The last of my British production Russians
in 54/60mm (excluding Airfix; coming soon) are the Charbens set; poor sculpts/poses and the Timpo set; poor sample size!
They're fun, but they are struggling in the
accuracy department aren't they, and suffer from the semi-flat'ness of a lot of
Charbens production, some throwback to the hollow-cast days!
Also reissued recently (Blockhill-Marlborough-Plastics from the Past),
my original officer is lacking a scabbard and the Vickers-Maxim is a tad on the
odd side! Note also he's a darker, greenish, 'field-grey'. At least they have a
single star, front, centre on a reasonable rendition of a 'Deputy Dog' hat!
Harsh indeed was the punishment
for forgetting
your sword at muster!*
Getting very brittle now and both as rare
as rocking-horse shit and priced to match! Timpo's
Cossacks, the better one is probably the commonest survivor being a bit more
substantial, but while I'm lucky to have him, I think I'm luckier to have
the other one with all his arms and swords and scabbards flying around to
break-off, but he's actually quite supple still, and I have a theory about that
. . .
. . . along with their (Timpo's) solid 8th Army and German
Infantry who are also both known for their tendency to brittleness and several
of the Crescent sets (60mm Wild West,
Romans, Elizabethans &etc.), it seems to be a bit of a factoid that when
you do find them still flexible, they tend to be heavily played with . . . you
know the state; hardly any paint, scuffed buckles, faces or hands, twisted or
chewed bayonets and scabbards, garden-grime pressed into the sculpting, odd
stains, home-paint, bent bases . . . !
I believe it's down to nothing more
complicated than the oils in human skin and/or other substances they came into
contact with during that heavy playing . . . grass, damp soil, rain, cake,
sticky sweets? Coupled with the fact that constant handling would have lead to
flexing, which may have 'exercised' the long-chain polymers, or maybe even the constant
temperature changes help?**
It's not a hard and fast rule, just a bit
of a factoid, but when you find mint-paint, 'laid-down' or never played with
(all that old shop-stock of the Turks/Afghans kicking around a few years ago),
they can be as brittle as biscotti, but find a tatty,
played-with figure and it's often still as bendable as new?
--------------------------------------------
* In Berlin our 'in house' (or in the
glasshouse!) prisoners used to have to double to the cookhouse at lunchtime
holding a wooden WOMBAT drill-round above their heads. They would often vomit
their meal back-up, whilst doubling back to the guardroom after lunch, and that
was 'fluffy Britain' in the late 1980's!
** I know some sources blame temperature
change for 'plastic cancer' but there's no empirical evidence for it, direct
sunlight is the killer as the ultra-violet passing-through will blast out the
polymer's free-radicals and kill everything left on a windowsill or shelf, over
time; even polystyrene gets crumbly! but I've had my whole collection in
several - very different - storage facilities over the years; commercial, old
stable, attic and shipping container (where temperatures are even more extreme
than an attic) and it's suffered no noticeable changes (except to un-bagged PVC
figures which go mouldy (black 'soot' or grey 'flock'), but the mould rubs/washes
off with no apparent detriment), the temperature changes (even a 'sudden' frost),
take time, and the polymer adjusts with its inherent flexibility. There will be
a whole page on polymers here one day.
