O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Ancient & Medieval

So, the 'Ancient and Medieval' vein was both rich and numerous, although I've got them down to ten images and a close up. Probably my favourite section, after space, and maybe ceremonial, although you find a lot of interesting Wild West stuff, and new civilians are always turning-up to amaze, farm, zoo, jungle . . . Pirates, pirates are my favourite, or they bloody-well should be? Anyway, we've got the opening paragraph; Let's play show repooooort!

 

Small-scale; Another bag of our Auther and his mounted Roman Gladiator Knights! To be compared with the other bags, as I think there was a hint at one point, the content's supplier changed, or the horses got diluted with a second type or something, none of it's actually Giant, but the story still needs to be accurate!

 

A few of the other Hong Kong knock-offs, Quaker and Elastolin Romans, and a Britians Trojan War figure, along with a broken Airfix and the ex-Montaplex runner of BuM Slot's Vikings. The mast and furled sails on their cross-spar have to be made from the central tree-runner!

 

Someone came and asked me about it, and I told him what I knew, then I either bought it off him later, when I found I still had cash in my pocket, or he just gave it to me, toward the end of the show? But he's not in the credit list? One of the Liverpool or Birmingham 'gangs'?

 

Hot on the heels of the three we saw the other day, both blog wise and literally, as the show was a couple of weeks after I acquired the others, came a fourth Marx 6" Egyptian pose, on the right here, and a broken duplicate, on the left. The good one needs a bit of a clean to match the others, while I intend to give the broken one a Kopesh curved sickle-axe-sword, and I'll use quite thick Plasticard, to match the chunkiness of the originals.

 

Between them, a Gashapon Samurai (not well shot!) and one of the Lik Be/LB cavemen. 

 

Hong Kong Timpo piracy on the left, also carried by Ideal in a fort set I think? Cherilea in the middle, and another Hong Kong (Britains 'War of the Roses' swoppet-copy) on the right. All good stuff!

 

These are very interesting, copies of the Lone Star/Hubley/Kresge 'Metalions' (it's increasingly unclear just what the history of those die-casts is/was), I think someone did give me some info' on them at the show, but so much goes-on, on the day, I'll be damned before I can remember what they said! In the style of some French reissue/Bazaar stuff and may be by Norev?

 

Did I say fourteen Richard I's the other day? Make that fifteen! And Bonux here, have simplified the folds of the cloak to such an extent it's getting back, closer to the Lone Star original, and further from the Jem/Norev it was copied from, for these washing-powder premiums!

 

Dom Landsknecht, Lone Star medieval and three Cherilea's, two of the early 'swoppets' and a solid in a nice greeny-yellow plastic. There is a forthcoming post on the swoppets, as you may remember I got four at the previous year's show, and have since obtained more besides.

 

More modern stuff, the old Marx/Tudor Rose knights, and the Romano-Greek motorcycle-raider 'knights' currently still findable on Amazon and similar platforms, all grist to the mill; colour variations etc . . . 

 

A bunch of Starlux, I think I picked a few of each a few years ago, from the same seller, but they went on clearance near the end of the show, so I just bought them all, doing him a favour, really, you understand, I didn't need them, they don't even look good en masse!

 

Bloody-lovely, that's what they is! And the unpainted one is a Starlux moulding, but perhaps issued as a premium, by a third party? We saw the white, polyethylene ones from Spain years ago.

 

Me box-ticking, or bag-ticking (playing catch-up) on Replicants!

 

Biblical figures are a difficult one, they can go with the civilians, or get their own section (which they often do at Christmas!), but as they are ancient, they might as well go here, two Marx nativity animals, home-painted (?), a French Santon, looking a bit like Mary, mother of the bloke standing next to her! He is also Marx, and was called Jey'sus'ah!

 

Again, many thanks to - Issack, Graham Apperley, John Begg, Barney Brown, Brian Carrick, Peter Evans, Adrian Little, Michael Mordant-Smith, Trevor Rudkin, Steve Vickers, and with no emails since the intro-post, anyone else who gave me stuff, including the BuM Vikings (?), and which I have forgotten to add.

News, Views Etc . . . PW Feedback

So, 4am here, and I've run out of puff, sorting the plunder pile! Yeah, I had a snooze earlier! There were three new Plastic Warrior Special Publications launched at the show this year, and the embargo has been lifted on them being announced, so they are:

A brief look at VP, not much added since the last issue, but all now in full colour for the first time, which with the sister volume . . .

. . . on UNA, means all five (Kentoys, Speedwell, Trojan) of the problematic Britains/Timpo-copy Khaki Infantry issuers have now been updated and colourised, I think? 

While this overview of Poplar Plastics, and it's relationship with Thomas, is also an update of a past title, with much more added, and again, in colour for the first time. They areare available separately for varying prices, or all three are in a bundle for £15:00, but I don't know how long that offer will last, before they revert to individual list items, or one of them runs out, so get your order in now!

 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts

 

Blog. - http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com/

 
eMail - pw.editor3@gmail.com (pw.editor@ntlworld.com)

Tel. - 01483 830 743

 

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Peter Cole and his label Replicants had a 40th Anniversary (of Plastic Warrior magazine) figure, and four pairs of English civil War cavalry on his tables.

 

In a departure for Replicants, there is a new horse with separate base a' la Britains/Timpo, and the 40th Anniversary figure is of a spy, saboteur or 5th columnist, with headphones, using a morse-sender/receiver, in a suitcase. Whether this is a metaphor for PW's revelations on the secrets of plastic toy soldier production over the years, I didn't ask, but it seems apt! He may, of course, just be getting the football results?

 

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Graham Apperley reminded me he has a Blog now, which I had read on Brian Carrick's pages, but forgot to action, so this is the URL:

 

https://talesfromthetoyroom.blogspot.com/

 

Away from the show, Tom also has a new blog:

 

https://tomertonvillage.blogspot.com/

 

and sent me a link to an interesting 3D print source for civil/railway figures:

 

https://www.smartmodels.org/

 

And I'm hoping to get commenter John's Blog-link shortly. 

 

10-06-25 Done - https://toysoldiersblog.wordpress.com/

 

It's nice to see a resurgence in Blogging, especially in our field.

 

It was a fantastic show as always, and credit is due to Paul, Peter and Brian for putting it on, I don't know when I'll get the plunder posts out as there's a ton of stuff in the queue before it, even if I get stuck back-in, which I'm not sure I'm ready to, but it'll all be here in the end!

L is for Late Show Report - Ancient & Medieval

Or, at least, that's the usual denominator when sorting show plunder, there's no real Ancients in this lot, so we're looking at the dark ages, the 100-Years War and the field of the cloth of gold!

 

Replicants 'new for the show' was this little doozy, and a very useful item, being suitable without driver for a period from around 4000BC until now, in some parts of the world! With the driver we're nicely covered from, what, 1400 to the Wild West?

You get a wagon with removable sides, a slightly put-upon horse and a chap who can look like he's struggling with the horse/load, or up to no good, depending upon how you pose him, he could even be dodging cavalry! Peter Coles' sculpting is another level.
 

I think this is the third or fourth of these 35'ish mm knights, with one or two from Chris Smith, I think and another from somewhere else, and I'm beginning to suspect Poland, without anything concrete, in their archives, but that's purely going on the thick base? And they are softer polyethylene than the output of PZG or it's rivals, with their nylons!

 

Another look at the new ex-Cody March figures from Michael Mordant-Smith, and these are the ones that are 'ready to go', or were, back in May, he's probably cleaned-up a few more now, but compare with the shots in the Introduction post (1st of this month), and you can see how many still need/ed a bit of work. Because these are producible, Michael produced a few, and they were gifted to friends at the show.

 

A bunch of HK/China types, these were in one of the donation bags and will have to be compared with all the others, they look to be a new shade of grey, so I'll probably hang to a few!

 

A poor shot, but I can't retake it, right now! I've bought a few mixed lots of these Cherilea knights, more pop-together than full-on 'swoppet', in various states, and am slowly building a decent sample, but it is shield-light, so these two will prove useful in making-up a complete figure. There's also a spare belt, and I may use one of these bodies, as a first example?

 

Finally, Peter also had these available at the show, last year's peasant musician and this year's Wagoner, but in Robin Hood green, so Alan a'Dale and a whip-handed merry man?!!

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.

L is for Late Show Report - Wild West

So, into the meat-and-two-veg of the show plunder from May just gone, and we're starting with the Wild West stuff, which is a pretty eclectic bunch with a bit of everything, including ACW, various polymers and most common sizes.

Replicants had these, which are old sculpts, some of them being reduced in size for Marksmen's 1:76 issue, many years ago now, well over a decade since, probably two, but they were new in this colour, as Irish Brigade, I think, for those who wargame without painting?

Wagons and wagoners, a damaged Matchbox 'prairie schooner', a Hong Kong copy of Manurba mail-coach, which was a better pink than it's apparently faded to, and a large, probably Tudor Rose or Poplar chap, with his plug-in bench-seat, who may prove a useful spare, going forwards.

 

More of the individually named French premiums which have been turning up in recent years, except the fact they've been turning up in mixed lots suggests being that - in this soft 'ethylene - they are probably bazaar/rack-toys from the - 'styrene - premium moulds, rather than actual premiums, of which I have one or two in metallic polystyrene. Seemingly adding mounted figures (sans names) this time, there may be more in the 'unknown' portion of the main stash, but a horse, or horses still need/s to be ID'd?

 

Mostly broken, these Minimodels (or, as here Triang) smallies from the unmistakable hand of Stadden, will go with all the rest, one of the yellow-shirts is complete, and finding good Indians involves finding mint sets/games.

 

These being from the Wild West Checkers (clearly aimed at export across The Pond?), where the damage is easily explained by the fact that they get so wedged in the counters, you would damage them trying to get them out to 'make King'? More common in black & white, these counters are unusual in red/blue I think, are they from the Wagon Train boardgame?

 

I feel an idiot with these, as I think I should know who they're by (Marlborough/Dorset test shots?), but I'm not sure, nor do I know if the other two poses were similarly copied, or who copied them first time round, equally I may already have them, but someone had a bunch so I got one of each?!! Obviously ex-Britains Herald sculps, and the cavity in the base is a bit Hilco/late Cherilea?

A couple of spare horses, common Hong Kong sculpt on the right, what appears to be a re-issue of something better (Lone Star?) on the left, a bit of a mystery, but all useful, given the number of mounted figures looking for mounts, and as the spare horse tub is quite large, and the riders many, I might do a series of matching-up articles in a year or so, when they finally all come together?

 

A nice bunch of small-scale, with pre- and post-Giant knock-offs, cracker-toy Lone Star clones, one of those Hong Kong wagon 'mexicans' (they have gihuge plug-on hats), taken from European premiums/giveaways and a teeny cracker-Indian.

 

Larger odd & sods; I'm surmising that the large confederate has been removed from a base with a sharp-edged tool, and is probably Italian in origin? He's new to the collection, so, whatever! The rest is grist to the mill, with the white chap at the back an interesting addition to the early British knock-off collection, Speedwell or Trojan?

 

Smaller odds & sods; again nothing terribly exciting, with two cake decorations and a couple of mounted, I think the yellow cowbindian (chaps, lasso and feathered headdress!) might be a mounted Texas/Isas figure? Civil/Sports next time!

 

Many thanks 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.

R is for Really, Really Rare . . . Not!

Having inadvertently used TJF and Master Sprecher ('they started it') to push the blog over the five-million hits, back in August, or whenever, I thought it would be fun to use this series of five corrective posts to get us over the third-best-year finish-line!

There's this guy, we'll call him the Man with Three Names, for it is he, who keeps posting the same stuff on a Faceplant group, over and over again, I mean seven times since lockdown, for most of it!

One of the things he keeps posting, and he's just posted it again, is his 'rare' colours of Marksman ACW, courtesy of the late John 'Marx Man' Stengel. Making statements such as;

"Some of these colors were test shots and were never publicly released"

"When he was deciding which colors to run the molds in..."

". . . in about 7 different colors, including 3 or 4 test shot colors, that were never produced."

"Some of these are "test shot" colors, that John was considering producing."

"They were a reject for mass marketing."

But it's all bollocks! I don't know whether he's trying to impress all the other members of the group, or just all the North American members of the group, but it's all bollocks!

 

Let me explain . . . I now have 12 colours, these have all come in, in mixed lots, off of that intermahweb-thingy, where other colours remain to be found, by me, other people have already found them! Marksmen, back in the day were a small two-man outfit, Peter Coles (now of Replicants) who designed and mastered the figures, and got the moulds produced and Mike Ellis, the office-end, who dealt with Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) in Hong Kong (Marx reissues), Mr Stengel and other clients around the world, and ran the stand at toy soldier shows.

Each run of the tools, was what the 'garage firm' could afford, and while some colours were more official than others, they were all available at the shows, I remember them piled-up on Mike's table for years afterward, and they regularly appear on feeBay, from whence I got mine in two lots a year or two ago.

While the idea Peter would let his moulds go to the US, and trust them to come back, is rather risible! 

Now, one shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but there is a possibility the late Mr. Stengel Senior (whom our reprobate keeps spelling with an 'a', suggesting he didn't know him as well as he claims to have) might have embellished his own position in, or contribution to, the Marksmen story.

 

But this endless re-poster, of the tale at hand, also has a history of not paying for his advertising, trying to get people kicked-off Facebook Groups with such convoluted lies, he eventually manages to destroy his case, trying to prove the truth, by inadvertently showing the lie (a story for another day, maybe), and, was only today, admitting to pirating Helmet, which may or may not have had a role in one of their demises, so I tend to think he's probably bullshitting for effect? And he keeps referring to a 'Peter Ellis' in his posts on the subject, suggesting he knows the subject no better than he knew Mr. Stengel, with an 'e'!

It's the same in the small-scale, where there were 'officially' four colours, but actually six or seven are kicking around, due to each batch often being a different shade, even if it wasn't an officially 'new' colour.

And - as far as I know - Action Casting, the firm currently owned by John Stengel Junior, don't have and never has had, the Marksmen ACW moulds?

 

And that's it, finishing with five posts in a row, correcting some of the crap out there - it's the third-best year, ever, for posts, here at Small Scale World. Which, given some of the shit which has come my way in recent months, is a major achievement! Anything which posts between now and Monday night is a bonus, we won't get close to the other two year's totals!

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.

PW is for Polymer Warriors!

Just a quickie, picked these up the other day as part of the 'machine-gun' lots, I missed them first time round although I was in the room I think, but I was there as a small-scale collector only and probably turned-down the free one at the door . . . shock horror!

The guys at PW have over the years managed to commission a re-run of Dulcop's tools, import Hing Fat, save the Rocco moulds, liaised with the saving of other moulds, offered other figures from time to time, published, or supported the publishing of a number of other books and guides, and - I think it's fair to say - supported the fledgling Replicants? A list which all other toy soldier magazine teams can only envy!

To commemorate the occasion of their 10th year of publishing and the putting-on of their legendary shows, they gave away one of these to each entrant to the 1995-show, back in the Queen Charlotte Hall days, just off Richmond town center, I think the door figures were red plastic, but lots of other colours/shades where run-off.

Those other colours were also available at the show, in these bags of five, but for a few silver-pieces, and as you can see mine are two dark, two mid- and one lighter green in that shade/range I call 'herb' green, which is 'errb to our French and 'urb to our US readers!

The figure is a late C19th 'colonial' era soldier, standing at attention, wearing a solar topee/pith helmet (safari helmet, salacot, sun helmet), or sola/shola topi - Indian, because it's made of shola pith!

Designed and sculpted by Peter Cole (of Replicants) for the magazine's tenth birthday, and it was intended (I think?) to go with those early Zang/Herald for Britains figures similarly posed - Sikh Indian, Highlander, 'Khaki Infantryman' and Guardsman (a few of which were also in the lot with these).

I now have a few, to make up from my previous heretical approach to the larger size, with red, bright green and purple-marbled ones being seen here in the past I think, so hopefully I'm forgiven, but I'll stand-by for corrections on the above details as it was a while ago and I wasn't paying attention at the time!

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