D is for Dustbin Lids

That's 'lid' as in helmet, not top, I know, it doesn't really work, but there you are, or, here we are! I want to leave this up for a day or two, so procrastinated and posted nothing for nearly two days while I thought about it, heay-ho! I'll still leave it up for a while, which will give me time to photograph a fantastic parcel from Chris Smith, which has all sorts of goodies (and bad guys) in it!

 

We're looking - in depth - at the First Version, Cherilea, 'Swoppet' Knights, here, because I have been lucky enough to go from a handful of bits to a master-collection, in less than two years. With a small but significant purchase at the Plastic Warrior show back in 2024 (possibly from Adrian at the now defunct Mercator), a smaller bag at PW this year, and the box above them which was a private purchase, to which I added a helmet (which had almost certainly fallen out of one of the three samples, and a plume, from a bits-lot.

 

There may be a few more in storage somewhere, but unlikely to make much difference to the whole, above. And the point of this post is to try and pin-down all the variables, a task which I may fail at, and which Matt Thier may have done a better job of back in the late 2010's in PW's magazine, when he went through all the Cherilea swoppets in some detail.

 

Poses first, and I am confident there are only six figures, five knights and this kneeling archer, who's a bit large, and a bit gawkish in posture, but would slip in-between the Britains and Lone Star chaps, but dwarf them slightly!

 

He is the only pose who doesn't wear a helmet, so his head is always painted, and a good one has three or even a formal four-count, of small arrows stuffed in his tube-quiver. 

 

But he comes in two versions, some with a 'ring hand' and the bow stuffed through the hole, some with a 'stud-hand' and the bow attached with a small plug-hole and stud, at the hand-grip. I have no idea which came first or why they may have replaced one with the other, as they both seem to work well, But maybe it's easier to lose the bow (even in the shop-stock boxes, at the store), from the plug-together version, and so that was the earlier, replaced one?

 

Three sword fighters, and this one seems to be the only one to officially get the cloak? Striking down, overarm, he's about to make a mess of someone who lost their footing, or who has tired, from existing wounds?

 

Striking around at waist height, he's in a fight to the death with an equal!

 

Ready, or parrying with his shield.

 

The standing waiting chap, never that useful in a fight, and I don't know if either lance is correct, the one with the dragon is associated with the mounted 2nd type, from the Sharna-Ware years and the rather compact castle play set, while the nicely, vicious-looking one is lovely, but the colour's not quite matching anything else?

 

The sixth sculpt is also a swordsman, but easier to separate out as he's striking overhead with both hands.

 

I've only noticed two different heads, one looking more like Charles I, the other looking more like a page-boy, or a Conquistador, but I must confess I didn't look that carefully, so there may be more. And while the archers' always have painted hair, it seems they gave-up painting the head inside the helmets quite quickly, with unpainted being more common than painted, overall.

 

Helmets, there are six dustbins, and two more traditional closed Burganets, but as I only have single examples of one or two, there may, by extrapolation, be more? And that's the rule for all the following!

 

I should point out that while they are mostly looking forwards in the upper shot, and backwards in the lower shot, it's not that simple, with the ones on either end of the row possibly facing forward in the lower shot and vise-versa, while the second from the right isn't clear at all! I also noticed the white plume is a fourth design! 

 

Single-headed Imperial chickens and two designs of cross, on the classic 'shield' shaped shield, of 13/14th century design, with a raised edge. A plug on the hand pushes through the shield and into the decorative element.

 

Earlier 11/12th century lozenge, or 'kite' shields with a more ornate chicken (looking the other way) and a fleur-de-lys (or, 'lis, a stylized lily or iris symbol, associated with French royalty, and symbolizing purity and the Virgin Mary). These shields seem to have been both moulded poorly, and then fettled poorly, and can be lumpy, misshapen or both!

 

I also have a double-headed chicken, but it's missing a wing, and all these are on the more decorative 15th century shields, which also have the raised rims.

There are two versions of three-point plume, and both seem to have sub-variants, which may be generations, or multiple cavities? This is the 'tumescent' one with two pointy-uppies and a drooper.

 

While the other variant has two droppers and one sticky-uppy, and is therefore the 'limp' one! Again, signs of different versions or cavities?
 

The only other crest design I have is a Wyvern (four limbed dragon), and again, as with helmets, shields, and shield achievements, I have only one of some of these, so there may well be more. So if you have items not shown here, or obvious variations, let us know!

 

All references to chicken/s should read eagle/s, I blame Artificial Intelligence!

S is for Seen Elsewhere and Sharna Ware (Cherilea)

Posted these elsewhere a while back, the figure pages from a larger Sharna Ware catalogue, dated 1974, Sharna being the buyer of Cherilea. I nearly wrote 'buyer and last iteration', but the solids all reappeared in recent years (Marlborough-Dorset-Imperial, Monty and Rommel are now in metal, shock horror!) while some of the swoppets (not in this catalogue) went to Italy (Tibidabo) and others were pirated in Hong Kong!

 

Typically, they've loaded in reverse order and I can't be arsed to sort them out, these (top two) were bought-in from Timpo, while I have a similar triangular flag in white, very crude. I'm not sure if the fort even got issued, it looks to be an original design (if plastic) or routed-wood, probably a particle-board, but I'm not sure if I've seen one with walls that high, however I do stand to be corrected, I can't know everything?

The medieval fort was sometimes sold in a Sharna box, and the knight we saw here as one of my early 'star purchases' after I began collecting the larger scales (when the blog made it inevitable, we discovered with One Inch Warrior magazine, that once you've covered a few rarities and some smaller makes, you rapidly run out of sufficient copy to keep a small-scale thing going!), had the same dragon as the flags on the fort, hanging from his lance, and despite not being in the shot above, probably came with the fort as it's 'Lord and Master'?

 

Below it, is all Timpo product, presumably as they got into difficulties they looked to expand the range without the expence of production-costs, and Timpo would have been happy to shift more stock, even/especially to a rival! Note the gun team kept both their Timpo horses and riders.

I think I'm right in saying the Covered Wagon/Buckboard was an earlier all-Cherilea design, albeit quite similar to Timpo's, while the Stage Coach was later bought-in from Timpo, but given Cherilea's bigger horse team and driver?

I have a few of the ACW, and one or two Crusaders, but I've not sought-out the Mexicans, I always thought they looked a little silly, and will wait 'till they are part of a mixed-lot or bulk-purchase, one day, if ever? I might have some dodgy Hong Kong copies though, somewhere, all semitransparent cloaks/ponchos in purple and pink?

Love the 'Commandos', and have decent examples of all three generations now, while the space sample is growing, and I've a couple of the Union, on foot. The spacemen have been much copied over the years, but the others are stand-alone!

Love the knights and I almost can't stop buying them, but I do stop myself if they are plain silver, the other colours however . . . I'm a sucker for them! While the Wild West I'm not so enamoured of, they aren't the best anatomically, and while not as silly as the Mexicans, I'm in no hurry to fill a quota!

From Companies House;

Solarprior Leisure Limited 30 Dec1957 - 10 Jan 1992

 

T/A

 

Sharna Ware (Mfg.) Limited 30 Dec 1957 - 09 Jun 1983
Sharna Tri-Ang Limited 09 Jun 1983 - 20 Dec 1988
Tri-Ang Leisure Limited 20 Dec 1988 - 09 Oct 1990
Dissolved 17 Mar 1994

 

Liability/debt litigation carried on until at least 2020!

E is for Ellem, or Not, as the Case May Be!

Having dealt with Merehall, and added suitable notes to the two older posts with them, I thought I should address Ellem, as they've just have one of their Tag's removed, but it will probably need to be restored when I re-read the articles fully and work out what I posted back then - with all the caveats and questions marks they needed!

 

Ellem were a 'mark' which appeared in the late Sharna-owned Cherilea catalogues, and were an attempt to cut costs by importing cheap product from Hong Kong, rather than relying on the expensive stuff made here, in the midst of, or possibly as a result of, all that industrial dispute/labour turmoil of the period.

This is a box of Ellem Crusaders, with three non-Ellem knights on top, off to the right-hand side, and also courtesy of John Begg (see previous post) but photographed a year earlier.

The Crusaders seem to be the same product as carried by Star Toys, so Ellem may well be a phantom-brand construct of Sharna/Cherilea, while the other two (one very mucked-about with) have the deep-hollow bases of the 'French-looking' paratroopers we saw here.

 

On the other hand, the sky-blue one is another type/maker again, having little circular indents round the locating pegs, and much-thicker walls, to an also hollowed-out base.

This is from an old photoshoot from years ago (2013) and proves little, as the angle is wrong to compare bases, but we will be returning to these from time to time, not least when further attributions turn-up! In the meantime they are just four more, probably from two (or three?) sources, with the Crusader being possibly Star and/or Ellem.

My sample of knock-off shields, the trouble with these is that they are peg-together rather than the heat-welded over-moulding of Timpo's, and consequently can be mucked-about with, by the human owners, within or between makers, to produce colour combinations which never left any of the factories, therefore I offer it only as a sample. Note: some of them are so poorly made, the symbol extends beyond the extent of the shield-board.

 

It's funny, someone used this image (seen before here at Small Scale World) without permission the other day and when I suggested he might be so quick as to enter my grave, he just laughed? You catch someone, in public, ripping you off, and they just don't care, they have no conscience in the matter?

 

Understand this; the more I'm plagiarised, the more I'm followed-up on, the more 'eemies' I have, the better the job I'm doing here, and my stats prove that, because they're all here, reading this, every day - the farty, envious, insecure, thieving, copycat, little scrotes!

 

Someone else in Hong Kong (or one of the above known or unknown makers) produced these copies, also of Timpo, but the earlier 'solids', imported (with poor-quality 'swoppet' foot figures) into the states by Ideal in large playsets, they were the same counter-top box singles here I think, or some bottle-bag rack-toy types? And someone reminded us it was Ideal the other day, but the post seems to have been taken down, so I can't find his name to credit him!

 

Back to Ellem, and some rather Blue Box-looking, Britains-copy, animal solids, in the zoo set, but I suspect 2nd or 3rd generation piracies, and shown here purely to help you sort them out of larger samples of similar animals, I know I have a dozen or so Ostriches now, all 'unknown'!