B is for Box-ticking - Soviet Era Troops - Czechoslovakia

When looking at Drevopodnik in the past I've mentioned another card with historical/ceremonial uniforms, and I think this figure is from that set.

Over 70mm with his very deep (but typical for composition) base, he's posed in a field stance, but is definitely wearing 'best' uniform for a staff officer! The map is nice, but not as highly finished as a German composition figure's map would be, and I don't know if the leg stripe is a staff or regimental thing; infantry, cavalry or another arm?

Given the crudity of the sculpt, the paint is everything, and enhances this figures appearance far more than the simpler painting of the combat types we looked at back in 2012, or last year's 'Hitler' waitress.

The base mark is the teller for Drevopodnik, if you're unsure; they always have a (roman numeral?) dash-mark, or series of dashes, probably individual caster's marks . . . do you 'cast' composition or 'press' it . . . individual moulder's mark?

H is for Hitler - in a Dress!

Or is it Rodney from Only Fools and Horses? I've actually picked-up four more Drevopodnik since we last looked at them, an MP/Traffic Sentry - who has already been put away - and two other duplicates, but of slightly better condition than the ones I glued back together in 2012.

The fourth figure is obviously from a civilian or railway figures set and wears the typical uniform of a waitress, but God! Is she ugly! I can't decide if it's Rodder's doing a Hitler impersonation or Adolf channeling Rodney! Still, it could be worse; the paratrooper's got a beak! But it's the naive charm that 'makes' these Czechoslovakian figures as far as I'm concerned.

H is for How They Come In - Sunday Surprise!

The 'phone went last Sunday, not too early, but I was veging on my bed in the extraordinary heat we had last week, Adrian was passing and had a 'few bits' for me, he's be about five minutes . . . so I flung some flip-flops on and wandered down to the road . . .

. . . to take delivery of these! I'd mentioned to him that I was after some more Bata (pronounced Barter, not Batter - I know because they had an interview with one of the UK Work's foremen on the World Service the other day (try 'Eye-Witness History')) and he kindly found these within the month! There are four OK and four with minor damage (missing extremities) which is pretty par-for-the-course with these early rubber figures now.

Technically they are Czech (or Czechoslovakian) figure production, but there's every possibility the moulds did the rounds of each Bata factory, so British ones may be British-made? One of the things I learnt from the recently broadcast interview was that in some parts of Africa bata has become the generic term for shoes, so common was the brand locally in the mid-20th Century!

To the Bata Adrian had added a bunch of mini/micro aeroplanes, a couple of mounted Rocco guardsmen and a few Hong Kong bits. We will return to the small pile of mounted Wild West in RTM in a week or two, well; few days now!

However the caveman joined his mates for a quick photo-shoot, I suspect these are by/from LP/Lucky Toys (now known to be - LB (LP) - Lik Be) as they have similar codes to the other figures from the range (excepting the spacemen) and in a similar format to their 'Funimals', but I haven't - as yet - identified the dinosaurs I [also] suspect they should be accompanied by?

They may - of course - be gum-ball machine or capsule-prizes though; due to their small size (50mm), which would make them stand-alone 'novelties'.

 

2025 - A suspicion which was proved correct a year later with the finding of a full set;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/m-is-for-monster-fantasies.html  

F is for French Figures III - Rubber and Polypropylene

These are the ones that aren't Starlux and don't fit on the other two pages! Mostly recent re-issues by a company unknown to me, some quite early...and Czechoslovakian!

So the older figures are both by BATA from Czechoslovakia and are made from a hard-wearing vulcanised rubber, hard wearing because the parent was a shoe manufacturer! They are therefore not French, but the blue ones may have been made for the French market?

The others are a dense plastic I used to automatically label nylon/rayon, but they're probably polypropylene? Looking a bit Qurialux, a bit Starlux they're probably neither!

These are all made from the same material, the two  middle images are all Quiralux poses, but they've lost the swoppet-heads of the originals (who were in a similar plastic...a clue perhaps?) the upper shots are of older poses originally in hard plastic by other makes, so a mould inheritance thing going on?

These were all (along with the upper 3 in red and yellow/green) 1980's/1990's reissues - I think?

M is for 'Mostly' Unknown!

When I did the WWI post the other day I nearly included this image as a source of potential WWI figures, but realised it needed a toy soldier related text, and as that was a PPE rant, I held it over. These are all either unknown or of an early 20th century style that makes them potentials for WWI.

The first figure on the top row is a Bata figure from Czechoslovakia, he's really a later figure, but with the pack and puttees looks the part for WWI, he's also that rare thing, a true rubber figure who doesn't melt into a puddle like so much of the contemporaneous Italian-made rubber production.

Next to him is a Marx re-issue - probably polypropylene, from the old hand-painted 'Warriors of the World' mould, and while technically an 8th Army/North Africa WWII figure, could just as easily be marching to Baghdad in the First war.

Then we have a complete unknown - definitely polypropylene, I think he's from a construction site toy, but the little tin safety-helmet looks like our old piss-pot, so he could be painted up as a WWI chappie! I have a mental note that he's from New Zealand, but suspect that's actually bollocks and he's just a Hong Kong 'generic'?

Last one in the top line-up is the Reamsa Turk, falling wounded in the Dardanelles - defending his homeland, the best way a soldier should die, not attacking some god-forsaken shit-hole thousands of miles from home. This is a late unpainted example; he's a nice figure and I wish I had the rest of the set!

Bottom left would also seem to be a Spanish figure, but buggered if I could find him on Google the other night, even trying search terms like 'Spanish Ceremonial Cavalry Modern', Spanish Lancers, etc...Included here as he would paint-up to a nice German cavalryman of the immediate pre-war period? Anyone know who made him, or what unit he represents?

The final figure would make a nice British officer from either war, and could be in WWI Palestine/Iraq, Gallipoli, WWII North Africa or even Burma. He turns up quite a bit, in charity shops and vintage toy soldier shows, he's metal, and while it's probably an alloy, it's not the granular Zamac/Mazac of die-cast toy vehicles, being a heavier material which holds fine detail. I'm sure he is actually a tourist keepsake of a Hong Kong Policeman from the pre-1997 period, and must have been quite a common purchase.

D is for Drevopodnik

Wound-up in Czechoslovakia around 1998 - some ten years after 'The Wall' came down (actually it was the falling of a curtain!) as another bankrupt former state manufacturing concern and based in Brno (when the Bren-gun gets half its name from!), all I can find in relation to this company is that it was a general household goods manufacturer who also offered glass-grinding, glazing and drilling as well as apprenticeships in cabinet making!

At some point someone thought to manufacture at least two sets of figures in a rough composition (very similar to the old Rawlplug 'plastic wood'), the set shown here and another I've seen with more colourful Napoleonic or ceremonial type uniforms.

These came to us at a general antiques fair, where someone thought they'd be a 'bit of us', and my mate - who's stall it was - said "..go-on then", and bought them while I was out having a cigarette! By the time I got back to the table he was having serious second thoughts, having looked more closely at them and seen that there was a fair amount of damage.

I thought - wow, they're a bit different, I'll have them, I'm sure I can fix most of them! So silver crossed palms on them for the secound time in minutes and they were mine. I won't tell what my friend paid, or what I paid, but suffice to say it wasn't much either way, but probably more than I can afford given my current circumstances...I still owe him twenty-five quid, but that's for something else!!

A quick look at the three sets shows a cirtain amount of damage, particularly the figure top-right on each card. There were also four loose figures from the same set.

As they came out of the heat-shrinked packaging, it became obvious that the damage was a little worse than appeared, with bits falling off more than 75% of the figures, paint damage and other horrors. Also it was clear that Q/A and/or Q/C was not a priority in the Drevopodnik works and they seemed to have been finished - at least partially - by hand.

So each figure was placed in a separate bag, with all it's bits and the bags were stacked (open) in a shoe-box and placed in front of the ducting vent in my flat's wet-room, where hot-air (this was back in the spring) was blown over them for 48hrs, to remove any damp that might have been responcible for some of the finer crumbling.

Then they were taken one at a time to the surgical bench and stuck back together with super-glue (which was of course it's original use - in Vietnam). The really bad ones were left in the bags until the end, and some figures had to be composed from several, to get a 'full set'. Others were fine though and as they were given the once over they were lined-up on a bizarre parade!

When the whole process was complete, the pile bottom-right in the above collage was left over, and after humming and harring for an hour or so - I threw it away. It took two days to fix them all, and I am now looking for some paint to match them, especially the Paratrooper, as the best example lost all his helmet paint as he was peeled off the backing film. I also need to track-down a tube of the aforementioned Rawlplug plastic-wood (that hasn't gone hard), to fill a few gaps...do they still make it?

Top left; The NBC alert guards - three out of four 'aint bad as Mr. Loaf might say! These were particularly hard to mend as they had all suffered their brakes up the legs or around the hips (or both) rather than the more common - and easier to fix - ankle-damage of the others.

Below them is a shot of their bases, with what I presume to be the makers mark's, possibly the wood-working apprentices...using-up wood-filler to produce a Christmas 'cash-crop'??

Top right; are a conversion/head-swap using the staff-officer's head, that came from the bits that were left-over after I'd got one decent set together. The figures on either end of the line-up (medic and traffic cop), had to be built-up from several donors and still need a bit of filler and stuff.

So - if any Czech or Slovakian readers are following this blog, can you add anything? Did you work in the Drevopodnik M. Brna factory in Brno (Bruno), or know someone who did? Does anyone know the extent of the full range?

I think there may have been a card of Indians (native American) as well, but that might be a false memory, and the trouble with false memory in the age of the Internet is that it tends to reappear as someone else's fact!

Note; The figures reached some untouchable temperatures as I bled super-glue into them. I don't now the physics or the chemistry but it was a hell of a reaction...I was using pound-shop stuff, as you get three tubes for a quid and they tend not to produce the white deposit of the more the expensive glues.

U is for Unknown Aircraft

While sorting out the Photograph for the Battle of Britain memorial piece last night, I shot these two as well, now I have lots of unknown aircraft I wouldn't dream of boring you with, but these two are worth a more public forum in the hope of identification...

The first is presumably meant to be a Czechoslovakian-service Russian Mig fighter, but is managing to look more like a V1 on it's launch-skid! It is missing the top tail-plane, and from time to time I consider making a replacement, but feel one shouldn't bugger-about with what may be a rare thing! Any ideas? It's about 1:90, 100% wood with paint, the red disc on the tail-fin is on both sides, there's no markings underneath.

The second one is even more interesting, a polished perspex model of - I think - a Messerschmitt Me.109? Could be a modern western 'collectable' from Franklin or Danbury and co.? Or, a post-war corporate desk model from Spain, Finland, Switzerland or Roumania? Either way, I suspect it's having been attached to an ash-tray or similar 'objet'.

Secondly - Could it be a Master, for a range of white-metal models?

The other alternative is that it is from National Socialist Germany. around 1:100/110 and obviously missing a propeller and tail-planes it also has a small hole for a mounting-wire (?) underneath, forward of the cockpit, under the cockpit itself is an air-scoop. No other details or markings. Again - any Ideas?