Hot on the heels of Peter's lot (looked-at a couple of days ago) came
another parcel, from Chris Smith and it's a cracker, which should have been
published yesterday (or weeks ago!) but I was struggling with the Internet, or
certain parts of it, yesterday!
I could get on Faceplant with no trouble at
all from start-up, Hotmail was intermittent, YouTube was slow but trying to get
on mine or any other Blog was not happening, and even getting Google's page up
took forever, once I was there I could get to Blogs through their URL, but even
then images needed to be reloaded and the blue-circle never stopped? Hay-ho,
it's working now (middle of the night by the time I get these loaded!), so,
onwards and upwards!
I think I bought my assistant off with some
cheesey-dreamies as it was a trouble-free opening and this is a shot of the
initial 'excitement sorting', it's just awesome, as every time you remove
something, especially the larger pieces, you find half-a-dozen other things
underneath, rapidly running out of room, you have to bring some order to the
chaos . . .
. . . which is what has happened in this
shot; like the last big lot from Chris, I started with thematic piles by
subject matter which are;
1.
Trees & plants
2.
Robot 'set'
3.
Weapons, scenics and equipment
4.
Wild West
5.
Sci-fi / Fantasy
6.
Ships & boats
7.
Aircraft
8. Ceremonial and historical
soldiers
9.
Farm & zoo
10.
Ancient & medieval
11.
Prehistoric Hominids
12.
Dinosaurs & Chinasaurs
13.
Flags!
14.
Cartoon / TV/Movie-related
15.
Money box/bank
16.
20th century soldiers / 'Army
Men'
17. Civilians
18.
'Halloween' / Horror
19.
Sports
20.
Vehicles
And we can then meander through some of the
piles looking at highlights and with both the above photographs it's a case of 'what can you spot', but we'll be looking at lots of them in close-up, the second biggest was the 'Army Men' pile which
as it was closest to me, got shot first!
Again, mid-sort shows piles of like-figures
being sorted from the main pile, although unrelated figures may end up in the
same pile, this is because when they get further sorted into the main
collection similar figures are often together; I know I've mentioned in the
past the quandary over whether to sort alphabetically by makers or thematically
by subject, it's bit of a hybrid arrangement at the moment!
Final 'exploded view', the blue rifle
should have been in pile '3', but fell out of whoever it had got caught-up in
as I was sorting them! It looks like a Christmas Cracker (budget range) novelty
'charm'.
Highlights not covered below include the
two Aurora kit-figure Russians in
shop-window display paint (I think, top right), some Matchbox Mega-Rig and Battle-King
figures (centre) and a Corgi pair,
various Airfix clones including some
more Russians, Toy Story Tim-Mee
clones (middle left) and another of those Spetznaz types I got all confused
with a while ago, I think this is the other size, but I'll dig them all out and
compare before I get it wrong again!
The pale yellow ones (middle top) are a new
form or version of Airfix US
Para-clones, and as I've now ID'd the third set I did have, I'll do an update
on that Airfix page soon . . . ish (I
must stop making rash plans as promises!).
Chris has contributed greatly to the
parachute toy sub-collection and this lot contained six, the two blow-moulds on
the right being different versions of a new (to me) variant, the Tim-Mee copy is possibly a Toy Story thing, but a knock-off I
suspect, not a licensed one - which we have seen here. Next to him is a less
common version of the smaller ones, while the two Airfix clones weren't duplicates of any I have here, and there are
quite a few, but with about eight variants and many colours, there's loads to
find!
Colour variations and mould variations of
figures we've probably seen before, except the painted chap, who will get a
full collage on the Khaki Infantry page, when I do the next update, as he appears
to be A) an earlier, unmarked, better-quality version of the 'Empire'-marked
one we looked at a while ago (from Adrian Little) with the scalloped-out base
and B) possibly British? It's a hard call, the plastic could be HK'ish, or even
South American, but it could be British, it's bloody-interesting anyway!
The figure on the left (a non-exact Airfix US Marine clone) is marked Macau
which makes it quite unusual, then two larger figures one an HK copy of a US
(?) maker and the other 'Rambo' probably
Arco, they made the smaller Rambo set (see tag list) with bases, and
I think these larger baseless ones were them too - plastic is the same and
poses are similar? Finally a really nice, dynamic pose of sniper, who pulls DNA
from the Airfix British paratrooper
sniper, but is by no means the same.
Not from Chris, but currently on sale under
the probably phantom-brand of 'Black
Temptation', these hark back to the previous Rambo figure (and the mentioned
smaller set) in that one or two of the poses here are taken from there! You get
12, six green and six . . . primrose! There's a bit of Marx and a bit of Bundeswehr in there too!
Back to Chris's donation to the Blog, and
saving the best to last; Chris got a nice 'score' of Tiny Trojans, among which
was one which hadn't been painted on the base and another which has a pod-foot
effect caused by a short-shot on the tool and he kindly sent both to the Blog.
The significance of the unpainted base is
there as all my brown weapon and/or black helmeted ones have plain bases, while
the pea-green helmeted ones always have painted bases, as did the rest of
Chris's substantial find, so it's not that it's an interim or crossover 'version'
but rather a mistake!
All superb stuff and I can't thank Chris
enough for sending this lot to the Blog, except by sharing it with you, the
loyal readers and next-up we'll have the ceremonial/historical types!
