O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Historical & Ceremonial

This post gets off to a good start, with the third boxed set I got from Adrian, and then goes downhill! No, I'm joking, there are several interesting bits here, but originality of text for the opening blurb-o-graph of repeat posts, like these, is not always obvious, to an amateur author!

 

It would be lazy to assume that these too, are Torgano, like the two Western sets in the previous post of this series, they are A) thinner flats, altogether less robust, B) they have thin, oblong bases, C) decoration is, if anything more leery than the previously-seen, already pretty-colourful samples D) the generic gift-wrap 'foil' covering on the box, is nothing like the set-specific artwork of those other sets E) they are slightly smaller, and F) the subject-matter is altogether more fanciful!

 

Definitely Italians though! Shades of Captain Nemo?

 

Also shades of Captain Video with the American-football/1930's tank-crew helmets!

 

Three figures duplicated, in different colours, everything else is a one-off, and there’s a lot going on, paratroopers, artillery, flying-boat, early rubber boat, spacey guys, a Tom of Finland sailor (everyone loves a sailor!), yacht, battleship and a sinking (?) liner, this set would have been a fantastic exercise of the imagination muscles! And there's a man fighting a giant octopus!

 

The Noris Ivanhoe game has similar unpainted flats, however Torgano's own mini's (space and 'dolls') do have oblong bases, while people like Tibadabo and Co-Ma must have started somewhere? What were PRB or Sam doing in the 1950's? I have the two earlier Italian toy soldier books, and a couple of maker specific things, but I don't have the most recent one, are they in there, can anyone give us a branding on these? 

 

American Civil War, a right old mix here, with 'China' copies of Hong Kong 'solid' clones of Timpo Swoppets, actual Swoppet clones, enough Blue Box for a skirmish and a Waddington's game-playing piece - all grist to the mill!

 

Back to Italy and a nice sample of the Nardi Union/US Cavalry types, you look at these and wonder if they didn't borrow one of Cherilea's sculptors! But their charm is the stronger for the dancing-loon look!

 

The Confederate sample is smaller and lacking more hats, as well as 'kerchiefs and heads, which explains the outcome of that war! Lack of logistical support and fighting men!

 

Ceremonial assortment here, with one of the just mentioned (BMSS post) Monaco guards, sans plug-on base, a broken metal figure, three HK copies of lone Star, a trio of Sacul musicians, four Café Storme Imperials, a Hong Kong highlander, and two Hilco, who rather confirm the Band-Major in that previous BMSS post! And a sucker-guard!

 

Three pirates, too early for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, these are the Fontanini smallest version, but in an usual colour of plastic, and polyethylene, rather than the PVC resin of my other samples?

 

More Café Storm.

 

Two early British-made Arabs, I can't remember who's these are (BMS?), we have looked at them all previously, in dribs and drabs, and I intend to do them all together one day, when they are all in one place!

 

Two probably Fraser & Glass, and one early Herald - polystyrene horses.

 

From the left, a kit figure, Pyro or Revell maybe, another of the growing sample of Spanish terracotta caricature figurines, a French (?) Santon, and a very French-looking sailor, from the novelty stacking sets, we've seen clowns and policemen here, and there are US versions of the same stacking figures.

 

There’s more on this in a follow-up, but here sold as Walco Products Inc., a similar outfit to Grandmother Stover's or SSCO, dealing with both craft items, novelty tat, and cake decoration stuff!

 

Small-scale bits bring the post to a close, with a few Risk board-game pieces and three of my favourite Christmas Cracker prize guardsmen!

 

And again; thanks are due to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, I've forgotten to add! Many thanks.

W is for Window Shopping

Continuing the 'show and tell's' from Brian's holiday in Italy earlier this year, and we come to what he found on the retail front, or at least some of it, there's more to come! The first seven images are of the window of a toy shop in Naples, the only one Brian found, suspecting Italian kids have mostly gone on-line to find their toys?

These first three shots seem to be mostly Schliech and/or Papo types (double -checking the shots; mostly Papo), and while nothing to write home about, they make a fine, and colourful display! A mix of Romans, medievals, fantasy and a few Pirates.

 

The other four look to be more domestic, and a mix of resin and whitemetal, some maybe locally commissioned? Two Napoleonic Brit's looking a little out of place in Naples! I can't make out the name on the labels in the background of one of the shots, can any Italian readers help out?

 

 

The above were to be found in the gift-shop at Pompeii, where the little four-euro one would seem to be role-playing size (28/35mm), and the other four are antiqued in the style of antiquities, but not copies of them, having a modern styling/sculpture. I suspect resin for the teeny and a base metal for the four fake-bronzes?

This is the window of a shop in Capri, and again a mix of metal and poured-resin, we will be looking at the eight-euro black knight in a further post, in fact it'll be a good excuse to dig out a few more and do what I did with the ceremonial odds-n-sods the other day!

 

In Brian's own words - "The [...] shot of red cardinals and chili peppers for some strange reason figure big in Amalfi Coast culture.", there are more ecclesiastic subjects to come, from the trip.

These two were found in a shop outside the Pompeii site, and may have more basis in actual artefacts or monumental masonry of the time, also resin, I think anyone who likes ancients needs one of these in their collection!

Thanks to Mr Berke as always, you can't beat a roving reporter who roves and reports! Cheers Brian!

B is for Boxed Bersaglieri!

I mentioned - back in Rack Toy Month - that Brian Berke had been to Italy and sent us a bunch of stuff, and now the show reports are out of the way, I'll be getting it up here, alongside my 60th Birthday Present from Adrian, back in the spring, the rest of the London visit stuff, and, and, and . . . it's never ending, and ever-growing, but Thanks to Brian for these, he sent me so much imagery, that it's pretty self-explanatory, leaving me not much to add, and I've broken them down into sections.

These were covered somewhere else, not that long ago, and I can't remember where? I have checked the blogs I thought they might be on, but couldn't find them, and they may have been on a Faceplant group/page, so apologies if it's you, do please put a link in the comments as I think you showed different figures?

 

Current-stroke-new production, from Giochi Preziosi, these figurines are larger than average, and depict the modern Italian armed forces, with three Bersagleri (light infantry), three Alpini, two Para's and an airmobile infantryman, a Special Forces 'insurgent' or infiltrator, and a 'Lagunare' which Google is translating as lagoon, so Marine or Dragoon (light cavalry), or possibly 'Peacekeeper', as lagoons are calm, and he's wearing a blue beret?

Packaging

Brain selected the Bersaglieri officer and trumpeter, and you can see they are attractively packaged in single figure window-boxes, which should keep even larger figures within the budget of a pocket-money collector, and also, obviously, makes them usefully touristy, in size - those luggage limits are getting serious!

 

Officer

 

A lovely figure and an unusual subject for those more used to WWII Allies and Germans, he's posed in the distinctive jogging run employed by the corps, unlike our own light infantry who do a short-stride, faster march, and wears the feathered Vaira headdress. He's a very serious-looking chap!

 

Bugler

 

The Bersaglieri are famous both for their brass bands and for their specific bugle bands, which hark back to the days when many commands were passed by bugle, most have now been disbanded, but one is retained and appears regularly on ceremonial occasions.

 

All the bugle calls can be found at the bottom of the Wikipedia page!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bersaglieri

You can see the figures are around 90-100mm, and seem to be manufactured in a modern PVC-replacement polymer, probably of the semi-rigid Papo/Schliech type?

 

Combined Shots

 

Again, you can see for yourselves how each figurine comes with an integral landscaped base, and a separate matching display plinth, probably in a harder polystyrene or 'propylene. Esercito simply means 'Army'.

 

So, many thanks to Brian as always, and more to come!