Q is for Quiralux

I have to go out before work today, so here's a quick 'L is for Lazy Post'! Seen elsewhere, it's a scan of a not oft-seen Quiralux flyer, it got me thinking I've probably mixed-up Quiralux and Cofalu in the past and probably need to check both Tags, to make sure they are pertaining to the right maker!

If you click on it, then left-click again it should blow-up to a useable image, and if printed on A3 or larger, will be a useful addition to a paper archive. 60mm modern infantry and Wild West, 54mm mediaevals and farm, I think, mixed plastics.

Q is for Quiralux's Quirky Quarrelers

Just a quicky, this shot's been in Picasa since 2013, and I thought it could finally fly free on the Internet!

I thought these were probably late, or even re-issue medievals (from another party) from Quiralux, being a bit flashy and unpainted apart from the beginnings of some home-paint on a couple of them, but I was wrong . . .

. . . they are from a paint-your-own set from Quiralux themselves! Seen here on the right with one of those naff brushes and some pots of - almost certainly - water-based paint. A window-box set of painted ones to the left, although they are all the same as the Acédo ones we saw here I think? Who made them first, I don't know, but French-made foot knights and men-at-arms anyway!

F is for French Figures I - Styrene & Cellulose Acetate

Add over another year to the dates below! I'd almost got these ready for publishing when Blogger decided to empty one of the folders and replace it with the contents of the one I was editing a few minutes earlier...I lost hart and sat looking at them for over another year! Anyway; here they all are....finally!

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I took the first of the images for these about five years ago, three years ago I had a bigger photo-session and announced they would be forthcoming, two years ago I got round to 'collaging them up' in Picasa - by which time a few more had come in - and announced that they were on the waiting list, uploaded them at the library in Newbury about 14 months ago and apart from adding another collage of latecomers, they've sat in Edit ever since!

I don't now what the problem was...like writer's block or something! Anyway, this and the three posts going-in below (on the blog 'Homepage') are the long-seeped results. It's no more than an overview of what little I know about French soldiers and French manufactured figures of 'combat' or 'khaki Infantry' from the WWII-Modern period.

This post looks at the earlier figures, the second looks at later soft plastic production, the third has some Czech rubber and polypropylene re-issues and the forth is a few Starlux. There are throughout the four as many question-marks than as facts, and input will be appreciated.

Three from Clariet and one from Jim, the more interesting is the separate helmet on the shirt-sleeved pointing chap, mirrored in the production of Minimodels over here. I particularly like the sailor, he goes well with the output of Starlux, but is doing something useful (slotting the enemy) not standing around with a swab or ceremonial axe!

These nearly all need ID'ing, I recognise some old Aluminium poses (and a couple of these are also in soft plastic as Vilco on the next post down), the silver one here is in a styrene polymer. I'd say the dark-blue sailor is from a die-cast or plastic toy vehicle or vessel of some kind.

The forth one along from the left seems to be Cyrnos, but the chap to his left isn't, so they are probably re-paints and the Tirailleur (mid-blue, far left) is definitely a Cyrnos figure

I think the riders are all Starlux (though I'm not 100% sure) but I'm not so happy that the horses are, there's only the two horses and ones missing its tail, so a poor sample, but the riders are lovely.

The pale blue chap is Beffoid, while the officer in the middle of the lower bunch is marked Quiralux, so going on both base-paint and plastic colours, I assume most of the rest are? The last two on the lower row are probably home re-paints; there were a lot in the collection they came from?

These are half-and-half a mystery to me; top middle and right looks like an ex-aluminium figure, so Quiralux or Cofalux?

The centre shot are all Cyrnos sailors, 3 repainted as Nazis by the same guy who ruined the soft plastic chaps in the other post. Stripping paint from hard plastics (especially if they are earlier cellulose-based compounds) is so problematical it's best to leave them.

I think these are all Cyrnos as well (not sure about the baseless MG gunner? He's painted to match the 'possibly' Quiralux above) and a bit chunkier. These are mostly damaged, but still evocative figures with that 1950's charm that can't be faked. I have Sam of Sam's Minis World to thank for some of these too.

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?

A is for Accompaniment

I was holding this intending to add another figure I got at one of the shows, but then I encountered the original show report post here somewhere looking for something else or answering a question and realised he was Salvation Army, so these can stand alone as a bit of a box-ticking exercise!

These are the Circus Bandsmen from Wendal with a shot of two different base stickers. I don't know if these were also issued by the French 'partner' firm of Quiralu, or - if they were - how they may have differed? Despite being made in aluminium they are really quite finely sculpted figures.

M is for Montaplex - Part III - Other Vehicles

M0st of my Montaplex sets will appear on the Airfix blog as comparisons when I get that page properly loaded-up, so here are just a few vehicles from sets not in the two previous parts of this overview.

The sprue with two little vehicles came in a few sets, being what appear to be an Airfield traffic-control vehicle and a fire engine/appliance.

The other four came with a road-works set that included Airfix civilian copies. There is no attempt at scale with the tractor in a bigger size than the lorries and the car somewhere between the two.

Top - some sets gave you two helicopters instead of one!

Middle - some of the other vehicles you can find in Sobres, the road-roller and fire-wagon seem to be copies of Matchbox, but Lido did produce a similar model, whether theirs was first or another copy I don't know, what I do know is that they weren't crewed by astronauts! The gun is a Manurba copy and the jeep come in a lot of sets although I've only found two plug-ins so far, searchlight and radar.

Bottom - The Montaplex copy of the Blue Box copy of the Dulcop copy of the Dinky Daimler Armoured-Car!...I think!!

A nice lorry with a US marine from Airfix for scale, the set actually contains copies of the Quiralux French soldiers/GI's identified Here, I not sure if BuMSlot re-issued them, I think they did, but not with the truck!

A is for Aluminium (or Aluminum!) Animals

Having told Sam in the comments section to the Starlux Italian circus set post that I couldn't see myself publishing more circus for a while, I remembered that I took these at the Sandown Park fair the the other week...so a Small request-post for Sam and a bit more circus in an unlikely material...

From Wend-Al (or Wendal), Britain's only volume producer of toy soldiers in aluminium, they are all from the circus range and consist...(I was about to list what is clear from the photographs!)...of what you can see! Like most of the bits I shoot at shows these were on Mercator Trading's table and may still be available from him, link; top-right somewhere.

Because my knowledge of Wendal is no better than my knowledge of Quiralux (which is non-existent) I couldn't tell you if these were also made by the French firm and with collectors varying in opinion as to whether Wendal copied Quiralux or Quiralux copied Wendal or some mould-sharing went on, I'll leave it as a maybe Quiralux carried these in their own civil range!