Without the books in front of me I won't try to ID them definitively, but US Marine and colonial Brit', on the left, colonial and regular French on the right, and some of them Britains (including the small one, a B-Series?), maybe a French made one or two?

L is for Lots of London Loot - One of a Few!

A fair bit of stuff has come in over the last few months, most from Peter Evans, some from the late Michael Hyde's estate, some of it donated, some of it paid for, but often not for much, and some bits which have got in there, but may be from other sources, because they all got shot in batches. So I'm just going to post it all as H is for's.... but as L's! With many thanks to Peter and thoughts for Mike and the Brother who survives him.

 

Useful bits and parts including most of an Airfix 88mm gun and tractor, but the obvious item of interest is the box at the top left, which is a further packaging of the teeny-tiny AFV models we've seen a few times now, such as here - as Empress.

 

Another box of bits, half of them Rocco Minitanks, the rest quite an eclectic collection of components, beebo's and oddments! The Rocco will prove perticularly useful, I have a large tub with most of the main range (the first 150-odd numbers), and many of them are missing the odd bit!

 

Unbranded, as a generic, the Hing Fat American revolution figures, not sure it all the poses are here, and for reasons of intrinsic idiocy, I photographed the majority of the poses present in the red, and only the remaining odds in the blue, when it would have been better to shoot them the other way! Another project which went on the back burner, but will be done one day is a page on/of the Bicorned/Tricorne forces from Marlborough to the French/Indian wars, and I can shoot the blues then!

 

A bag from The Toy Project, which I didn't open, but which had some useful bits in, astronauts from two sourses, a kitten and a puppy and a Corgi/Dinky (?) firefighter. The kitten looks like it might be from a board game?

A cereal premium Wellington, I only mentioned them the other day! And a blow-moulded bear, which was probably flocked once, and almost certainly a key ring, the use of the latter employment leading to the loss of the former coating!

 

The vatican guard from MM, one of the more eclectic sets of 'HO/OO' figures, and almost certainly from Mike's collection, he had got around to undercoating one-each of the three poses, the full set is covered by Dave over on PSR, from the style and material, I wouldn't be surprised to learn of a connection between these and Caesar Miniatures?

 

The Life-Like State Coach kit, it seems to be complete, so will get a making in the future, if only so it can be photographed 'whole', it's an old Miniature Masterpieces tool, a strange tie-in between the - then - nascent giant, Revell and the soon to fade Adam's Action Models. Thanks again to Peter for getting all this to the Blog.

M is for Merry Mass of Malleable Model Mayhem! 3 - Ceremonial & Historicals

Part-the-third, of the plastic plunder posts from Chris Smith's most recent parcel, brings us to the ceremonial and historical section, Royal Fail or Parcelfarce did their worst with these, as you can see from the first image in the sequence!

To be fair to Postie, I suspect there wasn't much in the bag when it left East Anglia, and was being sent as a sample of . . . Malleable Mouldings? But, yeah, it arrived as so much dust and two legs!

 

Funnily enough, the first Malleable horse I got (still somewhere in the pile) was found in the car-park at SAS, off the old A4, or at least, embedded in the gravel/puddle at the bottom of the steel fire-escape! It was/is missing both back legs and a base, and while I've handled several of Adrian's over the years, and posibly shot them for the blog, I have yet to find a decent mounted figure by Malleable! It'll happen!

Initially thought to be Italian, these are 30mm polystyrene Hungarian Imperial, or 'Royal' Guards, and - obviously - the same colour scheme as those 30mm plug-together 'swoppets' both Chris and Peter Evans have donated to the blog in the past. Lovely little things!

 

While the British 'Royal Guards' of the Household Division include two nice Hong Kong copies of Crescent (seen here yesterday), but in a Hilco style! next to them, the chap with the herb-green base is a real treat, he's the Reamsa copy of herald, and I think he might have been Reamsa No.1?

 

I personally love the eraser guardsman in purple, he's that silicon rubber which really just smudges pencil, but they were 'novelties' first and erasers second, always, I feel? The key-ring guardsman seems to go with some of the Highland pipers, one of the Welsh ladies and probably the fisherman we saw the other day, while the KT is damaged and the Rocco guardsmen need glue!

 

Cake decorations and premiums, we've seen the AWI before, and the French Dragoon (?) is from that set of premiums which used to have one name but now have several in two sizes, with base differences and Kinder joining the mix!

 

A Crescent lead, and Blue Box sailors (Merten copies) signal a Hong Kong copy of Airfix trumpeter to deal with some French interloper (HaT Industries) while a rather legless Lord Flashheart courtesy of Skybirds, recovers from a night on the juice, in the Mess!

 

In discussion, we think maybe Brazilian for this horse, although he could equally be Argentine? Missing a rider who may send it to the Wild West section, I posted it here, as this post only had six images!

And Postie again! But they were all missing their tails already, so just samples, and while I don't know what colours of this Rocco guardsman I have, if I need a white sample, I'll have one, once I've glued a couple of heads back on!

 

Many thanks to Chris as always for all these, and even the broken stuff has its place, as place-fillers!

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Added a few minutes later - I'd dropped some of the images in the Khaki soldier section!

 

It was looking at the damaged KT above and realising "Where are the other two?" that had me off looking in the other folders! Superb thing to get in the post without warning - two more boxed KT pencil sharpeners, and different boxing, both generic and serving the tourist trade, but aren't they lovely - I've already sorted the guardsman (forthcoming post) with a fully rifled replacement, so he's now a minter!

 

We saw him the other day, but he belonged here all along - the Blue Box Napoleon, which, with another figure in this parcel, get us closer to a complete pose-count, but we're still only half-way on the painted/chromed sets! Thanks again to Chris.

B is for Best Show on Earth! 5. Historical & Ceremonial

Some of the best pieces from the show ended-up in this category, allowing for the fact that one Rocco lifeguard (Part 4) has escaped this post, along with the Trojan same and Airfix figures which were all in Part 2.

Arguably the nicest thing I got at the show, probably Japanese, but it could be French, and a celluloid-acetate, blow-mould construction, it needs a good clean, and it needs some renovation; the spear is in two parts and the long Arab jezzail musket is broken across the handgrip, while both are also bent in places - my father had two of these guns, a lovely tooled silver/steel one and a mahogany one with ivory detailing, they have, sadly, both disappeared!

 

But an absolutely exquisite piece, with much thought gone into is execution, and a nice paint-job under the dirt, and a beautiful animal; albeit with hollow legs! Cotton thread is used for the reins and camel-furniture and the musket's sling and, well, I bloody love it!

 

At some point I will carefully take it apart - where possible; musket and rider - clean it, straighten and mend the two weapons and put it all back together again . . . like one of the King's men!*

* Except I didn't swear allegiance at the TV, like some mawkishly sentimental, cap-doffing dullard of a sycophantic, fuckwitted serf, so I guess, legally, I don't have a King?

 

Pirate game playing-pieces as a sort of add-on module, I may lose the packaging at some point in the future, but not until I've scanned it on the table-top jobbie. They look like the figures from the game I found a few years ago in The Works, and while that was Musketeers, they'd all go well together, and may share a sculptor . . . on the continent?

 

As you can see, the same flowing, fine detail, overblown drapery almost, with this set having two ladies, although I'm pretty sure 'lady-pirate' is an oxymoron! The third one is not clear, due to his vast beard and mitre-hat, but I think he's a skeleton to boot, so some kind of Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off?
 

Another highlight of the show has to be these Timpo Cossacks, I had intended to try and find these on the day, and got them in the first hour or so, the seller also had the mounted in similar condition, but by then I'd already got the Britain's teepee under my belt, and felt that I'd had enough greed for one day!

 

But these are very clean, they're all basically mint bar the barrel's missing fuse, and two are in a cream white rather that snow white, which by be 'smokers home' or just a different paint, it's not clear?

My other Replicants purchase on the day was a bit of catch-up, the Naval Gun was issued a while ago, but I'm still missing a far bit of early stuff, so I'm trying to pick them all up slowly! The two pirates are original MPC, who can have the spare weapons from the reissue runner in blue plastic I got last year . . . the year before?

 

Also loving the pair on either end of this collage. Probably Argentinian, as is the one behind the British guardsman, the bag is full of bits from two renditions of Airfix's 'Connoisseur' range 54mm Hussar, which came in separate donation, they go in the 'bits zone'! I think the Guardsman is Cherilea, but might be Hilco, I can't check right now!?

 

More Guardsmen, including a novelty Erzgebirge-style tree-hanger, but as likely Chinese-made as German these days! The two 50mm's are Hong Kong piracies of Crescent, and I was totally unaware of them until Chris Smith pointed them out, by which time most had gone I think, but I grabbed the last two, and a post will be forthcoming, courtesy of Chris.

Others are a standard Hong Kong copy of Lone Star, Hilco (I think some call them Fusiliers) and a Sacul trumpeter. Two small scale, one from Christmas crackers, one from the 'Maid Marion' rack-toy set and a rubber swoppet with the wrong base!

Atlantic Gendarmerie band, remains of factory paint points to one of the early window-boxes, but they are tatty and I have the HO sets in various boxing's, so it was just a box-ticking exercise to fill a gap in the collection, and to compare with the others one day! One of each pose!

 

Kinder odds and sods! One-and-eight-ninths of Kinder Zulu's, a Kinder pirate in need of a paint-strip, bits of a Kinder samurai, legs off one from the other Samurai line and a spare ancient/medieval horse!

 

Real mixed lot as the rump of this section, I think I may have the Starlux Napoleon already, it's odd, I had the 1:72nd sculpt from the odd eastern 'character' set in various colours for years, and no other narcissistic corporals, but in the last few years lots have come in, and I have somewhere between eight and, maybe fifteen or more? I haven't been counting, and everything from 30mm PVC to 8-inch ceramics, through metal!

Character figure is from Linde I think, but it's unmarked, so may be another issuer! And I know I have all the variants of the little Hong Kong AWI gun, in both sizes, so I may try to remove the plating on this one's barrel and paint-it up. lead wargame figure and a spare head, join two early British (BMS?) FFL officers and a pair of LB cavemen to finish off.

Thanks to all for everything last month; Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little and Andreas Dittmann.

F is for Follow-up - AWI and Cake Dec's

When I originally posted these, in a rather irreverent article, I mused on the origins of the red versus blue versions of the Airfix Washington's Army figures, a while later I actually saw some blue ones, on a US sale page, so that part of the mystery was solved and my improbable tale of how the UK came to have a bunch of redcoats seems more plausible now!

But, anyhoos, the other two sets in the recent charity shop purchase were this pair . . .

 

. . . both in SSCO packing (I've seen them in others now), and showing one way the Americans got them, six infantry in one pack and the mounted officer (glued to his horse in this case) in the other, so while still outnumbered by my redcoat sample, they have a fighting chance now, and the three musicians of the previous post to chivvy them along!

 

Alternate angle/close-ups, they are the same figures, almost certainly from Lik Be (formerly 'LP' . . . or IDL!), they share the same base style and marks as both the redcoats available over here and the pair of astronauts which joined LB's diminutive chrome-painted robot/aliens - of which I picked up a few, mint, the other day in a charity shop!

 

I haven't got their matching-set here at the moment, so it's a comparison with the slightly larger, baseless set, but you'll get the idea from the previous posts on these, and we will do a round-up of all of them when I track-down the two missing figures for that chap the other day . . . other week . . . month! Another box ticked, more confirmation of previous thoughts!

And [written after editing the article] this isn't a return to business as normal here, despite the fact this was one of the next few in the queue. The MacBook Air went back for a full refund, it was a dated technicolour yawn of multiscreen busyness, and for the price, a complete disappointment - and I've always hankered after one; looked into it about 15 years ago and gave it more thought when first doing CAD back in 2012/13!

 

So with the HPieceofshit17 already on its way back to Amazon, I went back to a Lenovo, if my government is happy for me to buy Chinese shit full of spyware, who am I to argue? But Windows11 is also shit, and I still don't know where half the stuff I have got across is! It's a depressing nightmare, and with everything else going on, I don't know when normal service will resume, but I will try to get out a few easy or new-stuff posts going forward - a lot has come in!

I've actually managed to add some shots to the 'civilian' post of the canoe 'season', but apart from that and the Airfix post (additions to the Commandos) which was to go early too, the rest are still on one of the hard drives and after trying to 'migrate' the back-up, I'm in no hurry to load anything else on here until I know what the fuck I'm doing!

And I've just had problems loading these images, they wouldn't go where I was trying to place them, I tried formatting the page to normal, but they kept going in down the bottom, so in the end I gave up and moved all the text in sections . . . Pain! Still, it's not all negative, I'm back with Firefox; if everything else has changed you might as well bite the bullet and get used to new everything, and the current spellchecker for it is much better even than the Windows Office one!

F is for Follow-up and Fervent, Faithful Flag-waving, Fifes & Drums!

I think I mentioned back in the autumn, or possibly during Rack Toy Month that one of my bad habits is to post something, then, after I've alerted/reminded you all of them/the subject, go off to evilBay and see what's [still] there! I did it after the AWI post the other day, and managed to find a charity lot (yellow & blue ribbon icon) with six sets of cake decorations!

Among which were these three, so I grabbed the lot (cheap, buy-it-now) and they got here a couple of days ago. It's some of the other Sprit of '76 branded stuff, with the figures I described the other day as "...short-fat-kid caricatures", here - on the left - a patriotic flag waving lady-girl and what is their fifth drummer - within the line. On the right we have patriotically-dressed kissin' cousin's!

Flag lady could double as a pencil top, while the seat of the kissing pair is of more interest, as I have suggested for years that the based-set of Airfix piracies are by Lik Be, due to the similarity of the bases to both the marked robot/alien types and the late set of two astronauts and flag with lunar lander, or at least (as it was in One Inch Warrior magazine I think, so years ago and 'LP') that the maker of the astronauts was the same as the maker of the Airfix Washington's Army pirates . . .

. . . and here, courtesy of Bill B's catalogue is the same bench-settee/love-seat, now providing a place of repose for an elderly couple, in a Lik Be trade advertisement. So I get to use the 'Told you so' tag which annoys some people; but it's the reason I use it!

Clearly LiK Be were supplying (among 'ethylene monsters, 'styrene space stuff and 'funimals' in both polymers) a lot of the wishy-washy white polystyrene plastic cake decorations carried by many brands both sides of the pond.

While these might be by another maker and are obviously another brand, the reverse of the card says "made and packed in Hong Kong", so Emilie is probably a pseudonym for dozens of outworkers!

I'm guessing we have Betsy and Abe here! But the same over-sentimentalised 'kidults', this time with just the big heads, and the painting of the Lincoln-alike hasn't reached the 'stars & stripes' excesses of the Spirit figures!

R is for Revolutionary Round-up!

We have looked at this topic several times, but there always seems to be more to look at or more to say, and as I still haven't got round to the muted 'bicorn/tricorn hat' page (despite my having seen the box pass under my nose back in the summer) we might as well have some now! Actually the box may be get-at-able, so I might get it done while I'm twiddling my thumbs in the new flat?

These came in as part of a loose lot I think (it was a while ago now!), and as we'd only seen the lovely boxed set Brian Berke sent to the blog, a few years ago now, I thought it was a good excuse to photograph them again, only closer inspection showed them to be another set altogether!

And I was going to post the link to Brian's set, but instead here's the 'Spirit of '76' tag link, which if you click on it, will give you the previous five posts on the subject, under this, which you can then keep reading, before carrying-on down to the bottom, in the hope it all makes more sense, as it's been confusing me!

These are larger than the Award International ones Brian sent, at about 60mm compatible, albeit with the same deep bases, and smaller drums, proportionally. With them came a mini flag-waver and the LibertyBell, both also cake decorations.

The vinyl set seems to have bee issued in various brand-marks, all carft/cake decoration importers; mine on the left, Brian's posed-set in the middle, and two others, the Super Minis is a dodgy-packed one with two fifers and no boy-drummer, while SSCO are quite a common brand over The Pond with a fine assortment of figures, some common (Wilton/Culpitt types), some less so.

This apparently 1976-branded 'brand mark' carries the smaller ones I've now tracked down, and what look to be copies - in polystyrene - of the previous baseless PVC set. It's this brand which also carried the two smallies above, there was also a patriotic bride & groom set in period garb, a Bettsy Rose sewing the flag and a Spirit of '76 trio, all done as short-fat-kid caricatures.

I collaged the Lido AWI drummer on the end, as he seems to be channeling the same trio!

Indeed, one of the reasons for all the confusion is that the painting by Archibald M. Willard provided the source material for many bronze, spelter, mazac/Zamak or similar metal statuettes, and there were (are!) a lot of ceramic versions, in both cases some historical, some rushed out for the 1970's celebrations (which I remember being almost as big over here as it was over there?), and the plastic's seem then to be copies of those copies . . . all the ones with the deep bases being copied from the ceramics. Two from evilBay seen here.

Well, by now I had a folder with AWI in the title bar hanging-around and started to shove all-sorts in it! So these got added; on the left a carded clone (no evidence of it being Star Toys, but they were one copier) of the Shell/Innovative set which we have also looked at here previously, and which explains the 'other' cannon, which I mused-on in one of the more recent posts, with, on the right, an artillery piece (which might also be from Brian?) in the style of pencil-sharpener artillery, but sans sharpener and able to fire pellets, branded to an Edge Mark 

Then this came in only the other day in a lot of mostly machine-guns! "It's a colour variation of the Brian set" I thought, but no, it's a sixth set of sculpts altogether! The younger drummer in the 60mm set has a full gap between his legs, the 54mm version Brian sent is filled-in with sculpted tree-trunk, while this chap has a part gap, part trunk arrangement, he's about the same size as the Award set though.

So, for all my efforts, and Brian's donation, I've only three-and-a-third of the six sets I now know are out there! And only five-and-a-third sets are illustrated on the Blog . . . so we shall return to them, again!

Knowing where the growing-contents of the folder was going I picked these up when I saw them going cheap, not very well painted (compared to say; King & Country) they are the 'wullumbriton' set (not really Britains!) in factory-decorated, poured whitemetal, and I wouldn't dream of paying full price for this attic-filling shite which is 80% packaging by volume, and 90% thin-air by pricing!

Brian also sent this a while ago, with the museum-visit stuff, some of which we have seen, some of which is waiting for that 1650-1800's page of big-hats! The government forces had drummers too! Better painted than the wullumbriton ones as well, but in the glossy 'toy soldier' style.

To finish; I have the painting-guide postcard for the Old Guard Inc., recruiting vignette/diorama The Raising of a Regiment 1776-83, in the archive, designed by Andrew Chernak; the figures could be painted for either side, but here a farmer has just signed-up for the armed insurgency and a backwoods hunter is contemplating the taking of sides!

Note how the reversed jacket colour/facings of the declared American drummer make him look quite British, something the French drummers 30-odd years later would also experience, were they more likely to survive in the fog of war as a result, or more likely to be shot by their own side, stumbling about in the clouds of musket smoke?