L is for Late Show Report - Last Word, Classics!

Not 100% sure what I feel about these, they were cheap, but not that cheap, i.e. 'all the money', and I can't blame the seller, as I enthusiastically talked myself into them! I thought they were plaster or chalkware with a bit of age, but they are actually some relatively modern, resinated polystone stuff, and they are bulky, filling a whole half-fruit box - my temporary storage unit of choice, as they stack!

 

Timpo

 

To be honest, in conversation with the seller, I think the situations was the same when he acquired them, thinking "Ooh, brilliant", then getting them home and thinking "What the flying-phuq was I thinking?!", but, they are my problem now, and it gives me my first and probably only opportunity on this blog to pull from my history of architecture modules!

 

Sadly I only had Roman figures to hand, for the photo-opportunity (the whole reason for selling them to myself!), while the three buildings are all, obviously, Greek! This being a reasonable rendition of the relatively iconic temple of Athena-Nike on the Acropolis, combining two goddesses who had been separate, one - Nike - being at various times the goddess of victory and/or subservient to the other - Athena, daughter of Zeus.

Blue Box

 

In fact all three subjects are from the Acropolis, and this with it's famous Caryatids (maidens of Karyai [Caryae], a village in Ancient Sparta) is the south porch of the Erechtheion (or 'Erechtheum'), which is the most architecturally interesting of the many ruins on the mount, being build over several levels, to account for changes in the ground elevation (solid rock) of more than three meters. It also has several 'rooms', including this entrance vestibule.

Kinder

 

The Parthenon, also dedicated to Athena, and look at the state of it! Lord Elgin, in the context of the time, and who he was, bought the friezes fairly and spent a small fortune getting them back to the UK (he also saved one of the caryatids, the ones actually on the temple now are ground marble plaster (polystone!) copies, with the other five (laser-cleaned) in the Acropolis museum), he literally saved them for humanity, years before the Greeks were prepared, equipped or even minded to do so for themselves. The noise surrounding the marbles is all political, with a bit of roguish nationalism thrown in.

I don't know if they are locally produced decorative pieces/garden ornaments, or Greek tourist keepsakes, but given how chunky they are I suspect the former, with TKMaxx, Matalan or a Squire's Garden Centre being the more-likely source, but then you remember the size of the larger figures on Carrara marble from Italy, sold as tourist trinkets, and the wonder remains?

Anyway, they are here now, and you can see that they do make quite useful bas-relief props for figure photography, so they'll stay for a while! Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile, and it's only eight-and-a-bit months to the next show!

V is for Vikings

Funny isn't it, you think you'll never mention Harry Reynolds again (HR Production), then you mention them twice in three days!

At November 2021's Sandown Park show, I raided Adrian's cheapie-tray of lead, and managed three different scarecrows, an anvil, and a nice Greek, along with an unknown - probably German - firefighter in composition, but by far the nicest piece was a Reynolds Viking, and as it's less likely I'll find one in the rarer plastic, a metal one was a decent substitute.

Here's all five poses, courtesy of an old Bonham's auction shot, the boot lacing is tighter on these, so mine might be a 'Friday afternoon' paint job! Note how they've tried to hide the broken axe, it won't fool in-the-room viewers, but might help garner higher Internet or 'phone bids!

O is for Oh, What Could Have Been!

This is the original customer information flyer and order form, it must be a later one given the number of sets listed, and the splitting of the earlier sets into the single pose versions?

The following product list is a different edit to that in earlier posts, and is now the definitive listing, superseding the previous edits;

Rospaks Product Listing

 25mm polystyrene war-games figures from the Heroics & Ross stable, sold in header-carded, polythene/polyethylene bottle-bags. The range was announced/launched in November 1981, and had finished by October 1982.

 
Greeks
AG1 - Greek City Hoplites
AG2 - Greek Light Infantry [November 1981 to April 1982]
AG2a- Thracian Peltasts [from April 1982]
AG2b- Scythian Archers [from April 1982]
AG3 - Greek Cavalry
AG4 - Macedonian Pikemen/Phalangiter/Palangites

 
Romans
AR1 - Roman Legionaries
AR2 - Roman Light Infantry [from February to April 1982]
AR2a - Roman Auxiliary Javelinmen [from April 1982]
AR2b - Roman Western Auxiliary Archers [from April 1982]
AR3 - Roman Cavalry

 
Persians
AP1 - Persian Archers Kneeling Firing, (probably never issued)
AP2 - Persian Spearmen (Kardakes), (probably never issued)

AP3 - Persian Mede Spearmen/Bowmen, (never issued)

AP4 - Persian Immortals, (never issued)

AP5 - Scythian Horse Archers, (never issued)

AP6 - Persian Half-Armoured Cavalry. (never issued)

Celts

AC1 - Celtic Warband Swordsmen, (never issued)

AC2 - Celtic Warband Javlinmen, (never issued)

AC3 - Celtic cavalry, (never issued)

 

Waterslide Transfer Sheets (originally included with the figure sets, later sold separately)
T1 - Greek City Hoplite Shield Designs
T2 - Roman Shield Designs
T3 - Macedonian Shield Designs, (probably never issued, but might have been printed?)

 
Painting Instructions
Sheet 1 - For packs AG1 - AG3
Sheet 2 - For packs AR1 - AR3

Sheet 3 - Persians, (never issued)

Announced - Never Issued
- Napoleonics
- Roman Catapult and Crew
- Greek Elephant

P is for Photographs of Plastic Pugilists

Just a bunch of old Rospaks photographs from the archive, some are black & white, all are - now - low-resolution and some were used with the original article/s in One Inch Warrior magazine, the small scale off-shoot of Plastic Warrior magazine.

It's all Greek to me! We have looked at these before here at Small Scale World, so if you click on the Rospaks tag, under this paragraph, or down the right-hand side of the page, you'll get it all up, with links to someone else's Rospaks posts I think?

MM is for Roaspaks in Military Modelling Magazine

The short history of Rospaks as a seperate entity of Heroics & Ros (known better for their range of micro-armour, which were much finer castings than the cheap, often lop-sided, Skytrex, I went with!) is best writ by studying the few appearances in Military Modelling magazine, and this post in of those cuttings.

 

November 1981

Trade Ad.

Images show sets AG1 and AG2

November 1981

'Observation Post'

 

December 1981

Trade Ad.

AG2 and AG3

January 1982

Trade Ad.

AG1

February 1982

Trade Ad.

AR1

 

March 1982

Trade Ad.

AR1

April 1982

Trade Ad.

AR1

May 1982

Trade Ad.

AR2 and AR3

June 1982

Trade Ad.

AR2 and AR3

 

October 1982

'Observation Post'

Obviously the magazine is still going (I think; it's years since I bought it), and despite several changes of ownership will still retain some copyrights on the above, which is all from my own archive and shown here for research purposes. The 'Tippex' marks are where I originally wrote-in the publishing dates/details.

It's notable that they stopped advertising some months before the announcement of the end of the line, presumably they were looking for a way to save the project? Less than a year first-to-last and still missed by many, they were quite crude figurines, sculpted in the lead/whitemetal style, but they had a definite charm.

You also have to bear in mind, when these were 99p, a box of Airfix HO/OO figures were about 25/30p?

F is for Fanciful Fellows!

Bit of a box-ticker, literally as it's the contents of the Charbens & odds ancients tub! I don't have many, but have managed to find most types (I've just realised I think there's a blue Hong Kong copy missing?) and all the poses.

My two originals, paint's a bit thin on the ground these days, but then the ground is shiny polymer which never held paint well, and although some early Charbens were chalky for the reason of pain adhesion, this set was a late addition to the range and didn't get a chalky iteration.

Unpainted/home painted, they may be from one of those home-paint sets, I don't know, but it would make sense? Flesh plastic and another two poses, you may have noticed they are all fighting over the wild strawberries . . . in their scale; the size of watermelons!

He's just helping himself with an axe swing! They were sold as Romans, but everything about them screams Greek, and a rather fanciful, pre-Classical era, Trojan War/mythical Greece at that!

This one is unpainted hard polystyrene, and may be a Prindus (Prison Industries) figure who avoided the painting phase in his hurry to find giant strawberries?

Duplicates from the recent/current form of re-issue, a dense, rigid polymer in a neutral grey. You may have also noticed the kilts are a bit short? The greaves look a lot like pantomime booties as well, so there's a quite theatrical look to them, but they have plenty of charm, and might work as Etruscans against true Romans?

Because there's a bit of room in their tub, they get the odd's which are - from the left; an Athena Greek . . . Greek tourist figure, not that rare, but finding the spears intact (polystyrene) is always a bonus.

Then a chess-set pawn, who's a bit more Roman. I think you can still find these in various finishes on Amazon, as whole (and not cheap) chess-sets, in metal or plastic, but these older ones are often to be found in rummage trays at shows, and while not a copy, his shield seems to have been influenced by one of the Marx 60mm set. Finally a modern Greek from Conte Collectibles, I think.

This guy's also in the same tub, a bit bigger than the others around 60-65mm (I didn't check at the time!) and from the liberal quantities of gold and silver paint; probably Argentinian! The fish-plate or scalloped armour has me thinking of Poseidon, was he from a set of gods? Also quite Ray Harryhausen'esque!

E is for the Elephants in the Room!

This is a fun post, mostly new to hobby, Blog and Internet - except eBay, where they all came from! Credeco, a new name to me a year-and-a-half ago when I bought the first of these (a couple were on another blog years ago), and while these have mostly been posted elsewhere in dribs and drabs over the last year, the article folder has been on the desktop for most of it, slowly being added to!

Where we 're up to now were up-to when this post had 12 images! Although there are more to find, a strange mix of wholly original sculpts of some ingenuity or imagination, and crude cut-n-shut copies of Britains Trojan warriors, from this lesser Spanish make, in the bazaar/rack-toy style.

This was the first one in the bag, he came with two other non-Credeco lots, and the seller (Miguel Angel) included a freebie (some Italian swoppet Wild West figures)! How could I not buy a War Elephant I'd never seen before!

Following up the seller's other lots while leaving feedback for the first three purchases lead to two more! One has a hole in it and I wondered if someone had cut the rider out, but I've seen another one others, which are the same (and now have a second, see below), with a rider in a different colour, so they may seem to have had single-moulding and two-part lines?

Equally, I'm not sure if this was factory paint or home paint, but I wasn't convinced as to the latter, so deciding on the former, shot the hell out of it (in case) before sending it to the bleach vats for an overnight snooze. Either way it's not good painting.

Overnight snooze in the bleach vat!

Gives me a unit of 35mm Carthaginians! They're not terribly realistic, obviously, but no worse that certain Cherilea output I could mention - and often have! They are, after all, proper 'toy' soldiers first, and I imagine if not actual sobres, as least kiosko! The red soldier may be missing a spear-tip, standard or sun-shade of some kind? Also they fit quite well with the Rojas e Malaret board-game war elephant.

By now I was on a roll, or a quest, found the mounted ones I'd remembered elsewhere, and managed to grab these two with the blue one in the final image, obviously taken from Britains Trojans, one is just near copy ('Ulysses', right) with a head swap, but the other ('Ajax') has had his broadsword replaced with a rather crude spear.

The Ulysses knock-off has a hole in his shield which seems deliberate, but has no apparent function and may be something like a broken mould release-pin that somehow got stuck or fired into the figure?

'Paris', Troy! The archer gets the biggest makeover, losing his bow, arrow and quiver in favour of a sword and dagger, which rather leaves him looking like an over acting character hamming-it-up in a pantomime!

The final purchase (for now then) was these three, it was the Roman on a camel I'd remembered (or found in the archive folder for Creadeco, which is the same thing; that's the whole point of the archive!), 'Hector' loses his javelin in favour of an axe, and a wood-axe at that! He also gets a head swap, while 'Achillies' now has Hector's head and a move of his sword-arm, both have been given new hoplon shields.

The mounted figure is the best (and I love the elephants), and why not, the Roman empire had a vast desert boarder in North Africa/the Middle East, camels are recorded as coming west with Darius and/or Xerxes, so whether Roman or Greek (Carthaginian or Trojan) why not have him on a camel, especially as his protagonist is an Arab! He's half Britains 'Agamemnon', and half the Marx cut-and-shut with came out of Hong Kong courtesy of Giant and others!

Yeah, I seem to have taken and awful lot of shots of them for some reason! Checking the old Trojan post here I wonder if these aren't actually copies of the 'believed to be' French bazzaar rack-toys, some of which are in that post?

The above has been ready for publication for some weeks (some months for the early drafts), but I took delivery of what will be it for a while, the other day so we plow-on, although no 'family photo' as the rest seem to have gone to storage!

This is another of the elephants with the hole, and you can see how a little diminutive figure is just stuffed in the hole like a cheap Hong Kong turret crewman! I think the silver on this is factory-paint, and having stripped the other, will probably leave this one as it is?

A couple of close-up's really taken to help me see if he was 'meant' and yes, that's all tool-machined marks round the feet, not a figure taken from a base. The trouble is, with my eyesight these days he could be mistaken for a damaged figure, and while it wouldn't stop me keeping him as a sample/example if I found him, I bet a lot of loose ones have been chucked-out as being [or; appearing to be] both damaged and odd-scale.

The horse is a ringer, taken off of a wagon team, so I still need another camel, but the figure is lovely! Tumanbay eat your heart out, my General Qulan rides again!

A few recent sellers on Todocollection, I think the archer may be an Atlantic roman stuffed in the hole? Evidence, so far, seems to point to four slightly different elephants, being two pairs of similar variations of the same sculpts, the one providing two with separate crew (head-spike and no head-spike), the other two with integral crew (sword & shield and sword & spear/parasol/standard?), and all possibly being variations of an original master, with leg and trunk changes?

Finally, not Creadeco - this guy was bought with the two red ones, as I figured he might go with them, but he's a lot taller and was obviously a copy of something else - he looked familiar? He was neither the Elastolin or Reamsa pointing chaps (which I thought of first) the former's holding a scroll in the left hand, the latter is pointing the other way!

In the end he turned-out to be a copy of the Jecsan Centurion! He also looks slightly effete, like he can hardly be bothered to point anywhere with any seriousness! "You! Soldiers! Err . . . go over there and do . . . something useful, but don't trouble me again"

Creadeco Punic Wars - box nicely ticked I think!