E is for Eye Candy - Flamethrower

One of the rarest of the Timpo WWII or 'Modern Army' vignettes, and also, with the flame, one of the most imaginative, but it's the flame which helps make it rare, being marbled orange/yellow, the very fine locating stud at the hose end of the flame tends to fault-lines or brittleness, as does the quite thin silver hose, resulting in very few complete survivors.

 

Lacking accessories, and lacking the imagination of thinking they could use the shrub from the German mortar (in case it caught fire?), they - instead - added the bazooka rocket pile, which was more than a tad anachronistic!

E is for Eye Candy - Infantry Mortar

Back to the Timpo Germans, and their 80mm mortar, and the other of these little vignettes which you can switch-out the figures and swap (or swop!) for British or American troops, and given the differences between mortars at this scale, and the simplistic design, means it makes no difference who's serving it!

 

The shrubbery, or - more accurately - 'shrub' is as unique as the mortar, I thought it got further issues with one or two of the wild-west vignettes, but it didn't. Somewhere I have one reattached to a standard figure base, but it tends to fall sideways on the long-sides of the slightly ovoid base!

 

If you look carefully you'll see the fine crossbar is broken, it wasn't when I got it out of the tub, but it's definitely a weak-spot with this Timpo weapon-sculpt, and went the way of most others, I just hope the other end will stay attached, and one day I'll try a miniscule blob of superglue, off a pin, to try and hold it long enough to get a better shot for the final archive/A-Z Blog post.

E is for Eye Candy - Bazooka

This post was going to be the Plasma Tent, but in Googling it to see if it was really called the Plasma Tent (it was!), I found this post, in the results;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/01/b-is-for-bonus-post.html

 

So, that plan got pulled, and the British stretcher team have been taken out of the queue as well! I'm losing control of the queue! Anyway, I then plundered the catalogues for the WWII stuff (although Timpo tended to call them all 'Modern Army'), so we'll have an ephemera post at the end!

 

In the meantime, I only have two shots of the Bazooka, which came with the Americans, and I realised I was talking bollocks yesterday, only the two German sets lend themselves to being used by other nationality's figures, the others all have set-specific poses!

 

You might be able to get the SMG gunner from the first type British/Aussie to hold this, but, he'd be the only other figure with the right-hand hole/s, and I haven't tried! While the No.2 is even more specific to the US Army!

 

 I also had this shot of the Officer kicking around, so he can go here.

E is for Eye Candy - Searchlight

Part two of several, brings us to the German army searchlight, although like most of these vignettes, you can change the crew (the whole point of swoppets), something you can't do with the Vickers MG, or the US Flamethrower.

 

The operator is the mortar-bomb guy, with the mortar-bomb removed, or, probably more accutarately, the mortar-bomb moulding cycle not performed. Usually the officer with Luger came on his own base as a third figure, with the Binocular guy the other one on this base, something I will correct as I have spare bino' guys!

 

777 - the first cousin of the beast?

Note the extraneous hole under the searchlight's base-plate.

 

These are in photo-shoot sequence, so I must have tried the grenade thrower after I'd shot the more correct bloke?

E is for Eye Candy - British Vickers MG

Seen elsewhere, a year or two ago now, there's a whole bunch of these for box-ticking, so they can be February's theme! If the Timpo figures were 'pocket-money' toys, these accessory vignettes were high-day and Holliday treats, usually requiring a little financial input, from an adult!!

 

Getting across the weight of the thing, quite well, the 2nd version Timpo British Infantry with their section-support weapon, technically a medium machine-gun (.303, same as the rifleman's round) or infantry machine-gun, it was redesignated a heavy machine-gun in WWI when the Owen came in as a light machine-gun (also technically - or by today's standards - a medium machine-gun), becoming a medium machine-gun, officially, for WWII, although it remained bloody heavy!

 

***      **    *    **      *** 

 

Many years ago, maybe 1969, or 1970, I fired one, and nearly broke my jaw! Dad, who had little regard for regulations, and was Commandant of the Infantry Battle School at Brecon, thought it would be a good idea to wake the garrison with machine-gun fire on the 50m pistol range at the back of the camp, so had a Vickers set-up, and my Brother and I got to fire a few rounds each!

 

I can remember it was a cold, foggy morning; that clinging, Black Mountain mist, thickened with coal-smoke from the chimneys of the town, and still quite dark, and as I fired the thing I coughed and nearly caught my face on the shuddering body.

 

The SNCO who was with us, managed to get across his concerns about the whole performance, while doing whatever Dad told him, but Dad thought it was all highly amusing . . . It was an unconventional childhood, especially in those Wales days!

 

Strangely - fifteen-or-so years later, also at Brecon, while looking for something mundane like shovels or sandbags, we found (me and a couple of mates), in the POW Div's storeroom, a US .50cal, heavy machine-gun (in anodised silver?! A presentation, or demonstration piece?), just leaning against the wall, it didn't seem to have a cradle or tripod, and we just moved it out of the way, but that was a two-man lift, for two fit young men.

E is for Eye Candy - Crescent Highlander Swoppets - Late Follow-up?

I have a folder simply marked 'George K', dated July 2020, which I suspect might be the follow-up images mentioned in the comments, last time we looked at these, back in 2018;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/11/s-is-for-swivel-not-swoppet.html

 

Or related to them in some way (there are two years between the events), in which case, this post is a follow-up which never happened, but it was a bloody odd year, and, with Mum and Girly-Girl both leaving this world, over Christmas, a rather shit one, in which I had other things on my mind, but many thanks to George K for sending them, and here's the officer who was missing last time.

 

This time the marching rifleman's the missing chap, Crescent's 60mm 'swoppet' Highlanders, marching, fighting (the Officer) and dancing, I think that sums-up Glasgow on a Saturday night? Thanks again to George K.

E is for East of India

Another non-toy company whose products had a bit of a Christmassy vibe, also shot at the Birmingham gift fair, but crafty fun, and no polymer in sight, bar a few rabbit-sized, dungaree-buttons!

 

There's something of the primative votive about these.

 

Cake decorations?

 

Felt tree-hangers.

 

There were several displays of 'The Boos'

 

Nativity figures, so generic, you can't tell which is Mary or Joseph?

 

Boos . . .

 

Animals . . .

 

. . . and more Boos!

E is for Eye Candy - WWI Cavalry

I shot these at the BMSS (British Model Soldier Society)'s show in Reading, two years ago, on Mercator Trading's stall (thanks Adrian), and they are pretty special; Holgar Eriksson's finest, WWI British Cavalry in the charge. Probably from Comet-Authenticast's set British Cavalry, Field Uniform, 1914, which was unnumbered.

The brown one may be Chinese or something, Eriksson's lists included dozens and dozens of nations, and often it was just a paint-job to create another catalogue listing, but only Boxer Rebellion types are listed to my knowledge, although #56 was an 'unused' number in the later sets. The same - painting to order - was true of the first Malleable Mouldings lists. Or, it could be one of his own figures, from Sweden?

E is for Eye Candy - Sort Of!

I think we've seen this before, in passing, but I took it apart and cleaned it of a lifetime's kitchen grime, a while ago and seem to have taken far too many photographs, which need to be out of Picasa and on the Wibbly Wobbly Way!

 

 

Obviously you need a kettle with the right kind/diameter of spout, and when the water starts to boil, the inner sliding component moves and the bird starts whistling! Before modern automatic cut-offs (which work the same way - pressure, try getting one to work if you haven't closed the lid properly, it'll boil dry!), this was an ingenious solution, to a minor problem!

E is for Eye Candy - Naval & Marines

This was shot back in November 2020, so five years ago, give or take the odd day and a leap-year! There's about the same again to be added to this, in the still being sorted pile, at the lip of the storage container, and we've added a couple of rack-toy assault-craft over that time, all seen here in various posts, I think, try 'Vessels' or 'Naval - Marines' in the tag list. But what can you spot?

 

Top left is all the larger 60mm'ish stuff from Marx, MPC, Auburn (polymer, not rubber) or Ideal (?) and so on, originals and re-issues, to their right is the Lone Star sample, with some PVC, Timpo-branded, Toyway reissues, while the more historically-uniformed Charbens are in the little bag.

 

In the box, top right, are the more modern (WWI/II'ish) Charbens with four of the ever more brittle Lone Star marines - fighting in No.1 Dress uniforms! I have added one or two I think, but they may be duplicates. Below them is a mixed tub of the smaller Marx and a few others; Reisler, hollow-cast &etc, which we saw in an early post on the subject. There's been a few hollow-cast additions too.

 

Sandwiched between those two tubs is a wooden, hand-carved, tourist chap, who we also saw here over a decade a go, but there are four, similar, and very interesting plastic versions about to hit the blog! To the left of the mixed tub is a newer one, since enlarged, but still not ready for the definitive post, with the Britains Naval gun, now 'guns', but not all versions yet, although we did have a look at them, in part, a while ago.

 

In the corner are the three Greek assault-boats, copied from Britains, which got a post, and then in the top-left quarter of the box, all the iconic novelty floating toys from Britains and Timpo. You can see the Greek crewmen under the US Assault craft . . . I've actually done an 'Assault River-Crossing', in a remarkably similar boat, but ours didn't have engines, so we had to fucking paddle, in the rain!

 

The final tub, outside the box, has all the European types, obvious are Cofalu/Cofalux swivel-heads and the Coma assault marines, but there's some other stuff, a couple of Atlantic, a Hong Kong or two, and, strangely, mu original Frog trio, who are RAF rocket-troops! They've since been moved, as the sample is up to about ten now!

 

You can add a largish sample of the Gem cadets, those Argentine rubber ones which came in a while ago, and more Atlantic, Lone Star and Reisler, along with some Starlux (not sure where they are?), but, there's actually quite a few to sort into this tub at some point, and more take-away tubs will be needed! Then there's all the ABC and other Hong Kong copies, from hollow-cast, taken from Britains, which we have looked at here, on more than one occasion, now.

E is for Eye Candy - Blue Box French Resistance

As far as I know, Blue Box never gave these a title or name, so we don't know if they were resistance, revolutionaries, militia or for that matter, even French! But they are pretty unique, and having never been produced in the 50mm, a bit of a grail for some small-scale collectors, despite being a tad big at 28/30mm.

 

I'm really only using this as an excuse for a News, Views . . . as I have finally started updating the Parachute page, with shooting-sets added a few months ago, Imperial Poopa-Troopa's and similar cartoonish ones, a few weeks later, the Trojan Red Devil and others tonight, and a subsection of the Airfix clones. I've also added a lot of images throughout, and tweaked a few things, but there are still about nine-sections to do! And I think I need to spell-check it properly!

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html

E is for Eye-Candy - Gem Cadets

Adrian Little gave me these OBE's the other day, when I was passing, and I realised, looking for something else the other day, it's not a 'new feature', I started using E is for Eye Candy, a couple of years ago! Hay-ho, I'm a danger to myself sometimes!

 

Three of the Gemodels sea-cadet cake decorations, given heavy bases and painted in the 'Old Toy Solder' style of gloss paint or varnish, but without the pink cheek dots!

E is for Everything Else - Odds & Sodds!

There were a few smaller pieces and loose figures picked up at the Last Sandown Part show, which was, in some respects, one of my best yet for purchaes, but in conversation, there's a feeling that while prices are down, this stuff is coming out of the woodwork at the moment, I got a really nice, never seen before piece off of that evilBay the other day.

 

I've never really followed this stuff, nor felt the need to, poorly acted 'C' movies, for kids, in the 'over the top' style of kids programming, never grabbed me, but there is a big following for the whole Kaiju, Gojira, Ultraman, Atomic-boy stuff, and these are probably quite modern 'Ultramen', and may be from one source, but two are realistic 54mm'ish solids, well within the scope of the collection, the other two are a super-deform (right) and big-head (left), both of which, leave me pretty cold.

 

A Christmas cracker bike, and two micro-trucks from Italy, another 1-ton Humber knock-off, too close to the Dinky original to be considered the donor for all the Hong Kong copies, but could be based on the Pyro/Kleeware minis? And a post-war US 'duce-and-a-half' probably an M39 era/generation?

 

Very obviously an ex-Giant chariot, we looked at them on the Romans page (above), and eventually will look at them again on the But is it Giant sub-Blog, in greater detail, but for now, this one needs a good clean, or at least, the horses do!

 

A couple of bags of odds I picked up on a wander, the gum-ball robot will go in a bag with several others and bits, in the hope his arm turns up one day! Two lesser characters from the larger, 'styrene set of Noddy figures, a Fozzie Bear pencil top, and another of the Rupert Bear pencil-top torsos, I think I have four now, two Kinder and an LB for Culpitt spaceman!

 

Adrian found these two for me, French clowns in hard plastic of the polystyrene type, but being French could be Phenolic or a formaldehyde resin of some kind, although both are stable. Cyrnos, Clairet; someone like that?

 

A bit of fun, it links a common-enough piece of scenery to a specific animal, so not that useful, but it also links marks together.

 

Swoppet knock-offs!

 

A nice, early piece of, probbaly German composition, around 45mm, and unmarked, he's obviously a WWI-era German soldier, and I rather like him, as a possibly very old survivor . . . 1920/30's?

 

Isaac gave me these two lots, the Cherilea 60mm's are clean, but have lost 90%+ of their paint, while the karki infantry might have all been home-painted to match, or are a new-to-me paint scheme, the radio-operator is Benbros.

 

Seen in a recent book-post, useful little monograph on Selwyn Miniatures.

 

I'm guessing this is American, but it could be French, or from down the road! It's a solid lump of die-cast Mazac / Zamak or pure aluminium (not light enough?) with wooden wheels, and may once have been a penny-toy . . . a whole penny!

 

Make your own caption! How cake-decorations are born!