T is for TAG

Which may or may not have stood for something longer like 'Toby and Garry' or 'Turner and Griswold' but nobody seems to know? The general acceptance being that it just refers to the tags they came with, but I feel it may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum, especially with the capitalisation of the TAG, on the tags!?

 

RAF Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps, Infantry (with a camouflaged beret!), and the Parachute Regiment, done in what is almost a Belgian (Durso) style, the same sculpt being used with different paint on the berets to represent several of the main protagonists of the British Army in the then, just finished, World War.

 

The reverse of the tags have a small thumbnail sketch or written vignette of the unit/figure represented. Their post-war issue being revealed in the text - 'served', and 'earned', in the past tense.

 

 

 

The officer corps were also represented, and here we see a standard Army officer, and RAF 'wallah' and their corresponding tags, the arms of the flyboy are uncomfortably wrong, in that the left arm should be slightly forwards, in time with the right foot.

Our Allies were also modelled, and here we see two GI's, and it's nice to see them in both 'white' and African American skin-tone paint-jobs, because we appreciated everyone who helped. Although without the tags, the black soldier may have been representing Brazil, who sent troops to the Italian campaign?

 

This seems to be a better rendition of an Infantry beret, but again, might be representing Canada or something like that, I don't know how large the series was, or how many nations were represented?
 

A comparison between the two shows a marked size discrepancy between the different mouldings, and is that a fledgling (at the time) UN flash on the GI's shoulder, maybe he's the Brazilian?

Ceremonial uniforms of both our own and allied armies, with a 'Highlander' (no specific regiment given) and a Cossack. I have one in another colourway somewhere (seen on the blog years ago) and have seen others, there may be as may as four different treatments of the decoration on this sculpt, even six - black, red, and white coats, with reverse versions?

 

A difficult subject, the Cossacks, as they fought in large numbers on both sides, mounted troops being very useful in winter snow, and for covering distance over the steppes in summer. Those fighting with us, were of Russian descent, those fighting agin' us, were fighting for Ukrainian Independence rather than in support of Nazism, while atrocities were committed by both sides.

 

The Women's Royal Army Corps weren't forgotten . . .

 

. . . and both the Monkeys and Snowdrops got a look-in!

Quality of finish varies, my Cossack is so tough or dense, and so smooth I thought he was resin, for years! While the figure on the left is a much rougher moulding, almost as lumpy as the worst examples of wood/linseed composition figures.

 

The first four again, showing the berets a bit better, the Para's is far too dark, as well as the odd Infantryman's two-tone headdress! Also showing the identical obverse of the tags through this sample, I don't know how many series' there were, or even if they ever got round to a Series 2?

 

     

F is for Follow-up to Frog's Fissile Flyer Fellows

When I got those three Frog Bloodhound Missile crew a year or so ago [exactly a year ago - as he checks the link!], I said we'd seen the missing figure on the Blog (I don't think we had - I can't find him) and that it was a coincidence that the one not in the recent purchase was in storage.

Turns-out I had two in storage the missing one and a rather grubby 'look to the skies' dude who must have come from a rummage tray at that last Birmingham show judging by the state of him and the fact that I'd forgotten I had him!

They look like Warmington's finest; Captain Mainwaring and the others, in the village square looking up at the German pilot stuck on the clock tower! From the left Cpt. M himself, Sgt. 'Uncle Frank' Wilson, Frazier and Private 'Can I have the Tommy-gun now, it's my turn!?' Pike.

Anyway, it means that as well as these four I have a spare, if you need the grubby one (it's fine under the dirt!) and are planning on being at the Sandown Park toy fair next weekend, eMail me in the week with an offer of a suitable swap (figure/s, vehicle/s, scenics - whatever) to the [your] perceived value and it's yours without cash changing hands!

L is for Lone Star - Harvey Series 65mm King Size (Swivel-heads)

The other set not found on the Khaki Infantry page from Lone Star are these, which we have seen before and I only have the three so not so much 'box-ticking' as hanging the arse out of it!

I think there are ten poses in total, each in two colours and with a choice of plug-in head. Sold as RAF Regiment with the painted blue berets and a blue-grey polymer, or Para's/combat troops in olive-drab polyethylene with painted red berets or brown US style M1 helmets, all heads being pink. You could give the red berets to the RAF chaps for airborne 'rock-apes' though! Do No.II have red berets? They should have!

The FN/SLR's are very well done, but at this size (65mm) they should be!

B is for Bristol Bloody Missile Crew!

It's not often I get that excited about a figure or bunch of figure's rarity, all this stuff was mass produced, and even these do tent to turn-up from time to time, not just loose; but in unmade or part-made kits, so even they . . . aren't that rare, but still it's nice to find three together, which happen to be the 'missing three'!

I thought we looked at their officer - as an ersatz boat/landing-craft commander - way back at the start of the Blog (but can't find the post/image), these are the other three, issued with a large, box scale (approximately 60mm/1:30?) polystyrene model kit of the RAF's air[field]-defence Bristol (BAC) Bloodhound missile by Frog-Penguin (Triang-Lines subsidiary) and apparently manufactured for them by Poplar Playthings.

I don't know if there is any empirical evidence for the link, but PW have interviewed some of those concerned and they certainly have some of the same 'hallmarks', the flat, baseless feet being an obvious link with the Thomas/Poplar Spacemen, Cowboys & Indians and Romans, the large size and clumsily-casual, or laid-back posing being another link with the latter charioteers, although these guys are chunkier.

Described as being "Accurately detailed from official prints" - referring, presumably, to the missile - the crew figures actually look more like members of Dan Dare's space police than any RAF 'erks I've met.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bristol_Bloodhound_missile.jpg

I remember coming into RAF Wildenrath half a lifetime ago and seeing dozens of Bloodhounds out of the window in batteries of maybe 6, arranged all around the end of the runway and out through the fields to the tree-line, not white, or silver or any of the colour-schemes you see them wearing in both old books and modern museums, but matt green and black, like squat little Dalek combat-stations!

H is for Half-moon!

Crescent to be precise, and as there is a detailed history of the company currently being serialised in Plastic Warrior magazine (you are subscribing...aren't you!) I won't touch on the company much here, except to say that unlike their rivals they never produced Germans, not even to fight their own 8th Army figures, whether this was because Arthur A. Schneider - one of the founders - was a refugee from Nazism or because the Luftwaffe bombed the toolroom is unknown? So we'll just look at the 4 figure sets in 'Modern' garb, that's 1950's/60's so; half a century ago 'modern'!

The beretted 1950's infantry in 60mm, I'm not sure if they actually produced them in SAS berets, of if the guy in pale green plastic with the Stirling SMG is a home paint, having handled many of these when I worked with a dealer, I don't remember seeing them with this colour beret, but then I didn't remember seeing them in that colour plastic either, so it may be a factory attempt to tie-in with the actions in Malaya or on the Indonesian border regions?

The two insets show both base types and both the smooth and the 'sand-blasted' sculpts. The finish that looks like sand-casting, is true for all poses and extends to the Guards, Cowboys and others from Crescent.

The 54mm helmeted troops, the blue ones are really unusual (even 'rare'; a word I try not to use about mass-produced plastics), being the closest they (Crescent) ever got to Germans, as they are 'enemy' from a game or boxed set (possibly an artillery set?).

The standing firing guy has the experimental bull-pup design known as the EM-2 which was trialed at Warminster by the Demonstration Battalion of what would become UKLF (in my time) alongside the FN Fal and Armalite AR-15 (later adopted as the M16), as a result there is a whole family of Toy Soldiers equipped with it, despite it's never being taken into service - ignoring what various combat-wombats have written on the wikipedia page devoted to it; I knew someone who worked with the troops at Warminster in the 50's, and well remember reading the Soldier Magazine article on the 'end game' and decision following the trials; which were won by the 7.62-chambered FN (licensed as the SLR) and got the story from the horses mouth as it were.

As toy soldiers go these are really quite common, so I apologise for the poor quality of my sample, but as you know I'm relatively new to collecting the larger scales and will 'upgrade' over time! Much copied in smaller scales by the industrious of Hong Kong, they will be covered here one day...promise!

60mm with helmets, the radio operator from this set has been pirated as often as the 54mm set (and the 8th Army) but the other five haven't been. Again the insets below show both base types, colour variations and the moulding variance of the kneeling firing figure, who appears to have an M1 carbine/Ruger Mini 14! The other two rifle-equipped troops have FN/SLR's while the 'Tommy-gunner' seems to have a grease-gun?

The 60mm range with beret could also come with a US style MI helmet, which looks OK on the flamethrower, but doesn't go very well with the '58 Pattern webbing of the other figures! The plug-in heads bring to mind a small range of similar figures from Cofalux, who could be Para's, FFL or regular infantry with a head swap, one wonders which set came first? I only have these three, I think there are 8 poses? One is on evilBay at the moment but it's not matched - colour-wise - head to body.

The Blue figures are meant to be RAF Regiment (who secure and guard airfields) and were going to be more prominent as the Hawker Harrier came into service...they could - of course - be used as enemy, and lose - badly...bloody 'Crab Air'; not real soldiers! Having worn this garb daily in the late 1980's I can assure you the kidney pouches of the kneeling guy are too far apart, but the webbing is otherwise very accurate, for 'skeleton order' - lacking all the extra pouches we tended to add, water bottles etc...