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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eMail - pw.editor3@gmail.com

Tel. - 01483 830 743

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.

H is for How They Come In - Charity Shop Backlog - 2022, 2 of 2

All the two's! Clearing the backlog of stuff down in Picasa's 1960, except for 2023! Slightly more interesting stuff for the purists than the last post, but it all has its place, and I make no apologies for any of it, unless I apologise first!

A rather nice two-headed dragon, I don't know who it's by, and it went to storage ages ago, but I think it's the same line as the black one we saw recently with the two different wing arrangements, so someone like Toy major maybe?

 

Another of the Jada die-casts, again I'm not sure of the franchise (so far all their offerings have been licensed) but it could be Roblox or Blockworld or whatever they are called, I liked it, despite its chipped nose, as it reminds me of the morphing-cubes robot in the water world scenes of Interstellar, the movie!

 

Seen before I think, some things do tend to get more than one outing now I'm shooting stuff for other platforms, my latest Fontanini on his chunk of Carrara Marble, and a bigger one at about 100/120-mil.

 

 

Nappies in various sizes, the one on the right is the fun one, it's a well [home-] painted slush-cast tourist statuette! The other small one is a 'figure painters' whitemetal figure, I don't know the maker while the ceramic is a fairing type, which was going for a couple of quid rather than some Meissen/Worcester type, but a fun addition to the growing side-collection of naughty Mediterranean (remember the rules of French Warfare) corporals!

This was a 50p jobbie, and worth the read, probably collected articles from a history magazine or periodical or something, not exactly in-depth, and not revealing anything which isn't in AJP Taylor or Liddle Heart, but maybe a tad-less jingoistic.

 

This wasn't that hard to pin down, the artist being revealed as Eija Seras, a Canada-based Finnish artist of the 1960-70's, but the base mark with the 'H' seems wrong (the 'E' is as she did it), so it may be a maiden or married name from one end of her period of productivity? If you google her, you find lots of chess-set pieces, this doesn't seem to be one of them, so just a touristy piece.

"Seras produced a range of Inuit figurines, hand sculpted from terracotta clay, in the late 1960s through the 1970s based on her four years living at the U.S. Air Force base in Goose Bay, Labrador in the mid 60s . The artist was awarded the Canadian Design of Merit citation in 1974 by the National Design Council of Canada for her native figures"

 

'How they came in'! I forgot to load this picture in order, and if I slot it in now I'll have to rewrite the blurbs on the other two, and I'm intrinsically idle, so that's a big, fat no! I seem to recall they were a couple of quid each, from the BHF in Farnborough. Really showing the superiority of plastic in certain situations, as seen by those, back then, who couldn't foresee the pollution problem careering down the tracks.

P is for Panits Laszlo, or is it Laszlo Panits?

There are four things I can say about these, and with little else to say, I might as well get stuck in without a long opener!

 

The first thing is that I could have sworn we had these on the Blog about 15-years ago, but I'm damned if I can find them now, they are not in the Tag List, yet the above image was taken before I ever had a Blog, and had gone to the dongles as 'done', so they must have been posted somewhere, maybe they were on my long-defunct Imageshack account, which I had for about 18-months, about 16-years ago! In which case they may have been posted to a long-gone HäT Forum article or something?
 

I think the upper ones are copies of Preiser, the lower set a mix of Esci-Ertl and Airfix sculpts.

 

The second thing is that I genuinely don't know if the firm/shop/chap is called Panits Laszlo, or Laszlo Panits? In trying to research the company (Google has got shit in the last ten years), I discovered quite a few of both, but without the comma we'd use in English - Hugh Walter or Walter, Hugh - it's imposible to work out which is commonly the surname or the forename, how they are typically presented, or if, indeed, in Hungarian, there's no difference, but the fact that there are quite a few, suggests it's the equivalent of a John Smith, or Andy Brown.

 

And neither point is meant to upset any Hungarians reading, I'd love input from them, to explain the points? But it's Panits Laszlo on the back of the card, so that's what we are going with.

The third point is the obvious stuff, they are factory-painted, HO/OO sized (1:76th scale), whitemetal piracies of Airfix, mostly RAF Personnel, or Esci NATO Ground Crew, here, I suspect, painted up as Warsaw Pact Hungarians, with the other sets painted-up as WWII USAAF-USAF, and with at least one figure taken from Airfix's set of that American title.

 

Set contents also vary from card to card, so you could - presumably - choose a card that would most closely allow you to set up your diorama, with whichever kit you were making? And I think the message stamped on the front just says "Model Figure Card" (blister/pack).

 

And I've forgotten what the fourth point was going to be, but it's worth mentioning that Panits Laszlo were probably responsible for the other Esci copies seen here in the past - which I also can't find, Doh!!

 

So, we'll have it 'again'? Also copies of Esci, also factory painted whitemetal, not seen on these cards, and here not divisible by six, there may be some damaged ones in the bag taking the sample to 24? But they otherwise seem to be the same idea/concept as the air force figures above?

And that's it, that's them, box ticked, I don't know a lot, I suspect it/he (Panits Laszlo) was also a model shop in Budapest, and if anyone can add anything, their input will be welcome.

P is for Peter's Perfect Post-Christmas Parcel! 2 of 2

The other half of Peter's parcel, and in the order I shot them, as I was sorting them for the local TBS boxes, I have five stacks of the smaller cardboard 'produce' boxes which stack on the corners and have open tops and the odd slot/handhold in the ends, through which I can post things without taking the whole stack apart!

Three bigger animals, two makers? The cat's are similar plastic/sculpting, the girraffe is more sort of early-learning or infant-toy with a slightly cartoony look, but all useful and needing ID'ing one day!

 

Some medieval small-scale odds, I think we're looking at Revell's iteration of Accurate's Brit's on the left and something Itlaeri-Zvezda on the right, they'll go down the line to make up complete sets, from odd's, when I have the time!

 

Three Del Prado part-work figures from the Waterloo 'wargame', and a nice flat, probably modern in physical production, but from antique slates? The loader came apart as I was shooting them, which means we can look at how the parts go together!

I actually got the part-work for some time, a local shop kept getting a few in, for months after it was supposed to have gone subscription-only. In the end, I dropped-out, as I did the maths! But we will look at them in depth one day, it was about 20-years ago now?

 

Airfix bits and a Merit feather-edged fence-panel. Figures, kit bits and 'readymade' AFV parts/odds, it all has its place! The series I/II Land-Rover (from the Bristol Bloodhound set), looks a bit like my Uncle's Austin Gypsy did when I found it behind a barn, about ten years after I'd last seen it driving!

 

A very red sample of Poplar Plastic and Tudor Rose soft-platic Westerners, we're aiming for one of every colour on the Poplar's (unlikely, but you never know), and they always seem to be more Tudor Rose horses than riders, so all useful stuff!

 

Two for the spares box, a German parachute bag from Timpo and a small 'old school' dustpan or hearth-brush, probably from a cheap rack-toy doll's set, or budget Christmas crackers?

 

The saltier half of a pair of Friar cruets on the right, with some Kinder 'fidget-spinners'.

 

A sample of early British Khaki Infantry, they were a nice sample, but Royal Fail or Parcel Farce conspired to deny them a future of use, however they are unpainted and very clean, so could be a worthwhile sample, and will be kept for now, until the next big sorting of that sub-genre.

 

Likewise, this chap, who is not damaged in the post-production sense of the word, but is a short-shot moulding with a constricted, kidney-shaped base and short muzzle-tip, where cooling plastic failed to fill the cavity properly!

 

Many thanks to Peter for this latest parcel, especially at what is the quiet or 'down-season' in the hobby.