E is for Elastolene . . . Geddit?

Not Elastolin; those filthy enemy toys only still available from Yorkville's Importhaus. Oh; no, no, no . . . these are good British toys, British made by plucky Brit's in stand-alone British Britain don't-yer-know!

Hurrumph! Fussa-russa! . . . you can see where Brwreakshit came from!

"Practically unbreakable", actually quite frangible! Although - to be fair - you don't see these with the same damage you can find on playworn Elastolin or Lineol, but that may be because once they start to go, they go all the way, quickly?

The work of Brent, these are the smaller - 54mm - figures and dated by the gas-mask cases on their chests, take us back to the early years of the war; to the BEF and Home Guard, but presumably after the war-privation of materials had come into effect?

I assume the fluffy padding in the Stretcher Bearers set is a modern addition, they would have been sewn onto card-inserts or set in wood-wool or something, the farm (coming next) had a slotted card but with a much deeper box.

The 'Group' set has slightly random contents with two duplicates (grenade thrower and advancing with respirator on), while missing two poses.

There were eight poses in total, I don't have the grenade thrower yet, and actually don't have all these now (swapsies), but within the sample you can see colour variations and the size/pose differences you'd expect from oven-dried [inedible] 'dough' figures!

Five of the poses in close-up; note the colour variations of the ready/sentry challenging guy (bottom right), weapon barrels are provided by small panel-pins, the head used to give the idea of a muzzle or flash-eliminator, I've never encountered Brent badly damaged-enough to reveal whether or not there is a whole wire armature, but I suspect not?

Three more; clearly there is an armature for the machine-gun, which is less Vicker's own and more Bugsy Malone's splurge-gun! The prone figure is similar to several hollow-cast shooters, but not connected to the 'unknown' early-British plastic prone figure I've had a stab at attributing in the past.

Also missing from my collection (and manythanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot his, from/and also the boxed sets above), the stretcher is a simple affair of cartridge paper wrapped round a couple of stiff wire 'handles', the casualty seems to have been involved in the same incident as Timpo's swoppet, maybe they banged heads getting out of little Johnny's biscuit-tin!

Differences between two examples of the same pose, I thought the shorter pack was down to a misplaced thumb or finger catching the top and squishing it down a bit! But in fact it's shorter at the bottom end, so different cavities, or separate moulds, these may have been produced with hand-clamp type tools?

Despite their crudity of manufacture, they are OK figures, and with no lead available, you'd be happy to find these under the tree at Christmas; if you were a toy soldier fan . . . did anyone do composition footballers?

I also have two of the 60mm versions (upper shot), we have to assume they did all eight combat poses in both sizes, but I don't know about the stretcher teams, nor do I know if one line replaced the other, or if they ran alongside each-other?

The lower shots compare one of Adrian's Brent 60mm's (left of each picture) with an unknown figure (stylistically different, they're probably not a third Brent line) marked 'British' (we will look at them in a separate post), who is closer to 80mm and has lost his rifle tip.

This lot was in the recent Vectis sale, I don't know if Brent produced the 'egg-box' papier mâché dug-out/bunker, but it's a beautiful thing, and god knows how it has survived in that condition! If you return to the top, you'll see there are various lines mentioned along the top of the box, maybe Chris's ceremonial Guardsman is among them?

News, Views Etc . . . Catch-up!

Obviously the garden has not the same appeal this week as it had last week! Nice to see TJF's little friend making friends with the rest of the gang over the weekend, should have paid more attention to me two year's ago, would have saved a lot of damage, but hey-ho, some people prefer their train-wreaks in slow motion, witness Brwreakshit!

London Toy Fair Reports 2019  - Bandai
Next London Toy Fair post was sent to those who know best!

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2019/02/bandais-thunderbirds-are-go-at-london.html

Outrage
The Daily Wail getting hysterical . . . again! What would they have made of Yorkville's Importhaus! The Mirror joined-in because nobody does outrage like the Tabloids! Still, unaffordable publicity for PSR - Go Dave!

Toy Soldiers in Art
Al-Dowayan

RIP
Another collector has shuffled-off to the great toy-box while we were distracted.

S is for 'Special Relationship'...(Bloody Journalists!)

I have been trying to upload this for weeks, but Blogger will not accept the scan of the original newspaper article, so I've had to mock it up as well as I can in Word for Windows. It is a very delicate object and needed a high resolution to be readable leading to endless "An error has occurred..." messages from Blogger.

I've tried sharpening and lightening it to reduce the pixel-count but no dice. The mock-up is almost correct but lacks the vertical justification. Wording per-line/column is correct and the title and Images are where they lie on the original and, although that is very yellowed; I have rendered this is B&W to ease reading.

[You will need to right-click 'Open Link' to render this readable]

The Author of this piece definitely didn't think he had a Special Relationship with the 'Old Country'. I'm guessing this was published sometime after Dunkirk, and before the US reporters in the UK had started to fully report back to the US on the successes in the Battle of Britain, or the worst effects of the Blitz. As a historical document it is priceless, of note is the lack of a byline, a coward never signs his work - as true today as it was then.

He also credits the two non-combat poses above as being lazy old Brits, but the guy shaving is definitely a German officer in those riding Britches they favoured (Elastolin figure; 550/28) while the wounded guy is not the known British pose (in a tin helmet), is reversed from the illustration in War Toys 1 (39/40 catalogue) and has the wrong base for Lineol, but looks to be French - with that greatcoat on - anyway?

So not only does the reporter have a low opinion of the British and their efforts to keep the world free of repressive, fascist dictators single handed, but he's willing to lie to 'prove' his point...a journalist, lying? Never!

The other two are both Lineol, the 'Tirpitz launch' Hitler (5/1) and 5/79/2 - German soldier throwing a stick-grenade.

It should be pointed out that three out of four Americans at the time supported their Presidents support (albeit tacit and with ulterior motives!!) for the British position and more specifically his friend Winston Churchill, unfortunately, the 25% were good-old-boy, red-necked, right-wing fascists!

And what happened to the Importhause in the next year or so . . . ?

Some of the 'offending' articles at a recent show; Elastolin SA and Hitler Jugend at the front, SS/Leibstandart guarding the gate and Lineol British Guards behind a ranting madman on the dais (what am I doing there!!). The fort is also a German piece of the same period.