S is for Seen Elsewhere - Kinder Figures

Shown on a Facebook group a while back, and time to get them up here and out of Picasa, many of these Kinder figures have been seen here before, in mixed lots, donations or as bit & pieces! But these are all complete, as far as I know, and blurb can be kept to a minimum! These are mostly from the mid-late 1980's or early-mid 1990's.

 

Diver on the left, mostly polystyrene, an RP-sourced archer on the right, in a polyethylene, but they are starting (like a lot of RP stuff) to get brittle now.

 

Three musketeers, also Res.

 

Fencers.

 

American egg-ballers!

 

Alien, also Res Plastics, also getting brittle now, you have to be very careful of the joins.

 

Small-scale astronauts, and their means of locomotion!

 

Panthers, that are pink!

 

Wellingtonian . . . Enemy dragoon, I think?

 

Charley's, one's Kinder (soldier), the other Hong Kong or Italian copy?

 

Speedy Gonzalez!

 

Ice skaters.

 

Different set from the above, same trope!

 

Caricatures.

 

Two from the 1970's on the left, a later caricature figure on the right.

S is for Shelfload of Shelfies!

I shot these a few years ago, not long after the multi-part overview of Fontanini and musings on Fonplast, back in 2017, but they were put on hold, because as I said at the time, I knew someone else was working on the military range. That author was Peter Evans, and those articles with the sets/generations and original Military Modelling adverts were published in Plastic Warrior magazine (which you can subscribe to, details below) over a number of issues, back then, but these then got forgotten down in Picasa's 1950's!

I thought fifteen-quid each was a bit steep, especially for a charity shop, the mounted maybe, on a good day, but all of them? I like to pick these up for between two-fifty and seven-fifty at most, but they all sold, within a week or so, and that's good for the charity.

 

At the end of the day, Fleet may have a bit of poverty, round the back of the football club, or hidden at the margins of the Ancell's or Elvetham developments, in the single-mother blocks or starter maisonettes, but overall it's an upper-middle-class dormitory town for London commuters, and there are many smart homes with trophy-wife curated decors, and I'm sure they found a good display or two, for their hundred-odd quid!

PW is contactable here:

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And it's only five months 'till the next PW show!

B is for Boney Boustrapa Blownapart!

Oh, get over yourselves! As with the Martial Artists, this is a combination of an archive shot, actually seen elsewhere a while back, and a new purchase, and I'll start with the new purchase, as I had to look him up!

 

He was obviously French, however, I felt the base was a little thin for Starlux, and he's unmarked, but a quick Google search revealed his Toy Soldier Company commissioned reissue in a paler grey greatcoat, with braided cuff and different tricolour, so Starlux 8000 series, but original issue!

 

And he will join these guys who have all come in over the last few years, and one or two which I had already found, and just to confuse, I've already posted a better image with two additional nappy's, Blue Box and Kresge, so  this is more of a Picasa-clearer , than a box-ticker!

L is for Late Show Report - Ceremonial and Historical

Not much in this section from May, and I was going to combine it with the Ancient/Medieval images, but decided to move the images around instead, and add one from the archive at the end, so it'll do, it's only bragging on odd & sods, when all's said and done!

 

Small scale guards; a very broken Airfix was in the bottom of one of the bags! Running back up from him we have a Hong Kong swivel-head, a Zang composition with brown base (I think my existing sample have green bases?) and two of the 1990's Luck Bag/Christmas cracker ones.

 

When doing these temporary 'to be further sorted' sorts, I tend to put pirates or Zorro stuff with this class, so he's here! Those who have followed the Blog for any length of time will know there are a lot of these Kinder 'bits' bags now, with pirates, cowboys and Indians, Samurai, medievals etc . . . and he will join them for the final big sort! Missing his small parts but otherwise all there.

This was funny, a seller had a decent sample of the Colorado Argentines, and knowing I had a few, and fearing the price, I'd tried to ignore them all day, at the end of the day a mate came over and bought a sample of the foot figures (which I have), and I overheard the price, and quickly descended on the mounted pair, which I didn't already have!

 

In the course of the day I also picked up an arm in white plastic, which could be another Colorado, another Argentinian make or the Spanish Torres Maltas; I won't know (the pennant's different) until I can compare with an original or match-up with an 'armless guy!

 

I pick these up all the time, as part of my attempts to get them all sorted-out once and for all, and while I think these are all Airfix, I'm not sure on the academy cadet, he's had paint added I think, and won't fit on either horse without falling off, so may be a mucked-about-with Frazer & Glass, or a Bergan/Beton original, or another?

Horses are both 'bent-tail' Airfix, with a hard-plastic on the left and a soft plastic on the right, Lifeguard is definitely Airfix too, which would have been the end of this post (except it was originally the first image!), but I added this . . .

 . . . which was taken just over a year ago, and excluded the master collection, which was back in storage already (as all the above now is!), but includes that which had come in over the previous two years or so (on the left) and a lot from SAS Auctions on the right, with some sorting of horses and consolidation going-on in front.

 

Two posts were produced over a few moths for 'elsewhere', and it's intended to fully update the relevant page on the Airfix Blog, but I haven't got round to it, and may wait until everything's in one place, to try for the definitive narrative? You may recall there were several of these in Chris's last parcel, and the sample grows continually . . . and yes, there's an Airfix fireman hiding in there somewhere!

Many thanks again to Adrian Little, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Chris Smith, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul Stadinger, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin, for contributions to this year's plunder-pile.

P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Historicals and Ceremonials

There's no better-or-worse with these groupings, it's just the easiest way to begin the sorting, as most of the large scale collection is archived thematically. The small scale remains mostly alphabetical by company/maker, with only the unknowns thematic, but in the larger scales it seems better to separate them by theme, within which they are all equally valued, and equally useful, in their section of the whole! Today it's the more colourful soldiers from Chris's recent donation parcel!

This was actually a purchase from Chris, which was put in the box to save on postage, and turned-out to be a Reamsa cavalryman, Royal Escort Squadron, I believe, and doesn't seem to have been in the Gormasa-Soldis tranche of reissues? Now he just needs a horse, but as mentioned in related-articles passim, I think I have some somewhere!

 

Novelty Ninjas from Panosh flank a larger unbranded/several branded (generic!) figure, who is a more contemporary (or still recent) capsule-toy type. All three are manufactured in soft PVC style polymers.

 

From the left: a base for the via-Portugal premiums used by several French products, which had here, been paired with one of the smaller Kinder issue figures, which his locating pegs don't fit! A ceramic priest type, from Japan, a slightly damaged Marx Miniature Masterpiece knight - I have more damaged than not, and will have a modelling session with their polystyrene arses one day! Finally, a new sculpt of Welsh lady 'redcoat' to put the fear of god into French marines! She was obviously another (most of the previously-seen were) tourist keepsake, keyring

 

With sizer - a bit blurred, without sizer - a better shot! A home-casting mould Prussian, a naked lead figure around 40mm, he may have had a brand, but with everything that's happened recently that mental note has been lost, and what looks like a French (or Spanish?) copy of a Reisler (?) Band Major, he could be quite recent, he's very clean, and very flashy, almost a test-shot? The sizer is an Airfix clone.

 

Lovely novelty ceramic drummer, about 45mm? He's smaller than the others we looked at a while ago, and we will return to him/them, as more of the others came in a while ago, but have gone off to storage, so a better overview of them - as a genre or trope - is definitely in the pipeline!

 

And a nice bunch of slightly battered Oojah-Cum-Pivvy's, from India, via Shamus Wade, but being terracotta, they will restore quite well, both with superglue and modelling clay, while the powder/poster paint is equally easy to touch-up, so I will get decent samples of each uniform type from this lot. And again, many thanks to Chris for all the above.

P is for Polski Sklep . . . They're Everywhere!

After posting those others an hour ago, I remembered I had this chap in the queue, so went off to find the shots in one of the 'Eastie' folders, then thought there were those other three, which I think we've seen before, but anyway, more shots have been fired-off and uploaded, so here's more Polish-made Wellingtonian cavalry!

He's 70mm, with a more 'Spanish' (production) looking horse, and is a lancer officer I think?

 

The other 40mm trio included another-one of the white cuirassiers, so I now have seven of them, and he had a slightly different horse which I gave to the trumpeter, further swapping resulted in this pair being odd-men-out, and the six cuirassier troopers match! Ulan and Hussar here, I think?

 

 

Quick comparison shot!

K is for Kirasjerzy, Polscy Kirasjerzy

And the 14th Regiment of, if my cursory research in anything to go by, and it probably isn't! Looking for something quick to post after work, and these are a 'seen elsewhere', so let's get them in the Tag list here, PZG's Polish Cuirassiers.

I'm not sure if the horses are correctly distributed/allocated, but they all came together, and if I know anything about Wellingtonian troops, it's that musicians often had the odd/opposite colours to everyone else! And they are small, they're only about 40/45mm.

M is for Marx's Massive Moorland & Mountain Men

A quick box-ticker today, these are the six-inch 'Scottish Soldiers' from Marx UK factory in Swansea, and were a standard 'going-home' or 'attendance' present, at Birthday Parties when I was a kid.

 

For those who don't, or didn't practice such a thing, this was when all the kids who went to someone else's birthday party, got a little something, usually of the novelty or 'Christmas stocking' variety, to take home, in part as a memento of the occasion, and in part because watching one child open lots of presents (at least one of which could have been yours, if you hadn't handed it over!) tended to bring out the green-eye'd monster in some!

There was a bit of a party circuit in the late 1960's early 1970's, and several of the members had large gardens or grounds (such as Elvetham Hall, now a hotel and 'village' development!), and these keepsakes would, if the weather was inclement, be hunted for, outside, like Easter eggs!

 

If you found more than one, though, you had to surrender the spares to those who hadn't found any, in the great divvying-up! I remember the hard-polystyrene Indians also from Marx, and little bags of the Minimodels/Culpitts wild west (very frangible!), card-tube kaleidoscopes one year, and the rubber snakes mentioned here yesterday. The whole concept was meant to teach, in the nicest way, sharing, fair-play and decency? Some just resorted to lucky-bags as everyone was leaving.

 

I only have five (5th below), but I found this site which has all six;

 

http://marxsoldiers.british-classic-motorcycles.co.uk/index.php/scottish-soldiers/

 

Which was funny-ironic, as I was expecting a second bearskin for three pairs, and actually it's a third Highlander, leaving two lowland/fusilier types (with odd headdress I'm thinking, sort of French colonial, 18-somethings, 19-oh-whatever?) and the one Scot's Guard. That site's are cleaner than mine!

The other 'Fusilier'

Slight colour variation between batches?

A couple of - also soft, unpainted, polyethylene, 6" - Wild West cowboys who have come in at some point, I haven't obtained the hard, factory painted, polystyrene Indians from my childhood yet, but they were the 'thin' sculpts also done in 'HO', and the archers and spearmen tend to damage when you do see them.