G is for Guards - En Garde

"Halt; Who goes there, friend or foe?"

"Friend"

"Password?"

"Answer"

"Advance one and be recognised"

[Member of the other party advances]

"Pass Friend"

Left to right; Britains Deetail, newer, older, Cherilea 60mm, Cherilea...er...not 60mil!! Crescent 54mm

G is for Guards - Standing, Kneeling and Prone; Firing

Guards firing, because as soon as you've marched past Horseguards Parade, gone down the Mall, negotiated the Victoria Fountain and disappeared behind Buckingham Palace, you're off down the ranges in your best kit...didn't everyone know that?

Unknown sucker from Hong Kong (the same people who do the LP space-man knock-offs), Lone*Star - smooth headdress and round base, Lone*Star - furry headdress and oblong base, two colours of HK piracy of the Lone*Star and a separate base Honk Kong Herald

Crescent, Timpo early type, Unknown (Charbens?), Britains Deetail and a penny-figure from a hollow-cast mould and in a polystyrene plastic.

Lone*Star (damaged), Britain Deetail, two HK copies of Lone*Star, separate-based HK Herald and Crescent.

The kneeling ready guy is only here because he's nowhere else to go, or he didn't have until I did the figures from Hollow-cast moulds above! He's not firing he's 'Ready' and is kitted-out for the late 19th century. The lying firing are both Hong Kong produced Herald with the two silver paint styles, bayonet and bayonet & rifle-barrel, they are also very different mouldings, particularly the headdress.

M is for Mystery Men from across La Manche

Pascal-call-me-Sam from Sam's Mini's World sent me one of those wonderful mixed lots of toy soldiers he'd acquired from somewhere (I'm busy collecting him Dr. Who stuff by way of exchange!), with an eclectic mix of figures from near-mint recent French and Modern Chinese medieval through some German and Spanish Wild West to early French hard plastics in a bit of a state (but a sample is a sample is a sample and they are hard to find!), most of which I will deal with at a later date, some of which I will add to the posts which are now over a year and a half overdue!

However, I want to put these up here in order to thank Sam publicly,because they need a post to themselves and in the hope that some of you continental collectors can shed some light on them...

These have a lot in common with the Soldabar figures I looked at here; Minor Makes, in that they look like premiums, are copies of various British and other makers and come in various colours (I think I have yellow and blue ones in my archive photo's), they also cover a variety of eras. The 'premium' link is also there in the two Crescent figures, and the heavy bases and soapy-soft polyethylene of the Beverly figures we looked at the other month, these - however - have no discernible mark.

We have all four of the Britains Herald ACW poses, two Britains Herald cowboys (both poses much copied by others), a Crescent Guardsman copy, and pirates of three native American Indians, originating from (left to right); Crescent, MPC and Britains Herald again.

So - thanks Sam, one man's pirate copies are another man's ruby and jade treasures and definitely the cream of the crop...and can anyone shed any light on who produced them or marketed them, or - indeed - maybe gave them away? What other figures are in the range?

[I haven't added 'French' or 'Premium' to the tag list until we can hopefully get some more information on them]

B is for British Bearskins

The most iconic Toy Soldier type, by the most iconic Toy Soldier manufacturer; Britains. Famous for their hollow-cast ceremonials, they were bound to produce them when they started experimenting with plastic and indeed, some of the first figures they commissioned from Zang were the predecessors of these figures.

The moulds were re-cut upon the change from 'straight' Zang to the Herald brand, and would continue in production for decades with a slow decline in paint style and quality and a change to a softer vinyl/PVC material. Three shooting poses were added after production had moved to Hong Kong, and the officer was dropped from the range, there is a standard bearer missing from the above line-up and I have Michael Melnyk to thank for several of the above figures.

A mounted officer (similar to the Highland pose - no removable arm) also went the distance, and while I've tried to arrange all the above shots in chronological order with the oldest to the left, I'm not sure on the various saddle's originality, nor the age of the last horse which may be older than the PVC rider.

The out-painters had two ways of painting the SLR, with some silvering the bayonet only and others painting the barrel silver, right back to the gas-parts. These two versions are as common as each other and therefore make a collectable paint-variant.

The lower shot shows four of the main base types, again; oldest to the left, they are; Herald original, early Hong Kong figure with moulded-on base, later (1970's) glued into the box tray and finally the plug-on late style base, a hierarchy they share with the Combat Infantry and Wild West figures from 'Herald Hong Kong'.

When Britains introduced the Deetail range they added a set of six guards (the 'Royal Salute - Present Arms' pose is missing from the above image), which would run alongside the Herald pretty-much 'till the end. I don't know the significance of the base colours - except that the green is the commoner (perhaps the black are from some touristy thing commissioned by someone else from Britains?) and the black-based ones seem to have the matching (and correct) black trousers every time.