P is for Pratas, Portugal, but not Plastic!

I picked these up at the races! Totally new to me, and while Brain Carrick did know them, he couldn't remember the name, as he had sent them to someone else and eased the data out of the mental pending tray, if you know what I mean, anyway, I digged a dugging and now think they are Pratas a family firm (the Pratas family), who have apparently given their name, as the generic 'pratas', to all composition figures in Portugal!

 

Bases are in the Lineol style, but unmarked and smooth, I rather like the touch of the stands of wool for the plumes, redolent of the old British hollow-cast knights, with their airgun dart plumes!

I believe these are cadets, but whether officer-cadets, or something less elevated, I don't know, and could only find one image that sort of matched? Uniform seems to be loosely based on old Napoleonic-era garb, but in a paler grey-green, than the darker greys of the earlier period?

 

Not wishing to make the same mistake I made with the French swoppets a decade and a half ago, I am pretty certain that the green beret is a Paratrooper, and the red are commandos, Portugal does or did have a maroon, darker than ours, technically a brown, which was worn by the Light Infantry, now disbanded or replaced, with the beret possibly phased-out in 2019? But the green and red berets serve on.

 

The DPM uniform here is compatible with the Army's operations in Mozambique and elsewhere in the 'Colonial War' which ended in 1974, but worn through to the late Cold War. It has now - like many nations - been replaced with a smaller-fragment, more generic patterned one.

 

Scale is between 54 and 60mm, depending upon your ruling regarding deep bases, and they did do some smaller (50+mm) figures. The flags are making little sense, clearly meant to be the Portuguese national flag, I suspect a non-stable green-dye has completely faded? I have some fabric markers somewhere!

Bum Slot is for Montaplex!

We might have had that title before but I think it's worth having again! I was looking for something to make it a thematic day and thought about the smallies, but we've seen them once or twice over the years, except the Atlantic set (which was the other obvious absentee in this morning's post, but I should leave something for you-know-who to dust-sit with), when I found these whilst looking for something else in the garage!

BuM got hold of the old Montaplex sobres (surprise [bags]) moulds back in the 1990's, or - at least - they got hold of enough surplus product to start churning-out boxed sets, I'm not sure as to the full history; I think it's all been on Akala's Kiosko Blog, but my Spanish isn't good enough!

Anyway, this is two ex-Montaplex sets in one box; British Commandos (ex-Airfix) and an original-design (?) submarine.

The commandos are unremarkable, the two grappling-iron guys being notably poor short-shots, but the ladder is a whacky thing and possibly more dangerous to the user than climbing the enemy cliff-face naked except for a pair of mittens and some bedroom slippers!

It also ironic that Airfix-Heller were churning out the same old set (having apparently 'lost' not one but two new tools in the previous decade!), at the same time, in the same shit-brown polymer!

But this? Now . . . hold on a sec' . . . over here we had to wait for Birthday's or Christmas for pretty-much anything in the past, but the Spanish were getting these brought back by Mum or Dad, uncle or granny . . . with the morning paper!

It's a whole submarine! OK, it's a bit simplistic and there don't appear to be any holes for the two missile-things, but how much fun could you have over breakfast with this dropping out of a little envelope . . . it's a WHOLE SUBMARINE . . . for pennies!