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.

E is for Eye-Candy - Fantastic Plastic

These are the other bag, all rigid polyethylene, 'propylene or nylon/rayon low-friction bearing type plastics, and like the previous lot, novelty items, of the Christmas cracker/capsule-prize variety. The pink Dinobot is a Power Rangers knock-off.

 

Apparently, approximately twice as common as the soft, squidgy ones, it's NOT scientific! The large green one bears a resemblance to the Voltron ones we've seen here once or twice, he . . . it's also a parachute toy, as is the fat, dumpy, green one, front left. The green one front middle is marked Rigo China.

 

The two oxide red ones are similar to the Arco ones, but a bit smaller and different sculpts, but could well be from the same factory/sculptor/team of sculptors? While the blue one back left is a plug-together 'swoppet', missing an arm and marked ANT with a pictogram of an ant! The orange one with a base was known to be Ace Acme in the 'States.

H is for Hing Fat, Not 'DGN'

The forth corrective post today, except the calendar says it's tomorrow now, but I'm on an odd timeline at the moment, I'll schedule it for 9.30 in the morning!

 

You may have encountered the phrase 'DGN' in your Toy Soldier scrolling, over the run-up to Christmas, I don't know if it was aimed at me - He has shown a past preference for warming hostilities at Christmas, but hadn't for a year or two - or just a 'brain freeze', he's good at those, and he went on to link it to a sales page clearly crediting SCS Direct (sometimes Wicked Duals), not 'DGN'!

 

Now, I dealt with 'DGN' here, I wouldn't suggest you read all of it, it was tedious the first time round, but The Denouement will give you an idea of the conclusion, without reading the tedium of how I got there! But I thought I'd correct the new nonsense while I'm in a corrective mood!

 

 

If the comment was aimed at me, it might be these lots, all recently Blogged here at Small Scale World, which could have triggered the resurrection of the phrase 'DGN' after more than six-years? All the above are Hing Fat products, advertised on their poorly attended Faceplant page and offered for trade-sale on their difficult to navigate website, which has menus which only show themselves after you've clicked on one of the headings on the left.

 

Faceplant Page - https://www.facebook.com/hingfattoys

Older sculpts - https://www.facebook.com/hingfattoys/photos/pb.100063683895745.-2207520000/1725209017735366/?type=3

Newer sculpts - https://www.facebook.com/hingfattoys/photos/pb.100063683895745.-2207520000/1717159245207010/?type=3

 

Website - http://www.hingfat.com.hk/ 

Older sculpts - http://www.hingfat.com.hk/index.php?c=237

Newer sculpts - http://www.hingfat.com.hk/index.php?c=239

 

Basic research!

They are all based on the old Matchbox American Infantry set, with the smaller set in the lower image being those handled by such luminaries as D&D Distribution in the 'States.

While the other two samples are the newer set, from a larger line, distributed in Canada back in 2014 by Ricochet, as TJF told us himself in a post where the dreaded E. Sell said "These are the same DGN-not HING FAT figures run in different color", even though they are the same colour, and other people attending the post were happy to acknowledge the Hing Fat attribution and to them dating-back prior to 2014!

Peter Evans, roving reporter for Plastic Warrior magazine has been distributing them for several years now, and he gets them from Hing Fat direct, that's the Hing Fat who HAVE a website, who HAVE a Faceplant page, no matter how problematical they might be! And it seems SCS Direct are the latest to take some?

 

And yet, other Faceplant groups are full of 'DGN', several evilBay bottom-feeders (mostly Russians strangely?) are (or 'were', they're all banned until Putler looses the rest of his navy!) using 'DGN' in their listings.

 

But no one in the six years since my rebuttal, in the seven or eight years since Erwin's nonsense on the Vichy site, in the ten years since both types have been on the market alongside each-other, has provided a scintilla of evidence for a 'DGN' - no links to no factory, no website, no trade-ordering page or no Faceplant?

 

No address even, someone has suggested TJF said it meant 'Dounghan-Guandong Niunght', but that's nonsence, Dongguan (different spelling) is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong (different spelling) province, while 'Niunght' is a made-up word!

I have in recent months highlighted the fact that with the second version, where sculpting has been taken away from the Matchbox originals, there is some variation in base, probably nothing more significant than different cavities in a multiple-cavity mould (by giving them different bases, you might ID the problem cavity if a problem is noticed further down the 'bench'?), which are the two to the left, but that theory is rather blown-away by the fact that they are approximately 1-in-3, rounded to oblong bases?

The older figure is on the right, or 'older sculpt', Hing Fat are still offering both, to anyone who wants them! Base-marking is the same font or letter type, but slightly smaller on the older design, and all are made of the same plastic, a dense polyethylene or polypropylene type with that slipperiness to the finger-nail of nylon components?

Shade varies slightly between batches, and with the newer design, the two officers in the bottom shot have different sized oblong bases! If you read my original post on the Japanese from years ago (the post which seems to have started the war, even though it took them four years to strike!), it doesn't read quite right by what we now know, but that's - in part - because we're all learning, and we've learnt since then.

 

They were (the Japanese) in part - pose wise - inherited by Hing Fat from Rado Indistries/Ri Toys, and seem to be on their third iteration as Hing Fat with various changes in pose line-up and base-design? And with mine in storage, I haven't paid them the same attention, the three above came in with the Americans, and probably go with them. While an 'over the top' set accompanies the new oblong-based line.

 

All my versions of the newer set so far found, and they are all Hing Fat, not 'DGN'! And while I am only too-aware of the old adage 'the lady doth protest too much' in this case A) I haven't said anything for over six years and B) you have to nip this crap in the bud, or they will try to get away with more! Tiresome, and 'DGN' is 'Design', abbreviated.

U is for "Up Yer Ladder, Pal!"

This is an odd one, I've seen foreign-language versions, usually by equally esoteric makes as this one, Action GT being a TV-marketing enterprise who had some success in the late 1970's-1980's with mostly Hong Kong imports branded to them here, and other firms (Pressman, Remco (Big Trak?), Schmidt Spiele, Tyco &etc.) elsewhere, relying on a business model which seemed to consist of big-box, statement toys to 'make your year's money over/with the Christmas season'!

 

The game itself is a pretty random luck-oriented one, but obviously the 'hook' is the large apparatus which can be set up on the floor for the family to gather round and marvel at while smiling inanely at each other, and laughing a lot, in the - then - prevailing fashion of 'nuclear' families in televisual advertising!

 

The 'ladder' frame is manufactured in a rather flimsy polystyrene, unlike the figures and sacks which are all made of a hard-wearing material which could be a dense polyethylene, or a nylon of some type?

Having mentioned them; as toy/figure collectors our interest can be twofold, firstly, the obvious piracies of the Britains farmer have an appeal to completists, 'cameo' collectors or hard-core Britains' fans, while the supply of up to 16 sacks in up to four colours (you rarely see it complete, but you will often see it, incomplete, at the larger car-boot sales) might be useful for modellers or dioramists?

As you can see, the copies are around 40mm, and taken directly from the late version, PVC/vinyl farm-hand, who would have been easily obtainable in the former colony by whoever was pirating it for the Western buyers!

 

The hair-trigger hinges (they are weighted on the near-side, by being wider that the back portion), means you can drop your own figure, by himself, if you are too ham-fisted, but even if all players are being careful, three will usually send them all tumbling to the bottom, often carrying a few others with them. I'd imagine that with a shaky granny or fidgety juvenile involved, it became almost impossible for anyone to finish, and therefore a frustrating game which didn't come-out of the cupboard in subsequent years?

Original TV Ad.

L is for St. Labre Indian Catholic High School

Wikipedia suggests not all is rosy at this establishment, and I could dig deep and make a few more 'eemies' with my usual revisions of history toward a more accurate truth! But this is really only a quick box-ticker, while the eventual A-Z entry should have a better historical sketch.

We've seen some of this issuer's products before, quite recently with the canoe mini-season (thanks Brian) and ages ago with the semi-flat, relief tipi/tee-pee & children, as well as one of these totems, way back at the start of the blog, but here's a few more of the figural/toy figure output - an output which seems to have been quite prolific, due to the attachment of a Cheyenne Indian Museum & Gift Shop to the school, although there was clearly also a mail-away or direct-sales thing as well.

I've had the one on the left for years, and I have no idea how many there are now! Two lines, with the thinner more realistic ones being simple Totem poles, the other two seem more figural (legs and feet) and I wonder if they represent another type of 'totem', maybe dance costumes like the pueblo Indian clay heads, or stylised 'Welcome Poles'?

 

I could Google it for hours, but life's too short!

One of mine is missing its top-cap piece, so it was but a second's work to confirm you could stack these to infinity! I have seen one with black or green I think but the same design with the same three slip-in/slip-over, silhouette elements - 'Thunderbird', owl and wolf or bear? Beaver?.

I'm pretty sure I saw a third design of these too, on eBay at some point, so it looks like both lines ran to at least three variants, possibly more, and the construction of these is slightly more complicated than the straight poles, with no interchangeability. They also look like 3D forms of the designs you find on some of the rugs and blankets woven by Native Americans?

 

Additional to the Native American we saw with the canoes is the lady with papoose, this just plugs in to her back with two studs, and with the boy/chief makes three in the pile now. The figures are hollow polystyrene mouldings, the straight poles are polyethylene, while the 'totems' are a denser, possibly nylon polymer.

P is for Polish Roundup - 3 - WWII / Cold War

The third lot of PZG that's come-in recently was this little lot (plus the two figures from 'Four Tanker's & a Dog' we saw a few days ago here in other mixed post) and consists mostly of British production knock-off's, but there are some original Polish sculpts too.

Two ex-Airfix WWII Soviet Infantry, one compared with his donor (grey), all seven Airfix poses were copied, and the clones are a little smaller than the figures they're aping.

Also a pair of US Infantry, again; ex-Airfix doppelgangers, again all seven poses were lifted, and they are painted to match the Soviets, whether this means they were sold as a set of 14 from the same side or two sets of seven I don't know, but the PZG website separates them.

A Polish copy of a Trojan / BR Moulds rendition of an older Crescent hollow-cast figure, painting is quite (six-colour-) colourful on this chap, almost as if the painter liked the figure as much as I do!

Timpo also got the pirated treatment, with the 10 of their larger GI set joining two other (ex-French - Mokarex - production?) figures for a 12-count, these yellow bases can be shared with the previous Airfix clones, as can the paler green paint job on the other crawling chap. From the fact that some of the poses weren't copied by the British plagiarists, suggests PZG took these straight from the hollow-cast originals.

Original sculpts of Soviet-era stuff here, and while the No.2 on the bazooka is missing, they still make a nice vignette of an anti-tank crew or 'brick'. Technically post war/cold war Polish infantry, they can pass for WWII Soviet infantry.

Compatible with the previous set and including the same bazooka, these are painted as Paratroopers, but you can find them with black, blue (UN), green or khaki (above) berets. Both sets are quite large so I have a ways to go, but I've made a start!

P is for Polish Roundup - 2 - Wild West

I also picked up a nice little lot of PZG Wild West figures back around Christmas, and it's them we're looking at here! Fully round, they did get flat tee-pee/tipis, and I have the double one somewhere (on the Blog under the PZG label), but as a flat and before I knew anything about PZG, or collected the larger scales it went in the small-scale, flat, Wild West zone!

Hollowed-out bases, the one in the middle could use a re-paint, but that's not my schtick, and I love the guy on the right, it's a fact that some European makers were far more inventive in their sculpting than the 'Mid-West/Plains' types (with northern Totem Poles!) of most British and American makers, although MPC's witchdoctor is a favourite of mine.

Again the middle one is the poorest, his shotgun has been sawed-off for a blag! the chief also has lost the pointed tip of his lance while the other guy (copy of something East German?) is a tad bigger.

Accessories; the stunted tree is a Britains copy, while I love the fire with a small calf BBQ'ing for the returning war-party. These are basically my first PZG Indians, I have the blow-pipe figure somewhere and the flat, but I think that's it, so to mix metaphors; it's nice to get this duck off the ground and running.

Previously seen elsewhere; a reminder of them as a group shot, with the reverse shots and various base-styles employed by PZG, side-by-side.

P is for Polish Roundup - 1 - Flats, Semi-Flats & Historical Solids

So the plan was always to have three posts here today catching-up on incoming polish figures over the last 14-months, and as a foil to yesterdays space-horror, which only got Easter Sunday because I thought, well, the eggs! And I didn't have anything more festive.

That changed yesterday evening, with the recipt of a couple of eMails and a quick search of Picasa; so we're going to try six posts (I won't make a habit of it, except on ITLAPD!) before the clock register's Tuesday. How we do will depend on a number of factors, not least the weather - I must mow the lawn - second cut!

This post is the oddments, and we're starting with a small mixed lot I bought a few months ago, mostly flats, but not the hard 'styrene flats I got from Grzegorz Maciak, these are more like PZG (recycled Nylon-66), slightly softer, and painted after PZG too.

Indeed, most are credited to PZG on that site we've visited before, these being found under the last button (Inni) which I think is the equivalent of 'other' or miscellaneous? Clearly a Polish winged-hussar and two Cossack types, although (as some of you will know from your studies and others from recent current affairs programmes) at the time both were part of the Empire of Poland-Lithuania or The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but they posed better attacking each other!

Note to Putler - don't attack the land of the Cossack's with a bunch of Siberian conscripts, you'll get your nose burnt, along with most of your tank-crews . . . and your best boat!

A little light reading I've inherited! I've actually had to pack it for now, but I will read it soon, in the meantime, it seemed to be the perfect backdrop to the two figures.

Another unlikely pairing, a contemporary levy (?) to the previous mounted figures faces off against a Highlander? In a sky-blue kilt with his tartan lines at a rakish angle! he looks like he might be another plastic figure taken from old Schneider's home-casting moulds, but I think the Eastern sculpts here are all originals?

The guy on the right is also credited to PZG, but the other two remain question-marks, and he's a swordsman not an artilleryman, but again for the sake of a photogenic vignette; it'll do. They are also from very different eras!

This chap is apparently Urlich von Jungingen from a set of Grunwald 1410 figures, and note he's posed on two different horses, as that was what came in the lot! More a fully round, he's some semi-flatness to him and his horse, and both have the look of what we or the French might call 'from Hollow-Cast', but I don't know if there was a lead progenerator?

This was a shot I took a while back (two years ago) of my small sample of what I thought were all Napoleonic troops, but actually there are troops of several nations and several conflicts many years apart, so it became my even smaller 'samples'! But it makes a colorful group of what PZG (and another maker I think; I've lost the note!) were capable of.

Seen before but this is the 'appeared elsewhere' image! Bought at the pre-Christmas London Show in December, and note the chap in the middle is the same as my existing one, but a deliberately different shade of blue. There is a fifth somewhere I think, so that's a better sample than some of my PZG sets! But they're all growing.

P is for Polish Plastic People-Parcel Plus . . .

. . . a bit of Russian-should-be-Bulgarian stuck on the end of the post!

I received a lovely donation from Grzegorz Maciak the other day, of rare, unusual, new-to-Blog or much needed Polish polymer, which we are to look at right now!

As it arrived; The figure top left is a PZG, from the larger scale sets, probably later production (unpainted) and the officer from the Cold War set, next to him a lovely horse from the PZG set of 'Golden Horde'; those from the era of the Mongol invasions . . . indeed, with both rear feet of the ground, possibly the most dynamic and 'best' horse-pose in the set. Both are believed to be manufactured in Nylon-66.

Next to them is what I think is a home-made modelling-clay/craft clay figure of a medieval warrior with his shield slung on his back, the rest are hard polystyrene flats in two sizes/from two sets and from or based-on the German Schneider's home-casting moulds, some marked ZW.

The figure (which you may remember was in a donation from Chris Smith back at the start of lockdown) is the Hetman from the Golden Horde set, I suspect Hetman gives us, or gave us many centuries ago - the terms 'Headman' in English and Hauptman in German, or that they all share a common-root? His horse was much needed!

I have somewhere a pot of gold ink (from my days as a calligrapher! Pelican Plaka or something?) which is the same dull shade PZG used, so when I find it I'll try giving them both a heavy dry-brushing to get them back to something of their past glory and get them to match; the original set were all-gold, horses and riders.

The larger flats, originally designed as infantry of the Franco-Prussian war, pass just as well for the uniforms of Russian, East European and Balkan forces in the wars with the Ottomans (and each-other!) in the 1870's - link in a minute.

The smaller figures are more WWII/immediate post-war period (if assumed to be Polish Infantry) but are based on the original WWI/Inter-war period German/generics of Schneider's moulds, while the Cavalryman could be Polish, but is wearing a helmet while their 'last ever' cavalry charge was probably conducted with the soft Czapka headdress?

A footnote to the previous paragraph - for years Poland claimed the last ever cavalry charge in 1939, but the Australian Light Horse charged the Japanese later in the war, while Cossacks on both sides in the 'Great Patriotic War' will no doubt also have claims to that record - it's not a debate though as the Poles then charged German positions at Schoenfeld in 1945, cementing their claim!

It's the mounted lancers who carry the only mark on all these, a small 'w' sitting on the tail of a larger 'Z'. It could be something as simple as 'Zakład Warsaw' (Warsaw Plant/Factory), but I have no evidence for that or anything else and there is nothing in Garratt's encyclopaedia?

The new polystyrene figures compared to the two older soft polyethylene figures Paul (from Moonbase) gave me years ago and which were recalled by Yori as being Polish and - what we now know as - 'Kioskowce', the older two are probably also from Schneider moulds.

There is a current Schneider in catering/silicon moulds, but it was only formed in 1977 and has no link to the 1913 Schneider Brothers of flat-mould fame,that I'm aware of. Although - calling all these Schneider is an 'old school' practice, they ceased production before the 2nd World War, and most of the moulds you encounter these days may be/are more likely to be St Louis Lead, Greiner or Agasee to mention the better-known of many inheritors/copyists.

While all the above was going on I managed to pick this up on feebleBay, it's a Russian tourist trinket I think, commemorating the battle of Shipka Pass (which was several battles over some time), where actually the Bulgarians played the greater part in manpower.

It's a large lump of polyethylene with a rubber plug in the breach, as the trunion-bar runs through the barrel and out both sides it's not missing a firing mechanism, so I guess the rubber-plug is original. That bar and three others between the trails are heat-welded closed/shut as are both axle ends so there is a robustness to the chunky thing!

I say Tourist Trinket because while I can't imagine many 'western' tourists asking to visit the sight, it is a curated site, now in Bulgaria, and must be a draw to many in the region or with connections to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). Also its large scale points to an infant's carpet or beach toy, rather than its being part of a larger, or more serious set, or series?

(picture credit - Wikipedia)

Above are the guns upon which the toys seems to have been based.

Another minor connection with this addition and the preceding shots is that it was in the wars surrounding the Russo-Turkish fight, some earlier, some later, which lead to Poland's loss of independence and partition between Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungary. Sad face.

And thanks again to Chris Smith, Grzegorz Maciak and Paul 'Woodsy' Woods for all the interesting figure donations!