A is for Additional Adventurers

Bit of an odd one this; I'm used to these modern 'toob'/tub guys issuing a replacement set occasionally, we saw it with one of the Egyptian sets (Safari or K&M?), but this being only five figures is not a replacement set, unless shrinkflation is getting serious, but rather a sister set?

We saw a Plastoy lot of ten items, two years ago, on this exact, austere date, the day of piraty talk! But here's a set of five figures with a sixth accessory, and I can't remember where I bought it, however, given the shot and the date of the photograph, I may well have got it in Waterstone's, Basingrad, around Christmas-time?

 

Nice figures, the female is particular chic and swashbuckling, while the Afro-Caribbean chap is very similar to the one in the previous set, decoration wise, but has the slimmer grace of the other four in this set, so I think we can conclude another sculptor was involved?

 

They are very heavily armed, the guy on the left is positively bereft of weapons compared to his compatriots who all have at lest three! But if you have a peg-leg, I guess balance is your first concern!

 

A raft is the accessory this time, but it means that between the two sets (if you've re-read the other article!) ALL trope-boxes are well and truly ticked now. And having two sets of Plastoy makes getting the Papo set for next year a bit of an urgency, they really are 'missing' from the Blog now!

 

In trying to find out if the other set is still available (it seems to be), I discovered the previous sample is missing a tenth figure and cannon for a complete 12-count . . . the search goes on!

2nd October - Except in conversation just now, I realised the other - incomplete - set is 40/45mm not the 54mm of these, so now it's a question of looking out to see if they are going to trend a change to smaller content-count sets of 54mm figures, as they have some nice licences, like Asterix?

B is for ♪♪ "Bobbin' Along on the Crest of a Wave ♪♪ . . . .

. . . . Shit! Whitewater! Hold on to yer'hat pardner!"

A funny one really, I was looking for something to break-up the FFL/Arab posts, and started scrolling through Picasa, hoping to find a near-ready 'quickie', found a couple of raft shots in another place and though "Funnny, they should be in the raft folder" . . . but then couldn't find the raft folder? I had intended to publish the raft post over Christmas, so I guessed I might have, searched the C:Drive and found it in the 'Waiting Sorting' folder on the desktop, where it would be, if I'd posted it.

However, there was no blurb Text.docx, and I hadn't finished cropping the images, so I checked the Blog . . . nothing! I must have picked it up accidentally with a finished post from the desktop (where it was last time I remember it!) and dropped it in 'waiting'? What else is in there though, because often when you do a boo-boo like that you collect several folders/files in the invisible net, I'll have to have a careful check?

So, with the extra images, now all cropped, and months (years) late, here's the 'Rafts & Log' portion of the 'Canoe Season' (which is still in the long queue, but it got more work tonight (3rd), it's going to be at least 14 posts?), a bit of a cheat, as more than two-thirds of the season has come from Brian Berke, while this is all from my stash, but it will all happen fairly in the end!

Britains' raft; the Flagship of Herald's fleet! If I recall correctly it wasn't a good floater, the raft being a chunky lump of polyethylene, you could get it to sit steady in still water, but any roughness and it tended to go over! the punter's pole is snapped short, but they are hard to find in one piece, so at least I have a longish piece

A young collection, my sample doesn't do justice to the variations of plastic and paint colour out there, you can find quite pale rafts, darker rafts, bright orange baggage &ct. Some (early versions?) had the spigots on the figures feet/knees and receiving holes in the raft which was - frankly - the better system, as these reverse locating ones tend to lose the studs as I have on the left-hand one, something which plagued the canoes of both Britains and Timpo.

Timpo's log raft; not much else one can say, compatible with 3rd/4th generation cowboys (?) and pretty common - several dealers have shop-stock to dip into - it's a nice, novelty plaything which also enhances a Wild West collection. I think it came with a wire keel/weight for floating like the canoes, but the boys always get their feet wet!

Timpo also did a more comprehensive raft, but of the 'daft raft race' type, cobbled together from logs, broken planks and barrels, it's the sort of thing Timmy, the two Wayne's and I nearly won with, in 1984 - there was a lot of cheating, involving bare-legs and a divers knife!

I've seen them with two standing, one standing and one squatting cowboy, or this one with a pair of kneeling cavalry legs, mine is a poor sample as the non-punting passenger is clearly panicking and needs pre-float, aversion therapy! Hold on! I think I can hear him . . .

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!  It's the Plastic Warrior show in less than two weeks and we're still half-way up the Rio Grande! Punt harder! We're gonna' miss it!"

The people who do those one-cardboard-building-per-bag, swoppet piracies, also copied the Timpo raft! Here imported by Oto S.p.A. into Italy, but you find them as generics too. It comes with two sacks instead of the sack/trunk combo' of the original, and you also get a Timpo tree copy, albeit with rather sparse foliage! Note also that the top deck is parallel boughs, rather than planks, so they ex-kape a lawsuit!

Strangely most sets with this header-cad have crappy 3^rd/4^th generation copies of other Hong Kong knock-off swoppets, but the two job-specific figures in this set are quite good, being the keeling and squatting legs you don't often find in HK swoppet samples!