R is for Recent Events

Had a mare of a day yesterday (Thursday), although it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I managed to get back to Waterloo OK, despite the impending strike by tube workers, and some bus staff! The main event being the picking-up of a lovely lot of loot from Peter Evans.

 

I had a better Saturday last, attending the BMSS show in Reading, where among other things I picked up the above ephemera, all relatively useful, especially the colour facsimile of a Lineol catalogue. I may already have some of it, particularly the Corgi checklist/customer leaflet, but if so, it'll make a useful spare to swap for something!

 

The Hausser farm and zoo flyer is an original, and there's some German language stuff which seems to be either a dealers lists, or trade orders of some kind, and which may or may not have future use. The V&A monograph is a bit of fun for the library, and a picture of a diner from Route 66 heralds a parcel from Brian, which I'll hopefully post in the next few days, while Steve Vickers gave me both his cards!

 

Two Elastolin facsimiles got left out of the other shot, and I won two items on the raffle this year, the Land Rover kit has no figures (shock horror!), so I may just make them up 'as is', and photograph them against future Land Rover posts, in their neutral . . . gray - I just (a while ago) remembered I had to go to the bank, so shot off, forgetting I'd been doing this, then thought I'd go for a walk, it's a nice day, or it was, it's dark now! And actually wrote 'neutral' about ten hours ago!

 

As well as show plunder, which needs photographing, and the box from Mr Burke, which has been shot, I also picked up a big lot from Chris, which also needs photographing, but I have sorted it, and there are some interesting bits winging their way to these pages!

 

When I was on Faceplant, I'd thank Chris when a parcel arrived, with the Collected Paratroopers image, a few days or a week or so before they got posted here, but, as I'm not on Faceplant at the moment, here it is! The red one is actually a stand-alone figure from Processed Plastics, but he made the line-up neater, and was needed in the flyboy zone!

 

And while I'd happily draw a veil over yesterday's shenanigans, as I said, I did manage to get to Peter's and pick up a collected bunch of donations and car-booty, which is also in the queue to be photographed, along with some charity shop stuff I picked-up this afternoon, next to the bank!

 

Given that I haven't cleared any of the stuff I was intending to clear, back in January, because I've had a month off, like a lazy fuck, there's no shortage of stuff to post, and I fear the capsule-toy mini-season may join the HO railway outstanding's in the never-never section of the short queue! We'll see, what will be, will be!

 

The next event will be the London Toy Soldier Show, on the 9th of May, with a Sandown the next weekend (16th of May), so it's lucky PW has moved to June really!

News, Views Etc . . . Composition Page

Welp! I have finally published - with all faults - the composition page I started editing about fourteen or fifteen years ago! It was near-ready about ten or eleven years ago, and I sent off edits to a few people to proofread, and I must thank Paul Morehead of Plastic Warrior for being the only one to get back to me, with an edit (which I hope I've corrected in the current draft!), the other's know who they are, and have disappointed, but that's pink-monkeys for you; always disappointing when they can!

 

 

Brent - smaller version

After the above, was ready to go, the whole article disappeared, poof! Like some negative-reaction magic trick! And I never got it back, while Blogger/Google have yet to reply to my eMails of ten-odd years ago! Anyway, while I started again, I was rather disheartened by the whole business, and rather left it on the back-burner!

Luckily, I had the draft I'd sent out, and could get the images back off the dongles, although by the time I was about to publish, I'd reworked most of the second section, and that's now quite different, and probably not as good at it was first-time around, these things tend to flow better in the initial attempt? Or they do with me?

It's incredible! He has to have the same story, a better story or something similar scrapped off evilbay! Like the braggart in the playground, who won't be bested, yet always, only reacting!

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2025/11/sometimes-great-lotion.html

I mean, I'm not saying he made it up, but timing's everything, so no sympathy here! I lost a bigger, better, more erudite document, not five minutes ago . . . not! Little tosser.

Japanese composition Wild West

While I know I've lost some links, and I've since added most of the British makers here, in individual posts, but they're not linked to, on the new composition page yet, so there will be more editing, and there are a couple more to go up here, to finish-off what I have on early British composition. But I have checked the links there, and updated one, although, the STS Lineol link keeps defaulting to Kinder here, but I think that must be a 'me' or 'my machine' glitch, if it happens to you, 'copy' the link and go through Google.

 

Three lead and a bisque pilot, with variations of Timpo/Zang 'Timpolin' airmen

The page remains a guide only, and 'work in progress', with the 'Rest of World' maker's list particularly poor and bitty, so any help there will be gratefully received, but at least it is 'live' now, which is an advance on yesterday! Much shorter pages will appear at some point on ceramics and tin-plate, with polymers and size/scale/ratio/gauge, still some way off!

 

 

Unknown leopard - a plastic copy of a probably Lineol animal,

heralds the end of composition. 

 

I must also thank Adrian Little, who has let me shoot all sorts of interesting things, on his tables, over the years, not least a lot of the stuff on the Composition Page;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_25.html 

L is for Last May's Lots of Lovely Loot - Military Figures

On to the second post of the plunder from May's Sandown Park (the next show's on Saturday), and it’s the military stuff, which was a quite eclectic assortment from across the ranges of scales, materials, and eras depicted.

 

This was a lovely find, a very, very clean Kentoys guardsman, with the correct (for purposes of identification of several vertions ) Sentry Box, in a near mint box which also shows how the stretcher-party was sold from the same carton.

 

And, speaking of stretcher teams, this Starlux set came home with me, I know I have the small-scale set in several configurations of base-type, paint, or plastic colour, but I'm not sure about the big one, I think I may have a stretcher, but no casualty or orderlies?

 

And these were a nice find, despite being the less loved of the company's output, they are every-bit as historical (as artifacts) as their earlier Nazi brethren, being instead, the East German, collectivised Lineol factory's production of Volksarmee Cold War soldiers, with both the Soviet-influenced helmet and side-caps. The sculpting is much more 'wooden' that their pre-war/wartime stuff.

 

This came with them; I always like a bit of scenery! But I have no idea which side of the border, or even which side of the war, this was made! The pack suggests West, the quality post-war, so probably Elastolin, but unmarked.

 

 

Grist to the mill with these, and the foot figures are a bit bashed, but it's all useful stuff, and these Culpitt/Wilton cake decorations are polystyrene, so paint and glue is probably in their future? It would be nice to do a few of the French/Hessian uniforms.

 

I can never resist these smaller-scale, early British mounted subjects (here, Cherilea 50mm'ish), as there are quite a few of them (Cherilea, Crescent, Rocco & Hill), they tend to come in various plastic and/or paint colours, and are often a bit play-worn, so making sure you have the best sample, means grabbing them whenever you can!

 

A soap guardsman! Needs a careful damping to lose the white bruises, but I'll save that job for a day when I have the time, space and tools for the task, as you don't want to wreak it! I tried an Avon search, and he doesn't seem to be one of theirs (which were normally ' . . . on a rope'), so a minor make, a seasonal or touristy novelty!

 

Chess set figure, seen before, I think, but all need bringing together and comparing.

 

And from Adrian's cheapie tray I got some nice, hollow-cast lead samples. Without the books in front of me I won't try to ID them definitively, but US Marine and colonial Brit', on the left, colonial and regular French on the right, and some of them Britains (including the small one, a B-Series?), maybe a French made one or two?

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 - Composition Artillery

This wasn't a find, I'd ordered it in advance to collect on the day, and it's a mixed bag with several items of interest and while the figures are composition, the guns are both a die-cast / tin-plate mix with real rubber wheels.

The groups as bought, I have always wanted a decent sample of the 40mm figures, these are Lineol, and while I have managed a couple of musicians, one or two marching troops and a Tank Commander we saw here a few years ago, I didn't have any 'fighters'.

The mounted figures and standard-bearer can go with my existing paraders, while I'll look for a second gun for these chaps to crew (you will have noticed the further piece here is a US equipment). And I'm very happy to have my first explosion, having admired them in the past!

Adrian had a 70-mil artilleryman in his cheapie tray, so I bought him to A) compare with the smaller ones, and B) have a sample! Both figures are a clearly grey colour rather than Feldgrau or field grey, so a Luftwaffe unit?

 

I think the 3.7cm PaK-36 infantry AT-Gun is by Hausser-Elastolin (who had their own limited 40mm range), and it's a lovely piece, I love the pre-war ones with their three-colour schemes, but this is equally 'dinky' and fires individual, round, paper 'amorces' from an anvil-type firing plate off a finger-trigger, to the right of the breech.

 

The other gun in the lot is proving hard to ID, I mean it's obviously a US 155mm M1 Howitzer (a confusing gun to look at as it's layout is similar to the commoner, smaller, 105mm, and it shares a calibre with the more famous in the public eye Long Tom), and it's clearly marked JAG's Copyrights. The elevating mechanism is partially damaged.

 

But I can't find anything about JAG in the die-cast reference library, or on-line? Although, anyone who's tried using the old black and white French tome, will know it's almost impossible to follow, but my go-to cheat - Schiffer's Emergency Vehicles - doesn't list a JAG either, (and that has everything!) so if you can help with anything on the firm I'd be grateful.

 

There was a JAG's Trophies of London, a few years ago, could this be from a presentation plinth? An unusual piece for a UK company to make as a promotional, as it was neither an item of service equipment here, nor, as far as I know, licence built here for anyone else? It has the look of French Dinky about it, but isn't? It could be German or American in manufacture?

 

It's also in a smaller scale, so goes better with a few Airfix odds I had to hand, the image on the right is from Korea and you can see the model's wheels are a bit smaller than the service item. I'll look out for a 40mm compatible Pak-40 or '88 FlaK in tin-plate, for my artillerymen, but not for a year or two!

B is for Best Toy Ever . . . Again!

Some best-toys win on features or playability (the Tri-Ang Battle Game), others win on sheer quality (The Britains Land Rover), but when I awarded the Britains Land Rover BTE status, I hadn't seen today's entrant, which trumps the Land Rover by a country-mile, making it look all a bit cheap and placky!

It's the gonad-challenged leader of the 4,000-odd-day Reich; Herr Adolf Hitler, in his Mercedes tourer, with straight-backed driver at the controls. Shot two years ago at the then September Sandown Park show, this has been sat in Picasa ever since, but two years is about par for the stuff in the queue! Adrian Little of Mercator (link) is to thank for allowing me to photograph it.

I can't remember if Adrian said if it was Elastolin or Lineol, but it has a porcelain-head Hitler so it could be Elastolin, although other people bought-in the figures for their vehicles; Arnold, Bing and Karl Bub, for instance, so I stand to be corrected.

The detail of the model is on a par with modern, similarly scaled (and unnecessarily expensive) 'executive desk toy' type limited edition things, and compared with my Land Rover, is in a different league.

The main construction is tin-plate, but much use is made of die-cast and white-metal parts, down to the little door-handles! The wheels are almost scale replicas with rubber tyres, steel rims and cast hubs on rod-axles.

If one thing lets it down it's the steering-wheel which is a simple tin-stamping which doesn't look right next to all the other, finer detailing? The Fuhrer also has a moveable arm so he can do his flicky-little Nazi salute, or madly wave at his granny!

I can't remember where this came from; it's cropped out of a larger (but un-watermarked) image, from somewhere - auction catalogue on feeBay? Anyway, you can see the cheaper, rival Märklin model has all-tin wheels/tyres and simpler figures, albeit three of them, probably small O-Gauge/40mm to boot? Whether the main-subject above is also a 1936 model Mercedes or not I don't know, there are differences between the mud-guards of the two vehicles?

A worthy - if temporary - winner of 'Best Toy Ever' I hope you'll agree; despite it's background politics, it's a beautiful thing and many thanks to Adrian for the chance to photograph it.

F is for Follow-up - Wüsolin!

Finishing-off a Nazi day (not words I ever thought I'd put to the record!); this will hold the F is for Follow-up . . . record for time between post and follow-up for some time to come, if not the whole life of the Blog, whatever that may prove be?

We looked at this funny little 40mm composition on styrene-base'd dictator nine years ago and I promised at the time to take better pictures when I got my next camera, but that happened after the figure had gone to storage! I've worn-out at least three cameras (I think I'm on the forth?) since then, but here - as promised - are the follow-up shots!

Best to view these in the context of the original post; XYZ is for Busolin, Fusolin Musoline, or Dusolin! It's all there, especially in the comments; where Bod's Paul solved the ID and found some on-line which I've posted below.

The peskey base mark which caused all the problem last time, still not clear, but a heavy mark especially on the cursive 'W' and umlauted 'ü' have rendered it hard to read in any light!

This group was on feebleBay at the time and you can see the bases are the same clipped-corner lozenges, a bit like old Fisherman's Friends (which I quite like, but being a bit of a wuss; have to consume in quarters! But they definitely warm you up in a snow-hole!).

Sadly, apart from the stuff which Paul turned-up at the time, nothing much else has come to light on these, a few auction lots and a metal (demi-rond) naval band on the same plastic bases? But not much else . . . I don't know if they are in the new book? Dates of availability or a potted history of the company are the main missing pieces of the jigsaw. Although mine is obviously Hitler, in his 1930's-on party uniform, the other two - I think it's fair to say - could pass for late WW I staffers, as could (WW I) most of the other figures I've tracked down?

News, Views etc . . . All Sorts!

It's funny, I thought I was doing too many 'News, Views' this year, but looking at the dates on some of these newspaper stories it's a while since we had one, I must have filled the Blog with other stuff? So anyway; well overly time for another!

In one of those synergic acts of coincidence which happen from time to time, and - indeed -have only recently happened to this very brand (Noki) on the Blog already this year, I saw the other set in a charity-shop window the other day (right-hand shot - the same one my Fontanini came from a few months ago!), which happened to be the day-after I found an old Amazon sales image of the same set it different packaging on the 'unknown' dongle - left hand image.

Seen before - just Picasa clearance!

They both confirm my assumption in previous posts that the bread 'soldiers' cutter would be the same as the one in the E1 tank we looked at last time; not the first time an educated guess has won-out here. Worth noting also that there are slight differences in the old sales image over the actual retail version (different spoon, sharper nose), this is often the way with catalogue images or press-release/sales shots, as they call upon pre-production items to photograph so that artwork is ready for the launch date.

The first catalogue image of Airfix's 1:32nd scale Stalwart amphibious artillery re-supply vehicle was very different to the finished product, as was the contents of their HO Waterloo Assault Set, even on the sides of early boxes; one of the reasons for the 'Items may differ' disclaimers many catalogues and packagings carry.

Colin Penn - who most of you will know from the pages of Plastic Warrior as a collector who uncovers some real treats in his searches - was corresponding with me the other day on a pretty special find of his which I won't detail here as it is destined for Plastic Warrior itself (so subscribe - if you don't already!) but if anyone knows anything about a toy company called (or logo-branded to-) F&G / An F&G Product; he'd like to hear from you (almost certainly not FG Taylor & Sons), and I can pass info on or you can go direct to PW. 04-04-2019 - Now known to be Fraser & Glass!

He also kindly sent me the above two shots of Vitacup animals he's obtained, including a gazelle/deer (with curved horns) which wasn't in previous posts on the range, nor - I think - was it in the listing, so this set continues to grow! Thanks Colin.

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Having just looked at WHW's again, an interesting recent snippet in the press at the beginning of May concerns the auctioneer Breker in Koln (Cologne), Germany who were visited by the police with a view to removing what sounds like rare 70mm Lineol or Elastolin's from a forthcoming sale. The Nazi era figurines - including Goebbels and a moving-arm Hitler - had been flagged-up as banned Nazi 'memorabilia'. The auctioneers were ordered to 'cease & desist' the distribution of the sale's catalogue, while Astrid Breker, current boss of the company stated "Those were normal toys in that time - you cannot deny history", it seems however that the catalogues had already gone out and Breker now wait to see if they will face prosecution, as some of the toys had not had the swastika's obliterated from the images.

Also connected to WHW's is this, or at least it reminded me very much of the wooden flats issued as WHW's in such sets as the VDA (Verein fur das Deutschtum im Ausland - aid for Germans abroad) Schoolchild Collectors issue of 1935 or 1937's German Fairytales & Legends, both of which involved plain, block-painted, figural, wooden flats.

These however are life-size and of mostly Afro-Caribbean subjects, something that wouldn't have got past Goebbels! Actually these are by Lubaina Himid from her work 'Naming The Money' from 2004, Himid is one of the four shortlisted contenders for this year's Turner Prize, and the oldest ever nominated, being 62 years of age at the time of the press release.

Getting back to the Breker story and breaking in the tabloids today is the tale of a cashe of Nazi memorabilia found in the posh Buenos Aires suburb of Beccar, Argentina which includes toys "...used to indoctrinate German children of the time..." that's the language of the small-sheet press for you! But it does make you wonder if there is lickly to be a bigger backlash against the ElastolinLineol type toys?

Previously on Small Scale World

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A good walk spoiled, but look at that trophy! I believe it represents the clubhouse at the Augusta club where the 'National' was held this year? I can only see it in use as a fine full-veranda 'Southern plantation house' for the centerpiece of an ACW war game! You'd have to chuck the plinth, and obtaining the - probably solid silver - piece of scenery might be problematical!

March of the PC brigade

PC's and Laptops are gaining ground again after a few years losing-out to Tablets and dumb-phones. Having recently inherited a iphone4 which seems unwilling to talk to my Laptop by either Bluetooth or USB cable, and which won't allow me to the save music files on it to my Laptop in a Windows compatible form, I do wonder at the use of it and am therefore glad we may see a return to the more established and trusted form's of bigger, easier to use, larger memory devices

Could we hope the next generation of Laptop/Desktop will have built in mobile telephony technology, rather than the clumsy VOIP? If I can download music or view smallscaleworld on a dumb-phone, why can't I use the keyboard of my laptop to make a call - it's not rocket science!

Still on computing - I've seen (and heard) stories about the new Windows X-Box One-X, Nintendo Switches and the other things, along with the news that Atari (who have been out of the game - pun intended - for years) are to stage a come-back; so I guess we're about to go back to the console wars of the noughties? Can't say I'll do much but ignore the whole over-hyped business - as I did last time; but an ear will be kept to developments!

Other News

No longer a significant 'player' in premiums anymore, so a bit leftfield, but some may be interested to hear that Weetabix have just been sold again (to Post Holdings of the US), for £1.4bn, that's more than you can spend in a particularly extravagant lifetime!

As a fair few of you carry-out your hobby from your sheds, you might want to know that Cuprinol - the wood treatment people - have narrowed this year's entries for 2017 Shed of the Year, more info can be found at readershed.co.uk where voting is now over - sorry! I voted for the Tardis!

The Muppets - or fans of them - are seeking funding for their continued existence, albeit only as museum exhibits. New York's Museum of the Moving Image is seeking crowd-funding for a preservation package of around 32,000-squids at current exchange rates.

Stanley Gibbons have been in the news with three angles on a sorry story of the 'fallen mighty' in recent weeks, first it sold its stake in Masterpiece London (organisers of the Art fair) through it's subsidiary Mallet & Sons in order to restructure, then about three weeks ago it announced it was in takeover-talks, then - as they fell-through - it announced last week that it was putting itself on the open market.

While for teddy bear fans planning summer-holidays with younger children; the Spanish rental site spain-holiday.com is offering a reuniting service for teddies left behind (quite common apparently!), see details on their website for #NoTeddyLeftBehind.

Hornby Hobbies are expected to reveal profits down 6% this week, but given their tribulations over the last 18 months (specifically) and in recent years more generally, that will be a good sign of the restructuring going according to plan! However, the slim-line stock marketing-model is set to continue for some time, so no new lines for a while I'm afraid.

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Alibaba who have a retail platform model and are under-reported in the Western media and all but ignored by our hobby despite being bigger that eBay and Amazon combined; have seen their share-price rocket on the news of strong grown forecasts for the next twelve-months, around 47%! Coming on the back of a revenue increase of 56% (below expectations!) in the year to March; Trump and Brexit won't stop the march of China. The machinations surrounding Yahoo/Altaba are also interesting but I won't bore you with them!

However I will suggest that the news should be read in conjunction with China's new 'big idea' the Silk Road trans-continental rail link. At the moment there is a delay adding a day or two to the journey as gauge-changes lead to trans-shipping of each train's load twice en-route and locomotive/driver changes to boot. However, with The West pushing Russia and China closer with every speech, it's only a matter of time before a new correct-gauge direct route is established, and seeing how quickly they've (the Chinese) built the first part of their East African railway - we need to look out.

On the loss of Western hegemony and the rise of the - no-longer - 'Sleeping Dragon', a computer has played Go better than a human, a Chinese computer, that is; winning a complicated Chinese game (one of the last games to be bettered by AI) against a Chinese champion (Ke Jie, 19).

Which leads us neatly on to chess, also beaten by computers, but a while ago! The Association of Teachers and Lecturers have called for Chess to be taught in all schools in England as a 'mind sport'. This follows a similar call three years ago which fell on deaf ears in Westminster - too busy wreaking the country and flogging everything in the larder to their mates?

A story itself linked to one stating that school lessons should be broken-up with periods of juggling or Plasticine model-making! The research revealed that learning is best carried out in 15 minute bursts of information, with periods of ten minutes of 'unrelated activity'. This is a non-scientific study but seemed to gain results for schools in Sheffield under the Hallam Teaching School Alliance.

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No additional text needed! Seeemples!

The only event I've noticed recently is that the medieval fayre and jousting tournament which featured in a  pre-Easter 'News Views' will be at Herstmonceux Castle for the bank holiday weekend of August 26/28th with falconry, fire-play (?), costume and folk music, tag line: Party Like it's 1499!

Leo Baxendale, creator of the Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx for The Beano comic has sadly passed away. He was also responsible for Sweeney Toddler, Little Plum, The Three Bears, and Willy the Kid along with the co-creation of both Wham! and Beezer comics.

We've also lost Adam West the proper Man Bat, Peter Saliss (voice of Wallace from Wallace & Grommet), John "Down Shep, DOWN BOY" Nokes from Blue Peter and Play School's Brian Cant - the passing of the five all serving to make me feel a little older - but no wiser!

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Finally - who remembers these? On the backs of early-to-mid 1970's era Britains Herald long boxes, we have panels depicting - from left to right - Mini Sets, Herald, Herald, Eyes-Right and Swoppets, although - from the scenery - the second one can't decide whether it is depicting Herald Khaki Infantry or Mini Sets US Infantry?

T is for Two Oddities

The last 'T is for Two' post of things I shot at Twickenham a week ago, with a couple of oddments to close . . .

These are just sublime in their madness! Argentine (or 'believed to be Argentinian') copies in polyethylene of Elastolin/Lineol type composition World War One, 70mm, German Infantry! Factory painted, the printed-fabric wallpaper only adds to the madness - enjoy!

This was unmarked and while the driver seems to be home-painted to confuse slightly, the dabs of silver seem original and point to Hong Kong rather than 'Western' origins, however I'm sure it's a copy of a Tudor Rose, Rafael Lipkin or similar toy, maybe even a scale-up of an early Matchbox or Corgi model? I liked it. About 1:40th and soft polyethylene plastic.

Thanks to Adrian at Mercator Trading for letting me photograph these.

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.

W is for Wüsolin...not Düsolin!

Badly needed help with this one and it was rapidly forthcoming after I published a fine post on Düsolin - that well known (once, now long forgotten;) manufacturer of floor-polish made from crushed beetle-juice and camel-dung!

In the last photograph it's so clearly a 'W' now, I don't know how I could have struggled with 'D' for two weeks, although in my defence I had tried Oüsolin and Wüsolin! Anyway thanks to the efforts of Paul from Paul's Bods (link to left) we now know it's Wüsolin and that they are apparently very rare, appearing quite infrequently on German eBay and were designed with the intention of enhancing the small range of 40mm composition figures issued by Lineol alongside the 70mm biggies.

This was given to me by Adrien (Mercator Trading) at Birmingham, and seems to be an unusual piece of Nazi memorabilia, if such a thing isn't an oxymoron...Nazi nightmarebelia?

This one is clearly [Ha Ha! the beauty of the edit feature!...read the comment section!] marked 'Wüsolin' (and the sharper-eyed among you will also have realized that my camera's CCD is failing, so we'll see what Fuji have to say for themselves), it could be named after the brand of what would have been - then - a 'new' plastic?

This [Still] needs input from German, Austrian or possibly (?) Swiss-German readers/followers, as apparently the firm is still in existence, indeed, they may be modern figures? But that doesn't really tie in with the asking-price of a couple of non-character figures on evilBay recently.

Questions then; Does anybody remember this or the other figures in the range? How big was the range? When did they florish? Has anyone got some in their collection or tucked-away at the back of the hall drawer, or in the attic/cellar/shed/garage?

Clearly depicting the single-gonad equipped, short-tempered, arm-wagging, foot-stomping, war-mongering, young-men in uniform loving, Parliament-burning, poor-footballing, crap painting, take-us-all-to-hell of many a rhyme or ditty...Herr. Adolf Hissler (as Nostradamus tells us he should have been called) is painted in the style of a composition figure, and has the rough texture of one too, so may BE composition? The paint is also slightly tacky/sticky, but I'm not going to start scraping/poking what might be a very rare figure?

More for British/Antipodean followers - It is interesting to note he seems to have ended-up with one of Baldric's theatrical 'licorice' mustaches? I guess Baldric left it in the dug-out the morning of the Big Push and the opposing unit's painter & decorator found it while measuring-up for new wallpaper, once General Melchet had moved his drinks cabinet 18 Inches back in the direction of Paris? BhaaH!

Joking aside (and I'm half-German, so it's not like when I have a go at the French!) it looks scarily like Hitler...and while the figurine may be composition...


...the glued-on base is clearly an early injection-moulded piece of plastic, and here you can see (through the rainbow tinted lines of a 60's TV, indicating the failure of expensive modern photographic technology) the machine-tool marks, as the recess in the mould was ground-out in a circular motion.

If the figure is plastic as well, that might explain the tackiness of the paint as industry had to relearn paint technology in order to deal with the new plastics as they came along. It's not the polystyrene of the WHW figures, but seems too 'good' to be a phenolic/cellulose-acetate from that time (mid-1930's to 1944'ish?), which one would expect to see warping/shrinking/cracking by now.
[the above was written when assuming an age they may not - now - have, so does not apply if they are modern'ish of course! And the two on eBay are much smoother looking, I'll try and get permission to use the image...]

Disclaimer; The subject matter and all images pertaining to it including the part-Svastica/Swastika symbol are presented here as a historical artifact/curiosity of possible importance or interest to the small community of Toy and Model Soldier Collectors and/or any Militaria bods who may find it, and in NO WAY represents my views, political affiliations or approach to fascism, and should not be taken as any attempt to glorify or form of glorification of; The events of the mid-20th Century, the National Socialist movement in Germany, The Holocaust and/or the Second World War.

Indeed, having mounted guard on Hess, I can tell you they were nasty pieces of work.

PS; I'll re-post these photographs at some point when I have a better camera, but a new camera is not on the horizon - budget-wise - for the foreseeable future.

Which I did nine years later - here!