E is for Eggcellent Effigies!

I had this figure, can't now remember if it was from Chris, Peter or one of my own purchases (I suspect Chris, but thank all) but I posted it in the other place, asking for help, and Peter rememeberd it was part of a set of Hong Kong cake decorations from way back when . . . 

. . . so what I thought was a squib and powder-pot on some unknown Nappy, was actually a limp brush and glue-pot on one of the 'King's Men'! He's a perfect 54mm though and, like most HK cake decorations; a hard polystyrene plastic.

 

So, I was off to evilBay to see if I could find the rest of the set, the figure on the left was the first candidate, and a cheaper one was procured, and a second soon followed from SSCO, seen in the right-hand image with some figures that were hanging around . . . and they were from Chris, so the soldier must be too? Another Spanish National Guardsman and an Oklahoma standard-bearer from Argentina.

 

It seems Peter Evans was by now on the case and the two, top-right, arrived a day or two before my next purchase on the subject (another from SSCO), they have a wire-twist, heat-sunk into their backs for use as - rather diminutive - Christmas tree hanging ornaments, the wires having been carefully removed from the backs of Peter's.

 

Which, as I kept photographing them as they came in, got us to this point, and I don't think I've found any of the ones that might go with the guy on pasting-duty, but certainly the two Humpty's can sit easily with him and these are all 'styrene.

 

In the meantime, I couldn't resist the bisque chap on the left here, seen with Marx 'Fairykin', who was no-money, BIN, I collected the next as an Internet image, being a larger ceramic ornament, while the candle-holder one on the right seemingly matches these? Even to the point of putting them together at the other end, as they probably belong together?

 

By now, I was getting a little out of control on the subject of Humpties and ended-up bidding on this hugormous PVC-rubber Palitoy squeaky-toy, who's squeak has died without ever leaving the bag! :-(

Both sides, scale comparison coming below, it's as good as the day it left the factory, apart from the dead squeak, and while nowadays these are all sold as dog-toys, they used to be popular with kids too, in a simpler age!

 

Oh, it's not Poly Vinyl-Cloride, it's 'Cascathene'! And four-shillings and ten pence was a lot of money back when we last used a stupid currency based on twelfths and sixteenths! In today's money; about four quid?

 

The line-up around the time I was Blogging the Fairykins, I keep searching, about once a week, but so far haven't really found anything to match the chap with the floppy glue-brush, so a future post for sure! And I have the larger Marx one somewhere!

 

For now, I leave you with the fact that he has never been described as an egg, just shown as one, all people ever publish is the rhyme, which makes no mention of his material make-up?

F is for Follow-up - AWI and Cake Dec's

When I originally posted these, in a rather irreverent article, I mused on the origins of the red versus blue versions of the Airfix Washington's Army figures, a while later I actually saw some blue ones, on a US sale page, so that part of the mystery was solved and my improbable tale of how the UK came to have a bunch of redcoats seems more plausible now!

But, anyhoos, the other two sets in the recent charity shop purchase were this pair . . .

 

. . . both in SSCO packing (I've seen them in others now), and showing one way the Americans got them, six infantry in one pack and the mounted officer (glued to his horse in this case) in the other, so while still outnumbered by my redcoat sample, they have a fighting chance now, and the three musicians of the previous post to chivvy them along!

 

Alternate angle/close-ups, they are the same figures, almost certainly from Lik Be (formerly 'LP' . . . or IDL!), they share the same base style and marks as both the redcoats available over here and the pair of astronauts which joined LB's diminutive chrome-painted robot/aliens - of which I picked up a few, mint, the other day in a charity shop!

 

I haven't got their matching-set here at the moment, so it's a comparison with the slightly larger, baseless set, but you'll get the idea from the previous posts on these, and we will do a round-up of all of them when I track-down the two missing figures for that chap the other day . . . other week . . . month! Another box ticked, more confirmation of previous thoughts!

And [written after editing the article] this isn't a return to business as normal here, despite the fact this was one of the next few in the queue. The MacBook Air went back for a full refund, it was a dated technicolour yawn of multiscreen busyness, and for the price, a complete disappointment - and I've always hankered after one; looked into it about 15 years ago and gave it more thought when first doing CAD back in 2012/13!

 

So with the HPieceofshit17 already on its way back to Amazon, I went back to a Lenovo, if my government is happy for me to buy Chinese shit full of spyware, who am I to argue? But Windows11 is also shit, and I still don't know where half the stuff I have got across is! It's a depressing nightmare, and with everything else going on, I don't know when normal service will resume, but I will try to get out a few easy or new-stuff posts going forward - a lot has come in!

I've actually managed to add some shots to the 'civilian' post of the canoe 'season', but apart from that and the Airfix post (additions to the Commandos) which was to go early too, the rest are still on one of the hard drives and after trying to 'migrate' the back-up, I'm in no hurry to load anything else on here until I know what the fuck I'm doing!

And I've just had problems loading these images, they wouldn't go where I was trying to place them, I tried formatting the page to normal, but they kept going in down the bottom, so in the end I gave up and moved all the text in sections . . . Pain! Still, it's not all negative, I'm back with Firefox; if everything else has changed you might as well bite the bullet and get used to new everything, and the current spellchecker for it is much better even than the Windows Office one!

R is for Revolutionary Round-up!

We have looked at this topic several times, but there always seems to be more to look at or more to say, and as I still haven't got round to the muted 'bicorn/tricorn hat' page (despite my having seen the box pass under my nose back in the summer) we might as well have some now! Actually the box may be get-at-able, so I might get it done while I'm twiddling my thumbs in the new flat?

These came in as part of a loose lot I think (it was a while ago now!), and as we'd only seen the lovely boxed set Brian Berke sent to the blog, a few years ago now, I thought it was a good excuse to photograph them again, only closer inspection showed them to be another set altogether!

And I was going to post the link to Brian's set, but instead here's the 'Spirit of '76' tag link, which if you click on it, will give you the previous five posts on the subject, under this, which you can then keep reading, before carrying-on down to the bottom, in the hope it all makes more sense, as it's been confusing me!

These are larger than the Award International ones Brian sent, at about 60mm compatible, albeit with the same deep bases, and smaller drums, proportionally. With them came a mini flag-waver and the LibertyBell, both also cake decorations.

The vinyl set seems to have bee issued in various brand-marks, all carft/cake decoration importers; mine on the left, Brian's posed-set in the middle, and two others, the Super Minis is a dodgy-packed one with two fifers and no boy-drummer, while SSCO are quite a common brand over The Pond with a fine assortment of figures, some common (Wilton/Culpitt types), some less so.

This apparently 1976-branded 'brand mark' carries the smaller ones I've now tracked down, and what look to be copies - in polystyrene - of the previous baseless PVC set. It's this brand which also carried the two smallies above, there was also a patriotic bride & groom set in period garb, a Bettsy Rose sewing the flag and a Spirit of '76 trio, all done as short-fat-kid caricatures.

I collaged the Lido AWI drummer on the end, as he seems to be channeling the same trio!

Indeed, one of the reasons for all the confusion is that the painting by Archibald M. Willard provided the source material for many bronze, spelter, mazac/Zamak or similar metal statuettes, and there were (are!) a lot of ceramic versions, in both cases some historical, some rushed out for the 1970's celebrations (which I remember being almost as big over here as it was over there?), and the plastic's seem then to be copies of those copies . . . all the ones with the deep bases being copied from the ceramics. Two from evilBay seen here.

Well, by now I had a folder with AWI in the title bar hanging-around and started to shove all-sorts in it! So these got added; on the left a carded clone (no evidence of it being Star Toys, but they were one copier) of the Shell/Innovative set which we have also looked at here previously, and which explains the 'other' cannon, which I mused-on in one of the more recent posts, with, on the right, an artillery piece (which might also be from Brian?) in the style of pencil-sharpener artillery, but sans sharpener and able to fire pellets, branded to an Edge Mark 

Then this came in only the other day in a lot of mostly machine-guns! "It's a colour variation of the Brian set" I thought, but no, it's a sixth set of sculpts altogether! The younger drummer in the 60mm set has a full gap between his legs, the 54mm version Brian sent is filled-in with sculpted tree-trunk, while this chap has a part gap, part trunk arrangement, he's about the same size as the Award set though.

So, for all my efforts, and Brian's donation, I've only three-and-a-third of the six sets I now know are out there! And only five-and-a-third sets are illustrated on the Blog . . . so we shall return to them, again!

Knowing where the growing-contents of the folder was going I picked these up when I saw them going cheap, not very well painted (compared to say; King & Country) they are the 'wullumbriton' set (not really Britains!) in factory-decorated, poured whitemetal, and I wouldn't dream of paying full price for this attic-filling shite which is 80% packaging by volume, and 90% thin-air by pricing!

Brian also sent this a while ago, with the museum-visit stuff, some of which we have seen, some of which is waiting for that 1650-1800's page of big-hats! The government forces had drummers too! Better painted than the wullumbriton ones as well, but in the glossy 'toy soldier' style.

To finish; I have the painting-guide postcard for the Old Guard Inc., recruiting vignette/diorama The Raising of a Regiment 1776-83, in the archive, designed by Andrew Chernak; the figures could be painted for either side, but here a farmer has just signed-up for the armed insurgency and a backwoods hunter is contemplating the taking of sides!

Note how the reversed jacket colour/facings of the declared American drummer make him look quite British, something the French drummers 30-odd years later would also experience, were they more likely to survive in the fog of war as a result, or more likely to be shot by their own side, stumbling about in the clouds of musket smoke?