A comme les Anciens

More eye candy, and all French, all ancient'ish, and all pretty old . . . boom-boom!

 

I've picked up a couple more of the Clairet Greco-Romans, one a cleaner version of my first, the other of my second, so no new poses, but - previously - two green tunics and now, two blue, which will mean a nice Peloponnesian War vignette one day! Note the second figure has his original weapon, and it's more Viking farmer than anything Greek or Roman!

 

The separate shield and forearm was barely glued or glued with a non-solvent type? I seem to recall re-glueing my other one two, the join is to obtain dynamism without complicated undercuts, or the odd lumps you find on some figures.

 

A pair from Cyrnos, both in need of better swords, but otherwise pretty clean!

 

One the left a rarer, non-Elastolin Viking type moulding (they fought a set of Normans) from Ougen, fending off a poorly home-painted gladiator from Café Storm, and I think he's supposed to be a Samnite, like a Murmillo, but with a smaller shield?

 

Base mark of the Ougen figure, with the letters of the brand revealed in a tower's castellations which I think is pretty neat!

 

Historia Saracens, two versions of the same moulding, with different heads and plug--in weapons, a cursory search on Google revealed the same figure with the head on the right and an even more ridiculous 'Ali-baba' sword, from the pantomime's prop's department!

 

Issued by a magazine of the same name, not with it (as premiums), but, rather as a separate product line, in little boxes, like Starlux's Luxe range, so maybe aimed at Museums and gift shops?

 

Base marking.

 

This three-piece, 50mm guy,, I'm not so sure about, he might be an early Beffoid, or something else entirely, a minor make; it might not even be French! Obviously from well within the arctic circle, but with a bird of pray, more Siberian peninsular than North America?

A is for Ancient Archaic Antagonists of Antiquity!

Into the final furlong as far as the 2026 Plastic Warrior Toy Soldier Show plunder and loot is concerned, and I've split this lot into ancient and medieval posts, with the older soldiers first!

 

So, we'll go back 3000-odd years, to the siege of Troy, a probably real event, heavily fictionalised, the facts lost to national and region mythology, and the demented whitterings of priests, or bards, or priest's bards, no doubt, and thanks to Matt at Hobby Bunker, who brought these over.

 

I'd actually bought three other sets from him, either at last years show, or at the London Show in December (?), either way, I forgot to shoot them, and knowing these two were still to be found, never got around to it, but in all there are five sets of 'Troy' era figures, these two, and the sets:

• LOD 015 - The Amazons
• Figure Set #1 - The War at Troy - Commemorative Set, Ten Years of LOD
• Figure Set #19 - Amazons, Aeneas and Ajax

And the aim now is to open them all, and have a decent photo-shoot of all the pre-classical Greek sets from LOD, my first by them, and probably my last, just because I'm not doing the post 1990 stuff in the larger scales, there is tons of it, other people are collecting it, other sources are annotating it, and I haven't got the room, or budget for it, with so much vintage still to be found, but I do like ancient Greeks!

 

Similar point of discussion with these Supreme sets, I buy them as box-tickers when I see them cheap, we've done the Knights - of all types - to death, here at Small Scale World, and looked at the Romans, Crusaders, and was it the Vikings? I think we've seen three of these now, and while I haven't tracked down the Arabs/Saracens, one of their camels is in the Egyptian set above, and these both have one each of the two common horse poses.

 

Interestingly, the Greek looking commander figure and archer sculpts, usually smaller, from some of the medieval sets, aren't actually included in the pose-count for the Alexander set! But with their segmented-armour, knee-pads they'd look a bit silly, or even sillier than normal!

 

Unknown, probably still on Amazon if I look hard enough, and marked 'CHINA', I'm not sure if they are supposed to be cavemen, predating Troy by about 500,000-years (give or take a few 100,000), or 19th-20th century Zulu warriors, but they are fun, and were in one of the donations I think, so basically free, to share with you and tick the box! AND . . . they're not that bad, as sculpts, but the axe is a bit OTT, and the lady isn't going to be doing much damage with that hand-trident!

 

Two lovely sculpts, both purchases, the Athena is probably not that rare, being a tourist souvenir, but he joins a foot one we saw years ago, while the Nardi is quite a bit less common, and you can tell I really like them - multiple shots; gotta' do them justice!

 

Despite being late to the larger scales, as far as collecting goes, there aren't many massive holes or gaps in the UK collection, but this is one, and while I have the Cleopatra somewhere I think, on her chaise-longue/daybed thing, and, you may remember, I picked-up the Sphinx a year or so ago, I don't have many of this double set, half tan-plastic Egyptians, half brown Nubian slaves/captives.

 

And, yes, I know the Nubians were in charge under the Kushite kings, but Cherilea decided to sculpt them in chains, holding fans or cowering! Also, I've really got to get the cheetah and handler. But in the meantime these are a useful addition to a couple of play-worns, and maybe some reissues? I'd forgotten how colourful the series is, too!

 

Roman Gladiators as issued by Quaker Sugar Puffs and Tom Smith Christmas crackers.

 

Lucky Clover and other non-Giant Romano-Greek stuff.

 

Non-Giant Vikings.

 

The small scale stuff, as sorted mostly from Trevor's bag, and the similar early-purchase bag of hollow Hong Kong horse stuff, The Quaker have been done here, the Vikings, gold 'Trojans' and black forts have been covered on the But is it Giant Blog, the rest are pending, but some are covered on the HK Romans page above.!

 

Thanking Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin again, there's a fair bit of their stuff above. 

I is for It's That Horse Again!

The best thing in the recent pick-up from Peter Evans is this Hong Kong Roman chariot, it's the third iteration, I think, on the Thomas/Poplar theme, but it has very different horses!

 

And they are puke-green! Arranged in the Western Wagon configuration, the figure is the only real connection with the others, seen here previously, although the other HK copy uses the same horses, but the artwork and shape of this chariot is very different.

 

Is it based on one of the earlier lead ones, both the British and the French have some nice slush-cast chariots in the archive? One of the draw-bar connectors is broken, but I think I may have a set of these horses in the unknown horses tub!
 

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?