RF is for Rene Fisher

I'm on a long-run at work, which tends to build fatigue, so last night, instead of posting something here, I watched old clips of '8-out-of-10-cats...' on Faceplant, then went to bed! And this is only really a quickie, and seen elsewhere a while ago, but interesting nevertheless!

Pretty sure this is Rene Fisher or RF, from France, and some kind of touristy/keepsake thing, which would have had a waterslide transfer with a town or navel port (Marseilles?)'s name on it, it's all 'styrene except the little aluminium tags which keep the figures on the thing, and, from the number of holes, it's fair to assume there were other contents/layouts, and probably, originally, different towns depicted/named?

 

It's missing a couple of bars to the gate, but I have an old pack of Slater's window-bars somewhere, which I'm hoping with provide a nice, neat mend at some point? And - of course - it's another sentry box!

I believe the chap in the front left corner is also RF, but, like the two late'ish Starlux next to him, is apparently an French Alpine soldier, not a sailor! They are joined by three lead hollow-casts and the Argentinian ALB rubber chap, we've since seen cleaned-up here at Small Scale World, for an all-blue line-up!

 

Those alpine troops again!

B is for Best Show on Earth! 3. Ancient and Medieval

So; continuing with the plunder posts from the Plastic Warrior show in Twicker's a few weeks ago, and we're looking at the older eras depicted by toy soldiers, because it's all about the Toy Soldiers, or at least it used to be, these days it's as much about the spacemen or civilians, but you know what I mean!

 

Andy came over and asked me if these two Elastolin were worth a fiver, and while I'm no expert on the subject I said I thought they were given that they were two variants of the same figure, in good condition with the latter, rarer (or less common) moulding, only for him to frog-march me over to the seller? Before I knew what had happened, I was the proud owner of both? I'd thought I was just giving advice!

And they do make a nice pair, there are books published in Germany which go into intense detail on the left-hand figure, with endless colour variations, paint styles, base type hierarchy and so on, while the right-hand figure is unusual for being a harder plastic than the polyethylene of some other samples I have.

 

There are also French and Spanish copies of some of these, usually without the edge/rim to the base, and often silver or gold plastic, sometimes primary colours, usually unpainted.

 

A handful of 40mm Starlux medievals, who happen to split equally into blue/green and red/yellow armies for the purposes of photography, not planned as I picked them out of a larger sample. I have a few others somewhere, I think some have been on the Blog passim, so hopefully when we see them again, they'll be an even better shot!

Food premiums came in the guise of a Kinder Gaulish warrior and two Shredded Wheat 'Kings & Queens' series, I have lots of the latter, but don't know if I have all of them, and seem to grab them whenever I see them going cheap, and they are all over the place, so hopefully when I get them all togther there will be a full set - relief flats with the data on the flat back.

A nice handful of the early Cherilea knights, only bits and pieces, but there's a complete figure in the centre and enough bits for a second, sans helmet. I have managed to get several lots like this over the last few years (I know I have a whole archer somewhere), so when I look at them in full in the future we should get a better idea of them.
 

A small discussion was held about these, from which I gathered they exist, they turn up occasionally, they're interesting, but not interesting enough to buy, so I bought them! I wonder if they might belong with the previous swoppet types, from Cherilea, but currently 'unknown', the arms in non-matching plastic are heat-welded on.

Small scale from three sources and came in three donations I think with a bunch of Italeri/Zvezda Normans, a sub-piracy of Supreme's small-scale horse, a Giant knight and another Norman with a touch of paint.

 

This year's new set/s from Replicants were a selection of ancient/medieval levy/revolting peasants/belligerent civi's . . . they're not going to take it any more! Either side of which are two of the helmets from Airfix's 1:12th scale (six inch) character kits, being Richard III's on the left and the Black Princes on the right. As you can see they'll make nice enhancers for shelf displays or similar?

 

I've left them in the bag for now, but they are sculpted in Peter's usual, very animated, style and a nice mix of male and female types, with a lute player chivvying them all along with a Hay-nony-no, although the lady with a cleaver seems to have heard it before - once too often; you can have too much of a bard-thing!

 

Now . . . I have to get all these right, 'cos Brian Carrick put me right and then I must go and change the old post, which I could have/should have done three weeks ago, but life's too short and it's my 'eemies' who get excited about my odd errors, not me! These two ARE Guilbert from France, as is the horse, who is missing his tail.

 

This is a Colorado horse, which came with the Musketeer lot, also French, but maybe for Wild West? I have somewhere a bunch of painted French Wild West by several companies, in a little box which I think came from Sam of Sam's Minis, and I think they have been repainted, but I must sort them out one day, and hopefully there may be a rider for this beast?

 

These two are Ludorev reissues from the Rene Fisher lot below and like the lot we saw a while ago, one needs a new wire sword, which I will do in the fullness of time. I don't know about the half-barrel/bucket, which could be from anywhere, it looks like the kind of thing toy circuses make elephants or tigers stand on!

 

The Rene Fisher originals, which I think I called Guilbert (on advise) when we looked at them last time, I think we saw them all then except the Milady character figure, but in the meantime I had picked-up a third lot, which hasn't been Blogged yet, so we'll revisit Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan!

 

Bad rust on the two either end's swords, while an unstable red paint will need stripping which could lead to a repaint, but they are duplicate figures, so it'll be fun to give them a less toy-like countenance!

Thanks to all for everything last month; Peter Evans, Brian Carrick, Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan and Michael Mordant-Smith.

C is for Christmas Present . . . to Myself!

Did I already have a Christmas present to myself? Well, obviously it was a good Christmas! I'm only posting these as I haven't time to post what I was going to, and the final Sandown post has been declared 'Rump Post', broken up and sent back to the mixed files by subject!

These are the Gilbert C15th Musketeers, although which is which I don't know and as they all have mustaches I can't even guess at a younger-than-the-other-three one, who might be considered to be d'Artagnan!

Other colours and clear evidence (Top left) of multiple cavities, most are missing their swords which are just stiff wire heat-stuck into the gloved hands. I will replace mine in the fullness of time ad try to get a post out of it, I even found two lengths of case-hardened, gun-blacked piano or harp wire with a light dusting of rust on, the other day; just the thing to do the job with!

Bearing in mind that the Crescent's were 'small' 54mm when we measured them a while ago, it's still fair to say the Musketeers are a 'large' 54mm, heading toward 60mm in this chaps case, with that flouncy hat-brim! Can you believe the real musketeers were 400-odd years ago? It flies-by so quick . . . anyway, that's them, box ticked!

 

Now identified by Brain Carrick as Rene Fisher (RF), not Guilbert, But I have picked-up a couple of Guilbert by accident, along with two more lots of these and a pair of Ludorev, so there'll be a 'corrections and clarifications' post in due course! 

F is for Follow-up to French Fellows

Thanks go to Mathias Berthox for several of the images tonight and the identification info, both herein and in the comments section of the previous post. Also thanks due to Steve Vickers who kindly allowed me to photograph a set he had at the Plastic Warrior show in May, which turned-out to be just what we needed to complete the story.

This is to confirm or deny several points raised by This Post concerning the various versions of these French made knights. Mathias will correct me if anything is incorrect!

So, in the upper picture sent by Mathias we have Rene Fisher (RF) figures, these are a hard plastic, probably (like Starlux and others) originally in a phenolic plastic or cellulose acetate, then - later - a polystyrene. Well painted, most figures having at least 5 or 6 colours, with the silver being one, also with quite chunky bases, which are always painted green.

The lower shot - also from Mathias - shows the Jem versions, these are soft ethylene plastic, but still have a decent paint-job with cream bases. Jem also supplied their figures to Norev (then a maker of plastic vehicles in 1:43rd scale) who placed them in diorama boxes called 'History and Traditions', where we learn that Robin Hood had to deal with cactus as well as the Sheriff's men, and that he lived in a Tipi/Tepee!

Later Norev (who were making metal 30/35mm civilians a few years ago) issued figures which have a simplified paint scheme of 3 or 4 colours only; white gloves and details, gold joints to the armour and weapons, flesh (if needed) and one other 'highlight' colour. The upper photograph from Mathias again, the lower example from my own collection.

These seem to have been made in Hong Kong/China, and were either from the same moulds or  reasonable quality copies, plastic forts were also made for the figures to garrison and fight over! The plastic is a denser material probably a Polypropylene.

Two companies then pirated them, Hugonnet and Vilco. It is these lesser quality figures we looked at last time, and with a shot of all mine, now including a couple of the extra poses Sam (of Sams Minis World) sent me, along with a comparison of the copy standard-bearer next to the Norev original. The two lower pictures showing the twin mould release-pin marks that enabled me to separate them out of a load of 'silver knights'!

To the left is the set Steve Vickers let me shoot at Richmond, of note is the fact that this sprue seems to be mostly Lone Star piracies (like the 'King Richard' that seems to have started this little odyssey when I covered Robin Hood two years ago!), but also includes the RF/Jem archers seen above, so we seem to be looking at about 20 (cirtainly 17+) poses from Hugonnet/Vilco, from both the RF and Lone Star stables.

The guy on the right, seemingly a decent attempt at William the First of England, Duke of Normandy, seems too good to be from the above ranges, so I suspect a modern/current brand, but I don;t know who, so any help with this chap would be appreciated. He is in unpainted silver polyethylene and is the last chap from the 'silver knights' load, still to be identified, apart from....

...the chunky chap at the bottom of this picture, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I separated these guys out in the last post, it was suggested they were part of the above late sets we now know were Hugonnet/Vilco, and someone correctly pointed-out that they were Dom poses. Well, like an idiot (and working in poor light) I hadn't seen that they are in fact marked on the upper-surface of the bases 'MADE IN WEST GERMANY' and are actually Dom Plastik, and probably nothing to do with the French sets/makes at all!

These have apparently had three main phases, silver originals like the above, some (earlier?) basic paint versions and later recasts in a greyish plastic.

However, also in the 'silver knights' lot was this other chap, early-looking painted ethylene, but bigger that the Dom, although clearly the model for one of the Dom poses. He has the look of some East German plastics to me, he is a quite soft, silver plastic, a bit like Charbens knights, heading toward 60mm, very chunky base and has no discernible mark. Any ideas?